by Logan Scisco
The Legion of Doom’s return to Raw is the “surprise” that McMahon had been promising to viewers throughout the evening. Who says Vince doesn’t know his audience? The crowd does make Vince smile during this match by chanting that Nitro, Hulk Hogan, and Eric Bischoff suck. This match is booked wrong, as the Legion of Doom dominate the action, but have to do it over the course of eight minutes, which really exposes them. Worse, they aren’t even booked to go over. Was it really necessary to protect the Headbangers here? The Legion of Doom should’ve come out and squashed some random guys in less than two minutes. Rating: ½*
-Vince McMahon and
Jerry “the King” Lawler are live from the Manhattan Center in New York, New
York.
-Opening
Contest: The New Blackjacks defeat The
Godwinns after Windham pins Phineas following a Bradshaw lariat at 5:51:
The New Blackjacks are the repackaged Barry Windham and
Justin “Hawk” Bradshaw and while this idea may have worked in theory, it had a
couple of problems. First, people
usually prefer the original and second, many WWF fans were unaware of the
original Blackjacks because the WWF didn’t care to emphasize its history at
this time. The crowd is dominated by
smarks and ECW fans, who don’t care for either team here, but we do see Ken
Shamrock in the audience during the course of this contest. A sloppy brawl is what we get out of both
teams before a train wreck of a finish sees Phineas pinned despite having his
foot on the bottom rope. Another referee
comes out to inform the original referee that he messed up, but the original
referee refuses to reverse the decision so the Godwinns slop him. This did nothing for all parties
involved. Rating: ½*
-The Eliminators
show up and give Total Elimination to an unfortunate ring attendant and Paul
Heyman steps into the ring and says that ECW is in the house. The Eliminators should’ve roughed up the ring attendant after taking him hostage, though, because it looked silly to have him stand there like a statue while the Eliminators got into position to hit him with their finishing move.
-Stevie Richards
(w/The Blue World Order) defeats Little Guido with a Stevie Kick at 3:39:
This is our first ECW feature match and Raven makes a
cameo less than a minute in, coming from the locker room and
staring down Richards. Goldust appears
in the split screen and says that ECW is like a B-movie. This is a basic match without any psychology,
but its purpose was to put over the Blue World Order and Stevie Richards in
anticipation of ECW’s Barely Legal pay-per-view and it effectively did
that. Rating: **
-Sunny says Marlena
will not be in any condition to beat her in the arm wrestling match they are
going to have tonight.
-Arm Wrestling
Match: Marlena defeats Sunny:
The Honky Tonk Man facilitates this and Sunny gets one of
the loudest pops of the evening before she rips off Rick Rude’s opening speech, with
robe and all. Making this an arm
wrestling match is odd, but Vince Russo hadn’t developed the evening gown match
yet, so this is what we get. It unfolds
like any other arm wrestling match you’ve ever seen, with Sunny playing the
heel rule and constantly pulling away.
Regardless, the crowd is pretty into it and after making a comeback,
Marlena wins, only to have Sunny throw powder in her eyes. This brings out Savio Vega, who wants to take
advantage of the weakened Marlena, until Goldust runs in and gives us…
-Goldust
(w/Marlena) defeats Savio Vega (w/The Nation of Domination) via
disqualification when Crush interferes at 8:43 shown:
Miguel Perez is doing guest commentary and he says he has
no idea what has happened to Savio.
Savio finally has some different ring gear, which effectively
distinguishes him as a heel. The problem
with heel Savio is that his offense consists of chokes and nerve holds and it
sucks the life out of the match. Things
pick up a little bit when Goldust makes the comeback, but then things fall
apart again as Savio barely connects on a spinning heel kick and both guys run
out of ideas. Crush interferes when
Savio has the advantage, which makes little sense, and Perez comes to Goldust’s
aid. Rating: ½*
-Lawler interacting with Tiny Tim on Raw in 1993 is shown.
-Lawler interviews
Ken Shamrock in the audience and takes credit for Shamrock’s success. Shamrock says he doesn’t know Lawler and
that’s the segment. Really?
-Call
1-900-737-SLAM to vote for Best Finishing Move for the 1997 Slammy Awards. Your choices are Shawn Michaels’ Sweet Chin
Music, Marc Mero’s Wild Thing, Sid’s powerbomb, Steve Austin’s Stone Cold
Stunner, and Bret Hart’s Sharpshooter.
-Taz (w/Bill
Alphonso) beats Mikey Whipwreck via submission with the Tazmission at 3:29:
Heyman says the show has sucked aside from the ECW stuff
and I have to fully agree with him. Sabu
makes an appearance by taking out Taz’s crew, which the camera nearly misses,
and comes near the ring, where Taz can’t quite elevate Whipwreck enough to
crash onto Sabu on the floor.
Nevertheless, Sabu is pulled to the back by Taz’s entourage and Taz
quickly finishes Whipwreck. A decent
squash for Taz, but the WWF's camera crew needed to be better positioned to capture
Sabu’s dive live. They do a better job
handling the replay, though.
-The Legion of
Doom and The Headbangers wrestle to a double count out at 7:39 shown:
The Legion of Doom’s return to Raw is the “surprise” that McMahon had been promising to viewers throughout the evening. Who says Vince doesn’t know his audience? The crowd does make Vince smile during this match by chanting that Nitro, Hulk Hogan, and Eric Bischoff suck. This match is booked wrong, as the Legion of Doom dominate the action, but have to do it over the course of eight minutes, which really exposes them. Worse, they aren’t even booked to go over. Was it really necessary to protect the Headbangers here? The Legion of Doom should’ve come out and squashed some random guys in less than two minutes. Rating: ½*
-Another “Tell Me a
Lie” video is played for Shawn Michaels.
I would normally say this is unnecessary since Dr. James Andrews told us
last week that Michaels would be returning, but I enjoy the song.
-Tommy Dreamer
(w/Beulah McGillicutty) pinned D-Von Dudley (w/Sign Guy Dudley) after a DDT on
a chair at 4:29:
Dreamer and D-Von let everything go here, as D-Von takes a frying pan to the head and has Dreamer baseball slide some steps into his
face. This is really a prelude to the
hardcore era in the WWF, as chairs get involved for a variety of maneuvers,
including the finish. It’s a garbage
match, but an entertaining one when compared to the lousy WWF stuff on the
show. After the bout, Buh Buh Ray comes
in and the Dudley’s give Dreamer a Dudley Death Drop. The Sandman then comes out of the crowd to make
the save. Interestingly enough, you
could play this match before the first ECW One Night Stand pay-per-view that took place over nine years later and it would make perfect sense. Rating: **
-After the
Dreamer-Dudley match, Lawler irritates Heyman and provokes a brawl between the
two and McMahon gets lost amidst the ECW crew.
-Jim Ross recaps
last week’s events, which culminated in Sid winning the WWF title. Jim
Cornette also narrates Bret Hart’s rampage through the locker room after losing
the title.
-McMahon announces
that Bret Hart and Steve Austin will face each other in a no holds barred match
at WrestleMania.
-Todd Pettengill
interviews Shamrock and his family.
Shamrock compliments the Undertaker, thereby sparking his interest in
MMA. Pettengill does a poll for who the
fans would like to see win at WrestleMania between Austin and Hart and the
crowd firmly sides with Austin.
-The Legion of
Doom’s Doomsday Device on Mosh after tonight’s tag team match is the WWF Full
Metal: The Album Rewind for this week.
-The Undertaker
defeats Faarooq (w/The Nation of Domination) by disqualification when the
Nation runs in at 10:50 shown:
Faarooq disses the UFC and Shamrock on his way to the
ring and Shamrock teases jumping the guardrail and going after him.
The Nation takes out the Undertaker’s leg on the floor, but Faarooq
really doesn’t know how to take advantage of that. After what feels like an eternity, the Nation
does the predictable run-in to draw the disqualification and the Legion of Doom
come to the Undertaker’s aid as we go off the air. This one was a chore to sit through as
neither guy seemed motivated and the constant striking grew tiresome. I always try to look for any redeeming quality
a match might have, but this had nothing.
Rating: DUD
The Final Report Card: I’m not sure if the WWF guys intentionally
put together bad matches since they knew that the ECW crowd was going to
upstage them in terms of crowd reaction, but the WWF was clearly overshadowed
on this show. Of the WWF matches, none
of them broke ½* and it was an embarrassing display of what the company had to
offer. In the WWF’s defense, most of its
top talent was overseas on a European tour, but there’s little excuse for this effort. The ECW experiment
demonstrated Vince’s desire to do anything to get back into the Monday Night War with WCW and it did pop a rating here, but the WWF-ECW on-screen relationship
would fizzle when McMahon wanted the WWF to beat ECW in any invasion angle that
developed and Heyman wisely vetoed it.
Although the show was an interesting experiment at the time, it’s a
chore to sit through today and is really not worth your time to check out
unless you need to cure insomnia.
Show Rating:
2.5 (vs. 3.0 for Nitro)
Show Evaluation: Thumbs Down
Haha, that Lawler interview with Shamrock is so awkward. It's like Shamrock had no clue what was going on. Lawler is doing the most generic heel schtick ever ("We hang out together all the time!") and Kenny is just like "What? Dude you're a liar." instead of getting angry and threatening Lawler like I assume he was supposed to
ReplyDeleteHonestly, with a guy like Heyman as the supposed ringleader of ECW as he is portrayed here, I found him so damn unlikable and annoying that I automatically sided with Jerry Lawler.
ReplyDeleteThat's me today. I probably would have sided with Lawler had I been watching in 1997 as well, and this is coming from someone from Philadelphia.
Wow, I really dislike Paul Heyman.
I remember watching that episode. I remember when the bWo came out, Lawler ripped on them by calling them a 'cheap parody' (or something similar). Heyman fired back by asking them what they were a parody of, and Lawler and Vince had no idea how to respond since they didn't want to acknowledge the existence of WCW or the nWo.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree on your LOD rant, that was one of the weirdest backassward debuts of all time.
ReplyDeleteThey only acknowledged it when it was convenient for them, like whenever they would say stuff like "we'll give you a championship match tonight no matter what, we won't say we'll have one and then not deliver!" during that episode of Raw where Sid beat Bret for the title. Clearly stuff like that was a shot at WCW.
ReplyDeleteVince McMahon said something along the lines of the bWo is unrelated to the t-shirt brand known as the nWo.
ReplyDelete"Interestingly enough, you
ReplyDeletecould play this match before the first ECW One Night Stand pay-per-view
that took place over nine years later and it would make perfect sense."
Who says they can't do slowburn angles?
Seems like you do, yeah. I enjoy Heyman a lot (loved him as JR's color guy in 2001 especially), but he is obnoxious and sleazy. Disliking him seems like a perfectly natural thing, even if he's never bounced a check on you.
ReplyDeleteSad that both 'Taker and Faarooq managed to ummm.....top this atrocity by managing to have a match much worse than this one at KOTR. I was hoping for a "the Deadman hold us down too" promo from the Nation leading up to that match.
ReplyDeleteI love Heyman as a heel, I think he's perfect in that role, especially when he was the Smackdown GM briefly, and especially when he was the sellout ECW GM. But as a face, as he's supposed to be in this scenario, all I'm thinking is "how could ANYONE like this guy?"
ReplyDeleteIf I recall correctly the LOD hadn't signed a deal yet, but were about to. Hence the double CO with Headbangers.
ReplyDeleteI remember this episode like it was yesterday...good stuff...
ReplyDeletethe show after next week's was the first raw is war if i'm not mistaken and things go up from there.
ReplyDeleteThis was just anarchy and I loved it. February 1997 was a huge turning point for WWE. They had been experimenting with a few things in late '96, but they just transformed themselves here. The edition of Raw where Bret loses the title because of Austin, the ECW invasion and LOD return, the new Raw is War format, the Sid-Bret cage match with the legendary explosion/meltdown of Bret afterward... all between Final Four and Wrestlemania 13. And after that, they'd transition off the Austin-Hart double turn with the Hart Foundation formation. Feb 97 to about August 98 was the best run a wrestling show (Raw) ever had, in my opinion.
ReplyDelete