The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW – 04.19.94
Taped from Utica, NY
Your hosts are Vince McMahon & Randy Savage. Two weeks in a row?
Man, if you thought today’s product was a dead zone between Wrestlemania and Summerslam, it’s got NOTHING on the product 10 years ago.
Bret Hart v. Kwang
Although this is non-title and Kwang is not even in contention, Vince notes that a win over the champion will katapult him into the rankings. That’s a unique way to frame a glorified squash. Kwang attacks and uses MARTIAL ARTS to subdue the Hitman, but Bret works on the arm. Vince notes that Bret perhaps has underestimated the skills of Kwang. I somehow don’t even think it’s possible to undersell how little of a koncern he was. I think Barry Horowitz was a scarier threat at this point. They brawl outside and we take a break, returning with Kwang in kontrol. Bret comes back with a bodypress, but Kwang chokes him out on the ropes. And now, the most devastating of martial arts moves, the VULCAN NERVE PINCH, but luckily Bret fights it off and makes the komeback. FIVE MOVES OF DOOM while Owen Hart does a phone interview to milk his win over Bret, and the Sharpshooter finishes at 11:00. I guess Kwang’s martial arts just weren’t deadly enough this week. **
Meanwhile, Doink does charity work. As if those poor people didn’t have it tough enough.
Jeff Jarrett v. PJ Walker
We get our first PJ sighting in a while, shortly before his repackaging I believe, as Vince hammers home what a loser that JJ is because he can’t get a record deal in Nashville. Can you imagine them running that storyline today? They’d go out and buy some minor record label just to do a “Did You Know” bit and inflate some division of the company on the next conference call. PJ is all fired up, but JJ comes back with a devastating abdominal stretch while the announcers play “what’s in the news this week?”. Holy god JJ was insufferably dull before he found happiness with the Roadie. Walker with a small package, but Jarrett hits him with a slingshot suplex and flying fistdrop before finishing with a DDT at 3:53. Two future World champions, ladies and gentlemen.
Next week, Lou Albano wants an answer from Jack Tunney on the tag title shot!
The Steiner Brothers v. Barry Hardy & Mike Khoury
Things were getting a tad frosty between the Steiners and Vince at this point, so it’s kind of surprising they’re even on TV here considering what a huge “fuck off and die” that getting left off Wrestlemania was. Scott beats on Khoury and hits a dragon suplex, and then brings Hardy in and appears to take some liberties with him. Scott hangs him in the Tree of Woe and chokes him out while Vince teases a heel turn for Scott that went nowhere. Over to Rick, who continues bullying the poor guy with crossfaces and a superplex that was more just tossing him off. Scott comes in with a samoan drop off the middle, and then he powerbombs Khoury and finishes with the SCREWDRIVER at 5:11. Who shit in their cornflakes this week? Oh no, we’re getting paid more than everyone else in the tag division but Vince won’t let us work Japan whenever we want, boo fucking hoo.
Duke “The Dumpster” Droese is on his way. He only takes garbage from people because he WANTS to! Have I mentioned lately how terrible this era was? I had one of those giant C-band satellite dishes that I got around King of the Ring, and I chose to watch SMW and ECW instead of this crap most of the time in 94.
The King’s Court with Alundra Blayze, as she derides the segment as a ripoff of Piper’s Pit, which began a godawful feud between Lawler and Piper that paid off at King of the Ring. Lawler points out that Blayze is missing her title belt, and brings out Luna with insinuations that she stole it. I…don’t recall that going anywhere, actually. I remember the feuds with Bull Nakano and Bertha Faye, but I don’t remember Luna ever getting a title shot.
Earthquake v. Mike Bell
Quake overpowers Bell and THROWS A DROPKICK, knocking Bell right out of the ring. Legdrop and he headbutts Bell down a few times as Vince is SALIVATING over a match between Earthquake and Yokozuna. Yeah, that’s coming up too, just accept it. Powerslam and butt splash finish at 3:54.
Earlier this week, IRS launches a heinous attack on Tatanka and rips his headdress up over Taxgate.
IRS v. Major Yates
Apparently we’re all too stupid to file our taxes before the deadline. Hey, I do mine in March because I typically get a big refund, so I must not be stupid at least. Now, was Major Yates named that by his parents in hopes of a military career, and if so why not just name him General Yates and really go for it? Irwin with the abdominal stretch and a butterfly suplex into a legdrop, and finishes with an STF at 3:32.
Meanwhile, Johnny Polo isn’t particularly worried about the Headshrinkers, although he’s acting pretty worried, as this program really heats up.
Next week: Razor Ramon v. Jeff Jarrett and another shitload of squashes!
We talked about this briefly in another Raw Rant, but damn were the Steiners assholes. Vince giving MOM a payday over them at Mania is one of the best "go fuck yourselves" booking choices of the Mid 90's.
ReplyDeleteI guess Khoury wasn't in the Steiners'... LEAGUE! HA!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Luna, anyone know why they ended the Bam Bam/Luna pairing, and went with Bam Bam/DiBiase instead? Bam Bam/Luna complimented each other whereas the thing with DiBiase was just weird.
ReplyDeleteYou mean Scott doesn't wake up at midnight on New Year's Day to do his taxes like Ned Flanders does?
ReplyDeleteLuna was taken off TV not long after a brief team-up with Bull Nakano. Dibiase stealing Bigelow away to build his Corporation was a decent move, but then they never really won many big matches and a total of zero titles.
ReplyDeleteI guess that's the problem watching things in hindsight. I watch the Corporation slowly form and groan knowing how horrible it ended up becoming, whereas it was an interesting development at the time as DiBiase was well liked at the time.
ReplyDeleteYeah, and Barry Hardy was a long time and dependable job guy, too, who didn't deserve that kind of bullshit treatment from the Steiners. It wasn't like it was some punk kid who they were out there laying stiff kicks into. Shit, if it was PJ Walker I would have laughing right along with them, but this was pretty inexcusable.
ReplyDeleteThis was when I was 6-7 years old and the most I would be into the product, surprisingly, before the boom of the late 90's and early 2000's would cause me to hit unreachable peaks of fandom. I look back on these RAWs with fond memories. I'd go to my first show in Cornwall later this year. The product never really cooled off in upstate NY where I lived at the time. WCW was oddly just as popular in that area too.
ReplyDeleteMy late Dad would take these episodes for me every week. I wasn't allowed to stay up that late and watch RAW in those days, so I would always watch it on tape the next day either before or after school. Can't wait until we get to the Bret vs. 1-2-3 Kid title match, which was the first RAW I got to stay up and watch in its entirety. Needless to say, Bret was my absolute my favorite and my childhood hero. My mom even saw him in Denny's a couple months later in Syracuse, NY and snagged an autograph for me, which he was happy to sign. I find it funny he was wearing his own wildly obnoxious pink and black shirt at the time.
I felt like I could sense booking patterns as a mark kid, so when the first round of the KOTR was Scott Steiner vs IRS, I thought it was the start of a Scott singles run, and maybe a KOTR win (I remember him beating Ricky Steamboat on TV right before he left WCW). Sadly, to my shock, IRS won, and that was it for the Steiners in the WWF!
ReplyDeleteOnce they started Raw, I think it became clear that they could no longer get away with 4-5 PPV's per year. Not that they necessarily needed to go all the way to 12, but there was just too much time in between major events and having a show like Raw, on top of all the syndicated shows (Superstars was still pretty big in 94), there was a lot of treading water.
ReplyDeleteHe surprisingly brought it against Razor the next week, and against Tatanka a few weeks later. He was kind of an enigma.
ReplyDeleteIs the Mike Bell who jobbed here to Earthquake the same Mike Bell from Perry Saturn incident?
ReplyDeleteProbably safer than Homer's technique "How many kids... No time to count... NINE!!"
ReplyDelete"Man, if you thought today’s product was a dead zone between Wrestlemania and Summerslam, it’s got NOTHING on the product 10 years ago."
ReplyDeleteI thought Backlash 2004 was kind of decent.
I also never understood the online hatred for Kwang. What is wrong with a martial arts/Ninja heel? Perfectly fine for a mid card/Jobber to the stars role.
ReplyDeleteIf you think Scott busting out the Screwdriver as a finish on a jobber was bad, most of the time he'd just use it as a TRANSITION MOVE.
ReplyDeleteYeah, they were assholes but their jobber matches were the best. Ever.
I was thinking the same thing!
ReplyDeleteAlthough this is non-title and Kwang is not even in contention, Vince
ReplyDeletenotes that a win over the champion will katapult him into the rankings.
That’s a unique way to frame a glorified squash.
What's funny is that they did the same thing with The Patriot and actually pulled the trigger on it Guy pulls upset over champ Bret and gets a ppv title shot out of it.
Since you brought up the Patriot, what was the point of keeping him masked if they called him "The Patriot Del Wilkes" at one time? Isn't the point of a mask to hide someone's identity? Why give him a real name then?
ReplyDeleteCornette explained this all in one of his many shoots. Long story short, no one outside of Cornette cared about him. They were in a meeting about how to book the guy and everyone just wanted to talk about Sable's boobs.
ReplyDeleteBEWBS!
ReplyDeletean enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in flourescent green, yellow, and pink
ReplyDeleteThey actually had Patriot beat Bret a week before he got the title, so there would be a natural storyline to go into their program. Basic booking 101.
ReplyDeleteAh, I thought Bret was the champ then.
ReplyDeleteLike everything else from the time, he gave fans zero reasons to boo him (I always like the mist, so that's the one redeeming quality he had). It seemed like a problem up and down the roster at the time. Why go see a show when 90% of the people involved are only face or heel based on what WWF says they are, and not doing anything particularly nasty.
ReplyDeleteand The Patriot even was a decent enough worker who could have been a good addition to their midcard if they had just put a little more effort in.
ReplyDeleteI didn't actually realize the "pattern" but was hoping for Scott Steiner to become a singles star as well (I liked him and Rick as a team but Scott was always my favorite).
ReplyDeleteActually...my grandfathers first name was General. C.S.B.
ReplyDeleteI chalked it up more to him working Memphis style in a product that was as anti-Memphis as it got... plus he never really did much to draw heat. OOOOH, he wants to be a Country singer. Some heel motivation that is.
ReplyDeleteYou ever wondering guys like Droese coming into Vince's office all excited about their big break and then the smile shrinks and shrinks as the gimmick is laid out for them?
ReplyDeleteAnyone else notice that Alundra's crown spelled Lawler's name wrong? "Lalwer is a Loser" haha!
ReplyDeleteMy buddy lives in stamford and saw them filming that scene back in March 1994. It was 2 minutes from Titian Towers.
ReplyDeleteVince and Bruce Pritchard LOVED getting amped about the look and design of a character and then after they debuted did ZERO with their character development. I could likely list about three dozen guys from that era that were all art department. Russo helped flesh guys out with some storylines atleast starting in 97.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't want to do it as much as WCW already started adding ppvs so they had to follow suit.
ReplyDeleteI agree. It's amazing that they had zero plans for the guy. As Cornette was saying, why would you purposely screw the guy over?
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying Alaundra/Medusa was good here but it is kind of refreshing to hear a woman talk like a normal human in the ring.
ReplyDeleteKwang, Aldo Montoya, Sparky Plugg, Adam Bomb (both face and heel runs), Well Dunn, Duke Droese, Man Mountain Rock, Henry Godwinn, The Blu Brothers, Mantaur... my GOD, and I haven't even got to 1996! (Sal Sincere, The Pug, TL Hopper, Freddy Joe Floyd...)
ReplyDeleteHakushi fit that mold perfectly. That dude was way underused. His match with Bret from an early In Your House is an underrated classic.
ReplyDeleteTBF, Droese was "The Garbage Man" on the indy circuit before coming to the WWF.
ReplyDeleteIt could be worse, it could be the voice of Zan from the Wonder Twins.
ReplyDeleteWell never mind then he deserved it.
ReplyDeleteGot to love how Savage starts the show by immediately putting himself over and not so subtly suggesting to Vince that he should get a title shot against Bret Hart.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the next episode is Savage's most insane commentary ever, particularly during the Razor Ramon/Jeff Jarrett match. Don't want to spoil it for anybody so check it out if you guys haven't already done so.
"Can you imagine them running that storyline today? They’d go out and buy some minor record label just to do a “Did You Know” bit and inflate some division of the company on the next conference call."
ReplyDeleteDid they not end up doing something similar to this for Jillian Hall Christmas Songs in 08?Somehow ending up doing half way decent on iTunes??
Also im SHOCKED they don't do need for 3MB, yeh ano their jobbers but still, worth a try......
Kinda reminds me of how Bret Hart would act in his promos- he was less a "Shouty Screamy" guy, and acted more like a normal person in these situations. I kind of appreciated that more than the theatrics.
ReplyDeleteI still remember Mick Foley talking in his first book about the "Mankind" gimmick, and how much he hated the early plans of "The Mutilator" or something, and compared it to what kind of spiel a guy like PJ Walker got when he was told about the Aldo Montoya gimmick. JR's diplomatic response to his question about what the interview for a guy like Aldo would be like was pretty funny in how understated it was.
ReplyDeleteI think a TON of kids thought Scott was just fucking awesome. He was huge, hit amazing moves, and his tights looked great. Everyone with a brain could tell that he was the best half of the Steiners.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of the Foley story when I wrote that...well that and the image of Vince yelling He'S GONNA PUUUUUUKE at poor Droz while he was being forced to vomit on command.
ReplyDeleteLook at WWE headquarters on Google Maps sometime and it's shocking how residential the whole area is. You've got a bunch of mid-range, not overly expensive suburban-style homes and then a giant-ass office building right in the middle of it.
ReplyDeleteThe '96 guys were explicitly hired to be glorified jobbers, at least. Not that it excuses the fact that they were all talented guys (especially Smothers and Tony Anthony). But...they weren't really designed to "get over," and they basically only worked TV. They were guys designed to have just a little more credibility than nameless jobbers in the Monday Night Wars era.
ReplyDeleteI think that was one of their points of contention--the WWF wanted to split them up. Scott said that it was either him and his brother, or neither one. I can't say that I fault him.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. It also has a small city area with an arena, mall, etc. Back in the early 2000s I saw HHH and big steph at that mall (the luggage store) and Kevin Kelly at a&w root beer.
ReplyDeleteThere wasn't much reason to cheer/boo the entire roster, with the exception of the top 6-8 people. Creating gimmicks and putting them on TV, losing ratings and syndication at a time when house shows were down and syndication is what helped sell tickets in the first place, is bad regardless of these characters are meant to be used as scrubs or pushed talent.
ReplyDeleteWell, yes, absolutely. 1994 was a creative nadir as far as characters went.
ReplyDeleteRunning the Steiners like the 70's Funks (You gotta beat Rick to even be on Scott's radar) would have worked... surprised Vince didn't consider that if he wanted Scott as champ.
ReplyDeleteThat's why people loved Jake Roberts
ReplyDeleteStamford isn't exactly the rich, snobby Connecticut of people's minds. Neither Stamford, nor Hartford is all that great
ReplyDeleteWasn't Wilkes brought in because Michaels took his ball and went home for a while?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if they didn't see a long term place for Wilkes, I guess they figured they would bury him as much as they could, so he couldn't take his heat over to WCW. He was incredibly over on the indy circuit and was positioned as the star of Global, so I can see the WWF wanting to make sure they got their use out of him and then bury him
That was such an amazingly brutal move. Too bad you'll never see something like it in PG WW"E"
ReplyDeletefrom what I inferred, it wasn't about them intentionally burying him. They just didn't care if he got over or not. They had zero plans for him and just stuck him on tv.
ReplyDeleteScott was awesome before he got too big to handle the higher spot moves. Rick wasn't exactly a slouch either and was more hindered by his personality than anything. Rick could do the power brawling thing along with some fun suplex stuff, which could have easily gotten him over with better psychology
ReplyDelete