Kevin Ridge

Oh, those poor corporations. Summerslam will be in New Jersey after pesky tax bill has been repealed. I enjoy the minis dressing up as WWF characters. Ross plugs on his hotline that a major WWF superstar was forced to go under a strip search at airport. Match was too short but you expect that for WWF TV. Was good for what we got. Sagrada does a great looking dive off the stage. This would be getting showed repeatedly on WWF history video packages if it was done by a WWF wrestler.

Rodman escorts Hogan to the ring. Hollywood takes his time getting involved in match. Crowd chanting for Sting. Over the top rope elimination is in effect. Rodman helps eliminate Piper but he barely pulled down top rope. Benoit still out there. Hall struggles to hit the Outsider Edge. Luger is all alone. Lex kicked some ass before NWO did their cheating. Wait, what caused NWO to go after Sting? As far as yearbook, he was still showing up in ring with them. Anyways, Sting clearly shows were his allegiance is as he takes down rest of NWO.

Watching Savage is fun with him looking at the Kimberly’s centerfold still. Randy needed to ditch the glasses though.

DDP wants Savage who has been avoiding him. Savage gets my attention immediately. Elizabeth is holding a Nude Celebrities magazine. Savage name drops one of his girlfiends Pam Anderson. Ah, but Kimberly is one of the centerfold girls. Google time. Kimberly has spray paint all over her and Savage attacks DDP. Elizabeth shows as much personality on the mic that you will ever see.

Maybe it’s the first match of the show but crowd were excited at Malenko’s entrance. Boos for Eddie. Rick Steiner laid out backstage surrounded by the NWO. Crowd is cheering for everything Malenko does. A big Dean chant too. The No DQ mach is more of them upping the aggression and not having to worry about count outs when they go outside the ring. I liked Dean hitting a low blow and Eddie immediately responding with one of his own. Malenko with the frog splash! Guerrero gets the Texas Cloverleaf. They play up previous issues with Syxx and tug of war over the belt. Eddy clearly tries to use momentum to swing belt at Dean but misses. Malenko hits Guerrero with Syxx’s video camera. Might not be the extra stuff you’d expect from these guys but I liked it.

TAKA and crew are wearing their BWO shirts which is great continuity of them bringing the gimmick over to Japan. Togo launches Yakushiji with a German. I do love those combination tag team moves by Kaientai with added poses. Great stuff from TAKA. The moves come fast towards the end with all the dives and pinning attempts. Enjoyed it a lot but I too want to go back and revisit the 96 stuff.

Dudley’s talk about their wrestling clinic with The Gangstas that Thesa and O’Connor would be proud of. Tommy Rich says ciao. He is Italian.

We see Lance Storm take a Dominator from Axl Rotten. Gangtas show up. One of the weakest guitar shots you will see from New Jack. But may not have been gimmicked. Nintendo gets used. Sell that on Ebay. The guitar gets tied up to Bubba’s foot. Eliminators join up after Rotten got on mic and made claims about Dudley’s being best tag team today. Lance Storm is back up! He climbs to the top rope... and.... just waits there for the Dudley’s to turn around. That looked so funny. He's a running joke for me on these year books right now.

It didn’t look like the Tazmission was even correctly applied.

The blond was Chastity right? Richards wants a shot at Title at Barely Legal. Raven makes quick work of Meanie and Nova. Very quick face off with Richards but Raven walks off. After mostly pushing Funk as the guy to face Raven, they needed to focus more on the others. Richards is very hot right now.

These minis look tall compared to others. Ramirez and Guerrero had some excellent mat exchanges early on. Ha! Ramirez brings the ridiculousness to win the second pinfall. That was over the top but fun. Loved the psyche out moonsault by Dragoncito to the outside instead of him hitting a move into the ring as looked like was going to happen. That looked great. Replays make it look so much more crazy.

Wearing a tie in a barbed wire match is gutsy. My mind went off on why wrestlers don’t try to put the breaks on when Irish whipped in regular matches. After the initial teases, match gets going very well. Kudo with a huge dive over the barbed wire to outside. Lots of blood. Plenty of wrestling moves with pinfalls/submissions but also using the barbed wire. It was balanced well. Very good match.

Muscle Buster! That mat is very scuzzy looking. So are the wrestlers. Referee should have wore gloves as precaution for counting down on mat. Was alright but haven’t seen anything I like much from US Indies so far.

Bischoff doesn’t seem to be sweating being suspended at all. DiBiase's involvement in group seemed mute after Bischoff joined NWO. Rodman becomes the newest member of the NWO.

Spring break shows made for a nice setting. Rambling Piper who wasn’t pleased with WWF take shots at him for having hip problems. Mongo looks like a more natural member of Horsemen than Jarrett. Arn wearing his full denim. Piper talks about his guys being family and then chooses the Horsemen as his tag partners. Loyalty.

Rodman and Hogan together. Poster behind them of Rodman’s movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme. The Worm has arrived. Was only two months ago that he kicked that poor cameraman during an NBA game. But he was a big story during this period.

I loved this at the time. When WWF Raw was in north east markets I was always hoping ECW guys would show up. Lawler and Heyman going at it is just fun TV. Lawler lets everyone know Paul E still lives at home with his parents. Lawler finds out the hard way he doesn’t have any friends.

Ken Shamrock is announced as special guest referee of Submission match between Bret and Austin. Ken is the right choice as he knows lots about submissions. He plans on being fair and partial as referee. Thankfully Austin cuts off Shamrock. Bret complains about the lack of justice in WWF. He’s happy about his upcoming title shot against Sid though in steel cage. Shamrock is here to referee match not be a marriage counselor for Bret.

New intro for Raw that heavily features Steve Austin. They now got the big video screen at entrance that set stage for all the backstage stuff that would become a regular part of show.

Raven wants to wrestle anyone else but Terry Funk at Barely Legal. They were building it towards Funk winning the three way and facing Raven. Funk thinks this is a “stupid damn thing” of a promo segment. Funk would make a great motivational speaker.

I'm not a Joshi fan but I did like that the big 10 Woman Tag team match was mentioned. I said in that thread but it is one of the best Survivor Series type matches you will see. I had forgot about Atlas myself. USWA-TX had more to talk about. I was frustrated myself in that USWA-TX would do a bunch of gimmick matches but because of censorship on TV would cut major corners. Then you had blood baths in USWA Memphis with the same guys involved. And then there was the awkwardness of Chris Von Erich and Percy Pringle promos about the family.

Great first show guys. Very hard to cover a full year with 30 discs of action but thought you guys hit the high spots very well. Got a kick out of Gorky Park, Nick Patrick and of course, Mad USA getting air time. Loss underestimates the Hogan/Warrior promos too much for their over the top unintentional humor. But I agree it's not exactly the way you want to build your WrestleMania main event. No mention of ICW interviewer Dawna? She would have been a perfect special guest on show.

This is how I feel. As bad as it is, If she was hotter I would probably not have had such an issue. I'm so against the idea that she is attractive. Maxim, you suck.

Ohtani has both knees wrapped up. More powerbombs that mean nothing. Benoit is full of intensity and straight forward kicking some ass. Takaiwa with a full set of hair. Liger with a wicked top rope clothesline to set up the running Liger Bomb. Good match. I feel like Ohtani has one of the worst win/loss records on yearbooks so far.

I liked the opening opening exchanges but the first fall came too fast. We get a super close up of some young girl ringside picking her nose. That was hilarious. Couldn’t hold my full attention as match went on though.