Exposer

Undertaker must be working on his abs. It looks like he might have been doing some pull ups in the back somewhere. He says something about how Bearer will do what he has to do & he himself will do what he has to do. That's vague. The closing segment gives some answers (which I liked by the way), but confusing interview nonetheless.

Lawler's promo is unreal. He's never been short of controversial insults. Good lord. The match itself is fine. Fun for what it is. Evansville loves Lawler of course which doesn't bode well for Goldust. The baby face push just isn't working. In this case, it's silly to run this match in this town, but the guy can't catch a break. Lawler wins with his feet on the ropes but is chased up the ramp by Goldust. Goldust does his Rhodes version of Dusty strikes & sends Lawler rolling down the ramp in a fun spot. Marlena steps on Lawler with her high heel as she joins Goldust on the ramp. Fun segment altogether. Lawler is always a blast.

The segments where Austin looks for a partner during the show are hilarious. Especially the Sable one. Austin-Anvil ain't bad for a two minute brawl. Pillman gets some brief commentary time to hype a match with Austin at King of the Ring (which never happens). Austin notices Pillman & pulls him over the announce table & starts brawling with him. He goes back in the ring & Pillman follows breaking a crutch over his back for the DQ. Owen & Davey join in & pummel Austin. Shawn comes out & fights them off with Austin. Austin almost getting the chance to whack Shawn with a chair is a nice touch. JR is told that they are forced to team up for the Tag Titles next week & tells them in the ring. They're none too happy & close with another hot brawl. Great segment. Next week is a big one with this Tag Title match & Bearer potentially revealing Taker's secret.

Taker gets on Faarooq for using the "race card" & says Faarooq won't be the WWF champion because he's black, it's because he can't beat The Undertaker. I actually liked that line. Well said. A feud about race is always going to be a risk though & Taker being involved in one is just bizarre. Vince tries to get Taker to talk about his secret that Bearer is threatening to reveal. Taker says it isn't the time but Bearer shows up & starts mentioning burying Taker's parents & saying he's going to "open Pandora's box." Taker asks for more time & Bearer gives him one week to rejoin his side or else. Intriguing segment. The Kane saga is upon us.

I remember the super soaker. This commercial is random as hell, but most are. Sunny is a bully.

Great segment. Bret trolls the US fans which ends up having the HF get pelted with trash. Awesome. Bret's surprise is he's challenging Shawn Michaels at King of the Ring, with a bad knee & all, to a 10 min challenge. If Bret can't beat him in 10 minutes he'll agree to never work in the States again. Shawn agrees to the match, but only if the HF are individually handcuffed to each ring post. Bret obliges & the match that never was is agreed upon. Shawn makes his "Sunny days" comment here which infuriated Bret. Shawn is such a fucking asshole. Really great segment though & I'm pissed this match never happened.

Lawler takes shots at ECW for taking legal action after RVD had a match on RAW the previous week & he can no longer work on RAW. Lawler says RVD is the only talented wrestler from ECW & Paul Heyman is taking his chances away for a bingo hall & 300-400 morons in Philadelphia. Funny. RVD usually looks pretty good in highlight form.

This is an incredible piece of business. They straddle the line between kayfabe & reality perfectly here. Foley's amazing here being as compelling & terrifying as ever but at the same time becoming sympathetic. These interviews are probably the best character pieces in WWF history. The Undertaker feud got Foley over in the ring, but these interviews got him over as a character.

Shawn tries to be cool here or something & it's TERRIBLE. He's so bad here. He's in jeans, a cut-off shirt, & wearing a bandana. Lame. It's like he wants to be Stone Cold Michaels. Austin is great as usual though & the brawl is pretty heated. I liked that these two aren't buddies. Austin doesn't have any friends & Shawn Michaels shouldn't be pals with someone like Austin. That's great booking. Owen, Davey, & Anvil pop up on the tron & challenge them to a Tag Title match the following week if they can co-exist. I love the Hart Foundation because they're smart heels. Getting two birds with one stone in a tag match is brilliant especially when Austin & HBK hate each other. Austin & Shawn vow to find partners of their own instead of teaming with one another & start brawling again. Hot segment that is hurt some by Shawn's awful character tweaking.

This is great. I covered my thoughts in the previous week's show. Really hot brawl.

Bret dresses Shawn down which makes me happy. He does ramble a bit & is sometimes not entirely coherent but I'm glad he got to do this. Shawn spent ten minutes shitting all over Bret a few weeks earlier & Bret is man enough to call Shawn out & respond in kind to his face. Shawn looked legit mad for most of this. The people watching at the time missing the end live had to infuriate people. The last few minutes of the segment are on the Network & it's actually really great with Shawn superkicking Bret's lights out & having a heated brawl with the HF. Austin comes out & starts whooping ass & the HF retreat to the ring to protect Bret. Bret's promo is good, but it's a shame folks at the time didn't get to see the best part of the segment due to poor time management in production.

Pretty compelling stuff with Dustin talking about being a role model & a father. It gets even more touching when he addresses Dusty. After thinking about it some more, this would probably have been way better as a piece for Dustin Rhodes, the character, than Goldust. I do appreciate the attempt at humanizing Goldust & still think it was worth the try.

Really fun squash. NOD pick PG-13 as LOD's opponents in a funny moment. LOD proceed to demolish JC & Wolfie. PG-13 bump huge for them & the finish is awesome with both taking Doomsday Devices with Wolfie taking the second one & landing on the prone JC. Fun way to send PG-13 out of the territory.

Great promo. Austin is an all time great talker. He has no excuses for losing the Title match to Taker. I love him getting onto Vince for sucking up to him. Calling Vince a chicken for not wanting to say whether he's seen a chicken or not is tremendous. Austin talks about the HF being a snake & cutting it's head off, Bret in this case, is the easiest way to kill it. In a great little twist, he says he'd like to go for the ass of the snake first & that's Brian Pillman. Awesome.

Another great Bret promo. His comments on Austin are hilarious. He also tells Taker to hold the belt tight because he's coming for it. Bret says he has a surprise but the fans start chanting "Go Home!" at him & Bret gets livid & just leaves. Amazing. Heel Bret is maybe my favorite WWF character ever.

Strange match. It's pretty good, but the fans were expecting two badasses to brawl & most of the match they worked holds & body parts. Austin flinging Owen over the railing after the first punch exchange with Taker is awesome. I also think the fans were too distracted with giving the HF a hard time at ringside. Interesting match to watch though with Austin using an STF & Taker busting out karate kicks & half crabs. It's worked around dueling limb work. Fun to watch the whole thing to see how these two work on the mat together if nothing else. The finishing run is hot though. It's more what the fans wanted with the low blow spots & all. Hebner shows some personality for possibly the first time by giving Austin the bird during the whole low blow sequence. Funny. Austin hits the stunner & as he goes for the cover the bell rings & we discover Pillman has hijacked the ring bell. Taker gets back up & we get a WCW level reaction for a tombstone reversal spot. That was cool. Taker hits it & retains. The HF jump both guys right at the bell, but Austin slips out & targets Bret. He pushes Bret over in his wheelchair in a funny moment then takes one of his crutches & chases off the HF with it. Taker nails Owen with a chokeslam during all of this ass. When Fink announces Taker as the winner, Austin takes exception & stuns Taker to a big pop sending him the bird for good measure along with it. Good way to keep the Austin-Bret feud going & protect both Austin & Taker. Austin needed to be protected at this point & Taker needed to keep the belt. Great post-match & ending.

Pretty interesting to see something like this in a WWF ring. Very good match. Some of the early exchanges are awkward but once Vader takes control & starts potatoing Shamrock I got into it. I loved Vader lifting & throwing Shamrock out of some kind of cradle. The suplex to the floor is nuts. Shamrock's selling in this is really good. The last few minutes are amazing with Shamrock lighting up Vader's face only to get knocked loopy with a sickening Vader meat hook. Shamrock catches Vader in an ankle lock soon after & makes him submit. Cool hybrid style match that's crazy to see in 1997 WWF or any period of the company for that matter.

I couldn't find this, but it's not all that important & Austin's pre-match interview is probably much the same albeit without Undertaker magic & reponse. Pettingill is such an idiot he calls Undertaker's chokeslam a tombstone piledriver when covering the Austin-Taker confrontation from a few weeks ago. What a twerp.

Fun chaos to end the show. Austin-Davey is pretty forgettable with Davey being content to sit in a headlock until the finish & the hot post-match. That's fine I suppose. HF must have been the ones to steal the WWF Title from Taker & Owen is wailing away on Austin with it. LOD, Shawn, Furnas/LaFon, & Taker join the party. The ring clears & Taker sees Austin holding the belt. He snatches it from him & draws a line with it. They brawl to a hot ending. Strong go-home for A Cold Day in Hell.

I want to mention that all of the backstage hunting for Shawn on this show is fun. The highlight is HF thinking he's in the bathroom & jumping some random guy, realizing it's not him, & saying fuck it & beating up this poor guy anyways. This brawl is caught in progress with Shawn getting trapped by HF. Mostly Shawn & Anvil going at it again. Austin shows up to get at HF as well. HF scatter. Fun segment.

Shawn's promo is garbage as is him prancing around. He's the most unlikable wrestler in WWF history. The only other guy who rivals him is his good buddy Triple H. Bret comes on the screen & calls Shawn out for his phony "injury" & challenges him to fight Jim Neidhart. Fans throw shit at Anvil when he comes out in a funny moment. Anvil is no selling & working like Ole Anderson during this brawl but I wouldn't sell for Shawn either. This is a trap by Bret of course so Owen & Davey come out to help Anvil. LOD make the save & we have a fun brawl to close the segment. Good stuff for the most part.

Fascinating segment. I thought it was smart to humanize Goldust. This broke kayfabe but it's good to see behind the mask sometimes. Goldust saying he knows how Ellen feels is a bit much. I can see why some wouldn't like this but I agree that it's a last ditch effort to save Goldust as a face. I liked this.

This is really good. They make Shamrock sympathetic here & generally likable. I love stuff like this. NXT does a pretty good job of it, but the WWE main roster needs more features like this so we can understand who these people are.

I love Bret so much. He's so bitter & I love it. This is basically him thanking all of the members of the Hart Foundation & reintroducting them as a stable. Bret also says HF now has their sights set on Shawn Michaels & they're going to do to him what they did to Austin the week before. The highlight of this is Bret asking the American fans in Green Bay if they hate him following by a chorus of boos. His response: "I hate you too!"

Not much of a match. This is here for the hot ending. Owen jumps Taker & causes a DQ leading to Austin running out to clean house with Taker. Austin takes the WWF Title belt & starts celebrating with it in a funny moment. Taker takes exception but Austin gives him the stunner. Austin gets in Taker's face but Taker grabs a hold of Austin in a great moment & chokeslams him. The moment when Austin realizes Bret is by himself on the stage is amazing. Austin charges after Bret but then Jim Neidhart returns & attacks him from behind! Bret breaks a crutch over Austin's back which sends him flying off the stage. Austin is carted out of the building on a stretcher. Pillman closes the show with a maniacal smile on his face. Amazing. I can't say enough great things about this feud. This is legitimately compelling television. Every week is must see.