PeteF3
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Gene talking about how Bagwell came close to dying was probably better left unsaid. It was actually true--Bagwell went through some major scares while in the hospital--but *sounds* implausible and melodramatic. That said, they had an angle and a wrestler that people could believe in, despite Buff's rather wooden delivery here. And they pissed it all down the drain for the sake of a SWERVE.
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This is a good angle that would have been better with even a semblance of long-term planning. We set up this scenario where Jericho and Dean can't touch each other until the Bash, and we establish it and blow it off in the span of 3 minutes, 6 days before the show. Consider how much more effective this could have been with Jericho trying to egg Dean on over a number of weeks while trying to restrain from attacking Dean himself.
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As bad as he was on commentary, I always liked post-turn Mongo as a talker. He was good as a loudmouth trash-talker and he's good in a more low-key setting here. The Horsemen reunion talk is beginning, and in an ultimate insult to Flair, the plan was to proceed without him at this point.
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Malone will be a Rodzilla Killa come Bash at the Beach. Not a great interview because DDP's interviews tended to all be the same around this time (Hollywood...SCUM...HOGAN) but yes, better than last week. This main event build is almost idiot-proof, hence the huge buyrate the show would do.
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Crowd likes this and I dug the atmosphere, but this was a pretty bad segment. Lawler retired the previous week and now he's back and all butt-hurt that Hales has crowned a new Giant King. Well, gosh, Jerry, you sort of brought that on yourself, didn't you? After a possible interesting change of direction the previous week, we're right back where we were with a low-rent Austin vs. McMahon feud. The subsequent brawl is heated but the only person who really knows what they're doing out of 4 people is Lawler. For an unstoppable monster, Silva backs down awfully easily.
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Flat segment. The gone-crazy gimmick didn't really help Chavo, Jr., even though he tries to commit to it, because he continued losing all the time.
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Somehow at the same time these vignettes simultaneously look too slick for Raven's aesthetic while also coming off as incredibly cheap.
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This was originally supposed to be a post-Nitro dark match, but I guess it's desperation time. Of course the crowd goes nuts and it's honestly a pretty chillworthy scene, but they've already been fucking up the Goldberg push from a long-term standpoint and this is going to end up hurting more than helping.
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The "Columbia, Georgia" line after having to ask Dave Penzer where they are was funnier than anything Joel Gertner has said this year. Jericho promises a 5-star affair for us Internet geeks and sheet-readers, and produces a fat, pudgy Rey Misterio, Jr. Still waiting for Jericho to refer to him as "Ron Misterio." Misterio scores a humongous upset, thus making him the #1 contender to the Cruiserweight title and not Malenko. When you're brilliant, you're brilliant. -
Better than the Dudleyz clusterfuck but still not a good match. At the end they seem to be subtly building up to an eventual RVD vs. Shane Douglas match which I'm pretty sure never comes off.
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Did I mention that the HIAC match officially rendered ECW superfluous? I think I'll say it again. Really an awful segment on about all levels. I'm over Gertner's shtick, the match sucks, the brawling sucks, and to say Onita phones in his performance here would be an insult to true masters of laziness like Kevin Nash. I don't know whose idea it was for Onita to wear traditional Japanese kimono garb but it looks ridiculous and it completely kills his aura. There's absolutely nothing here that you haven't been shown a million times before.
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ECW Arena has yet another makeover, and now wrestlers have highlights played during their entrances as sort of a poor man's TitanTron. Douglas points out that elbow injuries happen when you're a GLADIATOR and not a SPORTS ENTERTAINER. I'm sure Steve Austin and the rest of the walking wounded in the WWF are all very impressed, Shane. Candido and Storm are now acting cordial for some reason. Taz comes out with his FTW belt and challenges Shane to a match with one arm tied behind his back. That doesn't seem to go anywhere and we somehow segue into Taz vs. Bam Bam for no real reason. Taz demands the cameras be shut off for it so only the ECW Arena crowd sees it.
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Battleground is 34 days from now.
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Good Lord, that pop for the 3-count might just be the loudest in the history of Raw. Just an electric atmosphere, even if a reset button got hit in some ways. Austin faces off with Undertaker afterward and pays him back for KOTR with a Stunner, and there's your SummerSlam main event. If it's a reset button, it's the most progressive reset button in the history of...I don't know where I'm going with this. The WWF is at a point where quibbling over individual booking decisions is fruitless because the company is so scorching hot and the top characters (and that includes Ross) so compelling that it doesn't really matter. The Only Rule Is It Has to Work.
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I have one quibble here in an otherwise effective segment: if Vince truly believes that Undertaker's motivations were purely selfish, why does he want him to stay out of tonight's title match? He should expect Undertaker to help Kane again, which would be to his benefit. I guess he feels he has Kane under control and doesn't want Undertaker to gain any influence.
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Venis and Togo are actually working hard to put on a decent TV match, and are successful, but none of that matters. A hot chick is at ringside in the role of Wally Yamaguchi's wife, and Dustin is out preaching the Word of God. Dustin once again throws himself 100% into a character that could be death, and provides some good awkward-by-design moments in badgering Ross and Lawler to accept Christ in their lives. The setting up of two feuds for Val at once is a bit of overkill--that's Russo Brand Crash TV for you, I guess. Val propositions Mrs. Yamaguchi afterward, then shoves down Yamaguchi and chairshots all of Kaientai into oblivion when they object. What an asshole.
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Awesome segment--McMahon's opening promo is just smothered in pure heat and hatred from this crowd. I like the idea of Kane being an ideal corporate champion because of overcoming a rough background to become a superstar, sort of a perverse twist on an old sports cliche, with Vince too far gone to realize that. Austin is out and successfully goads Kane into a rematch, as he points out that Kane didn't win the title last night, Undertaker won it for him.
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Karl's having fun, at least. There's some good stuff here, as the build to the arrival of DDP and Malone is well-done and Hogan and Bischoff set themselves up well to get surprised. And Karl bodyslamming Hogan was cool, and no doubt a mainstream grab for attention devised by Hogan himself. But Loss' point is well-taken--the Observer the very previous week, in talking about a goofy Japanese indy angle that saw the wrestling debut of Hisashi Shinma--yes, the old WWF/NJPW President guy--compared and contrasted the two approaches towards non-wrestlers. In Japan, Shinma got his ass kicked because protecting the business and the wrestlers was paramount and it was imperative to portray wrestlers as tougher than anyone else. The American approach was (and still is) to acquiesce to celebrities whenever possible, probably to the business' detriment in the long run. DDP and his Tony Little haircut give us a bad show-closing promo. And hey, let's not fault WCW for inconsistency regarding Hogan's booking, since they couldn't be bothered to decide at this point if Hogan-Goldberg was airing on TV or was just going to be a non-canon, dark match attraction.
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The start of the Russofication of the WWF title, but the result was a shocker at the time. Austin was working hurt, with a staph infection in his elbow (you can see the Barry Bonds-esque elbow guard and gauze underneath) on top of his usual injuries. Undertaker was already hurt going into HIAC and reaggravated a broken ankle when he hopped down from the roof, which we could also see. Foley was...yeah. We're officially in the full swing of the speculation about Undertaker and Kane secretly working together, as UT makes sure to revive the referee after he accidentally(?) busts Austin open with the chair so that he can see the blood.
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I'm reading a book at the moment called The Only Rule Is It Has to Work. And that's sort of how I feel about the layout of this match. It was masturbatory, overly dangerous, even moreso with what we know now, and a bad sign for where the business was headed...but from a coldly pragmatic standpoint, it was successful. It got the HIAC gimmick over as a drawing card in and of itself, it got Foley over as a legend when he had been floundering ever since Over the Edge, and it even got Undertaker over as a remorseless killer in preparation for SummerSlam and his eventual turn. It's another match that's impossible to rate conventionally but that everyone should probably see once, and for many that will be enough. It doesn't entirely work as a match but as a compelling spectacle and as theater, it did. In addition, I've also long seen this match as signifying the Death of ECW. That promotion has been pretty bad ever since the initial WWF invasions with Lawler and Cornette, but seeing this has rendered the company utterly superfluous. The WWF has taken their formula and improved upon it, getting more out of two incredible bumps than ECW could out of a zillion balcony dives. If Joey Styles had tried to claim that nothing in any other promotion could top something we'd just seen, I'd roll my eyes at him. When Lawler says it here, it sounds truthful even if it may not literally be so.
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These guys work really hard and clearly have their chemistry down pat from working with each other for 6 months. Yeah, it is dry and low on character work--as far as he's come, Rocky still has that part of his game to improve upon yet. But the crowd is into it and for a company not big on high workrate and match layout in its mid-card and with two rather limited guys, there sure are a lot of creative and close near-falls here. Shamrock is still Just Another Wrestler but this is a good win for him after sort of coming off as a choke artist in his inability to win Rock's IC title.
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Intrigue! Yes, this is definitely of interest, since Memphis has never really run with the idea of Lawler possibly not having it anymore--and that was when he was struggling with the Dragon Master and Leatherface, as opposed to legitimate monsters like Kane. Hopefully this gets the bad taste out of the ripoff angle the previous week out of our mouths and this Hales-Lawler program can go in a different direction than Lawler vs. Evil Authority Figure.
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Elaborate, professionally-filmed and edited footage of the return to the MSC, which was loaded up with WWF guys and drew a great house for the time period. Lawler sticks a lighter into Kane's mask, according to Cornette, and tries to take out Kane's remaining good eye. Paul Bearer was out selling the injuries from Raw and then actually legitimately injured himself in the angle where Undertaker attacked him at his house. Cornette cuts a terrific promo over all this.
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My shootstyle bias is showing again...right now this is my #3 MOTY behind Kobashi's TC win and Austin-Dude Love. It was still really good and maybe the best possible shootstyle time limit draw, which is a 4-word phrase that usually sends chills up my spine. This went from something enjoyable to something truly special when Tamura decided he had enough of this counterhold shit and just started palm-striking the snot out of Kohsaka, who had to resort to taking it to the mat not to fill time but to survive. It's the rare shootstyle match that goes 30 minutes and has me wanting to see more, and I hope these two face off again on this Yearbook or the next.
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Pretty frantic closing stretch--Jericho even busts out a tiger suplex for a hot near-fall among several others. I suspect this match in full may actually be better than their famous WAR bout from a few years earlier.