PeteF3

You talk about how the WWF took a few months to turn Ken Shamrock into Just Another Guy...WCW has topped that by doing it with Bret in six days! Bischoff is game for taking punishment but as mentioned, gets way too much offense on his own. You definitely want a moment or two where it looks like Bischoff is going to fuck everyone over and steal a win, but he needed more help than just Bret distracting Larry Z. Finish is blown as the object flies out of Bischoff's boot even before it connects--I don't know what the specific plan was originally, a Dusty Finish or what, but the match just peters out even though Bret punching out Eric and Sharpshooting Hall get a big pop.

Hennig tries but still seems several steps slow, and this crowd is pretty quiet. DDP wins the title, which is a good capper for the year, and they work an okay match without overloading it with a bunch of overbooking, which was refreshing.

Thank God this should be the last one! It wouldn't have set any snowflake records but Giant vs. Nash was a match they were sort of building to from the very start of the angle, at least before the Giant turn, so this is definitely a letdown. Giant easily lifting Hall up high over his head was a great, impressive-looking spot, though.

I honestly didn't see much hate here--I saw the same issues that plagued the previous match in that these guys ran through a bunch of (impressive, admittedly) spots without giving any of them space to breathe. It looked more like an audition tape than a wrestling match. The big climactic fall through the table wasn't all that impressive of a finish either, though admittedly ECW may have ruined tables for me and everyone else by this point.

One other thing going against WM4...I've been reading Brian Bayless' reviews of WWF syndie television over on Scott Keith's blog. And man oh man, is WWF television leading up to this show dull. I don't mean "dull" in comparison to what we were getting on Monday nights a decade later, I mean dull in comparison to the same squash-centric nature of television leading up to WrestleMania III. WM3 had angles up and down the card with every single match on the show serving some sort of purpose. Going into 4, we had exactly *3* angles going on: the Hogan/Andre/DiBiase title situation, the Islanders' dognapping of Matilda, and Hercules choking out Warrior with the chain. That's it--three honest-to-God feuds going in, only one of which was hot. Everything else on TV consisted of one guy in a tournament working a squash match, with his opponent cutting a quick insert promo on him. That was your television for two months. It may not have saved the show, but it sure seems like it would have been better served to move up the Cheryl Roberts angle by a month and run it before WM, and run one or two other angles to go with other first-round matches. As it was, it seems as if the WWF was expecting the tournament to get over just because it was a tournament for the title.

Ishikawa = Kendo Ka Shin

He and Heyman definitely hated each other, but Lawler barely had time to ever see ECW, much less form a real opinion on it.

Wrestling's a work.

Maeda has very little to offer here besides a good flurry of kicks and knees at one point, and this comes off as Tamura broomsticking this to passability. Maeda has the decency to go out on his back in this semifinal, though--a fitting victory for 1997's best worker.

They're already half-assing the execution of this takeover by having Bischoff duck out after a few segments and bringing back Tenay. God knows Mike is ten times the announcer but if you're going to commit to an NWO show, COMMIT. The fake head is eye-rolling and Hogan's acting even moreso, and even Sting ziplining into the ring doesn't look that dramatic. They really should have gone with Hogan-Sting at Halloween Havoc--in hindsight, Bret falling into their lap the next month would have been absolute perfect timing to set up a title vs. title match for Starrcade (in an alternate fantasyland where Hogan or Nash or someone doesn't get themselves into that spot instead).

This is a flashback to the ballsy backstage attack at Disney that held Nitro up for a half hour, one of those things you can only do if you're confident you're going to win the week no matter what. This starts off *great*, actually, looking totally chaotic and out of control, but (here's a familiar refrain) it wears out its welcome. The fallout is near-legendary: Raw wins its first head-to-head hour in nearly 2 years, and the plan for the NWO owning Nitro and WCW owning Thunder--a planned brand split over 4 years before it was actually done--was shelved entirely. The NWO-only concept was so tainted that they didn't even want to do it for Thunder. Somehow, a promotion completely in the driver's seat was in a panic as plans were being completely redrawn from scratch, while the WWF had a focused vision for what they wanted to do for WrestleMania. What led to all this? Well, I think I get why this segment failed on an artistic and more importantly a ratings level when the backstage attack and Piper tryouts didn't: there was no SUSPENSE. Even as we got a long, drawn-out ambulance scene or a long, drawn-out and completely baffling fight between Piper and a bunch of nobodies, people wanted to at least see what would happen next. In the summer of '96, Savage had chased after the NWO limo and there were rumors of a 4th man. The Piper tryout at least had you wanting to see what in the name of fuck was going to happen next. This has all kinds of cool attention to detail, but a few aesthetic overhauls with no commentary, no hype for what's coming or for what *could* happen, and no chance of any kind of attempted fighting back on the part of WCW (it had been *how* many weeks since a save was attempted by anyone from the locker room now?) isn't enough to keep people from wondering, "So what's Raw doing?" And while I guess you couldn't go straight from a hostile takeover to a straight-up wrestling match...I'm not sure a long gift-giving segment with nothing particularly new being said was the wisest choice of a first segment after the deconstruction and reconstruction. Oh, and the gift-giving is constantly held up by technical snafus and timing problems, making things drag out even more. In the end, the planned brand split was a brilliant idea on paper that could have led to WCW sustaining its momentum for a long time by keeping wrestlers separate and making PPVs special and preventing TV from oversaturating. But the soil was poisoned and the earth salted after this. A glorious over-the-top celebration is in actuality WCW's "HE'S CUT! THE RUSSIAN IS CUT!" moment.

I *think* they actually had the audacity to propose that Owen beat Michaels for the European title outright, which may actually be a bit over-the-top as I have to concede you probably have reached the point where HBK needs to be protected all the way until Mania. The "match" and immediate post-match reaction are pretty funny, though in typical DX fashion it's milked a bit too long.

"Don we now our gay apparel..." "I'm worried about what Luna's going to do with those balls..." "We continue with our Elton John Christmas..." "He sounds like Nathan Lane!" These remarks have all aged pretty badly but Ross and Cornette are having too much fun here. This starts as a repeat of the D-X segment, with Goldust reading a children's work in a gay voice, but this time Santa interrupts him. "When out from the roof there arose such a clatter / I sprang from my bed to see what was WOULD YOU SHUT THE HELL UP?" Santa whacks Goldust with his bag of goodies--actually a really good-looking shot. Like the Foley-NAO stuff this continues to have a lot of pretty traditional, Southern-style build to go with the wacky sportz entertainment hijinx. When it gets down to it, under the shock-value stuff we have a cowardly heel milking injuries to avoid a big tough babyface, all leading to a match on PPV.

There were some amusing little setpieces leading up to this, with Gunn and Road Dogg searching for Mankind in coal miner's helmets and embarrassing themselves. The NAO have gotten almost as much heat on them as DX have but both guys know when to and how to make asses of themselves as need be.

Austin is now pretty firmly entrenched as a babyface. Over the past few weeks he's started his "gimme a hell yeah" routine and is now coming to the aid of a child against a Bad Santa. Too drawn-out for a predictable climax. I believe that was Steve Lombardi under the beard.

Mankind explains why he's not letting Dude Love fight his own battles. This was a well-built-up feud. There is still a shred of old-school, progressive storytelling underneath all the desperation shock value.

I do love the Lowell Auditorium--a nice intimate and different-looking venue. Another boring DX segment as these promos are becoming as formulaic as a Popeye cartoon. Slaughter actually ends up saving the segment if only because DX playing off of him is generally pretty reliably amusing. Triple H makes sure to try to kill off any heat the NAO got last week, because reasons or something. God knows we'll see plenty more of *that* for the next two decades. Then he shifts gears to Owen Hart and goes to the old late-'90s "You're gay, so perform oral sex on me" tack of idiot dudebros everywhere. The dissension at the end is the first fresh thing out of these two guys in two months.

A multi-man cage match with weapons strewn about--this is every late '90s e-fed gimmick match ever. With six guys all in the ring in about 5 minutes, they may as well have just started the match with everyone right off the (barbed wire) bat, because the build-up to the entrances doesn't mean anything and no dramatic momentum shifts. And Onita is almost unrecognizable--not only is he dressed like Bret Hart but he's lost a lot of weight and grown out his hair. He really doesn't look good here but he does take Hayabusa's finish like a pro, at least. It occurs to me that I think this is only the second job I've seen Onita do on these Yearbooks--I can only remember the Tenryu match. All these complaints aside, this is pretty fun, with a really good performance by the babyfaces. Onita is turned on by his partners afterward and his alignment is set back to where it probably should always be.

Misirlou is replaced by what sounds like a Stevie Ray Vaughan Christmas tune this week. We couldn't afford to send anyone to Rock Center this year, so here's past footage of the bWo, Dudleys, and Public Enemy instead. The FBI are having way too much fun, as the Big Don is a little confused over what language he's supposed to be wishing us Merry Christmas in. Guido closes us out with a big pinfall win over Santa Claus.

Not a major match in the rivalry but a fun Main Event...er, main event. I was honestly surprised the show was still on the air at this point--I can't imagine it'll last long past Thunder's debut.

Awesome stuff, though I suspect we got all of the real meat of the match. I watch this and want to weep for what the WWF did with these guys. An MPro/WCW alliance would be drool-worthy. MPro was going through some severe financial troubles at this point, but they've offered us some fresh match-ups after all the multi-man tags from '96.

"We've been talking for two seconds, I'm already BORED." --Darrell Hammond-as-Chris Matthews on one of SNL's Hardball sketches. Possibly the most underwhelming debut in wrestling history. Every single thing about this segment is off--Dillon and Bischoff have *no* chemistry and while I'm a Mean Gene defender, he talks all over everyone all throughout this. The negotiating over the guest ref just isn't that interesting no matter who they go with because you know this match is going to be filled with gaga bullshit no matter what. And then Bret comes down to horrible entrance music with no fanfare and says nothing. As much as I've complained about the lack of creativity in WCW lately, it's only just now that it feels conceivable that the wheels could actually come flying off this promotion.

Definitely one of the Nitro matches of the year. We're going 3 hours tonight so these guys get to fill some time, and holy shit do they make the most of this. Some hard-hitting bombs to go with the graceful high-flying and some cool saves and near-falls that you didn't always see in these WCW-ized lucha bouts. It's longer than a usual Nitro match, but not quite long enough to be as epic in scope as the high-end Michinoku Pro stuff, but the action we do get is very comparable.

At least there's some attempt at genuine heat here rather than DX amusing themselves, though there's that, too. The South Park t-shirts are a pretty brilliant way of setting the Outlaws apart and really one of the hipper things the WWF has ever done. Michaels seems to be pondering the Outlaws' work as they leave and Raw goes off the air, a development that would sort of be put on hold for a few months.

I'll grant that, "Anything can happen in the WWF" applies more than ever now, as opposed to 1994 or so when that phrase was being beaten into the ground. This is Vince Being Vince, but I'm not so sure Modern Vince and Modern Stephanie maybe shouldn't be chained to a chair and forced to watch this Clockwork Orange-style, as Vince extolls the virtues of live television and extemporaneousness.