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Julie talking with a HEBNER! Oh, my. I'm guessing that's Dave and not Earl, but it's still jarring. Bret's kid puts on a happy face with the boys but goes to run and hide and is clearly getting torn up on the inside. Vince seemingly agrees to Bret's proposal--a schmozz finish followed by Bret forfeiting the title the next night on Raw. Agree or disagree with Vince's tactics, and I thought he was out of line...but a forfeiture followed by Bret leaving would have been a disaster. There had to be a middle ground somewhere where Bret could drop the title to someone at some point, in the ring.

Sasuke running through all of his offensive shit with a bum knee is troubling, but at this point it's sort of like watching a babyface Hogan match and complaining about his Hulking Up--it's just sort of with the territory, so all you can do is accept it or not. Plus Kaientai are so relentless in their attack on the knee that the match sustains its psychological thread in spite of it, and Sasuke is such an effective babyface-in-peril in every other fashion. This is so closely tied with the prior tag that it may as well be the second fall in a 2/3 falls match. I also loved how they recreated the previous match's finish, with Delfin trapped in the Teioh Clutch while Funaki gets Sasuke in an anklelock that tapped him last time, but this time Sasuke gets to the ropes. In addition to the requisite high spots they throw in some '80s babyface comeback spots like the heel apron collision and small package counter to the figure four, to add some new wrinkles to the MPro tag formula. I don't know if I quite liked this as much as the previous week but this was a hell of a series in any event.

Overall this is pretty cool and with good deliveries. But Douglas as usual goes through like 5 "false finishes" like an overindulgent ROH match and the stuff about Bigelow "not cooperating this time" like he did with LT, Kimo (!), and Hashimikov is kind of eye-rolling.

The camera zooms in obnoxiously onto Lance Wright's face--how many evil announcers do we need in one little promotion, exactly? Rude's partnership with Douglas was all a set-up, it seems, and he's back to fucking the Franchise like he said he'd do at the start of '97. Shel Silverstein had a children's poem called "Ations" that goes a lot like Rude's promo here--that might be the most pointlessly obscure reference I've ever made watching these Yearbooks.

Definitely a keeper--Otsuka does some terrific selling and it's amazing how he's able to make a somersault plancha, among other things already mentioned, look believable in a shootstyle environment. The key transition toward the end where Ikeda attempts one lariat too many is executed perfectly as well.

The Wars had gotten so intense that they were extending into Tuesdays--this was initially part of Assault on Devil's Island on TNT and USA countered with a Survivor Series historical special.

These segments *are* a little late, this one in particular, but I suppose it's better than nothing.

This probably did more for Jericho than when Hector Garza beat Hall a few months before, since that was booked as a total stone-cold fluke with a similar aftermath where here Jericho at least looks resourceful. Zbyszko eventually leaves the broadcast position to run Hall off and cuts a good scorched-earth promo on him. Scott Hall is afraid of a 2-handicap broadcaster!

Raven says that in sixth grade he sat next to "Teresa Hayes." Heh. (That's Beulah's real name). These segments aren't *bad* but I agree on all the other criticisms with regard to timing and (lack of) direction. Plus none of the announcers ever seemed to have an idea or get proper guidance on how to get this character over.

This isn't bad but it's a step or six behind the Shamrock/Bret match the previous week, which I think is telling on several levels. Shamrock has been and would continue to be a useful member of the roster for the rest of his stint, but after being the hottest free agent in wrestling worldwide in February, from a presentation and style standpoint the WWF has turned him into just another wrestler. I agree with the Between the Sheets discussion from a week or so ago--Shamrock may have been penny-wise and pound-foolish by not doing the Dome main events with Hashimoto, which would have been big money and better for his personal "brand." Another end of an era here: I believe this is the last show that Vince McMahon did as a regular announcer.

Vince says that Bret refused to come to Pennsylvania as a result of Shawn's remarks the previous week, which is completely weird and seems like an intentional way of marginalizing Bret further. Shawn kisses HHH in response to the "Shawn is gay" chant and then follows up with a kiss for Chyna, which actually gets a laugh out of me. Somehow I'm surprised that Triple H actually knows who Pontius Pilate is. Shawn challenges Shamrock to a match next week, but Slaughter makes the match for tonight. I can tolerate DX for the most part if they're not dealing with the Harts, but I don't know how much more I can take of them eating everyone else alive.

Terrific documentary-style recap of the past 18 months. All of a sudden, with no public hints prior (and even the Observer hasn't broken the story at this point), this Raw was all about hyping Bret vs. Shawn as being the last encounter between the two.

This was a pretty big out-of-nowhere shocker, since even in-the-know fans figured it would be Marlena who was turning. Dustin promises to reveal his "true self" which was...different. But this segment works.

I actually thought Sasuke was pretty selective in his knee-selling, so that's the only thing holding this back from MOTY status. The work by Kaientai was great and Delfin as the perennial saver on the outside was good, too. Funaki was the Man of the Match working on Sasuke's knee (a legit knee injury, which heightened the story and the tension of the match) but I did love Teioh stealing Delfin's swinging DDT/Delfin Clutch finishing spot--Delfin also waited until the very last second to kick out to make for a great near-fall.

Fun little match but LaFon & Furnas have clearly fallen off a lot--a combination of age, wear and tear, and never really recovering from their car wreck. The goal of this run was for Heyman to get them over so they could come back to the WWF revitalized, a la Al Snow next year. But it never really happened. Here, the action is pretty clearly being carried by Mikey & Spike, so we get a good opening match anyway. It's good to see ECW carrying the torch for traditional (and not-so-traditional) tag wrestling as it's dying in the Big Two.

Joey is so confident about the FBI getting massacred that you just KNOW they're going to luck their way into the Tag Titles, and that's exactly what happens. Smothers takes some ridiculously over-the-top bumps here, like selling a weapon shot by launching himself backward on top of the turnbuckles. After getting in no offense and with Tommy Rich getting destroyed, working the most competitive sequence of the match, the Dudleys run in and drop Kronus with the 3D, and put Guido on top for the win and the belts. This appears to be the start of the Jeff Jones turn, as he favors the heels here and again in the next impromptu match, as Axl Rotten & Balls Mahoney run in to kickstart their bout with the Dudleys. Mass chaos reigns, as the FBI and Gangstanators make their way back into the ring and out again. Jones again tries to help the Dudleys, but Jim Molineaux puts a stop to it and the two refs actually work a sequence together of their own. Rotten drops D-Von with an inverted DDT onto the chair and Molineaux counts the win. Sort of typical ECW but no one can accuse this of having any dull patches, and the crowd heat was tremendous.

Well, Ka Shin did annoy me: Liger has just destroyed Kanemoto with a shotei in the corner, a Liger bomb, and a super fisherman buster. So he tags in Ka Shin, who...stands over him for a few seconds and then throws some stomps. It's the worst transition I've seen in a NJ juniors match since the days of Tiger Mask and Dynamite Kid. Aside from that, this was pretty awesome and that's with Otani and Samurai sort of being bystanders, though Otani unleashes some great dropkicks down the stretch. Ka Shin pays for his grave mistake by being triple teamed into oblivion at the end, so at least we got some poetic justice out of this. A very good closing stretch that made you want to see more from 5 of these guys.

Kayfabe lives, even in a tribute match, so Ozaki does the job because that's the only realistic result. Still, Kansai standing guard at the corner to "prevent" Mariko from making the save seemed like an even better tribute in some way.

Pretty sure that was Bob Barnett, yes. It's somebody named Bob who tapes live lucha, at least. This is the aftermath of some giant 12- to 16-man clusterfuck of a match--I had it on an old Jack Epstein compilation tape but have never quite figured out what was going on.

Is this the last great Hogan WCW match? It's awesome on almost all levels--Hogan TAKES IT TO THE MAT and actually looks better and more organic doing it than he does in Japan. He unleashes a bevy of old Japan offense like the jumping knee, and he even does a back suplex on the floor. Page does an awesome job of selling the ribs, even as he gets thrown into the ropes, but gets a few cool hope spots here and there. Hogan takes a lot of the match but definitely knows when to show fear and bail out, especially on the Diamond Cutter tease. And that was a fantastic sequence where Hogan hit the big boot out of nowhere, only to miss the Legdrop--markout city. This match really couldn't end any other way but the post-match is pretty much Nitro by Numbers at this point, and even though the crowds are still hot I'm getting a sense of diminishing returns here. They change things up a little bit as Scott Hall gets a Scorpion Death Drop instead of just the B-teamers getting one (and yes, Vincent looked horrible--Hennig's set-up was pretty awkward, too). I was all prepared to complain about, ratings wars notwithstanding, DDP and Savage wrestling after the way their Death Match was sold the previous night. But this passed with flying colors thanks to the consistent story being told in-ring and DDP's selling, and the announced Babyface Flair vs. Heel Savage sounds awfully interesting though who knows what shape Savage was in. One to take a look at, though.

Not much of that finesse shit here--just two guys beating the dog snot out of each other. Finlay does do some way-cool takedowns, though. And a good way of getting Finlay over in defeat.

This eventually got over leading to a big "LARRY!" chant but Zybszko and Hall seemed to be talking past each other. Hall pays some lip service to the program but mainly sticks to catchphrases and hyping Hollywood Hogan's match later.

Jeff says he lacked the "stroke" to be one of Bischoff's boys. Oh, wow. After eviscerating everyone on the roster the previous week, now Jarrett is playing a humble quasi-babyface. Then when he started wrestling, he was basically Double J again without the country gimmick. No one seemed to know what they wanted Jarrett to be in this role.

Rude doesn't feel all that comfortable here, either.

DX is definitely way more tolerable in back-and-forth brawls than in any other setting. Shamrock gets a big push, basically singlehandedly taking out both Bret and Shawn. Looks like the IYH:D-X main event is set. Some interesting action down the stretch of the match itself, with Shamrock throwing some neat counters at Bret's standard offense, which really brings a new dimension to the Five Moves of Doom. This is definitely a match-up that could have been special in a PPV setting with Bret getting to lay the match out.