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Apparently a one-time thing as Ranallo was at the funeral of Kevin Randleman.

One of the most fascinating elements that I had no knowledge of at the time was Hogan and Flair becoming unlikely political allies. A few weeks (in 1997 time) ago Loss complained about Hogan ripping into Flair during the robe segment, but Dave actually saw it as a positive for Ric because he believed that it meant that Hollywood was in Ric's corner, at least to some degree. The eventual endgame was even more intriguing: Hogan & Flair as babyfaces feuding with Hall & Nash. Anyway, with Raw being a depressing mess of a show, WCW goes out of their way to give us one of the more overall feelgood episodes of Nitro of the year. Hennig pins Benoit clean after some decent and gritty enough action, and Heenan seemingly momentarily forgets that he's supposed to be anti-NWO. The B-teamers are out to put a beating on Benoit but Ric Flair stuns everybody by making the save and running Hennig all the way out of the Target Center. He cuts a big hometown promo promising to destroy Hennig at Havoc whether he gets a match signed or not, then moves on to Hogan. This is almost a precursor to Flair's return in Greenville in a year--it's not quite that transcendent and emotional, but it honestly doesn't feel that far off.

Mike gives us a history of Salvador Lutteroth and his pioneering of lucha promoting and masked wrestlers, and how that eventually translated to TV and movies. This is pretty all-encompassing, to an almost shocking degree, as Tenay talks about EMLL, AAA, and the UWA in addition to Promo Azteca as well as some non-WCW guys like Hijo del Santo.

Speak of retrogressive feuds...and yet, yeah, this is another hot segment that had no real right to be. Hogan spits out an absolutely vicious, venomous promo talking about how Piper has spent the past 15 years in his shadow--it's actually a bit similar to Shawn's shooty promo earlier in the night, but Hogan is WAY more concise and actually works to sell the PPV instead of spouting bullshit about how he works less and has more money and giving us other irrelevant asides. Hogan promises to end Piper's career at Havoc and put him in a wheelchair, then Piper gets double-teamed by Hogan and Bischoff. Eric lines up for a karate kick but accidentally hits Hogan--a cliched spot but it really works here because that type of thing didn't typically happen during an NWO beatdown, and the crowd goes nuts for Piper's big comeback. And a great job of making the decrepit commissioner look like a threat, as the NWO runs down but wants no part of getting into the ring and confronting Piper head-on--they just pull Hogan away and bail as Piper goes nuts swinging around the title belt. I don't want to see this match again either, but I do approve of everything about this segment.

Schiavone's mocking of Elizabeth crying was truly LOLworthy. Fucking rekt. Bringing back the DDP-Savage feud feels like a bit of a retrogression but this is a well-done segment on all levels, sold great by the NWO. The Minneapolis crowd regales Savage with the na na hey hey goodbye song in a terrific moment.

I actually kind of like this slow piecing-together of Goldberg's background. It works better if you remember a world before Google, pro-football-reference.com, or zabasearch.

Not much of a match and the crowd doesn't seem to really know how to react. Once again the Harts get booked like ineffective idiots as Owen, Bulldog, and Neidhart can't prevent Chyna and Michaels from costing Bret the match by countout. A fitting end to one of the most depressing episodes of Raw ever.

This is--incredibly--tone-deaf in more ways than I can even remember--asking Melanie to do a fucking on-the-spot PSA to aspiring wrestlers for not taking too many pain pills?? Jesus God. And then he asks her about the status of their children as the camera zooms in on Melanie's face. "What will you do now as a single parent?" I really hope she wasn't coached on some of these talking points about WWF support and Pillman and living and dying for the business. Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic of the Decade, not year, as if it was even a debate.

This has...not been a good night for Vince. He promises that Austin will get an IC title match with Owen Hart if he signs the waiver, but Austin smartly refuses until he gets that title contract in writing first. No "I owe you one, pal" here. Austin's interrupted by Faarooq, who lectures him on how toughness is more than just saying "ass" a lot, in a pretty good fired up promo. The seeds for Austin's post-Survivor Series program and one of the defining ones of his career are now being sown.

I wish Cornette had focused more on Not-Yet-DX than the NWO. Outing Kevin Nash as being 40 years old was pretty funny, though. This whole episode is like Vince Russo's wet dream so far.

Shawn refers to himself as "the very best sports entertainer in the world today," which makes me die a little inside since it stands out in this environment and is a sign of things to come. Shawn offers to show proof of his glorious victory over Undertaker, but instead we get MSG curtain call footage. And this was turning into a decent heel promo before we get into wankery territory that completely goes over the heads of this audience and serves to set up...Shawn vs. Vince? Shawn rants all the way through a commercial break before we're mercifully interrupted by Bret. He declares that the "H" in HBK and HHH stands for "homo" and accuses Shawn of barebacking his way to main events--yeah, sometimes he takes himself too seriously, but I can't really blame Bret for not wanting to say this stuff either. I continue to draw absolutely zero enjoyment from Shawn and Hunter behaving like asses and verbally no-selling everything. Shawn gets more time to shoot long after Bret leaves.

That Cornette audio sounds like it came from the uncensored version that aired on SMW. Which is better, of course. The Bodies' attack on Maggs & Mustafa came a week or so after that confrontation, after Watts and Bob Armstrong announced that the Bodies were being put into the SuperBrawl match to replace the Wrecking Crew.

http://www.factmag.com/2016/02/11/soundcloud-financial-report-44m-losses/ Since this is site the major source for the majority of podcasts linked to on this forum, I thought I'd spread the word some here. SoundCloud is facing a $44 million loss last year despite striking up a partnership with Universal Music Group, and is going to be dependent on heavy investment and/or additional revenue streams to stay afloat. This may be totally premature, but it may not hurt for podcasters and musicians to be thinking about a backup plan now.

But that doesn't make sense--a wellness suspension is 30 days. Another bit of speculation is that this dates back to before the closing incident on Raw, since earlier on the show Titus' winning streak came to an end at the hands of Adam Rose of all people.

This worked much better as "wrestling theater," to borrow a phrase from Childs, than One Night Only IMO. All the stuff with the chair has been very well-booked all throughout this feud and shows some great attention to detail. It does start off a little slowly, but it all makes sense psychologically with Undertaker picking apart Michaels, and moves and move attempts being set up and paid off with counters later. Then the ingenious way to get out of the Cell that plays off Michaels' past real-life tantrums--the sight of UT and Michaels battling atop the Cell still holds up as a holy-shit moment in the context of what else was going on in the company in '97 and in this match in particular. Even the finish works. As a pure match I'm not sure if this was good as Undertaker vs. Bret, but the stakes felt higher and is definitely the more historically significant match of the two, on multiple levels.

You have to give Paul E. this: he knew how to avoid burning through too many matches, too quickly. This is hyped as the first meeting between Sabu and Sandman, and I can believe it. We never even got matches that seem like they'd sell to an ECW crowd like Raven vs. Sabu or Raven vs. Taz. Sabu doesn't quite connect on the fireball but there have been worse efforts this year and worse efforts to come in '98. Good enough angle because they sold it so well and because of the Sheik-Sabu connection.

Yeah, this was fantastic, and I'm not sure this wasn't better than Santo/Casas to boot. Some terrific offense in this one as this almost turned into a lucha-meets-NJPW-juniors type bout. Psicosis dies for our pleasure on about 4 or 5 different occasions and then fucks Santo over to get the win in a very cleverly done finish, right when Psicosis looked dead and buried. This might be the best year for lucha since 1990.

What an absolutely beautiful wrestling match. It could start a discussion about how card placement fits into rating a match, as this feels very "slight"--not a lot of crowd heat, not a main event, not a match involving major stars, the announcers sort of treating it as a lighthearted undercard sampler (Dr. Morales is so engrossed that he doesn't realize that what he calls the tercera caida is actually the second fall)--perhaps too slight to be a true MOTY, if that's something you care about. But the matwork and the natural build to the big highspots are just fantastic. There's comedy, but it's not the overdone comedy spots you've seen a ton of. And it's quick and isolated, instead of serving to make the rudos look like bumbling idiots--just enough to make the tecnicos out to possibly be a little smarter. The dive train climaxing with one tecnico backdropping his partner onto the opponents who thought they'd countered the dive was great, as was Pierrotito's fantastic plancha that seemed to turn the tide in the third fall. Pretty much impossible to pick out a Man of the Match here--everyone looked terrific at everything they did.

Flair cuts a low-key, philosophical promo--this is as good as his "retirement" 14 years earlier at the hands of Race, Orton, and Slater. He has words for Hennig and Hogan, and then does a great job of putting over Benoit and imploring him to go his own way. And then does a damn good job of making McMichael into something. Flair stresses that he's not breaking up the Horsemen--just asking for a grace period. And he wraps it up by putting over the whole Havoc and Nitro card. Fantastic stuff from the Man, just as you'd expect.

No surprise that the NWO would win the survey in a longtime WWF arena.

Promising start to this series, in an area where Tenay really excelled at one point. The fans pick up on where this is going in a hurry, once he busts out the somersault senton. Really good little TV match, with Rey busting out a totally WTF double springboard to get a win. And yes, good announcing, too--not blowing the angle but not playing dumb, either. God knows how they were able to recognize Eddie but can never tell that Sting has grown 7 inches.

I...guess Bret and Bulldog were trying to get a pre-emptive strike in knowing Undertaker was the favorite to win the #1 contendership at Hell in a Cell? I dunno. Seems like an excuse to get in some extra hype for the tag match against Vader & Patriot at Badd Blood. Who knows why they didn't jump Not-Yet-DX during *their* entrance, though. Helmsley is turning into a degenerate but is still oddly doing some of his old blueblood gimmick stuff like the curtsy and bow. Rude whacks Undertaker with a briefcase in short order and UT is laid out with the superkick and bodybagged, but gets back up and gives chase to the back. Michaels is blocked from exiting by a mysterious red light and has to climb up the TitanTron instead. This stunned me when I went back through the September '97 Observers, so I'll mention it here--Michaels DID eat a pinfall in a Raw dark match a week or two before this, in a triple threat against Undertaker and Bret. He got tombstoned and then UT got distracted or pulled out by somebody or another, and Bret stole the pin.

Owen has his "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH" music, which I don't remember being around this early. No soundbites, though. Owen vs. Faarooq is sort of a weird stylistic and character match-up. He then appeals to Vince's family past and implores him to make the right decision re: Steve Austin's employment status. "All these fans here--THEY don't want Austin in the World Wrestling Federation, either!" Fun little postscript follows as Austin reveals himself to be one of the riot squad guys in disguise and drops Owen with another Stunner.

Vince probably *is* in the right, as many of the great heels are--his eventual mistake will be in continuing to try to keep Austin in line, he'll take things too far. Again, as what happens with many heel turns. The chemistry between these two is already there and this is a fine, tension-filled segment.

FREDDIE BLASSIE of all people instructs Sable on her next challenge: the Headbangers. Sable walks around and apparently the Headbangers accidentally shoot each other, not that you can tell with the cheap pieces of shit they're allegedly firing. Pillman's in bed with Marlena. He's BUSHED--get it? This angle may have been redeemed had they gone through with the planned Marlena turn, but as it is it's a career lowlight to end Pillman's life.