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The Manhattan Center! I missed that place. A ring attendant gets leveled with Total Elimination as Paul Heyman makes his presence felt on Raw. This was a great way to cover for half the roster being overseas, and a great venue to do it in. I love that they even use the ECW graphics as chyrons. Vince doing his trademark Vince laugh at the bWo's antics is surreal to say the least.

I admit this turn makes more sense in retrospect than it did at the time--it's clear now they had a Savage turn planned at least a month or so in advance (this was also borne out by reading the Observers--the DDP feud was already booked as well). Loss and stomper's explanations also work, and it would have been nice for WCW to spell that out for us. I think I've said this before but sometimes the WWF Sledgehammer of Plot is necessary, and generally should be the side to err on as opposed to Kevin Sullivan's sometimes-impenetrable booking. Further, the execution on the finish is pretty bad with the announcers not knowing what's going on. Thanks, Uncle Eric. Also, the heat's died back down after a pretty electric tag title match, as the crowd doesn't at ALL buy that the sleeper is actually going to put Hollywood out again, at least until the arm drops.

Good finish in a vacuum, with Nash hitting a great power bomb on the Giant but throwing his back out--the perfect set-up for Luger's Rack. It occurs to me that this might be the first and only time I've ever seen Diesel/Nash submit. Yeah, this has Dusty finish written all over it, but it's a feelgood moment by itself.

Okay-ish but not outstanding finishing stretch, but the "tug of war leading to accidental clobbering of the babyface" finish had been used *twice* with Sting and Luger the previous year then reappears here. That's not "crucifix power bomb attempt on Rey Jr." or "guy tries to backdrop Mr. Perfect" levels of overdone, but it's a particularly contrived spot to begin with to be used this much in this amount of time.

This starts off as a crazy garbage brawl then sort of gradually moves into a wrestling match--and they make it work. The brawling isn't as good as the high-end Ozaki-Kansai brawls, but it does feel gritty and intense in a way that some of the early-'90s weapons-filled AJW matches didn't. Ozaki's facials continue to amaze, especially her sick grin *after* Nagayo has done everything in her power to beat the shit out of her. Oz Academy feels very NWO-esque in more ways than one, particularly the way crowds are turning on Nagayo--to an even greater degree than WCW crowds ever did, to the point where she's actively heeling it up and flipping the fans off. Some good back-and-forth psychology surrounding urakens down the stretch, before Ozaki hits one with a chain wrapped around her first to set up the Tequila Sunrise and win. There are better Ozaki brawls but this was a good match--Nagayo does feel dated but she still works hard and keeps up with her fresher younger opponent.

Man, this match was kinda nothing. Oliver Humperdink is unrecognizable (at first I thought it was Bert Prentice), and Albano just wanders around cluelessly, not reacting to anything. This is still an interesting time capsule, as we have a very ROH-esque card set-up, but with old Northeast stalwarts like Albano hanging around and a very kid-centric audience that cheers babyfaces (Cheetah Master is over, no question about that) and boos heels. Both guys were talked up in the Apter mags and Darling had cups of coffee in the Big Two, but he didn't particularly impress here. Still, the Super 8 was sort of the first of its kind so it needed to be represented.

What Loss said: weird. Was this even a match? And there's surprisingly little crowd reaction to this entire thing.

It's not just the WWF that tends to overstate Sheik's place in history .The Unreal Story of Professional Wrestling, the Steve Allen-narrated A&E piece that aired at the height of the late '90s boom, also gave an inordinate amount of face time to him. Sheik was a guy in the right place at the right time, who would have been a standard one-and-done challenger if the Hogan push had been delayed or cancelled. He did follow that up with a tremendous feud with Sgt. Slaughter, but that's about the sum total of his true historical impact in wrestling.

Yeah, the "best wrestler on television" spiel doesn't really work in 1997. Douglas' Funk impression is pretty funny, though. This booking is all over the place--what title does Funk want, exactly? Brian Lee wants to be shown the money as he talks about money, and wanting to be paid money. Money. Back to Shane and Francine. Chris Candido cuts a motormouthed, barely decipherable promo towards Sabu. Taz jumps RVD after a house show victory, but is quickly confronted by Sabu. The locker room empties to keep the two separated. Good chaotic segment to tease the long-awaited main event but still making us wait for the payoff.

Taka, Togo, and Teioh impersonating each of the core NWO guys was the big highlight here.

Good effort by Sasuke. I like the progressively more casual dresswear as we go from Sasuke dressed to the nines to Hamada in a jacket with no tie to Naniwa in gym clothes.

The Raven-Dreamer feud is back on after a hiatus. He also has words for that five-and-dime cartoon would-be legend, Terry Funk. I actually think comparing Funk to his abusive father is a sound idea on its own, but when Raven starts screaming and ACTING this becomes too melodramatic to be believable. It's also hard to buy Raven whining about his father not taking him to baseball games after tossing out "molestation" without a second thought. Oh, now we're back to talking about Sandman and Tyler. What a fresh topic. And we switch gears AGAIN to talking about Stevie Richards. To say this was all over the place would be a gross understatement.

We're at the point now where with every good segment, I'm wondering, is this the final good segment of Memphis television? This could be the final great WMC studio match. Christopher delivers a very strong performance, his best since the epic TV bout with Jeff Jarrett. A good solid blend of Memphis shtick with a touch more '90s offense. He sells great, too. Aside from stuff with a chain that's basically a red herring, as I don't remember it playing a role in the match, this is pretty much a straight-up tag that avoids a lot of the usual Memphis cliches. The biggest being the run-in finish, as Elijah attacks Brian Christopher with a tire iron before the whole locker room empties for an impromptu battle royal. I know the company was in upheaval and morale was in the toilet, and that he was basically dragged out of retirement when Dave Brown quit, but this is the first segment I've ever seen where it feels like Lance Russell is phoning it in. He provides a few token insights but he's basically checked out at this point. I can't say that I blame him and half-assed Lance is still better than most announcers working at 100%, but I was still a little disappointed.

Slow start with Misterioso making a nuisance of himself outside--and not in a heat-gathering way, a "go the fuck away and let these guys wrestle before I hit the Next Chapter button" way. Eventually he's dealt with and these two get to wrestling. The start was too slow for this to be a true high-end Match of the Year contender but it definitely got better as it went along, and avoided most of the usual Konnan bullshit. The only remnant of that would be that contrived "wrestler hangs horizontally on the ropes while the opponent climbs up and legdrops him" spot that I hate, but was all the rage in the late '90s. Really good finishes to all 3 falls and I really liked how they spaced out the big kickouts in the 3rd caida. That gave the match a bit of an epic feel, but they were kept few enough that it didn't feel like an overblown faux-epic. A good--really good--match, that doesn't quite live up to the dream match that it was on paper.

I'm not entirely sure what I just watched. The most notable thing about this match appears to be the fact that Tirantes is mic'ed up. Metal and Octagon are eliminated in perfunctory fashion, then Lover and Garza do a weird tension sequence, then lie around as though they were 3/4 of the way through a 1-hour broadway. Lover wins after Garza splats on a twisting dive off the turnbuckle. This was too weird to be boring but as a match it's pretty whatever.

Great to hear more support for the year-by-year bootleg sets--Chad and Tim are working on doing the same for the AWA. I'd eventually like to see one for as many conceivable promotions as possible. Memphis in particular sounds like a beast to tackle--just trying to re-create Tim's '77 WWWF set with Crockett was a different animal because of the greater turnover and amount of "stuff" happening.

I'm honestly not sure if this is wrong. Wrestling companies have always had trouble selling the paying audience on hypotheticals. And that's wrestling companies everywhere: WrestleMania 4, the Crockett Cup, the Champions Carnival in the 1980's when Baba abandoned it entirely...there seem to be way more disappointments in tournaments than big successes.

"This Is Your Life, Rock" was the highest-rated segment in Raw history. It certainly did a monster rating, but I think it's worth noting that even at the height of the Russo Era, the highest quarter hour in Raw history belonged to...a wrestling match (Austin regaining the title from Undertaker). Also, DX's WCW invasion was the turning point in the Monday Night Wars. It's not even the most DX-centered turning point (X-Pac's debut was a bigger deal), much less the most company-centered.

And that Austin Aries tweet sort of makes me think the same thing about him.

DiBiase used a rash of moves before settling on the Dream. I remember the spinning toe hold, the reverse elbow off the turnbuckle, what would be known later as the Million Dollar Buster (cobra clutch legsweep held into a pin), and possibly the ol' powerslam as well. Adrian Adonis switched to using a modified DDT in 1985 (set up like a vertical suplex but with Adonis dropping straight down--and not like a brainbuster either). When Jake showed up in '86, it was back to Goodnight Irene. Shawn at one point in his heel days (around the time Diesel appeared) switched from the teardrop to a straight piledriver. Eventually Scott Hall told him, "Shawn, the kick's your best fucking move. Just use that."

It ran uncensored on Prime Time and to open Survivor Series.

That certainly didn't help. Also, they had no top stars after Vader left. They went from Vader headlining to........ Joe Malenko. Then they made the ill-fated decision to work with New Japan. They got buried in that feud and it killed the company. Also on top of that, Takada lost a great deal of face when he more or less announced a retirement so he could run for office a la Inoki and Hase, then almost immediately reneged. He had already developed a media reputation for being indecisive for whatever reason, and that just added to it. His failure to issue a challenge to Rickson Gracie arguably hurt more than the Anjo incident by itself. Of course there was nothing Takada could do with Gracie, but from the casual fans' perception it wasn't seen that way.

No way would they have given Mountie that much primo time and effort just to write him out. Guys who were written out simply disappeared from the WWF. They wanted "jailbird" chants thrown his way--something that would lead to his next program.

Shinobu Kandori and the other LLPW ladies showing up on the LPWA Super Ladies' Showdown PPV. I'm not sure you've quite lived until you've seen a Shinobu Kandori match with commentary by Jim Cornette.

I think the Wizard only did commentary for matches on All-American and maybe Spotlight. He didn't even appear on TV, just in voiceover form.