[1994-05-16-WWF-Raw] King's Court: Nikolai Volkoff

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Lawler says Piper started wearing a dress to get out of being drafted when he was 18 years old. "The army didn't take him in, but the doctor did take him out."

 

COMMERCIALS

 

After the break, DiBiase announces that Nikolai Volkoff is his latest purchase. They force Volkoff to wear new tights that say "Property of the Million Dollar Man" and for reasons I never understood, have a cent sign on the side instead of a dollar sign.

 

Vince: "Nikolai Volkoff a once proud weightlifter, much like Mark Henry today!"

 

This was intended to get DiBiase over as a jerk in his new role of manager, but it just fell flat.

[Kevin Ridge]

Lawler gets a quick dig at Piper before the commercial break. Volkoff does not seem all that pleased of joining up with the Corporation. I was a Corporation fan back in the day. Probably one of the few. Dibiase provides Volkoff with new gear which of course he pays for by deducting out of his paycheck.

[Exposer]

This was really lame and uncomfortable. I did like the Mark Henry shout out by Vince though.

[soup23]

This was ok. Kind of strange angle though featuring a retired wrestler and another who is way past his time in Volkoff. I always did like the tights though I must admit.

[Matt D]

I don't know. I kind of loved this, just for Lawler laughing at all of Dibiase's jokes. I haven't seen a lot of 94-95 so maybe they end up interacting a lot but there's something novel about the two of them heeling it up together.

[El-P]

Roddy Piper. Ted DiBiase. Nikolai Volkoff. Meet the New Generation.

[Matt D]

The Meltzerian mindset leading into the show was that the show would draw the worst WWF PPV number ever if Piper vs Lawler wasn't there to save it.

[El-P]

Piper vs Lawler was a god awful feud and match.

[Matt D]

I actually really like the vignette of Piper in the movie trailer. It was kind of cutting edge for WWF, more like something you'd see in ECW. They kept jumping ahead a few days or what not, with Piper saying he wasn't going to come back and then a few seconds later, wavering a bit but staying the same, and finally cut ahead again to when Lawler made it about sick kids and how he'd do it for them.

 

The top two non-tournament matches will be Bret Hart vs. Diesel for the WWF title, and the match that will be relied on to actually get the show over, Roddy Piper vs. Jerry Lawler. The return of Piper should do business, and with Lawler he has the perfect opponent to work off of on interviews to build the match up and in the ring as well. Based on what has already been announced, if Piper wasn't returning, this show would have been guaranteed to do the lowest buy rate ever for a WWF show.

[Dooley]

DiBiase never really clicked as a manager, which is odd since that character was so great at doing promos and had a natural heel manager act of purchasing people's souls. Bringing back Volkoff in '94 is as head-scratching a roster move as one can find.

 

Piper vs Lawler was a god awful feud and match.

Seconded.

[PeteF3]

Like I said earlier, this Lawler-Piper feud was a minimum of about 5 years too late.

 

Alka-Seltzer! Nestle Crunch! Fast forwarding!

 

Volkoff and DIBiase are out, with Nikolai in his old 1990 gear, standing there being demeaned by Ted and Jerry. Ted calls out Nikolai for his Russian flag jacket being out-of-date. This sure went on for awhile. This recreation of the Virgil angle actually could have gone somewhere with someone besides Nikolai, and if it...you know, WENT anywhere. Instead Nikolai wrestled for several months and vanished.