[1997-06-02-WWF-Raw] Shawn Michaels & Steve Austin vs Legion of Doom

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Austin and Shawn figuring out how to work as heels in this match and get an "LOD" chant going simultaneously amazes me and cracks me up; it's a really clever twist on the storyline that the top two babyfaces in the promotion can team and suddenly be the top heels. Shawn works the angle perfectly into the match and I have to give him credit. Shawn gets distracted by the Hart Foundation and Austin tries dragging him to the ring by the hair. Shawn reacts to that about like you'd expect and the LOD win by countout when both Austin and Shawn are thrown out of the ring. Not even really that good of a match, but some really good furthering of a storyline through work in the ring.

[Kevin Ridge]

WWF busting out video of Summerslam 91 when LOD won the tag titles. LOD is making easy work of Michaels early on. Maybe Michaels was ahead of his time and had those horse placenta massages of his knee as looks good as new. LOD are the faces in match. Michaels and Austin end up brawling outside which leads to a very quick count out. Patterson is back to wearing his white sneakers.

[soup23]

Austin/Shawn actually made a pretty good heel tag team when they were working together. LOD was pretty much done by this time and it showed here. I have liked the build to KOTR a lot better than I remembered.

[PeteF3]

LOD are basically statues, though Animal shows some fire. And yet Austin and Michaels and the booking manage a way to work around that to put on maybe as good of a match involving LOD as you could hope for in 1997. Seeing Austin and Michaels work as a heel team was intriguing as hell, and they pull it off without selling out their own characters. I didn't get then and don't quite get now why it was important to keep the belts on them, and I don't think the Harts costing them a title loss would have hurt them, but champs they remain.

[Exposer]

I thought this was really fun for the time it got. Shawn bumps big again & the Austin/Shawn "heel" work is really strong. The crowd was going nuts for LOD. That's impressive work by Austin & Shawn. The HF come out & distract Shawn on the floor. Austin sees this & is annoyed so he grabs Shawn by the hair to get back to the match. Shawn doesn't like that & they get into another brawl. The fans were pissed because they had gotten so into the match. LOD win by countout. Fun match & strong segment leading into KOTR.