[1998-05-11-WWF-Raw] Interview: Vince McMahon & Dude Love

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Vince brings out Dude Love, clean shaven, hair combed, with a suit (well ...) and tie, and his teeth in. He's even holding the Wall Street Journal and wearing reading glasses, even giving us a completely different cadence in his interviews. Vince announces that Gerald Brisco will be the timekeeper at Over The Edge and Pat Patterson will be the ring announcer. Vince announces a special guest referee with amazing platitudes. No one comes out, so Vince goes to the back to get the guy while everyone just stands in the ring. Patterson finally announces the special referee. They briefly tease Bret Hart before Vince comes back out in a ref's shirt and mocks Austin's intro. Awesome stuff.

[Zenjo]

Everyone is so used to Foley changing personality that it doesn't seem a stretch at all for him to come out with an all new character. Forget about the suit, the hair and the beard. It's so damned weird seeing him with his teeth in. Then you have the deck being stacked against Austin in spectacular fashion. How could he possibly overcome this?

[soup23]

With each passing sequence, we see how much in tune and focused WWF is. This was great stuff. Dude comes out a changed man with suit, a big smile, and a WSJ. The introductions and parade of Patterson and Brisco was well done. The build up to the referee was perfect and there was a lot of visceral hatred when Vince comes out.

[Superstar Sleeze]

Foley was excellent in this. Speaker of four languages, lover of women and a surprisingly good dancer for a big man! VinnyMac introduces Brisco as the timekeeper and Patterson as the Announcer. They build and build to the ref and then they even tease Bret Hart as the special ref until Vince is announced after he went back to find the ref. Awesome segment.

[PeteF3]

A great, near-legendary segment that gives as much credibility to the Dude's title chances as can be done. One of the interesting subtexts that may or may not be intentional that's running through this program is the self-deprecation and winking to the audience that the WWF has never been known for, before or since. There's a strong undercurrent of, "Yeah, we've been getting our asses kicked for the past 2 years, and maybe these guys are the reason why." It makes for a stark contrast with the self-serious, often-depressing soap opera going on in the WCW main events, and a great contrast in portrayals between Heel Vince and Heel Bischoff. If Vince were to challenge Bischoff to show up at a PPV in Georgia, it'd have been treated on-air by JR & Lawler as the joke segment that it obviously was.

[TravJ1979]

Another home run segment with Vince and Foley. This will be the last good character work/matches Foley would have until January 2000 HHH feud.