Monday Night Wars - Quickie version
Frankly, I haven’t had time this week to sit down and watch all three hours of this show without fast-forwarding, but the 2/17 edition is very interesting and well worth watching.
- RAW is of course the focal point again, as Bret Hart and Sid just can’t have that darn title match without Steve Austin mucking it up, until finally Bret gets to do the j-o-b and lose his belt 24 hours after winning it. They totally made the wrong call there. They should have put the belt on Austin and had Bret win it at Wrestlemania rather than trying for the Sid-UT match, but hindsight is 20/20 and Vince was desperate in 97 anyway.
- The Hardy Boyz do an ignominious job to the Headbangers, still dressed in their 80s pretty boy gear with “MATT” and “JEFF” in big letters on their tights in case they forgot which belonged to who. The Stage Dive (powerbomb into a flying legdrop) remains a pretty sweet double-team finisher from the Bangers, who sadly get no love from history while the Hardyz went on to become one of the biggest tag teams ever.
- Rocky v. Leif Cassidy was pretty friggin’ boring, once again reinforcing that Rock didn’t get anywhere in the orbit of good until 99.
- Over on Nitro, Sasktel has jumped on the Orwellian bandwagon and all mentions and appearances of Lord Voldemort have been excised. So I hope you kept your original tapes.
- This was also the week when Prince Iaukea won the TV title from Stephen Regal in a match barely above a squash, kicking off a rather pathetic title reign that was to end with a mercy killing. Having never seen the original match, I didn’t realize what a joke they treated Iaukea as.
- Roddy Piper in Alcatraz. Gimme a fucking break.
- Tony explaining to the fans at home what a VHS-C tape is — PRICELESS. File that one under “things you never thought you’d hear on a wrestling show”.
- The Randy Anderson-Nick Patrick “match” was pretty annoying, what with Eric overturning the decision and never having a foil to overrule him on this stuff. They just never gave the fans anything to cheer, and it makes it hard to watch the shows sometimes.
- Kind of sad to watch former cruiserweight stars Doc Dean and Robbie Brookside getting totally destroyed (especially Dean being totally manhandled by Jacqueline) but not surprising somehow. They had a good look and Dean in particular had some good matches in Japan and could have been something.
Hopefully next time I’ll have more time to recap the whole thing.
Piper in Alcatraz was totally retarded but funny. Didn’t they play it as if he swam all the way from the jail to the arena before Superbrawl 97?
Vince killed another one. Apparently Karl Gotch was found dead. When will someone step in and clean up this industry that takes so many so young?
Probably after you stop making lame comments and arguing for the sake of arguing. Or sometime around armageddon. Both could take as long.
You are so out of step.
Its just a name taken from a Minor Threat song, but good job turning it around on me. Really, it was a hoot.
I’m not sure how the Austin/Hart title switch is somehow better. The way they did it, they got two big matches. Your way, it becomes a one match draw. Plus, Hart and Austin were heading for the double-switch and there’s no way you want that kind of ambiguity going into the biggest match of the year. Unless you’re suggesting that Hart and Austin keep their original orientations which just totally fucks up the progress that WWF would make in the next year. It also destroys WM14 and Austin finally winning the title.
I think at the time giving The Undertaker the World Title at WrestleMania was something that he deserved after 5 years of winning his first World Title. The WWE always putt it him to work with all the big mens that came to the company and I think it was time he got his moment at WrestleMania.
I read somewhere that Austin was supposed to win the Final Four match the night before but due to the knee injury he suffered during the match, Vince switched it to Bret winning instead. Then, on RAW, Bret was supposed to cost Austin the title so that Sid/UT could proceed and Bret/Austin could continue. Are you suggesting, Scott, that if Austin hadn’t been injured, they should’ve just kept the belt on him until Mania? As he was injured, how would you have went about putting the belt on Austin? Could it have worked if Austin had gotten Bret DQed, instead of costing him the title, therefore making the I Quit match a title match?
That whole rumor was debunked by somebody, possibly Meltzer, a few years ago. The plan was always for Bret to get the belt at Final Four. Whether he was supposed to lost it the very next night, I don’t know. Other than Montreal, I don’t think Vince has ever changed a finish of a title match while it was happening. I know finishes have been changed literally right before they walk out to the ring, but never mid-match. Maybe I’m wrong.
Funny thing: Voldemort has been removed from the MNWars, but in the “Shorties” section of 24/7 (I have Comcast in the USA), there is a Benoit/Malenko flag match from Nitro in 1999. And it was added after the murders. Oops. Also, they had Sherri doing a “You’re watching WWE 24/7″ bumper before one of the events (I think the 1990 Bash), which I found to be a little tasteless, considering she just died and all.
Next (week): ECW invades the Manhattan Center and Savage joins the nWo and is reunited with Elizabeth on Nitro. Can we just get to RAW is WAR already, please?
Thanks for clearing that up, JH!
“Also, they had Sherri doing a “You’re watching WWE 24/7″ bumper before one of the events (I think the 1990 Bash), which I found to be a little tasteless, considering she just died and all.”
I thought it was cool they still had her doing one, myself. Sadly, it also showed why she is dead at only 49. I guess given her lifestyle, she was lucky to have lived that long.
I think that Austin costing Bret the title was a better choice that viceversa. Austin is the one that doesn’t follow the rules and was better for his persona to cost the title, rather than Bret.
The only thing I’ve never understood is this: If Bret was supposed to win the title from Shawn Michaels at WMXIII (as has been reported/rumored before), why did Undertaker get the belt? Shouldn’t Bret have either A)Won it at Final Four and KEPT it, or 2)Beat Sid or Austin or whomever for it at Wrestlemania?
Probably Vince decided that since the Shawn-Bret thing didn’t work since Shawn wasn’t willing to drop the belt to Bret he decided that the next guy that deserves the belt was The Undertaker after all the years of loyalty with the company.
Yeah that makes sense. Undertaker had his run and then a fresh heel Bret got the strap back later in the year anyway. Probably worked out better that way. I mean, who knows what would’ve happened with a 1997 face Bret championship run?
Who’s to say the run would have featured Bret as a face? They could still have done the double-switch and it would have been terrific for business–the face Austin chasing a heel Bret for the title he lost despite never actually submitting.
I think everything went all right. Bret won the title, the Austin cost him the belt to gain heat in what would be one of the greatest matches in history, Undertaker got his WrestleMania moment and a decent title run meanwhile the Austin-Bret feud continued without having a title on the line.
Yeah, everything did go very well–until that whole Montreal thing and all :rolleyes:–but it’s always fun to play “What If?”
Yeah, what if Bret Hart didn’t go to WCW? He probably would have hold the World Title and drop it to Stone Cold returning the favor from the WrestleMania from the year before.
Scott, this isn’t related to MNW, but do you think you’ll re-archive your past rants outside of Inside Pulse? The search functions don’t work, so I’m sitting here after about 10 pages and I still haven’t found the rant for which I’m looking (GAB ‘90).
Yeah Scott. What happened to the whole “PDF of the old rants” plan that you hatched when you moved the blog over to its own domain???
It’s a lot of work and I don’t have direct uploading capabilities on the site, only Scotsman does. The software is actually in place, though, and everything is pretty much converted over to PDF, it’s just a matter of putting A and B together to make C. Plus I haven’t decided if or how much I want to charge.
http://www.411mania.com/wrestling/video_reviews/32789/The-SmarK-Retro-Repost—Great-American-Bash-90.htm
411 has lots of his old stuff.
I’d pay up to $20 for a year long subscription.
You don’t know how much time I wasted at work surfing through your old stuff.
Whatever happened to the armageddon story?
- joe