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EVIL~! alkeiper

Monday Night Wars

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cabbage! cabbage! cabbage! I don't know about bedtimes for all y'all when you were wee TSMers and I guess it varies but I'm assuming there was a good percentage of the 6-11 crowd that WWF was marketing to at this period that didn't get to stay up till 10 P.M. on a Monday.

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cabbage! cabbage! cabbage! I don't know about bedtimes for all y'all when you were wee TSMers and I guess it varies but I'm assuming there was a good percentage of the 6-11 crowd that WWF was marketing to at this period that didn't get to stay up till 10 P.M. on a Monday.

 

Agreed. I remember freaking out about having to go to bed right after they showed Undertaker putting Warrior in the casket on Prime-Time one night.

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My bedtime was 9:30 but my parents let me sleep with the TV on because I was weird and couldn't sleep in the quiet.

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Savage was indeed an awful commentator. I loved the guy in the ring, but it was clear even to me as a young mark that he had no clue what he was talking about half the time. A lot of times he'd outright lie to play up the company...like I remember one time he claimed "There are at least 10 tag teams out there right now I could name who could take the belts!" This was during the time when they had the Smoking Gunns and M.O.M. and that was basically it.

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Randy Savage as commentator is one of my biggest guilty pleasures. The announcing team of him, Vince McMahon, and Bobby Heenan have provided me much laughter (intentional and otherwise over the years). Of course, my love of Savage the commentator is almost entirely attributable to the fact that he was the color commentator when I started watching wrestling.

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It depends. I was 13 when Raw first started so I wasn't really worried at that point about staying up until 10 (or 11). But even during the old PTW days on Monday nights I could stay up until 11 watching that show. After all, I was in grade school then and that starts an hour later. This wasn't necessarily every night, but I don't think my parents cared about me staying up a little later one night a week.

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Guest Smues

Nitro already sucks. I just sat through the 11/24 one and man it was pretty awful. I can't believe didn't get sick of the NWO shit much earlier than they did. And that main event segment, god that was awful. But there was a great moment, when Savage got nailed with a soda from the crowd. I'm still laughing about that. I pray the next Nitro is better.

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That is funnier than when he refers to Macho Man as future Hall of Famer Macho Man Randy Savage.

 

Randy Savage use to also say "Greatest WWF Champion Past, Present, and Future" and it seems like his reign is erased from any tense. At least they got him on the IC title history dvd. He could have got Bruno'ed as Sammartino did on the A&E special about a decade ago. They skipped a whole decade :lol:

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As soon as I saw that kid I wished I was able to take a video snapshot to save for future reference or sig/av possibilities.

 

Obviously WWE isn't going to shell out loads of money to licence music for one segment on a show that 115,000 people can see, but I have solutions on how that possibly could have been handled better (though some would argue this would be much worse):

 

1. Use "Shoot to Thrill" since they currently have the rights to the song for Mania 25 (the rights probably don't apply to this usage, though).

 

2. Use Eric Bischoff's theme - this would probably confuse people but it's a good meta reference.

 

3. Use the fake "Highway to Hell" music they use on the History of ECW.

 

I either missed this Raw completely when it first aired or it somehow got erased from my memory. I thought the last episode was Neidhart's farewell to WCW but here he is, seeking revenge in a wrestling match (then getting booted to WCW). Taka/Aguila was fun while it lasted, Bull "Recon" Buchanan seemed to be trying really hard in that Four Corners match (which Cornette said "was like mixing 'TNT' with 'Nitroglycerin'" - quite the odd line to say), and Sunny was Sunny. The crowd was really into that final segment with Shamrock and Slaughter running wild too.

 

I've pretty much resigned myself that it's going to be a lot of non-wrestling nostalgia enjoyment for a long time now, so to that end, I enjoyed Raw.

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They are hilariously anal about overdubbing these themes. It would be like Rob Halford analyzing these old AWA shows on ESPN Classic and saying "Eureka! The Midnight Rockers were using Living After Midnight so now I need to sue ESPN or Vince McMahon!"

 

It would be interesting to see a court ruling on wrestling promotions using songs. As in when does it go past mere ring entrance music and into actually using the song to draw money. For instance, Chris Candido using Back in Black as his ring entrance in ECW isn't a biggie. But Vince using Highway to Hell for a great video package to sell SummerSlam 98? Different story.

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Just watched that Raw and wow, it was the Russo experience left and right. Nothing but angles out the ass, barely any wrestling, promos galore. Given the roster of that era that isn't a bad thing exactly, but is there any excuse for a match where Vader gets counted out against JJ (Goldust distraction) and then they follow with the same exact silliness with Mero/Brandi? Mero's rant on Brandi was hilarious and total Russo, calling him "A jobber with a bad gimmick."

 

However, the show is very worthwhile for the legendary HBK promo where he trashes Owen Hart and calls him a nugget. As a matter of fact while watching these old Raws on 24/7 I've come to this conclusion: Shawn Michaels' heel run from Summerslam 1997 (or right after) until WM XIV is the greatest heel work in history. He was a total dick on and off camera, but after screwing Bulldog in England, ripping off UT in the HIAC and the Casket Match, winning the title due to the Montreal Screwjob, and generally being an ass every week I couldn't wait to see Austin crush him at WM.

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Re: Jeff Jarrett's new theme music: LO-fucking-L.

 

"There's all the superstars...and then there's-MEEEEEE!"

 

I could not stop laughing at that audio clip and had to rewind it three times, then I got to hear it again when Vader ran away. Great stuff.

 

cabbageboy pretty much summed up exactly how I felt about Raw as it is the clear cut prototype of a Russo show. I'm shocked they even had one competitive match (Dude/Gunn) that ended clean. However, because watching this show in it's current state is all about reliving the angles I loved in high school, this was a pretty great nostalgic trip. The Outlaws are now wearing their South Park shirts (which is when I became fans of them), the Mero / Brandi thing (which got the second biggest laugh out of me after "MEEEEEEEEEEEE", Mero calling Brandi someone who's doing an awful gimmick for money followed by JR saying "He's a baaaaaaaaaad man"), Austin proclaiming his intent to go after the world title, etc. Compare this to the Nitro episode which has wrestling matches, but they're Konnan vs. Ray Traylor and Barbarian vs. McMichael. I actually decided to stop watching Nitro at that point and watch it later.

 

Other Raw highlights:

- Hawk doing the "N64 Knockout" sell where he raises his head, trembles a bit, then collapses back down to the mat. You don't see that enough! Michael Cole (in his Raw announcing debut) also seems to think Kane gave Hawk two Tombstones when it was just a regular piledriver and one Tombstone.

- Taka gets a Memphis Funeral (two piledrivers and a spike piledriver is the sort of thing I assume killed a person in Memphis).

- Sable's Idaho potato sack as a "2" written in front of the 50lbs marking. This amused me.

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While watching the latest Nitro, I thought they might end the Benoit Embargo and show his match with Raven since the commentary hyping his match was left intact.

 

1992-03-21-1.jpg

Wrong!

 

On the subject of RAW, Jarrett's ridiculous theme aside, what's up with all of the foul language this week? I know that this was around the time when they were really pushing the envelope but this week's episode seemed like everything was turned up to 11. Any special reason or was this just another step into the Attitude Era?

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Oh, that level of language was a typical Raw from 1997-99. In fact it wasn't really one of the more shocking shows in terms of language.

 

For the sake of sanity I hadn't mentioned Jarrett's bizarre gimmick. Who knows what they were going for with it but the notion of him getting over seemed like a longshot. As far as Lawler/BC go, it'll be nice when Christopher gets buried for a while so Lawler can be put at the booth full time with JR.

 

In regards to Tom Brandi, why didn't they push this guy at all? He has a solid look and had at least a little talent. Could have been an IC contender, but after stuff like Mero burying him so hard on the mic he was almost impossible to take seriously.

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