DrVenkman PhD

TNT also details the Steamboat / Roberts angle from SNME, so that's good stuff. This Paul Christie guy... not so much.

TNT comes to us this week with "Surprise Guest Host" Mean Gene Okerlund so it's almost dead. Actually I think it lasts until September or October 86 but I've heard it only aired sporadically once Gene took over.

I have Part 2 of GFBE but not Part 1. I have the September 1st Nitro, but not August 25th. Unlike last week where there was no update at all, I'm going to assume this is remedied quickly (I also have no Shorties right now).

It'll just be Regal (his suspension will be up by Monday) but that's fine too.

I'm not picky about spoilers - especially since I actually own both of those tapes and would read full house show results to make preview listings - but a lot of 24/7 viewers like to go fresh into what they haven't seen. I also am finding not reading the results of past shows a nice change - the old brain can only remember so much so seeing things I don't remember is fun. I was pretty sure they did Yokozuna vs. Mabel on that show but I was hoping I was mistaken. Sigh.

Hooray for a new Red Faction. Boo for the "blow stuff up" gimmick STILL (based on the footage shown) basically being destroying building and bridge textures while the wireframe stays solid, meaning nothing changed. Blowing walls up is fun though.

That would be the show. Without looking up the card, I believe we're also treated to Marty Jannetty vs. Goldust (which I recall when I rented the tape in 1996, I really wanted to like but didn't) and Shane Douglas jobbing the IC title 15 minutes after receiving it by forfeit. As awful as it is there are probably a lot of people who may not even be aware a World Tour 96 tape exists (with good cause) so you could at least justify that 24/7 is unearthing some hidden tape. Bret/Austin isn't good but it has a notable finish. Holy tape spoilers, KKC!

I did realize I was enjoying the opening segment far too much for what was basically an Impact style "Cram everything together in one segment" deal, but the difference on Raw was this was the exception, not the rule. It was different for WWE programming and was used to show the chaos that was running wild.

Info from E3 about the game (and this is actually from a "Members Only" news post at F4Wonline... I normally don't like violating that and C&Ping to message boards, but really, THIS is pay news?):

Mid-month update (15 new videos!): Raw: Episode 38 November 1, 1993 | Approx. run time: 46 mins. Survivor Series is getting closer, and representatives of all teams will be on Raw. In the featured match of the evening, Intercontinental Champion Razor Ramon faces the most disgusting Superstar to ever grace Raw: Bastion Booger. Plus, a few days before Raw, Tatanka was brutally injured by the hands of Yokozuna and Ludvig Borga. Will there be an update on the Native American's condition? Bonus Match: Rick Steiner faces Jacques Rougeau from WWE Superstars. Raw: Episode 39 November 8, 1993 | Approx. run time: 46 mins. Randy Savage returns to Monday Night Raw with a vengeance. After being manhandled by Crush and Yokozuna, perhaps it wasn't the smartest idea by President Jack Tunney to allow Macho Man to call matches ringside. Considering Crush has a match that evening, it's guaranteed that all hell will break loose on Raw! The Fernwood Resort was never the same after this episode. Bonus Match: Razor Ramon defends the Intercontinental Championship against Rick Martel. Wrestling Challenge: Episode 3 September 21, 1986 | Approx. run time: 35 mins. WWE Universe has thoroughly enjoyed reliving WWE from the '80s, and this episode of Wrestling Challenge brings even more fun! This week, catch a rare match when The Killer Bees take on Terry Gibbs and Jack Foley. Little did anyone know back in 1986 that Jack Foley would become one of the most popular Superstars in WWE: Mick Foley! In other great action, The Hart Foundation challenge The Islanders. Don't miss Wrestling Challenge! Wrestling Challenge: Episode 4 September 28, 1986 | Approx. run time: 41 mins. Please welcome Bobby Heenan to Wrestling Challenge. Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon take members of WWE 24/7 Online down the historical path of 1980s wrestling. This week, Koko B. Ware, Paul Orndorff and the British Bulldogs are all in action. Also, the legendary debut of the longest-reigning Intercontinental Champion, The Honky Tonk Man, takes place. J.R.'s Pick of the Month: Dusty Rhodes vs. Barry Windham July 15, 2008 | Approx. run time: 26 mins. This month, J.R. chooses the "American Dream" Dusty Rhodes facing Barry Windham from The Great American Bash. Hear exclusively from one of SmackDown's newest members as Jim Ross talks about Dusty's rivalry with The Horsemen. Then enjoy this classic encounter from The Great American Bash. Bonus Features: Exclusive Interview with Jim Ross. My Favorite Match: Shelton Benjamin July 15, 2008 | Approx. run time: 25 mins. Shelton Benjamin sits down with WWE 24/7 Online to discuss his favorite match. Shelton, one of the most talented Superstars in Ladder Matches, said that he studied one of the first Ladder Matches ever. Of course, it's the Ladder Match between Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon for the Intercontinental Championship from WrestleMania X. Hear an exclusive interview from Shelton Benjamin and then witness this classic Ladder Match for yourself. Bonus Features: Exclusive Interview with Shelton Benjamin. Exclusive Diva Shorts Preview July 15, 2008 | Approx. run time: 17 mins. Who doesn't love the Divas? Catch an exclusive Diva Shorts preview this month. These Diva Shorts are airing for the first time ever on WWE.com. Every single Diva is represented, and if you enjoy these shorts, then you'll definitely want to head over to WWE Mobile where new Diva Shorts are available every week! These videos will give you an insight from the Divas about their entrance music and what they wear to the ring. WWE Universe is in for a real treat. Check out more Diva Shorts with WWE Ringside on WWE Mobile. Great American Bash: Doom vs. Rock-n-Roll Express July 7, 1990 | Approx. run time: 16 mins. Re-live this classic tag team match from The Great American Bash. The Rock-n-Roll Express was one of the greatest tag teams of the '80s, and Doom had Ron Simmons as one of their members. Which team will come out on top in this tag team battle? Great American Bash: Hulk Hogan & Bret Hart vs. Roddy Piper & Randy Savage June 4, 1998 | Approx. run time: 12 mins. A dream tag team of Hulk Hogan and Bret Hart was thought to be impossible. That was until 1998. Catch this tag team encounter when Hogan and Hart team-up to take on Hall of Famer Roddy Piper and Randy Savage. Which team of legends will walk out of The Great American Bash as the victor? Primetime Wrestling: 4th of July Special July 4, 1988 | Approx. run time: 89 mins. Let the fireworks display continue on WWE 24/7 Online! Pulled from the archives is this classic episode of Primetime Wrestling, not only will you get to relive the antics of Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon, but you also get to see one of the very first matches of The Rockers! This is a can't-miss episode of Primetime Wrestling! MSG: Sgt. Slaughter vs. Iron Sheik April 23, 1984 | Approx. run time: 9 mins. Sgt. Slaughter returned to WWE with his patriotism and made sure all anti-Americans were forewarned. Apparently, Iron Sheik didn't take the message too seriously. Would Americans leave Madison Square Garden happy with a Sgt. Slaughter victory? Saturday Night Main Event: Hacksaw Jim Duggan vs. Hercules April 30, 1988 | Approx. run time: 8 mins. You can't celebrate America without Hacksaw Jim Duggan! HOOOOOO! WWE Universe has been chanting USA with Hacksaw since the 1980s. Would Hacksaw and his 2x4 be enough to overcome the powerful Hercules? Find out in this Saturday Night's Main Event classic. WCW Main Event: The Patriot vs. William Regal March 20, 1994 | Approx. run time: 8 mins. While The Patriot brought his American pride for a brief period in WWE, he was a very popular Superstar in WCW. Watch this rarely seen match from WCW Main Event as The Patriot takes on William Regal (then known as Steven Regal). Starrcade: Dusty Rhodes vs. Lex Luger November 26, 1987 | Approx. run time: 19 mins. The American Dream Dusty Rhodes battles Lex Luger in this classic battle from Starrcade. Trapped inside the steel cage, both Superstars had their minds set on winning the United States Championship. Only one can represent the title and leave Starrcade the victor. Great American Bash: MVP vs. Matt Hardy July 22, 2007 | Approx. run time: 17 mins. Matt Hardy and MVP began their year-long rivalry at The Great American Bash. MVP was the reigning United States Champion, but Matt Hardy was hungry for singles gold. Already having a non-title victory over MVP, did Matt have enough momentum to win the championship? Find out in this intense championship battle.

They didn't mention it because London isn't a student of Shawn. It doesn't matter in the feud itself, if they want to say it, they can. Most people believe that is the case anyways. Somehow I thought he was. That would be Spanky, though. Carry on!

Yeah I realized that somewhere in the middle and didn't bother fixing my previous statement.

Oh. My. God. spman sent me World Tour 96 as a rib. It is the WORST TAPE EVER. This will be comically bad to watch, perhaps. World Tour 92 is a tape I bought from a store in 2005 because it looked good on paper, but I recall being let down (Savage vs. Michaels is Savage selling his knee the entire match). And they're showing the October 95 In Your House! What an absolute rib by the producers next month. Well done guys.

Yes, that's true (because I was confused again when watching the Flair ceremony on DVD), but as mentioned I remembered I heard his WCW theme when 24/7 aired GAB 92.

The best sign was "SANTINO FEARS LUIGI", complete with a picture of Luigi from the SMB Supershow. I believe that was on the barricade the entire match.

Because I enjoyed Raw so much, I'm going to go segment by segment tonight: Opening video package: Someone said they used this music on SD too, but I missed the opening of that show (I was either watching ALF or heating up some dinner). At any rate, while they've probably used that background music several times in the past decade, it tends to immediately remind of "The Master Plan" video package from Breakdown 98, which happened to be during the Attitude era. A good sign. Opening business: The segue between Stephanie and Shane's comments and a wild brawl between HBK and Jericho was damn brilliant and really set the tone. As was stated in the thread, it was very reminiscent of the opening to Spike's very first episode of Impact with Joe kicking Daniels. Those were the days, eh? Then Kane came out carrying what I initally thought were the remains of Damien (revealing Kane was concerned about Jake Robert's pet snake from 17 years ago) but that mystery remains unsolved. Anyhow they even managed to fit a match into this craziness, putting them +1 matches over last week's show in the same timeframe. I naturally enjoyed the match because A. It wasn't bad and B. If you've been following my random comments thrown about the forums you know Katie is my 2nd favourite Diva right now. Good start, and it actually set up a second match. Kofi vs. Burchill: Because the opening promo last week ended up going 28 minutes or so (and I did think the Vicki stuff last week was great), I think we were +2 matches over the previous week now (Marvin seemed to think it was only +1). God bless this crowd because at this point I wanted every Raw to come from Raleigh. Apparently because I was laughing too hard at the Pepsi machine comment (sorry Spiff, I really do find Santino funny) I missed Kane saying that he knows whatever he was talking about is dead. I also thought the Cena promo was good (and hardly "being gay") - it was nice to see him cut a serious promo to underline the bad blood in his feud with JBL. Not a big show note, but the fact the backdrop this week appeared to be a big tapr kept distracting me - I kept thinking he was going to pull it down and reveal a circle of cars in the background or that someone or something was going to crash through it. Beth (who is actually my favourite Diva right now) beating Santino amused me because instead of it being an annoying bitch like Chyna going over people like Chris Jericho or Jeff Jarrett, it's someone I think is awesome betting a comedy act. And again, I loved Raleigh. I've also been asking (silently, to myself) where Beth was every week and was always sad when she did not appear on TV, so I was happy to see her. In retrosepct I actually think this was a BAD idea because by the end of Raw, Katie Lea became the only heel women on Raw so unless there are changes coming or some new women are on the way in, this was an odd decision. I liked it live though, and again, welcome back to TV Beth! I'm glad some of you people aren't on the WWE writing team because if you were, it sounds like you'd make the mistake WWE often does themselves - give up on an act you haven't given people enough time to care about one way or the other. The deal with Rhodes and DiBiase giving Duggan the verbal business instead of a cliche beatdown was good character building and hopefully it results in them getting heat in the near future. Their alliance with JBL is a good one too. I really did feel bad for poor Duggan in this segment (and I actually felt, for what it's worth, he looked even older than usual out there tonight). Say what you will about ol Hacksaw but I'm glad WWE gave him a job. Whenever he's hosting something on 24/7 he sounds so excited that you can't help but feel good, and the people went nuts for his act at the Raw I was at in May. He has no business in main events or anything, but he's harmless. Lay off Duggan, people! I guess it's worth noting Kelly looked pretty good tonight too but I was glad the heels saved us from having her wrestle (and wrestle who? Layla didn't appear to be in wrestling gear later in the evening). Kane vs Punk - ok, we hate count outs, but they were pretty much booked into a corner with this match. Do you job out the guy who is holding the belt or job out the guy you're supposed to be giving a new heel push too? The answer, of course, is neither, so they (in theory) Punk gained credibility by holding his own and winning by count out while Kane didn't get pinned. Punk shoving Batista was nice too and the post match spinebuster would indicate Punk gets to retain. Jericho vs London annoyed me, actually. Why didn't they acknowledge London as a student of HBK? I don't care if he looked up to him as a kid and when you have Lance Cade out there, make this meaningful! I also didn't care for London's sneakers - did he find out he was wrestling 10 minutes before showtime? The post match angle this set up could be good though. Noble's character is amusing, I had no problem with his deal with Snitsky. Gives Layla something to do too, I guess, but like I said earlier it seemed this dynamic made her a face and she was the last heel except for Katie (and Jillian, who I totally forgot about - I guess that would have been Kelly's opponent too). The main event was well worked (though fairly basic) and enjoyable. It's good to see some young elevation going on. The ending was a bit weird (and the really funny part was Cole and Lawler saying they didn't know what JBL was up to - uh, trying to save his partner from a submission hold? It was if they pulled a Tony and forgot he was actually a participant in the match) but maybe it's part of a new angle where running into the ring without tags and pulling the tights gets you DQd (I doubt it). The post match angle was silly and you had to know something was coming when they had all those slick cuts to different exterior cameras. Since it's not a cliffhanger about whether Cena will live or die, it's not horrible, so I'll let it slide as a crazy pro wrestling angle.

It's no barrel of fun, but it is very good. Go with it.

This reminded me that I need to tape 1992 tomorrow afternoon before it expires.

The Score is only licensed for X amount of live programming (what a retarded licencing standard, btw - thanks CRTC or CBSC or whoever is responsible for this!) and when they picked up Raw in 2006, that put them over their alloted amount. I guess they have enough leeway to be able to air an episode live every now and then (most recently a Raw from Toronto) but the 9:15 concession is much better than when they used to wait until 10pm.

I was surprised at the result of the Flair/Piper match from MSG. I assumed it was a no contest or some such (due to Piper's repuation of never doing jobs except for Bret Hart and then Hogan in 2003) but a nice surprise. It was also a nice surprise to hear the fans go banana for Ric Flair AND have Monsoon acknowledge it instead of just ignore it, but he had a habit of just saying whatever the hell he felt like anyway.

I didn't know they had pinpointed the exact date of the big bang, so credit to Eric Bischoff or whoever at Fusient came up with that scientific discovery.

Does anyone REALLY care about a dark match main event? Seriously? HHH, HBK, and Cena squashed Orton, Umaga, and JBL at the last Raw I was at. Big deal. Thanks for the WWE.com update Lazarus, I was hoping they would immediatley clarify the situation. Oddly enough, them saying JBL missed makes everything cool in my book (more or less).

I was so let down to see such an awful angle end what was turning into what I thought was a really, really good Raw. I understand the idea is to build heat for the feud AND serve to be an act so dastardly and out of control that Shane HAS to take action on Raw next week to pay off the chaos angle, and that's fine under two conditions: 1. They admit JBL missed and Cena moved (since clearly no one was there) Or 2. Cena was there, is seriously injured, and the advertised Bash match is off until SummerSlam. JBL is also in some sort of legal trouble. Sadly I believe we'll see the following: 3. Cena fights on Sunday with a piece of gauze around his rib cage.

Indy wrestler Psycho Sailor was from "Ports Unknown".