Monday Night Wars

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

He gave someone (let's say Chainz) a PRP on the floor during the 8 man tag match betwee Los Boriquas and DOA at SummerSlam 97 when The Nation interfered.

[packwingfn 0]

Flairs promo at the beginning of the 6/30 Nitro is awesome.

 

I love the girl's reaction when Mean Gene asks them if Flair is truly the 60 minute man!

[tapout 0]

Flairs promo at the beginning of the 6/30 Nitro is awesome.

 

I love the girl's reaction when Mean Gene asks them if Flair is truly the 60 minute man!

 

 

Yeah LOL. How about the other chick making a mistake saying Flair could only last for 30 seconds? Mean Gene had to cover and clean it up quick.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

You can't say that on television! (in reference to Syxx saying the only time Jericho beat anything was when he went back to the hotel).

 

Gene was really cheesy in a fun over the top way on this show.

[Bruiser Chong 0]

- The Gang Warz(z?) angle was awful. Not just because of the strained racial overtones of the whole thing, but because there isn't a single good wrestler involved in the stupid thing. Yeah, we get The Rock in the mix eventually, but the lack of any competent wrestlers made all of the matches bred from this angle tough to watch.

 

- I'll admit it: I'm not at all into the Hart Foundation angle. I was watching in 1997 and wasn't too keen on it then. I've seen all these rosy recollections of it in recent years, so I figured time and perhaps maturity would leave a different impression on me when I saw these again. Nope. I feel like I'm seeing the same thing every week. I'll be the first to say the climax of this thing (Canadian Stampede) makes the laborious nature of the storyline to this point tolerable.

 

- The Kane thing is really...bad. I'm not sure how it could've been introduced better, but I was almost embarrassed listening to Paul Bearer's retelling of what happened and The Undertaker's response.

[packwingfn 0]

Ah I think the Hart Foundation stuff is pretty good, but the Kane/Undertaker thing that gets me is that ...they build up the secret from May to late June. then Kane doenst even debut until OCTOBER!! then they build the match until wrestlemania. looking back at it now, it was defnitely drawn out way too long.

 

This was the debut of Michael Cole! I cant believe Pettingill and Cole were both on WWE Programming at the same time even though Pettingill didnt last too much longer after this (summerslam 97 was his last live appearance) but Cole was HORRIBILE in his interviews then, not that he isnt horribile now lol

[packwingfn 0]

The girl defnitely did not expect Mean Gene to say that to her I guess, he must have thought of that comment on the spot. The girls reaction is priceless lol.

 

This was a pretty good Nitro I must say. They knew that they were going to get a draw because of the impact player. So having Raven debut, Nash wrestle Rey, Malenko wrestle Eddy....etc. but deliviering Henning until the very very end then ending it like that did suck a little but made you want to watch the following week.

[Guest Bigelow34]

Ah I think the Hart Foundation stuff is pretty good, but the Kane/Undertaker thing that gets me is that ...they build up the secret from May to late June. then Kane doenst even debut until OCTOBER!! then they build the match until wrestlemania. looking back at it now, it was defnitely drawn out way too long.

 

This was the debut of Michael Cole! I cant believe Pettingill and Cole were both on WWE Programming at the same time even though Pettingill didnt last too much longer after this (summerslam 97 was his last live appearance) but Cole was HORRIBILE in his interviews then, not that he isnt horribile now lol

 

There is a PPV or show where Todd sends it to Cole and says "this guy kind of looks like me". Can't remember when it is, but yeah those few months of overlap are weird.

[1234-5678 0]

Can anyone remember why there are subtle references to the DOA working for the Undertaker?

[cabbageboy 0]

I actually really dig the UT/Kane/Bearer stuff watching now. At the time the whole thing was disturbing and offensive to me, but now in retrospect it was done just right. It's almost like Bearer got UT into a false sense of security, then brought Kane in at the ONE point where it would hurt UT most (HIAC).

 

The slow build is what made the feud. There was too much going on with UT/Bret and UT/Shawn to debut Kane. It's almost like that stuff needed to play out and then go into the Kane feud. And then UT didn't want to fight his brother, until Kane finally drove him over the edge. Kane ran roughshod over guys like Mankind and Vader until finally UT stopped him.

 

The storyline ended up drawing big money, so I think they did it pretty well.

[Nate 0]

watching the Juvi/Jericho match I counted at least 4 or 5 botches by Juvi

[cabbageboy 0]

Oh god, Juvi was horrible in that match. Wonder if he was on drugs during that one? I felt sorry for Jericho while watching it.

[tapout 0]

Damn Juvi was blowing spots all over the place. Just awlful.

[packwingfn 0]

After re-watching Raw. I was half alsleep the other time I saw it, I change my mind and think the Undertaker/Bearer/Kane thing was drawn out well, and how the story of how he bascially became the Undertaker if you think about it, it's pretty good I must say.

 

And I agree that drawing out Kane till October was good considering how good the Austin/HBK Hart Foundation feud was going.

[Guest Bigelow34]

Can anyone remember why there are subtle references to the DOA working for the Undertaker?

 

There were rumors for a while that Taker would switch to a biker-esque gimmick. That plus the name "Disciples of the Apocalypse" kind of lent itself to Taker. I don't know if it was ever seriosuly considered, but it did come off that way on more than one occasion.

[Aero 0]

Watching the Taker-Kane build now, it's all just as stupid as any of the other soap opera type stuff they were going for in late 2002 (Taker cheating on his wife, Katie Vick... although not quite on the same level). Back in 1997, I was a huge Taker mark, so I didn't think too much about the stupidity of the story. In fact, one of the reasons I ended up ordering Canadian Stampede was because I thought Kane would show up. When he finally did debut, I already knew that they would hold off the Taker-Kane match until Wrestlemania, so I was counting down the days.

 

A Jeremy Borash sign in the front row in 1997?

 

I had almost forgot totally forgot about Cornette randomly bringing in the Samoan SWAT Team. Did they ever appear on Raw again? I looked through some of the results within the next few weeks on Cawthon's site and didn't see any mention. They looked pretty bad here, so I'm assuming they might have been sent back to development.

[PILLS! PILLS! PILLS! 0]

I had almost forgot totally forgot about Cornette randomly bringing in the Samoan SWAT Team. Did they ever appear on Raw again?

 

That was the Head Hunters, not the SST. You might be thinking of their Rumble appearance when they were rechristened as the "Squat Team" for one night. The segment would have been much better if they given it half as much time.

[cabbageboy 0]

Well, at the time I was actually quite offended by the whole Bearer revelation. I thought it was pointless and at that point didn't see where any of this could draw money. Once we found out Kane was still alive then you had to know that Kane would show up at some point and thus they have a money making match on PPV.

 

What money could stuff like Katie Vick or UT cheating on his wife draw?

[zappafrank 0]

I finished up the 6/23 ep the other day (the one where the DoA debuts), and is it just me, or did Ahmed's reasoning for turning heel make NO sense at all, compltely ignoring nearly a year of storyline? I didn't start watching wrestling until the beginning of '99, so the only thing I knew (or so I thought) about Ahmed's heel turn was that it was a case of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." But his explanation really didn't say anything! He claimed discrimination and wanting title a shot, and that Faarooq's way of doing things would ensure he got what he wanted, but the announcers' failure even to hint at Ahmed's past feud with Faarooq was inexcusable, even by wrestling's short-memory standards.

 

For goodness sake, Ahmed was injured and stripped of the IC belt b/c of a Faarooq attack, Savio turns on him to join the Faarooq and the Nation, and then he spends the 1st half of '97 feuding with the Nation both with others (LoD) and on his own. And then when all of a sudden he's standing side-by-side with Faarooq, all buddy-buddy, NO ONE on the announce team is thinking, "Ya know, these guys have pretty much been at each other's throats for the better part of a year, so what gives?!"

 

And I also thought it was kind of interesting how the DoA were automatically cheered as soon as they came out, b/c in the weeks leading up to the split, Crush wasn't necessarily getting any sort of face pop. Maybe it was the motorcycles. It could be the fact that they simply represented someone opposing Faarrooq, but I don't think Savio would have gotten that kind of pop.

[Guest]

or did Ahmed's reasoning for turning heel make NO sense at all, compltely ignoring nearly a year of storyline?

Not for me. Decisions go against him, so he turns against THE MAN. The group that's against THE MAN is the Nation, so while it didn't make perfect sense, it still made sense.

 

I do think it's kinda dumb, though. I was looking for a reason why the crowd cheered DOA hoping to find that the show was in the South, but it wasn't, so I've got no real answer for that.

[bob_barron 0]

I thought that RAW was pretty terrible.

 

Jim Neidhart might have been the worst wrestler in the company at this point, he's just embarassing.

 

Taker's promo where he explains his side of the story was just weird. Paul Bearer is awesome at this point, and I loved Taker storming out and threatening to kill him

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

That Raw was pretty boring, though I was happy that this episode finally marked the debut of Shamrock's regular theme music. I also liked the guy with the "Vote Jeremy Borash - Marconi 97" (which would be about the Marconi Award for radio broadcasting, which is what Borash was doing in 1997).

[WWE247FanaticSeries 0]

Vote Jeremy Borash

[cabbageboy 0]

I'm amazed people here are baffled as to why DOA got cheers while the Nation and Savio's jobbers didn't. They were the white guys in that gang warfare angle, haha.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

They were also the faces...

[10 Pounds 0]

It seems the people are split on the Undertaker angle. As far as soap opera angles go, I think the angle was great. It was the first time they tried to humanize the Undertaker and they did it a whole lot better than the stupid "Mark just takes his character way over the line" stuff from 1999. Paul Bearer had great delivery and Undertaker's story actually made sense in the sense that he did a "death" character in order to cope with his guilt. Of course, considering all the developpements that later came ( Taker intentionaly burned the house, Kane was never burned and couldn't drive a stickshift, etc...), it doesn't make sense but I think the story was good for that timeframe. In hindsight, it may just be another stupid soap opera angle but, just like the Angle-HHH-Stephaie triangle, it's an enjoyable one, which is a rarity.

 

 

I didn't remember that Jim Cornette came back to get revenge on Owen and Bulldog, much less with the Headhunters. This comeback surely didn't last long. Was it before of after Cornette's rants on the state of wrestling ? I also remember seeing on Superstars a huge fat guy named "The Tank" who was in the Truth Commission for a short time,was it one of the Headhunters ?

[MillenniumMan831 0]

IIRC, according to Dinsmore's shoot, Tank was Mantaur.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

I was finally able to see this Nitro before it expired. Hennig's big appearance seemed like an afterthought. I did like Heenan's line when the limo pulled up, "What's so hard about looking in a window?!". I found the show better than that week's Raw at any rate.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

I still love this Raw. Back in 97 when I was doing some stupid wrestling hotline for the Detroit area (a bunch of people had Ameritech voicemail boxes and did hotlines) I advertised an interview with Bret Hart where I just cut together the audio of this promo. Bret's promo was also on a t-shirt being sold at a local Hart Foundation Reunion show in 2005.

 

Sasuke/Taka is a really good TV match and I enjoy HHH vs. Austin as well. Back to the hotline, I speculated with another hotline host that Canada was cheering HHH because they were ahead of the curve in recognizing Hunter's wrestling skill (I was a big HHH fan since 96) on top of the obvious reason of his opponent being Austin. Speaking of Austin, you have to love his asshole attitude towards Mankind with the swerve and "DTA, don't ever trust nobody!" (heh) and "You'll never be my tag team partner because you're a long haired freak AND you suck!".

[Diamonddust 0]

It seems the people are split on the Undertaker angle. As far as soap opera angles go, I think the angle was great. It was the first time they tried to humanize the Undertaker and they did it a whole lot better than the stupid "Mark just takes his character way over the line" stuff from 1999. Paul Bearer had great delivery and Undertaker's story actually made sense in the sense that he did a "death" character in order to cope with his guilt. Of course, considering all the developpements that later came ( Taker intentionaly burned the house, Kane was never burned and couldn't drive a stickshift, etc...), it doesn't make sense but I think the story was good for that timeframe. In hindsight, it may just be another stupid soap opera angle but, just like the Angle-HHH-Stephaie triangle, it's an enjoyable one, which is a rarity.

 

 

I didn't remember that Jim Cornette came back to get revenge on Owen and Bulldog, much less with the Headhunters. This comeback surely didn't last long. Was it before of after Cornette's rants on the state of wrestling ? I also remember seeing on Superstars a huge fat guy named "The Tank" who was in the Truth Commission for a short time,was it one of the Headhunters ?

 

The Headhunters were one and done. I don't think they ever appeared again after the time Cornette brought them out. On one of Cornette's shoots, he recalls how Davey and Owen made them look completely inept.