Raw Is Owen
5/24/99
St Louis, Missouri



Arguably the most poignant episodes of Monday Night Raw history. At a time where the WWF was all about cheap stunts and sophomoric humour, it was really cool to see them put on a show that was dedicated to their friend and let them be real infront of the camera. It didn't make for comfortable viewing but at a time where fans were grieving, it must have been cathartic to see the wrestlers deal with the same emotions. A show like this could have easily tanked with the crowd turning on it, knowing they wouldn't get any progress and fans may have tuned out when they cottoned on but the crowd was very respectful through out and the show drew the largest contested rating (7.1) up to that point. Perhaps that had to do with the car-wreck esque interest but I'd like to think that the fans stay tuned because they appreciated the tribute taking place.

Like Over The Edge, I won't be going into too much detail about the show. It was pretty clear that a lot of these guys were on limited time and were simply working the quick 3 minute style match. I thought the best one of the lot was the Jarrett/Test match which saw Jeff use the Sharpshooter to win. I thought his segment was the most poignant and his interview the toughest to sit through because you could see how much the death affected him. It was tough on all of them and even the final sign off from Lawler/JR was heart-breaking in a way. Both guys had been such troopers through everyone. JR carried the load for the most part, but Lawler in particular was trying his best to make it a party type atmosphere sharing all these different stories. When it came to the end of the night, he dropped his guard and spoke about what it was like heading to the ring to take the mask off of Owen and all that strength finally alluded him.

I don't know if I could recommend this show. It's easily one of the most memorable editions of Raw, but it's a heart-breaker and not a typical wrestling show at all.

As I said, I won't go through the show match by match like I usually do, but here's a list of all the results...

Jeff Jarrett (w/Debra) defeated Test via Sharpshooter at 2:42
Kane and X-Pac defeated Edge & Gangrel (w/Christian) at 3:57
The Hardy Boyz (w/Michael Hayes) defeated Kaientai at 3:17
Ken Shamrock defeated Hardcore Holly at 1:46
Mankind defeated Billy Gunn at 3:10
D'Lo Brown and Mark Henry (w/Ivory) defeated The Acolytes
Road Dogg and Godfather (w/Hos) ended in a No Contest when Dogg took Godfather up on his offer
Triple H (w/Chyna) defeated Al Snow at 3:40
The Rock defeated Val Venis at 0:50

The show ended with Austin giving Owen one final toast.

Couple of Notes
- Steve Blackman and Bradshaw got into a fight at baggage claim. This was actually referenced on the air during the Acolytes match with King relaying that he was there with Owen who just laughed at the ridiculousness of it.

- The WWF offered Shane Douglas a contract, but Douglas turned it down. Speculation is that Douglas will reconcile with ECW and work a program there.

- Ferrara is staying put with the company, at least for now. Ed had given his two week notice but Vince talked him out of it.

- The Hart Family were mixed on the Raw Is Owen show. They felt some wrestlers were genuinely upset and appreciated their tributes but thought others were merely exploitative.

WWF Raw Is War
5/31/99
Moline, Illinois

It was back to business as usual following the tragic death of Owen Hart. The show touched on Owen's funeral briefly at the top of the show with Lawler once again giving condolences on behalf of the WWF.

From there, it was business as usual with the Corporate Ministry entering the ring, druids and all.

Corporate Ministry Segment
Taker introduced the hook of the show tonight, that he was going to unveil his 'greater power'. OK, so we all know the drill about the higher power. (HINT: IT'S ME AUSTIN *aw son of a bitch*) but watching this in real time at face-value it seems completely left-field. In fact, I had to go back to see when Taker even alluded to the 'Higher Power' since he's largely deferred any open communication to Shane. As it turns out, on the the May 3rd edition of Raw, Taker promised that he would introduce Austin to a power even greater than he and he would know that blah blah blah, Taker was the king of cheesy rambly promos at this point. The thing was, it seemed like a throw-away line, but now it's an important plot point. This subject has always fascinated me because it's seen as one of the biggest letdowns right next to the Gobbly Gooker. In my mind, I thought this went back to January and they built and built and built to it. If anything, they only gave it one week where they treated it as the biggest mystery this side of the Outsiders 'third man' and kept guessing. I guess they did a good job of getting the fans interest but in real-time, it was a one week (two if you had access to spoilers) storyline.

Anyways, Vince comes out and he's in total babyface mode at the moment. He calls Taker out for being a bitch and screwing Austin and the fans over on PPV, tells Taker that Austin will kick his ass and even wants a piece for himself after the hell he's put his family through. This leads Shane to book a match between Vince/Taker where if Vince wins, Taker will face off against Austin for the WWF Championship on Raw. However, if Vince loses, Austin loses his right to challenge for the match and Vince will violate the stipulations of the match if he calls on any outside interference.

Proud of themselves, the Corporate Ministry make their way up the ring until SURPRISE, one of the druids is actually Austin. Huge brawl between Austin & the Corporate Ministry before the Union help even up the numbers as the fans go crazy. It was fairly mindless action but god damn if the fans didn't love it.

The Big Show defeated Billy Gunn via Count-Out in 3:10
Gunn wussed out just as the Big Show was looking to finish things off. He seemed pretty proud of himself until Dogg threw him back in the ring so Show could get his chokeslam in. A simple, but effective segment for everyone involved. Show looks strong, Gunn doesn't eat a decisive victory and Dogg gets a measure of revenge after Gunn cheated on PPV.

Beaver Cleavage defeated Christian via Reverse Suplex in 3:46
Considering Cleavage is one of the worst gimmicks in wrestling history, this match was a perfectly acceptable showcase match. It helps that he was in the ring with a total pro like Christian who's always been great at making people look better than they really are. Plus, the Hardy Boyz got involved and Christian took a nasty cane shot from Hayes so we got a nice little promise for more Brood/Hardy matches.

WWF Intercontinental Championship Match
Jeff Jarrett defeated Godfather via pinfall in 3:24 to become the NEW Intercontinental Champion
Jarrett used Debra's women championship to blast Godfather across the head and pick up a championship of his own. The match was all about the finish where Debra did her apron strip-tease. The Godfather wasn't really buying it and mocked her, but then one of his hos started mimicking Debra which caught everyone but Double J off guard leading to the result. This was a good decision by the WWF. The belt was supposed to go to Blue Blazer, but Jarrett was a better fit as he's great at working in the gate-keeper role.

Vince McMahon defeated The Undertaker via DQ in 2:12
I actually felt stupid for not predicting this. I guess it seemed like such a cop-out ending that it just never entered the realm of possibility and as a one-time thing was perfectly acceptable. In fact, in hindsight it made perfect sense to make sure Austin would be present for the main event.

Mankind Promo
Foley coerced HHH into a match by making the gross insinuation that Chyna has a crush on Mankind. This makes HHH so mad he gets Bossman to sort out his business only for Road Dogg making the save leading to...

Road Dogg defeated Big Bossman via DQ in 1:46
This felt like a waste of time. Both guys brawled until Bossman resorted to using the night-stick and choked Road Dogg out with his chain.

WWF Tag Team Championship Match
The Acolytes defeated Kane & X-Pac via Clothesline From Hell in 4:43 to become NEW Tag Team Champions
This felt like overkill and completely random. The Acolytes were a good hoss tag team but had been completely underutilised while Kane & X-Pac were beginning to find their feet and was a good use of both men. This just felt like a title change for the sake of one. Basically this was your typical X-Pac/Kane match until Shane interfered with a chair just as Pac was going for the Bronco Buster. This stunned Pac who then ate a Clothesline to surrender the belts.

Debut of GDTV
D'Lo Brown catches Mark Henry taking a giant dump in the toilet, bowl movements and all. This was another ingenius Russo idea that he completely ripped off television and tried to use on more than one occasion (it was BK Cam, or something to that effect on WCW). The segments actually had potential since they provided the show with a nice change of pace but this segment was terribly unfunny.

Val Venis defeated Ken Shamrock via Inside Cradle in 2:06
Venis is seriously the worst. The Nicole Bass angle isn't going anywhere, nobody cares about their odd couple pairing and it's coming at the expense of him, Double J and Shamrock. They tried to protect Shamrock here by having Double J distracting Shamrock and by having Ken attack Venis after the match but he still came off poorly in this match. After the match, they had Venis tease a break-up with Bass only to go along with her idea of make-up sex. Bleh.

Hardcore Match
Triple H defeated Mankind via pinfall at 6:29
Foley tried really hard here but he was really in no shape to compete so they went to the bells and whistles very early in this one. Lots of interference by Chyna, Mr Socko spots and of course the ol' Sledgehammer from Triple H. They're really going out of their way to get that thing over like it's Dangerously phone, HTM guitar or Elizabeth's stilleto and to their credit it obviously worked. Great shot here as Foley walks right into a vicious sledgehammer shot right into his knee. It looked painful and Foley sold it like death. HHH wasn't done there but before he could inflict too much damage, The Rock returned the favour from last night and made the save to a large pop. It's amazed me how little part The Rock has played since turning babyface. He's received as much screen time as a Road Dogg yet is ridiculously over. Also note the seeds being planted for Rock n Sock. Foley is helped to the back by the Union before being loaded into the back of an ambulance, signalling his stint on the sidelines.

WWF Championship Match
Steve Austin defeated The Undertaker via DQ at 7:13
Similar to their previous bout from Over The Edge, except not as long or plagued by a ham of a referee. Austin goes close but gets screwed over by interference by the Corporate Ministry. They tie him to the ropes as the greater power makes his way to the ring, reveals himself to Austin, leaving the Texas Rattlesnake pissed. Who is it? Guess we'll find out down the road.

OVERALL: Jam-packed edition of Raw. It seemed like with the Owen Tribute, they had to jam two weeks worth of content into one show so you had all these different ideas present. For that, I'd consider it one of the quint-essential episodes of the era without necessarily calling it great. There were a lot of good moves, but some fairly bad ones too with the Corporate Ministry on the verge of jumping the shark.

NOTES
- Sable has officially left the company
- Harts weren't happy with the McMahons showing footage of the funeral
- Douglas made a counter-offer to the WWF which they shot down

WWF Raw Is War
6/7/99
Boston, Massachusetts

The show opened up with one of the longest segments in Raw history. It was essentially a month's worth of material reduced to a single segment. Normally that would be cause for criticism but the reveal was so comically bad that I was relieved they got it out of the way ASAP. So after spending half the segment trying their best to convince the audience otherwise, Vince McMahon (aw son of a bitch) is the higher power. The swerve was so comically bad, it was as if the company recognised it right away as they went straight to their next angle, CEO Austin. This development would normally come across as a 'jump the shark' moment, but Austin was so over at this point that the fans popped huge and to everybody's credit they came up with a lot of funny skits for Austin. It's really no surprise that they revisited this angle in 2003 as the gimmick has a lot of potential and makes good use of Austin. Unfortunately on that occasion it didn't pan out for one reason or another.

On his first night in charge, Austin predictably booked every match in the babyfaces favour leading to a show filled with more shenanigans than usual. There were three highlights (or lowlights) pending on your perspective. The first was the Russo-riffic 'Cast' match between Triple H and The Rock. This maybe the worst match between either man, as Triple H had to contend with his leg in plaster while the referee fumbled with the DQ stipulation. According to the referee, using a steel chair was perfectly acceptable but outside interference was against the rules? "Austin rules" I spose

Next we had Shamrock challenging Vince to his specialty match, the Lions Den. The premise was actually a neat, as Shamrock was pissed that McMahon had the World's Most Dangerous Man do his bidding, all the while Vince was screwing with his sister. The match on the other hand never got going. Vince locked Ken outside the cage, Jarrett cracked Ken with the steel chair and Vince was able to win with the ankle lock. This could have been a great source of heat but it happened so quickly and Shamrock is such a nobody at this point that nobody batted an eyelid.

Finally we had the Big Show challenging The Undertaker for the WWF Championship. The match was sucking the big one when all of a sudden Big Show chokeslammed Taker through the ring. ECW DID IT, ECW DID IT! And boy did they do it better than as well. This was a holy shit moment which was sold really well by everyone...except for Taker. As the Big Show is fending off a bunch of Corporate Ministry stooges, Taker nonchalantly picks himself up from the hole and walks to the back like nothing happened without any word from the commentators. The fans are actually responding really well to the Big Show at this point, but the attention to detail and lack of commitment is preventing them from getting behind them at an Andre level which was the plan.

Oh, I almost forgot. So earlier in the show, they had a segment with the Union announcing their 'matches' as per the orders of Stone Cold. With each announcement, they'd cut backstage to Vince and Shane who were doing an amazing job reacting to each announcement like they were getting kicked in the groin. So Show and Shamrock announce their matches, leaving only Test who decides to call out Stephanie McMahon of all people. I wasn't a fan of this angle, but the way they did it here with this being the tipping point for the McMahons was great and was the best thing the Test character had achieved up to that point.

Notes
Nothing major to report. All I know is that the next two episodes of Raw are in the can, so smart fans would have known what was going to happen well ahead of time.

WWF Raw Is War
6/14/99
Worcester, Massachusetts

Just when it seemed like the WWF had run through their repertoire of gimmick matches, they announced a bunch of matches, each one as pointless and useless as the other. The show had a chain match, a blindfold match, a handicap match and even a straightjacket match. That's right, Ken Shamrock wrestled the WWF Intercontinental Champion Jeff Jarrett in a straightjacket match...and won...clean. No wonder Double J dogged the company the way he did. To get beaten by a guy who couldn't use his arms, right as you're in the middle of the biggest push since your return is such a slap in the face, especially when the guy winning has been a complete geek for six months. It wasn't the worst piece of booking ever, Jeff nor the IC belt had much credibility, but they could have put Shamrock with Mideon and achieved the exact same thing. Instead, they just buried their secondary championship. Silly...

Speaking of championships, Ivory won her first Women's Championship after Nicole Bass interfered, and helped her defeat Debra. The women's division is in complete disarray at this point. Clearly the WWF only brought it back to find someway to showcase Sable, who's history at this point. The rest of the women are either ancillary characters (Debra) or just bit players to showcase Sable. I imagine this was put together to give Bass something to do, and get the belt off of Debra as she had no business being in the ring.

Outside of the main event, none of the matches were anything to write home about. With the exception of the Acolytes v Kane match, none of them exceeded 3 minutes and most of them were simply about watching the ramp to see who would interfere. On the other hand, the triple threat three way between The Rock, Triple H & The Undertaker was a fun television brawl that was helped out tremendously by a red-hot crowd. Everybody there was rooting for The Rock to overcome the odds and when Taker/HHH turned on one another, the crowd was going nuts. It was easily the best match on the show, yet all it was, was a truncated version of the UK No Mercy main event. If it wasn't for the stipulation, which guaranteed The Rock a WWF Championship shot at King of the Ring, I doubt it would have as much heat.

In between all the in-ring action, the show had a bunch of skits of Austin running the WWF headquaters. It was all really solid stuff. The material wasn't all that great and you could see the ending coming a mile away (**SPOILERS** Austin pours manure all over Vince's offices **SPOILERS**) but it's Austin and he just has impeccable timing and watching him interact with a bunch of stiffs is easy entertainment. The highlight for me was Austin giving tips to the receptionist. Simple but effective humour.

In a nut-shell, it was a 'shoe-on-the-other-foot' edition of Raw. The heels got to book a lot of one-sided matches that didn't really make for compelling action or push any angle forward in any meaningful way. If there was any consolation, the format was fresh at the time and it does establish flow and continuity. For 1999, it would have been fine, but in 2015 where the WWE continues to book themselves as the bad guys, relying on Cena, Bryan, Ambrose & Reigns to correct them, it's difficult to appreciate. I think the WWF realised this, which is why the show was padded with about 8 or so Austin skits.

GTV segment of the week - Gunn has a pimple on his ass. Riveting.

WWF Notes
- Brian Christopher tore his ACL, putting the recently debuted Too Cool gimmick on the shelf.
- Goldust is out with a back injury
- Giant Silva, Carl Oulette & Vic Grimes are doing well in developmental.
- Shannon Hall (Dallas from American Gladiators), Mrs Cleavage, Ryan Shamrock & Nicole Bass are all ongoing intensive wrestling training.
- Savio Vega & Mark Canterbury (Henry O. Godwinn) are due back from injury

Raw Is War
6/21/99
Memphis Tennesse

I find myself really torn on this show.

On one hand, a lot happened over the course of the show and there was very little filler.

On the other, the only match the WWF have booked well going into King of the Ring is the McMahons vs Steve Austin Corporate Ladder match. Considering the PPV is based on a tournament, it's odd to see how briefly it's ever brought up. Sure, Vince promised there would be a Queen of the Ring during his Rolling Stones esque (not even kidding, it may as well been a Gene Shalit routine) but that was the high point as far as promotion went. Instead, they basically had JR point out participants as they were heading to the ring. "That's Road Dogg King, say, do you think he'll be King on Sunday at King of the Ring?" Come to think of it, I can't remember any King of the Ring that was actually promoted well outside of 1993. Maybe I'm being reactionary, but the WWF usually seem to struggle with promoting the event properly.

The show was built around three key matches.

Stone Cold vs Big Bossman - Which Austin won, meaning his stipulation that forbid any Corporate interference remained intact. I've got to give the WWF credit. Usually in situations like this, the heels either ruin the match, or they inexplicably don't get involved even though they have every right to get involved. This provided them with a good storyline reason, and gave you a nice segment where there were some stakes.

The Stooges vs The McMahons - Patterson & Brisco are now working for HBK and the reveal was priceless. Watching Pat dance to Sexy Boy and seeing Vince's 'WTF, I'm not drunk enough for this' expression was one of the best things I've seen in one of these opening segments. The match was really nothing more than an excuse to debut the latest member of the Mean Street Posse, Joey Abs, but it's crazy to think how over the Stooges are. I would dare say behind Mankind, they're the most over babyface in the company, even topping the likes of Show & Shamrock.

The Undertaker vs Triple H - The match the Corporate Ministry didn't want you to see. They had a decent match by '99 Undertaker standards. Lots of leg-work, selling before the match ended on a DQ so The Rock could get his stunt in to send us into King of the Ring. After planting Taker with a Rock Bottom, the Rock revealed to everyone that he had a Brahama Bull symbol and after a cliche brawl where the Bossman aligned himself with the babyfaces, The Rock strapped Bearer to the symbol to send the fans home happy.

But so much happened on the show...

- Steve Blackman popped up on Raw out of no where and cost Ken Shamrock the Intercontinental Championship. Ken is basically back where he was pre-Corporation, while Jeff's reign is being plagued with even steven booking.

- Edge randomly reverted back to his pre-Brood gimmick for his match against The Rock. I'm unsure why he did it, but thinking on it, I think an argument could be made that The Brood held him back as a singles competitor.

- Beaver Cleavage broke kayfabe and stormed off from his interview with Kevin Kelly. The story Mosh tells is that they dropped the gimmick because of the lawsuit between them and Sable. While it maybe true, it's odd to see it dropped on the same show with Debra, who may as well be called Tits McGee.

- The European Championship is back. Mideon saw it in Shane's bag and used it to dispose of D'Lo Brown & Mark Henry, after the World's Strongest Man's match against Viscera. The two were involved in Russo's Wacky Gimmick of the Week match - a body-slam match match just for the hell of it. In fairness, both guys did a reasonable job and we got two fairly impressive top turnbuckle bumps from both men.

- After getting pierced on Sunday Night Heat, Venis exacted a measure of revenge by tattooing his initials on Prince Albert's ass.

- Big Show flipped a car onto Hardcore Holly in their Hardcore match.

- Billy Gunn/Acolytes vs X-Pac/Kane/Dogg turned into a WWF Tag Team Championship match, where Gunn pinned X-Pac. Mr Ass stole Bradshaw's championship, leaving the champs confused.

All that and Al Snow eating his snot on Raw.

That's Raw really. Anything outside of Austin vs McMahon which usually has some ridiculous stakes attached to it is just a collection of ideas, presented in a very disposable fashion. Some of them are good, and some of them are completely ridiculous but they're ideas none the less and I imagine a number of drinking games would have been invented about predicting them.

News
- The Insane Clown Posse are still coming
- Hundreds of people report that Big Bossman is the suspect on America's Most Wanted

WWF King of the Ring
June 27, 1999
Greensboro, North Carolina

King of the Ring Qualifier #1
Hardcore Holly vs X-Pac
Out of every match on the card, I was probably the most excited about this match on paper. Pac is a performer I've grown to appreciate over time, while I could see an argument for Holly being one of the hardest working performers during this era. Unfortunately they kept it to three minutes, with Holly taking exception to the Bronco Buster, grabbing a chair and getting himself disqualified. That was the point of the entire segment. So Holly could attack X-Pac and give the underdog even more sympathy moving forward. Sadly this set the tone for things to come.

Rating: N/A

King of the Ring Qualifier #2
Big Show vs Kane
Where as I was completely wrong about Holly/Pac, I knew what to expect from this match. These two are incapable of having a good match against one another and this maybe the worst match I've seen in 1999. I didn't think it was possible to have a bad six minute match, but these guys proved me wrong. Both guys struggled to stay in sync with one another, the spots were extremely sloppy and there was nothing engaging about it. To add insult to injury, Holly comes down to the ring with a steel chair in hair, attacks Show for trying to kill him on Raw before Kane spends two minutes putting Big Show into a choke-hold. They do this spot until the Big Show makes a cliche babyface comeback which ultimately sees Kane nail him with the chair anyways. I hated everything about this match. In Big Show and Kane, the WWF hjad two of it's most protected guys face off in an unremarkable King of the Ring match which exposed the limitations of both guys. Awful and I wouldn't be surprised if this was the match that convinced Vince and company that the Big Show needed a mentor.

Rating: 0

King of the Ring Qualifier #3
Ken Shamrock vs Billy Gunn
So at the start of the show, Ross and Lawler talk us through a clip of Sunday Night Heat where Steve Blackman attacked Ken Shamrock with a kendo stick and left Shamrock in a really bad way. We then got treated to a couple of backstage vignettes where Shamrock was crouched over with blood coming out of his mouth as medics tried to assess his condition. This all led into the match itself which was really nothing of a match. They teased a forfeit finish before Shamrock came out. Teddy Long (the referee) tried to talk Shamrock out of it until Gunn struck Shamrock with a cheap shot. I guess contact initiates a match as Long just called for the bell anyways. 3 minutes into the match, Shamrock attempts a comeback but can't capitilise on any of his offence as blood continues to pour out of his mouth. Gunn hits Shamrock with a sit-out powerbomb which causes blood to erupt out of Ken's mouth and Long decides to call the match.

Rating: N/A. I thought the visual of Ken's internal bleeding was cool but ultimately wasted and so far this King of the Ring tournament is 0/3.

King of the Ring Qualifier #4
Road Dogg vs Chyna
The biggest storyline going into the show was the potential of Chyna becoming the first Queen of the Ring. It was the only storyline that had any heat and it gave me the impression that Chyna would be a big deal on this show. But as it turns out, this was the Royal Rumble all over again with Chyna receiving a ton of attention, only to end on an anti-climax as she fails to make it out of the quarter finals. I never really understood the booking here. If they weren't confident in her abilities, why would they dedicate that much focus to her? It just seemed like the WWF couldn't decide whether to shit or get off the pot, so in the end we all paid for it.

Sadly this may have been the best match of the entire tournament. Lots of well laid out near falls, some fun sports entertainment hijinx and enough time to tell a story. I wouldn't call it a good match as it was very sloppy in places, but easily the best match of the night so far. While that's all well and good, I can see the political finger prints all over this with Triple H trying to make his girl look good and give her bragging rights (follow that guys!) at the expense of the show itself. Given the stories from Jericho's book, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case but on what I saw I'd give this match a rating of...

Rating: 3/10. I wouldn't call it a terrible match but out of all the smoke and mirror matches, it didn't stand out and I thought it exposed Chyna in a few areas. Still, the crowd was into it, so that's enough for me to give it 3 ticks.

No. 1 Contenders Match
The Hardy Boyz vs The Brood
Another match that I was really looking forward to that ended up disappointing. They received just under five minutes, so this was nothing more than a sprint where all four men were working too fast for their own good. It was just a very uneven match where a lot of spots failed to register as well as they should have and it seemed like the match broke down a few times. The finish didn't help it either with Gangrel accidentally spraying blood into Edge's eyes, giving the Hardyz a really undeserved win at a time where they need as much credibility as they can get. I was pretty close to calling this match a dud, but there was one spot where Edge nailed Jeff with one of his best looking spears of his career and JR sold it like a champ.

Rating: 2/10. This was a Shotgun Saturday Night match masquerading on PPV. Both teams had to condense a ten minute match into five and they didn't quite acclimatise. However, as bad as this match was, it highlights the patience the WWF showed and how they were ultimately rewarded. Sometimes you've just got to persevere with the talent you've got and let them build on their strengths. This is sadly something that's been lost over time.

King of the Ring Semi Final #1
Billy Gunn vs Kane
Four minutes into the match, Big Show appears at ring-side and nails Kane with a steel chair (possibly the same one Holly used), giving Gunn the easy pin. It was hardly clean, but having their two biggest monsters lose in such a short amount of time really felt unnecessary.

Rating: N/A - Both guys did hit a neat dropkick if that's worth anything.

King of the Ring Semi Final #2
X-Pac vs Road Dogg
Both guys cut promos prior to the match reminding everyone that they're still friends and that the match itself was just business. They kept this extremely short with X-Pac attempting a Bronco Buster 2 minutes into the match, Dogg escaping and going for a Pump Handle Slam only to eat an X-Factor for the three.

Rating: N/A

WWF Championship Match
The Rock vs The Undertaker (c)
This was a by-the-numbers WWF main event style match. Lots of referee bumps, lots of shenanigans and even more crowd brawling. In fact, I'm confident this was 5 minutes of in-ring action and 14 minutes of both guys brawling at the top of the entrace ramp. Story of the match was that The Rock had the match won on three seperate occasions but was ultimately screwed out of the match by Triple H who nailed The Rock with a Pedigree, allowing Taker to hit the Tombstone for the win. Beyond the opening where The Rock surprised everyone with an early Rock Bottom, this was nothing to write home about.

Rating: 3/10. Like the Chyna/Dogg match, the fans were into it and loved Rocky. However, there were too many shenanigans and I had more gripes with the match than anything else. Namely, I really didn't like how Taker portrayed himself in the match. He should be the strongest guy on the roster, instead he's relying on the match being 3-1 in order to keep his championship. It just seemed like a very cheap way to protect The Rock. It also didn't help that this wasn't the main event match, so both guys feel like an after-thought compared to the real main event.

King of the Ring Final
X-Pac vs Billy Gunn
Speaking of after-thoughts, poor Billy Gunn. As indifferent as I am towards him, the WWF did him very little favours here, giving him two undeserved victories before he wins cleanly against Pac. They kept this match to under 6 minutes, with Gunn in control for the majority, X-Pac teasing a comeback only for Gunn to finish Pac off with a super fame-asser. A fun spot, but the fans were given no reason to care about the match and so they simply didn't. No fanfare for Gunn's victory, JR simply announces it before Gunn heads to the back.

Rating: 3/10. The match was perfectly acceptable and I actually like the fact that all things considered, they kept it short. Pac had been absolutely demolished by Hardcore Holly to start the show, to have him work a twenty minute match would have been a drag. Unfortunately the fans didn't care so even at six minutes it felt like a slog and it did very little for Gunn moving forward.

Ladder Match
Steve Austin vs Vince & Shane McMahon
So through out the show, they had been teasing an angle where Shane had been injured and Vince had worked out a loop-hole where Triple H could be his tag team partner. However, HBK had HHH escorted out of the building for ruining the WWF Championship match and when GTV revealed that Shane was perfectly fine and was backstage chilling with the Mean Street Posse, the match went ahead as planned. The match itself was a very basic squash match with Austin on offence for the majority and the McMahons getting tiny windows of offence. It was a fairly unremarkable match, but there were enough fun spots to make this match watchable. Of course the big talking point was that at one point, Austin had nailed both McMahons with a stunner, went up to retrieve the case only for it to be raised further in the air. This is often treated as one of those unsolved mysteries, but I think you'll find the WWF give you a big enough hint on the next Monday show to realise who it was. The finish itself was probably the worst part of the match. Vince and Austin are brawling on top of the ladder when Shane gently tips the ladder sending both guys to take a nice gentle bump in the corner of the ring. Shane then places the ladder in position, climbs up and wins the belt in a huge anti-climax. I guess the fall couldn't be too violent, but it really didn't look good.

Rating: 3/10. Just like Rock/Taker in a sense. Fairly by the numbers WWF main event style brawl with a few fun sports entertainment-y moments to make it worthwhile. The match dragged a little in parts and the finish felt a little weak, but on such a bad show, it's hard to be too harsh on it. Especially when you consider that it's Vince McMahon and Shane McMahon in one corner, both guys are limited in what they can do and were willing to take some nice bumps for their part.

Overall: This could be the worst show of 1999. There weren't any good matches on the card, some matches actively hurt the significance of the participants and the marquee match was a complete after-thought. It wasn't like they were pressed for time either. At this point in 1999, this was the shortest PPV at 2:28 (normally shows run till 2:45), which suggests they did a very poor job of timing the show out. As successful as the TV show was, it's PPVs like this which turn people off on 1999.

The State of the Mid-Card

If King of the Ring exposed one thing, it's how weak the mid-card was. So for the sake of something a little bit different, I thought I'd break-down the final eight and give my thoughts on how it could have been done better.

Starting with

Mr. Ass - Gunn is a great example of a 'text-book worker'. On paper, he sounds like a world champion but in practice he's nothing special. The Mr Ass gimmick didn't do him any favours either. A gimmick like that is in the same ball-park as Naked Mideon, something silly to illicit a reaction that was otherwise missing. The theme music didn't help either, it's just too ridiculous to ever get emotionally invested in the guy one way or another. I thought they left a lot of money off the table breaking the New Age Outlaws up and had they kept them together, they could have had an easier time bridging the gap between the Outlaws era and the TLC era. As it is, the Outlaws are on par with Too Cool, when they should be remembered as THE biggest act of the era.

Road Dogg - Similar story except Dogg was portrayed as the bitter ex who simply couldn't move on.

Chyna - There was definitely a market there for a Chyna run, the problem was that she couldn't capitilise on it. The WWF tried to play it both ways, unfortunately she came off more like a choke-artist who would receive an invite and fall at the first hurdle. If they were going to book her in a prominent position, then they had to make more of it. As it was, I would have made her my face of the Women's Division.

Ken Shamrock - Looked like he was going to graduate into the main event before he was thrown into the Corporation as just another thug. Given how light the WWF was on credible main event talent, he should have been kept out of it and booked as a knock-out artist IC Champion.

Big Show - I hated the build up to the show where they had try and tip a car off a ledge onto Hardcore Holly. In what world does Big Show get off scot-free? If he isn't going to win, then he shouldn't be in the tournament. He's a tough act to book, especially at a time where the WWF was constantly trying to out-do everything the week before. My vision of the Big Show was something akin to the Incredible Hulk. Huge power spots, lots of destruction, this fear that he'd destroy you if you stepped into the ring with him but a good natured quip every now and then.

Kane - Kane is another character that's really tough to book since he was really meant to be another 'monster of the month' for Taker to beat. In most series, he would have made an exit during the Inferno match and only made the odd comeback here and there. As a regular character, he doesn't really work but since the roster it so shallow you've got to get more out of your investment. Contrary to the Big Show who I would have kept off the show and protected more, I would have included Kane. The show needs one red herring and as long as you book his exit in a satisfying matter, the fans would be fine with it.

X-Pac - I've got no issue with Pac being there. With guys like Rock and HHH graduating into the main event, Pac was the right guy to step up and fill the void. My only gripe with his booking was that he was virtually crippled after the first fight and couldn't work long matches.

Hardcore Holly - He deserved better. I hated how Holly was booked in this match, squandering his big opportunity and then costing the Big Show. Why would anyone care about him when he doesn't even care about himself? I would have let Holly be Holly. A no-nonsense bully akin to Billy Bob Thornton, except he can stiff you like Buzz Sawyer if you're not careful. He wouldn't have gone that far, but he would have given the guy who beat him a hell of a beating. In my mind, he's the perfect final eight guy. You can beat him, but there's the possibility that he may even benefit from the opportunity.

In short, neither Gunn, Dogg, Chyna, Shamrock or Show would have participated in the tournament.

Who takes their place?

Edge - I don't think there's a more underutilised act of the Attitude era than The Brood. They had it all, yet they were treated like any other team on the roster. I like the idea of teasing an Edge singles run without completely pulling the trigger.

Gangrel - Just to add fuel to the Brood's break-up story. Edge surpassed his leader by going further into the tournament, Gangrel isn't pleased. It also gives you a free pinfall during the first round.

D'Lo Brown - I don't think the WWF ever found what they wanted to do with this guy after the Nation broke up. One second he's being conned by PMS and made to look like a total j-brone. The next he's in the final four of the Royal Rumble. I reckon he should have been kept a heel, with big ol goofy Mark and been a live action Looney Tunes character. In this instance, I would have had him lose to Kane in the opening round - somebody credible so it doesn't devalue his place on the card.

Meat - Goldust just got injured before the show, so let's throw this fresh face rookie into the mix. The Attitude Era was all about the women anyways and I'm sure you could have done something fun with PMS and Debra during the first round.

Triple H - The guy had nothing better to do on the show, was over and he would have gotten fans emotionally invested in the entire tournament. Also since this is a championship you can give to him without making him drop it, it would have been an easy way to build him up for SummerSlam 99.

With those inclusions, the final 8 would have looked like

Kane
X-Pac
Hardcore Holly
Triple H
Edge
Test
Jeff Jarrett
Val Venis

I'd consider throwing Viscera in there (sorry Shin) just for a bit of variety. I loved how the first KotR had different matches and you don't want every match to be Perfect-Bret.

WWF Raw Is War
6/28/99
Charlotte, North Carolina

Coming off a lackluster PPV, the WWF gave the fans what they wanted, giving Austin back his WWF Championship. In a by the numbers main event match, Austin defeated The Undertaker after two consecutive stunners. The match was set up earlier in the show, where Austin crashed the Corporate Ministry's celebratory promo and announced that he had booked himself in a championship match against The Undertaker as his final act as the WWF CEO. While the match was only so-so, the promo to set it up was fantastic with Vince gloating about his win at KotR before running through all the ideas he had lined up for Austin. Before Austin could cut McMahon off, the Big Bossman made his way out seemingly to give the Corporate Ministry a piece of his mind, but instead told him he loved them and was welcomed back into the fold. Hmmm, I wonder if he was the one behind the briefcase? So after Austin won the championship, Taker wasted little time seeking revenge, busting Austin wide open, hinting at the stipulation for their big rematch at Fully Loaded.

The 1999 King of the Ring, Billy Gunn featured heavily on the show. It was a mixed night for Mr Ass, who had his celebratory promo interrupted part-way through so HHH could tell him about the situation involving DX. Apparently X-Pac and Road Dogg weren't sharing the royalty money, so HHH set up a match for Fully Loaded involving X-Pac & Road Dogg vs Mr Ass & Chyna for the rights of D-X. Triple H didn't want to take part in the match since he was already scheduled to face off against the Undertaker for the WWF Championship but those plans were ultimately quashed. Both men were blind-sided by The Rock who raced down to the ring, seeking revenge for last night's show. This set up a singles match between HHH & The Rock which ended with Mr Ass clubbing The Rock in the back of the head. Later on in the show, Billy Gunn took on Bradshaw in a match to determine the rightful owner of the WWF Tag Team Championship. The finish saw X-Pac blindside Billy Gunn, enabling Bradshaw to hit the clothesline from hell, giving Billy Gunn a big fat L on his first night as the reigning King of the Ring. This led into the semi-main where Gunn cost X-Pac the Intercontinental Championship against Jeff Jarrett.

Other things that happened on the show...

- Steve Blackman vs Ken Shamrock ended abruptly after Blackman attacked Shamrock with a singapore cane, causing more internal bleeding for Shamrock. After the match, Blackman calmly walked out of the arena, while Shamrock screamed at EMTs.

- Chaz debuted in 'style' defeating Meat in the weekly 'what's on Nitro?' segment. Chaz is just a guy from New Jersey who is looking to have fun. He wrestles in his boxers, comes to the ring with his girlfriend Marianna and every now and then he hits these ridiculous moves to compensate for the lack of character.

- Test and Stephanie McMahon were caught on GTV leaving a hotel together. Terry Taylor interviewed Test backstage about the video, but before Test could respond he was ambushed by the Mean Street Posse and Shane McMahon.

- "The Big Shot" Hardcore Holly scored one of the biggest victories of his career when he pinned Kane in the middle of the ring. Of course, the Big Show played a huge part in the victory, hitting a Showstopper while Holly had referee Teddy Long distracted in the corner. After the match, Kane chokeslammed the Big Shot four times to a healthy reaction from the fans.

- Edge came to the rescue of one of the Godfather's hos, after Droz and Prince Albert tried to pierce her tongue. Both men were embroiled in a feud against the Godfather and Val Venis and had inexplicably aided Edge in his match against the Godfather. Like he did the week before, Edge came out through the crowd to his original entrance music and ended up leaving with the ho he saved, much to the dismay of Gangrel who was watching from the stands. One thing worth noting here is that the WWF really tried to push the Spear as Edge's new finishing move. Hot off the heels of the King of the Ring, where Edge may have hit one of the best spears of his career, the WWF really hyped the spot up and had Edge win the match with the very move. Unfortunately for Edge, the move looked no where near as impressive on the Godfather.

- Ivory and Nicole Bass put in a contender for worst segment of the year when they threw out an open challenge to the crowd. Ivory's delivery was bad enough, but the segment truly hit rock bottom when Ivory egged her opponent on by telling her 'you know it's all fake anyway'. Oh Russo...you're that uncle that revels in telling young children that Santa isn't real right? Anyways, a 'fan' answered the challenge, was strangled by Nicole Bass before Ivory began slapping her putting the end to an utterly nothing segment. As a bit of trivia, the plant was played by former WCW Women's wrestler Malia Hosaka who was supposed to get a run at some point, but plans kept falling through.

WWF Notes
- There were a ton of Chris Jericho signs at the PPV as fans knew full and well that he was coming to the company.
- X-Pac suffered an injury prior to the King of the Ring, which is why a lot of his matches were kept extremely short
- The awful Big Show v Kane match was supposed to have a different finish, but Big Show was so awful in the match, the WWF reportedly improvised a new finish on the spot. Apparently The Undertaker was supposed to come down to the ring to attack The Big Show, but after an incredibly sloppy start, the finish was change on the fly. Big Show v Austin is slated as the main event for Wrestlemania 2000, but the company's faith in the Big Show is withering.

WWF Raw Is War
7/5/99
Fayetteville, North Carolina

It's official, Fully Loaded will be a First Blood match for the WWF Championship. If The Undertaker wins, Austin will revoke his right for a rematch and will never get another championship opportunity. If Austin wins, we will never ever see Vince McMahon on TV. It's a huge stipulation that promises to change the product, one way or another, but there's no way they'd honour it. I hate it when companies fail to keep their promises. Not only is it bad writing, it's bad business, informing the fans that they're not going to get their moneys worth with your product. It would have been far better to put up the fate of the Corporate Ministry - atleast that would have been a promise they could have kept. Never the less, outside of the opening segment, we barely saw Austin or Vince on the rest of the show. It was sort of refreshing to see the WWF focus on other characters and just give Austin and Vince their own little window to get their stuff over for the week.

Instead, we got a Steel Cage main event between The Rock and Triple H. Everytime Triple H has been given an opportunity to stand out as an in-ring performer, he hasn't delivered. HHH/Kane in a Steel Cage? Forgettable. HHH/X-Pac in a 20 minute PPV match? Boring and bloated. This match? Only so-so. They had a ton of time to put together a compelling match, but for the most part it was the same old punch, kick, head-smash, irish whip-thon Attitude Era match you've seen a ton of times. The only aspect of this match that stood out was the referee bump which allowed both guys to brawl at ring-side for a few moments. I had never seen anything like that and in a Cage match, I don't think I want to ever again. It's like when you buy somebody a really expensive gift and all they want to do is play with the box. They can do that whenever they want to, there's so many things inside the cage they could do. The finish also really bugged me. Both guys were sitting on top of the cage, brawling when HHH was able to get his hands on a steel chair thanks to Chyna, level The Rock with it, granting him a golden opportunity to win the match. All Triple H had to do was lift one leg over, rest his foot on the side of the cage and help soften his fall. Instead, he decides to climb back into the ring, crotches himself and desperately climbs towards the door, only to lose it to The Rock who is clearly a lot smarter than the cerebral assassin.

I actually preferred the opener which saw the Hardy Boyz capture the WWF Tag Team Championship from the Acolytes. Sure, it only lasted four minutes but it was just so much more engaging and had far more flavour to it. So the story of the match was that on Sunday Night Heat, Kane had Tombstoned Bradshaw on top of the steel stairs. He really shouldn't have been out there and he sold the concussion well, lagging a little giving the Hardyz an opening to hit their fun hot-tag offense. It also played into the finish where the referee had his back turned, allowing Jeff to smash Bradshaw with Hayes' cane, allowing Matt to hit a Tornado DDT and win the belts. In a nice touch, Terry Taylor asks Hayes his thoughts on the victory and Hayes tells him to talk to the stars.

The rest of the show was a calvacade of mid-card angles. X-Pac and Road Dogg were arrested for allegedly spray-painting Chyna's car. Of course later on in the show, we find out it was a set-up with Billy Gunn and Chyna spray-painting PMS nWo style. Gangrel helped Droz and Prince Albert attack Supply and Demand, causing the Brood to take Gangrel to the back. Later on in the show, Edge beat the Bossman with a crappy spear, only for the Bossman to handcuff him and Christian to the ropes and beat them down. Gangrel was no where to be seen. Test & Joey Abs were having a really good smash-mouth match before the rest of the Mean Street Posse attacked Test. Chaz got an IC Championship shot and lost inside of two minutes. Then in the semi-main event, The Undertaker interfered in the Kane v Show/Holly match and helped Kane double team the Big Show.

WWF News
- Chris Jericho has officially signed with the company. Jericho was offered $450 000 to re-sign with WCW, but was reportedly frustrated with where negotiations were going so agreed to a $350K deal with the WWF.

- Test vs Joey Abs & Droz/Prince Albert v Godfather/Venis were supposed to feature on Fully Loaded 99. I'm unsure why they didn't eventuate.

- Vince McMahon suffered a broken tailbone and seperated pelvis on the 4th of July in a motorcycle accident. He was riding down the street when a car backed out of it's driveway, causing Vince to flip over. Since Raw was taped on June 30th, Vince didn't appear physically worse for wear.

- More details on the Show/Kane mix up. Apparently it was a case of nobody knowing what the cue was. The Undertaker was waiting for the Big Show to make a comeback before he came out, while the Big Show was waiting for the Undertaker to come out before he started to make a comeback. Ultimately, Kane just stood there with a choke-hold that seemingly took eternity. This match honestly needs to be remembered as one of the worst wrestling matches in history.

- The Big Bossman is going to appear on America's Most Wanted as a follow-up to that story posted earlier.

- The Calgary Sun had a feature on Davey Boy Smith. Smith is apparently in good shape and is looking to sign with the WWF or WCW in the coming months. PWTorch believes it will be the WWF at this stage.

- The WWF are going to release a book called Vampire: A Masquerade which is supposed to contain the Brood's backstory.

- HHH pushed for X-Pac to win the 1999 King of the Ring, but management wanted to build up a new heel, hence Gunn got the nod.

- Cornette is getting ready to move to Louisville and work for Ohio Valley Championship Wrestling.

- After pushing for more ECW talent, Taylor is trying to push for more Light Heavyweight Wrestlers.

WWF Raw Is War
7/12/99
Louisville, Kentucky

This felt like more of a traditional Raw, as the company gears up for Fully Loaded.

The build up between Austin/Taker has been pretty decent so far. I like how the feud was framed as a 'best-of' as a lot of story pieces from past rivalries were thrown together to give this rivalry a nice big send-off. On this week's edition, they had contract signing where Vince signed the deal with Austin's blood and we were treated to a main event of Austin/Show vs Taker/Kane. While it was nothing to write home about, I enjoyed the match and appreciated the Texas Tornado style. I have no idea why they ever bothered with the traditional tag set-up, it always felt like a hindrance and always seemed to go by the way-side for the finish. Speaking of, it was sort of odd to see the Brothers of Destruction lose clean in their first night together. I suppose it was a sure sign that these two weren't going to last long and it was merely an angle to help add intrigue to Fully Loaded.

Outside of the tag team main event, another aspect that made this show feel traditional was the six-man tag team match between Rock/Road Dogg/X-Pac vs HHH/Billy Gunn/Chyna. This was basically every six man tag team match ever, with the Rock replacing Kane who was too busy hanging out the Undertaker to help his tag team partner out. The babyfaces won, with The Rock exacting a measure of revenge against the King of the Ring, pinning him clean in the middle with the People's Elbow. So far, both rivalries really lack heat and just feel like something for these guys to do. They even had Triple H cut a promo calling the Rock a waste of time and how he should be getting a WWF Championship shot. At least it isn't as bad as the 'vandalism' angle from last week. They followed it up this week with X-Pac and Road Dogg pouring tar and feathers on Fink for stooging them off to the police. It was like Russo remembered half-way through that without HBK, all D-X had was a catch-phrase. Even their other bits, like invading WCW and the parodies got old super quickly. I don't know how many people remember this because it barely gets mentioned, but there was a segment where Triple H teased he was going on a suicide mission and fly a jet-fighter into a WCW building. Of course, it ends up being this really lame segment where they have 'Triple H' do a bunch of sky writing. It was about as pathetic as Eric Bischoff challenging Vince McMahon to a fight on PPV.

In other events, Edge took on Gangrel in their break-up match. Given the angle, this could have been on PPV but they threw it on here in the opening match. The match ended in a No Contest after Gangrel threw Edge through the Brood's ring of fire, which JR sold like Edge was going to be written off TV for a bit. We know that Edge is going to take on Jarrett at the PPV, so I'll be interested to see what happens between now and then. Speaking of Jarrett, I get the feeling that he was the victim of a re-write here. They had a segment where Jarrett was cutting a generic promo about 'his puppoes' when all of a sudden Stone Cold came out and gave him not one but two stunners and made the IC Champion look like a total chump. On one of the Austin podcast episodes, Russo spoke about an incident where they had to re-write a Jarrett/Austin segment and I get the feeling this was it as Austin just completely buried him. To his credit, Jarrett made the stunner look like a million bucks on both occasions, selling them in two different ways.

The semi-main saw Test run the Mean Street Gauntlet. This was basically a glorified segment and was actually really well executed with Test coming off like a bad-ass before the numbers got to him, Shamrock got a great babyface pop rushing into make the save while there was a great piece of drama as Steph was knocked inadvertently knocked unconcious as she tried to intervene. Everybody sold it like the record had skipped and rushed to her side. As much as I thought I'd hate this feud, so far, it's been presented really well.

Then in the 'Attitude era' segment of the night, Al Snow took on Droz in an Evening Gown match. Droz seems like a take on the whole Marilyn Manson gimmick Saturn had been doing in WCW and apparently enjoyed dressing up in women's clothing. This was a continuation of an angle involving the Godfather, where Droz and Prince Albert had to dress up like hos for the night. Snow won the match, but Prince Albert drove a spike through Head.

And since I've basically touched on everything, The Godfather and Val Venis were screwed out of the tag team championships went Michael PS Hayes interfered on behalf of the Hardy Boyz. The tag team division is in a really weird state where everyone bar the Godfather/Venis are heels and it appears we've got a heel v heel match at the PPV between the Acolytes and the Hardyz.

WWF Notes
- Ventura is receiving a ton of backlash for signing with the WWF, with plenty of pundits questioning his credibility.
- Speaking of politics, Lawler's bid for the Mayor of Memphis is picking up some early momentum. However, he's already under fire from the National Organization for Women for posting provocative photos of his girlfriend Stacey Carter, who he had been dating for 10 years at that point.
- The Jarrett segment was supposed to plant seeds, with Jarrett boasting that Austin had never beaten him despite being WWF Champion.

WWF Raw is War
7/19/99
Lexington, Kentucky

This was another wild and confrontational go-home show leading into Fully Loaded. The main story of the night saw Triple H challenge the Undertaker for a shot at Austin on the PPV. In the space of a few weeks, Triple H has gone from an ass-kicking take no-prisoners bad-ass to a sociopath who will stop at nothing to be recognised as THE best in the business. I much prefer the latter, especially since Taker should occupy the first position. Predictibly, Austin ruined the match by driving a Blood Donation truck into ring-side. It's a total rehash of the Beer Truck pre-Wrestlemania XV, but it feels poetic here, given it's an End of an Era. It was a really well done finish to the show. Austin kicked ass, got too carried away busting open a defenceless Vince and the Undertaker made him pay for it. As the show ended, Taker stood tall over both Austin and Vince with JR screaming one of my favourite sound-bites: SOMEBODY IS GONNA BLEED! SOMEBODY IS GONNA LEAVE! LIVE THIS SUNDAY ON PPV!!! Classic JR.

In the semi main-event, Kane cemented himself as a babyface, rejecting The Undertaker's advances and siding with X-Pac. It was really cheesy and the whole angle came off as a homosexual love triangle. For what it was, the segment was actually well done. Kane was distracted by Hardcore Holly and The Big Show when the Undertaker made his way to ringside and attacked X-Pac behind Kane's back. Taker then proceeded to help Kane out with Holly and Show, causing Kane to side with Taker. However, Kane caught a glimpse of the replay and made his decision to the crowd's delight.

In other news, Billy Gunn scored the biggest victory of his career, defeating The Rock after some interference from Chyna. After being thrown through the ring of fire, in a spot that would usually write a character off for a number of weeks, Edge appeared perfectly OK and was ready to face off against Jeff Jarrett for the Intercontinental Championship at the PPV. To hype the match up, they had Jeff take on Christian in one of the best sprints of the era. Considering Christian was portrayed as the weak link of the Brood, Jeff was very selfless, giving Christian 90% of the match and having to resort to a bunch of dirty tricks to put Christian away. Speaking of Edge, he formed a really good tag team with D'Lo Brown in their match against Gangrel and Mideon. One thing I will say about Edge is that I always thought he did well in a tag team environment. His ability to come up with creative double team spots cannot be underestimated.

By and large the rest of the show was there to hype up the PPV. The Hardy Boyz won a Fatal Four Way Tag Team match, Road Dogg was ambushed by Billy Gunn in a chain match against Chyna, Al Snow begged Bossman to kick his ass so he could silence Heads' screams, Test was attacked by the MSP in his match against Steve Blackman - Shamrock made the save.

WWF Notes
- Big Show vs The Undertaker, Road Dogg vs Bob Holly/Al Snow and the Acolytes vs Kane/Pac were planned for SummerSlam 99
- Nicole Bass, Ryan Shamrock and Shannon Hall were released around this time. Hall was better known as Dallas on American Gladiators and had been apart of the WWF's developmental program, but never made it onto TV.
- The Road Warriors were still apart of the company, and JR suggested that Hawk may have a singles run with Animal recuperating after back surgery
- The Undertaker is nursing a nasty hip injury that requires surgery.
- Austin spoke at length about his personal life. He's been dating Debra McMichael since Wrestlemania XV and believes he's in the best shape since his neck injury. He credits his health to his restrictive ring-style that enables him to stay on his feet and has eliminated any bumps that target his neck.

WWF Fully Loaded
7/25/99
Buffalo, New York

WWF Intercontinental Championship Match
Jeff Jarrett defeated Edge (c) at 13:22
Yes, you read that right, Edge went into the match as champion. As the story goes, Ken Shamrock missed a House Show in Toronto so to make it up to fans, the WWF had their home-town boy win a championship at a live event. It's usually not a good idea to hot-shot a championship, but in this case, it fit the booking of the show where all the belts were changing hands. To be fair, it wasn't a bad match either. Jarrett walked Edge through a nice match where Edge got to pick his spots including a spear that looked absolutely top-shelf. The finish wasn't too bad either. Gangrel tried to do a Blood Bath on Edge, but since Edge is all too familiar with the situation he was able to fend Gangrel off. However, a combined effort by Debra and Gangrel was too much for him with Jarrett hitting the Stroke for the victory. This maybe Edge's best match up to this point. 4/10

WWF Tag Team Championship Match
No Disqualification
The Acolytes defeated The Hardy Boyz and Michael Hayes (c) at 11:02
This was a really strange match. Despite being affiliated with the biggest heel stable in the company, the Acolytes worked the match like they were babyfaces while the Hardyz were like pests. Outside of the Clothesline From Hell spot, which was stolen from Edge's spear spot from the King of the Ring, this was a dogs breakfast of a match infront of a crowd that had absolutely no interest in what was happening. 2/10

WWF European Championship Match
D'Lo Brown defeated Mideon (c) at 7:07
I really wanted to give this match a fair chance since on paper it sounds awful but mid-way through Mideon's heat they just lost me. Mideon had absolutely nothing in the ring at this point and his inability to bump for Brown's offense made this uncomfortable to sit through. At this stage, I think the crowd would prefer a Monday Night Raw than a PPV. 2/10

WWF Hardcore Championship Match
The Big Bossman vs Al Snow (c) at 10:33
Ever since Prince Albert nailed a spike into Head, Al Snow hasn't been able to get a wink of sleep. He spends the entire match begging for the Bossman to put him out of his misery, which Bossman finally does by tying him up to a fence and clobbering him with his nightstick. In essence, this was a replay of a segment from Monday Night Raw, except they made it twice as long and put a championship at stake. The crowd is bored out of their minds. 1/10

Special Guest Referee: "The Big Shot" Hardcore Holly
The Big Show defeated Kane at 8:10
Every Big Show match ever where he slowly pounds away at a guy with basic Andre the Giant offense before the guy makes a comeback, either getting the win or losing through nefarious means. In this case, Kane had Show set for the Chokeslam, Holly checked Kane, allowing Show to hit his version of the move and Holly fast counted the fall. Outside of Kane taking an impressive military press slam from the ring to the floor, this seemed to be more about the post-match segment than the match with the Undertaker and the Big Show double-teaming Kane. X-Pac tried to come out and make the save, but was bested by Taker. 2/10

Iron Circle Match
Ken Shamrock defeated Steve Blackman at 4:15
Remember that parking lot brawl between Cena/Eddie? This was the same deal except with terrible lighting, honking cars and Prince Albert constantly cheering both guys on. You simply couldn't see a lot of spots due to it being so dark and some of the spots you could see were akin to every hardcore match at that time. The finish wasn't great either, with the babyface Ken Shamrock grabbing a chain and choking Blackman out. If that wasn't bad enough, the timekeeper rings the bell, they play Shamrock's music and Ken celebrates like he's a wrestler from WWF Warzone. Easily a contender for worst match of the year. 1/10

D-Generation X (X-Pac and Road Dogg) defeated D-Generation X (Chyna and Billy Gunn) at 11:47
I didn't think the work was anything special here, but the crowd ate it up so they had to be doing something right. Both Gunn and Pac are really charismatic workers that excel at pumping the crowd up and to his credit, Gunn does a good job of bumping around the ring like he's a Looney Tunes character. Considering Billy Gunn's position in the company, I didn't like the booking in the match and it's just another example of why Gunn failed to do anything with his King of the Ring push. 3/10

Strap Match
Triple H defeated The Rock at 19:23
According to the Torch, the first eleven minutes were spent brawling in the crowd, and I believe it. Outside of two or three spots, they barely used the strap and by the end HHH had taken the thing off for a good six minutes. The finish saw both Chyna & Gunn interfere, allowing Triple H to hit the pedigree for a real lazy 3 count to a mild response. There's a reason why nobody talks about this match, there's nothing worth mentioning. 3/10

First Blood
Steve Austin defeated The Undertaker at 18:36
This match was really bizarre. It started off as a really solid brawl and just as the match was brewing along, it went straight into the finish. In fact, the transition maybe the most bizarre as it looked like The Undertaker tripped over Earl Hebner, clumsily got himself tied into the ropes allowing Austin the luxury of grabbing a steel chair. From that point, it was run-in city with both members of the McMahons distracting Austin at different key intervals before X-Pac got his revenge from earlier in the show. This gave Austin time to borrow a TV camera and bust Taker open with it for the win. From there it turned into an all-in brawl with Triple H and The Rock coming out and Taker/Austin teeming off while blood is pouring from both men's faces. For what was supposed to be an end of an era, this didn't feel that different from a lot of Monday Night Raw segments. Vince is gone, yet nobody is really celebrating. 3/10

I found this to be a really underwhelming show. The idea of an End of an Era sounded really appetising, but this was a tired show filled with matches fans had little to no interest in and a lot of inane brawling. I've often seen the argument that WWF 1999 worked typically better on television than on PPV, and this show is a good example of that in practice. The fans didn't care to see the matches, they just wanted to sing along, see a couple of angles and have a beer bash with Austin. I think this period right here was a really dark period as far as quality is concerned and the WWF wouldn't begin turning a corner until Armaggedon '99.

Or at least that's my hypothesis heading into the rest of the year.

WWF Raw Is War 1999
7/26/99
Cleveland, Ohio

The Acolytes def. Edge & Christian
The Godfather & Val Venis def. Droz & Prince Albert in 2:58
Kane def. The Unholy Alliance via DQ in 2:08
Triple H (w/Chyna) def. Ken Shamrock in 3:57
The Rock fought Chyna & Billy Gunn to a No Contest in 8:27

A show of two halves. At the top of the first hour, you had the Vince McMahon send-off which was surprisingly understated. This could have been an entire show in of itself, but they simply had Vince attempt to shake Austin's hand, Austin reject the gesture and finish with a 'nananana hey hey goodbye' sung by JR.

Then in the second, HHH was in every second segment trying to get himself over. It's clear that the WWF were really over-compensating here with Triple H getting the best of The Rock (once again), forcing MMA tough guy Ken Shamrock to submit and then closing the show by punching out JR.

Outside of that, Jarrett attacked Ben Stiller who was there to promote Mystery Men, Key (Vic Grimes) attacked The Godfather in the middle of the crowd during a street fight and Kane cut his first promo using a voice modulator after the Unholy Alliance (Taker/Show) hospitalised X-Pac.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that this was one of the weaker editions of Raw. Vince had been such an important character on the show and HHH wasn't ready to replace him just yet. The WWF was in a transitional period, and had some teething issues to sort through before it could truly find it's feet.

Notes
- Shamrock is expected to go on a sabbatical from Pro Wrestling in 2000, with JR acknowledging Shamrock's desire to return to MMA. Shamrock's deal is reportedly flexible and the WWF are expected to promote Shamrock's fight in a bid to build him up as a star outside of Pro Wrestling.

- Russo is set to produce his own weekly television show that will give fans a backstage expose of the business of Pro Wrestling.

- The contracts of Savio Vega and Mark Canterbury (Henry O'Godwin) expire in October. Neither are expected to be re-signed. Brawl For All Winner Bart Gunn has been granted an early release and Dustin Runnels is expected to sign with WCW at any moment.

- Bossman is said to be against his hardcore push

WWF Raw Is War
8/2/99
Columbus, Ohio

Edge defeated Gangrel in a Blood Bath Match
The Unholy Alliance defeated Kane & Road Dogg
D'Lo Brown defeated Jeff Jarrett to become the NEW WWF Intercontinental Champion
Big Bossman defeated Viscera in a WWF Harcore Championship Match
Test defeated Rodney
Val Venis vs Steve Blackman ended in a No Contest

That's right, the main event of this week's edition of Monday Night Raw was between everybody's favourite porn-star Val Venis and Bayley's favourite wrestler The Lethal Weapon Steve Blackman. To add insult to injury, we didn't even get a proper finish with Ken Shamrock avenging his hit and run from the week before. Of course, that wasn't the advertised main event of the show. That would be Steve Austin vs The Undertaker VII, which was put together after The Unholy Alliance bum-rushed Austin in the middle of an in-ring promo. They kicked his ass for a couple of seconds, got bored and Austin was seemingly so underwhelmed he offered Taker a shot at the championship. This fixture pissed HHH off who had to move heaven and hell to get a championship match against Austin, prompting HHH to incite a massive in-ring brawl which featured everyone including The Big Shot who was keen to get himself some because that's his deal at the moment.

And as the show was closing, I realised that this was the first ever Monday Night Raw I remember watching. Even back then as a 9 year old, I must admit I was really perplexed by the situation. You had this crazy in-ring brawl featuring names like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker & The Rock...yet the letter H was kicking everybody's ass?

In other news, it appears we got the blow-off for the Gangrel/Edge feud, with Edge winning Russo's gimmick match of the week - a Blood Bath match. As you could expect, this was similar to all the other Russo matches where a foreign object was located around the ring with the match being decided as soon as the other person was covered in blood. The two had a nice back and forth match (for the Attitude era) ending with Christian dousing his former leader with blood and aligning himself with his 'brother' Edge. A lame finish, but since the match was set around Christian's allegiance, an inevitability.

D'Lo Brown scored possibly the biggest win of his career when he pinned Jeff Jarrett to become the first Eurocontinental Champion. As much as I like the live action bobble head, this push came from absolutely nowhere leaving Double J with limited credibility. This was every Jeff match ever, basic back and forth wrestling before Debra decides it's time to get involved except this time she inadvertently hands D'Lo the IC Championship which he promptly uses to his advantage while referee Tim White was unconcious.

Mr. Ass cut one of the strangest promos about checking out The Rock's ass in the shower. To hammer how god awful the promo was, they showed a giant Rikishi-esque ass on the screen to crickets. The Rock then appeared on the titatron, completely buried Billy Gunn before going through all his catchphrases like he was a Krusty The Klown doll. Chyna was so unimpressed by this, she wore an inconspicuous hat to the ring.



And that was far more newsworthy than the Bossman/Viscera, Venis/Blackman, Ivory, Test/MSP and Shane McMahon segment.

Save Us Y2J

WWF Notes

WWF announced plans to become a public traded company. By this point, the WWF had filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Comission for an initial public offering of stock. Titan Sports will offer $172.5 Million of its Class A Common Stock, with the proceeds being used for working capital and general corporate purposes. The stock was being offered on the Nasdaq National Market.

The Dudley Boyz have agreed to terms with the WWF. Supposedly the WWF wanted to sign them back in March, but the Dudley Boyz weren't interested. Russo in his WWE 98 shoot mentioned that was an unreliable liason who wouldn't tell his talent that the WWF were interested in their services.

Debra is getting heat for refusing to work non-Austin live events.

Savio Vega's release ties in with the cancellation of Super Astros.

Vince is planning to stay off TV for a long time, with Shane McMahon expected to step into his place after the MSP angle is over. Ratings currently are the lowest they've been in five months, with D'Lo Brown/Jarrett drawing the highest ratings, while Austin/Taker drew the lowest.

WWF Raw Is War
8/9/99
Chicago, Illinois

Gangrel pinned Christian
Val Venis pinned Jeff Jarrett
Kane & X-Pac defeated The Acolytes to win the WWF Tag Team Championship
Test & Ken Shamrock defeated Joey Abs & Steve Blackman
Road Dogg pinned The Big Bossman
The Rock defeated The Big Show via DQ
Chyna defeated Triple H & The Undertaker



You cannot talk about this show without one of the best debuts of all-time. Simple but effective vignettes (literally a countdown), great entrance, against the right opponent, infront of the right crowd with a guy on the rise. It had all the right pieces and while Jericho didn't come off great in the promo, The Rock brought his A game and delivered one of his best promos of the year. Last year, I made a thread about whether The Rock's mic work really held up, and six months into 1999 I'd argue it hadn't. However around July leading into August, The Rock has been on fire with his Billy Gunn burial and the Jericho promo. Unfortunately the only con to Jericho's debut is that he wasn't able to go straight into a feud with The Rock. In hindsight, the WWF would have been better off letting Jericho come in, beat The Rock at SummerSlam before returning the favour at Unforgiven. That way, Jericho would have been established as a top guy and would have given The Rock a more engaging feud than the Billy Gunn feud. While the Mr. Ass feud was supposed to give The Rock an easy win, somehow it cheapened The Rock who had to settle for The Booty Man to Triple H's Hulk Hogan.

Jericho's segment may have lasted the test of time, but the show was more about the return of Jesse Ventura. Jesse had been away for 9 years at this point, but after being elected the Governor of Minnesota, Vince couldn't wait to bring him back into the fold and put him front and centre on his PPV. It was smart business really, the WWF were going through a transitional phase, taking the focus off of Vince and placing it onto Triple H and having celebrities of Jesse's stature would help ease the transition. And in fairness to Ventura, he was a total pro, finding the right line between diplomacy and entertainment. He featured in two segments, an in-ring promo with Triple H and in the main event as the guest commentator. Jesse's appearance garnered the highest ratings (6.9 in Q3 and Q9) and all in all was very entertaining.

Outside of Ventura's appearance, the big angle of the show revolved around Triple H. After threatening the Governor of Minnesota, it was implied that The Game had knocked The Texas Rattlesnake unconcious backstage with a cinder-block. Comissioner Michaels, who made one of his random guest appearances, was on hand to discipline The Game, by putting his number one contendership up for grabs in the main event. And in a strange twist, HHH's girlfriend, Chyna pinned The Game to set up the main event at SummerSlam against Steve Austin for the title. It was Russo style booking at it's finest, but it was a nice cliffhanger to end the show. In a way, the angle reminded me of the Billy Gunn/Road Show switch-a-roo at Wrestlemania XV, where the company went in a direction that most bookers wouldn't dare to go. It didn't work out great, but I think under better circumstances, these kind of risks can pay off.

Running through the rest of the show quickly. Gangrel defeated Christian thanks to the Hardy Boyz who aligned themselves with Gangrel. The tension between Jarrett/Debra deepened after Debra inadvertently cost Jarrett the match against Venis in a 90 second bell to bell match. Kane and X-Pac defeated The Acolytes in a short but sweet match. Russo wasn't a fan of the Acolytes and with the Unholy Alliance around, it made sense to give Kane and X-Pac the Tag Team Championships. Test & Shamrock won their two-feuds-in-one tag team match. After the match, Test 'broke' Abs' leg as apart of his angle with Shane where he's taking out the MSP one by one. This is easily Test's best angle to date and the fans are really into him. Road Dogg beat Bossman inside 90 seconds after Al Snow interfered. It was a non-title hardcore match and basically just an excuse to get all three men on the show. The Rock had The Big Show beaten inside 4 minutes after interference from Hardcore Holly but Jericho and Billy Gunn spoiled the party for the People's Champion.

WWF Notes
- Austin suffered a knee injury on the 7/26 Raw taping which is why he's been featured as little as possible. Austin has been clashing a lot with the WWF lately, veteoing proposed angles with Jeff Jarrett while opting for Mankind to be thrown into the SummerSlam 99 main event so he can do the honours for HHH.

- Originally, HHH was supposed to go over Austin then enter a program with Mankind. HHH would hold onto the championship until the Royal Rumble, where he would drop it to Austin setting up a Big Show v Austin Wrestlemania main event.

- As mentioned in an earlier recap, the Austin/Jarrett segment was supposed to plant seeds for a later program but after completely changing the segment, Austin expressed no desire to work with Double J. Austin has several grievances with Jarrett, including: Jarrett's 97 shoot promo, Jarrett's relationship with Austin's then girlfriend Debra, Austin doesn't believe Jarrett is over enough and he doesn't like Jarrett's style.

- Austin is keen to work with Billy Gunn in the future.

- Another reason why Austin hasn't been featured so prominently is that he didn't want to spread his character too thinly on throw-away segments. For example, Austin was supposed to save Ben Stiller from Jeff Jarrett's attack on Raw, but Austin felt that after the End of an Era match, it wouldn't make sense for him to butt his nose in Jarrett's business. Austin has been very particular with his transition from working the Undertaker, choosing to interact with only a select few on the roster.

- Jericho's debut segment was originally going to involve The Road Dogg and Kid Rock. However, Kid Rock signed with WCW a month before Jericho debuted, nixing the angle as the WWF felt a Dogg/Jericho angle on it's own wouldn't be strong enough. While Jericho doesn't have anybody to face at SummerSlam, he is expected to enter a program with The Rock after SummerSlam.

- Davey Boy Smith has signed with the WWF

- The Rock met with Chris Jericho a month before Jericho debuted. The two hit-it off, leading The Rock to request their segment with one another.

- WWF are in talks with UFC fighter Oleg Taktarov

- Erin O'Grady (Michael Lockwood) has been signed and will partner Hardcore Holly.

- The Dudley Boyz are getting ready to leave ECW. Paul Heyman recommended Sign Guy Dudley to the WWF, but there's been no word on whether they're interested.

- Steve Richards has signed with the WWF and will team with The Blue Meanie.

- Barry Werner will step in for Vince Russo as the editor of WWF Magazine. Russo is completely swamped with creative duties and is in the middle of developing his sitcom for USA.

WWF RAW IS WAR
8/16/99
Milwuakee, Wisconsin

Road Dogg defeated Al Snow
Chyna defeated Triple H
Test defeated Steve Blackman via DQ
Kane & X-Pac defeated The Acolytes
Mankind defeated Chyna
Triple H & Mankind fought to a double pin

The go-home edition of Raw was all about the main event of SummerSlam. We’re six days out, and it appears the match is up in the air after the events of last week where HBK stripped HHH of his opportunity and Chyna, HHH’s girlfriend, received the opportunity instead. Normally this is a creative no-no as you don’t want the fans to think their main event match is in jeopardy since it’s supposed to sell the show. However, since the WWF had Ventura and Austin, they could afford to play around with it.

And play around with it they did. As I noted last week, Austin was on the warpath and was very protective of his character at that point. This was evident in his push to bring Mankind into the picture and have him drop the championship on PPV. The normally hyper-aware Austin seemed OK with the idea of the babyfaces having a 2-1 advantage at the big show, just as long as he could stay strong.

This results in the big up and coming heel, Triple H, doing the honors for his girlfriend on not one but two consecutive shows. While he was screwed over on both occasions, to have your ass-kicking heel lose to his missus did him little favours, especially when he’s coming up against a global icon and a national treasure.

So this is how the storyline played out on the show. A replay aired of last week’s main event segment where Austin interfered and Chyna scored the biggest victory of her career over Triple H and The Undertaker. The show opened with an in-ring promo between HHH and Chyna, where HHH reminded Chyna of how great he’s been to her and then started quoting lines from the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”. Chyna offended by HHH’s poor taste in music (Hey I like the song) refused to give him back his championship shot without a match.

So the two went at it later in the show, with Chyna giving a fair account of herself before Mankind made his return after two months and cost HHH the match. HBK realising that Chyna/Austin would most likely suck, decided to give Mankind an opportunity to win his way into SummerSlam giving us Chyna/Mankind, which Mankind won. Having enough of all this terrible booking, Shane McMahon came out and announced that it would be Mankind vs Triple H in a match where he’d be the referee and we’d get our HHH v Austin match as promised. HBK being a fucker inserted himself into the match, leading to an obvious shmozz with both guys being declared the winner. It was Russo-riffic crash-style booking, but as a novelty it was fine and outside of putting the heel at a disadvantage it wasn’t like it resulted in anything terrible.

Outside of that, this was the show of terrible promos. The opening promo? Really flat and awkward with HHH trying to remind Chyna of all the good times but all the material was so hackneyed that HHH had no confidence in cutting it like a wrestling promo. Then you had The Rock promo where he revealed that he tampered with Mr Ass’ massage and had the masseuse use poison ivy. The exposition was really awkward, but in true Rock fashion, he made it sound far better than it had any right to be. Then in the Hall of Fame of terrible promos...you had The Undertaker tell a story about The Big Show and how he survived the desert. Dear lord this promo was absolutely horrendous. It was just five minutes of Taker rambling, pulling stuff out of his ass and the fans like he’s some loon on the train. I wonder if it was intentional since it fed straight into another Jericho promo where he called them out on being rubbish and apparently earned himself a ton of heat in the process.

Going through the rest of the show – The Big Bossman cost Al Snow his match against the Road Dogg in a change up from last week. Shane McMahon and Steve Blackman attacked Test and Ken Shamrock with kendo sticks, leaving both men laying in the centre of the ring. Finkle started sucking up to Jericho, starting their little partnership. Hardcore Holly introduced everyone to his ‘Super Heavyweight’ cousin, Crash Holly. Both men got into a dispute and brawled around the arena for the rest of the night. Mr. Ass got the better of The Rock in their verbal confrontation by grabbing the same kendo stick used earlier, attacking The Rock and making him kiss his ass for good measure (why was that not his deal? It would have at least bought him some heat). Austin provided guest commentary in the main event and was as good as you would expect in the role (which is to say he was great, the guy knew his character and knew how to get others over).

WWF Notes

Both HBK and Ventura are frustrated with the Austin situation. One story making the rounds is that HBK, a man known for being difficult, told Vince “ring me when you get your company back.”

More on the Austin situation and it appears that Wade’s source of information on this is the Road Dogg. Austin supposedly went up to Road Dogg to question whether he had any heat with the D-O-Double G. James told him he didn’t like the Jarrett situation and Austin went over everything that’s been mentioned, namely he didn’t like his style of wrestling. The only bit of news is that it wasn’t personal between Austin and Jarrett, with Austin making a point of raising other examples and why he wouldn’t work with them just yet. Finally, the boys are still upset with Debra receiving first class flights, despite Austin explaining that he just wants to sit next to his girlfriend on the plane. This has caused friction between the boys and JR, he has to keep knocking back deals that include first class tickets.

The WWF want to restructure HBK’s existing deal. Shawn is still on his active wrestling deal and is earning 15K each week.

Ventura made a point of blowing cigar smoke in Vince’s face when he was backstage at Raw

Road Dogg is expected to be added to the Hardcore Championship match at the PPV.

WWF SUMMERSLAM
8/22/99
Minneapolis, Minnesota

WWF INTERCONTINENTAL AND EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
Jeff Jarrett vs D'Lo Brown (c)

Jarrett has really been on a roll lately as far as working these solid opening matches are concerned. He comes from the Owen Hart school of using movement to add to the dynamic of the match and it works here as D'Lo is a shallow wrestler who relies more on moves than being a technical wizard. This was a really solid D'Lo Brown showcase until seven minutes in where Debra did her deal on the apron and Mark Henry betrayed D'Lo for Jeff to regain the championships. 4/10

TAG TEAM TURMOIL MATCH
Edge & Christian vs The New Brood vs Prince Albert & Droz vs Mideon & Viscera vs The Acolytes vs The Holly Cousins

This match made me lifelong fans of Edge and Christian. As a kid, I bought into their babyface in peril shtick and after watching it again, I can see why. Sure, it was like they were the Rock n Roll Express but for 1999 Attitude Era wrestling they were really good and quite efficient with what they had to work with. As you'd expect, the opening was awesome with the New Brood rekindling their feud with Edge & Christian. There was this awesome spot where Jeff was attempting to do his barricade spot, only to get speared by Edge from the opposite barricade which looked like a million bucks. Albert/Droz & Mideon/Viscera should have dragged the match down, but they surprisingly added to it and were perfectly cast in their roles. The Acolytes/E&C stuff was fun until it lasted, then the Holly Cousins jumped the gun and the last 3 minutes really dragged, hurting what had been one of my favourite WWF 99 matches in sometime. The finish saw Farooq nail Crash with a spinebuster to win in fairly anti-climatic fashion. 5/10

HARDCORE CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
Al Snow vs The Big Bossman (c)

Before the match there was an in-ring promo segment between Jericho/Dogg which was completely one-sided. Jericho completely owned Dogg's character and it was hilarious watching Jericho sell 'Hey Jericho...shut up biatch" as this killer line. Since Road Dogg wasn't included in the match for whatever reason, he decided to follow both Snow/Bossman around the arena providing live play-by-play. Outside of a few creative spots, this was every hardcore championship match ever. Just two guys throwing punches until they end up at their destination and someone ends up eating a pinfall with very little rhyme or reason. In this case, both Snow/Bossman brawled until they got to some bar filled with obnoxious fans who wouldn't stop trying to get their mugs on camera. They brawled around, Snow hit a moonsault off the bar before Dogg decided he had seen enough, clubbed Bossman with his own night-stick and Snow capitilised getting the three. A terrible finish to a boring match that only had a handful of moments. Post-match, Snow runs back to the ring to celebrate, attacks both Meanie and Stevie who are apparently trying to steal Pepper before celebrating his victory. 2/10

WOMEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
Tori vs Ivory (c)

This was an eight minute match, squeezed into four minutes with both girls rushing through their spots as quickly as possible. Of course it was sloppy and rushed to all buggery and felt like complete and utter filler. Ivory won, attempted to take Tori's top off until Luna Vachon returned and made the save. 1/10

LION'S DEN
Ken Shamrock vs Steve Blackman

A really boring hardcore match that dragged on for ten minutes until Ken finally put us out of our misery. 1/10

NO HOLDS BARRED
Shane McMahon vs Test

Arguably the most memorable match of the show. A really well put together match that the fans bought into hook, line and sinker where everyone played their parts really well. Lots of shenanigans, lots of hardcore spots, a few well constructed near-falls but the match had a great rhythmn to it that really got the fans into it. 6/10

TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
The Unholy Alliance vs X-Pac & Kane (c)

Perhaps the best match either teams had. Very up-beat, some cool transitions and just that extra attention to detail that really got the crowd feeding into it. There was nothing too out of the ordinary here, but I did find the finish a little odd. Big Show hits Pac with the Show-stopper, goes for an arrogant cover and Pac kicks out of it (making him the first person on the roster?) before Taker finishes Pac off with the Tombstone Piledriver. After the match, Taker scolds the Big Show while both men walk out as champions. Maybe it's just me, but it seemed like punishment for some past indiscretions from Show. 5/10

KISS MY ASS
Mr. Ass vs The Rock

A surprisingly OK match. Dare I say, The Rock's best PPV match since Backlash? Both his matches with HHH and The Undertaker were filled with really bad shenanigans where as this followed a conventional structure that I thought helped both men. Gunn controlled 70% of the match, but The Rock won decisively, rubbing Gunn's face into that obese woman's ass, hit a Rock Bottom and followed up with a People's Elbow. Gunn doesn't really have the offence to do anything too special, but the Rock's cartoony selling is compelling enough to make this a solid match. 4/10

WWF CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
Mankind vs Triple H vs Steve Austin (c)
Special Guest Referee: Jesse Ventura

A real mixed bag of a main event. At times it had some really nice moments with both guys using offence they normally don't use and HHH exhibiting some nice psychology going after Austin with a steel chair. But then there were stupid moments like Mankind teaming up with the guy who put him on the shelf for two months for an extended period. If it was for one spot, OK, but there was an entire section of the match where both guys worked together. Foley would later do the exact same thing at Wrestlemania 2000 and I hated it there as well. It really brings down what could have been a good special guest referee match where they did a good job of getting Ventura involved without having him steal too much of the spotlight. The finish saw Triple H hit a pedigree on Austin, only for Foley to blindside him, hit his DDT on Austin to 'steal' the championship in 16 minutes. Feeling a little generous, I'll go 5/10.

Overall - While it may just be a middle of the road SummerSlam (at best) as far as 1999 shows go, it was certainly one of the better top to bottom cards with plenty of matches worth checking out and outside of the Blackman/Shamrock match nothing too offensive. Even the women's match was fairly quick, even if a little pointless on the show. But at the end of the day, you got a lot of stars on the show and it felt like a show where a lot of things took place, which at the core is what you want from a PPV.

WWF RAW IS WAR
8/23/99
Ames, Iowa

Road Dogg fought Al Snow to a No Contest
The Unholy Alliance fought The Acolytes to a No Contest
D'Lo Brown defeated Mark Henry via DQ
The Rock defeated Gangrel
Viscera & Mideon defeated Kane & X-Pac
Triple H defeated Mankind to WIN the WWF Championship

After all the backstage drama surrounding SummerSlam, Triple H finally came through the otherside as WWF Champion albeit in a match that was completely stacked against Foley. Aside from the usual hurdle of having Chyna at ring-side, Shane McMahon made himself the special guest referee which led to all sorts of controversy finally ending with Triple H winning the belt. It was a typical bells and whistles match, but I did like the vibe of Mankind going into this impossible battle where the result was decided before he entered the ring. By Pro Wrestling standards, there's something poetic about that.

Apart from the match itself, it really was the Triple H show. He opened Raw, bragged about attacking Austin, got Mankind to agree to a WWF Championship match that night, broke JR's arm and even got the better of The Rock who was doing guest commentary in the main event. It had the distinct feeling of Triple H being rewarded for his patience and getting to be booked as the strongest heel since Kane way back when he first debuted. At the time, the push felt really forced and was undermined by some spur of the moment booking but to it's credit history justified the decision, Triple H would grow into the role and I think having a dominant heel gave the show a fresh dynamic after the Austin era.

Running through the rest of the show.

The Hardcore Championship match with no-rules ended in a No Contest after interference from both Jericho and Bossman. After getting the better of Snow physically, Bossman decided to add insult to injury and steal Snow's dog Pepper causing Snow to go through a mental breakdown through out the rest of the show. I want to like Snow, but he was involved in some of the dirt worst angles and there was no way fans were ever going to care about him getting his dog back, yet they keep insisting on making it a thing. Meanwhile, Jericho clearly still upset with Road Dogg's terrible comeback at SummerSlam wanted a piece for himself. This led into a later segment where Howard Finkle (coming out to the Warrior's music) challenged the Road Dogg to the match, enabling Jericho to sneak up on Road Dogg and hit his awesome Double Power-Bomb spot. Jericho was really awkward in his first few months in the fed, but that powerbomb spot was so cool, it's a shame he went away from it because it seemed like a cool set up for the Walls of Jericho.

Taker threw Farooq onto Kane & X-Pac while they were providing guest commentary, causing them to react and spoil the match. This led to the later match where Taker's underlings pulled off a huge upset beating Kane & X-Pac clean. The babyfaces looked in complete control until Viscera hit a splash on X-Pac and picked up the surprise three count.

Backstage we were treated to a promo on the Blonde Bytch Project, a Stevie Richards/Blue Meanie deal which was supposed to be expanded upon on SmackDown but was dropped before it ever got that far.

Test proposed to Stephanie McMahon in the middle of the ring. Before she could answer, an irate Shane hit the ring and told Test off. Not pleased, Steph told Shane to mind his own business before telling Test that she wasn't ready yet. You know there's guys on the roster like D'Lo Brown and Val Venis where I accept that they could only go so high on the card, but the WWF really did a number on Test. After a career defining match against Shane, they have him completely embarrass himself on TV.

Next up, was a really productive Jeff Jarrett segment where it seemed like he was hellbent to take his character on a new direction. He gave Mark Henry the European Championship to get him out of his hair, introduced Miss Kitty as Debra's assistant and set up an open challenge for the Intercontinental Championship. As the European Champion, Henry geared up for a match against Meat, only to find himself face to face with D'Lo who attacked Meat backstage thus earning him a shot at the championship. Fortunately, Double J was still around and since Jeff felt sorry for Meat (or whatever) he cost D'Lo the match. And just after that, Billy Gunn secured the contract for the IC Championship, handed it to Chyna for safe keeping, before Chyna signed her name on the deal setting up her deal with Jarrett.

Finally, you had The Rock who made short work of Gangrel and made a point of how lazy his booking has been lately and how he can't stand seeing jabronis like Triple H and Mankind in the WWF Championship scene while he's working some coomzee coomza idiot like Mr Ass at SummerSlam. Normally I'm not a fan of guys burying other talent, but it felt true to The Rock's character and he had a point, he did deserve better around this time.

NOTES
- Lillian Garcia debuted on the show
- After JR was attacked, Michael Cole called the rest of the show (which really took the show down a notch)
- More on the SummerSlam main event - Austin completely tore his PCL and there were concerns whether he'd even be able to work the show. That's why they had Mankind come in so he could help take the burden off of Austin and contribute to the match. The finish of the match changed on the Friday before from Triple H pinning Mankind to Mankind pinning Austin. Creative felt it was the best decision for everybody - Ventura gets to raise a babyfaces hand, Austin does the job and Triple H gets to brag about taking out Austin leading to a big Raw which should draw huge ratings.
- Raw drew it's lowest rating since January of that same year.
- Jericho attacked DDP on his website for all of his appearances on other TV shows, wondering why some of the other boys weren't receiving the same opportunities. When quizzed on this, DDP was stunned claiming that he had helped Jericho out on numerous occassions and put him over as a future star. Apparently Jericho was upset with something DDP had said on a WCW Internet Show.
- There was speculation that Venis and Godfather were omitted from SummerSlam due to Ventura's presence (ie. the WWF didn't want to associate a government official with porn and pimps). As it turns out, the Godfather has been off the road due to a cyst on his tailbone.

WWF RAW IS WAR
8/30/99
Boston, Massachusetts


The Mean Street Posse defeated Mankind via DQ
Big Show defeated The Rock
X-Pac defeated Taka Michinoku
Edge & Christian vs The Hardy Boyz vs The Acolytes vs The Holly Cousins ended in a No Contest
Mark Henry & Jeff Jarrett defeated D'Lo Brown and Mr Ass
Ken Shamrock defeated Gangrel
The Rock & Mankind defeated The Big Show and The Undertaker to WIN THE WWF TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP

The birth of the Rock n Sock connection, one of the most memorable tag teams in WWF history who never really worked all that well in the ring. However, out of the ring the two were just dynamite. Mick Foley at his best is a Hall of Fame worthy performer, but if you stick him with somebody else, his game typically goes up another level. This was true with Mikey Whipwreck, true with Stone Cold Steve Austin (which seemed like a precursor to this angle in a lot of ways) and definitely true here. Now the idea of a super-heel team dropping the belts two weeks into their reign would normally be terrible, but the Rock n Sock were such a good unit that they became the exception. Considering both men needed to keep their distance from Triple H, pairing them up and putting them in the tag division served as a good detour. Plus, it suited Foley who was really broken down at this point and enable the writers to make the Rock's transition into the big babyface far more believable.

I've also entered a tricky phase with the project as the introduction of Smackdown brings up all sorts of holes in the continuity. For instance, Billy Gunn has seemingly already turned babyface, Shawn Michaels has turned heel, Jericho has moved on from Road Dogg and has set his sights on Ken Shamrock and the Big Bossman regained the Hardcore Championship. To avoid writing massive essays on each episode, I'm just going to touch on the things that stuck out to me.

WWF Notes
- This episode featured one of the all-time famous ribs where Pepper's 'help-line' was actually Val Venis' cellphone number.
- Jesse Ventura is rumoured to be apart of next year's Wrestlemania. JR went to great lengths to reference The Body a few times on SmackDown
- Road Dogg is out for six to eight weeks to work on his music
- Foley is trying to lose weight (he was at 300 pounds at this point)
- Taker is working through a torn groin muscle
- Zack Wylde was backstage at SummerSlam and supposedly made a cameo in the hardcore championship match
- With Austin out, the current plan for Unforgiven is to have the Undertaker fill in for the Texas Rattlesnake, making it a main event of Triple H vs The Undertaker vs The Rock vs Mankind for the WWF Championship.

WWF Raw Is War
9/6/99
Hartford, Conniticut

Mankind & The Rock defeated Triple H & Kane
Jeff Jarrett defeated Jaqueline
Edge & Christian defeated The Acolytes
Big Show defeated Val Venis
Test & Pat Patterson & Gerald Briscoe defeated The Mean Street Posse
The Holly Cousins defeated The New Brood
D'Lo Brown defeated Steve Blackman
Ivory defeated Tori
Triple H defeated Billy Gunn

A pretty solid edition of Raw all told, focusing on some of the lesser stars like Kane & Billy Gunn. Gunn is a babyface now after Chyna screwed him out of his championship shot and he's actually better in the role as he can take advantage of his athleticism and be more explosive in the ring. His match against Triple H was decent for what it was, a couple of blown spots, but they did a good job of booking a few near falls to keep the fans excited. I thought JR was awesome during the call. His commentary here reminded me of a match he'd call in the future involving Jeff Hardy and The Undertaker. He didn't have to, but he called it like the main event of Wrestlemania and actually got me into the match.

They also did a decent job of booking Kane here I thought. He took the pinfall in the opener, but it took a sledgehammer to put him down and he still got to finish the night strongly. He isn't everyone's favourite wrestler but at a time where the WWF were struggling for stars, I thought Kane played a bad-ass Jason Vorhees. It was probably the best Kane has looked all year and just in time as well since he's going to be in the six-pack challenge match.

Speaking of, I didn't know it at the time, but the basis for that match was the Buried Alive match that happened on SmackDown. This show felt like a huge infomercial for that one match, with both teams cutting backstage promos to remind us of the match. The Rock has been on fire as of late with his promos. His chemistry with Foley is first class and the way he mocks other wrestlers is on-point. Even though I knew it was coming, I couldn't stop laughing at the Rock mocking The Big Show's chokeslam, just classic.

The Ivory & Tori match maybe one of the most memorable matches of 1999, but for all the wrong reasons. This was the first ever hardcore match between two women (supposedly, could be wrong here) where they brawled backstage, tearing off each other's clothes to the point where the whole thing came off as a really bad fetish video. Apparently the entire match was pre-taped just to ensure they didn't go too far but the whole segment just felt dirty, even for 1999 WWF.

Outside of that, you can see the mid-card beginning to take shape. Edge & Christian are the number one regular tag team, the Dudley Boyz debuted and have a program heading into the PPV, Val Venis has been thrown an angle with Steve Blackman, Sexual Chocolate is keeping D'Lo Brown relevant and Jeff finally has a focus beyond tricking out his valet to score wins.

It's a new direction for the company and while it may not be perfect, it's an improvement over Austin/Taker which well and truly ran it's race.

WWF Notes
- Watch out folks, HBK is on WWF Live. Here's some of the highlights.

. Admits that the reason why he hasn't returned to Pro Wrestling is the amount of stunts that are happening in today's product. Doesn't feel like the wrestlers are telling enough stories and that it resembles too much of a stunt show (drawing a comparison to his HiaC match to Foley's)
. His back is healing up nicely and he'll be getting the screws taken out in January. The doctors say he can wrestle again, but at this point of time, Shawn had no intention fearing that he couldn't keep up with modern trends in Pro Wrestling and deliver the same performances. One specific issue he had was his timing, which he felt was off on the premier of SmackDown with the spot involving Rock.
. Touched on Kevin Nash as a booker "If you can make your own movie, why wouldn't you put yourself over in the end?" Basically said that Kev's heart isn't in WCW and that it's a shark-tank down there.
. Considers himself a fan of Jericho but has a couple of issues with the transition. Firstly, he hates the Finkle stuff since it seems to be a carbon copy of WCW and why would you want to copy that? Also believes that if Jericho wants to main event, he has to work like a bigger man and cut some of the cruiserweight spots out of his arsenal.
. And in a snippit that would see him shelved, criticised Austin for being selfish and not putting his best friend over at SummerSlam. Also thought the 'injury' excuse was convenient and he was never afforded the same luxury at Wrestlemania XIV.

WWF RAW IS WAR
9/13/99
Anaheim, California

Luna Vachon defeated Jeff Jarrett via DQ
D'Von Dudley defeated Farooq
Test defeated Joey Abs
Godfather defeated Chaz
Chris Jericho defeated Gotch Gracie
The Rock vs The Undertaker vs Mankind vs Kane vs Big Show ended in a No Contest
Val Venis & D'Lo Brown defeated Steve Blackman & Mark Henry

Vince McMahon is back on WWF TV. Less than two months removed from the 'End of an Era' match, Vince appeared to defend the honour of his wife after she had been threatened by Triple H. Despite being way too early, Vince's return was about as good as it could have been. The fans bought him as a babyface right away and while his explanation was bogus (this isn't business, this is personal!) it was better than the usual method of "just because".

Vince's return followed Austin's return on SmackDown, who appeared in the back of an amublance to ambush Triple H in that tag team Buried Alive match on SmackDown. I remember watching that match around four years ago and being really underwhelmed by it. Now with all these storylines in mind, I can appreciate it more now as a segment than an actual bell to bell match. They did the deal where they teased an immediate championship match between Austin and Triple H, only for Triple H to get Austin arrested for the attack on Thursday.

Triple H was really over as a heel here. Maybe it's because he was the forefront of the show - everyone from Austin, Kane, Mankind, Rock, Show and Taker all wanted a piece of him, but he had molten heat with the crowd. As a performer, I don't think he was doing anything great. All he does is whine about having to be a champion, anytime he goes to insult someone it feels really lazy. The WWF wasn't an in-ring promotion at the time either, so I'd say it came down to presentation and booking more than anything else. It's weird, because guys like Austin and Rock were clearly superstars and deserved to be booked as such, Triple H wasn't quite there but the WWF desperately needed a top heel so they manufactured him as such and the fans are going along with it. Triple H finished the show brawling with Austin who had returned after being arrested, giving us a taste of things to come.

Meanwhile, the other main event talent had a five-way number one contendership match which ended randomly as guys just started pouring out from the lockeroom. I must admit I'm a sucker for all in-brawls but it felt like a crutch here so Russo could do his shtick about the referees going on strike. Just a really bad bait and switch, giving us a main event that was essentially just a showcase of two undercard matches on the upcoming PPV.

Jarrett continues to relish his feud with Chyna by being an absolute chauvinistic dick, going as far to attack Lillian Garcia since she announced Luna as the victor. Without much help, Jarrett has turned Chyna into a big babyface character. Test vs Joey Abs was just a random bomb throwing match between two guys who would have been huge on the independents at that time. For a Raw match it was really good. For Mean Street Posse fans, it was a sombre night as Shane McMahon officially departed the group to become a babyface. In preparation for Shamrock, Jericho decided to take on a member of the Gracie and Gotch family in a shoot-cage match. It turned out to be Mr. Hughes, Jericho's new bodyguard in another idea that was clearly inspired from his WCW shtick. The British Bulldog made his Raw debut basically to create a segue for the Kennel in Hell match which is coming up and I'm so excited to see how bad that match is going to be, I've yet to actually see it.

No interesting notes this week, it's all about the other company where Bischoff has been let go.

WWF RAW IS WAR
9/20/99
Houston, Texas

Chris Jericho defeated Mr Ass
Luna Vachon defeated Ivory
The Dudley Boyz defeated The New Brood
Test & Stephanie McMahon defeated Jeff Jarrett & Debra
The Rock n Sock Connection defeated The Ministry (subs for the Unholy Alliance) to win the WWF Tag Team Championship
Shawn Stasiak defeated Steve Blackman
Hardcore Holly defeated Big Bossman
Test & Shane McMahon defeated Triple H & Chyna by DQ

The go-home show for Unforgiven and in terms of being an infomercial for the PPV, this show was all over the place. Of course that's not a surprise since VINCE MCMAHON started the night off as WWF Champion. Yes, that's right, this was the Raw after the SmackDown show where Vince McMahon, the guy who had lost a wager where he could never be on TV ever again, beat Triple H to become WWF Champion. Clearly the whole deal was motivated by ratings, but this was one of those car-crash type deals that ends up hurting more than it actually helps. Not only does it hurt the credibility of the championship (for multiple reasons) but it does nothing to build up the match at PPV where they've got about five different storylines going on at once. Instead they add another storyline, which isn't going to be relevant on Sunday and make it the focus on the entire show.

And look, I enjoy the McMahons. They understand the theatrical component of wrestling and they surprisingly know how to work a decent smoke and mirrors match. However, by this point the show had it's fill of McMahons, it went out on a high note and the WWF was in a need of a change. Bringing it back and making it louder than ever really contributed to some of the worst months of WWF history and I'm about to enter one of the darker periods of the product. Fortunately, the company was so hot that it didn't really affect them but make no mistake, this was really bad TV and perhaps a sign that SmackDown should never have existed.

So this was the McMahon show. Vince is back, full-time, as Austin was kind enough to bury the hatchet despite nearly two years worth of storylines and all that nonsense. Steph made her in-ring debut, defeating Jeff and Debra alongside her 'fiance' Test. Then Test pulled double duty teaming with Shane to take on Triple H & Chyna. That of course ended in a DQ, with Triple H laying out both guys only for who else but VINCE MCMAHON making the save.

What were the five others doing?

Well, Taker was getting ready to say goodbye to the WWF. This would be his final appearance on Raw until May and the Deadman was in fine form. It's worth noting that the Undertaker has already made the transition into Biker Taker at this point, wearing the sunglasses, bandana and general attire. Apparently around this time he was going through a messy divorce and was really struggling with the groin injury, so his dressed down look gave him the appearance of a guy who was completely burnt out with the company. And that impression was further emphasised with his promos where he didn't even bother trying to cut a kayfabe promo on The Rock and just flat out attacked him as a professional having to use script writers to come up with his material. Taker was 'too lazy' to defend the belts, having his Ministry boys do it only for Kane to foil his plans, enabling the Rock n Sock connection to regain them. This displeased the Undertaker who tried to burn Kane alive again, only for The Rock n Sock Connection to make the save there.

As for the rest of the show, it was one of those episodes where they just had way too much going on.

Here's a list of angles
- The referees are on strike, so now the company is resorting to agents like Dr Tom Pritchard and the Brooklyn Brawler to officiate. The gimmick is that they're even worse than the typical referees.
- Jeff locked the Figure Four on Debra after losing the match
- Big Bossman was caught on GTV pissing on Pepper's grave
- Mariana is filing DV orders against Chaz
- Val Venis filled Blackman's duffle bags with dildos (actually thought that was sort of clever as a finish)
- The Acolytes hate the Dudley Boyz because they're from ECW. The Acolytes are the babyfaces of this feud...
- Mark Henry has a sex addiction and was caught off-guard by D'Lo Brown in a strip club
- Al Snow set up a dummy to show Bossman what the rottweilers were capable of

The calvacade of ideas added to the appeal of the show since there was never a dull moment but it wasn't exactly good TV.

Except for New Brood v Dudleyz, even early on those teams had good chemistry against each other.

WWF Notes
- Nicole Bass has filed a lawsuit against the WWF for sexual harrassment. Seriously guys? C'mon...
- Al Snow dropped Taz's catchphrase (win if you can, survive if I let you) during his promo on Raw. It was either supposed to be a rib, or a hint of Taz's first opponent in the fed.
- Jericho news: All fairly self-explanatory stuff. To get himself over as a main eventer, he's resorted to wearing lifts in his boots. The feud with The Rock was changed to Shamrock so he could go over in his first program. Currently he travels with fellow Canadians Edge, Christian and Val Venis.
- Vince was supposed to provide commentary for the UK Rebellion show
- The current plan for the Test-Steph storyline is for Test to cheat on her with Terri, setting up a heel turn
- Taker's shoot on the Rock is supposed to reflect the current backstage animosity towards him from guys like Road Dogg. Road Doggy Dog believes The Rock stole some of his material and it's supposed to be a source of friction between The Rock and some boys backstage. In 98 the Rock was quizzed on who comes up with his material and he was supposedly very quick to point out it's his, adding fuel to the fire.
- The 3 Biggest Merch Sellers - Austin, Rock, Road Dogg.

WWF Unforgiven 1999
9/26/99
Charlotte, North Carolina

After a tumultuous series of shows, we've finally arrived at Unforgiven 1999. The introduction of SmackDown really kicked creative into over-drive. Titles have been changing hands like nobody's business and the show's have been unfocused as ever with the main event taking a backseat to the McMahon v Helmsley feud. It doesn't bode well for the PPV, but the WWF has pulled off big surprises in the past, could they be so lucky tonight? Let's look through it.

Before we begin, we're taken to the front of the arena where the referees are on strike after a wild all in-brawl on the 9/13 show. So a running theme of the night is that we've got scab referees. I must admit, I didn't mind this piece of creative. It wasn't really hurting anyone, in fact, any babyfaces who lost at this time were protected but with all the angles going on, it's just another element for fans to wrap their heads around.

Val Venis defeated Steve Blackman in 5:45
This match wouldn't look out of place on Superstars. Just a very bland match designed to give Venis a much needed victory on PPV. They achieved that but then they took away all his heat by having Blackman lay him out with a kendo after the match. So in the end, the guy who received the biggest rub was the head of security, Jim Dodson who took Steve Blackman down with a double leg takedown to a healthy pop.

On a side-note, I believe this was the debut of BB, arguably the most forgettable WWF character of all-time. She was apart of the medical team treating Venis and she stuck out like a sore thumb despite JR barely acknowledging her.

WWF European Championship Match
D'Lo Brown defeated Mark Henry (c) in 9:15

Before the match, Sexual Chocolate made a pass at Lillian Garcia only to get slapped in the face. Henry tried to use the slap to get out of the match, only for the referee to ring the bell - actually a decent pro wrestling bit there from Henry. OK maybe I'm bias here but I thought this was a decent match for what it was. Both guys kept it simple, built the match up, all their spots meant something and in the end the fans were happy to see the babyface win the championship. A MotY contender? No way, but easily Henry's best match and arguably D'Lo's best effort this year as well.

As I've been watching these shows, I've been keeping a close eye on D'Lo. He seems to be one of those retroactive fan favourites, where he wasn't that big at the time, but it seems like anyone who stuck around from that time seemed to be a fan of his. For awhile, I didn't get it as he has zero personality and his matches weren't anything to write home about. However, ever since he started feuding with Jarrett, he's stepped his game up and creative has really found the right role for him. In hindsight, I wish they hadn't broken D'Lo and Henry up. D'Lo just didn't have enough personality or in-ring skills to get over on his own. If you let him work off of somebody as charismatic and extroverted as Henry he could have carved his own niche for years.

WWF Intercontinental Championship Match
Jeff Jarrett (c) defeated Chyna via DQ in 11:52

At this stage, I don't think I can say this was a surprisingly watchable match. It's pretty clear that Chyna was being protected as a worker and had HHH, Pat and co. producing her matches as they relied on all the usual crutches to get the fans reactive. I can't deny that it wasn't effective because the fans were all up off their seats when Chyna crawled over for the pinfall and were happy when she won - a nice feat considering she's been one of the biggest heels of the year. But before Chyna could really celebrate, they did the deal with Dr Tom Pritchard informing Wippleman that Debra had interfered on Chyna's behalf, leading Wipplemen to reverse his decision. The finish hurt the match somewhat, but it made sense as Jeff was getting great heat with his chauvinistic gimmick and was a good hand and one of the few guys capable of carrying Chyna to a good match.

The Acolytes defeated The Dudley Boyz in 7:27

This was a similar deal to the opener where it wouldn't have looked out of place on Superstars. I find that sad as well because this could have been a quality brawl with boys team going hard at each other and doing all sorts of insane spots but it was just a very basic heel v heel tag team match. Seven minutes in the match broke down and all four men were in the ring. The Dudley Boyz hit a 3-D on Farooq, Bradshaw nailed Bubba with a clothesline from hell and when the referee had their backs turned Stevie (who was dressed as the APA but with the UPN symbol on his chest) superkicked D'Von enabling Farooq to score the pin. For his trouble, Stevie was laid out by the Acolytes after the match.

Not sure what the deal was with this match. This was a really bad pairing for the Dudleys who had only made their Raw debut two weeks prior. The fans weren't invested in them, the Acolytes or the match and it just seemed like a waste of fresh new group they desperately needed. And I have no words for poor ol' Stevie. I guess Russo caught the bWo stuff, thought impressions could pass as an entire gimmick so Stevie has this odd deal where he randomly dresses up as other wrestlers and jobs out.

WWF Women's Hardcore Championship Match
Ivory defeated Luna Vachon in 3:28

I guess the WWF figured the only way to feature women's wrestling into the program was to have them work these short hardcore brawls. This was a blink if you miss it type deals, not much of a match but it didn't over-stay it's welcome to be horrifically bad or anything. The only bad part of this match is that it felt like a set-up for the Ivory v Fabulous Moolah storyline with both her and Mae Young attacking Ivory after the match.

WWF Tag Team Championship Match
The New Age Outlaws (c) defeated Edge and Christian in 11:07

So on the go-home edition of SmackDown, the New Age Outlaws reformed and defeated The Rock n Sock connection in their first night back together setting up this match. Kayfabe wise it was a mess but the deal was that they had booked a Tag Team Championship match involving Edge and Christian so they needed somebody to defend the belts. This was a better version of the Dudley Boyz v Acolytes. Two babyface teams, a lot more high spots but in the end they went for the cheap finish with the New Brood running interference allowing the champions to retain. Not a bad match, but we're halfway through the show at this point and the haphazard build up is starting to take it's toll as there was really next to no emotional investment in this match. It felt like a basic TV match, except prolonged to kill time.

That's why I think the WWF would have been better off keeping the Outlaws together and letting them be the face of the tag team division for all of 1999. They could have carried the division and with the right build up could have main evented a few shows if they played their cards right. Instead they let two of their bigger stars flounder about in the singles and they were never the same again after 98.

WWF Hardcore Championship Match
Kennel From Hell
Al Snow (c) defeated The Big Bossman in 15:01

Oh dear god. I knew this match was bad, but I didn't realise it was this bad. Neither guy had any idea what to do and there were occasions where the match just stopped dead as both guys tried to figure out what they were going to do. They would then go to their pre-planned spots, they wouldn't work and repeat the process. The only spot in the match that got over was Head's comeback with everything else dying a death. In the end, both guys just gave up, and just raced each other to see who could escape the match first, Snow won and that was that. I think they must have been trying to incorporate the dogs but even then it's just asking for trouble.

I'm flogging a dead horse but this was easily the worst match of the year. Not only did both guys visibly struggle with the concept of the match, it lasted an agonizing 15 minutes. I've never heard JR so bored in my life, it was like he'd rather be anywhere but at the booth at that time.

X-Pac defeated Chris Jericho via DQ in 13:17

Shamrock was a late scratching from the show after aggravating a long term neck injury he's had ever since he broke it in his teens. That gave us Pac/Jericho which looks like a MotY contender on paper but in execution was awful. Blown spot after blown spot and they just never clicked at any point. This may have one of the worst spots I've seen where X-Pac went for the Bronco Buster while Jericho was in the tree of woe position - it was up there with the Halloween Havoc 95 ending in terms of hilariously awkward spots. So after 13 minutes of both guys fumbling around, Hughes interferes on Jericho's behalf before Road Dogg makes the save and the babyfaces get to stand tall. So much for making Jericho look strong on his PPV debut. What a mess.

WWF Championship Match
Triple H defeated The Rock, The British Bulldog, Mankind, The Big Show and Kane in 20:20.

In order for a match like this to be successful, it really needs a story and some well-thought out spots with a hot finish. What we got was a very safe fatal four-way match with a lousy finish to cap off a mediocre show. And I get why they did it. Look at who was in the ring, Show and Kane were limited in what they could do, Bulldog was past it, Foley was out of shape leaving only The Rock and HHH who were both a little green at working main event style. I think if they attempted anything too creative, the match would have blown up in their faces so the same old tag in tag out structure we're so used to seeing made sense.

Unfortunately from a fan perspective it was a boring match. Sure, there's plenty of high spots but none of it registers because you know these moves are just going to be broken up. There's no real progress and it all just feels like filler until guys starting spamming finishing moves. That's what happened here and it appeared as if The Big Show, of all people was going to get the last laugh until the referees decided to interfere in the match and stopped the count. They all fed for Austin who became the referee and after some shenanigans involving the British Bulldog and The Rock, Triple H was able to cover the People's Champion for the very anti-climatic victory.

Overall - A really rough show, which is disappointing because after the Chyna/Jarrett deal it was actually shaping up to be one of the better shows. The problem was there were a bunch of matches that had little build behind them and then to cap things off we got treated to three very long Attitude era matches that ranged from OK to unbearably cringe inducing. A bad show, but then it just felt as if the WWF had to bite the bullet after some crazy weeks of TV.

WWF RAW IS WAR
9/27/99
Greensboro, North Carolina

The Big Show defeated Chris Jericho via DQ
D’Lo Brown defeated Steve Blackman via DQ
The New Age Outlaws fought Kane & X-Pac to a No Contest
Evening Gown Match – The Fabulous Moolah and Mae Young defeated Ivory
Chyna & Debra defeated Jeff Jarrett & Dr. Tom Pritchard
The Rock defeated Triple H via DQ

This Raw is famous for one segment and one segment only – the Rock n Sock ‘This Is Your Life’ promo. I’m sure everyone has seen it, personally I’d watched it a handful of times and while I really enjoyed the idea of it and think both guys do a good job delivering the content, there really isn’t any substance to the promo. It just goes on and on and on for twenty pain-staking minutes and there really isn’t any pay-off beyond Mankind revealing Yurple The Clown under a blanket. Now, none of that is news to me but watching this all in context, the segment felt completely random. The Rock n Sock connection have cut some fun promos and had their share of matches but it felt as if they went from 0-100 with this team. The story was, Foley felt guilty about DDTing the Rock at Unforgiven. So to make it up to him, he throws the Rock a big shin-dig for his birthday (the only part of the segment that holds up is The Rock revealing that at the end, his birthday is on May 2nd). All well and good but then Foley cuts this overly emotional sentimental line (Everytime I hang out with you it feels like somebody’s birthday) which just didn’t feel right for the character.

Never the less, it maybe one of the most overrated segments in the history of the business but it was also one of the highest rating drawing an 8.4 Quarter Rating. Keller claims that it’s the highest full quarter rating of all-time but even if you don’t count the over-run 9.2 rating from the 5/10/99 edition of Raw, there was a quarter where they drew an 8.6 so it isn’t exactly true. Still, it was a healthy rating and a sure sign of both The Rock and Foley’s super-stardom.

The rest of the show wasn’t much to write home about. They set a few matches up for the PPV, pushed Droz (vs. D’Lo), Prince Albert (vs Big Show) and The Holly Cousins (vs The New Age Outlaws) and put on a main event match that everyone was keen to see.

Maybe I read ahead and missed it, but I believe there was a big rumour going around that The Rock was supposed to go over Triple H on this show. Reportedly the WWF had been on the fence with The Rock as of late but had been completely sold on him when the fans EXPLODED when they thought he won the belt at Unforgiven. Allegedly there was a lot of in-fighting before in the end, they did the deal where the Bulldog ran down and ruined the match.

Speaking of the Bulldog, the opening promo between him and HHH was brutal. HHH came out and cut an unremarkable promo about Unforgiven and his upcoming match with Austin before Bulldog came out to demand a title shot. Not only were some of his lines really silly (Game...BOY!) but he was slurring lines left right and centre to the point where fans couldn’t understand what he was saying. The whole deal with the Bulldog feels like a charity case so that Vince can win some members of the Hart family over after what happened to Bret and Owen. And damn it if he didn’t succeed and enhance the tension within the family.

WWF Note-Book
- JR Blog Highlights
- The Undertaker is set to be out of action for six months
- Brian Christopher is set to return
- WWF has no intention of bringing Taz in just to be a mid-card guy
- WWF are looking to build a partnership with FMW, which is why HBK has been sent over as a special guest referee
- And put the Vampiro to WWF rumours to bed

WWF RAW IS WAR
10/4/99
East Rutherford, New Jersey

The Acolytes defeated The New Age Outlaws, Kane & X-Pac and The Holly Cousins
Edge & Christian defeated The New Brood
Fabulous Moolah and Mae Young defeated Ivory and Miss Kitty
Chyna defeated The British Bulldog via DQ
The Dudley Boyz defeated Mankind & Stevie Richards
The Rock defeated Chris Jericho

The biggest talking point in the WWF right now is the departure of Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara. Both writers decided to quit straight after Rebellion, leaving the WWF in the lurch. Their departure caught the WWF flat footed, leaving us with a very ho-hum edition of Raw. The show was kept fairly simple and they didn’t try to stretch themselves too creatively, opting to follow up on angles that occurred either on SmackDown or Rebellion.

The highlight of the show was easily the Rock v Jericho segments. Even back then, both guys had tremendous chemistry on the microphone and they were able to achieve so much with so little. The segment began as another Rock n Sock improv session before it transformed into a nice repeat of Jericho’s debut. It was pretty clear that both guys were just improvising, but the material was so golden (you think you impressed The Rock because you beat some guy called Juventud?!) that they actually did a great job of salvaging the segment.

For a long time, I thought this was the match Jericho was referring to in his second book where he threw a cup of spit all over The Rock by accident, earning him heat with the one guy he really got along with. As it turns out, that was a house show match in Augusta Georgia right before Unforgiven. Their rematch was actually a lot better, dare I say, even better than the Cage match from two nights before? The only hitch is that right before the finish, the arena suffered a black-out so there was this pregnant pause of about five seconds where you couldn’t see anything until they got a spotlight on the match. It didn’t really hurt the match any, but Jericho could be onto something about the Jericho curse.

It’s a shame Jericho’s opening stint has been so shaky since he’d make a much better PPV opponent than the Bulldog who is clearly half a step off where he needs to be.

Apart from that, I found the Terry Invitational Tournament match between Edge and Christian/New Brood to be sadly disappointing. It just seemed like neither team were in-sync and the one spot they set up (the spear spot from King of the Ring) was poorly executed.


WWF Notes
- The October 5th edition of SmackDown saw Droz suffer a broken neck that would leave him paralysed to this very day.
- Keller interviewed Russo on why he left the company. It’s everything you’ve heard before, they introduced SmackDown but weren’t willing to give Russo a raise so he left, fair enough as well.
- A few people were concerned that Russo was taking advantage of Mae Young’s willingness to do anything. Last week they had Ivory strip her in the evening gown match before throwing her over the top rope.
- The Blue Meanie has been shelved, which is why Richards is doing this directionless parody gimmick
- There’s rumours that the WWF are about to sign Kimona Wanalaya. JR denied them on his blog, but Kevin Kelly contradicted the report on Byte This stating she had meetings in WWF Headquarters
- Originally Jericho was supposed to go over The Rock on this week’s edition of Raw but since Russo left the promotion, those plans were changed to where The Rock defied the interference and won clean
- The issue wrestlers have with Jericho is that he doesn’t know how to sustain heel heat in his matches

WWF Rebellion
10/9/99
Birmingham, England

Before I begin, I should mention that Jerry Lawler wasn’t present at the show, leaving us with Michael PS Hayes. I have a lot of time for the soon-to-be Hall of Famer but it’s obvious that he was given little to no notice and was on auto-pilot for the entire show. His performance really dragged the show down a lot and made me feel as if I was watching WWF New York or one of those cheap syndicated shows.

WWF INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
Jeff Jarrett defeated D’Lo Brown

Before the match began, Jarrett challenged any woman in an arena to a match and if he lost, he’d pay them a 1000 quid. Chyna accepted the challenge, beat down Jarrett and left him sprawled out near the announcer’s desk. To make matters worse, he was on the losing end of a coin toss so his IC championship was on the line in the champion v champion match against D’Lo.

A real solid opener, both guys knew how to work a up-tempo mid-card match and it flowed nicely. After being in the driver’s seat for most of the match, D’Lo fell for the ol’ apron trick (performed by Miss Kitty) enabling Jarrett to smash D’Lo with a vacuum cleaner he brought down to the ring for his pre-match promo.

The Godfather defeated Gangrel
Typical Godfather squash, only thing of note is that the UK hos were more scantily clad than usual and weren’t afraid to rub up on the commentary team.

Val Venis defeated Mark Henry
Typical Venis squash

WWF WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
Ivory defeated Luna Vachon & Jackie & Tori
This was better than most women’s matches by virtue of some fun four-way spots. They did a bit more comedy but by this point this was around three short matches in a row.

Chris Jericho defeated The Road Dogg
A really solid match, Jericho seemed to click better with Road Dogg here and they laid out a simple but solid match. The only blemish here was the finish, where Jericho won with a simple low blow.

WWF INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
Jeff Jarrett fought Chyna to a No Contest
Before the match could get underway, The British Bulldog interfered and hit Chyna with the Running PowerSlam.

Kane defeated The Big Show
These two didn’t have chemistry, resulting in another bumbling match that relied heavily on people being impressed with Kane working lighter.

The British Bulldog defeated X-Pac
I should make mention that the British Bulldog has been all over the show. It started off with him barging into Vince’s office, demanding a championship shot before throwing a trash can that happened to knock out Steph. Then there was the Chyna incident which would lead into the main event. It’s funny because this wasn’t much of a match, Bulldog controlled most of the action, X-Pac teased a few comebacks but the Bulldog won this clean as a sheet.

Edge & Christian defeated The Acolytes & The Holly Cousins
A decent if not meandering triangle tag match. Apparently creative forgot that Edge and Christian had already earned their WWF Tag Team shot at No Mercy since the number one contendership was up for grabs again.

WWF CHAMPIONSHIP
STEEL CAGE
Triple H defeated The Rock
Very reminiscent of the Steel Cage match these two had in lieu of Fully Loaded. They worked a fairly simple cage match until there was a referee bump that let them brawl outside before the British Bulldog reared his ugly head and we got this big cluster of an ending where HHH was able to escape over the top.

Overall – UK PPVs have the reputation of being nothing more than a glorified house show. This show did things differently, giving us a few angles moving forward but sadly most of them had to do with the British Bulldog. The WWF are trying their best to make this guy seem relevant but like the Bossman it’s clear that his best days are behind him. The reason why the Attitude Era feels so fresh is because they’ve been able to pull the trigger on new guys with potential. While the WWF were in desperate need of talent, they were about to learn that they couldn’t just bring in anyone to feud with their mega-stars. At least not if they wanted those stars to be happy or deliver quality content.

WWF RAW IS WAR
10/11/99
Atlanta, Georgia

Billy Gunn defeated Crash Holly
Ivory fought Mae Young to a No Contest
The New Brood fought Edge and Christian to a Double Count-Out
X-Pac defeated Farooq
The Headbangers defeated Chris Jericho and Curtis Hughes
The Godfather (with 20 hos) defeated Mark Henry
The Big Show defeated The Big Bossman via DQ
Steve Austin and JR fought HHH and Chyna to a No Contest
The Rock n Sock Connection defeated The British Bulldog and Val Venis

The go-home edition of Raw, so for the most part this was merely an infomercial for No Mercy.

In spite of the quality and lack thereof, Vince would have been beaming with the turn-out for the show. 33 375 fans packed the Georgia Dome for the WWF’s debut at the venue and the boss made sure he’d be the one to open the show as he came out to introduce Austin. You would think with such a turn-out, the WWF would have thrown caution to the wind and given fans a huge match ahead of the PPV – perhaps a Fatal Four-Way involving Austin, HHH, The Rock and The British Bulldog. Instead, we got a tag team match with HHH and Chyna challenging Stone Cold Steve Austin and Good Ol’ JR.

Strangely the match did not main event the show. The actual main event saw the Rock n Sock begrudgingly team up to take on their respective No Mercy opponents The British Bulldog and Val Venis. They had a decent main event match capped off with some classic McMahon toilet humour as the British Bulldog suffered a Rock Bottom and a People’s Elbow on a board of dog faeces.

HHH/Chyna vs Austin/JR had to settle for the prelim spot on the show. And as you would expect, this was anything but an actual wrestling match. The match dissolved quickly with HHH and Chyna kicking the seven shades of shit out JR before Austin ran down, made the save and smacked HHH around the arena. This left Chyna and JR to duke it out in the middle of the ring where it appeared as if the 9th Wonder of the World was going to pick up the easy victory. However, Jeff Jarrett attacked Chyna from behind, threw her into a big laundry container and proceeded to push the container to the parking lot where he threw Chyna down the ramp ala New Age Outlaws on Cactus Jack and Chainsaw Charlie, except nowhere near as memorable.

Beyond that, the show was in a holding pattern in the build up to No Mercy. So only a few angles progressed and they weren’t big deals by any means. Namely, Chris Jericho attacked and walked out on Curtis Hughes in their match against the Headbangers. The show also marked the introduction of the Bossman/Big Show storyline. In a random segment, D’Lo Brown comforted a distraught Big Show who revealed that his dad (who had actually passed away years prior) had terminal cancer. Later on in the show, Bossman made it known that he didn’t care about Big Show’s personal life and then proceeded to beat the Big Show with his nightstick in their short match up.

On a positive note, the X-Pac v Farooq match was a neat television match that was everything it needed to be.

WWF Notes
- Jarrett’s contract is coming up and he could show up on next week's Nitro. So the WWF knew the desperation of the situation well ahead of time.
- Corny weighed in on the Russo departure and basically said the exact same things he’s said in shoot interviews ever since except he predicted that he’d be out of the business within 2 years.
- JR also weighed in on the situation on his blog, rebutting comments that Vince McMahon had little to no involvement with creative.
- Keller addressed a few of the points raised, stating that Vince McMahon only cares about major storylines and that a few angles have been dropped because they didn’t have any idea where they were supposed to lead to (eg. Test and Steph)
- Jericho admitted on his website that his ring-work hasn’t been up to par, citing ring rust as the issue
- Jerry Lawler appears to be out of the race in his bid to become Mayor of Memphis
- Shawn Michael’s is happy with the FMW deal since it gives him the opportunity to send his TWA students over
- WWF is interested in Miss Congeneality. The ECW valet has experience in WWF appearing as one of the Godfather’s Hos
- Russo was highly respected backstage for his work-ethic and his creative ideas
- On the other hand, Ferrara was considered a goofball who only lasted because he was friends with Russo
- SmackDown is beginning to have adverse effects on the health of wrestlers. On TV days, wrestlers have to be at the building early in the afternoon to shoot vignettes and go through their different roles. The schedule has become so much that wrestlers are falling asleep on the lock room floors just to make it through.

WWF No Mercy
10/17/99
Cleveland, Ohio

The Godfather defeated Mideon in 7:30
A last minute addition I wish they would have saved for Sunday Night Heat. The match is a continuation of a storyline from the go-home edition of SmackDown where Viscera attacked The Godfather after Big Pimp Daddy defeated Mideon. Logic would dictate that it should be a Godfather/Viscera match but since Big Vis is so limited, we get a rematch instead.

Before the match, King reminds us that Mideon prefers the company of farm animals, particularly when they’re dead. That maybe the most disgusting factoid I’ve ever heard of a wrestler. Apparently that’s his gimmick about it because in his in-ring pre-match promo Godfather makes a reference to it.

As bad as the match appears on paper, it wasn’t that bad in execution. I enjoyed the logic involved in the match with The Godfather clearly being the better guy only for Big Vis, the catalyst for the entire match proving a nuisance effectively making it a two on one match. If you were new to wrestling, it would be very easy to discern the babyface/heel as everything Mideon does is just ugly. He maybe sloppy when he comes to execution but Mideon has sound psychology and knows how to lay out a match.

One aspect I really enjoyed about the match is that The Godfather didn’t begin his comeback until he took care of Viscera. As soon as he caused Vis to charge into the ring-post, Godfather went straight to the finish hitting the Ho-Train before rolling Mideon up with a surprise inside cradle for the finish. The pin caught me completely off-guard and while he didn’t go over-board, I thought as if the Godfather went the extra mile here and gave us different spots we typically don’t see from him. For instance, during a short-lived hope spot, he went for a Vader Bomb which is a move I’ve never seen him attempt before.

Not my idea of what an opener should be, but a solid effort from both men nevertheless. The Godfather was really over with the fans, was one of the better promos in the company so he’s always a safe bet to have on your undercard on any show.

Backstage, Michael Cole is standing by with Triple H. One of Triple H’s biggest problems as a promo is that he can be incredibly long winded. This was a good example. Essentially the point he was making was that he humiliated Austin on Thursday and he knows that Austin is going to be madder than he’s ever been in his entire life and he’s going to get the best of Austin. However, that was basically 10% of this meandering recap where he went through every single thing he did on the show. And then to make matters worse, when it came to close out the promos he flubbed his lines, lost his train of thought and the camera just cut-away. This wasn’t one of Triple H’s finest moments.

WWF Women’s Championship
The Fabulous Moolah defeated Ivory (c) in 2:50

Ever since Jeff Jarrett attacked Mae Young and the Fabulous Moolah in the lead up to Unforgiven, the WWF have gone completely ham on the two Hall of Famers and pushed them as the stars of the women’s division. Now it’s easy to be critical of the booking here and there’s plenty of substance to those critiques but I’ve got to give it up to both ladies. Now I’ve seen countless legends in that position completely half-ass it and turn up to events where they were in completely no shape to wrestle. And I’m talking legends, guys we like to mimic or tout as good wrestlers to boost our esteem. At 76 years of age, both Mae and Moolah took some hellacious bumps and while it wasn’t the prettiest match and they clearly had little to no business being in the ring, both girls really gave it their all so it’s difficult to be overly critical.

A sad indictment on women’s wrestling? Absolutely, but Moolah seriously was a better option than others on the roster at the time. At least people cared about her and she had some clue of what she was doing. It was just being able to do it that was the problem.

Backstage, Vince McMahon is sitting with Triple H in his office. He informs Triple H that he’s aware of Hunter’s strategy to push Austin’s buttons until the Rattle Snake gets himself DQ’d so he’s going to make tonight’s match a No Holds Barred match. Triple H was not amused.

The Holly Cousins defeated The New Age Outlaws via DQ in 10:32
This was another instance of the TV getting in the way of the PPV. The match was supposed to be a Tag Team Championship match but on the go-home SmackDown, the Holly Cousins cost the Outlaws the belts rendering this bout a mere grudge match. Poor build up aside, this was a really solid undercard tag team bout. It started with the Outlaws meeting the Holly’s on the ramp, still pissed off from what happened to them on Thursday and both teams brawling on the outside. They brought it to the ring where the Outlaws dominated the early going, with Road Dogg getting all his signature spots in before he was sent flying off the top rope.

Dear god, that top rope spot was brutal. Road Doggy Dogg jumped as high as he ever jumped and then hit the ground with the saddest thump you’d ever heard. As painful as it was, it made for a great transition spot and the rest of the match was just the Holly Cousins on the offence. I’d say the heat section made up for at least 6 minutes of the match, and as good as Road Dogg was as the babyface in peril, the Holly Cousins simply couldn’t capitilise on the heat section and they lost the crowd in parts. Finally, the D.O. Double Gee was able to hit the superplex, make the hot-tag and we went straight into the finish. I’ve been meaning to bring it up, but Billy Gunn’s hot tag offence looks eerily familiar to something you would see from Luger or Sting. Clothesline, Clothesline, Milatary Press, Milatary Press, Stinger Splash, Stinger Splash and just to rub it in he throws a bit of Goldberg in the mix with a Jackhammer. It doesn’t get the job done, but it looks like a Fameasser will until Holly perfectly slides a chair on the ring and Crash’s head makes contact with the foreign object. The referee sees this and disqualifies the Outlaws.

DQ finishes on PPV are really weak. In fairness to the match, they had been building some tension between the Outlaws and the referee so it didn’t feel completely out of the blue like it normally does. So in that sense, they tried their best to make the finish work but it was weak and they should have let it been more decisive. This just felt like a cop-out victory for the Holly Cousins and if they were the ones going over it should have been through pinfall.

WWF Intercontinental Championship Match
Good Housekeeping Match
Chyna defeated Jeff Jarrett in 9:56

We all know the story behind this match. A week out from the show, the WWF realised Jeff’s contract would expire just before the show and were desperate to re-sign him. Jeff had no intentions of signing the deal and took the WWF to the cleaners agreeing to do the job for a sum of money said to be in the six figure range.

Did he half-arse it? While the match wasn’t as good as the encounter at Unforgiven, this was one of the better hardcore matches of the year. A large part of it goes to creative who picked all the weapons, but Jeff, Chyna and Miss Kitty all took their lumps in this match and the fans ate it all up. Jeff was a real trooper in the match, taking all kinds of head-shots and bumps in order to give Chyna a big rub on the way out. And to Chyna’s credit, she took some nasty bumps as well including a few receipts from Jeff who got her good with the trash can.

The highlight of the slapstick portion was when Jeff and Miss Kitty decided to have some fun and bake a Chyna cake. Of course it all blew up in Jarrett’s face with Chyna knocking a bunch of flour into Jeff’s eyes but they had some really fun ideas and Lawler had a field day calling the match on commentary.

The only big issue I had with the match was the finish. For whatever reason they did a tease where Jeff won the match, but since the Intercontinental Championship wasn’t considered a household item, the match restarted enabling Chyna to get the win. It was just awkward and wasn’t as big a deal as it should have been.

Was Chyna’s reign a sad indictment of the Intercontinental Championship? Perhaps, but the damage had been done in February with that horrible Ryan Shamrock storyline where they traded the belt around like it was a trinket. At least Chyna was a bigger star here than Val Venis or Goldust and won the belt in a meaningful moment. In an ideal world, maybe she gets overlooked but if you were ever going to pull the trigger 1999 was the year.

The Rock defeated The British Bulldog in 7:15

The Rock certainly pulled the short straw here. As much as I appreciate a comeback story, the Bulldog had no business being in this position. He could barely move around the ring, was never a quality promo and just wasn’t in the Rock’s league in terms of stardom. And this match reflected all of that. It was unfortunate as well since it really hurt The Rock as there were clearly times he was thrown off by Bulldog’s performance and would lag on certain moves or wouldn’t bump as well as he could.

The sad thing is, The Rock kept it very simple. He started off with his go-to, by throwing Bulldog over the top-rope where they could execute all the familiar but engaging spots on the outside before he surrenders control to the heel. However, even here Bulldog was messing up spots and just seemed off. You could tell The Rock had enough and just cut him off, hurting the flow of the match and leading to one of my favourite bumps of 1999. The Bulldog was working the Rock over in the corner, tried to whip him over to the other corner, reversal and the Bulldog decides to do a backflip before reaching it – it was ridiculous. Anyways, they’re blowing spots left right and centre, The Rock has to restart a swinging neck-breaker, Bulldog takes a good ten seconds to get a suplex going after a few attempts and they can’t even execute a snapmare. Eventually they go to the finish with the Bulldog hitting the running powerslam to silence. The Rock hits both The Rock Bottom and People’s Elbow to a huge reaction to give the fans something to smile about, because boy oh boy, this match certainly wasn’t going to achieve that.

Terry Invitational Tournament Ladder Match
The New Brood defeated Edge and Christian in 16:40

What else needs to be said? This was a career defining match for both teams as they simply went out there to make a name for themselves. Sure, it wasn’t technically brilliant and at times the selling felt spotty but the pros definitely outweighed the cons. While there were moments where it felt like they just went and hit spots for the sake of hitting them, what I liked is that a lot of spots were built around them trying to win the match. A guy would find themselves within an arm’s reach of winning the money, go for it, only to take a big bump. That happened half a dozen times and while it was perhaps one time too many, I really couldn’t fault it.

Aside from the sound psychology of the match, I also liked the creativity on display. The cannonball-ladder spot made for a great visual (albeit extremely dangerous as we’d learn over the years) and I even liked the finish where a freak accident occurred and Jeff Hardy happened to be the last person on the ladder.

In 1999, in-ring ability rarely earned you a bigger push. The only guys who appeared to get more in-ring time based on their performances were the McMahons which tells you all you need to know. Not only did this match make the Hardy Boyz into stars, it also breathed some much needed life into the tag division which had quickly turned into a joke. One of the few 1999 matches that’s worth going out of your way to see.

Backstage, we get a replay of a segment from Sunday Night Heat. Mankind is searching for the Rock to give him a copy of his autobiography. The Holly Cousins point Foley to the men’s bathroom where Mankind has a full-blown conversation with a man he thinks is The Rock. But then as he leaves they do the deal where The Rock was walking through the hall. Foley returns to the bathroom where he’s ambushed by Venis who leaves him laying. It was sort of a dumb segment but this feud needs all the heat it can get plus we need a comedown from the previous match.

Speaking of, The Rock comes out to cut an in-ring promo. He goes through all his usual catchphrases and in the middle of it declares that he’ll face the winner of tonight’s main event at a later date. As he’s walking to the back, HHH leaves him laying with his sledgehammer before the EMTs break it up.

Val Venis defeated Mankind in 9:18

As a Foley fan, I’ve got to admit that this was a stinker of a match. Foley was really out of shape at this point and while he tried the best he could to work around it, his body simply wasn’t up to it. He couldn’t do much of anything physically and he was limited in the bumps he could take so he was like a sack of lard out there. Venis really tried to work a good match but he had so many issues facing him that there was nothing he could do.

For the most part, this was a one-sided affair with Venis executing a bunch of bland offence on Foley but there were two things I wanted to raise. Firstly, the entire match seemed to exist solely for the finish where Venis won by squeezing Foley’s balls as hard as he could with a sock puppet. That in of itself sums up the match. The other point is that the match made a mockery of the Hollys/Outlaws match by implementing the steel chair in a really inconsistent way. This wasn’t a No-DQ match, yet Long showed a bunch of discretion with a steel chair. On a show where one referee was really sensitive about the issue and another not was just really shakey writing.

But yeah a fairly brutal match, definitely one of the weakest Mick worked as an active member on the roster.

Four Corners Elimination Match
X-Pac defeated Kane, Farooq and Bradshaw in 10:15

I really wasn’t looking forward to this match when I saw it announced but I thought it was a genuinely well put together match. It was also a real feather in the cap of X-Pac who was the glue who held everything together. In particular, watching back these old shows, I really like X-Pac’s attention to detail. There’s very few times where he’ll rely on a weakness of his like his punches. He’ll typically go with kicks or find other ways to take the big guys down that’s believable and brings the fans into it. Then on top of that, he knows how to tell a story.

For instance, in this match X-Pac is a career mid-carder who wants to make the next step up and prove himself against the ‘big boys’. Apart of that is taking on his team mate who doesn’t want to hurt him, so you get these nice dramatic moments where the tension is palpable that both guys do a really good job of building to.

As solid as Kane was, if I could give away a silver medal it would have to go to Farooq. He wasn’t in the ring long, but when he was everything he did was on song. He sold Kane’s enzuguri like AJ Styles – a tremendous display of athleticism, executed a sweet shoulder tackle and his signatures all looked spot on. The only thing he stuffed up was the finish where he went for a head-butt which Pac was able to counter into an X-Factor. The timing was little off there and I’m not sure who’s to blame but it’s a shame because if it was hit well it would have made the match that much better.

Outside of the finish, I thought the match dragged a little bit with the Acolytes taking Pac apart but otherwise I thought this was a fun prelim match and Pac did a good job of getting himself over.

WWF Championship Match
No Holds Barred
Triple H (c) defeated Steve Austin in 21:50
It’s well known that around this time, Austin was struggling with numerous injuries and was limited in what he could do. As a result, a lot of Austin’s work feels the same but I can’t act as if it wasn’t effective even if it isn’t necessarily my cup of tea. What I liked about the match is that they didn’t waste any time and the match began with both guys brawling around the ramp. One thing I hate in grudge matches is where a match will start off in the ring and we have to wait to get to this stage, so I thought it was a good call to start it wild off the bat.

The brawl lasts a good ten minutes, until Austin slings HHH into the referee around the barricade leading to the first false finish of the match. Austin brings Helmsley into the ring and hits the Stunner only for there to be no referee. He tries another one, only to eat a pedigree but Hebner is just a fraction of a second late enabling them to protect their finishers. I like that after all that brawling, both guys went for their biggest spots and teased the finish right then and there as it just made sure they had everybody’s attention.

HHH and Hebner did their little bit where HHH tries to bully Earl and Hebner stands up for himself. It’s a fun little bit and enables Austin to retain control of the match. After executing his Lou Thesz Press and Middle Finger Elbows spot, Austin takes the match to a new environment in the announce table. He’s looking to inflict punishment on Helmsley so he starts using the cable to choke Helmsley out, only for HHH to gather a ring bell and knock Austin for a loop before suplexing him into a table. I loved that transition and finally HHH has his opening. We get a nice heat section where HHH targets the knee he destroyed at SummerSlam and works it over time and time again. He eventually hits the facebuster and thinks he has the match won but Austin kicks out five times sending HHH into a rage. HHH grabs a steel chair looking to end Austin, but it backfires on him allowing Austin to go into beserk mode and just smash HHH with shot after shot. One thing that I didn’t notice but it adds another element to a match down the line is that it was very similar to the finish of Wrestlemania 17. Now JR makes the point that this was the exact move that nearly ended Austin’s career at SummerSlam, so the finish of Mania 17 can be symbolic of Austin trying to avenge that (and even this) moment.

Austin goes for the killer blow, only for HHH to get in a desperation low blow. With both men down, who else but the Rock makes his way to ring-side with sledgehammer in hand. He swings for HHH, hits Austin, HHH takes The Rock out with a Pedigree pins Austin and everyone is in shock.

What I like here is that instead of just taking the finish on the chin, Austin gives HHH enough time to celebrate the win before chasing after him on the ramp and he tries to get him some before the Game flees through the Taxi.

Like I said, it’s not my style of match. I’m not huge on crowd brawling and there was a lot of that here but the decision making process and the way they were able to tell a story with so many restrictions impressed me. They had a good understanding of the audience, the attention to detail was good and everything they did do was executed well.

WWF RAW IS WAR
10/18/99
Cleveland, Ohio

Kane & X-Pac defeated The Dudley Boyz
Viscera defeated The Godfather
Test defeated The British Bulldog via DQ
Val Venis defeated Al Snow
The Big Bossman defeated The Big Show via forfeit
The New Age Outlaws defeated The Acolytes
The Holly Cousins defeated The Rock n Sock Connection to WIN THE WWF TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS

One aspect of 1999 that the WWF handled really well was their post-PPV shows. Typically companies would use these shows to give you a follow-up on what happened on the PPV and it can be really predictable, but the WWF typically used these shows to feature fresh talent that may have been lost in the shuffle.

For instance, on this show the Acolytes received some much needed character growth in the form of their poker gimmick. Despite being two relatively good promos, Farooq and Bradshaw had little room to display their personalities, so this backstage set-up was the perfect opportunity to get them to interact with other superstars and gave the show a nice change of pace. The debut edition of their poker show saw them take on Jericho’s former lackeys, Curtis Hughes and Howard Finkel. They robbed poor ol Curtis blind. So much so, Curtis got desperate and put poor ol’ Howie up for grabs. It was one of those bits that was so ridiculous that it was always going to get over one way or another.

On top of these forgotten guys receiving angles, you also had a bunch of PPV matches coming together on the show. In the first fifteen minutes of the show, the entire stage was set for the WWF Championship match at Survivor Series, later on in the show Jericho cut a great promo on Chyna to set up their match and then you had other angles to set up Bulldog/Test & Bossman/Show. There was no confusion on the direction of the company and the guys could commit to their angles.

Raw itself centred around the relationship between the Rock n Sock connection. Foley’s gimmick at that time was shilling his amazing autobiography and when Al Snow informs Foley that he found the Rock’s copy in the trash, Foley is a broken man. They have him cut a ‘Cane Dewey’ esque promo on The Rock setting up the main event tag title match which was basically a handicap match. Now normally when they do this deal, they usually have the tag partner simply no show, but they actually had Mankind show up without his mask, turn his back on the ring and just sit and mope in the corner. It was a great visual and the fans responded to it amazingly and were dying to see Mick have a change of heart. It never happened and in the end despite all the odds, the Rock could not overcome the interference of Triple H and took the pinfall for his team. There were a few blown spots so it wasn’t a good match by any means but the storyline here was pretty good. There was a moment in the post-match beat-down that I thought was just awesome where Austin threw HHH back into the ring and you’re led to believe that he and the Rock are going to execute this 2-1 beat-down. However, as the Rock is about to hit the People’s Elbow, Austin flips The Rock off, The Rock does his best stunned mullet impersonation as Austin hits a stunner on the game. So while it appears that there’s going to be a title change at the PPV, the WWF is throwing enough elements around to really heighten the suspense. Can Rock/Austin co-exist? What involvement will Vince have on the match? Is Foley going to get involved? Order the PPV to find out!

Finally, this show had two moments that I just wanted to touch on. Firstly, the Venis/Snow match was a really fun five minute sprint where both guys went out there and had a god damn wrestling match free of all the usual Attitude era tropes. It wasn’t one of the greatest Raw matches of all-time or anything, but it stuck out like a sore thumb and was surprisingly good and Venis looked the best he’s ever looked in ’99. Then in the Acolytes/Outlaws match, the top rope broke and both teams had to improvise on the spot. They actually did a decent job and made the issue work for their match.

Actually I lied, third moment – Big Vis versus Godfather was a surprisingly decent three minute match. The Godfather worked around Big Vis’ size and hit a few more light heavyweight moves to compensate and Big Vis hit his sweet rolling kick which looked great from a game his size.

WWF Notes
- Terry Taylor, Kevin Kelly and Bill Blanks (WWF Magazine Writer) were in charge of creative last week.
- Since Russo and Ferrara's defection to WCW shocked a lot of people, Vince has offered his staff a loyalty pledge that would prevent them from working with WCW for a year
- Lots of backstage rumblings. Three staffers (WWF Website, JR's talent relations assistant and a publicist) have been let go and many expect Terry Taylor to return to WCW in the coming weeks.
- There's some whispers going around that Austin has agreed to do a heel turn

WWF RAW IS WAR
10/25/99
Providence, Rhode Island

Viscera defeated The Godfather
Edge & Christian defeated The Holly Cousins via DQ
Ivory defeated The Fabulous Moolah to WIN THE WWF WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP
Big Show and Prince Albert fought to a no contest
Chyna & D’Lo Brown defeated Chris Jericho and Stevie Richards
Mankind defeated Triple H via DQ
Kane defeated Buh Buh Ray Dudley via DQ
Steel Cage – Test & The British Bulldog fought to a No Contest
The New Age Outlaws defeated Steve Austin & The Rock

After a seven month absence, D-Generation X are officially back together. The popular group made their presence felt in the main event where HHH & X-Pac interfered on behalf of the New Age Outlaws to close the show out. It was a timely decision to bring the group back together, HHH desperately needed some better minions than The British Bulldog and Val Venis so his old stablemates were a safe choice.

Interestingly, Chyna was not apart of this incarnation. She’s in fully fledge babyface mode and they’ve very quietly split HHH and her up. She no longer accompanies HHH to the ring and she’s now got her own manager in Miss Kitty who randomly just started doing her Mini-Me gimmick on the post-No Mercy show. I’m glad they were hush hush on the break-up, it would have served only to complicate things and HHH needed to break away from using Chyna as a crutch as that had been his gimmick for two years at that point.

Outside of that, I thought this was a strong show.

It opened up with another surprisingly decent Viscera/Godfather match. Before the match started, Viscera grabbed the microphone and made a deal with the Godfather where if he (Big Vis) won, he’d get the services of the hos. To help increase his odds, Vis informed Henry that if he won, he would let Henry do whatever he wanted to the hos. This made sense because the Godfather was trying to teach Henry how to deal with his sex addiction, so there was enough motivation for the turn. After Henry cost Viscera the match, Big Vis attacked some of the hos to really draw some heel heat. I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying this match.

Too Hot made a surprise return, costing Edge and Christian the tag team titles after a hot start to their match with the Holly Cousins. The Hardy Boyz made the save, seemingly setting up their match for the Survivor Series.

So much happened last week that I didn’t get an opportunity to put over the Big Bossman. Over the past couple of weeks, he’s been cutting some great prick promos mocking the Big Show and this absolutely trite storyline involving the fake terminal illness story. Last week he paid off a police officer to convince the Big Show his father had passed away, just to avoid wrestling him and being able to pay him out not once but twice. This week he knocked him out with a hammer before destroying the Big Show’s family heirloom. Now, this angle should be one of the dirt worst, but Bossman’s commitment to the role is just so strong that I can’t help but be entertained by it all.

The Mankind/Triple H match was a really strong TV match. Both guys just know how to work against each other and the fans were invested through out. I’ve been really tough on HHH in my reviews, but to his credit, he’s easily one of the best guys at working a body part. In this match, he worked over Foley’s shoulder and the effectiveness of that work drew the fans in. So much so, they popped huge when Foley made his comeback and looked to have won the match. Ultimately Venis interfered so Al Snow could make the save and form his short-lived pairing with Mick but this was a nice treat after some of the past Foley matches.

Another feud I find myself enjoying is this Dudley Boyz v Kane feud. I wasn’t a fan of the decision to have the Dudley Boyz revert back to their 1996 personas. However, here it made perfect sense and there’s nothing better in entertainment than a hypocritical bully. Here’s Buh Buh who’s clearly insecure about his stammer, paying out on Kane because he has to use a voice box and he’s just going for broke on the poor guy. It’s attracting good heat and gives the Dudleyz somebody more relevant to work with than the freakin’ Headbangers.

I wasn’t a big fan of the Steel Cage segment. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Tests’ big elbow off the top and Shane’s flying cross-body but that was a lot of risk for such little reward. Had they done this on a PPV and had a clear winner and a clear loser it would have been great but it just seemed like they made way too many compromises here and what we got was this huge mess where the babyfaces didn’t get as over as they should have.

Finally, there was a random segment right before the main event where the Acolytes, who had not been on the show prior, found themselves at a local bar. They were there trying to have a drink when they were approached by two racists who were trying to start shit with Farooq and the Acolytes just went ham on these guys and it turned into one of the coolest brawls I’ve seen in the WWF. As I said, there was no build up or anything, it was just this segment that felt like it could have been on any TV show and yet the action here was unreal.

WWF Notes

- Jarrett was paid $200,000 at No Mercy. The deal included back-payments on house shows, PPV bonus’ and to work the match with Chyna on the show.
- Taylor has taken a two-week hiatus as he weighs up his options. Vince wants him to sign a no-compete clause, but Taylor wants a promotion and wants to write the TVs.
- With Russo, Ferrara, Blanks and Taylor gone, Vince McMahon wrote this week’s edition of Raw
- The Rock called out the Road Dogg in the Richmond Times. Apparently it was a response to an earlier story from the Times, where the Road Dogg said some off-colour remarks about the Rock. The Rock called the Road Dogg insecure and found it funny that established main-event talent like Austin and The Undertaker has his back, but somebody who isn’t on his level is trying to create drama.
- WWF are desperate for more heels. Viscera is in line for a main event push while the likes of Test, Mankind and Kane are considered options for a heel turn.
- Miss Congeneality has officially signed a WWF developmental deal. She worked her final ECW show on October 23 and is scheduled for breast implant surgery on October 28th