WWF Monday Night RAW: Taped 11/18. Hosted by Vince McMahon and Jerry "The King" Lawler. - Shawn Michaels is live in the studio this week, supposedly to apologize for his comments last week. Also we are promised a look at an altercation involving Sid, Steve Austin and Bret Hart last Wednesday. - FLASH FUNK vs. THE GOON Flash is accompanied to the ring by the "Funkettes." I don't think I can adequately describe how insulting (and just plain lame) this gimmick is. Who's idea was it to dress him like a pimp? At least he looks more like an overweight Evel Knievel than an underweight Elvis this time around. The Goon jumps him in the ring and takes control of the match early. Flash recovers quickly, sending the Goon to the floor and following with a plancha from the second turnbuckle. He then nails a moonsault off the top to the floor. Back from the break and we see Flash in control. The Goon turns things around with a suplex, then an elbowdrop off the ropes. Flash seems to gain control again, but misses a moonsault. Let me briefly interrupt by mentioning that McMahon announces that we will see a special segment devoted to Tiny Tim. How depressing - not Tiny Tim's death, but the fact that they're going to use time on RAW to remember him. Back to the match and Flash downs the Goon with a belly-to-back suplex, then hits a 720 degree suplex into a legdrop off the top turnbuckle. Flash gets the pin. - Clip of an installment of RAW from 1993 in which Jerry Lawler interviews Tiny Tim. Tiny calls Lawler "Dairy Queen." Lawler grabs Tim's ukelele and smashes it to bits. Oh yeah, that's how I'd like to remember Tiny Tim - on his knees crying! - PHINNEAS GODWIN (w/ Hillbilly Jim) vs. DIESEL Diesel takes command early with a Sidewalk Slam and a big legdrop. Razor Ramon comes to the ring and distracts Godwin long enough for Diesel to deliver a big boot to the midsection, followed by the Jacknife. Jacobs has got the Diesel act down quite well, and really does resemble him physically. Diesel with the pin. - Shawn does a remote interview that is worlds away from his last one. I've never heard Shawn speak so much without actually saying anything. - Jesse James comes to the ring singing "With My Baby Tonight." Knowing just how sick of this song we WWF fans are, they cut away to take a commercial break. - "DOUBLE J" JESSE JAMES vs. JUSTIN "HAWK" BRADSHAW (w/ Uncle Zebekiah) They'd like us to call him "Double J." They also now spell his name "Jesse Jammes." Can I decline on both counts? In the grand tradition of Jim Duggan vs. Big Bubba, Bradshaw wins via a clothesline (but only after Uncle Zeb grabs Dubba J's boot.) After the match they brand James on the arm. Jesse James now has zero credibility left if you ask me. (That, and he cut off all his braids. He looks really nerdy now, especially since he won't take off his shirt. Face fact Brian - you're getting fat! You're already ugly! You can sing, but... who cares?!) - Since Mr. Perfect is now gone from the WWF, they had to scrap his and Sid's Karate Fighters match. They claim that Sid no showed, and that Perfect was shown up by Hunter Hearst Helmsley, or something. Anyway, Lawler and Todd Pettengill fill in. Lawler wins, advancing to face Sable in the finals. - Recap of the Austin attack on last week's show, as well as clips from last Wednesday night in England. Austin knocks out Sid with the WWF Title belt in the course of a match between the two. Out comes the British Bulldog and he and Austin come to blows. This causes Sid to lose the match by disqualification. Austin has left by now. Sid attacks the Bulldog and sets him up for the powerbomb, but out comes Bret Hart to make the save. Bret and Sid then stare down as Owen Hart comes out and helps the Bulldog back to the dressing room. Austin then returns and hits Bret from behind. Sid then grabs Bret and chokeslams him. Finally we get comments from Austin, Bulldog and Owen, Bret and Sid. I'm not sure how all this is going to wind up, but it is kinda cool. - JAKE "THE SNAKE" ROBERTS/"WILDMAN" MARC MERO (w/ Sable) vs. HUNTER HEARST HELMSLEY/BILLY GUNN They start off showing us what happened last week between mero and Gunn. Then they cut in with Jess James challenging Justin Bradshaw and Uncle Zebekiah to a handicap match. Then we get this miserable, boring dog of a match. Roberts and Gunn wrestle the majority of the time. By the end Roberts is so out of breath and in pain that he collapses in the corner. Match mercifully ends when HHH and Billy get bump accidentallt and begin to argue. Helmsley says if he doesn't like it he can leave, so he does. Roberts and Mero then doubleteam HHH. Mero picks him up in a Fireman's Carry, the delivers a Samoan Drop. He finishes Helmsley off with the "Wild Thing" and the pin. Jake, gut bulging, sweat glistening off his bald spot, lies in the corner holding his back, gasping for life giving air. After a few moments he regains enough of his breath to get up and dump his snake Revelations on Helmsley. - Next week's main event: Undertaker vs. Mankind in a "No Holds Barred" match. Also Goldust vs. Bart Gunn and Sid vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley, non-title. Comments: What a terrible week for RAW! Flash Funk looked good in his RAW debut, but it was only against the Goon. Even mentioning Tiny Tim was shameless namedropping. The Diesel match was a good place for a standard squash (see later on for more on this notion) and the Bradshaw/James match was the start of another pointless, entirely unanticipated feud. Shawn's interview was just an excuse to do something live and put Michaels' mug on screen. The only high spot was the clips from Britain, then they killed the rest of the show with the pointless tag match. I've mentioned in the past my ambiguity towards tag matches in general, and outright dislike for matches where the teams are made of established singles stars specifically. It's even worse when it's a rematch from a dull singles match from the previous week. The crowd was downright bored and silent for the entire show. WCW Monday Nitro: Live. HOUR ONE: Hosted by Tony Schiavone & Larry Zbyszko. - Rick and Scott Steiner interrupt Tony and Larry and issue a challenge to Sting to appear later in the show. Scotty is again wearing that silly looking black leather outfit that he favors for live TV appearances. They show clips of Sting's attack on Rick Steiner last week. - GLACIER vs. HARDBODY HARRISON Harrison is presumably another Power Plant graduate. Glacier no-sells all of Harrison's punches, chops and kicks him in the corner, then finishes him off with a spinning savate kick. Glacier's intro lasted far longer than the match itself. - Several Cincinnati Bengals are among the crowd wearing NWO t-shirts, along with a number of semi-pro hockey players wearing WCW shirts. (This week's Nitro originates from Dayton, Ohio.) - THE AMAZING FRENCH CANADIANS (w/ Col. Parker) vs. RENEGADE/JOE GOMEZ the Canadians sing their anthem as the crowd chants "U.S.A.!" The Canadians have little trouble with the scrubs, Renegade being allowed one brief sequence to look good. At least it was short. Rougeau piledrives Renegade, then assists Oulette in landing a senton off the top turnbuckle, followed by the pin. - Mean Gene interviews Arn Anderson. Arn reminds us that Hulk Hogan is beatable, that Arn himself did it two successive weeks on Nitro. Mean Gene announces that Roddy Piper will put in an appearance next week on Nitro, which will take place in Charlotte, the home of the Four Horsemen. Arn says that the Horsemen will have a summit meeting with Piper, and that Hogan is welcome to show up if he'd like. - FACES OF FEAR (w/ Jimmy Hart) vs. ROBERT GIBSON/SCOTTY RIGGS Clip of The Giant chokeslamming Meng is shown. Gibson and Riggs work well enough together, but I thought this match went on much too long. The Barbarian puts Gibson down with a big boot, but only after Robert and Scotty are made to look pretty good. After the pinfall, Riggs chases the two off with a few chair shots. Now this is one of the things wrong with WCW's booking in my opinion. The Faces of Fear are the guys getting the build-up, having already been scheduled for the next tag title shot. So what does WCW do? Have them only narrowly win a match against two inferior opponents. Why make them look so less than dominant? How are we supposed to think they have a serious chance at beating the Outsiders when they barely won this one? This is one of the things the advent of Nitro has perhaps ruined about wrestling: the traditional squash match. This is a case where a good, quick squash would have been far more effective. WCW would say that it just goes to show the quality of tag team wrestling overall in WCW, but c'mon... does anyone really believe that Gibson & Riggs will have any serious impact on the tag team ranks? I might have felt different if it had been a good match, but it was the typical "I beat up on you for a while, then you beat up on me" match. Squash matches have their purpose, and Nitro raised the stakes in the Monday Night Wars by eliminating most of them outright, and masking others by using mid card wrestlers whom they've given a few victories to (Alex Wright, Renegade, High Energy and Billy Kidman to name a few examples.) The WWF was forced to follow suit. This is just my opinion, but I feel this has forced an overexposure of their top wrestlers, made the midcard guys look less impressive (because they're forced to wrestle and lose so often) and has made more legitimate main event level matches that much harder to build. Why order a PPV when you get that caliber of matches every Monday for free? Then when the Monday night wrestling drops in quality, how do you get the audience to expect more on the big cards? Their answer to this is the large number of non-definite finishes (DQ's, countouts, etc.,) that we see so often for free. An example was last week's Mankind/Steve Austin match. We all knew there would be no pinfall in that one. There couldn't be... because someday it might be a PPV match. I think this is why the "In Your House" PPV's have done so poorly. They're little more than Monday Night RAW with a Shawn Michaels match added. The difference is that you'll probably see at least one clean pin and a slighltly better caliber of match. Well, longer matches at least. I'm not calling for a return to the days of hour long squashfests, just pointing out that they do have their uses and this may have been a good place for one. - Clips of the Benoit/Sullivan match from Baltimore Saturday before last. This angle is Sullivan's attempt to attract the hardcore fans. Again the two end up in the bathroom, but this time the rest of the Dungeon of Doom are awaiting, hidden in the toilet stalls. They all drag Benoit back to the ring and work him over until Woman comes and tries to save him. Woman jumps on Sullivan's back, then the two are pulled apart and Kevin is held back and prevented from breaking several state and federal laws. - KEVIN SULLIVAN vs. ??? Speaking of squashes - here's one. Schiavone is unable to name Sullivan's opponent ("they didn't tell us who he is.") Another Power Plant grad. Sullivan smacks him about, tosses him around, pours a cup of water on him, hangs him from the "Tree of Woe" and stomps on his belly. Sullivan tells Mean Gene that he's going to bury Chris Benoit alive. - DEAN MALENKO vs. BILLY KIDMAN Another fine showing from Billy "I'm cool because I wrestle like the Japanese!" Kidman. Schiavone reads a statement from the WCW Championship Committee which says that they alone have the power to declare who is or isn't a titleholder, and that the United States Title tournament will take place as planned, no matter what Eric Bischoff says. Match starts with a lot of armbar and headlock reversals. Kidman then gets Malenko with a standing Frankensteiner. A brief resthold ensues, then a sequence of bouncing off the ropes. Malenko leapfrogs Kidman, but Kidman catches Malenko with a flying head scissors. Malenko goes to the floor. Kidman tries to follow up with a plancha, but Malenko dodges the falling body. Kidman manages to land on his feet. Malenko then picks him up and delivers a powerbomb to the floor. Malenko saunters back into the ring as Sonny Onoo comes to ringside to snap a few pictures. Kidman crawls back into the ring and is met with a belly-to-back suplex, followed by a snap mare into a chinlock. Another resthold, then Malenko applies a vertical suplex. After a kick out of a pin attempt, Malenko whips him into the ropes. Kidman raises a boot to meet the charging Malenko, but Malenko pulls up and avoids the shot. Kidman comes out of the corner and Malenko pastes him with an elbow shot. Malenko whips him back into the corner and tries to follow him in, but Kidman again raises the boot, this time catching Malenko. Kidman then hits a dropkick off the top. A Perfectplex follows. Malenko kicks out of the pin attempt. Malenko then tries a powerbomb, but Kidman rolls up and over with the momentum and hooks Malenko's shoulders into a backslide. Dean kicks out. Kidman small packages him and the two trade reversals into pin attempts. Back to their feet and Kidman hits a dropkick. Then the action moves to the corner. Kidman goes up top, but Malenko catches him and suplexes him to the mat. Malenko goes to the top. Sonny Onoo moves in close and snaps a picture. The flash blinds Malenko and he drops to the mat. Kidman scrambles to the top and does the Shooting Star Press. Malenko brings up his knees to block it. Kidman is then down on the mat, writhing in agony as Malenko applies the Texas Cloverleaf for the win. An okay match, but as I've said before, for all his impressive moves, Kidman is just plain dull. No charisma. HOUR TWO: Hosted by Tony Schiavone, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Mike Tenay. - BIG BUBBA (w/ Jimmy Hart) vs. JEFF JARRETT Pretty much your typical Jim Duggan caliber match here. Fast forward to the finish: Jimmy Hart's megaphone manages to get into the ring. Jarret tries a Sunset Flip, but Bubba leans forward and swings the megaphone at Jarrett's head. Jarrett moves away and the megaphone hits the mat. Jarrett rolls Bubba up, but Hart has the ref occupied. Finally a count is made but Bubba gets out. Referee Mark Curtis picks up the megaphone. Bubba grabs it away from him, turns and faces Jarrett. Jarrett lands a dropkick on the megaphone, which then knocks out Bubba. Jarrett covers for the pin. - The Steiners enter the ring and challenge Sting to a match. Sting, up in the rafters, nods his head as a sign of agreement. - As Tony, Mike and Bobby hype the upcoming Sting/Rick Steiner match, the NWO come out and take over the broadcast desk. Bischoff makes up for lost time and his few week's worth of absences. He says the reason he didn't try to sign Roddy Piper was to protect him. Bischoff reminds us of "Van Vader," then runs clips of Hogan beating Vader, as well as Flair getting jumped by the NWO and Hogan beating Randy Savage (whom Bischoff says is "gone, but not forgotten!") He says his office has been flooded by WCW guys trying to sign with the NWO. Bischoff, Hall and Nash do the commentary for the rest of the show. - EDDIE GUERRERO vs. SQUIRE DAVID TAYLOR Hall says they need an Englishman in the NWO. They also feel Guerrero is a suitable candidate. Bischoff also says that the Championship Committee may have jurisdiction over the titles, but as the top ranking WCW executive, he can attach any stiplation to a match that he wants. In this case, the winner of the U.S. Title tournament will have to defend their newly won belt against The Giant as their first title defense. A quick match. Mostly blows traded back and forth until Taylor misses a cross body block off the second turnbuckle. Guerrero then hits the dazed Taylor with the Frog Splash for the win. - Lee Marshall calls in with the 1-800-COLLECT report from Charlotte, N.C. He exchanges words with Bichoff. Bischoff gets the last word by reminding him he's got three weeks to sign with the NWO. - ARN ANDERSON vs. JIM POWERS (w/ Teddy Long) Scott Hall goes off on how he's upset at the level of announcing in WCW. In particular that of Larry Zbyszko. Hall says Zbyszko should stick to playing golf. Bischoff says that when the NWO takes ovber Nitro officially, they'll have much better graphics and lighting. You know... I watched this week's Nitro three times to get all the notes for this recap. I still can't remember what happened in this match, it was that dull. Powers seems to dominate a good portion of the match, but Arn eventually catches him with a DDT. Arn gets the pin. - Back from the break and Bischoff is ordering someone in the production truck to get him a pizza. Oohhh... now that's evil! - CHRIS BENOIT vs. LORD STEVEN REGAL No Woman with Benoit this week. This is another match in the U.S. Title tournament. A great match... I think. Starts off with really stiff shots from each, as well as good solid mat work. Regal then does two or three really hard headbutts, which apparently either freshly busts him open, or more likely opens an older wound on his forehead. In any case, Regal starts to bleed heavily and the camera pulls back - waaaay back! For the next five minutes (I timed it) we get only the one camera angle shot from somewhere across the Ohio border. (It was like watching an ECW match. Not for the blood, but for the one stationary camera.) There's moves off the top rope, hard suplexes and piledrivers. It even briefly spills to the floor. In the end the tiny stick figure that looks like Benoit applies a Dragon Suplex to the ant that resembles Regal for the win. Hall complains about the camera angle and threatens to beat up the cameraman if they don't move in for a closer shot. When nothing improves, Hall makes as if he's going to do it, but the match then ends. Mean Gene interviews Benoit, Anderson and Steve McMichael. Arn wants to know where Woman is? Benoit says she's taking care of Horsemen business, but Arn says being at ringside is Horsemen business and where she should be. Mongo warns Benoit to stay focused. Debra McMichael then takes over the interview, babbling about how Woman is a distraction in the lockerroom. She insinuates that Woman is infatuated with Benoit. She then goes off on a tangent and talks about growing up as, I dunno, a beauty queen or sex symbol or something. Benoit again reassures everyone that Woman is a Horseman. - ROCCO ROCK (w/ Johhny Grunge) vs. LEX LUGER Grunge interferes early on, choking Lex on the bottom rope as Rocco distracts the ref. Three minutes into the match and the only offensive move we've seen are punches. Luger turns things around with a bodyslam. Grunge comes in to break up an attempt at the Torture Rack. Grunge then holds Luger against the ropes. Rocco charges, Lex moves, and Grunge is knocked to the floor. Luger then Racks Rocco. The NWO mull over their relationship with Luger, finally deciding that if they bring Sting in, they'll eventually have to sign Luger too. - STING vs. RICK STEINER Not really a match at all. The Steiners appear first. Then Sting comes out wielding a baseball bat (again.) All through the show the NWO have gleefully spoken of Sting as if he's officially an NWO convert. They cheer him on as he comes to the ring. Hall extends an informal challenge out to the Steiners on the behalf of himself and Nash once Scott Steiner gets healthy. Sting enters the ring, then turns his back on Steiner. Rick nails him from behind. Sting tumbles to the floor and Scott rolls him back in. Rick then pops him one. Sting stumbles back, bounces off the ropes and Rick hits him again, then a third time. The fourth time Sting duck and Steiner bounces off the ropes. Sting catches him and applies the reverse DDT. This is pretty much it, as we then get a replay of what he did with Lex Luger and the bat. Sting leaves, all the while the NWO eagerly awaiting his coming over and officially signing his NWO contract. Sting gets to the entry ramp, stops, points the bat at Bischoff and crew, then reverses his course and exits the arena through the crowd. Bischoff, Hall and Nash act slightly confused, then overly confident that Sting has crossed over and that it's a matter of time until he signs. - Next week's main event: None announced. Comments: I've started thinking of Nitro in terms of "after all is said and done and the show is over, was it worth the two hours of live airtime?" The quick answer this week has to be "no." They spent nearly the entire two hours promising a Sting match. Then we get 10 seconds of Sting no-selling some shots from Steiner. To top it off, they finish by delaying Sting's inevitably telling the NWO to "stick it!" Overall, nothing happened. Hall and Nash are, on occasion, genuinely humorous on the mic. Bischoff on the other hand is still having problems adopting to the new heel persona and in more than one instance lapsed back into his old announcing routine. And what's the deal with the blood? I'm not some kind of ghoul - I don't need to see the blood close up in glorious color, but why refuse to show it, yet allow the match to continue? I'm pretty sure it was a legitimate cut, so why do what they did? If it's going to be their policy not to show blood, then why not do the logical thing and have the referee stop the match? As far as I'm concerned we were robbed of the match anyway. They could have stopped it and announced a rematch on a future Nitro. They could even have restarted the match for the arena crowd after the live show went off the air. That way both the home and event audiences would recieve some level of satisfaction, while giving more than lip service to some vague anti-violence policy. The worst part was that they wouldn't own up to what was going on. When the camera first caught the blood, all three men reacted ("Uh oh!") They never bothered to explain why the camera pulled way back, except to insinuate about halfway through that Sting was making his way through the crowd (which he wasn't) and then Hall's lame attempt at claiming the cameramen were protesting the NWO takeover. I didn't even see the blood until I reviewed the tape, and even then it was little more than a smudge on Regal's forehead. Had it been just a minute or two, I might have not even thought anything of it. But more than FIVE minutes! C'mon! Either you bite the bullet and warn the audience that things are getting graphic, or you stop the match. Ahhh... who'm I kidding... I just wanted to see the blood! Bottom line: Very poor week for both shows. I had really hoped to give RAW the win this week. This week's winner: Nitro.