WWF RAW – February 9th, 1998 — Roberts Municipal Stadium — Evansville, IN
Sunny opens tonight’s WWF Raw. It’s Fred Blassie’s 80th birthday, so she reprises her role as Marilyn Monroe to sing, “Happy Birthday Mr. President”. It should be noted that Marilyn would die of a barbiturate overdose three months after that performance.
Too much Scarn, and not enough Scott! It’s time for WWF Raw, coming to you from Evansville, Indiana. Stone Cold comes to the ring with a mystery bag, then challenges Shawn Michaels’s “long-haired ass” to meet him in the ring.
D-X, sitting in the locker room in their new (now long-forgotten) “degeneration-X” tees with a big red slime X, interrupt Austin. Shawn says he punked Austin last week and asks Stone Cold why he should bother coming down there again. Stone Cold says he’s got Shawn’s belt in his bag. Shawn, whom Vince McMahon once called “incredulous”, predictably doesn’t believe him… until he looks in his bag and finds a toy title belt. Shawn now has rest of the night to get it back.
Guest ring announcer Sunny introduces the Legion of Doom, weighing in at “585 rock-hard pounds”. And tonight, they’re going to show the NWA contingent what “hard” is all about. The announcers harp on how much the LOD have been losing an awful lot as of late, and how they need a major overhaul or at least some backup. How about helmets, Droz, and Sunny?
As if to answer all this talk of being washed up, Animal impresses with a big sunset flip on Jeff Jarrett, follow by a less-impressive small package attempt. Hawk then tags in and runs shoulder-first into the ring post, dropping to the floor like a sack of potatoes. While the referee is busy not making the illegal men leave the ring, the rest of the NWA very loudly batter Hawk. The match having devolved into a tornado tag, Jarrett slaps the Figure Four on Hawk while Windham and Animal slug it out. Bradshaw chases off the NWA team, causing the Road Warriors to lose by DQ.
This Sunday is No Way Out of Texas, whose logo now includes those last two words, albeit in a different font. It’s a shame this didn’t start a naming tradition, but “No Way Out of Connecticut” wouldn’t have the same ring to it.
The Quebecers and the Godwinns, who each cost each other matches on Shotgun to different halves of the Boricuas, send one half of their respective teams to do battle tonight. This Sunday, they’ll face each other two-on-two to determine Shotgun Saturday Night’s third-best tag team.
In a big ol’ meat match, Pierre brawls with Henry Godwinn, who Kevin Kelly calls pound-for-pound the strongest man in the WWF (because he doesn’t know what “pound-for-pound” means). Pierre then randomly hits a tope suicida over the top rope onto Henry, followed by a top-rope leg drop and a missed top-rope senton bomb to make that first move seem less random. Jacques trips Henry and hits him with a bucket (which the French Canadian had brought to the ring), so Phineas retaliates and hits Pierre with a different bucket.
Backstage, Chyna interrupts a Boricuas poker game to try to get their help in retrieving Shawn’s belt. The conversation is all in Spanish, except for when Savio says, “Hey, what’s your f***ing problem!?” Chyna says she needs help finding Steve Austin, because he stole Shawn Michaels’s belt. And she wants the Boricuas to bring it back. Although she uses the indicative rather than subjunctive mood of the verb traer, the Boricuas understand. As for money, Chyna says not to worry, and that they’ll take care of them like the last time.
Brian Christopher and Pantera, who on Shotgun had a miscommunication with Taka Michinoku, face the Light Heavyweight champion and Águila. Mr. Kitty faces Taka this Sunday for the title. As the team of Táguila fly around and out of the ring, JR promises to keep viewers “abreast” of Chyna’s search for Stone Cold.
After the break, Too Sexy swings at Taka with a foreign object and misses, but Pantera picks it up and hits Michinoku from the top rope. Christopher picks up the pin before WWF Raw goes to another commercial.
Kane and Paul Bearer walk “through hellfire and brimstone” to walk to the ring for a promo. In it, Bearer condemns Vader for using a fire extinguisher on Kane last week, which he calls a “lethal weapon”. For whom, Charmander? Bearer says he’s tired of “Vader Time”, so he has Kane burn a clock with Vader’s face on it. The two masked men will meet this Sunday in a match where timepieces are barred from ringside.
The Foot Action Slam of the Week is the Rock’s Rock Bottom (or as Jim Cornette calls it, a “urine-odgy”) on Tom Brandi from Shotgun.
“We’re All Together Now” opens WWF Raw’s second hour, the War Zone. Faarooq & The Rock take on Ken Shamrock & Chainz, with each team accompanied by their respective No Way Out teammates. Ahmed Johnson marks his last WWF Raw by egging on a “Rocky Sucks” chant, which drowns out The Rock’s remarks on “human genetic cloning”. Rocky says the only person worthy of being cloned is himself. Unfortunately, this experiment would go horribly wrong when the clone, named “Dwayne Johnson”, grew to twice the size of the original.
Ken Shamrock takes down Faarooq with strikes, leading The Rock to tag in and the rest of the Nation to complain about closed fists. Apropos of nothing, Jim Ross name-drops Gordon Solie, who will be honored this week in Florida. Also apropos of nothing, Jerry Lawler says that if the United Nations were as united as the Nation of Domination, they wouldn’t be having problems with “this jerk Saddam Hussein”.
Faarooq accidentally crashes his ballz onto Chainz’z kneez, allowing the Disciple of Apocalypse to tag out to Shamrock. While the two factions brawl at ringside, Ken locks in the ankle lock but lets go after The Rock smashes him right in forehead with a chair. Faarooq pins Shamrock, who then wakes up and goes nuts on The Nation. And the referee. And Chainz. It appears Ken is in his “zone”, just like all those dead football players they studied. As Shamrock breaks down in tears, one of the white supremacist twins consoles him with a hug.
At the recent WrestleMania press conference, Vince McMahon promised an “extrava-gahn-za beyond extrava-gahn-zas” in front of a huge collection of what Lawler repeatedly called, “press people”. McMahon announced Mike Tyson’s role as outside enforcer, where he will act “in somewhat of a guest referee capacity” and things of that nature.
Mike Tyson, when asked what attracted him to the WWF, cited Bruno Sammartino and the Valiant Brothers. Will they be at WrestleMania, too, or did Tyson misunderstand the question? In contrast to Tyson’s rather inept answers, one learnéd guest at the press conference called Steve Austin an “uncouth imbecile”. It was Tyson. “You want to hurt somebody, you want to kill somebody”, said Iron Mike. “Try loving somebody.” Putting this philosophy into practice, Tyson played peacemaker between Austin and Michaels.
The incident led to lots of coverage on TV and in New York papers, including a Diario headline reading “TrucoManía” (meaning, “No one in the WWF office knows Spanish”).
Speaking of español, Los Boricuas and Chyna scour the halls of the arena looking for Austin. They find Harvey Wippleman. Chyna then barges into the men’s locker room, shoves another five-footer, and kicks in the stall doors, but finds no Stone Cold.
Steve Blackman is in the ring working out with glow sticks. No one gets into heaven without a glow stick! He faces Bull “Recon” Buchanan. Unlike the Truth Commission, Steve Blackman has actually been to South Africa, where he contracted malaria nine years earlier.
Seconds into the match, the Jackyl’s music begins to play. As he descends from the ceiling, Don Callis makes a speech at a podium about the WWF’s “systematic shmear [sic] campaign” against him. There being few Jackylites in Evansville, the crowd boos Callis (and ignores the match). Anyway, Blackman beats Recon with an arm bar. After the match, Jackyl berates and slaps Buchanan, who stops just short of hitting him back.
A former NWA champion is allegedly negotiating with Jim Cornette to join his stable — call the WWF Superstar Line to find out why you should care.
To enrage the Indiana crowd, the New Age Outlaws sport t-shirts of a rival kids’ sports team. They then reflect on the grievous bodily harm they did to Terry Funk and Mick Foley last week, which put the duo out of action for over an hour. They play a replay and even push another dumpster off the stage (or as they call it, Runway 69). Speaking of which, they pull two blow-up dolls, dressed as Chainsaw Charlie and Cactus Jack, out of the fallen dumpster.
Backstage, Los Boricuas search for Austin, who sneaks by and locks them out of the arena.
In the de facto main event, The Artist Formerly Known as Goldust enters once more to his “Beautiful People” stand-in theme. Showing a disappointing lack of creativity, Goldust wears the same outfit as last week. On the plus side, this spares us from having to see him in a thong and ball gag or whatever. He’s accompanied by Luna, Marc Mero, and Sable, who Jim Ross says is “no Lewinsky” despite being treated like an intern.
The theme for tonight’s WWF Raw is members of rival teams wrestling each other before their matches No Way Out. Thus, Thrasher will wrestle Goldust (who teams with Mero this Sunday versus the ‘Bangers). Mero banishes Sable to the back before WWF Raw goes to commercial.
Both men’s allies interfere on their behalf, but Goldust’s is better at it. Since Mosh can’t counteract Luna, Sable has to do it herself, marching down to ringside against Marc’s orders. When the cleverly-named “Marilyn Mansondust” gets in Sable’s face, she slaps him, allowing Thrasher to roll him up for the victory. Sable slaps Luna, too, before Marc pulls them apart, leading Jim Ross to anticipate a catfight this Sunday night.
Backstage, D-X march toward the ring as WWF Raw goes to its final commercial break.
Shawn Michaels, drunk with anger, calls out Stone Cold. Austin brings the stolen belt with him, which he uses to fend of D-X and the New Age Outlaws. As a chainsaw sounds, Austin and the heels have a stand off, during which Chyna sneaks away the belt Austin drops.
Cactus Jack and Chainsaw Charlie climb through the ring, followed by Owen, who takes the more traditional route but nearly bumps into Terry’s chainsaw. D-X then retreat with the belt. As WWF Raw goes off the air, Jim Ross says someone’s going to get hurt at No Way Out. Or before it, seeing as Shawn Michaels won’t wrestle due to injury.
Final Tally:
Marilyn impersonators: 2