The Undertaker has new theme music! Alright! He still sucks! McMahon, Austin and
'taker did their usual decent to great work on the mic. I've talked about these
guys doing that a millions times before. It might be nice to see an actual wrestling
match open up Raw for once.
D-Lo's mic work shows promise, his delivery is good, but his material ain't that
great. Vader's being wasted, blah, blah, blah but this was a borderline good match
'cos D-Lo worked hard and Vader was very generous with the selling. The finish
was lame but at least it wasn't screwy and Vader was shockingly given a victory.
I took some amount of pleasure in watching Steve Williams get dumped on his no-selling
ass. If nothing else, the Brawl for All gives the undercard guys a legitimate shot
at moving up the ladder and Bart Gunn took full advantage of this opportunity. I
hope Williams still gets a big push though 'cos the WWF needs some serious new
faces, not to be confused with babyfaces, at the top of the mix.
Jason Sensation as Owen Hart was a real cut up yet again. Then his dad Dan
Severn came out to protect him. The ensuing melee was notable for the cool
Sharpshooter reversal by Severn but there wasn't much else to make a Hart
vs. Severn match something worth anticipating. Just this week I watched the UFC from
back in May and there's a very funny moment involving Ken Shamrock.
Early in the show during a backstage interview, Shamrock's sitting in a wheel
chair, selling the injury from when Owen Hart turned on him. Then at the end
of the show when Pete Williams knocks out Mark Coleman, Ken runs into the ring
to celebrate with Williams. I laughed my ass off.
The Bikini contest winner trophy presentation got good when McMahon stepped up
to the plate and delivered his best piece of work in weeks, maybe months. He
was awesome talking back to the fans and being king asshole to Sable. He's gonna
be the heel of the year.
The Outlaws vs. Undertaker/Austin for the belts was an ok, simple match, pushed
up a notch by the super crowd reactions. It truly boggles my mind that TSN had
to censor a shot of the Undertaker drinking a beer. The post-match was more of
the same, I was kind of hoping they could keep these four apart for a little
while.
It's kinda interesting that Scorpio is teaming with Faarooq since, I believe,
that's who he (Scorp) teamed with in his WCW debut along with the first Bobby
Walker against Cactus Jack and the Barbarian and maybe someone else, or not.
Yep, and that's a hell of a lot more interesting than the match at hand, against
the DOA. Not helping things was Bradshaw on commentary. Really not helping
things was Bradshaw getting involved, and nobody selling a thing, not even
the decrepit Sgt. Slaugher who'll sell for Chyna for chrissakes! Oh, Scorpio hit
a hella nice plancha off the top turnbuckle.
The triple threat intercontinental title match was OK wrestling-wise, but the
booking was shit. First off, what logic was behind the signing of this match?
The Rock shoulda been shouting conspiracy louder than Chris Jericho. Why didn't
DX have a better game plan going in? They didn't discuss which one
of them was gonna get the pinfall? And why didn't they pull the old
I'll-let-you-pin-me DX special? And then to top it all off we get the worst finish
on the show (which is saying something) in a countout. No sir, I don't like it.
Val Venis and Brian Christopher worked with what they had but it wasn't nearly
enough time to make any match good. I like that Kaentai DX are being given
TV time, I just wish they'd get to spend that time wrestling, not perpetuating
old fashioned Japanese stereotypes. Yamaguchi's "I choppy choppy you pee pee" is
gonna be one of the most sublime wrestling quotes of all time. I HOPE they get
to wrestle next week 'cos TAKA & Venis vs. 2 of DX (2, Vince, not all 3, no need
to make these guys look more ineffectual than you already have) has the potential.
The Hawk angle was pretty funny, acting all doped up was his best work in years.
Animal vs. Mark Henry and Kama was an ok, nothing special, match but not ok
enough for me to give it the nod.
Ollie
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