The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW – 11.13.95
Taped…again…from Brandon, MB. FOUR WEEKS from this shithole 2000 seat minor league hockey arena.
Your hosts are Vince McMahon & Jerry Lawler
So apparently Kid and Ramon have broken up during the house show tour, so Gorilla Monsoon has declared the main event tonight a non-title match because Kid is the special ref and shenanigans might result. Never mind that the match was taped weeks ago and they spent last week hyping the title match while knowing full well they weren’t going to deliver.
Hunter Hearst Helmsley v. Henry O. Godwinn
Hunter sends Henry into the stairs and sprays him with some perfume, as he was kind of picking and choosing from better gimmicks at this point. So Godwinn decides to slop himself and Hunter slips in the debris and runs away. No match. I note to my wife that the guy flopping around like a clown and running away now runs the WWE. She’s not surprised.
Hey, let’s take a look at Shawn Michaels, because he’s not on this show quite enough as of late. Man, once they turned him face and decided that they knew better than the fans what people wanted to see out of Shawn, they killed his cool factor dead.
Ahmed Johnson v. Jake Steele
This was Ahmed’s RAW debut, and he shrugs off the jobber’s offense and levels him with a clothesline. Spinebuster and the Pearl River Plunge finish at 2:25. This was impressive enough to somewhat wake up the dead crowd. Vince calls it a “tiger bomb” and I believe the nerd rage from the DVDVR crew on RSPW is still percolating to this day. Ahmed cuts a post-match promo and Vince is all “All right, thank you very much” and totally ignores whatever he said.
Barry Didinski shills the 1996 WWF calendar. My parents used to buy me one of those every Christmas!
Bret Hart and Diesel have a face to face interview to continue stretching this week of tapings out. So there you go, the last time Kevin Nash would ever sniff the WWF title was this show. This was long and dull stuff.
Speaking of dull, Vince McMahon engages in battle with Jerry Lawler via Karate Fighters, and Lawler cheats to win. Yes, Vince McMahon actually booked a worked Karate Fighters match.
King Mabel v. Roy Raymond
Nearing the end of the line for Mabel as well. He pounds away on Raymond, throws him around, and finishes with a belly to belly at 3:00.
Sid v. Razor Ramon
1-2-3 Kid is YOUR special referee. Vince lists all the times that Ramon and Kid have broken up on the house show circuit, which pretty much gives away that you’ll see the same stuff night after night. I mean we KNOW already, but why advertise it, ya know? Sid attacks and stomps Ramon down for two, then follows with a chokeslam and continues his thrilling stomping and forearming. Was it ever explained what the deal with this was, anyway? Was it originally filmed as a title change and then altered in post-production when Sid quit, I wonder? Ramon comes back with an attempt at the Razor’s Edge, but Sid backdrops him over the top while Dean Douglas joins us as we take a break. Back with Sid busting out a backdrop suplex for two, and a legdrop for two. To the chinlock, but Ramon escapes with an electric chair and Sid damn near breaks his fucking neck taking the bump wrong. At least they didn’t book him to jump off the second rope. Ramon, however, does, and hits the bulldog for two. Razor’s Edge, but Kid pulls Sid down and the powerbomb finishes via fast count at 11:50. So the Kid is now part of the Corporation, although nothing is done with the belt so it must have been done as a non-title match in the arena. Decent enough match. **
Next week: Shawn Michaels v. Owen Hart in a match you may have heard about before. Things are gonna start getting wacky now, folks.
