The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW – 06.20.94

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The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW – 06.20.14

Sadly, the Network is skipping the COUNTDOWN TO THE CROWNING.  So this would place us at the night after King of the Ring.

Live from White Plains, NY, in an arena that at least looks slightly less embarrassing than the last set of tapings.

Your hosts are Gorilla Monsoon & Randy Savage.   I miss Vinnie Mac already because this gonna be a fucking trainwreck.

Diesel v. Mark Thomas

So Vince is off getting grilled over steroid distribution and they put Steroid McSteroid out there as a jobber?  Dude’s built like Scott Steiner and you can practically see his testicles receding into his scrotum.  The jobber gets a couple of shots in and then Diesel tosses him and Shawn beats on him outside.  Sideslam, Snake Eyes and we go to a neck vice as this live show is really kicking off with a bang!  Big Kev finishes with the Poochiebomb at 4:00.  Shawn actually LEAVES HIM HANGING on a high five and Diesel is forced to do the “smoothing his hair” move to compensate before they repeat the spot and get it right.  Poor guy.

King of the Ring report with Todd!  He lays out the Jim Neidhart heel turn (and why didn’t we just get the Hart Foundation v. Shawn & Diesel?)

The 1-2-3 Kid v. Nikolai Volkoff

Winner of this gets a title shot at Bret Hart to possibly make this the most random #1 contender match ever.  Funny bit with Volkoff being announced as hailing from the “servant’s quarters” of Dibiase’s summer residence.  Volkoff overpowers the Kid and puts him down with a sort of spinkick.  Gorilla:  “I bet Dibiase literally bought and paid for this shot at the title.”  Savage:  “No kidding, how did you figure THAT out?”  Gorilla was not good at this point.  No wonder they got JR back.  Kid fights back with kicks and has his comeback cut off by a butterfly suplex that gets two.  Kid with a rollup for two and finally he’s had enough of selling and fires back with a series of kicks for two.  How could they be talking about the New Generation while Volkoff was out there lumbering around stuck in 1982?  Volkoff with a backbreaker for two, but he picks the Kid up for some reason.  Kid appears to blow out his knee on a missed leapfrog, and Volkoff takes too long to put him away and gets pinned at 6:08.  *1/2  The Kid was FAKING, you see.  Seriously, it was 1994, Sean Waltman should NOT have been fighting from underneath Nikolai Volkoff.  The Dibiase crew does a beatdown, but Virgil saves in an interesting bit of storyline that never went anywhere, much like everything else with this deal.  They could have had Virgil trying to liberate Volkoff or maybe turning on him and going back to bodyguarding Dibiase again or something.

Yokozuna v. Nick Barbery

Coming back from commercial, Gorilla sums up the show:  “We’re live and you haven’t missed a thing!”  How true.  Yoko slowly beats on the dude while Gorilla points out that Typhoon is returning to get revenge for Earthquake.  And don’t forget Bam Bam v. Mabel next week!  Belly to belly and legdrop finish at 2:23.

Typhoon v. The Black Phantom

Were we REALLY supposed to buy Typhoon as a serious threat only a few months after Shockmaster?  When you’re so terrible that even WCW doesn’t want you, you suck.  Typhoon tosses the mysterious masked jobber around with suplexes before finishing with the big splash at 2:33.

The King’s Court with Duke Droese, as Lawler makes reference to Ace Ventura because Droese is smelly.  And we never even get an interview, as Lawler continually insults him until he walks off, causing Lawler to attack him with his OWN GARBAGE CAN.  The layers of dramatic irony are…oh, wait, it’s a commercial break, never mind, I don’t care anymore.

The Heavenly Bodies v. Russ Greenberg & Jim Powers

And we get ANOTHER pair of super-roided jobbers!  Also, I have the same Looney Toons tie as Jim Cornette.  So yeah, the Bodies have wings on their robes now, because WCW.  Powers holds his own while Cornette is just killing it on commentary, hyping a tag title match against the Headshrinkers that I don’t think ever happened.  Powers gets a small package on Dr. Tom and then makes the error of tagging in Greenberg, and he promptly gets killed while Cornette reinforces that the Headshrinkers are STUPID.  How stupid are they?  Well, he’s got about 15 examples and they’re all funny, but the point is that they’re STUPID.  Cornette almost made this god-awful show worth watching all by himself.  Del Ray finishes with the moonsault at 4:00.

Gorilla apologizes profusely for the garbage cans that were used as a weapon earlier, and the Powers That Be have issued a statement CONDEMNING Lawler for using them.  Objects will only be used for the thing they were designed to do on this show from now on!  Well that was bizarre.

Meanwhile, Ted Dibiase wants to manage Lex Luger.  Well that was random.

Next week:  Bam Bam Bigelow v. Mabel!  And the messed-up dating is back!   BE THERE!