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Humanizing Undertaker somewhat was the right move to make at this time, and they manage to do so without sinking to the "too into his character" stuff from '99. Later, Undertaker would attack Vader and Bearer would drop the bombshell that Kane personally told him what to say, because Kane was still alive.

"YOU'RE A MURDERER, UNDERTAKER. YOU'RE A GOD-DAMN MURDERER." Bearer spills the beans, almost bursting a blood vessel in the process. This ended up working, but at the time it felt like Black Scorpion Redux.

When does that ever happen in real life though? Look at pretty much every political scandal. The standard MO is deny, deny deny, obfuscate and only when you're dead to rights is there a half-admission of guilt. Maybe when Undertaker went back with Bearer, there was some language in the manager's contract that meant Bearer was guaranteed the first face-time to discuss the incident if it should come to that...or something.

Meltzer seemed to think the Sunny Days comment was a teaser with Sunny getting involved at KOTR and helping Bret win. This little side piece adds to that theory, even though it went nowhere.

The house show title change was a Terry Taylor idea, apparently. Until now I wasn't aware that this match actually existed on tape--unfortunately it's not much a match. Jericho is pretty resoundingly booed for his win. This is 1997 Internet so it was a pay-per-listen deal, I believe with Bob Ryder and possibly Scott Hudson on the call.

Lawler hypes this up as well as he can. He's more of a moustache-twirling villain here than he was "shooting" the previous week.

PJ desperately trying to look like Konnan, and looks and sounds hopelessly like a trust fund kid pretending to be a street thug.

Everyone hates Brian Christopher, but no one as much as Billy Travis. Wolfie D and JC Ice are back out! They're dressed in jeans and ECW t-shirts rather than their old gear. They praise ECW to the heavens while mere days ago they were complaining about the stinking Yankees they had to wrestle in front of.

Hype for Lawler & Christopher vs. Dreamer & Sandman in Memphis.

Sort of a Nitro-by-numbers finish, and Sting kind of looked dumb surrounded by fans at the back of the lower bowl while Page was getting killed. Again, they compounded their mistake of teasing Sting by also blowing the Hennig reveal on Nitro. Not that I think it would have worked much better had they held him off, but it may have helped.

Worth repeating, Rodman was HUGE in '97. Won a title with the greatest NBA team ever, was constantly in sports headlines for various controversies, dated Madonna, had his own show on MTV. Probably a bigger deal than Mike Tyson, actually.

No one quite seems to know just how legit Miller's martial arts credentials are, do they? He does ground the whole Blood Runs Cold feud a bit, though.

This was supposed to be Faarooq & Ahmed, but naturally Ahmed blew out his knee in the DOA brawl, as the horrible rash of injury luck continues for both the WWF and Ahmed personally. Vader abuses D'Lo while Bearer browbeats Undertaker in the corner. Undertaker finally clobbers Vader which leads to a Faarooq spinebuster and pin. Undertaker tombstones Vader after the match! Okay, that was great, and I'm guessing it wasn't decided yet that Vader was stepping in at the PPV for Ahmed. Bearer scurries for cover, and announces that he's telling the secret next week. I have a sneaking suspicion that this whole angle will actually come off better in hindsight, considering how objectively successful the Kane gimmick turned out to be. I'm also looking forward to seeing if this really is the run of Percy's career--right now I'm partial to his call-to-action run as a WCCW babyface, but there's no question he did some good work with some horrible material in 1997 and '98.

We open with highlights of the first Triple Threat Match on WWE television--Owen Hart retaining the IC title over Goldust and Triple H. Bret is back! He draws huge heat for declaring him and the Anvil a better tag team than the LOD, then talks about Ken Shamrock coming out of the Ultimate Fairy Championships and brings up four Hart sisters who will keep Marlena in line. Bret finally targets his wrath at another "thief"--Thomas "Hitman" Hearns. Hearns ain't no Dennis Rodman by 1997 in terms of Q rating and I could have done without Ross begging for this to air on SportsCenter, but this is still a good, heated segment.

I did like Ahmed going back to the injury that cost him his title shot and calling out Undertaker for being a "slave" to Paul Bearer, but then he rants about how MLK got shot for being nice and Louis Farrakhan being alive because he doesn't play by the rules, and just...ugh. This stuff doesn't have the panache and the "realness" of when New Jack was saying similar stuff--the environment is wrong, and Ahmed comes off as a guy playing a role rather than a legitimately unhinged thug. D'Lo is starting to get more face time, which I approve of. We end with the sterling debut of the Disciples of Apocalypse. Security and police show up despite this not being particularly chaotic in the face of what we've seen with the Hart Foundation the past few weeks.

Lawler's doing a great job shifting his tone for these promos in a new environment--no jokes, no shtick, no one-liners, just venom. He outs Paul E. as someone angling for a job working for Vince.

Dreamer cuts a promo while EMTs work over the back of his head. Dreamer now has something to live for.

Big cheers when it's announced that Travis has been behind on alimony and child support. I don't know if *that's* the proper reaction, but this was some tremendous on-the-fly thinking on almost all parties. Lawler is out to respond to a complaint letter sent to the studio by ECW and continues to throw out challenges. Moving to the Burning Question--Lawler laments that wrestling was better when there was some mystique to it. He points out that seeing the latest Jurassic Park movie was helped because Steven Spielberg didn't pop up on the screen saying, "Hey, these aren't real dinosaurs!" Oh, Jerry...it's going to get worse before it gets better. (And gosh, most of us Indians fans were glad to be rid of Albert Belle.) Lawler ultimately decides he isn't going to answer, then tells Christopher he can't answer, either...which pretty much answers the question. A really good, quick, shoot-looking physical altercation follows.

Dutch will soon be back to tell it like it is, because we all suck. He demands to be allowed to stick to his busy schedule of drinking and gambling.

It was even crazier than that: when the police showed up at the studio, Lawler was actually able to hold them off and talk them into allowing WMC to film everything. Lawler either wielded even more power in the city than anyone could have realized or he was the smoothest talking motherfucker in history, or both. Crazy stuff and it's incredible that Travis and Biggs stay in character for all this.

Zouev looks like a better-groomed Dean Ambrose here--it's weird to watch. It's not like I've ever had anything negative to say about him before, but this is the first match where Tamura really does look to me like a Best in the World candidate, as seems to be the trend of his GWE discussion at the moment. His escapes and counters are absolutely breathtaking while never looking rehearsed--it's a huge contrast to the matwork I saw earlier today involving Chad Gable, Jason Jordan, and Ciampa/Gargano--that was a good match, but the difference in how cooperative or non-cooperative the hold exchanges looked is palpable. Zouev struggles to control the pesky fucker but manages to catch him in a cool-looking shoulder hold to put him away. Excellent match, one of the better bouts of the month.

PG-13 work the crowd spectacularly, playing up the Southern vs. Yankee element. This is the perfect ECW house show opener as booked by 1977 JCP-era George Scott: there's no out of the ring brawling, no weapons, no blood, nothing that would set the bar too high for what's to come but well-worked in its own way. I actually wasn't all that impressed by Spike here--he's into his spastic, "special" character before the match and doesn't do anything badly per se, but doesn't do much to grab your attention either--he basically just serves as a punching bag. Mikey is better but was also working on one knee for most of '97 and has had better performances elsewhere. This is a PG-13 show all the way, masters of heel miscommunication but also providing a lot of really cool offense, now that they're in with two guys they can actually throw around. Wolfie's huracanrana into the turnbuckle was a highlight, as was his awesome apron clothesline to cut off a potential Spike comeback. Please tell me that there's a PG-13/FBI match out there.

Not a good sign when Kronus has to carry the action all by himself for his team. He gets protected anyway, as it takes interference from Big Dick Dudley to put him down.

Muraco was supposed to be on Warrior/Beefcake's team (because of his feud with Valentine). JYD was supposed to be on Jake/Duggan's team.

Terrific match, maybe the best lucha trios match of '97 so far. Just non-stop action but everything makes sense and everyone gets some time to show off their stuff, with great urgency from the beginning when the technicos blitz Santo and pin him after a superbomb. Bestia's presence gets paid off wonderfully as he's taken out by a Santo tope by accident, which also removes Santo from the match.