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When Rich was on offense this was pretty great--great fire (no pun intended) in just throwing everything he can to try to knock Kamala down and Kamala doing some great weeble-wobble selling. Like Abby and ZombieTaker, the best way to get a good match out of Kamala is to beat (or try to beat) the shit out of him. The run-ins themselves are fun and draw tremendous heat, but the idiotic finish kind of sours this. Paul Boesch doesn't even try to proffer an explanation. Why couldn't they just do a DQ?

He was actually still Strike Force Tito in Barcelona, which just makes it weirder. The Booger thing seemed like it was just a way to establish him as, "This guy isn't a total jobber, but don't hold your breath waiting for main events." Same thing they did with Koko B. Ware, teaming him up with Paul Roma to put over the Hart Foundation in his debut. Both guys lost but got heat afterward--Koko cleared the ring of the Harts, Booger went over Virgil next week. Incidentally one of Tito's very last matches in the company was putting Booger over on a house show, which had to be his lowest point.

I think the thinking was they could run an angle like this as an excuse to keep Lex back in the shadows, since they were pretty much out of allowable dates on his contract with him. Rude was there because Sting still needed something to do, and further Dusty was more about overlapping feuds than Vince ever was. Of course, about 10 months after this, there's another twist yet in the mystery box angle.

One of the all-time WTF results for me remains the '89 Survivor Series Showdown, where Big Boss Man did a pinfall job to Tito Santana. Santana wasn't a total job boy yet, but he'd already been left in the dust by Martel and Boss Man was still feuding with Dusty. It wasn't a clean job--Rhodes hit BBM with the nightstick and put Tito on top for the cover--but if I have things right, it was the very first time Boss Man had taken a pinfall on television. And it came to Tito Santana of all people.

The Tenryu squashes may have been originally intended to air domestically. At one point he was supposed to wrestle Lawler at WrestleMania 9.

With Lawler getting $1000 for every minute he could last, I think stalling was absolutely the right psychology there.

Mexican and South American promotions are always crawling with heel refs, of which Gran Davis was the premier one in Mexico at this time. I don't know of anything specific to Konnan beyond that.

I suspect Austin suffered a legit injury the previous night, as we're now in a trend that will last until the end of the year of the WWF roster being decimated by injuries and absences that seem to come at the worst possible time, affecting pretty much every major star. Mankind takes his place after a rather cheap bait-and-switch angle--he and Pillman actually put together a pretty good, gritty, intense little match that nicely covers for Pillman's physical limitations, but the crowd shits on it because it's not the promised and hyped main event, to the point where even Vince & JR have to cop to it. Meanwhile, Vince drops the info that HBK and another Hart Foundation member were asked to leave the building after a "display of unprofessional conduct"--uh-oh. Schmozz finish with Austin being Austin, as he repays Ken Shamrock for saving him by dropping him with a Stunner.

It is too bad that this portion of the interview aired when it did, as Mankind's justifications for wanting to see Shawn Michaels have his career and personal life end in tragedy is some fucking scary twisted logic befitting of the very best heel interviews. Then Mick delves into some meta-commentary that treads on the same heavy subject matters of his anti-hardcore ECW promos--"Let me ask YOU a couple of questions: what is it about pain that I 'love'? You see, I feel pain JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER PERSON. YOU SEE THAT?? IT HURTS. Is it when I can't get up whe my little boy says, 'Daddy, I want to play ball,' and I can't do it? Is that where the fun starts?!" Then his awesome mandible claw attack and apparent immediate remorse. A fantastic and fitting conclusion to a series that will have Mankind in strong contention for the #2 Interview of the Year spot (Austin I think has the trophy locked up).

I love seeing this feud transcend three different promotions over the course of a week. RVD pins Flash Funk clean, which surprises me a great deal. Funk was pretty far down on the pecking order but a few years earlier they were careful not to let the Rock 'n Roll Express even beat Well Dunn on television. Lawler goes in to congratulate him and his met by Paul E. and Dreamer.

That, and the (intentional or not, likely not) sowing of the seeds of the Austin-McMahon feud, with Vince remarking his confusion over Austin's popularity at KOTR and his badgering of Austin tonight. Austin calls out Pillman, throws his hat into the Canadian Stampede ring, then threatens to take out Gorilla Monsoon and Stu & Helen Hart if they get in his way.

Helmsley cuts a mini-shoot promo on Vince's politics postponing his KOTR victory by a year. His promo is pretty generic, but gets better when he has Mankind to focus on. Helmsley is rapidly morphing into the modern-day DX/Game persona as the blueblood gimmick is getting more and more marginalized. Helmsley and Chyna blow off Mankind's challenge for a rematch and then beat him some more with the crown, but Helmsley makes the mistake of leaving it in the ring for Mankind to get, presumably giving him a bargaining chip.

Good match--not a great one, but from memory it strikes me as much better than WM14 despite the less satisfying conclusion. These two actually keep it clean for the first portion of the match--by design, I'm sure, but the incident with the Special Olympian also seemed to throw them off their game for just a few minutes. They smartly elevate this with bigger bumps and more "hardcore" elements but without getting into no-DQ territory, utilizing the barricade and exposed concrete for their big spots rather than chairs and tables. Austin is still dealing with split crowds when working against other babyfaces--he's growing in popularity but he's not an Ace yet.

Not one of Bret's greatest promos but a good enough one, with Bret establishing his return and the 10-man main event of the Canadian Stampede. The real highlight is the confrontation with Vince, JR, and the WWF road agency. Everyone here is great, especially Pillman and Owen ("He can't talk to my brother like that!")

Pretty good finish, with Mankind going all-out to put Helmsley over and getting over as a sympathetic babyface in the process...hmm, I think if this goes into the 2000s I may be able to write that sentence some more. Mankind takes a Pedigree through a table, a shot with the scepter from Chyna, a Nestea Plunge (the photographer's positioning seemed to be designed to give Foley a bit of a break on that bump), and another Pedigree before finally going down. Helmsley and Chyna then rough up Todd Pettingill--maybe the only instance of that ever happening--and then he unconvincingly beats Mankind down some more with a felt and plastic crown.

Todd Pettingill is SO out-of-place in 1997 WWF, and this makes for a weird combo. Not as weird as when Pillman did an angle with the Bushwhackers, but not far off. Austin sneaks up behind Pillman and has a little fun mocking him to delight the fans, then jumps him and gives him a swirlie. Note the magic camera inside the stall! Even though he's finished, it's good to see the Loose Cannon matched up against someone more in tune with his act and who can match it.

Yes, this was the Broken Orbital Carnival, hence Misawa's face at the end. That knowledge adds a ton to Taue's eye work, I'd say--maybe that's what will push Grimmas to giving it 5*.

Has Dave ever watched a fictional TV show besides 90210?

SWERVE, baby. I guess we needed something to end the show with. The Eliminators win in a big upset thanks to Saturn doing an incredibly stupid elbow off the top turnbuckle even though his leg is in a giant splint. I would be shocked--too bad Styles FUCKING TELEGRAPHED THE FUCKING FINISH AGAIN once he declared that Kronus had nothing left and that the Dudleys were going to win the belts a second time. The result was plain as day after that, just a matter of how they were going to get there. You know another thing that was so great about the prior segment? Joey shut the fuck up for most of it.

Yeah, put me down as a guy who doesn't much care about Douglas or Taz, marginally cares about Sabu, and who doesn't hate Dreamer or Raven but doesn't really care about them, either. And this was a fucking awesome rollercoaster ride. I too am not going to go over everything, because there's too much to go over and new viewers shouldn't get spoiled, but a few quick bullet points: - Raven vs. Dreamer as a match is pretty much everything you'd want. It's nothing great, but it's a worthy conclusion to a pretty epic and damned fun feud. Raven trying to run away, Dreamer throwing himself into every bump, and the climax. Maybe a few too many run-ins, but they all made some sense. - The aftermath is holy-shit stuff. As I see it, there are three high watermark moments in ECW history: the double dog collar match between Raven/Richards and the Pitbulls, the Shane Douglas/Pitbull halo angle, and this. Huge heat, the Lawler/RVD/Sabu tandem pushed huge, and a great reaction by Fonzie explaining to Lawler how fucked they are when "War Machine" kicks up. - Taz vs. Sabu is a match I actually liked quite a bit better than the one at Barely Legal. The counters were cooler, Taz's mat stuff was better, and the finish was better. - Taz vs. Douglas wasn't something I cared too much about and the negotiations dragged on a bit, but I did like the amount of thought put into setting this up (which goes back to Taz's first mic spot) and the psychology of the match itself, with Taz and his bad neck going against the master of broken necks. Nothing great and I don't much care about Taz winning the TV title, but even in this I found things to enjoy. ECW hasn't all aged well and the overbooked run-in-mania main events have been a major negative on the business as a whole. But on the rare occasions that it works, holy shit does it work. Calling this marathon a "segment" doesn't do it justice, but this is one of the better "things" of the year of any promotion anywhere.

Good, chaotic finish to the show. Dreamer destroys all the old guys in suits, drops an office chair on Bill Rush, piledrives him on the floor, then clobbers Commissioner Elliot Pollock with a steel chair. Lance's indignance is classic: "THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A GREAT ATHLETE?!" This was a good last-gasp effort from the dying territory, but the most telling part of all this is that the studio audience is almost 100% cheering for Dreamer.

Yeah, why is he continuing to act like Razor after "coming clean" weeks ago? Diesel comes out and it occurs to me that I don't think I've ever heard Glen Jacobs talk in a normal voice before. Diesel spraypaints a yellow streak down Razor's back in a pretty pale imitation of what Kevin Nash had been doing.

Billy has been hiding under the ring with a chair and not one but TWO guitars, one electric, and he goes to town on Brian Christopher with all 3 after Christopher turns down Luther Biggs' offer to be a manager. Luther is far from the worst manager of the post-Jimmy Hart era, but I don't think his big-time-agent gimmick really flies. Travis cuts a psychotic promo about how we all laughed at his music but he takes it serious. Not a bad segment but very Memphis-by-numbers, and Memphis-by-numbers just isn't going to cut it in '97.

A bit out of sorts here timeline-wise, as Lawler gloats about his actions in the ECW Arena and Lance mentions that they showed the tape, but okay. I'm amused by Michael St. John attempting to put Mr. Wrestling over as "carrying on the legacy" of Tim Woods and Johnny Walker. Before long Tommy Dreamer is in the studio getting held back by security. Good, hot segment that holds the promise of more to come--Lance teases that Dreamer may have brought some other friends with him. Everyone is jumping onto the invasion gravy train, but ECW and the USWA make for a good contrast with each other, despite the latter's clear influence on the former. I actually thought the video they showed was more effective for a (presumably new) USWA audience by leaving Styles' commentary in instead of overdubbing music on it.

I had trouble getting into this, at least until Dragon went down. It felt like a LOT of scene-setting but not much actually happening. There's slow burn and then there's stuff that causes me to drift out. Fiera also looks like he's aged ten years since the last time we saw him--he does the requisite back body drop bump and a few nice strikes but not a ton else. This did ramp up in intensity when Dragon got hurt, and Casas takes a royal shitkicking on the outside, including a nasty headfirst bodyslam into a row of seats. There's no pretense of "tweenerness" here--Casas is a full-fledged tecnico and Santo is a heel all the way. Dragon makes a surprise return just when it looks like all is lost, and he and Casas team up to superbomb Santo into defeat.