WWF Shotgun Saturday Night (March 22, 1997)

After a bit of a hiatus from most wrestling I’ve slowly gotten back into the swing of things with my random-ass Watch WWF ’97 But Only Shotgun and PPVs project that I was working on last year. Today we’re taking a look at the March 22, 1997 episode of Shotgun. This is the WrestleMania “go home show” so I honestly don’t expect much here beyond a bunch of video packages to give me the hard sell on Mania one last time.

WWF on MSG Network (March 16, 1997)

Dok Hendrix’s constant hyping of the March 16th return to Madison Square Garden during episodes of Shotgun Saturday Night got to me and I have decided to go ahead and watch that show. I have, in the past, watched and reviewed “fan cam” footage of a wrestling show on this here website, but that is not what is going on here today. From the mid-70s through early 1997 the MSG Network would occasionally air WWF cards from Madison Square Garden. The show I’m reviewing today was (at the time of my writing this) the last of these broadcasts. So let’s see how things were on a quasi-house show from this time.

WWF Shotgun Saturday Night (March 1, 1997)

It’s time for another look at what WWF was up to over on their B-Show, Shotgun Saturday Night in the year of 1997. On Raw and the PPVs things are honestly getting interesting as the world title scene is heating up and ECW is invading and there’s a new title being introduced for the first time in 20 years, but that’s stuff for Raw and the PPVs. This is Shotgun Saturday Night where you ask yourself, “That guy was still with the company in 1997?” on a weekly basis. So let’s check it out!

WWF Shotgun Saturday Night (February 22, 1997)

After a bit of a detour to watch some WWF wrestling shows from 1997 that actually mattered I’m back to on my bullshit as we press on with my march through Shotgun Saturday Night. This is the first episode of the revamped Shotgun. The show is no longer coming to us from various dive bars in New York City but instead just whatever arena or civic center Raw broadcast from that week since the show the show would be taped prior to Raw going forward.

Also all the matches on this episode were also featured on Superstars the following morning, albeit in a slightly different order making it a bit of a Metal / Jakked situation. This apparently only lasts until March at which point Superstars transitions into a recap show if memory serves correctly.

WWF Shotgun Saturday Night (February 8, 1997)

I have no idea why I’m still all in on these Shotgun Saturday Nights. The wrestling is generally pretty terrible and the “comedy” is dreadfully unfunny but there’s something kind of entertaining about how ramshackle it all is and I doubt they’ll ever get more ramshackle than this week when Shotgun comes to us live from Penn Station. That’s right folks! We’ve got a wrestling show coming to us live from a train station in New York City. Shit could potentially get wild!

WWF Shotgun Saturday Night (February 1, 1997)

After a brief detour to watch a different WWF C-show from late January 1997 we’re back on the Shotgun Saturday Night train. Last week’s episode had a one off match between two all time greats that should have been better than it was, the last Jake Roberts match in the WWF, a Savio Vega heel turn, and a whole lot of Nation of Domination. Let’s see what we have going on this week!

WWF Superstars (January 26, 1997)

So I’m taking a bit of a detour from watching Shotgun Saturday Night to watch another C-Show from 1997, specifically the January 26, 1997 episode of WWF Superstars. Why am I watching this you ask? Well on the January 25, 1997 episode of Shotgun Saturday Night they hyped this episode up and in doing so alerted me to the fact that there was actually a second WWF (Insert Program Name Here) Bowl match.

That’s right folks! The story you heard about the Raw Bowl being so atrociously bad that it was never revisited was as wrong as the legend you heard about the 1997 Royal Rumble being the first appearance of JR’s cowboy hat. So let us see how the WWF dealt with Superbowl Sunday on a random C-Show back in 1997.

WWF Shotgun Saturday Night (January 18, 1997)

For as much as I complained about the episode of Shotgun Saturday Night I reviewed recently the show was a pretty easy one to just sit down and watch and so I’ve decided to continue watching Shotgun Saturday Night at least up until the format change that I know is coming happens and the show goes from being a weird ECW homage and just become proto-Velocity or Jakked.

WWF Raw Is War (September 28, 1998)

So Breakdown happened, but outside of the Royal Rumble and Fully Loaded (which I technically reviewed before beginning this project) I’m not fucking around with the PPVs so I didn’t watch it. It doesn’t seem like anything all that important happened anyway besides the stuff with the main event but that was really the case in general with the WWF in 1998 wasn’t it? Anyway since I didn’t watch that PPV we’re moving on to the following night’s episode of Raw Is War.

WWF Raw Is War (September 21, 1998)

Last week’s episode of Raw Is War was, if not the best single episode of the show I’ve seen since I started this project, definitely up there in terms of quality. The angles were good and well booked, the in-ring action was pretty good for the standards of the day, and the crowd was absolutely nuclear, all leading to a surprisingly entertaining show. Will this week continue that trend? God I hope so!