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 15, 1997)

Time for another exciting episode of Shotgun Saturday Night. This is the first episode of the show that wasn’t overlapping with WWF Superstar and the show isn’t coming to us from Europe so we’ll have an idea of what the new Shotgun Saturday Night format is going to look like going forward so let’s get to it!

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 In Your House 13: Final Four (February 16, 1997)

It’s time for WWF In Your House 13: Final Four! It was a PPV that was supposed to determine the #1 Contender for the WWF Championship after all manner of Stone Cold shenanigans made the Royal Rumble less decisive than folks would have liked it to be. But between the Royal Rumble and Thursday Raw Thursday, Shawn Michaels lost his smile and relinquished the belt so now the WWF no longer needs to find a #1 Contender they need to find a WWF Champion.

WWF Thursday Raw Thursday (February 13, 1997)

My gameplan for this 1997 WWF deep dive had been to just watch Shotgun Saturday Night and the Pay Per Views unless I could not find an certain week’s episode of Shotgun online or if Shotgun did a decent enough job hyping a particular match on Raw that I felt inclined to tune in. This week is a bit of a special case as Shotgun is a Best Of episode to fill time while they rework the concept and move away from the live from a dive bar gimmick and start taping random matches before Raw instead. So I’m checking in with Raw this week and as fate would have it this episode of Raw might be the most significant episode of the year so strap in as we discuss lost smiles, the proto-People’s Champion, and whether or not this episode of Raw is called Thursday Raw Thursday or Thursday Raw! Thursday Live!

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 25, 1997)

I was planning on watching at least the entire run of live form a nightclub era Shotgun Saturday Night anyway but after last week’s surprisingly fun episode I’m now actually kind of looking forward to this. I hope that last week’s wild brawling and Terry Funk cussin’ up a storm extravaganza we get something similar this week and not a return to the boring “LOL!! PEE PEE!!!” bullshit we had in the first two weeks.

WWF Raw Bowl (January 1, 1996)

I decided to mix things up a bit and watch a match that I heard spoken about alongside nonsense like the Kennel from Hell match when people talk about all-time stupid gimmick matches but never actually seen: the first (and last) Raw Bowl. It’s New Generation Era WWF so I don’t have particularly high hopes for any of this but the entire episode is like 45 minutes minus commercials so who really cares.

WWF Raw Is War (December 28, 1998)

Since I already reviewed the December 21, 1998 episode of Raw prior to starting this 1998 deep dive we’re moving on the December 28th episode. It might have taken three months longer than I had originally intended but this is the final episode of this project so let’s get to it.