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 (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 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 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 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 Shotgun Saturday Night (January 11, 1997)

I’m going to guess that because I watched an episode of Los Super Astros the other day this popped up in my YouTube recommendations. I figured “Why not?” and so here are words about the second episode of WWF Shotgun Saturday Night. This is from when the show was still a live late night broadcast primarily for the New York market.

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.