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.
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!
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.
Time to get back on track and finish up my Raw ’98 deep dive. The previous week’s episode kind of sucked ass as it leaned WAAAAY too hard into the sports entertainment Vince Russo bullshit. This week’s episode is pre-taped so maybe it will feature a bit more actual wrestling but it’s also the go home show for Rock Bottom so who the fuck knows. Let’s just get this over with…
Well, it’s 2022 now and I didn’t quite finish rewatching Raw ’98 in its entirety like I planned to last year. I ended up, through no fault of my own, falling about a month behind but I’m not about to abandon the project now. So today we’re pressing on with the November 30, 1998 episode of Raw is War.
So last week’s episode of Raw Is War from the year 1998 sucked so much ass and the week before that wasn’t so great either. Will this week’s episode be any better? I doubt it but I’ve committed to getting through all the Raws from 1998 so let’s just get on with it.
I’m getting really burned out on this ’98 WWF deep dive but we’re coming down the home stretch so I’m going to try and just muscle through. This is the Raw after Survivor Series and we’ve got a new champion in The Rock which might help liven things up a bit. Who knows?
I’m going to be honest with you folks, I’m getting real sick and tired of the Attitude Era. I want like a single goddamn match that ends with someone just pinning someone else or maybe making them tap out. Heck, a knockout would be perfectly fine. These past few episodes have been most of Vince Russo’s worst booking tendencies (there’s been surprisingly little outright sexism in the last few episodes thankfully but all the others are in full effect) and honestly it’s becoming a bit of a chore to get through. His style of booking has caused me to not give a shit about pretty much anyone except Mankind, The Rock, and Stone Cold Steve Austin since everyone either has to cheat to win or ends up getting repeatedly murdered by Kane week after week. It’s very repetitive and very boring. Thankfully I’ve got seven episodes left including this one (I reviewed one of the December ’98 episodes already and won’t be watching it again) so I might as well just wrap this nonsense up. Let’s take a look at the November 9, 1998 episode of Raw Is War…
I’ve not been a fan of the past two episodes of Raw for vastly different reasons but we’re coming down the home stretch with stupid 1998 rewatch project so I’m going to muscle through. This week we’re going to take a look at the November 2, 1998 episode of Raw and see what’s going on with the McMahons and maybe also get a wrestling match or two.
Last week’s Raw had a huge overarching angle that dominated the bulk of the show and saw Stone Cold take Vince McMahon hostage, torture him, and then threaten to shoot him in the head in the middle of a wrestling ring. It was not a thing I was a fan of back in the day and 23 years after the fact it hadn’t gotten any better. So will this week be more of the same or will we get two hours of hot in-ring action? Probably not the latter since the only thing announced in advance for this episode was the fact that Motley Crue would be showing up. Oh goody…
Atomic Drop 