Monday Night Raw Tape with KB

[klunderbunker]

So back in the 80s and 90s, the WWF was FAR more prolific in putting out compilation tapes. There were dozens of tapes with matches from house shows or TV tapings or in cases like these, a compilation of the best of Raw. What we have here is about two hours of what are considered to be great matches from the first two years or so of Raw, putting this tape from late 94 or early 95. I’ll set up each match as best I can. If I can find other tapes like these I’ll certainly do them as well.

Monday Night Raw Tape
Location: Manhattan Center, New York City.
Commentators: Jim Ross, Gorilla Monsoon

Note: Upon further review, I have NO CLUE what tape this is. The video which I found online is labeled Monday Night Raw: Prime Cuts. Now such a tape does indeed exist, but it’s not this one for sure. There’s nothing indicating what the tape is so I’m stunned. Let’s see if there is anything on there to tell us.

It’s from 93-94 as Savage is on it so he wouldn’t have been able to film these if they were after about Survivor Series 94. Another clue is that this is definitely a WWF release as Ross and Monsoon are doing the commentary, although these matches are all from Raw. At this time the hosts would have been Heenan, Vince and a comedian named Rob Bartlett that was terrible. Damn I have no idea what this is though and it’s bugging me.

After the old school Raw intro, Vince, Savage and Bobby run down some of the card that we’re about to get. Let’s get to it. All matches are in the location listed above unless otherwise noted, although I’m pretty sure Raw was just being held there at the time.

Repo Man vs. Randy Savage
Date: January 25, 1993

Repo Man stole Savage’s hat to set this up. This is around the time that Savage was about to leave but hung around to be on commentary and occasionally get in the ring since, you know, we couldn’t put the company around him or anything like that. We start on the floor with Savage dominating. Savage is ridiculously over. They ask why Repo Man wears that mask which is a great question.

It’s ALL Savage so far. And there goes that as Repo rams him into the steps. We’re on the outside for the most part still. This is from the infancy of Raw so they saw Monday Night Raw with far more gusto than you get today. Ross gets a jab in at Jack Tunney which is always fun. Repo shouting things at the crowd about how he steals stuff is funny. Ross is FAR tamer at this point also. It’s weird seeing Ross being this low key also. And then Savage slams him and hits the elbow. That was shall we say, unexpected? Savage gets his hat back.

Rating: C. Odd match here as Savage dominated for the most part but Repo got some stuff in. The smaller arena is REALLY odd here and compared to Raw today is stunning as far as the differences go. Not a terrible match but painfully predictable. Granted the way angles happened was far different back then.

Beverly Brothers vs. Steiner Brothers
Date: April 5, 1993

Sweet damn the Beverly Brothers sucked. The Steiners rocked but the WWF wasn’t entirely sure as to how to use them. Monsoon wants to punch the referee. That would be Fonzie from ECW. Scott and one of the Beverlies start us off. Yeah I can’t tell them apart either. Oh that’s Beau apparently.

Rick is wearing one red shoe and one white shoe. Ok then. Hearing Monsoon call this match is just odd. I can see why this tape is so hard to find: I wouldn’t want to advertise it either. Yeah this isn’t very good. The earlier Raws tend to be REALLY bad. Scott is taking most of the beating here. These weird cuts are funny because there were commercials on these shows which obviously weren’t on the tapes. Rick gets the tag and everyone comes in. Frankensteiner ends it from the illegal man.

Rating: D-. Just boring as all hell here with a referee that didn’t quite know what he was doing to put it nicely. He was trying I guess which is what counts. Ok screw that it doesn’t mean a damn thing. This was just bad.

Brutus Beefcake vs. Ted DiBiase
Date: February 15, 1994

This is after Beefcake hurt his face, after years of it hurting us. He came back and this is either his first or second match. Yay us. Jimmy Hart is with DiBiase at this point and he’s a tag champion. You know what I meant there even if I kind of butchered the way I said it. Brutus has some messed up version of his original music here and it sucks.

Brutus was just past his time here and to be fair so was DiBiase for the most part, but that was due to age and injuries more than a general lack of talent. Beefcake is controlling to an extent but not that much. In case you can’t tell, I don’t really want to watch this tape at all.

IRS shows up for what I’m sure will be nefarious reasons. Beefcake gets a LONG headlock and it sucks what little life is left in this match. And there’s the briefcase shot to get the DQ. They try to hit him in the face with the briefcase in his messed up face. It connects, and of course he was able to keep wrestling. Ross sounds about as unconcerned as you could imagine. Somehow this got Jimmy Hart to manage Hulk Hogan. Go figure.

Rating: F+. Just awful as it was really short and not any good at all. This was all to set up Hogan’s return to give him a reason to be at Mania to get his 4th title that no one wanted him to have.

KOTR Qualifying Match: Typhoon vs. Bam Bam Bigelow
Date: May 10, 1993

We go to Savage and Vince on commentary for no adequately explored reason. Oh and Heenan is there too. This could be VERY bad. Typhoon slams him. No one cares. Bigelow gets him up but just drops him. Vince talks about Duggan vs. Shawn later on in a lumberjack match for the IC Title. Thank goodness we don’t have to see that.

Vince yelling at a referee to do their job is far funnier now that we know he signs the checks. This is painful to watch almost. Heenan: You know what slows Typhoon down. Twinkies. Bigelow hits a Samoan Drop and the top rope headbutt ends it. Wow how riveting. This was Typhoon’s last televised match. The Shockmaster would be born in about three months.

Rating: F. Seriously, just freaking terrible here. Who thought THIS would be a good match? I want them shot. Or worse yet, dragged out into the streets and forced to watch this match.

Beverly Brothers vs. Money Inc.
Date: April 19, 1993

One Beverly Brothers match isn’t enough??? Damn man who was booking this crap back then? Why in the hell would you put THIS on a tape? We’re back to Gorilla and Ross here. It’s heel vs. heel so there we are. It’s the classic showdown that the world was waiting for! And of course the match sucks. So who am I supposed to cheer for her? Am I supposed to cheer? I don’t think so since this is clearly designed to be a test run of a new form of torture.

Gorilla goes into his history of tag team partners which is LIGHT YEARS more interesting as he talks about being partners with guys like Bill Watts. This is a very different style of commentary from Gorilla and JR as they’re clearly having more of a free reign than normal as this isn’t designed to be a regular show.

It lets you have more stuff you want to talk about since you don’t have to plug angles or shows. It’s very nice actually. Granted they don’t have much interest which is fine and understandable. They get bored and just start cracking jokes that you have to be a true wrestling geek to get. To be fair, this is one of the most boring tag matches that I’ve ever seen which is why I’m talking about the far more interesting as well as entertaining commentary.

It’s so funny hearing two old guys talk about how bad things are now that they’ve changed in the 90s. The “brothers” make a mistake and DiBiase gets a rollup for the pin. And all of a sudden Vince is talking??? It was like the production guy pulled the tape early or Vince put his seal of approval on it. That was WEIRD.

Rating: F+. And that’s ALL for the commentary. I have NO idea what the idea here was but it failed and it failed big time. Just a horribly bad match.

Lex Luger vs. Crush
Date: April 26, 1993

This is face Crush vs. the Narcissist. We see X-Rays of Luger’s steel plated arm as we get Michael Jackson jokes. Crush was the blink of an eye away from getting Luger’s mega push but for some reason they turned Luger instead which is one of the eternally asked questions in WWF history: why not Crush?

Heenan says he is now the host of Raw. Oh yeah we’re back to the other three commentators now. After we waste some time we get the test of strength and it’s the same thing everyone always does with it where Luger wins at first but Crush comes back. The military press multiple lifts are always cool to see. Apparently the screws in Luger’s arm, WHICH WERE UNDER THE PLATE IN THE X RAY, are apparently almost sticking through the skin. That’s just amusing.

We go to commercial and come back with Crush taking over. Luger hits his powerslam, thus cutting his amount of moves to go down to about one. Crush makes his comeback and hooks the Head Vice but looks up to see Doink. Yes, I’ll leave the muscleheaded knockout king alone with time to recover to yell at a clown that’s a whole floor above me. There’s another Doink on the other side of the arena. Luger gets the forearm shot and Crush gets counted out. CHEAP ending.

Rating: B-. By far the best match on the tape so far as you had some decent back and forth stuff from two guys that were in the mainly upper midcard around this time. The ending sucked big time though as Crush was looking down the whole time but just happens to see Doink when he looks up.

And great. There’s a PART TWO to this tape. Blast it.

Intercontinental Title: Shawn Michaels vs. Jim Duggan
Date: May 3, 1993

Well at least it’s not the lumberjack match. Both guys are kind of wearing red white and blue which of course is what Savage says will win. He never was the best with words despite being a great talker. That made sense to me. See what this tape is doing to me? And we hit the chinlock. Duggan has never won a title before? That’s most odd indeed. In WCW he would be put over Steve Austin in 40 seconds. There you go I guess.

Shawn hits what would become Sweet Chin Music but here is I guess Bitter Chin Music which isn’t as good. And we go to another chinlock. Duggan won’t even jump for a knee to the ribs. Are you freaking kidding me? Jump over the damn knee! And hey, let’s have another chinlock! Duggan makes his brief comeback and knocks Shawn to the floor and he tries to leave. Duggan lets him get counted out by punching him far longer than he should have. Brilliant indeed.

Rating: D. Just not that interesting as we had a chinlock at least three times that I was awake for. There was a rematch in a lumberjack match the next week but of course they wouldn’t air two straight weeks in a row of matches. No way.

Intercontinental Title: Shawn Michaels vs. Jim Duggan
Date: May 10, 1993

And yes it’s the lumberjack match mentioned earlier. I hate my life. Shawn has a bad knee! Oh wait never mind no he doesn’t and Mr. Perfect proves it. Perfect and Shawn had a long feud that got kind of a blowoff but it didn’t live up to the hype which to be fair was nearly impossible. Shawn is in street clothes here.

Duggan is in the women’s one piece swimsuit outfit here but it’s red white and blue so that makes it ok I guess. Vince keeps shouting about how he is SURE the title will change hands tonight. This is a rematch from last week where Shawn ran away. Shawn wastes time to start and refuses to lock up. That kills a few minutes so that’s a good start I guess. The lumberjacks are in flannel shirts to make the gimmick REALLY stand out.

We’re running out of time apparently. Such beautiful words. Shawn misses a Stinger Splash after a commercial. Yoko beats the living hell out of Duggan and one foot pins him. Actually it doesn’t as Perfect runs in for the DQ so the ending is the same anyway. This was clipped to hell as they cut over ten minutes out of it. The natural brawl happens afterwards.

Rating: N/A. FAR too much cut out to be considered a real match but the regular one which I’ve seen is decent but not great. Odd that they would clip this one but not the far worse one that set this up.

Headshrinkers vs. Nasty Boys
Date: March 15, 1993

We’re in Poughkeepsie here this time with Gorilla, Heenan and Rob Bartlett the comedian. Can’t they edit him out? Apparently not. Papa Shango vs. Bob Backlund was also on this show. Can’t we watch that instead? I’ve always liked the Headshrinkers but I want this over quickly. They’re heel here for some unexplainable reason. Bartlett is trying to be funny and is failing painfully. To say this is a contrast of styles is an understatement.

This was when the tagline for Raw was Uncooked, Uncut and Uncensored. Seriously, what kind of a name is Raw? Bartlett is just babbling like a diseased llama at this point. The fans like the Nastys for no explicable reasons. Knobbs gets a hot tag. OH! Bartlett is imitating Vince! It’s very telling that he’s been doing that for five minutes now and I haven’t been able to tell that until this point. And we fight to the floor for a double countout.

Rating: F. Is this a theme on this tape or something? Does every match have to be a squash or a bad ending for some idiotic reason?

Scott Steiner vs. I.R.S.
Date: April 12, 1993

Back to Gorilla and Ross. This should be decent at least. And amazingly enough, it’s not that bad. Irwin dominates for the most part so they’re using a basic formula. This tape has sucked the life out of me though so don’t expect much as far as insight goes here. IRS goes up and does the jump into the boot since there was no way this was going to be an actual move so it looks like crap spot.

And here’s Scott dominating for the most part. I think we’ve been clipped again here. Scott uses the tie for an over the top rope clothesline in a nice little spot. DiBiase runs in for the DQ but beat up Money Inc for the I guess face turn. This is after the match they had next week…why?

Rating: D+. Not awful but still I just want this to end badly. There isn’t much that could make this worthwhile but it’s whatever I guess at this point.

Mr. Perfect vs. Ric Flair
Date: January 25, 1993

Ok so maybe I was wrong. This is Loser Leaves the WWF. Heenan and Vince are on commentary and I think Bartlett is there too. Heenan is PANICKING here and it’s nearly as good as at the 92 Rumble. We have another channel leaking into our feed here and it turns out to be Sci-Fi. That’s just amusing for some reason. This is the night after the Rumble which was rather forgettable to put it mildly.

Based on the guys in there, this more or less has to be awesome. Flair’s hair is freaking golden here. We go to the floor and Flair gets a big old chair. Damn it this is clipped. That takes the grade down a good bit. Perfect hits the post with his head of course since his name is Mr. Perfect. We get a nice long back and forth sequence with both guys hitting some decent stuff and controlling for awhile. And it’s clipped almost to the finish. Well just great. Perfect hits the suplex for the win and Heenan loses his mind.

Rating: B. That’s for this version mind you. The regular one is a classic and was the best Raw match ever for a LONG time. The clipping sucks the life out of this though as it’s like 8 minutes shorter than the regular version. Still though this is a fun match and light years ahead of anything else on this tape.

The three original announcers say join us for the next one of these. Really?

Overall Rating: F. Just FAIL here. I have zero idea what the goal of this was but it wasn’t accomplished at all. We have a span of about four months of matches here and most of them are bad. The order of the show hurts a lot too as there is zero flow at all with matches that came from angles being shown before the angle that set them up.

Again, I have no idea if this was like a best of show or what but it was awful to put it mildly. If you can figure out what this was, then don’t watch it. This isn’t the far superior Prime Cuts, which was you know, good.

 

[Nadeem Ahmad]

I know KB posted this review almost two years ago, but I didn't read a lot of it until today. Basically, I had been watching digitally compressed episodes of WWF Monday Night Raw from 1993, and saw every show of that year on blank DVDs which were not blank after I had those shows burned or recorded, so I put them in the DVD player last year starting in the first week of January 2011, and saw these episodes in order during the weekdays, and finished watching them probably in April of 1993. The quality was really good, because the cameras back then, before Bret Hart broke them in 1997, were built much better, more strongly, and could show stronger pictures, but less faster videos. That part meant if you would pause any scene, the picture would look more solid and rich with color, than if you paused an episode of WWE Monday Night Raw from this year, which would feature faster frame rates of video though.

To say the shows were brutal would be an understatement. I could not give all the details now, but basically, I skipped the parts of this review which discussed matches after 1993. Now, Curt Hennig versus Ric Flair was a strange way to close January, as it seemed that the Nature Boy had only really been active in the WWF for a year, and I really was not expecting him to lose based on the buildup, no matter how many times I had read about the outcome for this match. I definitely would have preferred if they did not show blood, which I feel is unnecessary. You could kind of seem them talking to each other, going over spots, when they were in chin locks, holds and various positions, but they added to the realness of the match, making it seem like they were daring each other to do moves.

The two matches for the Intercontinental Title with Shawn Michaels defending against Jim Duggan were basically pathetic, as I never felt Duggan belonged in the ring for long periods of time. Even Shawn could not carry him to a good match, and believe me, he tried the hardest of anybody that I ever saw compete against Jim Duggan in a ring with. Shawn got kind of aerial for about two spots that I briefly remembered from the first going in that year on Raw between these two wrestlers, and made things a little tense in the match with lumber jacks, as he still tended to go up on the turnbuckles and post, to connect with certain maneuvers. Jim Duggan really was a washed up guy, trying hard to look dominant, and the idiotic fans cheering him on really made things worse. I was not saying this guy could not do anything, but he really was very dull, extremely overrated, and a mess. He was less worse against other strong guys that did not fight with techniques, like maybe Lex Luger, but that was just a wrestler I named, as I don't think they ever fought in a televised match, but anyway, I digressed from these two bouts, which Shawn really had to pick up the pace in, a rare scenario indeed. Honestly, no matter what Michaels did, there was just no way in that era for a goofy, overweight pathetic slob to take the Intercontinental Championship from him, especially since in that time the belt was won by wrestlers who actually wrestled more, instead of brawling and fighting a lot, with some people like Roddy Piper being an exception.

Randy Savage against Repo Man was another poor letdown to start off the series, as well as the year with, seeing how it came before Curt Hennig versus Ric Flair by a week or a few weeks, and the Macho Man clearly was not the same performer he was in the eighties. I don't exactly know what happenned to him, but remembered going into this series of Raws from 1993 that he was already injured and basically retired from being a full-time wrestler for a while, and remembered reading that he would come back sporadically, before watching this match, and knew he would be cheap by trying to fight in a hardcore type of match, going outside the ring, using a lot of closed fists and being overly aggressive without actually doing wrestling moves much. Repo Man was somebody whom I wished I never knew existed, as this fat bum looked like he was way past a prime in 1993, if he ever even went through primed years of a career in professional wrestling. They did not mention much about the past of Repo Man, and the gimmick of stealing cars was overly dramatic, feeling unncessary, giving way that he would be gone soon, or in jail or just stop wrestling entirely, and surely enough, I did not remember him coming back more than one or two more times after this match, which all he did in was punch a lot and maybe push Randy Savage into things away from the ring, like the barricade. Repo Man might have gotten in a few moves here and there, but they looked like getting done because Macho Man purposely let him get early advantages to wear him out, destroying any chances of rhythm, flow or psycology in the match.

The tag team matches between the Beverly Brothers and Steiner Brothers were not too bad, and by matches, I was also considering the opening contest from Royal Rumble of that year, not covered in the review obviously, since it was considering matches from episodes of WWF Monday Night Raw in the early nineties to middle nineties, and I had only watched and read about the matches from Raw in 1993. The match they fought in during April of 1993 felt like it had a big atmosphere, but that part happenned mostly because there were only about four major shows on Pay-Per-View that year, and eight-five percent of the shows for Raw to about ninety percent of the shows on Raw were held in the smaller Manhattan Center, but this match was in a larger arena of Poughkeepsie, letting about ten thousand fans attend, according to what I guessed, compared to the maybe one thousand people or three thousand people that would attend Raw at the Manhattan Center. I actually was never a fan of tag team wrestling, but the Steiners were quick, technical and actually functioned as a tag team, double-teaming effectively and somewhat compliantly with the rules, not often going over things like limits of five seconds for the partner being in the ring, etc. Also, when they did spots of double-teaming moves, they did so with a flow into the match, and not just at blatant finishing moments or for cheap pops. The Beverly Brothers actually acted like a tag team too, knowing where they would be in the ring, and coordinating tags at right times to let the fresh brother in.

I didn't remember the match between I.R.S. and Scott Steiner too much, but thought it was also held in the larger arena of Poughkeepsie if the memory was right, and they seemed to be getting barely noticeable reactions, though the heat on I.R.S. was noticeable before the match started. Scott Steiner was holding defense throughout, with I.R.S. overstrengthening him at many times in the bout, showcasing a variety of wrestling maneuvers which were impressive for a taller man of that size, though he was in the middle of that range for heights, measuring maybe about six foot four if I had to take a wager. I thought he was like a Val Venis of that time, somewhat more skilled in certain moves than he appeared to be, but he was nothing outstanding or special in the ring, and nowhere near as agile nor quick as Sean Morley. It seemed like he went into professional wrestling as a secondary part-time hobby, based on the pace of the match, how slow he was between moves and "downtime", when Scott Steiner would lay down to sell a move rather quite nicely and effectively, and he appeared to be getting legitimately frustrated based on how the crowd was booing him, which seemed like what many people here on the internet would call "X-Pac type heat", which would come many years later, due to him getting negative reactions for not wanting to be seen, rather than for acting well as a villain.

Oh and the Beverly Brothers against Money, Inc. from around the same time was about just as bad, if not worse, due to it being a tag team match, which was more prone to failure. Now, that era did feature less worse tag teams than current times after the 2000s, but they still did not get everybody involved, nearly as much as I had thought they would do. I think I.R.S. was in there for way too long of a time without having Dibiase tag in, and the Beverly Brothers were much stronger than they behaved in this match, selling less destructive moves from I.R.S., like smaller slams, to take more of a toll on them than those same things had in the past during other matches. I did not get why they would be so wounded from such maneuvers here, when they would stand up fast from multiple suplexes delivered to them by the Steiners in other matches, but maybe they wanted to show how strong I.R.S. was, who still looked less muscular than Scott Steiner did.

Anyway, those were thoughts I had on those matches, and I know they seemed like they were very general complaints, but I felt like a lot of performances in that year were thrown together, and very lackluster. Maybe they felt that way because it was the first year for the WWF to regularly show live wrestling at least once every week. To edit, I might have messed up on recalling the Beverly Brothers versus the Steiner Brothers from April of 1993 on WWF Monday Night Raw being held in Poughkeepsie. I know I.R.S. and Scott Steiner definitely did fight in that city during an opening match on Raw in that same month of that year, but felt like they would not have had two weeks of Raw in a row inside that same arena during those times.