Monday Night Raw - December 18th 1995

• I guess I’ll get this out of the way - on December 18th while WWF fans watched a pre-taped episode of Raw, over on a live edition of WCW Nitro the WWF Women’s Champion Alundra Blayze made her debut and dropped the WWF women’s title belt into a trash can. In the years since she’s claimed that she didn’t want to do that stunt and was pressured into it by Eric Bischoff but it happened and it set lots of things in motion. Vince started firing back at WCW on air during the next couple of weeks as we’ll see and the paranoia about his former talents repeating this stunt caused several more ruthless decisions from Vince in the years after (Montreal)
• The final Raw of 1995 kicks off with Jeff Jarrett, who returned to TV last night at In Your House and smashed a framed golden CD over Ahmed Johnson’s head, vs. Fatu who has new theme music I think. He shouts “west side in the house” and “hi mom” as he dances to the ring. Fatu seems to hurt his shoulder after a bulldog and Double J focuses on it. That brings Ahmed Johnson rushing to the ring to attack Jeff for his actions last night. Jarrett escapes and runs away winning this match by disqualification while Johnson checks on Fatu and raises his (uninjured) arm.

• In the crowd Dok Hendrix interviews President Gorilla Monsoon who reconfirms the Royal Rumble’s main event which will be Bret defending the WWF title against The Undertaker. Awesome. In other news for the event he removes Jeff Jarrett from the Royal Rumble match and instead announces he’ll wrestle Ahmed Johnson at the event in a singles match.

• Goldust has some more comments for Razor Ramon. He calls their attraction taboo and says that they should ooze machismo together. 
• Buddy Landel who debuted at In Your House as Dean Douglas’ opponent faces Bob Holly. I thought Buddy was a one time deal but I guess not. He’s a two time deal. Holly hammers Buddy with chops in the corner but ends up having a hard time with who I assumed was a jobber. A little research tells me that he was one of Cornette’s boys from SMW so this match must have been his tryout for a full time WWF job. This is the last time we’ll see him so it must not have gone well. He wins with a corkscrew elbow drop which in hindsight was a huge waste of everyone’s time.
• In the ring Brother Love conducts an interview with the Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase. Vince has hyped this up as Dibiase’s chance to clear things up as to whether the man who sold out to him last night was the real Santa or not. Yes, really. It’s not Santa Claus it is in fact Xanta Claus from the South Pole! We’ll never see him again so don’t worry about it. He says that 1996 will be the year of the Million Dollar Corporation (don’t hold your breath) and not only will The Kid and Sid be the next WWF Tag Team Champions but the Million Dollar Champion will be debuting soon. That is exciting. 

• They’ve promoted the Raw Bowl previously and been vague about what that actually involves but from the names listed by Vince it sounds like it's a big eight man tag team match. 
• In the main event, Razor Ramon defends the Intercontinental Championship against the 600lbs+ Yokozuna. Before Razor makes his entrance Goldust comes out with the same usher he had at In Your House and they take a seat at the top of the entrance to get a closer look. When Razor gets to the ring instead of his usual entrance pyro it rains golden glitter as it does during Goldust’s entrance. Mind games. The match itself is fine - Razor throws big strikes and avoids Yoko’s various attempts to sit on or splash him. Jerry Lawler claims to have retrieved the letter that Goldust sent to Razor Ramon last night after the Bad Guy threw it away but Vince doesn’t allow him to provide any more details. Razor endures a long beating before coming back with a diving bulldog off the middle rope. That beat Sid last night but we’ll never know if it would beat Yokozuna because when the arena lights start to flicker the Undertaker heads down to the ring with a casket. He still wants revenge for the part the big man played in breaking his face with King Mabel. Yoko sees the casket and runs away getting counted out. Razor Ramon retains the title and just shrugs at the camera. After a commercial break Dok Hendrix interviews him and asks for his thoughts on the way Goldust is acting. Ramon explains that Goldust might be attracted to him but he only likes women. He doesn’t at least come across as homophobic which is the least we can ask for. Jerry Lawler agrees with him and says that the content of the letter is not for broadcast television. Vince McMahon calls it appalling and honestly I don’t know exactly what he means but it makes him sound deeply homophobic which I’m almost certain he is.

• The closing moments of Raw are dedicated to a music video about Shawn Michaels because sadly he may never be able to return to the ring following his injury. It’s a slow sappy song but I quite like it. It’s a nice spotlight for HBK just months before he finally became a main eventer for real and as good as his career was up to this point the best was very much still ahead of him. He hadn’t even scratched the surface yet in 1996.

Monday Night Raw - January 2nd 1996

• What on Earth is the Raw Bowl? It's basically a parody of the Superbowl but interesting as you can hear in Vince’s opening promo that while he lists lots of other Bowls, he doesn’t actually say Superbowl. This Raw also marks the debut of one of the WWF’s more notorious pieces of wrestlecrap and the first direct shot Vince McMahon ever took at WCW. Yes, with the Monday Night War in full swing he showed us The Nacho Man, The Huckster, Scheme Gene and Billionaire Ted. His point? The lads in WCW are all old and useless.

• Whatever the Raw bowl actually is involves four teams - WWF Tag Team Champions the Smoking Gunns, Yokozuna and Owen Hart, Intercontinental Champion Razor Ramon and Savio Vega and Sycho Sid and The 1-2-3 Kid . As Razor makes his way to the ring Goldust’s usher presents him with a box of roses so he attacks the usher and sends him scurrying to the back. The match is basically an elimination rules fatal four way.

• They make a big deal about how you could in theory tag in someone’s partner and make a team wrestle itself and that happens right away when Owen Hart tags in Billy to wrestle Bart. They lock up and then tag out to Owen Hart and Yokozuna to return the favor. They have to make physical contact before they can tag out so they do with a big clothesline and then Owen tags out to Savio Vega. That’s such a silly rule, I’m glad they got that spot out of the way. The match continues with the heels working together as you’d expect and after lots of tags in and out Razor has the Kid where he wants him. Sid calls for a time-out - one of the rules of this Raw bowl match - but Razor hits him with the Razor’s Edge anyway. In the confusion with the referee not counting and being distracted by a protesting Dibiase, Sid hits Razor with a clothesline from behind and somehow that’s enough to keep him down for the Kid to pin him for three. Razor and Savio are the first time eliminated. Football music plays for the elimination and they do what they can to make this feel grandiose including having Lawler interview “The Raw Bowl Queen” at ringside and him dusting off his “magistrator” so he can draw on the screen during replays. It’s actually quite good fun.

• The next elimination comes when as Owen and Yoko try to double team the Gunns, Billy counters on Owen and an unknowing Yoko squashes him with the Banzai drop! He covers and Owen Hart and Yokozuna are eliminated leaving this as a normal tag team match between the Tag Champion Gunns and Sid and the Kid. The Smoking Gunns do still have a time-out to use as well. Sid and the Kid are a good team and he spikes Billy with a big chokeslam which would probably end the match but doesn’t bother pinning and instead seems determined to let the Kid be the one who wins it for this team. He holds Billy in place for a dive off the top rope but Razor Ramon returns and shoves the 1-2-3 Kid off the top rope, screwing up their timing and the Kid crashes into Sid instead. Billy rolls him up and that’s enough for the three count - Billy and Bart Gunn win the Raw Bowl and as tag team champions it does make sense they’d win this big Tag Team match. That was good fun and the match itself was good. 

• Next week on Raw Shawn Michaels has a huge announcement to make which Jerry Lawler smugly claims to know will in fact be him announce his retirement. 
• Dok Hendrix hosts the half time show and tells us that tonight’s main event will be Diesel vs. King Mabel and throws to Jim Ross for an interview with Diesel which he wasn’t able to get.

• I’m glad I had plenty to say about that opening match because a huge chunk of Raw is taken up by replaying, in full, the Hogpen match between Hunter Hearst Helmsley and Henry Godwin from In Your House. I’m not watching that again! 
• In the main event Jerry Lawler claims that King Mabel will rule the entire WWF in 1996. Remember he said that when I get to the Royal Rumble match. Diesel starts off aggressively as has been his M.O lately and drops Mabel with a big boot and pins him in about 20 seconds. He drills Sir Mo with a Jackknife powerbomb too for good measure and chases off the referee. He is a motivated man and Vince confirms that he is indeed in the Royal Rumble match. Jerry Lawler interviews Big Daddy Cool or tries to at least but instead the Raw Bowl Queen gets up and leaves on his arm. The ladies love Kevin Nash but this kind of thing is less effective because during his lame babyface era he mentioned his wife and kids more than once. 

• At the end of Raw the winners of the Raw Bowl are presented with the Lombardi Trophy. I did think to myself that Lombardi is the Brooklyn Brawler’s real name and it turns out I was ahead of the game because that is exactly the joke. The babyfaces beat him up and pour a cooler of drinks over his head. 

• Another new face heads to the WWF in Vader. A former WCW Champion with a great reputation from Japan as one of the all time great big man wrestlers. 

• The broadcast ends with the REAL main event; the glimpse of Billionaire Ted’s Rasslin War Room

• This is Vince making fun of the old men in WCW and pointing out how awesome his New Generation is by comparison. In theory it's funny but it would backfire massively over the next few months when a couple of Vince’s biggest New Gen pillars also left for WCW. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Monday Night Raw - January 8th 1996

• The big headline tonight is that at the Royal Rumble press conference earlier today Shawn Michaels made a huge announcement about his future. The Raw intro has been updated again, reverting back to the original theme song. It was necessary because Dean Douglas was prominently featured in the other version but I won’t capture this one because honestly, it’ll need another major update in a month or so. In the arena Jerry Lawler and Vince McMahon hype up something else; the debut of Ted Dibiase’s new Million Dollar Champion. That is very exciting news for anyone who knows what’s coming.
• The show opens up with Jeff Jarrett vs. Hakushi. This match marks the debut of Jeff Jarrett carrying a guitar to the ring which is something that became his trademark both in and out of the WWF. This is a decent match between two talented wrestlers with Jeff slowly working over Hakushi and using lots of classic heel shenanigans to get the crowd into it like strutting and posing after every move and holding the ropes when he locks in a submission or rest hold. Hakushi’s comeback with spin kicks is cut off and Double J locks in the Figure Four for a submission victory. 
• This week’s Slamjam is hosted by Jim Ross. He runs down the Rumble participants which includes Jerry Lawler now as well as the newly debuting Vader. I’ll talk more about him in the near future obviously - that’s a debut I’m looking forward to. They end the segment with a joke about Scheme Gene, which is obviously picking on Mean Gene who departed for WCW a couple of years ago at this point. Vince was on the back foot in the Monday Night War and I don’t think this lame comedy that half the audience didn’t quite get was the answer. 

• Ahmed Johnson faces a jobber in big baggy pants. I try to remain positive in these show write ups but my God is Ahmed terrible. He’s clumsy and lifts the jobber to dump him awkwardly on his head and shoulder more than once. His big bicycle kick is messy and his big spinebuster is a move he takes flat on his tummy rather than landing on his knees. The Pearl River Plunge looks good but all of other moves don’t. As he celebrates Jeff Jarrett runs to the ring and tries to hit him with the guitar, but Johnson sidesteps it and it breaks (kind of) on the ringpost instead. Jeff runs off and Johnson does a better job of smashing the guitar to end the segment properly.

• Brother Love interviews Ted Dibiase and making this one of the most important segments in wrestling history, his new Million Dollar Champion The Ringmaster. It’s WCW and ECW’s Steve Austin, known as a gifted wrestler and a great talker he was a very good addition to the WWF and full of bitter rage at WCW for having treated him so poorly. The Ringmaster gimmick and name didn’t stick for long. He cuts a great promo effortlessly singing his own praises and letting us know that he’s in the Royal Rumble match and intends to make a big impact. Awesome stuff. 

• Goldust goes one on one with Aldo Montoya. It feels like months since I last saw Aldo. During this match Vince confirms that Razor Ramon will defend the Intercontinental Championship against Goldust who has been making rather overt sexual advances on The Bad Guy. McMahon speculates that Goldust doesn’t really mean what he says and its all just mind games to throw an opponent off their game. Wise. For the third match in a row Goldust wins with a different move but this one stuck - a reverse DDT into a big slam which he’d later call the Curtain Call. 

• Later in the show the big announcement by Shawn Michaels was revealed; he is not retiring, he’s ignoring his family and friends advice and throwing his hat in the ring for the Royal Rumble match. He guarantees that not only will be win that match but he’ll go on to Wrestlemania and claim the WWF Championship too. That’s followed by comments from some of the other top contenders. The babyfaces wish him luck but say they won’t take it easy on him and the heels tell him he’s not ready and call him a marked man. 

• Like last week with the Hogpen match, a huge chunk of Raw is taken up with a full unedited replay of the Bulldog vs. Bret Hart match from In Your House. I’m not recapping it again obviously. It leads into promotion for Bret’s next challenge at the Royal Rumble - Undertaker tells him that it’s nothing personal and nothing can stop him from claiming the title now. Next week’s big match is The Undertaker vs. Isaac Yankem D.D.S which is historically fascinating for what I’m sure are obvious reasons.
• The show ends with another Billionaire Ted skit. The joke is that all of his ideas are stolen from the WWF. The Huckster is a confused old man. Nacho Man suggests that all their top stars are on steroids which feels pretty sketchy! Vince Russo was actually in all of these skits too so I’m sure he had a lot to do with the writing. 

Monday Night Raw - January 15th 1996

• Raw kicks off with a disclaimer warning of mature content and a fun video package with some pretty awesome music. I’ve included it here as well as the new Raw intro. 

• In the ring the show kicks off with what should be a good match; Marty Jannetty vs. Owen Hart. It’s not as good as I was hoping mostly because it was too short. Owen wins a back and forth exchange with a tight roll up.
• In the SlamJam my boy Todd Pettengill runs down the Royal Rumble card, hypes up the new Free For All pre-show which he now hosts and will feature a match to decide who will be the 1st and 30th entrants into the Rumble match itself and tells us about the rest of the card. Diesel is one of the odds-on favourites and in his promo he mentions Shawn Michaels and the newly debuting Vader as his main concerns. Elsewhere Dok Hendrix is getting ready for an interview with Goldust BUT, his Rumble opponent Razor Ramon is also on the way and plans to tear Goldust apart tonight.
• The show is peppered with little segments where Sunny suggestively tells us that she likes it Raw. Someone in WWF management has apparently realised that sex sells. At the end of the show there’s a particularly provocative one where she’s sitting in the bath, nude.

• The Ringmaster faces Matt Hardy. I don’t believe that the Million Dollar Championship is on the line. Wild that this is Steve Austin’s first WWF match. His early gimmick is a man with a lot of technical expertise and so he dominates Hardy with a variety of holds and strikes. He doesn’t have too much of a problem with Matt Hardy and after a hangman across the top rope locks in the Million Dollar Dream for a submission victory for the Million Dollar Champion. He is a bland heel thus far but you can see how much personality this man has bubbling under the surface with his smirk and the way he plays up to the crowd during his matches.

• After a commercial break we join a match in progress with WWF Tag Team Champions The Smoking Gunns against two masked jobbers. This is all storyline developments from the weekend shows but Tom Prichard has rebranded himself as Zip and teamed up with Skip to make The Bodydonnas. They’re still managed by Sunny and Lawler and McMahon speculate that Sunny has gotten into the ear of President Gorilla Monsoon and with some flirting gotten them a Tag Team Championship match at the Royal Rumble. The Gunns win this, obviously.

• Here’s another Billionare Ted skit making fun of WCW without actually saying WCW. This is probably the most famous of these and thankfully they don’t last long. I’ll have my final thoughts on all this at Wrestlemania 12. In a historically interesting note, Jerry Lawler mentions the merger with Time Warner. It was in the works for a few years but the merger between Time Warner and AOL in 2001 was the final nail in WCW’s coffin.

• In the ring, Vince McMahon interviews Goldust. Vince sells how creepy Goldust is and continues to push the narrative that Goldust is just playing mindgames. He also comes across as enormously homophobic by calling Goldust controversial and getting angry when he dares touch him. He refers to the homophobic fears of most men. Goldust continues to make innuendo directed at Vince “is that an extra microphone in your pants?” and he looks angry about it. I feel like this is Vince telling us that EVERY man is homophobic, it's not just him. No Vince it’s not just you but that doesn’t mean it's anyone. It’s definitely aged very poorly and Vince’s face twisted up in disgust at just the idea that Goldust might be attracted to another man makes me want to slap him. 

• I’ve captured a lot of videos in this Preview haven’t i? Here's another; the commercial for the Royal Rumble 1996 and Undertaker vs. Bret Hart. 

• Razor Ramon arrives at the arena and wants Goldust, shoving his way past Dok Hendrix to go and fight. Vince McMahon does later in the show back peddle a little and explains that Goldust’s sexuality is not the issue here, the issue is the way he’s sexually harassing people who aren’t interested in him. Ok now THAT is fair enough. Hearing Vince McMahon of all people talk about consent is hilarious in hindsight of course. 
• In the main event The Undertaker faces Issac Yankem D.D.S. Yankem would go on to have other gimmicks which were much better but he did spend his entire career being tied to The Undertaker in one form or another. This wasn’t these two men’s first match together - they worked together a lot in Memphis too. This is a decent big man match and both men move fast. Glen Jacobs was always athletic in his youth and Undertaker needs to be ready for his match with Bret Hart of course. There’s a messy edit to hide a botched tombstone where the camera cuts backstage at random but they recover and a second, much nicer Tombstone gives Undertaker the victory and moment.

• In the final segment of Raw Dok Hendrix tries to talk to Goldust about both the Royal Rumble and his match with Bret Hart next week. He’s attacked by Razor Ramon who violently attacks Goldust hitting him with a trash can and throwing him up and over a table while referees try desperately to get the brawl under control. A well-timed low blow gets Razor off of Goldust and the segment ends there and he tries to escape the arena but Razor continues to attack and they end up brawling outside the arena in the snow. Ramon tries to hit Goldust with a shovel but slips and Goldust manages to escape into the parking lot. This was a really good brawl.