Monday Night Raw - July 24th 1995

• The show has a new set with wrestlers entering through a giant RAW logo. I like it. 

• Raw wastes no time and kicks off with the new WWF Intercontinental Champion Shawn Michaels in action against Jimmy del Ray (who’s already in the ring with Tom Prichard and Jim Cornette). Despite interference from Prichard, this is a showcase match for HBK who hits his new trademark move - the diving elbow drop off the top rope - and Sweet Chin Music to pick up the win. He dances and teases, pulling his pants down which makes the girls scream uncontrollably. Shawn is really finding his feet as a babyface. Important plot points from this match is that Vince and Jerry Lawler spent much of the match talking about Sid being his next challenger. That seems like a sensible match for Summerslam doesn’t it? 

• This is Jimmy del Ray’s final WWF appearance. It’s all a bit nasty but he, Tatanka and some others were accused of sexually assaulting a girl in a hotel including drugging her and shaving her head. Tatanka was lumped in because he’d been seen drinking with Del Ray but the reality is that Tatanka did nothing wrong and it was all Del Ray - Kevin Nash said in interviews years later that Jimmy was famous for that kind of thing, basically horrifically mistreating women. Nasty stuff, so good riddance.
• I mentioned this previously but Vince lets the cat out of the bag. With Double J and The Roadie now having had a big falling out, The Roadie has now outed Jeff Jarrett. He wasn’t singing at In Your House, The Roadie was! Jeff was just lip syncing. I mentioned at In Your House that Jeff is basically gone from the company now in protest of being forced to split up with Roadie. Nice that he was so loyal to his friend I guess. 
• There’s a video recap of Bret Hart’s feud with Hakushi earlier this year which included a moonsault off the stage, Bret ending Hakushi’s undefeated streak and then Hakushi costing Bret a match to Bret Hart. 
• The Smoking Gunns take on a pair of jobbers. I did actually catch their names this week but they were long names that I’m likely to misspell and let’s be real - you don’t care. They weren’t anyone I’ve ever heard of. Billy and Bart win with their sidewinder tag team finisher which is hard to describe so below you’ll see a picture of them mid-move. Vince and King spent this match talking about the Blu Brothers who are apparently feuding with the Smoking Gunns. 

• There’s a very short teaser for the debut of Goldust. We’ll see and hear more about him over the coming months but he didn’t make his in-ring debut until November’s Survivor Series so that’s a lot of build up! There’s also another video from “Make a difference” Fatu which is broadly the same as the last one. 

• Waylon Mercy faces Gary Scott (not the Cillit Bang guy). The…I dunno, creepy southern gentleman?...shakes hands with the referee before the match and mercilessly beats up Scott, choking him and slamming him on the floor. He breaks his own pin and finally finishes him off with a snug sleeper hold. I really have no idea what to make of this gimmick and performer. 

• In the In Your House Report, Todd recaps all the happenings from the PPV last night but the only real breaking news is that King Mabel is now declaring himself the number one contender. He challenges Diesel to a WWF Championship match at Summerslam and tells “Big Daddy Fool” that King is a higher title than his Championship and he is only granting him a match out of the goodness of his heart. Excited for Diesel vs. Mabel? No, me neither.

• Hakushi has the same model of Bret Hart’s head in a sack which he showed off a few weeks ago. That’s certainly emotive. When Bret enters, Shinja immediately grabs his ankle to distract him so Hakushi can jump the Hitman from behind and take control of the match. The “modern day kamikaze” works over Bret in a very good performance and draws gasps and wows from the crowd and the commentators with a dive to the outside and a backflip into a standing moonsault up and over the top rope onto Bret on the floor. Awesome. Bret comes back with some high flying of his own, boosting off the middle rope to crash down onto both Hakushi and the interfering Shinja. From there he goes into his classic finishing sequence with the side leg sweep and pinpoint elbow off the middle rope, followed by a running bulldog. A distraction from Shinja puts an end to it but Hakushi misses the flying headbutt off the ropes and a superplex and Sharpshooter later, Bret wins by submission. He’s not done and spikes Shinja with a piledriver for all of his interference too. As Bret celebrates, Jean Pierre Lafitte comes to the ring and steals the bag which contained the dummy of Bret’s head. 

• There’s another video for a newly debuting superstar - Dean Douglas. Played by former ECW mainstay Shane Douglas, this is another New Generation gimmick which is famous for all the wrong reasons. He’s a smug school teacher who lectures his un-seen class on the meaning of Knowledge. He’d make a good tag team partner for Mr. Bob Backlund with this gimmick but I suspect the logic in debuting this gimmick was to replace the 45 year old Backlund with a younger talent doing basically the same thing. Douglas, for all his faults, was always a good talker. 

• At the end of the show, Vince and Jerry Lawler interview Shawn Michaels. They hammer home that he is now a marked man and EVERYONE is going to be chasing him and his Intercontinental title including Sid. Lawler even throws out a challenge on behalf of himself. The Heartbreak Kid is unafraid and tells them all to bring it on. 

Monday Night Raw - July 31st 1995

• King Mabel, carried to the ring on his throne and led by Sir Mo, faces Nick Barberry. Honestly impressive they managed to carry the 500lbs King to the ring. Last week he challenged Diesel for the WWF Championship at Summerslam and now Lawler and McMahon are talking about that as if it’s locked in. I’m sure we’ll learn more about Summerslam later in the show. Mabel wins with a big slam and heavy elbow drop. Post match he tells everyone to bow down to the King, and after Summerslam he’ll also be the WWF Champion. 

• For the third week in a row, Fatu encourages us all to say no to drugs, stay in school and “make a difference”.How very mid-90s kids TV show of him. He’ll return to the ring next week.

• Jerry Lawler heads backstage to interview Shawn Michaels. Last week they had a little bit of an argument at the end of the show and it seems that King has taken great offense at Shawn’s lack of respect and plans to confront him about it. King also mentions that Sid will battle Shawn for the Intercontinental title at Summerslam which is news to me. Lawler keeps gently mentioning that he’d love a shot at the title and Shawn is unwilling to back down and dares him to bring it. It seems like they’re setting up a future match between HBK and King. Michaels insults him both as a wrestler and as a journalist and they get into a brief shoving match. Lawler spends the rest of the show talking about how he’s taken an oath not to get involved as a wrestler while he’s performing his journalist duties. Vince continually goads him into accepting Shawn Michaels’ challenge which he finally says he will during the main event.

• Bam Bam Bigelow takes on Bob Cook. Bam Bam beats him up and finishes with a big splash off the top rope. Considering how he’s been positioned as a top babyface since Wrestlemania he got next to no reaction from the crowd here. I think losing to non-wrestler Lawrence Taylor hurt his career more than they’re letting on.
• This week’s Dean Douglas “Report Card” segment focuses on Bam Bam Bigelow and discusses the meaning of the word “beast”, breaking down his performance and appearance during the previous match. Is this gimmick any good? Honestly, I think it might be! 

• Skip of the Bodydonnas faces a jobber. Before the match, Sunny rants about how she’s sick of hearing about Barry Horowitz who picked up his first ever victory three weeks ago with a roll up on Skip. The fans chant Barry at Skip who wins this with a nice superplex. 
• In the Summerslam report there’s three big matches made official. Two of them we already know about with Diesel vs. Mabel and Sid vs. Shawn Michaels for the WWF and Intercontinental titles respectively but Bret Hart will also face Jerry Lawler’s evil dentist Issac Yankem D.D.S. A huge debut for a new character but my God they couldn’t have found something better for Bret to do on the second biggest show of the year? During the report, Diesel cuts a promo on Mabel basically promising that the title isn’t going anywhere, and Lawler and Yankem cut a promo together about how Bret’s WWF career is like a decaying tooth and the dentist is going to pull it out at Summerslam. 

• In the main event, Owen Hart and Yokozuna defend the WWF Tag Team Championships against Razor Ramon and Savio Vega. On paper this is a good main event and one that makes plenty of sense for the time period. The company is REALLY behind Savio with how he’s been presented. I love Owen’s gimmick of carrying both Tag belts and he actually wears both around his waist at once during their entrance. Great. This is a decent tag team match with Owen doing the bulk of the work for his team and Yoko only tagging in to slowly dominate either Savio and Razor. It breaks down and Razor hits the Razor’s Edge on Owen to win the WWF Tag Team Championships! The referee counts and Razor’s music plays as Jim Cornette protests that Owen was NOT the legal man and that the pin shouldn’t have counted. The referee listens and the match is restarted BUT he does also eject Jim Cornette from ringside to make sure the next finish cannot be in dispute. The match becomes a frantic sprint of near falls with Owen having to kick out again and again but, just as Razor looks like he has victory in sight and sets up for another Razor’s Edge, Raw runs out of time and the broadcast ends with Vince promising us the match will restart next week! 

Monday Night Raw - August 7th 1995

• Raw kicks off with a dramatic recap of last week’s Tag Team title main event and a promise that the match will restart tonight. The reality is that all of these Raw’s were taped on the same night so it was in fact just one big match edited up into two episodes. Razor and Savio did re-do their entrances at least so that it was easier to edit and suspend disbelief. Jim Cornette is back at ringside for this rematch too. The official finish of last week’s show as a draw due to the time limit expiring (the show ended). This is another good match between these teams thanks to the skill of Owen and Razor. It breaks down and Yoko crushes Savio with a giant leg drop to retain the titles while Razor fights with Owen on the outside.

• The show opened with promos by both Diesel and Sir Mo about their match tonight. Mo calls tonight phase one of the royal plan but Diesel seems confident that Mo won’t be softening him up for Mabel tonight as planned. 
• This week’s Dean Douglas lesson is on the subject of Teamwork, specifically talking about the Tag Team Championship match. He denotes himself as a heel by being extra critical of Savio and Razor’s performance. He gives them a grade of T for Terrible. 

• Fatu makes his in-ring return as a singles performer and shows a lot more personality than he did as a Headshrinker. He dances, shows off and with a splash off the top rope defeats Tony Devito. Vince uses this match to plug the WWF’s charity work and puts an address up on screen where companies can contact them about hosting fundraising events.
• I haven’t mentioned it but since announcing that Jack Tunney had retired as president of the WWF, they have been on the hunt for a new one. Now given that Mr. Bob Backlund was doing a gimmick at the time where he was running for president, one might assume they’d make him the on-screen President but heel authority figures in wrestling hadn’t been invented yet and so this week it’s confirmed that Gorilla Monsoon is the new President of the WWF and in his first official act he has cancelled the Sid vs. Shawn Michaels match at Summerslam and instead we’ll get a rematch of the awesome Razor Ramon vs. Shawn Michaels ladder match for the Intercontinental title. That is a much more exciting match but Sid wasn’t injured or anything so I can only assume the match was changed purely for quality and performance reasons. This all came up during the Summerslam report where Gorilla explains that he’s going to be the most fan-friendly president in history. He announces that Alundra Blayze will defend the Women’s Championship against the woman who broke her nose Bertha Faye at Summerslam as well as adding Undertaker vs. Kama to the show. Undertaker and Paul Bearer have some comments (the usual stuff about plunging his soul into the darkness and resting in peace).

• Sid calls in to the show during the next match to complain about his Intercontinental title match being cancelled. He is furious with Gorilla Monsoon and says he still plans on getting his hands on Shawn Michaels down the line. He isn’t done with HBK and blames him for costing him the WWF Championship.
• Kama is in action against some mulleted jobbers. The Undertaker’s creatures of the night are at ringside with a black wreath and Kama goes out to give them some abuse and smash up the wreath. He wins the match with an armbar submission. 
• In the main event, Sir Mo battles WWF Champion Diesel. It’s funny that they felt the need to specify that this is a non-title match like we might believe Mo from Men on a Mission has a shot at the WWF title. Big Daddy Cool dominates Mo as Vince and King discuss his potential back problems. Mabel comes down to ringside for a closer look but is followed by Shawn Michaels who is there to even the odds for his buddy Diesel. After more back and forth, Diesel finishes off Mo with the Jackknife to win the match but he’s immediately attacked by Mabel. Shawn Michaels is quick to make the save and sends King Mabel out of the ring with a dropkick but when he dives out after him he’s caught and driven into the ring post and then slammed on the floor. Diesel rescues him from more of a beating and Men on a Mission leave as Diesel and referees tend to Michaels who seems to have a badly hurt back. Jerry Lawler loves it and laughs at HBK’s misfortune as he has a match with him next week on Raw. 

Monday Night Raw - August 14th 1995

• With Jerry Lawler in the ring tonight he’s replaced on commentary by Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase. He says that Sid is here backstage and he is so furious at having his Intercontinental title match at Summerslam taken from him he refuses to be held responsible for his actions tonight all but promising that Sid will interfere in the Michaels/Lawler match later.

• Doink the Clown makes a rare Raw appearance against Waylon Mercy. I have no idea who was playing Doink by this point but he doesn’t have Dink anymore and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Ray Apollo anymore. Doink was no longer a regular character and served as a well known jobber being played by whoever was free on a given night basically. Mercy wins this with the sleeper hold for a submission.
• For the past three weeks the teasers for Goldust have been limited to simply his name written in glitter but this week we get our first proper look at him in person. He’s a creep who talks about the magic of tinsel town. He hasn’t quite nailed the character yet but what I find most amusing about this is that while it’s obviously in front of a greenscreen, whoever edited the audio did a terrible job as he speaks in a hushed whisper and you can barely hear him over the fake traffic noise. 

• Henry O. Godwin is scheduled to be in action tonight. As you’ll all recall last month he did the dirty work for Ted Dibiase and his million dollar corporation a few times but when Vince asks if he’s now officially a member of the corporation Dibiase laughs it all and says he’d never officially bring on board a dirty smelly hog farmer. He’s very nasty about working man HOG and so before his match is slated, Henry has had enough and comes to the ring and forces the Million Dollar Man to get on his knees before dumping his slop bucket all over him! That’s disgusting, and it makes Godwin officially a babyface. Dibiase is replaced on commentary by Dok Hendrix for the rest of the show. 

• The Smoking Gunns face a pair of very tanned jobbers. One of them looks a bit like a tall Marty Jannetty. Dok Hendrix tells us another match has been made for Summerslam - Billy and Bart vs. The Blu Brothers. The Gunns win this with the sidewinder.
• Dean Douglas critiques Bret Hart. He picks apart what he sees as some minor errors in execution with his performance during a short match clip. He gives Bret an F for Failure. I am enjoying these videos so far! 

• Hunter Hearst Helmsley faces Jeff Hardy. This is one of those time travel matches as they met many times over the years for championships as they rose up through the card. Jeff shows off a little some high flying including a taste of one of his future trademark moves, the Whisper in the wind. HHH wastes no time pummelling Jeff in the corner and finishes him off with the Pedigree in the middle of the ring. Vince mentions that Hunter has a match of his own at Summerslam against Bob Holly. 

• The Summerslam Report is now known as the Summerslam Insider. I did wonder how long it would be until these weekly Reports for each PPV disappeared and I think this is probably the beginning of the end. There’s two new matches added (in addition to the ones I’ve already mentioned during the previous matches) with Barry Horowitz vs. Skip of the Bodygonnas and the 1-2-3 Kid vs. Hakushi. One of those will be a great match and the other at least has a bit of a story heading into it with Skip suffering a second loss to Horowitz on Superstars.

• The now babyface Henry Godwin faced Russ Greenberg. He wins with the slop drop DDT and then dumps a bucket of slop on his face for good measure too. That’s kind of a dick move. 
• In the main event, Intercontinental Shawn Michaels gets a massive reaction against Jerry Lawler. This is a non-title match because HBK has that ladder match rematch to get ready for. HBK gives Lawler the run-around but when Sid comes to ringside, HBK gets distracted allowing Lawler to take over and work him over. Sid picks up Michaels’ Intercontinental title belt and walks around the ring while King gets his licks in and when HBK mounts his comeback and connects with the Sweet Chin Music, Sid attacks him to cause a disqualification. Sid drills Michaels with a chokeslam and is about to give him a Powerbomb but Razor Ramon runs down and attacks Sid. Shawn is about to drop Sid with a superkick but Ramon shoves him out of the way and tries to give him the Razor’s Edge instead. King rescues Sid and the pair of heels leave. Michaels and Razor are both babyfaces but that doesn’t make them friends and they have a little tug of war over the IC title belt. Razor wins that and they continue to argue. After a commercial break, WWF Champion Diesel is in the ring holding his two friends apart and stopping them from coming to blows and that's how the show ends. An exciting ending with a lot of different storyline threads being pulled - I liked it! 

Monday Night Raw - August 21st 1995

• Historically this is a very important episode of Monday Night Raw as it’s the final episode before the start of the infamous Monday Night War. I’ll talk a lot more about that and WCW in the next Preview as during this episode, Raw’s annual several-week-long break is mentioned and the next episode isn’t until September 11th.
• The previous weekend on WWF Superstars Kama once again tore apart the black wreath of the Undertaker fans. The creature of the night was offended enough that he got in the ring and was chokeslammed by Kama for his troubles. The Undertaker vs. Kama match at Summerslam is now a casket match and Undertaker promises to take out as many members of the Million Dollar Corporation as he can beginning with Tatanka tonight in the main event. I mean IRS, King Kong Bundy and Nikolai Volkoff are all gone so he doesn’t have many to deal with. 

• The opening match is King Mabel and Sir Mo vs. two scrubs. The royal duo attack them from behind and have no problem destroying the jobbers as you’d expect from someone who has a WWF Championship match at Summerslam less than a week later. Mabel hits a decent looking piledriver to win it for Men on a Mission and then after the match claims to be the greatest tag team of all time. He throws out a challenge to the Allied Powers duo of British Bulldog and Lex Lugar. You’d think he was more focused on his WWF Championship match. That’s setting up M.O.M’s next feud but as I mentioned at In Your House 2, Lex Lugar won’t be with the company for much longer. That kicked off a show-long storyline where Vince and Jerry talk about how the British Bulldog wants to accept their challenge but can’t find Lex Lugar anywhere.

• This week Dean Douglas is out of the classroom and brings The Report Card to us from the production truck. This week’s word is Dominant and he gives King Mabel a grade of NC, which stands for New Champion. He shows a little bit more personality this week with an evil laugh at the end.

• The 1-2-3 Kid faces the Brooklyn Brawler. The legendary jobber attacks the Kid before the bell and that lets him control the match for a little bit but only one of these guys has a PPV match so it’s a fast victory for the 1-2-3 Kid with a barrage of heel kicks and then a roll up. 
• This isn’t the last we’ll see of Tatanka but this is very close to the end of his WWF career. I mentioned earlier in this Preview that there were some sketchy legal issues involving him and Jimmy del Ray and he was removed from TV as a consequence of that - this and his next match were pre-taped before that happened. Chalk up another loss for the Million Dollar Corporation who are now down to just two active members in Kama and Sid. A little distraction from Ted Dibiase allows Tatanka to attack from behind and he slowly works over the Undertaker with punches, chops, kicks and a long sleeper hold. Vince McMahon buries Tatanka a little saying that this match proves Undertaker isn’t the same man without the urn - normally Tatanka would be no match for him. Undertaker guts it out and with a chokeslam and then a Tombstone picks up the victory and momentum heading into Summerslam.

• During the Summerslam Insider, Todd Pettengill runs down the whole card. There’s some brief comments from Bret Hart about his match with Isaac Yankem where he continues his trend of adding the word “the” where it doesn’t belong and promises to beat up the evil dentist at The Summerslam.
• Jean Pierre Lafitte faces my boy Scott Taylor. The thieving pirate beats the hell out of him with kicks to the gut and finishes him off with senton splash off the top rope.
• Goldust speaks to us from Hollywood and the greenscreen is way less obvious this week - I think he might actually have been there in Hollywood this time! Jerry Lawler calls him the personification of Hollywood and mentions that the internet is abuzz with Goldust. The Internet was such a niche concept in 1995 for most Americans that this feels like the first time they’ve ever mentioned it on Raw.

• In the ring, Vince McMahon interviews WWF Champion Diesel about Summerslam. He makes a strong case for “whitest man in the world” as he calls Mabel a big cat who has picked it up a notch but tells him that after Summerslam the WWF will still be running on Diesel power. To everyone’s surprise, the British Bulldog comes down to the ring. He says that Lex Lugar isn’t here tonight because of a medical emergency and so he needs a partner - he asks if the fans want to see Diesel team up with him against Mabel and Mo right here tonight! Big Daddy Cool is game and shakes his hand and accepts and after a commercial break, Mabel and Mo are on their way down to the ring. The match doesn’t go long before, to everyone’s shock, Bulldog clotheslines Diesel from behind! Mabel slams him and then holds him so that Bulldog can beat him up some more. See, the plan was for the medical emergency to be that Bulldog attacked Lex too but that story never paid off of course. As the attack continues, Jim Cornette of all people comes down to the ring and confirms that he is now the manager of British Bulldog. Bulldog slams Diesel in the middle of the ring and leaves him for Mabel to splash and leg drop. Cornette hands the WWF title belt to Bulldog who celebrates with it - extremely odd given that Mabel is the one challenging for the title at Summerslam. He does have the common sense to hand the title off to Mabel and he and Mo parade themselves over the fallen Diesel in the ring. 

• Jerry Lawler scurries backstage after Jim Cornette and the British Bulldog to get a quick interview with them about what just happened at the end of the show. Cornette and Bulldog laugh at Diesel’s misfortune but refuse to explain themselves and then the focus goes back to Mabel who screams about his royal plan and how Diesel has no chance at Summerslam.