Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to another edition of The Fall Count. I
Speaker 1: am your host, Steve fall And if you tuned in
Speaker 1: today expecting to hear about five star classics, amazing wrestling,
Speaker 1: or even the best years of the business, well I
Speaker 1: am sorry to let you down, because today we're hopping
Speaker 1: into our wrestling time machine and going straight back to
Speaker 1: the first episode of Monday Night Raw in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: So happy New Year from World Wrestling Federation. Right wrong.
Speaker 1: This was the time when Vince McMahon was looking down
Speaker 1: the barrel of a multi million dollar rival down in
Speaker 1: the South WCW. His big creative answer was to give
Speaker 1: us some of the most confusing, painful, and downright embarrassing
Speaker 1: theme TV in the history of Monday Night Raw. Today
Speaker 1: we are breaking down an episode that time for good,
Speaker 1: or rather an episode that wrestling fans try to wipe
Speaker 1: from their brains. Ladies and gentlemen, Today we are talking
Speaker 1: about the raw Ball. Now. Vince McMahon loved a gimmick.
Speaker 1: He loved copying big pulp culture events, and since the
Speaker 1: NFL's Super Bowl was right around the corner, Vince decided, Hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we turn our biggest show into our football
Speaker 1: game goodshit. He called it the Stepdaddy of the mac
Speaker 1: Daddy of the Mall, and it was taped in Delaware,
Speaker 1: of all exciting places, no offense to the Delaware audience
Speaker 1: out there, and hosts for the night were a hyper
Speaker 1: Vince McMahon and a completely bored Jerry the King Lawler.
Speaker 1: Before so we get into the ring, let's talk about
Speaker 1: how this show looked, because the visual alone tells you
Speaker 1: everything you need to know about the WWF in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six. Now Vince McMahon and Jerry Lawler are wearing
Speaker 1: full football jerseys. They spent a whole hour planning out
Speaker 1: terrible football puns. I love it though, I do love it.
Speaker 1: Every single sentence out of Vince's mouth is a weird
Speaker 1: joke about first downs, the gridiron or trick plays. Then
Speaker 1: you have the storylines happening in the background. Gold Dust,
Speaker 1: who was a brand new, highly controversial character at this time,
Speaker 1: is trying to play mind games with Razor Ramone. He
Speaker 1: sends an usher down to ringside to give Razor a
Speaker 1: nice bunch of flowers. How does Razor handle it? To
Speaker 1: show off how tough and manly he is, he beats
Speaker 1: up that poor damn usher beats the hell out of
Speaker 1: him and then smashes the flowers to pieces. Now you'd
Speaker 1: think a guy with that much tough guy energy would
Speaker 1: be a little more secured himself, but hey, it is
Speaker 1: the nineties. But the main part of this episode, the
Speaker 1: thing that took up nearly half of the entire show,
Speaker 1: was the actual raw ball elimination match. Four teams. We
Speaker 1: got the smoking Guns, Savio Vaga teaming up with a
Speaker 1: Razor Ramone, Psycho Said teaming up with a one two
Speaker 1: three kid, and All in Heart with Yokozuna. The rules
Speaker 1: were a total mess. It was elimination style, but with
Speaker 1: the tweets, each team got one a fish shall time
Speaker 1: out that could call at any point during the match.
Speaker 1: It was a train wreck from the word go. So
Speaker 1: let's get into this beautiful disaster, all right. So this
Speaker 1: four way elimination match gets underway, and right away the
Speaker 1: football gimmick ruins the actual logic of the match. Early on,
Speaker 1: Owenhart is doing what Owenhart does, stalling and pulling cheap
Speaker 1: bad guy tricks. Referee Earl Hebner actually reaches into his
Speaker 1: pocket and threatens to throw a delay of game flag
Speaker 1: on Owen, I am not making this up. The match
Speaker 1: drags on, We've got random tags leg Larry, It's flying everywhere,
Speaker 1: and the commentary team is completely ignoring the action to
Speaker 1: make terrible football jokes to make matters worse. Throughout the
Speaker 1: entire match, this show keeps cutting backstage to the dressing
Speaker 1: room where Brother Love is screaming and preaching about love
Speaker 1: to a completely empty room. No one is there. It's
Speaker 1: just a useless noise filling up space because the action
Speaker 1: in the ring is going absolutely no nowhere. Now I
Speaker 1: get it. They were trying to have an inspirational speech
Speaker 1: about love in God, but they didn't want to say God,
Speaker 1: so they said love and said I get it. But
Speaker 1: Brother Love nineteen ninety six. No one's thinking we need
Speaker 1: him at this point. Finally, though, we get to the
Speaker 1: first big moment that actually matters, the first elimination. Razor
Speaker 1: Ramone gets a hot tag, enters the ring and starts
Speaker 1: running wild on the one two three kid. The kid
Speaker 1: is getting desperate and destroyed, so what does he do.
Speaker 1: He uses the match gimmick. He calls an official timeout. Now,
Speaker 1: in a normal world, a timeout means the action stops.
Speaker 1: Earl Hebner stepsid and forces Razor mode to stop beating
Speaker 1: down the kid, but because this is nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: WWF rules don't actually matter. While Hebner is distracted trying
Speaker 1: to yell at Ted Dibiaski on the outside, Razor decides
Speaker 1: to screw the timeout and hit the one two three
Speaker 1: kid with a massive razor's edge. Anyways, but the bad
Speaker 1: guy has karma. Psycho sid In blindsides the razor with
Speaker 1: a hard clothesline, drags the half dead one two three
Speaker 1: kid onto razors knocked out body, and the referee counts
Speaker 1: the pinfall. Just like that, the most exciting team is
Speaker 1: eliminated and their wrestling football jerseys will have to be retired.
Speaker 1: This evening, Razor and Sabia Vaga are out, and it
Speaker 1: leaves you with asking the obvious questions, why on God's
Speaker 1: Earth was there a timeout? But yet the action is continuing,
Speaker 1: so we're not fulfilling the gimmick. The kid called the timeout,
Speaker 1: the good guy ignored the timeout, the bad guy cheated
Speaker 1: during the timeout, and the raft counted the pin during
Speaker 1: the timeout. It was completely backwards storytelling that helped absolutely nobody.
Speaker 1: But we go to a commercial break When we come back,
Speaker 1: the match slows down to a crawl. It's Bart Gunn
Speaker 1: getting beaten down by the bad guys Owen. Hart is
Speaker 1: hitting shoulder blocks, flying souplexes, controlling the pace. Eventually, though,
Speaker 1: Owen decides to take a big risk. He goes up
Speaker 1: to the top rope, jumps off for a flying splash,
Speaker 1: but nobody is there. He hits the canvas hard. This
Speaker 1: leads to one of the most idiotic messed up finishes
Speaker 1: you'll ever hear about. Now, while the referee is completely
Speaker 1: distracted by something on the apron, the massive four hundred
Speaker 1: pounds Yoko Zuda climbs the ropes, hits the bond's eye drop.
Speaker 1: Billy Gunn moves though somehow though Owen ends up rolling
Speaker 1: right underneath his own partner. Yoko Zuna comes crashing down
Speaker 1: with all his weight onto his own teammate. Billy Gunn
Speaker 1: simply puts a hand over Owen and the referee counts
Speaker 1: to three. Now Owen and Yoko are out ouch. So
Speaker 1: now we go down to the final two team Psycho
Speaker 1: Sid in the one two three Kid versus the Smoking Guns.
Speaker 1: Now Sid takes control using his usual offense, which is
Speaker 1: Let's be honest, lots of punches. Sid hits a chunk
Speaker 1: slam on Billy Gun and the match is over. All
Speaker 1: Sid had to do was lay his massive body over
Speaker 1: Billy Gun and take the win. But instead of covering him,
Speaker 1: Sid gets cocky. He decides to send the end the
Speaker 1: one two three kid to the top rope to hit
Speaker 1: a flashy move off bad move though out from back
Speaker 1: comes a mad Razor amone. Remember Razor was screwed over
Speaker 1: during the time out earlier, so he's he eliminated. Who knows?
Speaker 1: Razor runs down the aisle, storms the ring, shoves the
Speaker 1: one two three kid right off the top rope. The
Speaker 1: distraction completely confuses the big guy. Billy Gun takes advantage,
Speaker 1: rolls up a confused Sid, and the referee counts to three.
Speaker 1: The Smoking Guns win the highly prized robble now over.
Speaker 1: On the other channel the exact same night, WCW Nitro
Speaker 1: was on the air. Eric Bischoff looked down Ranto the
Speaker 1: camera and called the rabble the toilet bowl, and folks,
Speaker 1: perhaps he wasn't lying. It wasn't a complete piece of garbage,
Speaker 1: but there was garbage. It had no energy, It dragged
Speaker 1: on forever. The rules were stupid, and the finishes made
Speaker 1: everything look idiotic. Though I did like the theme part.
Speaker 1: I liked how the wrestlers came through a giant raw
Speaker 1: bull signed like football players. I enjoyed the jerseys. I
Speaker 1: did enjoy the football puns. But if you're looking at
Speaker 1: this with my eyeballs in today's world, yuck. If I
Speaker 1: look at it in nineteen ninety six, when I was eleven,
Speaker 1: I loved it. Loved it now. I haven't even mentioned, though,
Speaker 1: some of the worst parts of this. Throughout this whole
Speaker 1: twenty minute match, Jerry Lawler completely ignored the wrestling because
Speaker 1: he was too busy hitting on a Raw magazine model
Speaker 1: who was sitting at the broadcast table. Her entire job
Speaker 1: for the night consisted of staring blankly into space, occasionally
Speaker 1: whispering this is wild into her microphone. Truly a high
Speaker 1: point of the broadcast. But if you thought the football
Speaker 1: theme ended the match right here and then you're wrong.
Speaker 1: Next up, Vince McMahon treats us to the official Raw
Speaker 1: Ball halftime show. Is it gonna be SEZ ninety six?
Speaker 1: We got we have Michael Jackson singing Tina Turner. Nope,
Speaker 1: we cut backstage to Doc Hendricks drank way too many
Speaker 1: energies and he's trying to bring a maximum hype to
Speaker 1: this segment. Doc tries to throw the show over to
Speaker 1: Jumbo Jumbo Jim Ross for a live report. Now, Jim
Speaker 1: Ross is a huge football fan. He loves a sport,
Speaker 1: but when the camera cuts the good old Jr. He
Speaker 1: looks and sounds like a man who wants absolutely zero
Speaker 1: part of this circus. He gives the most bored, flat
Speaker 1: delivery possible, completely killing Doc's energy. You could practically hear
Speaker 1: Jim Ross updating his resume in his head while the
Speaker 1: cameras were rolling and speaking of things that people wanted
Speaker 1: zero part of. Vince McMahon decides that the best way
Speaker 1: to kick off the new year on the Biggest TV
Speaker 1: Show is to take us back to the previous month's
Speaker 1: pay per view in Your House five. Specifically, he decides
Speaker 1: to the infamous hog pen match between Hunter Hurst, Hemley Hemsley,
Speaker 1: Triple Ah and Henry O. Godwin. Think about the business
Speaker 1: logic here for a second Okay pay per view companies
Speaker 1: charged fans hard earned money to watch this match just
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, and Vince's brilliant plan to show
Speaker 1: the entire thing on free TV right afterward. I'm sure
Speaker 1: the pay per review bosses were absolutely thrilled with that choice.
Speaker 1: The match featured Hillbilly Jim as a special guest referee,
Speaker 1: because if there was one thing Vince McMahon loved more
Speaker 1: than bad football funds, it was Hillbilly's. Then. The goal
Speaker 1: of the hog pen match is very simple. You have
Speaker 1: to physically throw your opponent inside a mud, poopy filled,
Speaker 1: dirty pig pen that was built all the way across
Speaker 1: the arena entrance ramp to ring. But for some weird reason,
Speaker 1: the match actually starts inside the ring. Now, let's skip
Speaker 1: right to the finish of this masterpiece. After fighting back
Speaker 1: and forth from the ring to the stadium floor, they
Speaker 1: finally end up back where the hog pen is. Henry
Speaker 1: oh Godwin, which I love that name, Henry Oh Godwin
Speaker 1: h O g ha, it's hog you got it. Henry
Speaker 1: Godwin hits his finisher, the slop drop, flattening the high
Speaker 1: class Hunter Hurst Hemsley on the floor. Henry thinks he
Speaker 1: has the match completely won. He runs hard at Hunter,
Speaker 1: looking to throw him into the filth, but Hunter uses
Speaker 1: Henry's own speed against him. Hunter docks steps aside in
Speaker 1: demps Henry headfirst straight into the hogpen. Now, during this matchup,
Speaker 1: Hemsley was slammed into the hogpen, cunning his back and
Speaker 1: now he has an open wound and pig poop and
Speaker 1: mud are going inside of his body. Now here is
Speaker 1: a funny bit of wrestling trivia for you. The original
Speaker 1: pay per view match only ran for about nine minutes,
Speaker 1: but because the WWF editors chopped that match up with
Speaker 1: a massive amount of commercial breaks for its TV reair,
Speaker 1: they somehow stretched the match out to nearly twelve minutes.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you, adding those commercial breaks made
Speaker 1: an already bad match worse, but it completely filled up
Speaker 1: the time on TV. But hey, the highlight package wasn't
Speaker 1: a total waste. Now, during the commercial breaks of this rebroadcast,
Speaker 1: the wwfails got to see historic early footage. We got
Speaker 1: the very first glimpses of the Huckster in the not
Speaker 1: cho Man. These were the infamous, pretty bad, poorly put
Speaker 1: together parody skits that Vince McMahon made to make fun
Speaker 1: of Hulk Coogan and Randy Savage for leaving his company
Speaker 1: for WCW. At this point in the show, though they
Speaker 1: hadn't even officially introduced these characters, yet we were seeing
Speaker 1: them for the first time during this commercial breaks of
Speaker 1: a hog Pen match. Now, as the segment wraps up,
Speaker 1: Vince McMahon hypes up that next week's episode of Monday
Speaker 1: Night Raw, proudly announcing that they are going to give
Speaker 1: away another big pay per i view match for free.
Speaker 1: You're gonna actually get to see Brett Hart first the
Speaker 1: British Bulldog for the WWF Championship on TV. My parents
Speaker 1: pay this bill for me in December of ninety five
Speaker 1: to watch this pay per view match. Now, if you
Speaker 1: watch it a RAW, I get to see for free.
Speaker 1: Plus Jeff Jarrett will take on Hakushi in a live
Speaker 1: press conference with Shawn Michaels. Now, Vince was losing viewers
Speaker 1: to WSW and you could feel the desperation as he
Speaker 1: tried to throw everything at the wall giving away pay
Speaker 1: per view matches. I cannot imagine the WWF or the
Speaker 1: pay perview companies being happy about that. Now, moving on
Speaker 1: to the next part of the show, we finally get
Speaker 1: something short sweet. We get Diesel versus King Mabel, a
Speaker 1: rematch from Summer Slam nineteen ninety five, as the main event.
Speaker 1: Now you're getting it. It's just a regular match on Raw.
Speaker 1: Before the match even begins, though, there is a historical
Speaker 1: nugget buried in the entrance that perfectly shows the brutal
Speaker 1: reality of working in wrestling business back then. Now, King
Speaker 1: Mabel makes his grid entrance sitting on top of a massive,
Speaker 1: heavy royal throne. And guess who one of the poor
Speaker 1: unnamed extras tasks with carrying that heavy throne on his shoulder.
Speaker 1: Was a very young, skinny Jeff Hardy. You actually can
Speaker 1: see Jeff Hardy on the screen visibly hurting his back
Speaker 1: compressing under the sheer weight of King Mabel. And it's
Speaker 1: no wonder that the poor guy ended up needing pay
Speaker 1: medicine later on in his life to fix that broken
Speaker 1: back from carrying Mabel all the way to the ring. Now,
Speaker 1: the match itself, thank god, it was short. Remember anything
Speaker 1: about SummerSlam ninety five That match went three seconds too long.
Speaker 1: Diesel doesn't play around the bell rings. Diesel hits King
Speaker 1: Mabel with one massive big boot, pins him and gets
Speaker 1: the win in exactly ten seconds. Hallelujah, where's brother love
Speaker 1: to celebrate this ten seconds? It was a ten seconds
Speaker 1: can you believe it? Ten seconds? The main event Summers
Speaker 1: ninety five? Ten seconds now who in for good measure.
Speaker 1: After the match is over, Mabel's partner Sirmo tries to
Speaker 1: get some revenge, but Diesel catches him and destroys him
Speaker 1: with a massive jack knife power bomb. Then we get
Speaker 1: to Diesel's new character direction. Vince McMahon was trying to
Speaker 1: turn Diesel into this cool anti hero rebel badass, very
Speaker 1: similar to what Stone col C of Austin would perfect
Speaker 1: a year later. But Vince's idea of showing that you
Speaker 1: were a rebel was forcing the audience to buy merchandise
Speaker 1: for a man who's seem to be doing poor and
Speaker 1: evil things. Vince mcmahondough announces that if you are a
Speaker 1: true fan of Diesel, you have to go out and
Speaker 1: buy official w WF branded black Diesel leather gloves to
Speaker 1: show your support. Nothing says I'm a rebel against a
Speaker 1: system quite like buying official corporate merchandise. Am I right?
Speaker 1: And of course the football theme keeps on giving folks
Speaker 1: because next up is the official Lombardi Trophy presentation. Only,
Speaker 1: because this is WWF, it's not the real football trophy
Speaker 1: it's the Steve Lombardi Trophy, presented none other than the
Speaker 1: legendary Brooklyn Brawler himself, Steve Lombardy. I love it so much.
Speaker 1: The trophy itself was a cheap plastic bowling trophy with
Speaker 1: a cardboard cutout of Steve Lombardi's face tape to the
Speaker 1: top of it. This was the big creative payoff to
Speaker 1: twenty minutes of football puns, football related matches, timeounts flags.
Speaker 1: The good guys naturally storm the ring and smash the
Speaker 1: cheap trophy to pieces in dump cans of Lipton wrist
Speaker 1: iced tea all over Steve Lombardi. To wrap up this
Speaker 1: sports theme nonsense, we get a quick promotional list for
Speaker 1: the upcoming Royal Rumble pay per view. They start listing
Speaker 1: off all the names of the restlers who are officially
Speaker 1: entering the match, and right there, buried in the middle
Speaker 1: of the hype package, we get a massive historic moment,
Speaker 1: the official WWF introduction of Vader. Big Van Vader was
Speaker 1: coming to the World Wrestling Federation, which was a huge
Speaker 1: deal at the time because of his brutal runs in
Speaker 1: WWCW w CW that is in Japan. And speaking of WCW.
Speaker 1: The show closes out with another trip to Billionaire Ted's
Speaker 1: Wrastlin war room. This was the peak of the Monday
Speaker 1: Night Wars propaganda skits. The skits feature the Billionaire Ted
Speaker 1: character sitting around a conference table with two top executives
Speaker 1: watching the tape of the WWF superstars doing high impact
Speaker 1: power bombs. In the skit, the Huckster and the Nachomen
Speaker 1: are terrified of the moves and want absolutely nothing to
Speaker 1: do with taking a power bomb. But hey, they look
Speaker 1: at each other and decide, hey, at least we can
Speaker 1: still do our signature postes. Get a lot of finger poking,
Speaker 1: a lot of hand cup in our ears. Now, looking
Speaker 1: back at this footage, the irony of these skits is
Speaker 1: absolutely off the charts. The whole point of Vince McMahon
Speaker 1: in his parody was to make fun of WCW for
Speaker 1: being an old, outdated wrestling company were the top stars
Speaker 1: did exactly the same moves they did in the eighties.
Speaker 1: But if you look closely at the air quote cutting
Speaker 1: edge product that the WWF was offering on the exact
Speaker 1: episode of Raw, their entire roster's big offense consisted of
Speaker 1: variations of the same exact moves that we were seeing
Speaker 1: in the eighties. It was the pot calling the kettle black,
Speaker 1: and it made no sense. In nineteen ninety six, these
Speaker 1: billionaire ted skits were seen as cheap shots. Now, obviously
Speaker 1: they're harmless through but they're incredibly petty. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: later in the year when these skits started getting deeply
Speaker 1: personal and nasty and targeting real life legal issues. The
Speaker 1: whole creative direction went completely off the rails and turned
Speaker 1: honestly a lot of fans off. As eleven year old kid,
Speaker 1: I thought they were hilarious. When you look at though,
Speaker 1: this entire episode of Raw, it stands as one of
Speaker 1: the absolute worst, most painful episodes of Monday Night Raw. Ever,
Speaker 1: it was creative, but at a low point in the WWF,
Speaker 1: we had terrible puns, bad corporate jokes, making fun of
Speaker 1: the huckster and the nacho man. But hey, this is
Speaker 1: the beauty of the wrestling business, in the wrestling history.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to sit through the mud and the
Speaker 1: hog pens to appreciate the gold we got later on,
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, though, thank you so much for tuning
Speaker 1: in to another episode of a fall count. I've been
Speaker 1: your host, Defaul, make sure to hit that subscribe button,
Speaker 1: leave us a review, and call your local cable providers
Speaker 1: and let them know how angry you are that Monday
Speaker 1: Night Raw in nineteen ninety six was giving away pay
Speaker 1: per view matches that you convinced your parents to purchase
Speaker 1: just two weeks ago. Oh, I love the rabble, but
Speaker 1: until next time, keep your shoulders off the mat and
Speaker 1: we will see you next time.