WWF In Your House: Final Four 2/16/97

Shamefully, I've never seen the Final Four main event. It's a big 90s WWF blindspot for me and there's no reason for it, other than I don't love 1997 WWF. The highs are high, but the arenas are cold, the undercards are stale, the house style leaned towards dull, and I don't think the shows are filmed well. But other than that, I can't complain. A fact that can double as a reason, is that I've been watching - daily - a lot of 1997 WCW lately for my wildly entertaining and cumbersome book, and watching something like this does make for a nice comparison point. Plus, In Your House events were still under 2 hours at this point. They're basically a Coliseum Video with worse editing.  

Anyway let's correct the mistake of me never seeing a universally praised match with 3 of my favorites, and also double down and replace that corrected mistake with a bigger mistake: reviewing the entire show. 

1. Marc Mero vs. Leif Cassidy

ER: Marc Mero gets a ring full of sparklers, and Cassidy is already waiting inside that ring of sparklers. How often did they already have somebody waiting in the ring to start a PPV? I really like how the French announce team talks about Chattanooga, but the crowd is cold for this one. A Wildman shouldn't start off a match working a kneeling wristlock, so the cold is earned. Cassidy at least throws in bumps and acts like a dickhead. When Cassidy is kicking at Mero's leg, I buy his look of disgust. Cassidy throwing legsweeps and heel hooks is more interesting than what Mero was doing with the match. Okay we are going into the heel hooks and the elbowdrops to the inner knee a lot more than I was expecting. Interesting to me doesn't mean "interesting to the live crowd", but to the crowd and wrestler's credit they did all come together to root Mero through the legwork. 

It just hit me that the whole thing is laid out like a Tony Garea/Johnny Rodz match, and how a lot of 1997 WWF undercard matches felt like they were doing tributes to bad 1982 WWF undercard style. Not only is that a terrible style to be doing in 1997 - especially compared to what WCW was doing - but this was in Chattanooga and people in Tennessee were getting Lawler/Dundee in 1982, so Salvatore Bellomo vs. Baron Mikel Scicluna wasn't going to cut it. Mero has a cool short runway tope to break up Cassidy threatening Sable, and the shooting star press looks like even more of a crazy 1997 finisher today, but WCW opened their February PPV with Syxx/Dean Malenko like one week after this. People saw the difference. 

2. The Nation of Domination (Crush/Savio Vega/Faarooq) vs. Goldust/Flash Funk/Bart Gunn

ER: What even is this babyface (?) team? What do those three men have in common? Are they all recent TV victims of the Nation? I didn't watch any of the TV surrounding this match, but that's a tenuous reason to have three men teaming up on PPV. One of the clips they showed was Goldust getting jumped on a house show. Was WWF setting up PPV six mans on house shows in 1997?! Also I know I'm a big hypocrite because if I saw this match was on a WAR card I would lose my shit, and I would be right to do so. And this match - what we get of it - might be worth losing your shit over? It's filled with Flash Funk in his Labelle boots, hitting huge planchas (including one he gets Irish whipped into), and a nice run of the Nation cutting the ring off on Funk. Flash has a great sequence to build to his hot tag, back flipping over a Vega/Crush double clothesline and leaping through them with one of his own. 

The hot tag goes to Bart Gunn and it's kind of incredible to have one of wrestling's best babyface hot tag guys on the apron but choose not use Goldust as the babyface hot tag in a match where Goldust was the one shown getting attacked at a house show and makes the most sense as the babyface hot tag. But hey I guess liked the simple usage of Gunn. He comes in, throws left hands, hits a couple clotheslines, and gets a nice visual pin on Faarooq with the bulldog. This is a very fun six minutes, but ends way too early and feels way too incomplete to fully recommend. There was hardly any Goldust, Crush, or Vega. I don't know if you can have a good a trios match while barely utilizing half of the participants. It's useful as a match you can point to when talking about strong Flash Funk performances - maybe the least recommendable era of Scorpio's career - as it has some of his best flying and great selling. That means something. 

3. Rocky Maivia vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley

ER: I didn't actually check the full card for Final Four before I fired up this review, and I gotta say I'm not jazzed about watching a HHH/Rock title match. That said, this was really good. It has a great opening. They do a really cool section around dueling drop toe holds, a bit of a scramble, a loud slap delivered by HHH and returned by Rocky and it snaps the crowd awake. Helmsley hits kind of hard and Rocky bumps bigger and a bit more recklessly than he would a year later. I wish we got a bit more Rocky bumping, as the HHH control after the hot opening was solid, workmanlike, but doesn't give Maivia a ton to play against. Rocky isn't great at emotive selling in 1997. He only knows one move and it's "heave on the mat". He just lies there and heaves, which is the worst way to make a grounded side headlock interesting. But the more he moves, the more the crowd swells, and he's very good at taking offense. He is much more watchable when he runs into Hunter's running knee (which Hunter brings up to face level) and misses a high dropkick than he is is hitting a running crossbody. 

Rocky's big punch comeback has some fire but was missing something, much better taking at a hot shot off the top turnbuckle. Yep, Rock's offense sucked in 1997, but HHH tucked his head painfully on that stupid "hop around you" DDT. This had a really good opening and a second act that felt like it was building to a hot third, and I don't think we got there. Of the Islanders given a surprise title win in 1997, it's clear that Prince Iaukea was so much further along than The Rock. We'll see how this continues to develop, but as of February 1997 it's clear that Iaukea is more advanced as a wrestler and in line for a more successful career. Not one single person could have predicted what Rock would become by June 1998 if they had only seen him in February 1997. Impossible leap. If Byron Saxton had become an all time short term draw a within a year. 

4. Owen Hart/British Bulldog vs. Doug Furnas/Phillip LaFon

ER: This is one of those on paper matches that feels like it should be great, but this was not great. That's partly due to a lot of this being angle instead of match, but also due to the angle itself not being any good. I don't think the Owen/Bulldog team was ever as good as it should have been, and even working normally I don't think they were ever as complementary as they should have been. That means in this match they are a team of non-complementary guys who are now intentionally not communicating as part of an angle. It's awful. And let's just get it out of the way now: British Bulldog looked like shit. He didn't look like shit physically; he actually looked healthy. "Healthy" isn't a word typically used to describe The British Bulldog, but this era is the healthiest he looked. He's noticeably smaller and has none of the inflated muscle he had through most of his career. Every person in this match is basically the same size, even though I don't think of any person in this match being the same size as any other person in this match. Bulldog and Owen are essentially the same exact guy here. So physically, he looks great. 

He just wrestles like shit. His strikes are shockingly bad, just putrid strikes with no kind of weight behind them. His clotheslines look so pulled that you'd think his body was incapable of taking any kind of resistance. Bulldog was much smaller and not wrestling like a heavyweight...sorta. Other than holding LaFon up in a vertical suplex, he does no power spots, instead doing sliding dropdowns and sunset flips. The powerslam is still his finisher, but it's more like Charlie Haas doing a powerslam. British Bulldog is like if Doc Dean had worse stomps. 

 

Owen and LaFon feel like they would be a much better team with better chemistry. I liked the twists they did on their own Malenko/Guerrero roll-ups. I'm pretty burnt out on 2 count kickout reversals but theirs looked fresh, and it helped that they weren't doing these reversals in a bunch of their matches. Owen and LaFon feel like two sides of the same coin and even their movement is similar. None of the Owen/Bulldog offense looked good and they really did feel like a time who never teamed before, more than a team having disagreements. When Bulldog holds up LaFon in a vertical suplex, Owen goes to crossbody LaFon to the mat and instead mostly lands on Bulldog's face. But I did like Owen's spinning heel kick into him when LaFon ducked out of the way. Their best interaction against each other was strong, when Owen actually slapped him and Bulldog responded with his best clothesline of the match.

Furnas and LaFon wrestled like a fucking team. These dudes wrestled like every single tag team on TV today wished they wrestled like. It's crazy you don't hear Furnas/Kroffat every mentioned by modern wrestlers as influences, because there are dozens of guys on current wrestling TV who seem to be wrestling like worse versions of Furnas/Kroffat. They were doing this high speed move chaining so much better than all of the teams who have turned that into the prevailing Big Match tag team style. When Furnas made his hot tag it made the match actually hum for the first time, with nothing but cool shit getting chained. But then it ends with Owen barely hitting LaFon with his Slammy award. Major boner not just giving Furnas/LaFon the titles here. 

5. Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin vs. Vader vs. Undertaker

ER: I'm not sure why I haven't watched this before now. I really didn't know anything about the match other than it still gets consistently praised and that Vader got busted open. I remember seeing the Raw Magazine with Vader's bloody masked face on it in the supermarket, at a time where I hadn't been exposed to that much bloody wrestling. I had bought an old copy of the War Games Bash '87 clamshell VHS at a Healdsburg video store and that had really opened up my wrestling world. That who tape was bloody and had at least two dozen instances of somebody getting their face painfully raked across chain link. I don't think I had seen bloody wrestling before that tape, and I don't think I had seen blood in a WWF match before seeing Vader bloodied up on that magazine. 

And Vader bleeding is really the thing that makes this match great. It's really chaotic, more chaotic than any main event WWF had done, because most of the match is two separate singles matches happening in the direct way of each other, without ever really getting in the way of each other. Impressive feat. It rules that Vader gets busted open like 2 minutes in, running full face into a chair and then taking a big bump into the ring steps, quickly apparent that the cut over his eye is disgusting. It's great that the match became all about Vader's disgusting eye and didn't focus on a goof like Undertaker, a man who is doing his silly rope walk in a match where you can lose by being thrown over the top. Just out here making everyone look like fools. It's only when Vader is swinging wildly at him with a chair - and then getting that chair mashed into his face by Taker's boot - that the match really starts to feel like a match. Well, I guess it felt like something great was going to happen before the match when Vader and Austin were flipping each other off. But Vader is a force and the crowd is hyped and loud. People love seeing Vader get chokeslammed, people love Vader kicking Bret in the balls and beating him with a chair, the people loved Vader and Austin hitting each other with the ring bell and fighting on top of some balding guy who Vader fell on top of. 

Vader gets kicked in the balls by Bret Hart in one of the most teed up kicks to the balls to ever appear in a main event. When Vader is eliminated, he is uppercut in the balls by Undertaker. People get choked with production cables and kicked in the balls in this match, and every time they show Vader's cut it looks worse. His missed moonsault is incredible. It defies physics. That moment where his hand is no longer in contact with the top rope and his body is leaning back before starting his rotation, it looks like you're about to witness the most dangerous accident. But then he gets superplexed by Bret and you begin to wonder which bump is worse for a man the size of Vader to be taking, and how fucking stupid it was that WWF had a 400 pound mastodon who could bleed out of his eye for 20 minutes and still go up for a moonsault and a superplex and then take a bump over the top to the floor, but still not see a role for him as a star.

I liked everybody in this match. Bret was as great as Bret always is in main events, Austin was lean and incredibly fast, Undertaker somehow fit excellently into the chaos, and I guess that's the key to why this worked so well: it was constantly chaotic with very little downtime, without any pairing ever overshadowing the other pairing, no matter who was fighting or where they were fighting. But this was Vader's show, a legendary big man performance that probably would have come off great even without one of the more grisly cuts in modern WWF history.  

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The Continuing Saga of Dirtbag Era Barry Windham

 Barry Windham/Jeff Jarrett vs. Legion of Doom WWF Raw 1/26/98

ER: The was a little scruffy, but I thought a lot of this was real good. I love this era of uncertain Windham looks, vacillating among different levels of dirtbag. Cowboy, biker, lazy pool guy, man who offers to wash office building windows and also smells, etc. This week he's still got the Blackjack hair, but now has a freshly shaved smooth fat face. He looks like a guy who wears a clip-on tie and makes fake IDs and licenses. Most notable about this was what I thought was a strong Hawk performance. I really liked his selling while getting repeatedly cut off from Animal, and I thought the pace pushing in his sequences with Jarrett were the best parts of the match. Windham works this like Buddy Rose and gets better the longer the match goes and Animal works a nice hot tag, but Jarrett and Hawk elevated this. There was a killer little sequence where Hawk stops Jarrett's sunset flip and punches him right in the forehead, and Jarrett instinctively trips him by the ankle and drags him down to keep control. 

This was the first of only *three times* that Windham and Jarrett teamed, and it's too bad. They had real chemistry and would have been a real upgrade to the tag division over the summer, and I loved the Aztec ring gear for Jarrett. I liked their ring control and simple things like a Windham vertical suplex followed up by a Jarrett elbowdrop. Both Road Warriors had some big long arm lariats and Animal's high rotation powerslam looked great, and I liked Hawk's role in this even before he hit his leaping fistdrop. The finish is messy but in kind of cool ways, with Hawk leaping recklessly off the top rope with a clothesline while he should have clearly seen that his target, Jarrett, was *not* facing him. Because of that, Hawk basically hooked Jarrett's neck and crashed himself, while Windham gave a weird but kind of cool short piledriver to Animal. The finish had Windham at his asshole heel best, blasting Animal with the tennis racket and then bat flipping it way out of the ring, back to Cornette. I need a GIF of Barry tossing that racket. 

Barry Windham/Jeff Jarrett vs. Bradshaw/Flash Funk WWF Raw 2/2/98

ER: If Windham was a low key document forging dirtbag last week, this was more of him as a guy talking too much shit at a birthday kickball game. He had a smooth smug look on his face and kept obnoxiously flashing peace signs, a cheap shot artist even though he was the biggest guy on the field. Not coy about it, just smiling and getting away with it, with two improbably 40 year old Rock n Rolls laughing and helping him cheat. The match was better on paper than it was in execution, but only because Flash gets taken out of the match early, and his exchanges with Jarrett showed uncharacteristic hesitation. Most of the Windham talk from this era was about how out of shape he was, but this match shows that this man can flat out work regardless of what his body looked like. I guess that's always been something said about him, though. His crowd work during his brief WWF NWA heel run showed that he could still connect to the crowd as a heel, he was just doing it in a way that WWF didn't like looking at. He taunts the crowd from the apron the entire time he was not officially in this match, and only enters the match after the Rock n Rolls distract Bradshaw, allowing Barry to sneak around the ringpost with a western lariat. 

When Windham tags in, he hits two excellent punches, long uppercuts that started from behind his right lovehandle, and continued to mock the crowd any chance he got. It surely wasn't a good sign for the NWA angle that Bradshaw still managed to win this match despite having no partner and going against 5 people, but it was worth it for the post-match beatdown. Cornette blasted Bradshaw with the racket and Bradshaw completely ignored it, before being jumped by Ricky and Robert. I loved the visual of the Rock n Rolls holding Bradshaw by the arms while Jarrett ties up his legs, Windham hitting standing splashes on Bradshaw's bad leg. I wish we would have gotten a Blackjacks Explode PPV match instead of just a 3 minute Raw match two months later. The whole feud could have been so much more. 

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Mini Complete and Accurate: Dan Severn in WWF

Dan Severn vs. Flash Funk WWF Raw 4/6/98 

ER: Kind of a robotic debut, but an effective short dead eyes killer showcase. Even though an actual match between these two would have been much better, I like when they put two tough guys in there together. Funk had size for an extremely agile guy, so with Severn's throwing strength and Funk's height you get a couple cool high Severn takedowns. Severn's takedowns all looked great, but his open hand slap ground and pound didn't really read as well to the crowd. The intensity was there, with Severn pouncing on Funk through the ropes and both almost tumbling to the floor. Given even a couple more minutes this could have been a stiff style clash for the ages, and Funk even hits his great spinkick right to Severn's chin. But this was not going to be Severn debuting in a competitive match, and he hits a mammoth belly to belly on Funk before tapping him with a Fujiwara. This was the lost weird dream match that some indy should have booked in the 2010s. I have a feeling that every single Severn WWF match is going to feel like something special that wasn't given a chance to be special.

Dan Severn vs. Mosh WWF Raw 4/20/98 

ER: This was really cool, as it was basically worked like a Bloodsport match. Severn shot in with a fireman's carry takedown and double legs and kept Mosh down with his weight, but Mosh was no pushover on the mat. I've never thought of Headbanger Mosh as someone with amateur wrestling tendencies in the ring, so it was cool to watch him not go limp on takedowns and throws. He was taken down with a reverse waistlock and kept fighting to his right and actually almost pulled off a go behind on Severn! It really looked like Severn wasn't expecting it and they both kind of awkwardly tumbled into the ropes. Severn threw him with a couple of cool rolling gutwrench suplexes, and Mosh kept trying to slow the momentum of them, only making them look cooler and fought for. Mosh even got a big arcing takedown while Severn was distracted, and Severn nearly took a huge head drop off it, like he was Misawa taking a big German. I really dug the two grappling on their feet, ending with Severn throwing what looked like a shoot bodyslam, then doing a similar lift into a powerslam before trapping the arm. The only actual strike that was thrown was a kneelift from Severn. Well, there was a really terrible punch thrown on the floor, when Thrasher took out Cornette with a punch that landed somewhere around Cornette's elbow. You give Severn and Mosh two more minutes, and you come out with something better than the majority of the shootstyle indy matches from this current craze. 

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On Brand Segunda Caida: The Goon

The Goon vs. Dan Jesser WWF Superstars 7/20/96

ER: Honestly, anybody who hates this gimmick is an actual fucking idiot. This whole performance was awesome and would absolutely slay on the indies (or in major feds) today with zero changes. We get a short, hilarious highlight package of Goon slashing and high sticking people on a hockey rink, and once the bell rings he literally throws his gloves off and starts hockey fighting Jesser. It's brilliant. And it's brilliant because Bill Irwin is a mean son of a bitch. He lights up and overwhelms Jesser with right hands, then throws him into the ropes and lariats him right in the back of the head. Jesser isn't a total zilch in this, working in a fun spot where he has Goon by the arm and keeps ducking right hands before flipping Goon onto his butt. The Goon's offense is simple but really tough, loved his flying knee into the corner and all of his strikes looked really good. His finisher is awesome, just flying as hard as possible into Jesser with a body check, sending Jesser bumping in awesome fashion through the ropes to the floor. For good measure, Goon runs out to the floor and checks Jesser again, from behind, right into the apron. For guys whose finishers involve sending a guy to the floor to get counted out, I'm gonna say that The Goon's body check is as good as Berzerker launching people past the ringside mats. Anybody who has ever told you that this gimmick wasn't good was not being honest with you, and you shouldn't trust them.

The Goon vs. Marc Mero WWF Raw 7/22/96

ER: This match ruled so hard. I cannot believe how wrong everyone was about The Goon! I knew I liked Bill Irwin, but The Goon is brilliant. This is also by far one of my favorite WWF Mero matches, both guys working stiff and Mero breaking out some cool highspots. The Goon throws down the gloves at the bell and throws hard hockey punches at Mero, big elbow, and sets up the body check in the corner. His hockey offense was so awesome and it will never ever get old to me. He throws rabbit punches, throws Mero into the ropes only to skate in with a low shoulderblock to the gut, steps on Mero's neck with his ice skate boots, the whole thing is amazing. Mero is a former Golden Gloves boxer who has no problem throwing blows with The Goon, and a dirty hockey fighter vs. a cultured boxer is a cool match-up that people would probably be more excited for today than in 1996. We get a couple nice nearfalls, with Mero hitting a roll-up that I thought was the for sure finish. But the match goes to even more interesting, deeper levels, really an awesomely laid out spectacle. To open the show they did a segment where Sunny brought out a big cake for Shawn Michaels' birthday, which of course babyfaces Michaels and Ahmed Johnson shoved into Sunny's face. So the ringside area was covered in cake, and here comes The Goon aiming to check Mero into the ring steps, and Goon slips on icing and flies into the steps himself! Goon was slipping around on the icing, then Mero hit his big tope con giro which Goon caught perfectly. Back in and a slingshot legdrop gives The Goon a loss two matches into the gimmick. But no matter, this was a match with tons of asskicking, and The Goon's brand of slugfest came across really cool in the middle of 1996 WWF. I wish 1996 Irwin was around to be doing this gimmick in current wrestling.

The Goon vs. The Stalker WWF Superstars 9/22/96

ER: I just might be crazy, and maybe it's because those ice skate boots were really tough to move in, but Irwin is so damn good in this gimmick that he actually MOVES like a guy starting a fight on the ice. His whole body movement is slightly off balance, but he hits with great explosive force and makes all of his shots look like big impact. Irwin vs. Windham surprisingly wasn't a match that ever really happened, which is a shame as this whipped in 1996 so imagine what it would have been like in 1989? The Goon throws his short right hand hockey punches, and they look so great! Stalker fires back with really nice, but more traditional punches, including his nice hooking uppercut. The Goon runs hard into Stalker, throws cheap shot back elbows (the gimmick is perfect!! Everything he does feels like a hockey cheap shot!!), and for the first time breaks out his full extension pump kick. Now, that's a classic nice Irwin spot, and I suppose it doesn't make as much sense to do it while wearing ice skates, as he would have just sliced Stalker's carotid, which is a bit much. Nice vertical suplex from Stalker here, and an even nicer superplex (obviously), and this was just a real nice workmanlike short match. He was clearly treated as a peer of Mero's a couple months before, but this whole match had much more of a "Stalker showcase" even though it was competitive. The Goon is still awesome.

The Goon vs. Flash Funk WWF Raw 12/2/96

ER: I *LOVE* that although The Goon's run was short, they kept matching him up with tough guys who didn't mind working stiff. Goon threw more stiff hockey punches, hard kneelifts, and sharp back elbows, but Funk is obviously a guy who isn't going to get eaten alive out there. Funk hits his slick sunset flip rollup out of the corner for a nice nearfall, then builds to a big lariat from the middle rope to the floor, and follows that with a moonsault from the top to the floor (and damn does his knee connect right with The Goon's face). The Goon is such a big bumper, taking a dropkick from Funk and doing a cool backwards butt first, through the ropes to the floor bump, and misses a leaping charge into the ringpost as nastily as I've seen anyone ever do it. He even brings some flying to counter Funk, hitting a cool elbowdrop off the middle rope and a couple variations on his pump kick. Both of them came off like tough guys in the one, and both took risks that were bigger than the reactions they were getting. But still, this was a cool match up from two awesome workers in weird gimmicks. Vince grunting and dancing to Flash Funk's theme music while imploring Funk to "get his booty up off the mat" is one of the worst things I've ever seen.

The Goon vs. The Undertaker WWF Superstars 1/5/97

ER: This match is exciting for many reasons. It's The Goon going out on top, going head to head with one of the top 3 guys in WWF in his final match. It's the end of the season, and The Goon just got told he's not going to be brought back next year. He still valiantly throws down those gloves to get into one last fight, and in a fantastic moment Undertaker becomes the first guy to successfully dodge The Goon's opening match cheap shot. Every other match saw The Goon jump his opponent at the bell and bully them into the corner with bitchin' rights to the eye sockets. Undertaker sidesteps The Goon and starts winging body shots in the corner, Goon bumping around like a doofus losing a hockey fight but who is going to keep swinging until he can't see. It's a fun match up and the cruel runtime tease was deceptive (the YouTube file of the match is 9 minutes, making me excited for a potential syndicated classic, but the match ends in 4 minutes and we get a Jim Cornette angle for as much time as the match got). Undertaker took most of the match, but The Goon didn't come off like a joke. He's a guy who looked tough even though Undertaker took 75% of this. He felt like a guy on Taker's level, and it would be a program I actually would fucking love. The Goon was a really impressive big guy bumper, and he really ran into guys, hard. I like how he took the chokeslam and the Tombstone, but man I wish this was a little more competitive and got at least a couple more minutes. What a weird little gem of a run.


ER: What do we actually know about Bill Irwin's run as The Goon? From the evidence here I thought it was a genuinely great, funny character that had potential as a popular midcard act. I don't know why WWF was bringing in 42 year old Bill Irwin, and then not rewarding him when he did the best anyone possibly could have done with a hockey gimmick. I'm not sure what more could have been expected. Whose idea was the gimmick? Why did they lose faith so quickly in the gimmick? What fault could they have found in Irwin's execution? I'm SO interested to know their expectations and reasons, so hopefully the reasons are common knowledge and someone can help me. I am a big Irwin fan, and think he's a guy more people should spend some time on. And I thought this gimmick was incredibly fun and incredibly well done. The fact we got so short of a run and so few matches from The Goon is a 100% honest to god unobjectionable shame. Take a 1/2 hour of your day to watch these matches and see why.

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