WWF Raw – October 5th, 1998 – Nassau Coliseum – Nassau, NY
WWF Raw opens with a recap of the recent Vince-Austin drama, including the hospital room beatdown (but not the forcible enema). Vince drives his own car, a Corvette convertible, to the arena. He has also invited Austin to the arena tonight. What could possibly go wrong? The stooges help McMahon into his wheelchair as he berates the garage attendant.
The New Age Outlaws are back together after a brief separation. Billy doesn’t seem into it, though. Sure, he’s pointing to his ass and all, but where’s the smile? Gunn does grab the mic and lays the matter to rest with the standard ultimatum re: being down with DX.
Their challengers are LOD 2000, tonight consisting of Animal and the substitute Droz, who wears the face paint and spiked shoulder pads.
Hawk, meanwhile, wears face paint and regular clothes and insists that he’s sober. For the record, “Mike” says, he was addicted to pain pills after years of injuries. At Judgment Day Sunday, the 3-man LOD will wrestle DOA and Paul Ellering in the latest installment of their never-ending feud.
Shortly into the match, DOA interferes and brawls with the Legion of Doom. Amid the distraction, the Headbangers sneak into the ring and smash Road Dogg with a boom box (payback for the Outlaws doing the same thing a year earlier). Jim Ross is quick to note, twice, that this was not a JVC Kaboom Box, as “those things don’t break”. The Bangers, who have been feuding with the Oddities and Insane Clown Posse for weeks, suddenly have a tag team title match against the Outlaws on pay-per-view.
As first noted on Heat, Vince McMahon has stripped Triple H of the Intercontinental Title due to injury, therefore a new champion will be crowned tonight in a tournament with unknown participants. I honestly don’t remember who wins this one, which should tell you something about the importance of the IC title over the next few months.
McMahon sits backstage with his foot propped up when Kane arrives at the arena in a mask and a track suit.
Steve Blackman, still recovering from injury, faces Ken Shamrock in the first tournament match. Shamrock targets Blackman’s injured knee throughout the brief match, winning with the ankle lock. His celebration is cut short, however, by the Blue Blazer, who gives him a spinning heel kick before moving on to Blackman. I’m sure this would be much more amusing without knowing it will lead to Owen Hart’s death. Shamrock seems more confused than anything, quickly slapping the ankle lock back on once the Blazer left.
The Undertaker walks into the parking garage in biker gear before WWF Raw goes to commercial.
Lawler and Ross narrate clips of Goldust to remind viewers who he was. This includes clips of him beating up Razor Ramon and Roddy Piper (both coincidentally employed by WCW) in early 1996. The latter footage cuts off before Roddy strips him to women’s lingerie.
Val Venis is here for a first round match, and the commentators are resentful that Tony Chimel knows the tournament participants and they don’t. Venis compares his dick to a clock. His opponent is Marc Mero, accompanied by Jacqueline, who finally has an actual Women’s title belt. With the previous belt in Madusa’s waste basket, it was either use the old one with Moolah’s face on it, or make a new one.
Jim Ross relays that someone has arrived at the arena and is causing a stir, but we’ll have to wait until after the match to find out who. We don’t have to wait long, as Venis beats Mero in fairly short order following a distraction by Terri. Post-match, Jackie tackles and punches Terri. Hey, you’ve got to have new contenders for that Women’s title!
Anyway, the new guy at the arena is Paul Bearer. Yay.
Michael Cole talks with Sable, starting off with effusive praise for her performance on Pacific Blue. Cole is worried that Sable might leave the WWF to pursue acting full-time, but Sable denies it. The only thing that could drive her from the WWF is a culture of sexual harassment! She then goes into Jacqueline’s dressing room and drags her in front of the crowd. The two choke each other, causing concern and arousal in Ross and Lawler, respectively.
WWF Raw returns with another tournament match, Mankind vs. Mark Henry. Mankind, who faces Ken Shamrock at Judgment Day, said in pre-recorded comments that Ken’s chair shot was weak. He’s got one word for him: Socko! Mankind’s opponent, Mark Henry, faces The Rock at Judgment Day. In pre-recorded comments, he shares a poem he wrote for Chyna.
Within seconds of the bell, Chyna comes to the ring to observe, but Mark is not distracted. Henry targets Mankind’s leg with elbow drops and splashes until Mankind dodges a second-rope splash. Foley takes Mr. Socko off his own foot, puts it on his hand, and beats Henry with the Mandible Claw. After the match, Chyna argues with Mark, who refuses to talk.
Back in the parking garage, Steve Austin pulls up in a cement mixer and chats with the garage attendant Vince insulted.
When WWF Raw returns, Stone Cold tells Michael Cole to buzz off because Austin has work to do. Vince doesn’t like this news one bit, so the stooges promise to investigate. Commissioner Slaughter, now aboard the idiot train, trips over Vince’s leg en route to the garage.
Jeff Jarrett faces X-Pac in the final first round match, the winner of whom faces Mankind. Ross wonders how former champ Triple H feels about X-Pac being “forced” into this tournament. Yeah, poor X-Pac. The announcers, who have been complaining all night that a lack of front office communication has been making them sound like morons, can’t fathom what Steve Austin wants with a cement mixer in the same garage as Vince McMahon’s personal convertible. Sorry guys, but this one’s on you.
The action in the match is fast-paced—a little too fast-paced for Mike Chioda, who catches a stray from X-Pac. With the referee momentarily out of commission, Jeff Jarrett puts a boot into X-Pac’s groin to prevent a Bronco Buster. Wrestling rule book aside, it’s legitimate self-defense to kick someone in the groin if they’re about to shove it in your face.
Less legitimate is Jeff’s attempted use of a guitar as a weapon. For the first time ever, Jeff Jarrett has his guitar in a case (to keep it from getting scratched before he smashes it into a thousand pieces). But would you believe it—there’s no guitar inside, just Al Snow’s mannequin head! X-Pac uses the distraction to roll up Jarrett for the victory.
Continuing tonight’s theme of guys doing things for the first time and having it immediately backfire, it’s back to the parking garage and Vince McMahon’s convertible. It’s from McMahon’s famous Corvette collection that we’ve never heard of before tonight! Austin dumps cement into the open roof until the windows break. “Austin is loading McMahon’s car with cement!” says Jim Ross, who pronounces it CEE-ment. That’s cement, with a t.
WWF Raw returns with Steve Austin in the ring; Stone Cold says Vince “cemented” his fate when he screwed Austin. This Sunday, despite being merely the referee in the main event, it will be Austin himself whose hand is raised. McMahon then rolls onto the ramp in his wheelchair, flanked by a masked personal bodyguard (whom he really should have dispatched to the parking garage ten minutes ago) and police dogs. Austin charges up the ramp but stops about five feet from the dogs. With Stone Cold at bay, Vince harangues him and books him and The Rock against The Undertaker & Kane. Stone Cold will need to look in his rear-view “mirruh” and watch his back.
Fans chant, “Asshole” at Vince, who, thanks to his leg injury, may never play polo again. And he’s still not over Stone Cold violating his “rectal area”, which draws big cheers from the crowd. Oh, for the love of polo!
McMahon promises to fire Austin if he doesn’t raise the hand of a new WWF champion at Judgment Day. When Stone Cold says Vince doesn’t have the balls to do it, McMahon claims to have balls the size of grapefruits, a phrase that would be quoted for years. What wouldn’t be quoted was McMahon’s follow up: “…and this Sunday, you’re going to be picking the seeds out of your teeth, because Austin, you will be humbled!” It turns out, Vince McMahon’s famous “grapefruits” line was about forcing Steve Austin to orally pleasure him to completion. Yeah, he’s guilty.
WWF Raw returns with Val Venis, whose suggestive pre-match promos now sound positively tame in light of that Vince McMahon promo. There’s no bawdy “Big Valbowski” joke this time, though, as Shamrock attacks him from behind during his entrance. Shamrock locks Venis in the Boston Crab, and Lawler takes the opportunity to hype up Val’s “lower-body strength… if you know what I mean”. At least it’s not the most tasteless joke he could make about Venis and crabs. At long last, Venis reaches the ropes and goes on the offensive, breaking only to gyrate. Shamrock soon chop-blocks Venis’s ankle and wins with the ankle lock. He faces the winner of Mankind vs. X-Pac.
With Val prone in the ring, Goldust returns and shatters Val’s dreams, the debut of that illegal wrestling move. Looks like Terri won’t be picking out any seeds any time soon.
In the garage, the stooges assess the damage to Vince’s car. Mankind, ever-helpful, fishes through the cement with Mr. Socko in search of McMahon’s briefcase.
WWF Raw returns with another ill-fated Michael Cole interview. This time, it’s the Rock pushing Cole away. Rocky reminds fans that he is the number-one contender for the WWF title (though the Kane-Undertaker PPV title match would say otherwise), then says he has a problem being Stone Cold’s partner tonight. D-Lo and Mark Henry then show up to complain about The Rock teaming up with Stone Cold (whom Rock threatened with physical violence not five seconds earlier). Despite Vince McMahon publicly forcing the two men to team up, D-Lo takes Rock’s pairing as an insult, as if Rock thinks he’s too good for the Nation. Mark Henry, who signed to wrestle The Rock this Sunday, is likewise shocked at the lack of loyalty.
X-Pac and Mankind come into their second-round match in bad shape; X-Pac has a limp, and Mankind doesn’t have Socko. Mankind dominates the early part of the match until he brings a chair into the ring, which Mike Chioda confiscates. Though X-Pac is a beloved babyface, the fans boo the prospect of Mankind not being able to smash his head in. X-Pac makes a brief comeback with martial arts kicks, but what really turns the tide is Ken Shamrock hitting Mankind in the ankle with a chair. X-Pac wins with a schoolboy, putting him in the finals with Ken Shamrock. Ken congratulates his next opponent with physical violence. A team of referees pleads with Shamrock to release his headscissors before Tony Garea figures out he can pull one of Ken’s legs.
WWF Raw comes back from commercial with X-Pac clutching his neck but agreeing to wrestle Shamrock anyway. Former champ Triple H is on commentary rooting for X-Pac, but it’s not enough to overcome the ankle lock; Shamrock wins the match and the title, although, like Jacqueline last month, there is no physical belt on hand. Did Triple H throw it in the trash?
In WWF Raw’s final segment, Jim Ross announces that the Shamrock-Mankind match at Judgment Day will be for the Intercontinental title, meaning all five titles will be on the line at the event. That makes up for no real Austin match, right?
He also notes, during a replay of the Corvette incident, that they call it a “CEE-ment mixer” in Oklahoma (just to clarify that he wasn’t saying, “semen”).
During the Rock-Austin vs. Taker-Kane match, Paul Bearer comes to the ring. Ross says Paul is only “allegedly” Kane’s father because Jim “didn’t see no DNA on that”. They did a DNA test on WWF Raw five months earlier.
While Undertaker handles Stone Cold, he’s puzzled by Paul’s presence, allowing Austin to hit Taker’s leg against the ring post and tag out. The Rock delivers a People’s Elbow to Undertaker, though he has to kick him back down after the Taker sits up in the middle of it. Kane interrupts the count; his subsequent reprimand from Earl Hebner allows The Rock to cold-cock the Dead Man in his cold cock. Kane intervenes again, permitting Taker to chokeslam Rocky. With the brothers now firmly in control again, D-Lo Brown and Mark Henry come to check out their old buddy and his new best friend.
Kane hangs up the Rock on the top rope and crashes down on him from above. The announcers, however, are more concerned with Austin’s (un)willingness to “humble himself” for his boss this Sunday (grapefruit seeds and all). Following a desperation Samoan Drop on Kane, The Rock tags out, then gets double-teamed by D-Lo and Mark. Austin’s offense is interrupted temporarily when he gets locked up in the ropes, but soon he’s battling it out with both Taker and Kane. McMahon’s security guard rushes the ring, clubs Austin from behind with a nightstick, then unmasks to reveal the Big Boss Man. Kane and Undertaker stomp Austin until WWF Raw goes off the air.
Final tally:
Clinton references: 0