The Yokozuna push in early '93 was one of those things where WWF played it tricky by playing it straight.

WWF: "Yokozuna is probably the favorite to win the Royal Rumble. HOW DO YOU GET THAT GUY OVER THE TOP ROPE?"
Me: "LOL, that's not how it works. I know that by now."
<Yokozuna wins Rumble>
WWF: "Bret Hart is just up against too much here. He's a big longshot to successfully defend his title against Yokozuna."
Me: "Well obviously that's just a smokescreen. Bret's winning. Next."
...
Me: "WTF is going on here"

Is the WWE Network website super shitty or is it just my very bad computer? I can't scroll right on the "jump to" section of the shows.

Nevermind. Either I'm an idiot or it's a bad design.

It is a bad design for sure, but I haven't had issues with the functionality.

I made my way through the new Superstars stuff they posted. I think I'll officially give up on the MNW thread since I don't have the will to put in the proper effort level that thread requires (blame the invisible consumers of the thread who never posted), particularly because I keep making myself not use the Network to watch yet-to-come material from that period so that I could recap it unspoiled in the moment.

I think I'll just post my casual '97-and-on thoughts ITT like ABD does.

TAKA vs. Brian Christopher.

Lawler: "If you turn an Oriental upside down, do you..."
Vince: "NO NO NO. Stop."
Lawler: <tries to re-interrupt and continue the joke>
Vince: "No, we don't need to hear about that."

You know you're stepping wildly out of line with the casual racism when Vince is aggressively hard-vetoing in the moment.

Watching the 96 Survivor Series that FS1 aired this Tuesday, which I was at.

Couple of live thoughts:
- I was a big Freebirds fan, particularly Terry Gordy when ESPN used to air WCCW in the afternoons all the time. I can't believe I never put together that he was the Executioner at the time. The mannerisms should have been a dead give away, though he did look slower, but strangely thinner.

- I look at Sunny 96 and can't believe how far south she'd gone in less than 15 years. Drugs, I guess.

- Barry Windham. Slap a moustache on him and call him the Stalker. And make him a babyface?

- One of the things I didn't at all realize the significance of at the time, the debut of Rocky Maivia.

Yeah, I can't get through this in one sitting. Maybe I'll continue tomorrow.

Alex Wright: <speaks German>
Mean Gene: "Hey, hey! Back off the wienerschnitzel, pal! We talk English. This is America."

Finishing thoughts...

- I certainly didn't appreciate Bret/Austin enough at the time, nor did I realize how much of a face pop Austin was already getting, though Bret was still getting a larger face reaction, since it was his return after Mania that year.

- 24 years later and I can still remember the level of disappointment I felt at Jimmy Snuka being the mystery partner. I guess Vince thought that Snuka at the Garden would always be nostalgic.

- How many calories per day did Yokozuna need to maintain that size? And it's not like he was sedentary as a professional wrestler either. Not that a final result that everyone ends up just getting disqualified isn't ridiculous anyway.

- I remember hating Sean Michaels during this period whether he was face or heel. Although I can't remember who the heel or face was in this match. They both came out shaking hands with fans. Sean wrestled the match as a heel, but then Sid clobbered Jose Lothario with the camera.

- Short story time: I went to this with one of my friends and a couple of guys he worked with who were into wrestling. One of them was a strange dude, but was way into the product. I may not have said more than a few words to him all night. As we're coming out, we walked by the crowd gathering where the wrestlers come out of the garage.

An ambulance pulls out and a bunch of people scream "Sean Michaels". This dude takes off running after the ambulance with a few other fans. I wanted to get the hell out of there. It took us around 15-20 minutes to get him back. I was kinda pissed. I also wonder what the hell he was planning on doing if he caught up to the ambulance.

This was my first non-house show wrestling event, so it probably still ranks top 3 in all the wrestling events I've ever attended, though far behind Raw from 9/22/97 (also at the Garden) and KoTR '01 (Meadowlands).

Aside from The Undertaker at Survivor Series '90, I can't remember a time that WWF went the mystery partner route and had it not be disappointing.

Subbing Savio Vega into the main event of a PPV as the mystery partner was the real low point.

Bahahahaha.

Sometimes Tony Schiavone's hyperbole annoys me, but sometimes it just makes me laugh. I'm midway through Road Wild '97, three matches left, and Tony has declared that these are going to be the three biggest matches in WCW history.

The go-home show for this was a good one. I sighed when they announced that it was going to be three hours (for the 100th episode of the show), but they made it a big deal with Luger winning the title at the end, and it was plenty enjoyable. Road Wild been good so far too.

So, this happened.

One of the GOAT wrestling gifs right here!

A local club had a "Shadow Dance" competition at around midnight every Thursday night back in the late 90's. You basically danced behind a curtain and the crowd could just see your shadow. My roommate, who never really seemed like he paid attention when I would watch Nitro and rarely got drunk, surprised us all by entering and breaking out the Alex Wright moves.

Overheard from the crowd: "This kid's got no guns at all!"

My Jersey buddy: "Oh, he's got guns!" {he didn't}

I just shared your gif with him and he LOL'd.

I knew when I saw that moment that I had to stop everything and make a gif of it.

When The Godwinns turned heel in '97 (on the basis that LOD actually broke Henry Godwinn's neck in a botch, and they had the audacity to be mad about it), they started working patches of the Confederate flag into their wrestling gear as part of their heel symbolism. It was a nice touch, part of a natural transition from likable farmers to contemptible rednecks. This doesn't seem like something that Vince would use to have a wrestler try to draw heel heat these days.

Been enjoying the Last Ride doc.

This is my number 1 promo of all time

https://youtu.be/tEI81DATt5A

It’s a great promo. Personally I’m partial to his Tuesday in Texas promo. I highly recommend looking up his Hall of Fame induction speech if you haven’t seen it. He easily gave the best one of those I’ve seen.

Despite this, it was very well done. Especially the last part with this year's match against AJ. I had no idea he had two deaths in the family (including his brother) the week of mania.

Having been a dumb fanboy during the Monday Night Wars who would actively root for the WWF over WCW, I would usually find a way to convince myself that just about everything about the WWF product was better. I loved the WCW cruiserweight division, so I was very excited by the prospect of WWF creating the light heavyweight division, which would surely be even better than WCW's cruiserweights.

And then the people who came away headlining the WWF LHW division were Brian Christopher and TAKA Michinoku. Surrounded by supporting cast such as Scott Taylor and Scott Putski. And I still tried to play along. This was one time where, even in the moment, I knew that any attempt to say that WWF was anything but thoroughly outclassed in the cruiser/LHW area was just some biased clown ****. I'm pretty sure I did my best to roll with it anyway.

****ing ****. Gifs wouldn't do this justice because the sound is a big part of why it was so brutal, but Michaels smacking the back of Mankind's head into the post several times in a row was truly some cringey ****. All seemed extremely stiff.

It remains a wonder that Foley seems so functional today. It will be a damn miracle if he's alive and of sound mine into his 70s.

So DX was formed and The Rock returned from a lengthy hiatus with a heel turn that launched his career on this same Raw.

Pretty underrated historical episode in terms of the groundwork it laid.