WWF Monday Night RAW (October 24, 1994)

Original Airdate: October 24, 1994 (Taped October 17)

From Burlington, Vermont; Your Hosts are Vince McMahon and Randy Savage

Opening WWF Intercontinental Title Match: Razor Ramon v Yokozuna: Yoko attacks Ramon as he takes off the copious amounts of jewelry he wears, but the Bad Guy manages to use his speed to get away from his challenger, and he knocks Yokozuna to the outside with a flurry of right hands. Back in, Yoko stalls as the crowd taunts him, so Razor tries a bodypress - nicely blocked by Yoko with a bodyslam. That was very fluid, and looked great. He whips Razor into the corner a few times, but gets gassed, and takes forever to follow-up, finally unloading a headbutt, then tossing the champ out to the floor. Ramon beats the count back in (Why? The idiot threw you out of the ring and made no effort to go after you. Take the countout and keep the title, dumbass! It's right there!), and takes a nervehold for being a total dumbass. Yoko gets a second wind and unloads in the corner, but quickly runs out of steam, and goes back to the nervehold. An avalanche misses, however, and Razor hits a 2^nd rope flying bulldog for two. A series of rights knocks Yoko out to the floor, but he sees a casket that one of the Undertaker's Druids wheeled out during the bout, and runs away in fear to give Razor the countout victory at 12:00. Pretty terrible match, as Yokozuna was not a young lad at a spry 505 pounds anymore, and couldn't really work without taking long breaks in between spots. Luckily, they shifted him into a team with Owen Hart the next year, which is the best way to use a guy like that, since he can come in for short bursts, while Owen does the heavy lifting - no pun intended. –¼*

Survivor Series Report! Finally! It's been two months since SummerSlam, already!

The Smoking Gunns v Barry Hardy and Mike Bell: Man, the Gunns kinda did a whole lotta nothing before getting pushed up into the tag title picture in 1995, didn't they? I mean, from when they debuted back in early 1993, to now, have they had any real feuds at all? Even TV feuds? And it's not like the division was filled to the brim with exciting teams and they got lost in the shuffle - especially during 1994, post-Money Inc and Steiner Brothers. Gunns with the Sidewinder on Bell at 2:00. ¼*

Tatanka v Scott Taylor: You know, they should have run more shows out West during this period, because I think these North Eastern crowds find it too politically incorrect to boo Tatanka. Well, that, and because he's boring as fuck in this role. He tries, though, making all sorts of angry faces while working Taylor over, on his way to the End of the Trail at 4:00. ¼*

On Superstars over the weekend, IRS visits a funeral home to ensure that the corpses are up to date on their taxes

Adam Bomb v Phil Apollo: Apollo tries attacking before the bell, but gets quickly squashes with a flying clothesline and the Meltdown at 1:30. Afterwards, Bob Backlund shows up, and attacks Bomb with the Crossface Chickenwing. WHAT? Literally how many stop/start feuds did they have for Backlund in 1994? Savage! Luger! Bomb! And the Hart match for Survivor Series was already announced, so it's not like he didn't have a direction. That character had serious legs, and they totally cut him off too early to make way for Diesel. ¼*

Jerry Lawler hosts The King's Court, to unveil the final piece of his evil plan for Survivor Series: Cheesy, the royal midget

Action Zone promo, hyping the famous Kliq tag match. Man, they were really coming out the gate hard with that show, give them that

Diesel v Ben Jordan: And speaking of the Kliq, here's Ben Jordan! Unfortunately for him, Diesel doesn't think he's up to their level, and turfs him from the gang with the Jackknife at 3:45. Diesel looked to be having a ball dismantling the jobber, and see, if Tatanka was doing badass squashes like this on a regular basis, people would totally buy into him. ¼*

Our Season Never Ends baseball promo

Bob Backlund comes back out to act like a maniac again, which was actually probably his entrance for his opening match on next weeks show, which was taped immediately after this

BUExperience: Nice to see them finally announce matches for Survivor Series, but this was one of the duller episodes in a while, as it’s smack in the middle of the taping cycle, and with a terrible feature match, to boot.