WWF Superstars (October 28, 1995)

 

Original Airdate: October 28, 1995 (taped October 24)

From Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; Your Hosts are Vince McMahon, Jim Ross, and Jerry Lawler

Marty Jannetty v Jake Steele: I always liked Marty, and it seemed like he would get a good reaction every time he came back from his various… outings… but he seemed ice cold this time around. It also didn’t help that he was still doing the ‘Rocker’ thing, when the promotion had moved on, Shawn Michaels had moved on, and he just felt like a throwback. Jannetty is trying in the ring here, but he also looks out of shape, and isn’t moving as well as he used to. Jannetty with a flying fistdrop at 3:18. ¼*

WWF Women’s Champion Alundra Blayze is ready to be the face of the generation. Let us know how that works out

Jean-Pierre LaFitte v Tony Roy: Speaking of ‘ice cold,’ nothing doing with LaFitte here. Strong worker, but this gimmick is death, and they never really got behind it enough to get it over. Like, the gimmick isn’t great, fine. But they’ve gotten over lamer stuff through good booking. No such luck for LaFitte. LaFitte with a flying somersault senton splash at 3:44. ¼*

Dok Hendrix is in the studio for the Survivor Series Slam Jam, and Diesel/Bret is already announced as the main event. There are definite positives and negatives to the monthly pay per view model, but one definite positive is that they are pretty much forced to start promoting stuff right away, instead of weeks of nothing going on when they had big gaps between the pay per views

Backstage, Owen Hart, Jim Cornette, and Mr. Fuji give Yokozuna a pep talk ahead of his match with Razor Ramon later

Duke Droese v Roy Raymond: There’s this one dude in the front row (wearing all denim, a true Canadian) who has just been sitting there stone-faced the entire evening, and he’s hilarious to watch. Duke gives this jobber a lot of offense here, before killing him with a tilt-a-whirl slam at 3:10. DUD

WWF Intercontinental Champion Razor Ramon battles 1-2-3 Kid in a Karate Fighters match. Non-title

Bob Backlund v Bob Clancy: Bob is using Hail to the Chief as his music now. Backlund was still a good character, but they really didn’t have anything for him past WrestleMania XI. On the one hand, I get it. But on the other, the roster had so little depth, and they were running monthly pay per views, so I’m kind of surprised they didn’t find something more for him to do. Backlund with the crossface chickenwing at 2:01. DUD

Survivor Series ad. Featuring Bill Clinton!

Backstage, Razor preps for the match with Yoko, with 1-2-3 Kid cheering him on

Razor Ramon and 1-2-3 Kid v Yokozuna and Owen Hart: Razor with the white leather version of that belt looks wrong. This is scheduled as Razor v Yokozuna one-on-one, but Owen refuses to leave ringside, so Razor calls Kid out, and makes it into a tag match. Luckily, Kid is color coordinated with Ramon already. The heels attack, but get fought off, and the babyfaces clean house. Kid and Owen, and a criss cross ends in Kid delivering a monkey flip. Kid with an armdrag into an armbar, then into a hammerlock, but Hart throws an elbow, and adds a spinheel kick. Tag to Yokozuna for a combo, and a bodyslam follows, but Kid manages a tag to Razor. Ramon runs into trouble as well, however, and Owen delivers a legdrop. The heels work Razor over, but Ramon manages to reverses a side suplex on Owen for two. Hart pops him with a leg-feed enzuigiri for two, and he goes to a chinlock, and Yokozuna dumps him to the outside. They continue cutting the ring in half on the Bad Guy, but Yoko misses an avalanche, and Kid gets the hot tag - Roseanne Barr the door! Kid with a spinheel kick on Owen for two, but Hart fires back with an overhead belly-to-belly suplex for the pin at 10:53. This was solid, and did a good job of advancing several storylines (tensions between Razor/Kid, and Owen challenging Ramon for the title on the next RAW). * ½ 

Dok is back with another Survivor Series Slam Jam. They announce the Wild Card match concept here, and holy shit, the graphic is incredibly lazy. Shawn’s literally has a huge chunk of the In Your House logo on it! Did they really not have any other graphics on file for Shawn Michaels?!?

Sycho Sid is ready to show Bret Hart that this isn’t football next week. If it were softball, that might be a viable threat

Bret isn’t buying what Sid is selling. He’ll play football if he wants to, mama

BUExperience: A pretty good episode this week, with immediate Survivor Series direction, and a solid feature bout. Though I will say, while I like that things move along nicely with the monthly model, it also doesn’t really leave much room for anything to breathe. Like, In Your House had lots of huge stuff going on, but they just kind of glossed over it because now it’s time to push Survivor Series.