This episode starts off with a pretty awesome Sinead O’Connor-on-SNL reference when Rob Bartlett rips up a picture of Bobby Heenan and says “Fight the real enemy”. I still have no idea who Bobby Heenan is but I’m clearly supposed to dislike him so I can buy into that. Meanwhile, the Macho Man gets inexplicably attacked by a character called the Repo Man. I really hope the Repo Man is a wrestler because I don’t need another Doink running around keeping everyone on edge. Wait, is Doink a wrestler too? Ugh I hope not.
The face of a man with nothing left to live for.
Moving on to our first match, we have Terrific Terry Taylor VS a very wet Mr. Perfect. These are two blonde white guys with mullets so naturally I lose track of who’s who pretty quickly. It’s interesting to note that during this match Mr. Perfect is dishing out chops, but the audience doesn’t “Woo!” for each one the way today’s crowds do. I assume they didn’t start doing that til after Ric Flair retired. I’m interested to see when that starts. Speaking of Ric Flair, he shows up midway through to attack Mr. Perfect. Apparently there just weren’t enough white guys in the ring with super 80’s blonde hair.
Wet Hot American Wrestler
Afterwards we get a quick promo from Bret “The Hitman” Hart who looks like he just walked off the set of a My Chemical Romance video. He actually does go on to cut an awesome promo on Razor Ramon: “Razor Ramon is scum. He’s not the bottom of the barrel; you’ve got to tilt the barrel up and that’s where you find scum like Razor Ramon.”
The Black and Pink Parade
Afterwards we get a match between Marty Jannetty and Glen Ruth, but you wouldn’t know it from the commentary team who literally never even mention Ruth and instead spend their time talking about an upcoming match between Jannetty and Shawn Michaels. At one point they even call Shawn Michaels on the phone and talk to him about that match. Glen Ruth: the original jobber.
The final match of the night is between “El Matador” Tito Santana and Ric Flair. I don’t know who Tito Santana is, but if he’s facing Ric Flair, I have to imagine he’s somebody legit. I’ll have to keep my eye on him. I should mention that Flair sells like a champ during this match. Eventually Mr. Perfect shows up to attack Flair, returning the favor from earlier in the night. I have to imagine this is either setting up or continuing an on-going feud between the two. Afterwards Flair cuts an awesome promo. I could watch Ric Flair burst blood vessels while screaming into the camera for 3 minutes straight no problem.
Vince's face says it all.
Other Observations
We get a quick commercial of Randy Savage hocking Slim Jims. I didn’t realize he was doing those commercials even back then. Is there some connection there that I should know about that explains why they wanted him as their spokesperson? Hulk Hogan’s color scheme was pretty close to the Slim Jim packaging. Maybe they couldn’t afford Hogan and just went with the next closest thing.
The Repo Man just seems like a boring Hamburglar.
Raw is apparently sponsored by something called ICOPRO (which stands for Integrated Conditioning Program). Its tagline is “You’ve Gotta Want It” which seems like a very Tim and Eric kind of catchphrase.
A big plot point for the Marty Jannetty/Shawn Michaels match is which person Sensational Sherri will be supporting. I don’t know who she is or why I should care, but I’m looking forward to hopefully finding out on the next episode of Monday Night Raw!