WWF In Your House – Beware of Dog

WWF In Your House – Beware of Dog
Florence, SC
Civic Center
May 26, 1996

Oh boy… one of the WWF’s most notorious PPV trainwrecks and an event that we endlessly mocked at the time. From its ridiculous name to goofy main event feud, everything about this show made us laugh so much, and watching it again immediately took me right back to the spring of 1996. It’s a companion show to Good Friends Better Enemies, with the feuds and matches already being set then, but wow does the WWF landscape feel different.

Change was certainly in the air. Only a week before Beware of Dog, the infamous ‘curtain call’ went down at Madison Square Garden and wrestling history was changed forever. I’m always surprised to look back and see how many landmark moments took place during this mostly boring and monotonous year. 1996 completely changed the wrestling business and we didn’t even know it. As an early internet user, I was reading all kinds of crazy rumors, but who really knew what was real and what wasn’t!

As for the show itself, Beware of Dog took place in Florence, South Carolina… whaaaat? Why Florence of all places? The WWF never ran PPVs in the Southeastern US prior to this, other than Florida and maybe Louisville if that counts, so why the small city of 40k in the middle of South Carolina?! In my few minutes of Google research, I didn’t turn up much. The WWF hardly ran Florence, so I wonder why they chose this city for a PPV location? Feels so incredibly random.

WWF In Your House – Good Friends… Better Enemies

WWF In Your House – Good Friends… Better Enemies
Omaha, NE
Civic Center
April 28, 1996

Talk about a transitional pay-per-view. There’s so much to discuss after watching the seventh In Your House event. This show, in my opinion, marks the end of the New Generation era and the very beginning of the Attitude era, though it wouldn’t full take shape until much later in the year. And of course just a couple months after this the wrestling world gets turned upside down and things are never the same again.

Watching through these events chronologically, it’s funny how 1995 is infinitely more interesting than 1996, with some truly great hidden gems and laughably terrible wrestlecrap. 1996 has its moments later in the year, but really drags from Wrestlemania to Survivor Series. Back in 96 I watched a number of these shows live with Matt on PPV and the rest scrambled, and would also rent all of these shows when they were released at the video store. But I had such a growing negative opinion of the WWF at that time that it clouded my enjoyment of the shows and it would be years before I re-watched most of these PPVs. Just over 10 years ago I started re-watching through 1996 again and found the events to be overall better than I remembered, but still a slog to get through.

WWF Wrestlemania XII

WWF Wrestlemania XII
Anaheim, CA
Arrowhead Pond
March 31, 1996

Watching Wrestlemania XII a couple weeks ago brought back a whole mix of thoughts and nostalgia, much like In Your House 6. This early 96 era is so burned in my brain because of my own eroding fandom and growing disappointment towards the company. 1994 and 1995 were tough years, but it still felt like the WWF. Now, things were moving farther and farther away from the wrestling I grew up loving and things just weren’t the same dammit!

Matt and myself complained endlessly about this Wrestlemania and were so frustrated with so many aspects of this whole event. It was a big improvement over the abysmal Wrestlemania XI, and looked and felt like a huge event, but that didn’t mean it was all that good. Over the years I’ve watched Wrestlemania XII a good number of times, but rarely the entire show. I hated the build towards the Iron Man match, and just hated the endless Shawn Michaels fawning that somehow became even more unbearable in the wake of his title win. And I never enjoyed the match itself, as it felt so endlessly long and I was mostly bored through it. The undercard had some good matches and excitement like the return of the Ultimate Warrior and the underappreciated Diesel-Undertaker feud, but also featured all the terrible Roddy Piper-Goldust stuff. It just felt like everything could have been booked so much better.

WWF In Your House #6

WWF In Your House #6
Louisville, KY
Louisville Gardens
February 18

The sixth In Your House took place on my 15th birthday in 1996, but I don’t remember having any interest in it, not even scrambled. As the calendar flipped into 1996, my interest in the WWF in general was fully on the decline. Don’t get me wrong – I was still a massive fan, watching as much as I could, but I pretty much stopped caring as much about the pay-per-views and was outright making fun of the WWF by spring. Like many WWF fans my age, a shocking and sudden shift in allegiance to WCW was unknowingly on the horizon, and the WWF would have to make a massive tonal shift to keep up. Looking back, the seeds for what was to come were already being planted in these early 1996 pay-per-views.

WWF Royal Rumble 1996

WWF Royal Rumble 1996
Fresno, CA
Selland Arena
January 21

It took me forever to watch through all of the 1996 Royal Rumble. I’ve never been a huge fan of this event and it’s such a boring slog. As terrible as 1995 is, there’s a lot of fun and wacky bad shit to laugh at – so many random debuts, weird pushes, and other more interesting stuff. 1996 has always been so boring and flat to me, way more middle of the road. It already starts here at the Royal Rumble, which feels so different from 1995 already. I last watched through a good number of 1996 events back around 2009 or so, and enjoyed them more than I remembered. I’m really curious to see how I feel about these shows now, but man, not a great start with this Rumble.

WWF In Your House: Good Friends Better Enemies

(Guest written by Matt)

In Your House: Good Friends Better Enemies
Omaha Civic Auditorium
Omaha, Nebraska
April 28, 1996

I wasn’t completely sure if I had seen this before. But after watching it, I definitely remember it so we most certainly rented this back in the day, probably 96 or 97. I even think we referenced this event when we wrote that letter to the WWF around this time, that we never actually mailed. Anyway, its only an In Your House so I guess your expectations have to be low, but for some reason I was hoping for a great event, and it most definitely is not. The only match I thought was pretty good was Diesel vs. Shawn, and almost everything else was a big disappointment. WWF definitely sucked around this time, as this followed a bad Wrestlemania, and an even worse In Your House event followed this. The talent pool was just so low at this point (even worse than 2015) and was about to get even lower. I think the company got better in later 96 and maybe I’ll have to check out some summer and fall events to find out.

1. Owen Hart and British Bulldog defeated Ahmed Johnson and Jake the Snake Roberts.

It initially looked like this was supposed to be a one on one between Bulldog and Ahmed, but then Owen appeared, and Jake was announced at the end with seperate entrance music. This match was mediocre, maybe the second best on the card after the main event. The main dead weight was Jake who was slow and pathetic at this point in his career and wearing a full body tights suit to cover his bloated gut. Ahmed knew enough power moves to get the crowd going, and obviously Owen and Bulldog are both great wrestlers. The match just seemed to be lacking something, or I stupidly expected much more.

2. I.C. Ultimate Warrior defeated Goldust by Countout (or something like that)

This was just pure garbage. They never even locked up. It was all terrible theatrics with Goldust trying to seduce the Warrior, and the Warrior playing stupid mind games like laughing like an ape, and smoking Marlena’s cigars (not exactly PG). Goldust had some weird bodyguard who I think was Mantaur though he looked a little different. Mantaur was the one highlight of the match as he attacked Warrior and then got his ass kicked after the “match” had already ended for no reason. They said it was a countout victory for Warrior, but honestly both guys spent pretty well the entire match outside the ring so I’m not sure how the decision was determined.

3. Vader defeated Razor Ramon.

Another terrible match as Razor barely mounted any offense, and Vader just slowly worked him over with power moves. Vader was totally wrestling the “cowardly heel” style at this point and that completely ruined his career. Nothing much else to say about this one.

4. T.T. Bodydonnas defeated Godwinns.

Hahaha! We HATED this match so much in 96, that we mentioned it in that letter we wrote to WWF. I think it was in our top ten worst matches in WWF history list that we wrote at this time too in an early attempt at making a webpage at your house. Objectively, its just a regular boring tag team match, comparable to like the Bushwhackers vs. The Rougeaus. Sunny at ringside is the only highlight and its funny when she puts a signed picture of herself in the slop bucket to distract the useless Phineas. Its hilarious that at the time we complained that we wanted to watch the actual wrestling, not just Sunny at ringside. Hadn’t we started puberty yet?

5. H.T. No Holds Barred: Shawn Michaels defeated Diesel.

While not exactly a classic match, this was strong enough to partly save the card at the end. I’m sure we hated this match at the time too, and probably gave it no chance. Right before they entered, British Bulldog was shown in the back starting to pound on Shawn’s locker room door, accusing him of harassing his wife. Oh man, I hated that storyline so much in 96, and I can remember arguing with someone at school that week, as he thought the storyline was hilarious. Anyway, this is a good back and forth battle and they brawled outside the ring with weapons and beat the hell out of each other. Shawn needed two super kicks to take the big man down and this match did a better job of cementing him as champ than his boring match with Bret the previous month. But still it wasn’t enough to save a very lacklustre event overall.

WWF Survivor Series 1996

(Guest written by Matt)

Oh 1996! The year I almost stopped watching the WWF all together in favor of WCW. WCW had the better ideas, the more innovative product, and more bells and whistles. They also had great in-the-ring wrestling with all the young up and comers like Rey Misterio, Chris Jericho etc. starting out. But most importantly they had the NWO, which brought Danny and I excitement like we hadn’t felt about wrestling in years. The WWF had been in steady decline compared to the classic years, and we very nearly gave up on them altogether. The unfortunate aspect of that was that we missed out on and/or didn’t appreciate the great wrestling the WWF actually still had going for them throughout these “crisis” years. It took me a lot of years to finally admit this, but most of the payperviews in 95 and 96 were actually really good. I still think the TV sucked but it wasn’t even really fair to compare it to WCW since WCW apparently didn’t care about long term profitability and pretty much ran a free payperview every week on Mondays.

As for the event, I enjoyed it very much. Overall it wasn’t as good as Series 95, at least not when viewing it as a traditional Survivor Series event. The survival matches were mediocre at best, though it was awesome to see all the weird jobbers featured, just like in 95. On the other hand, all three singles matches were fantastic and made this feel like a great stand-alone payperview, even if it wasn’t that great as a Survivor Series. I think after this, the Survivor Series tradition was weeded out, and the 97 Series was awful. Unfortunately, I’m not going to find out anytime soon, since this was the last Series event I received from Danny.

Doug Furnas, Philip Lafon, Godwinns def. Owen Hart, British Bulldog, New Rockers

It kind of sucks that team names disappeared for good in 96. I always loved the zany team names, which started in 89. Anyway, this quasi-tag teams Series match was pretty good, but nothing that amazing. It was mostly just used as a showcase for Furnas and Lafon, who I really expected at the time to become a major force in WWF tag team wrestling since they were hyping them up quite a bit. They were great workers, but just didn’t get over in the end. I was happy to see the Godwinns jobbed pretty hard in this match, as well they should be. But again, just like last year I was disappointed that Owen was pinned so easily. But it made Furnas and Lafon look like a force to be reckoned with. Hilarious to see the New Rockers there. I think they were a team with some potential as heels, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Undertaker def. Mankind

After all their stipulation battles, this one was just a serious in-the-ring match. That’s almost the reverse of the way most long term feuds play out. Jim Ross keeps running his mouth about what a great worker Undertaker is and how impressed he is that Taker is actually doing wrestling moves, rather than just brawling. Even though this quickly became annoying, I agreed with him. This was a good solid wrestling match between two guys in their primes. The Paul Bearer stuff was kind of stupid, but I can deal with it because the match was good. I remember at the time thinking the Executioner’s attack on Undertaker after the match seemed so destructive and I thought it would lead to a big feud. In this viewing, it doesn’t look any more destructive than The Brooklyn Brawler attacking Red Rooster after his match at Mania 5. Plus, the Executioner just sucked in the end.

Marc Mero, Rocky Maivia, Jake the Snake, The Stalker def. Goldust, Crush, Jerry Lawler, Hunter Hearst Helmsley

Sunny commentated during this match. She was super hot in that dress, however; her commentary was awful. Her jokes were worse than Lawler’s, and she started to remind me of Elvira on commentary at Mania 2. Anyway, this match was again, okay, but nothing too amazing. The guys who sucked like Lawler and Stalker were eliminated early, which was good. And the decent wrestlers hung in there, and you got to see some decent combinations happening. It was especially funny whenever Maivia was in there with Hunter, since it foreshadowed years of matches to come. This match was correctly used as an effort to elevate Maivia, whom the WWF brass saw something in early. But the fans weren’t buying it yet, and his dorky character didn’t yet fit in with the changing times.

Bret Hart def. Steve Austin

This match was so good, that even at the time we thought it was amazing. Though it isn’t quite the classic that their later Wrestlemania 13 match will be, its still a good candidate for best match of 1996. Even though it starts out with “all headlocks”, the pace eventually picks up and these two guys really bring out all the stops and bring the roof down. When I see Austin wrestle in these days, I really wonder what the Attitude Era would have looked like if he hadn’t been injured a year after this. Because he was very close to being on Bret’s level in terms of technical expertise at this time. These two had great chemistry in there, and the crowd was nuts for both guys. Kudos to Austin for agreeing to lose so many times to Bret. I don’t know if I would agreed to that. Bret deserved these wins, but Austin maybe needed them a little more.

Faarooq, Vader, Razor Ramon, Diesel wrestled to a no contest with Flash Funk, Savio Vega, Yokozuna, Superfly Jimmy Snuka

Yawn! This was one of the worst matches in the history of Survivor Series! Why even bother with this mess? It was less than ten minutes long. The guys didn’t even try. That old geezer Superfly was there stinking things up. (Like he still does every now and again now.) And it ended in a completely retarded fashion. I did laugh pretty hard at the New Razor and New Diesel, but other than that, this match was dog shit.

Psycho Sid def. Shawn Michaels

At the time, I think we hated this match because we hated both guys. Now I thought it was really awesome. Sid was basically the fan favorite in this match as the crowd went wild for him, Shawn not so much. Again, the match had a slow pace in the early getgo with a lot of restholds, but after awhile the pace really picked up and it never slowed down again. It would have been cool if Sid had won the belt clean and would have made him look more like a monster, but this was the WWF of 1996 so of course he had to be a WWF cowardly heel. I laughed super hard at Jose Lothario getting smashed in the face with a camera, and later JR screaming about how the old man was going to have a heart attack. It was cool to see Sid win, even though I’m not his biggest fan. But it was a shocker, and the WWF definitely needed some shockers at this time to renew interest in the product. Great effort by both these guys to close out a great event, though maybe not such a great Survivor Series.

WWF Summerslam 1996

(Guest written by Matt)

General Comments: Once again, I am surprised to find that I really enjoyed Summerslam 96. It turned out to be a very good show from top to bottom, much better than I remembered it being. Even as late as 2007 when I watched many of these Summerslams, I hated this event. But I now think, other than a few flaws, that this is a great show. One advantage is watching this event outside of the context of the times. WWF in 96 was downright embarrassing to watch at times with the stupid “Diesel Cool, Undertaker…” theme, Dox Hendrix, retarded angles like Goldust being infatuated with Sable etc. A lot of big stars like Diesel, Razor and Bret had already left the company. And WCW just flat out had the better product at the time. All of this made the 96 PPVs seem like crap at the time. But this event, anyways, seems a whole lot better when watching it now outside of those times. I still think Wrestlemania 12 sucked big time, but that was mostly because of the 1 hour mess that was the main event. This show had much better pacing, solid in-ring work, good characters and storylines, and good commentary, all the things that make a great PPV.

Owen Hart def. Savio Vega: This was a solid, well worked opener. I hated Savio at the time, but I now realize that he worked hard in every match he was in and was actually a pretty good wrestler. Owen was great as always, though ironically its really Owen who kind of messes up the finish here. First of all, he “plays possum” after both Savio and the ref have already seen him up. And then he hits Savio with his cast right in front of the ref and isn’t DQed. In short, a good technical match but with a botched finish.

Smoking Gunns def. Godwinns, Bodydonnas, and New Rockers: This match is pretty terrible, other than Sunny looking super hot at ringside (which definitely helps). The WWF has always sucked at multi-person and multi-team matches like this because they don’t seem to understand that these matches need to have a faster pace and that there need to be either quick in and out tags, or all the guys brawling it out at the same time. It just doesn’t work if you treat it like a regular WWF formula tag team match. And just like in most of these matches, two of the teams, the Donnas and the Rockers are just jobbers who are eliminated right away, leaving it as just a regular tag match between the Godwinns (snore!) and the Gunns. The only really good part of this match is Sunny, both her hotness and heel antics, and her dropping a giant poster of herself from the rafters.

Psycho Sid def. British Bulldog: I wasn’t too impressed with this match either. I don’t even remember Sid being a babyface in mid-96, which is weird because he won the belt from Shawn as a heel shortly after this. Anyway, the match is alright, but kind of slow and lumbering, and I was surprised that Bulldog just jobbed clean, after having been a main eventer earlier in the year.

Goldust def. Marc Mero: The storyline here at the time was flat out terrible with all the Goldust is infatuated with Sable nonsense. Plus, Goldust looks disgusting here with his balls and ass crack visible through his body suit. The match itself is alright. It could have been better with a faster pace. It was really surprising to see Goldust winning the match clean, since his big run was pretty much over by this point, and he was the more boring wrestler in the match. There’s a weird part during this match I never noticed before where somebody collapses in the crowd near the guy dressed up as Goldust in the second row, and EMTs actually clear out the seats around there and take the guy out. The camera shows the whole thing happening in the background.

Jerry Lawler def. Jake Roberts: Now, here’s where the PPV gets really good. Every once in awhile, I like to see a great Memphis style match, and that’s exactly what we get here. Lawler making fun of the Cleveland Browns leaving and wearing a Baltimore jersey is where the hilarity starts. And then from there, as he makes fun of Jake’s alcoholism and dumps booze on his in the match and so forth. Just fucking hilarious, especially considering that Jake looks to be in real rough shape here, and was probably back on the juice (if he was ever off it to begin with). Most of the time, Memphis stalling is boring, but its so well done here that I can’t help but love this objectively awful match. Its kind of like the Bret-Lawler match from Summerslam 93, which I also loved, except Lawler actually wins here. Mark Henry’s awful commentary and involvement in the match at the end also adds to the laughs, because he sounds like he can barely speak English at this point.

Mankind def. Undertaker: The first ten minutes of this match are terribly boring. They start out in the dark boiler room and its all just slow lumbering and poorly paced weapons shots, kind of like a 1999 Russo hardcore match. Then once they leave the boiler room, the pace picks up and it actually becomes a great battle. They probably could have just cut out most of the boiler room parts, and then added another match to the card instead, maybe featuring Steve Austin or someone. Anyway, the rest of the match is one of the best hardcore battles I’ve ever seen. And it was such a great surprise to have Paul Bearer turn on the Undertaker. And even more amazing is that Undertaker actually put someone over. The long boring Druids part after the match kind of kills it, but I can forgive that given the intensity of most of the battle.

Shawn Michaels def. Vader: Another great match, much better than I thought at the time. I usually hate Vader’s matches in the WWF, but here they booked him right, as a monster heel. He just demolishes Shawn through most of the match, making Shawn’s eventual comeback and victory all the more awesome. Apparently Vader was supposed to win this match, but Shawn bitched and whined until they changed the finish. At the time, I would have been pissed off to hear that, but I now think it made more sense for Shawn to retain. I like how they had Vader get two false wins over Shawn by CO and DQ, before Shawn’s final comeback. Although after the CO, the ref basically orders Shawn back into the ring while Shawn looks like he doesn’t actually want to continue with the match. Shouldn’t the babyface champion be wanting to take on all challengers and rush back into the ring to accept Vader’s challenge? They kind of make him look like a pussy, which I guess is what Shawn Michaels really is. Anyway, a great match, one of the best Vader ever had in the WWF, and I now think the finish is awesome and makes sense, even though I didn’t at the time.