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GUEST EDITORIAL
By Joe Haas, Torch Subscriber, PWTorch Subcriber

Almost 24 hours later, I'm still ruminating in my mind about the terrific wrestling show I watched last night - it featured star talent in memorable angles and a good mix of in-ring action and story telling.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the show I'm talking about is Monday Night Raw from March 31, 1997, currently airing on WWE 24/7. The subscription WWE 24/7 package offers, among many other things, two editions of "Monday Night Wars" each month, comprising a full edition of Raw and WCW Monday Nitro as they aired against each other on the same date.

WWE 24/7 is airing these in chronological order, refreshing the system about every two weeks, and is about one year into the war. There's still a lot of great programming to come in this particular package.

What surprises me, ten years later, is how good Raw became once the "Attitude" era began in early 1997. The last few viewings of Monday Night Wars, I've enjoyed the Raw offering more than the Nitro offering, but back when the war actually was going on, I was more of a loyal Nitro viewer up until about 1998, when I started watching both shows.

I take no joy in noting how good the WWE product was shortly after Wrestlemania 13 - I have always been one of those fans who preferred WCW (and now TNA) to the various WWE offerings. But the March 31, 1997, Raw reminds me how much wrestling fans have been missing, no matter which promotion they watch.

WWE's penchant for revisionist history might make one believe that Vince McMahon got "Stone Cold" Steve Austin over by giving him a mortal enemy, but this edition of Raw still features McMahon in his pre-"Montreal screw-job" role as a corny, face play-by-play announcer. Yet, when Austin comes out to cut a promo in the show's second hour, getting over his tweener character who will take on the "good guys" and get booed or take on the "bad guys" and get cheered, he couldn't be more electrifying. And he's working against Bret Hart, who's on the Titantron, not McMahon.

Ah, Bret Hart, another person who made this show so great. This episode of Raw is the night Hart comes out to the ring to interrupt a European title match between Owen Hart and Davey Boy Smith (may they both rest in peace), tells them he needs them for his anti-WWF and anti-American fans campaign, and they all group-hug in the ring. Before Bret's interruption, though, we get about 10 minutes of a good title match, reminding us of what a great worker Owen was. It makes one wonder where Owen, who'd only be 41, would be today if not for the tragedy in Kansas City in 1999.

(My personal suspicion is he'd be working for his friend, Jeff Jarrett, in TNA - as a former WWE world champion. But, sadly, we'll never know.)

Speaking of resting in peace, this Raw also features a terrific angle in which the face Undertaker, newly crowned as WWE champion at WM13, addresses Paul Bearer's request of one week earlier for a reunion. Taker brilliantly sells the idea that he's going to accept Bearer's offer to "come home," only to turn and beat down his former manager.

The Road Warriors [artist Robert Wallum (c) PWTorch]

This leads to Mankind (Mick Foley) emerging from under the ring, attacking Taker from behind, and "blinding" him by throwing fire. That's how deep WWE was at this point, with Foley, Owen Hart, Rocky Maivia and Hunter Hearst Helmsley populating the upper midcard. (Of course, these guys were in the midcard partly because Vince McMahon at the time was giving bigger pushes to Smith, Sycho Sid, Ahmed Johnson, Goldust, and the oh-so-played-out Road Warriors.)

Not everything on this show worked great. The Honky Tonk Man angle that would lead to Billy Gunn (now Kip James in TNA) being repackaged as "Rockabilly" features a twist when "Double J" Jesse Jammes (future Road Dogg and B.G. James) is approached by Honky to be his protégé, with Jammes playing along, then turning him down in decisive fashion. It was a good segment but all leading up to the short-lived Rockabilly gimmick. (But maybe the seeds were planted in this angle for the eventual pairing of Jammes and Gunn as the New Age Outlaws. So even in the things that didn't quite work, you can foresee how WWE will make something better out of them.)

The show also features a continuation of the feud between Helmsley and Goldust, with the early introduction of the then-massive Chyna as Helmsley's bodyguard. Shawn Michaels, who is feuding mainly with Bret Hart, is heard from only by phone, while Ken Shamrock is teased for action the following week.

There is so much stuff going in this Raw, most of it good, and all of it given ample time to develop over two hours. There are lessons here for TNA and WWE - TNA needs to give stories more breathing room and the kind of development that was going on in the reunion of the Hart Foundation and the multi-sided war among Bret Hart, Austin and Michaels.

WWE needs to learn from its recent, glorious past and identify and elevate new stars. In March 1997, WWE was just a short time from realizing it needed to repackage both Foley and Maivia, but it did so with great success, and both became main eventers, even though at this point, the future "Rock" could barely get the audience to pay him any attention.

That WWE still headlines pay-per-views in 2007 with tired acts like Undertaker and Triple H, non-talents like Batista, and, before his injury, a wildly unpopular face like John Cena, tells me Vince McMahon quickly forgot all he learned in the mid-to-late-'90s.

For the sake of the wrestling fans, including me, I hope McMahon can relearn the lessons of the '90s, and quickly, and that TNA, which often resembles the WCW of 1999-2001 instead of that from 1996-1998, can learn from what worked (and what didn't) during the Monday Night Wars.

Because in the meantime, wrestling fans like me can get what we really want for eight bucks a month on WWE 24/7.

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