In Your House 14: Revenge of the 'Taker

Legacy Review

In Your House 14: Revenge of the 'Taker

April 20, 1997 from the Rochester Community War Memorial in Rochester, NY

Commentary: Vince McMahon, Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler

We're coming off Wrestlemania 13 and the Attitude Era has well and truly begun in full. As has the new Hart Foundation stable, with freshly heel turned Bret Hart turning back to his family after getting shunned by the fans. Well, American fans. Unlike other Blacklash style cards in future years we've actually got mostly fresh matchups tonight instead of WM rematches.

The house set is back, at least partially. They're using the garage with the entrance tunnel inside it. Strangely, the ring aprons are all generic rather than PPV themed.

WWF Tag Team Championship: The Legion of Doom def "The British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith and The Slammy Award Winning Owen Hart (c) by DQ in 12:16- No surprise to see the LOD in a tag title match right after their return. The champs come out to Bret's music, now the music for the whole stable. No more face teases for Bulldog either. Bulldog is also still the European champ. Owen and Animal start. Animal quickly pounds away. Flying tackle. Animal powers out of an Owen facelock by tossing him across the ring and Owen's had enough. Hawk tags in with a clothesline and fist drop. Bulldog gets chopped down in the face corner. Hawk gives Owen a good old Spaceballs salute. Bulldog counters a backdrop and hits the delayed vertical suplex. Owen ax handle off the top rope. Hawk powers out of an early Sharpshooter attempt. Animal powerslam for 2. We go picture in picture to see Steve Austin finally arriving at the arena. Flat tire, apparently. Sure the Harts had nothing to do with that. Animal press slams Owen. Hawk splash off the top for 2. Owen does a corner whip reversal, Hawk Bret bumps and they collide. Owen enzuguri. Hawk goes Road Warrior in peril for a bit. Sleeper from Owen. Hawk snap mares out. The heels try a double team and Hawk knocks them into each other. Tag to Animal. The LOD hit their back/front double clothesline. Animal powerslam from the second rope on Owen, and that gets a pin! LOD are announced as the new champs. BUT WAIT. A second ref is in. Here comes the Dusty Finish. Fink announces that Animal pinned Owen, but Bulldog was the legal man. There's no fall and this match MUST CONTINUE. Well, that might be the only time in history that rule was followed. The champs stall so Fink announces they must get back in before the count or they forfeit the titles. They run back in and somehow get the jump on LOD, who were waiting for them. Animal runs into an Owen spinning heel kick, then gets choked and double teamed in the heel corner. Owen neck breaker and legdrop for 2. Animal gets a sunset flip on Bulldog but the ref is distracted. JR: "I don't think this referee went to ref school on scholarship. He must have been a walk on." Animal dodges an Owen headbutt off the top and tags. Hawk runs wild. DONNYBROOK! Doomsday Device on Owen! Bret runs in and attacks for the cheap DQ. Well, that was a long way and a lot of overbooking to get to that finish, but it doesn't entirely suck as it works to get the new Hart Foundation over. The match was mostly OK. **1/4

Brian Pillman fools around with Sunny in the Superstar Line room backstage. That's proper 900 number content.

 

WWF Intercontinental Championship: Savio Vega (w/The Nation of Domination) def Rocky Maivia (c) by countout in 8:33- This was supposedly supposed to be Vader winning the IC title as compensation for not winning the WWF Title despite the great work he had been doing lately (it certainly should have been him instead of Sid again), but he managed to get himself arrested while WWF was in Kuwait after messing around too much with a TV talk show host. It's still real in Kuwait, dammit. That incident didn't just scrub Vader from this match, it pretty much nixed any future push and left him as a midcarder for the rest of his WWF run, a run where he somehow never won a single title. Zero reaction for Rocky on his entrance. Vega tries to jump but Rocky is ready for him. A Nation goon also goes down. Armdrags from Rocky. Faarooq comes out with an arm in a sling and joins commentary. Or tries to, but his headset doesn't work. More suppression from The Man. JR graciously offers Faarooq his own headset to keep the peace. While all this is happening there's jack all going on in the ring, with Rocky rolling through the exact same armdrag spots for a second time and Vega putting on a Nerve Pinch of Match Killing +1. Vega does hit a heel kick in the corner then falls out of the ring. On commentary Faarooq challenges Ahmed Johnson to a gauntlet match against him, Vega and Crush, and if Johnson wins the Nation will disband. Rocky crossbody for 2. Vega goes back to the nerve pinch. Rocky gets a small package for 2. Vega big boot. Nerve pinch 3. Rocky gets a sloppy Perfectplex but the ref is distracted. Another spinning kick by Vega followed by chops and a hip toss. Nerve pinch 4! This is getting ridiculous. Remember when Vega used to be a halfway decent worker? Rocky ducks another spinning kick and hits a spinny DDT. Vega gets a roll up and Rocky's kickout sends his shoulder into the post. Back suplex from Rocky. Belly to belly suplex. Rock Bottom! That gets a 2 count. Clearly it's not a thing yet. Vega tosses Rocky out and he takes Crush out. Pissed off Crush gives Rocky a heart punch on the floor. Rocky can't get back up and is counted out. Vega's upset at Crush, like he couldn't have gotten his ass out that entire 10 count and rolled Rocky back in. Faarooq comes in to lay down the law, and the whole Nation makes up the only way they know how- gang beating on Rocky. Johnson runs out to make the save and accepts Faarooq's gauntlet match challenge. A couple of weeks after this Rocky dropped the IC title to Owen Hart on Raw, helping to push the Hart Foundation even more as the dominant faction in the company and finally giving Owen his first WWF singles title. 3/4*

Young Kevin Kelley is with Sable and Marc Mero. I put Sable first very deliberately as she's clearly the star of the pair now. Mero says he'll be back from his knee injury over the summer. Austin walks behind them, goes into the men's room and a ruckus ensues. Dave Hebner runs out and says Austin's been attacked. Then we see Owen and Bulldog come out holding weapons. As soon as they see the camera they scarper.

 

"Double J" Jesse James def Rockabilly (w/The Honky Tonk Man) in 6:46- Right, there's a lot to unpack getting into this one. Jesse James basically took over Jeff Jarrett's gimmick after the big reveal that he was signing all of Jarrett's songs, their breakup and Jarrett's latest departure from the company. After the breakup of the Smoking Gunns, Billy Gunn returned from injury on the preshow match at WM 13, defeating Flash Funk. Afterward he turned down Honky's offer of mentorship, but Honky refused to take no for an answer and here tonight Gunn is debuting as Honky's protege, Rockabilly. This would turn out to be one of several famous singles run gimmick disasters from Gunn. Right from the start he doesn't look comfortable at all doing Honky's mannerisms. Gunn comes out hot but a James sequence sends him to the floor. James clothesline off the apron. Gunn begs off in the ring and does an eye poke. He hits the Fameasser, which wasn't fully a thing yet, stalls forever with awful dancing and finally covers for 2. Neckbreaker. A James comeback is cut off with another eye rake. James dodges an avalanche. Gunn hits the post and does a nice delayed flop sell, probably the best thing in the whole match. James rolls through his signature jabs and does some mounted punches, then does his own showboating and hits a corner clothesline. Gunn uses momentum to toss James to the floor and does some more bad dancing. Back in James gets a Paul Smackage outta nowhere to mercifully end this disaster. That didn't work as a debut or as a match in general. The irony is after a long feud these guys would decide to team up and become the most dominant team of the era, the New Age Outlaws. 1/4*

Kelley is with Austin and WWF President Gorilla Monsoon. Austin says of course he's wrestling tonight you jackass, no one in the Hart family from Bret to "fat ass" Stu is keeping him out of the ring tonight or any night. Monsoon says he's going to give Austin extra time to recover and flips the order of the last two matches. Next we cut to the Hart Foundation locker room, where Owen and Bulldog argue that Austin attacked first. Believable.

 

WWF Championship: The Undertaker (c) def Mankind (w/Paul Bearer) in 17:26- For Taker's first PPV title defense WWF smartly decided to go back to Mankind, who Taker feuded with for most of '96, a feud that produced easily his best matches to date. It got going on Raw a few weeks prior when Mankind threw a fireball in Taker's face, burning him. This is his first appearance since then. Mankind comes out with a fire extinguisher which is pretty funny and plays into the burning. Taker charges in during his entrance and we're on. Taker's got a bandage on his face from the fireball. Back and forth brawl start. Cactus Clothesline! Both guys land on their feet. Taker goozles and slams Mankind hard into the guardrail. He gets dumped over the barricade and I anticipate the mandatory late '90s crowd brawl but they get back to ringside pretty quickly. Not quite mandatory yet. Taker hooks up old school but twists the script by hitting a flying clothesline off the top. He goes for snake eyes but Bearer gets on the apron. Mankind comes from behind, nails Taker with the urn and covers him for 2. Running corner knee. JR references Vader in Kuwait. Swinging neckbreaker from Mankind. He hooks on a nerve pinch and switches over to a chinlock. Again, subtle but important difference between a match killing resthold for resthold's sake, and a cool down hold for proper match flow. This is the latter. Taker rapid fire strikes out. Mankind flops to the floor and takes a stair shot. He grabs Vince's pitcher of water and hits Taker with it! Chairshot to Taker's head. Cactus Elbow off the second rope to the floor! Bang bang! Mankind rips Taker's bandage off and he's got some pretty good and convincing burn makeup on. Back in Mankind hits a piledriver for 2. Second piledriver. Taker sits up and fires back. Flying clothesline. The ref gets squashed in the corner. That was well done, it wasn't as badly telegraphed as ref bumps usually are. Mandible Claw! The backup ref runs in. Mankind Claws him and tosses him out! Bearer tosses a chair in. Mankind decides to one up that and brings the stairs in. Taker dropkicks the stairs onto Mankind! Chairshot. Mankind gets hung in the ropes. Taker gets him out, taking Mankind's mask off in the process! Taker charges with the stairs and hits Mankind off the apron. Mankind flies backwards and goes HEAD FIRST THROUGH THE SPANISH ANNOUNCE TABLE! HOLY SHIT. Talk about concussing yourself. Damn. Mankind stays in that position for a while, head through the table. So fantastic. Taker drags him back in. Chokeslam! Mankind kicks out! Tombstone! That's it for Mankind. Love that finish sequence. The table spot actually meant something. Mankind tried to fight back but the damage was too great. This was probably these guys' best match to date. ***1/2

After the match Taker brings Bearer in for a beatdown and we end up with an epic Botchamania moment. So Mankind is supposed to light another flash paper fireball and Taker is supposed to push Bearer into it so he gets burnt. Problem is, Mankind can't get the lighter to light. He tries a couple of times while they all fumble around to stall for time. Taker takes the lighter to try to do it himself and also can't get it to work with more stumbling around. Finally Taker gets it to light, salvages everything by super dramatically showing Bearer the lighter, then lights the paper for the fireball literally right in his face. Pro's pro man, there's few guys you could count on more to save that whole thing. And it was extremely important, as Bearer getting burnt here was the lead in to a very big debut later in the year....

 

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin def Bret "Hitman" Hart by DQ in 21:09- The one WM rematch on this card, and it makes sense after the double turn at WM and Bret forming the Hart Foundation adding whole new layers to the feud. Not to mention you know these guys will always deliver. Bret tries to bring Bulldog and Owen to ringside but both refs and Monsoon refuse to allow it. Monsoon sits ringside for the match. Another jump start with Austin in control early. He hits a suplex and gut stomp. Double ax handle to the floor. Bret gets whipped into the steps. Austin rolls in and mocks Bret's pose. More stair shots. They go up the aisle a bit and Bret takes a ton of rail shots. Back in Austin hits an elbow off the second rope for 2. Bret quickly rolls back outside. He tries to get a chair and Austin tries to fight him off. Bret goes for a chairshot but Austin cuts him off. Austin takes the chair. Bret dropkicks him in the back, pushing him into the chair! Hebner went down there too. Bret drives the chair into Austin's chronically bum knee. He helps Henber back up then goes to work on the knee. Austin kicks back with his good leg. Bret cuts the comeback off with an eye rake. Post wraparound figure four! More chairshots to the knee. Austin's had enough and starts pummeling Bret. Bret goes back on the knee while we go picture in picture for a moment to see a howling in pain Paul Bearer being loaded up in an ambulance. Bret takes Austin's knee brace off and continues to pick it apart. Austin gets a desperation low blow. Elbow drop and he chokes Bret with his wrist tape. Bret dodges another elbow off the second rope and Austin lands badly on the bad knee. Austin snaps Bret over the top rope. He teases a suplex to the floor. Bret blocks it and suplexes Austin back in. Figure four! Austin slowly reverses it and Bret grabs a rope. Austin has some words and some middle fingers with Hebner. Bret kicks the knee from behind. He tries for a post figure four again but Austin fights it off. Austin backdrops Bret over the guardrail! Clothesline off the apron to the floor. Back in we get a Bret bump. Austin does some ground & pound and covers for 2. Piledriver attempt from Austin but his leg gives out and Bret gets back on it. Austin collapses on a corner whip. Bret wraps his knee around the rope. Austin lifts Bret and drops him on the top turnbuckle! He goes for the Stunner but Bret grabs the ropes to block it. Bret low blow! Superplex! They barely avoided Austin's discarded knee brace going down. Bret goes for the Sharpshooter. Austin grabs the brace and whacks Bret with it! That's why it was still in the ring. I was thinking Hebner was doing a shit job keeping the ring clear. Austin hooks on a Sharpshooter! Owen and Bulldog are out. Austin fights them off. He puts the Sharpshooter on again! Bulldog grabs a chair and whacks Austin with it for a cheap DQ. After the match Bret grabs the bell and goes to hit Austin with it. Austin cuts him off with a chair to the knee and puts the Sharpshooter on again. They echo the WM match with a gaggle of refs trying to get Austin to release the hold. Finally officials get him off and Bulldog and Owen help Bret to the back. That was the "weakest" PPV match between the two, but it was still fantastic even with the DQ finish. Like the DQ in the tag title match, it makes sense in the context of the Hart Foundation feud. ****

 

The next night on Raw WWF would follow up on this with one of the most epic, legendary Raws of all time. Bret and Austin have one more match, this time in a street fight. Of course the match starts with the Hart Foundation gang attacking Austin, only to see SHAWN MICHAELS return and make the save, running Owen and Bulldog off and leaving Bret for Austin. Austin tore apart Bret's knee again with a chair and the Sharpshooter, in story breaking Bret's leg (cover for a real life knee surgery Bret needed). At the end of the show Austin has some words for Vince, doing some long term setup there, before Owen and Bulldog attack him for revenge. Shawn gets involved again, and the whole thing leads to the final bombshell of the night: BRIAN PILLMAN joining the Hart Foundation.

OVERALL SHOW THOUGHTS- Not a lot to write home about on the undercard, but the last two matches absolutely delivered, both in terms of match quality and long term storytelling. WWF's creative renaissance continues and was about to get even better.

OVERALL SHOW GRADE: B-