Monday Night Raw
May 27, 1996
Fayetteville, NC
Cumberland County Memorial Auditorium

The current WWF Champs were as follows:
World Champion: Shawn Michaels (3/31/96)
Intercontinental Champion: Goldust (4/22/96)
World Tag Team Champions: The Smoking Gunns (5/26/96)

Uh-oh, we get a “Viewer Discretion is Advised” disclaimer at the beginning of the broadcast. Well, there is that Ultimate Warrior match tonight.

Your hosts are Vince McMahon and Jerry Lawler.

• Non-title match: WWF Intercontinental Champion Goldust (w/Marlena) vs. The Ultimate Warrior – KOTR Qualifier
  

Huge ovation for the WO-YAH. Goldust tries to run from Warrior, but he’s eventually caught and takes a couple atomic drops back out to the floor. This is just all Warrior as he beats Goldust in and out of the ring. We get a little bit of guardrail action. Goldust eats the ringpost for a nearfall. Goldust punches back and sits down on a chinlock, but Warrior escapes with an electric chair drop. That’s when Goldust decides to leave when Ahmed Johnson comes out and carries him back to ringside. After some commercials, Goldust lures Warrior to the floor and slams his head on the steps. Back inside, Goldust heaves Warrior through the ropes to send him crashing onto the director’s chair. Warrior starts selling his arm a tad, which Goldust wrenches for a few moments. Warrior fires back with a belly to belly suplex (!!) for two. Goldust goes to the eyes and low blows him in the corner while the ref’s back is turned. Vince mentions how the officiating as of late has been under great scrutiny. Goldust applies a chinlock, but Warrior rallies back with a powerslam. After he WARRIORS UP, Goldust bails and Warrior follows him for the double-countout. (12:40 shown) Jerry Lawler thinks Warrior is going after Marlena, so he charges Warrior armed with Marlena’s chair. Warrior chases Lawler away and further breaks Marlena’s chair in the ring. Not a great one though I would easily call it Warrior’s greatest match of his “final” WWF run. I put “final” in quotations since he did just make amends with WWE. He had no good WCW matches, so no reason to even consider it. *½

Next up, still shots of last night’s In Your House: Beware of Dog get shown. Lightning struck a transformer and killed the lights in the arena and the satellite feed for three of the featured matches. Only PPV matches that didn’t take place in the dark (which surprises me how they were able to safely wrestle in the dark) were Mero/HHH and the main event with the WWF world champion Shawn Michaels and Davey Boy Smith. Since the WWF title match ended in a double-pin, WWF President Gorilla Monsoon made a rematch for the upcoming King of the Ring. Vince tells us that the three matches we missed will occur the following night at 8PM EST. Plus, I’m assuming a replay of the other two matches. I’m almost positive no one saw the main event considering the meat of the show was missing. I mean, who is going to sit there and watch a PPV screen for what I’m guessing was around 90 minutes that the feed was out. Anywho, Vince implores us to call our cable company to figure out the mess that the storm caused.

Back at Raw, Ted DiBiase and Stone Cold Steve Austin vow that Savio Vega will not win again in the ‘Caribbean Strap match’ rematch Tuesday night. In fact, DiBiase is so confident that Austin will win that he adds a stipulation says he will leave the WWF if Savio Vega wins. No pressure, Steve. Look at it this way. With the 1-2-3 Kid now gone, the Million Dollar Corporation that was once so prominent in the WWF in 1995 has now come down to just one man. We all knew Austin didn’t need a mouthpiece in the first place. And besides, Ted DiBiase feels like ‘yesterday’s news’. One of the all-time greats, but he doesn’t feel fresh and new like what the WWF needed in 1996.

• Non-title match: WWF World Tag Team Champions The Smoking Gunns (w/Sunny) vs. The Bodydonnas
  

Just to recap, Sunny showed up at In Your House in the corner of the Godwinns as co-manager. She was wearing this cute little hillbilly outfit, but then Billy Gunn laid a kiss on her and the Smoking Gunns regained the WWF tag titles. So guess whose corner is in now? Basically, she goes where the belts go. Hillbilly Jim joins us for commentary. Sounds like he’s got laryngitis. Harvey Wippleman watches the officiating from the aisle way and takes some copious notes, I’m sure. Is it interesting that he only chooses to watch matches that involve Sunny? The Gunns work on Zip’s arm to start. Bart delivers a fun press slam. Press slams are completely absent in wrestling nowadays. You telling me you wouldn’t mark out seeing Cena give Punk a press slam? Blind tag to Skip. Some nice fast sequences from Billy and Skip. Skip takes a powder and runs across Sunny. She says she’s not coming back. Life imitating art imitating life? Commercials! When we come back, Zip pulls the top rope down on Bart to send him flying out to the floor and put the hurting on him. On the split-screen, we see Skip coming off the top rope onto Bart. Back inside, the Bodydonnas cut the ring in half on Bart with chinlocks and the like. Once Bart fires back with a bridging German suplex, Phineas Godwinn comes down to ringside to confront Sunny. Hillbilly Jim leaves the table to handle the situation. Henry Godwinn comes out to assist as all the Hillbillies return to the locker room. Double-team legdrop causes Billy to come help out. He winds up getting hung out to dry by the Bodydonnas, which dumps him on the floor. Bart then receives a double slingshot suplex. Skip comes off the top with a flying bodypress, but Bart rolls through for the 1-2-3. (9:32 shown) And Sunny celebrates with the tag champs. This was a good one, but with a very unsatisfying finish. **½

Before the WWF title match last night, Jim Cornette’s lawyer (or maybe now he’s just the resident heel lawyer character) Clarence Mason serves Shawn Michaels with a summons as a defendant for the charge of ‘attempted alienation of affection’. Clarence says we will see Shawn in a court of law, but what judge would seriously let this case come to court? It’s an old-fashioned tort that’s only still recognized in a handful of states (North Carolina being one of them!) where Davey Boy Smith is trying to seek compensation from Shawn Michaels who is accused of ‘stealing away’ his wife, as though she were Davey Boy’s property. Well, Shawn rips up the subpoena, because it really is bologna. As stated earlier, the main event WWF title match ended in a double-pin, resulting in a rematch scheduled for the King of the Ring on June 23!

Sega Saturn Slam of the Week: The double-pin from last night and Davey Boy Smith celebrating his “title win” with Diana and Owen. Poor Diana is so awkward.

• Ahmed Johnson vs. Vader (w/Jim Cornette) – KOTR Qualifier
  

Owen Hart joins us for color commentary. Why, you ask? He’s here to share some of his expertise in the field of wrestling. Strong tie-up to start goes nowhere. They go nose-to-nose with trash talking. Apparently Vader dropped the “N” word on Ahmed because Ahmed beats him way down into the corner. This crowd goes nuts for everything Ahmed does. Vader fires back with his signature punches, but Ahmed hits him with a clothesline and they tumble out to the floor. Cornette whacks Ahmed with his tennis racket, but Ahmed NO-SELLS and scares Corny back to the locker room. Commercials! When we return, Vader is in control and hits a flying body attack for two. A pair of avalanches and a clothesline weakens Ahmed for a chinlock. Ahmed reverses a suplex, but Vader is right back on top of him. Vader takes too long setting up for the Vadersault and misses. Ahmed rallies back with clotheslines and delivers a powerslam, but Cornette is back out to distract the ref. Ahmed flips him into the ring and whips him into Vader. Cornette goes flying all over the place. Vader charges Ahmed and runs smack dab into a Spinebuster! While the ref is with Cornette as Ahmed covers Vader, Owen Hart leaves the table and lowers the boom on Ahmed using his cast. Once the ref gets rid of Cornette, Vader rolls over on Ahmed for the 1-2-3. (9:50 shown) Vince announces that this is Ahmed’s first loss. He is out cold! Good power match from these two. Ahmed could do no wrong with this crowd and he had plenty of good people here selling like crazy for him. **¾

When we come back from a break, Ahmed Johnson is carried through the arena on a stretcher. Before he is carted out of the arena, Goldust comes by and tries to give Ahmed “mouth-to-mouth”. Hey look, it worked! Ahmed wakes up, but he doesn’t like the taste Goldust put in his mouth. Ahmed sells his injuries going down the stairs looking for Goldust, but then gets a rush of adrenaline as he starts choking Bob Holly up a wall. SNAP. When he asks Marc Mero where Goldust is, he points towards his dressing room. There’s a jobber standing in his way, so Ahmed runs through him and tears down the door. Awesome. Goldust is nowhere to be found. Ahmed’s so pissed and out of control, he even decks the cameraman. We last see him turning over a catering table as he searches the building for a piece of Goldust. Oh, it’s ON.

Fun ending, but Nitro had this ending beat by like a million points this week.

NEXT WEEK: Nothing announced.