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[1998-02-02-WWF-Raw] Cactus Jack vs Chainsaw Charlie


Loss

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  • 1 month later...

I am really digging these behind the scenes clips we are getting of Funk and Cactus before they beat the shit out of each other. It kind of makes the Charlie gimmick a lot better as its not just him running around in pantyhose and no one pretending it is Funk. Funk meets Cactus at the entranceway and eats a chair. Cactus suplexs a ladder onto Funk. They do an inside cradle spot down the ramp which was really humorous for a hardcore match. Back inside the ring, Funk unloads his garbage can full of more garbage cans. He takes two shots right to the noggin for his troubles. Cactus hands Funk the trash can and allows himself to get hit. Funk is having second thoughts but then obliges when cactus turns around. Cactus piledrives Funk with a trash can on his head in a painful looking spot as we go to break. We come back with Funk doing the windmill ladder spot at the top of the entranceway. Funk gets backdropped into the dumpster and the mandible claw is locked on. We then get a Cactus elbow from the Titantron. This leads to the NAO coming out and tieing the lid shut on the dumpster. They then send the dumpster off the ramp intensifying this feud even further. Ross's reaction is amazing showing extreme fear at the individuals inside. They play this up as a serious event and that Cactus and Funk are in danger health wise. Vince is out there and Flash Funk is wanting to fight them to a great reaction. The match was actually fairly innovative and quite good for the time it lasted. (**3/4)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate fake injury angles? Especially when they drag on for ages this one. The fellow wrestlers doing a load of bad acting. The announcers trying to put it over as a real life situation is disrespectful to the real injuries that do sometimes occur in the ring. In 1999 one guy would die in a WWF ring and another would be permanently paralysed. This was so serious Cactus and Funk would be back the following hour. It's pathetic.

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I feel like these guys have had better matches, maybe in ECW, that weren't so weapons based.

 

The "real life" angle is nothing ECW hadn't done better, multiple times before. JR using the term "over" on TV is just weird. I did enjoy Scorp and Vince's performances, though.

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Agreed that this was a really fun match before the big angle. And I liked the angle, even though parts of it were a blatant copy of the WCW angle in 1996 where Kevin Nash threw Rey into the trailer, with Sunny in the Woman role. Michael Cole's complete lack of authenticity and reliance on buzzwords ("Many of the Superstars look up to these two") hurts this some, but Jim Ross is exceptional. Flash Funk wants to fight the NAO, which is a nice touch, then the brawl breaks out with other guys too. The NAO seem almost apologetic and DX cut them off and tell them to suck it up and I really like this part of the segment a lot. Putting them in DX cemented them at that level, but this is the angle that made the NAO stars.

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The attention to detail throughout this show-long angle was quite good, with stuff like Flash Funk going after the Outlaws, Lawler refusing to express sympathy for his longtime rival Funk and DX acting as instigators. That set this apart from a lot of the pseudo-shooty shit we'd see in future years.The WWF had an impressive ability at this point to wrap all of its key players into one angle over the course of a show. We saw that often with the Hart Foundation/HBK/Austin stuff in 1997, and it continued here. They rarely pull that off now, even though the in-ring wrestling in 2014 is often better.

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  • 1 year later...

Fun match before the angle and man, what an angle. Really, really impressive stuff. The way they shot this and how they directed the aftermath is seriously great TV. Feels like a huge deal, they get everything right with the Outlaw's reactions, the roster coming out, the chaos around the ramp area, wrestlers going after the Outlaws. The camera work/production and announcer reaction all strike the perfect chord too. The talk about "getting over" and the Outlaws doing it for the ratings was a perfect injection of some realism without going over too far. The time dedicated to this also helps and makes it feel like a huge deal.

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There's some stuff here that I *should* hate, like the use of insider terms and the cheapening of real-life injuries as have occurred and will occur in the future, but in the end it's the performance of Jim Ross that carries this. It's not as overall effective as the backstage NWO attack at Disney, but it does work--at least for now. I like that they gave us more or less a full match before the Dumpster angle--there's not much we haven't seen before but the action is good. And any falls-count-anywhere match with wrestling spots on the floor--here Funk turns a suplex onto a ladder into a small package--is never going to be all bad. Use of "over" aside, no one really compromises their characters here--even Mero and Savio being out there, despite being heels, is understandable and well-explained by Ross--"they all have families to feed." This was the first time the WWF had run this angle in the middle of a program as opposed to the end and this kind of show-stopping, format-destroying angle that Russo was never afraid to write. It didn't always work but I don't think it's something that WWE has really attempted in years, though doubtless they wouldn't carry out a fake injury angle to this extent these days.

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  • 1 month later...

It's hard to look at this segment in isolation, when you know what happens in the main event at the end of the night, and you get the sight of Cactus and Funk charging out with drips in their arms, but looking at just the dumpster angle, and while you can debate the tastelessness of a big shoot/fake injury angle, this is an incredibly well done, and fairly nuanced piece of wrestling television. From the announcing, to the melee and confusion that then follows, this does feel at times incredibly real - although Sunny's soap opera acting does take you out of the moment - and even watching 18 years later, I was still sucked in.

 

With the match, the stunt and then the aftermath, all told this takes up at least half the show, not to mention the constant replays and the cut in's from the hospital. Those bits, with the lines about Foley "slipping in and out of consciousness" are when it starts to get a little too much though. I'm a huge sucker for a show long angle, and while I can see why they might have wanted to bring Foley and Funk out at the end again to complete the episodes circle, or perhaps to not have people/sponsors worried that they were going too far with playing up how real the whole thing was, it really did lessen the impact, and feel that the two returning at No Way Out - even if that would've still been a very quick recovery - would've been so much more gratifying and perhaps softened the blow of "mystery partner - Savio Vega".

 

As has been pointed out above, the whole thing is played very well, and is very effective at creating drama through the little touches. Heels and babyfaces together, no-one (Sunny accepted) going too over the top, the initial remorse from the NAO, Scorpio going off on one and having to be restrained, the brawl with everyone trying to get to Road Dogg and Billy Gunn. A very captivating piece of wrestling television, but one that's legacy it's hard to detach from the victims coming back three quarters of an hour later.

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Even though all four people involved were some of my favorites at the time, I HATED this. It took almost the entire first hour of Raw and just dragged and I didn't buy them being hurt throwing about six feet onto tables while surrounded by pads and packing peanuts. This is especially true after they showed clips of them killing each other in Japan death matches.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1998-02-02-WWF-Raw] Cactus Jack vs Chainsaw Charlie

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