Reviews From The City of Orange: WWF In Your House XIII: Final 4

Posted by Mike Campbell on 08.13.2009

Shawn's loss (of his smile) is Bret's gain.

IN YOUR HOUSE XIII: FINAL FOUR
February 16, 1997

Let’s take a little trip back in time to 1997, a time before Vince lost to the Pandas and required us all to “get the F out.” Before Bret was screwed and when the majority of the people actually didn’t like Steve Austin. When Marc Mero was a Wild man, and when Ron Simmons knew more than one word.

Flash Funk . . . flies around like a madman and winds up being the lone highlight of a trios match.
Hunter Hearst Helmsley . . . has his first ever PPV match with the future most electrifying man in sports entertainment.
Owen Hart . . . puts on a wrestling clinic alongside Philip Lafon and steals the show in the process.

MARC MERO vs. LIEF CASSIDY
As an opener, this is acceptable if nothing else. Neither of them really goes all out as far as offense goes. Mero leaves Snow to do the heavy lifting, he doesn’t do much more than a dive to the floor and the Wild Thing that gets the pin. Snow targeting Mero’s knee is a good idea in theory, to keep him grounded and avoid the Wild Thing, but he doesn’t do much other than kicks and the occasional hold, and, with the exception of the Figure Four, they aren’t anything that anyone would buy as being able to get a submission. It’s odd to see Sable interfering since Mero is the babyface (she pushes the ropes toward him to allow him to break the Figure Four) and then denying that she did anything when Snow goes after her. Mero would go on the shelf shortly after this, so maybe they were laying the groundwork of a dual heel turn or a split between them that Mero’s injury put the kibosh on. Snow going after her gives Mero the chance to stop selling his knee and dive to the floor onto Snow, he rolls him in, and quickly finishes him off. It’s frustrating to see Mero blowing off Snow’s leg work, which had been carrying the match, but Snow wasn’t exactly using high tech offense, so it’s not too big a deal.

FAROOQ/CRUSH/SAVIO VEGA vs. BART GUNN/FLASH FUNK/GOLDUST
It’s good that Scorpio was here. Otherwise, this would have been a real bore, instead, it’s just a little bit north of that. The heels aren’t good for more than just punching and kicking, and Goldust and Gunn don’t add much of note other than Gunn’s bulldog to Farooq that leads to the finish. Scorpio does a big plancha onto all three of the NOD early on, and gives Farooq an opening with his leap frog that Farooq catches and plants him with a spine buster. Scorpio makes the hot tag and all hell breaks loose. Gunn launches Scorpio into the air to dive on the heels again, but he gets caught this time. Gunn hits the bulldog and the ref is busy, Crush hits a legdrop and puts Farooq on top for the pin. Six-and-a-half minutes really isn’t enough time for six wrestlers to do their thing, so it was smart of them to just let Scorpio do his stuff and then take it home.

ROCKY MAIVIA © vs. HUNTER HEARST HELMSLEY (WWF Intercontinental Title)
Wow. Watching HHH here and from his peak in 2000 is like night and day. It’s telling when the only decent thing from him in the entire match is done about two minutes in, he outwrestles Rock early on and takes him to the mat with a drop toehold and then playfully slaps him in the head, and it’s equally fun to see Rocky hand it back a few minutes later. Beyond that, HHH is pretty bad on offense, his idea of getting heat on Rocky is by using extended chinlocks, and using the ropes for leverage, or choking him, he’s got next to nothing for real offense. He’s much better when Rocky is in control, his stumbling and stooging go a long way toward making this as watchable as it is (and it’s barely that). HHH is still better than Rocky though, and when you’re getting outdone by 1997 HHH, you’re not doing much. He doesn’t do much of anything to get the fans behind him. The only thing from Rocky that really wakes the crowd up is his small package counter to HHH’s vertical suplex attempt, and that was mostly because that was the way Rocky had the won the title from HHH a few days before this. Rocky’s offense is ugly for the most part, the floatover DDT was dreadful and there was no grace at all to his high cross body press. Rocky’s use of the German suplex is a unique finish for 1997 WWF, but it doesn’t jive with the storyline of Goldust distracting HHH, a simple cradle would have worked much better. There’s no doubting that these two both went on to become great and have great matches against each other, but they’re both a long way away from that here.

OWEN HART/BRITISH BULLDOG © vs. DOUG FURNAS/PHIL LAFON (WWF Tag Team Titles)
Even with the stupid booking of the DQ finish, this is still easily the match of the night so far. Owen and Lafon look like they were made to wrestle each other, and Bulldog and Furnas stayed out of things for the most part, so as not to muck up any of the good stuff the other two were doing. They just show up and do the stuff they can do well, Bulldog’s running lariat and Furnas’ overhead belly to belly and hurricanrana. Owen and Lafon take care of the rest, the highlight is Owen’s monkey flip, but Lafon didn’t fly over, Owen took him over and wound up in a pinning position, and Lafon got his legs up and countered to a sit out pin of his own. There’s also the great moment when Lafon gets hit with Owen’s enzuigiri and sells it like death, which pays some respect to the Owen/Michaels angle, despite being more than a year before this. The only thing that looks a bit awkward was when Owen went for the Sharpshooter and Lafon kicked him off, Owen looked puzzled for a second like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do.

What keeps this from being much more than good though, is that, for all their efforts, this more about the Owen/Bulldog dissension angle than it is about the tag titles. It never looks like the titles are in any danger, even when things boil over and Owen slaps Davey and Davey responds with his running lariat to Owen. Furnas and Lafon capitalize on the break and start rolling out double teams on Owen, but it doesn’t feel like the titles are in danger. And they evidently weren’t, because Owen and Bulldog pulled things together on their own and Bulldog looked to have the match won with his powerslam to Furnas, but Owen used the slammy and got them disqualified just to spite Bulldog. Clean finishes are always preferable on PPV, but it’s not a totally ‘out there’ finish, although it’d have come off eons better had it been Owen doing it save the titles because they were in danger of losing. But, the whole bit of doing it just for the Owen/Davey breakup (that never happened) angle is better left for matches on Raw with the Godwins and Headbangers. ***

BRET HART vs. STEVE AUSTIN vs. VADER vs. THE UNDERTAKER (vacant WWF World Heavyweight Title - Final Four Match)
This is somewhat unique, given that four-way matches were still uncommon, but there isn’t a whole lot that’s worth praising other than the booking. It’s paced like a 2/3 falls match from the ‘70's in the sense that the first fall is the feeling out portion, and the two subsequent falls are more action and are quite a bit shorter. There isn’t much ‘feeling out’ being done though in the time spent on the match prior to Austin’s elimination, it’ s just a lot of Bret brawling with Austin and Vader brawling with UT. Given that, at the time, those were two of the main feuds it makes sense to have them brawl but they don’t do much besides eat up time, and with Vader’s love of taking the match to the floor, the camera is going back and forth between both fights, so you can’t piece together much of anything as far any in-match story. So it gets mundane quickly.

Vader’s eye getting screwed up would have been a golden opportunity for some storytelling, Bret and Austin deciding to put their grudge on hold, even briefly, so that all three could work together and get rid of Vader. But Vader’s gusher allows for little more than a few grotesque close ups. Ross and Lawler were hammering home the nature of the match being every man for himself, but they seemed to take that a little too much to heart. Hell, every Royal Rumble match gets that very label and there are always people teaming up and working together. The only time it comes up is briefly, when Vader puts Bret in a Sharpshooter and Austin takes advantage and puts the boots to Bret. But that’s not so much Vader and Austin working together as it is Austin taking advantage of Bret’s predicament.

The eliminations themselves are just fine. Bret eliminating Austin clean as a whistle, with no chance of any controversy, puts some closure on the whole Royal Rumble fiasco. UT elimination of Vader was also well done, although Vader mucked it up a bit by spending so much time bouncing for the Vader bomb that it gave away UT sitting up and knocking him off the ropes. Bret’s elimination of UT is the best by far for the way it adds to the Bret/Austin feud. Austin, more than a bit miffed at being eliminated, tries to cost Bret the title, but all it does is get UT angry. UT stops to knock Austin off the apron and Bret takes advantage of the opening and lariats UT over the top. Despite his intentions to stop Bret from becoming champion for the fourth time, Austin wound up being the reason that he won it.

The 411: There’s nothing outright bad, but it’s got a lot of stuff that’s on the dull side. HHH/Rock is more amusing in a ‘where are they now’ sense than for any merits it has as a match, and the tag titles match was good, but held back by the booking. I’m in the middle here, nothing to run out for ASAP, but also nothing to avoid like the plague.

Final Score:  7.0   [ Good ]