Dark Pegasus Video Review: In Your House V – Season’s Beatings

IYH 5: Season’s Beatings by J.D. Dunn December 17, 1995 Live from Hershey, Pa. Your hosts are Vince McMahon, Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler. Opening Match: Sycho Sid & The 1-2-3 Kid (w/Ted Dibiase) vs. Razor Ramon & Marty Janetty. Considering he was an underdog for the better part of three years, the Kid adapts to the role of cowardly douchebag quite well here. He plays cat-and-mouse with Marty and Razor for a while before Sid tags himself in and nails Ramon from behind. Marty gets the hot tag and hits a version of the Throwback. In the audience, we catch up with Goldust who is REALLY admiring Razor Ramon. Admiring him so much, in fact, that gay and lesbian groups started to complain, and the WWE toned it down a bit. Marty, meanwhile, is holding his own until he comes off the top into a Sid powerslam. Janetty settles into his old role of “guy caught in the wrong corner.” He finally avoids a charge by the Kid and tags in Ramon. Ramon cleans house and goes for the Razor’s Edge on Sid, but Sid backdrops out of it. Razor has to settle for a bulldog off the second rope. Kid is too much of a pussy to make the save, and Razor wins at 11:56. Sid isn’t too miffed at the kid, though, because he pulls Kid away from the Razor’s Edge. *3/4 Jeff Jarrett makes his triumphant return to the WWF after a brief holdout during the fall of 1995. He joins the commentary table as Lawler’s guest. Ahmed Johnson vs. Buddy Landell (w/Dean Douglas). In a funny twist on the Clique screwjob earlier in the year, Dean Douglas announces he can’t wrestle tonight because he has a back injury. Instead, he introduces his top student – Buddy Landell, doing a Ric Flair impression (with Flair’s music, no less). See, ten years earlier there was an angle over who the real Nature Boy was. Flair had already won that battle, but promoters still liked to make a few bucks off it. Ahmed no-sells everything and finishes Landell with a Pearl River Plunge at 0:42. 1/4* Lawler and Jarrett make jokes about Ahmed until he gets pissed and gets in King’s face about it. Jarrett knocks Ahmed out with his country music award. He tries for more punishment, but Ahmed is REALLY mad now. He chases Jarrett up the ramp. This would be one of the things Jarrett ranted out in his shoot promo when he returned to the WWF in 1997. In the back, Todd Pettingill delivers a copy of Goldust’s screenplay to Razor Ramon. Ramon is disgusted and storms off. Although Ramon passed on the project, the script would later be filmed as Brokeback Mountain. Arkansas Hogpen Match: Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Henry O. Godwinn. This is one the reasons you shouldn’t be too harsh on Triple H. Hillbilly Jim is your referee and doesn’t bother calling for an opening bell. Like the Casket Match, the idea is that you have to beat your opponent badly enough to put them in the hog pen. HOG ties HHH in the ropes and shoves slop into his mouth. Hunter gets pissed and uses his backstage influence to…oh, wait. Hunter actually still has to prove himself at this point, so he jumps HOG from behind and takes him out near the hog pen. He makes the mistake of going for the Pedigree right next to the hog pen, and HOG backdrops him. Hunter grabs on to the top railing and holds on like it’s the Royal Rumble. Helmsley knocks HOG down and drops an elbow off the top of the pen. They brawl to the ring where Hunter works in his over-the-top corner whip spot. They fight back to the pen where Helmsley blocks a Slop Drop (Reverse DDT). HOG tries again successfully, but he charges and gets backdropped into the pin. Hunter picks up the win at 9:06. Of course, it wouldn’t be a WWF PPV without the heel getting humiliated, so Hunter picks a fight with Hillbilly Jim and gets tossed into the pen. As stupid as the concept was, this was a decent match. I’m sure many of you would find catharsis in watching Triple H get humiliated like this. The match was actually pretty good if you can get past the gimmickry. **3/4 Diesel vs. Owen Hart (w/Jim Cornette). The night after Diesel dropped the title to Bret at Survivor Series, he came out and cut a promo about how the WWF had turned him into a “corporate puppet” and how he’d go back to being the real “Big Daddy Cool.” On that same episode of Raw, Shawn Michaels and Owen Hart were having a spiffy little match until Owen hit the enzuigiri. Shawn suddenly collapsed in the ring, leading to a ref stoppage. Shawn would lie prone in the ring for several minutes in one of the best worked injury angles in WWE history. Owen spent the next two weeks bragging about how he was the one who ended Shawn’s career. Shawn and Diesel were still friends, so Diesel signed Owen’s open contract for this match. Diesel destroys him for the most part. Owen gets in a few moves and goes to work on the leg, but Diesel shrugs him off and hits the Jackknife. He puts a boot in Owen’s chest. ONE, TWO, THR-Diesel takes his boot off and sets up for another one, tossing the referee in the process because this is about revenge, not winning. He gives Owen a second powerbomb as the ref calls for the DQ at 4:37. Now *this* Diesel could have drawn serious money, and in fact he did…for WCW. Glorified squash. *1/4 Ted Dibiase, Savio Vega and Santa Claus come out to hand out gifts to the ringside fans. If that seems a little off for Dibiase, don’t worry. He stops Savio and asks him if he believes in Santa Claus. Savio, being the good babyface, says that he does, so Santa smashes Savio in the back with his bag of goodies. It would turn out that Santa was, in fact, future ECW star Balls Mahoney. Casket Match: King Mabel (w/Sir Mo) vs. The Undertaker (w/Paul Bearer) Taker still has his mask on after Mabel broke his face with a legdrop. Taker chases after Sir Mo, allowing Mabel to jump him from behind. Undertaker no-sells and fights back with a flurry of punches. Mabel catches him with the sideslam, but Taker no-sells. Taker avoids a splash off the second rope, but Mo distracts him again, enabling Mabel to get a belly-to-belly and a legdrop. A splash puts Undertaker out, so Mo drags him out and puts him in the casket. They don’t bother to shut the lid, though. Yeah, Mabel’s kingdom was not the brightest in the ‘hood. Taker escapes, of course, and hits the flying clothesline on Mabel. Taker chokeslams Mabel and boots him into the casket. Mo tries to make the save, but Taker chokeslams him too, retrieves his melted down urn, and seals them both in the casket for the win at 6:12. The number of casket matches is inversely proportional to how good the Undertaker’s year is. Men on a Mission would disappear until Mabel had one more match in the “Raw Bowl” early in 1996. Mabel came back four years later as, Viscera, one of the Undertaker’s Ministry. (And before you write, yes, I know he technically came back as Mabel and was turned into Viscera that same night, but you get my point.) 3/4* WWF Heavyweight Title: Bret “the Hitman” Hart vs. Davey Boy Smith (w/Jim Cornette). They work on the mat to start with Bret dominating. Davey catches him with a knee to the gut to take over. Davey hangs Bret in the tree-of-woe. Davey lays in a few shots and locks in a chinlock. Crowd chants “ECW!” Davey Boy counters a crucifix to a Samoan drop and drops a leg across Bret’s chest. Cornette nails Bret with a racquet shot behind the ref’s back. Bret takes the “Bret Bump” off a whip to the corner. ONE, TWO, TH-foot on the ropes. Davey headlocks him and uses the hair to maintain control. Bret finally shoots him off and reverse monkeyflips him. Atomic Drop! Headbutt to the midsection! Bulldog! The move, not the wrestler. It gets two. Bret counters a backdrop to a piledriver for two. Davey blocks a superplex and crotches Bret on the top rope. Ooh, that’s rough. Davey knocks Bret into the ring steps “accidentally” busting him open. Davey goes right to work on the cut with a headbutt and a piledriver. The delayed vertical suplex gets two. The Military Press gets two. Davey gets two off a diving headbutt and hurts his knee in the process. Bret reverses a bow-and-arrow to a Sharpshooter attempt, but Smith pushes him away. Bret spills out of the ring off a shoulderblock. Bret counters a suplex to a Bridging German Suplex for two. They catch each other with clotheslines for a double KO. Davey recovers first but gets tossed over the top on a wild charge. Bret pescados out onto him and goes for a springboard splash. Davey counters that to a powerslam on the outside. Davey rips up the mat and sets up for a suplex. Bret returns the earlier favor by crotching Davey on the railing. Back in, the Pendulum Backbreaker gets two. Davey nearly breaks his neck on a whip to the corner. Bret pounces with a superplex. ONE, TWO, THR-no! Bret argues the count enabling Davey Boy to deliver a reverse rollup. Bret reverses that for two. Davey charges to the corner, but Bret gets a boot up. Bret casually rolls him up with the Majestral Cradle for three (21:10). Different than the Summerslam match, but also quite a classic in its own right. ****1/4

The 411: The WWF was transitioning from the financially horrible Diesel era (for which he doesn't deserve as much criticism as he gets) to the Shawn Michaels era in 1996. They did some nice things creatively here, such as Diesel's tweener status and freaky Goldust. The crap is definite crap but short crap, and the good stuff takes up most of the PPV's running time, so the match ratings probably don't give an accurate picture of the event overall. The main event is an unsung classic too. Thumbs up.

Final Score:  7.0   [ Good ]