By Mike Grindle @MikeGrindle
Taking place on July 7th, several months after the famous Hart/Austin double turn at Wrestlemania 13, Canadian stampede would see Bret Hart and the Hart Foundation take on Austin and four of the company’s top USA born babyfaces. In the U.S. Hart’s new anti-American gimmick made him a despised heel, but abroad (especially in Canada) Hart and the rest of the Hart Foundation were still babyface’s, creating a unique scenario for the main event here. Also on the card is an Undertaker WWF title defence against Vader and a rematch from the 1997 King of the ring final with Hunter Hurst Helmsley taking on Mankind.
The opening video puts over how the roles will be reversed in terms of fan support tonight in the main event. We’ve got Vince McMahon, Jerry Lawler and Jim Ross on commentary, all of whom have cowboy hats to fit tonight’s theme (Obviously that’s just the norm for JR). Lawler’s hat is comically oversized, and JR looks kind of embarrassed by his fellow announcers, but I kind of miss seeing this sort of thing during PPV’s, where the announcers clothing and the stage décor followed the PPV’s theme.
Hunter Hearst Helmsley (w/Chyna) vs. Mankind
HHH is still the blue blood at this point, but the evolution of his character is slowly beginning to emerge. Mankind meanwhile has recently morphed into the downtrodden, sympathy inducing babyface version of himself. Even in 1997 these two hate each other and things start hot and never really slow down here. Mankind controls the offence early with a Cactus Jack elbow and a suplex to the entranceway, before Chyna interrupts a mandible claw attempt in her first interference of the night. Later, in what is a nasty looking spot, Chyna ends up hip-tossing Mankind into the steel steps legs first outside. Somehow there’s no DQ, and HHH hones in on Mankind’s now injured leg. Mankind’s selling here is top notch, and he doesn’t forget about it either when he starts to make the comeback. Mankind introduces a chair late in the match, but another Chyna interference ends with him taking the chair shot as the ref is distracted (90’s refs were the most useless.). HHH goes up top but Mankind catches him with the Mandible claw before Chyna again interferes and pulls Mankind off of Hunter. The match ends as Mankind and HHH proceed to brawl around the arena and get counted out in the process. You can’t really expect anything less than a lot of interference from Chyna in Helmsley match, but the chemistry between HHH and Mankind is clear as day here and the result is a decent match, despite the non-finish.
Taka Michinoku vs. The Great Sasuke
Before these two get a chance to go at it, Mankind and HHH (who’s now bleeding) reappear amongst the crowd for a few moments still brawling, before disappearing again. This is Michinoku’s first singles PPV match, and Sasuke’s WWF debut. With neither man being a big name within the WWF, the crowd are pretty much dead going in but some hard hitting action and high flying soon brings the crowd around. This is definitely not your prototypical 97 WWF match, with both men battering each other with some hefty kicks, and pulling out some big dives and suplexes, in a very back and forth affair. The future light heavyweight champion Michinoku hits the Michinoku driver but Sasuke kicks out at two. Michinoku tries to follow up with a top rope crossbody but Sasuke counters with a dropkick. A springboard moonsault, dominator-style powerbomb and tiger suplex follows from Sasuke for the win. The WWF light heavyweight division would flop terribly over the next few years, never really fitting into the WWF’s chaotic shows, and Taka would end up becoming a comedy jobber. Here both guys were given the time to do their thing and the result is a great match.
WWF World Heavyweight Title Match
The Undertaker (c) vs. Vader (w/Paul Bearer)
The Undertaker starts off on the offensive and in all truth, stays on the offence for most of the entire match. He goes through his usual back catalogue of signature moves including old school and some float over lariats, with any advantage Vader gets being short lived. In desperation Vader hits a very blatant low blow right in front of the ref, and for some reason is not disqualified (again, those 90s refs are the worst). You have to love the fact that the Undertaker, who plays an undead wizard who can reincarnate and summon lightning, is as weak as any man is to a punch in the balls. A botched Tombstone piledriver reverse spot follows, before Vader looks to go for the Vader bomb. Undertaker stops Vader with a blatant low-blow of his own (just to confirm again, this is not meant to be a no DQ match), and hits a second rope chokeslam. Vader survives that and the regular chokeslam that follows, but the tombstone piledriver puts him away. Vader was never a serious threat here, instead this match was just a way to get the Undertaker on the card and continue his feud with Paul Bearer. As a filler feud title match this was fine for what it is, helped along by the crowd’s enthusiastic reaction for the Undertaker.
Goldust, Ken Shamrock, Steve Austin & The Legion Of Doom (Road Warrior Animal & Road Warrior Hawk) vs. The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart, Brian Pillman, Jim Neidhart, Owen Hart & The British Bulldog) (w/Diana Smith)
We get the Canadian national anthem before the match, and the ring announcer lets us know that patriarchs of the Hart family, Stu and Helen are ringside. The U.S. team get mostly fair reactions, with Austin’s being both the loudest and most mixed. The members of the Hart foundation meanwhile each gets a hero’s welcome, especially Bret and Owen. The match itself, which stars off with Bret Hart and Austin, is chaotic but in a good way. Neither team is ever able to hold the advantage for a long stretch or isolate an opponent, since the ref is never able to keep order over the ten men. There’s an interesting dynamic with everyone essentially playing face except Austin, who excels in his tweener role here. In fact this match is the perfect example of what made the Stone Cold character so great, since on one hand he cheats from the get go, low blowing Bret early on in the match, and on the other hand he’s completely fearless, often trying to take the entire Hart Foundation on all at once. At one point in the match Owen Hart gets taken out by a doomsday device from LOD, which leads to an all-out brawl between the two teams as the Hart foundation makes the save. During the chaos, Austin drags Owen to the corner, places his leg across the ring post and then hits his leg with a chair. This leads to Owen being taken out of the match and helped to the back. Bret soon gets his revenge though, and does the same thing to Austin but this time with a fire extinguisher, which leads to Austin being helped to the back as well. Things settle down for a while after that, until Austin returns and we go back to Bret and Austin fighting. Bret goes for the sharpshooter, but Animal makes the save and Austin applies a sharpshooter of his own, only for Owen to now return and make the save. More chaos ensues, and Austin for some reason goes after the Hart family at ringside, leading to a brawl between several of the Hart brothers and Austin. Bret rolls Austin back in the ring, and Owen sneaks behind him for the rollup and the win. It’s an odd finish, but it makes sense booking wise, as Austin is left with an excuse for his loss (although its entirely his own fault) whilst the Harts still get to look like heroes in front of their home crowd. The brawling between everyone continues after the match until security step in and break everyone up, leaving the Harts in the ring to celebrate. Just as things look to have calmed down though, Austin returns again, taking out Jim Neidhart with a chair before security have to subdue and cuff him. With Austin gone the entire extended Hart family enter the ring and celebrate together in front of the fans. While the match was good, especially whenever one of the Hart’s was in there with Austin, it was the red hot crowd that really made this feel special, popping loud for everyone and everything throughout the match.
This was a really solid show, elevated almost to greatness thanks to one of the all-time best wrestling crowds. All of the matches delivered at least to some degree and the big main event really capped off the show in a great way. It’s not an overly long show either, capping in at just under two hours, so if you find yourself with some time and fancy a little early attitude era goodness, then check it out.
