Simply A Masterpiece

Don't Believe the Hype

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

1st Match: Owen Hart and The British Bulldog vs Jake Roberts and Ahmed Johnson. A slow match to start the show off, that'll be the running theme for this show. I don't mind slower matches, but the match just drags on for over 10 minutes until Bulldog gets the win. Boring, next. Rating: 1.5/52nd Match: Goldust vs The Ultimate Warrior, WWF International Championship. This is just stalling, there are some funny moments, but it's just 7 minutes of stalling until Goldust finally gets counted out. No rating for this, but I'll hold it against the show as a whole for being over 7 minutes of nothing. Rating: None3rd Match: Razor Ramon vs Vader. This would be Hall's last show before going to WCW, so losing to Vader made sense. He puts up a good fight though, the match has the best pace out of all the matches so far. Hopefully Hall does well in WCW when I see him again in a couple of shows. Rating: 3/54th Match: The Bodydonnas vs The Godwinns, WWF Tag Team Championships. A short match with nothing really interesting in it. The match only exists to really have another title match on the show, so it's just going through the motions. At least it's short, that's something. Rating: 2/55th Match: Shawn Michaels vs Diesel, No Holds Barred match for the WWF Championship. The match of the night, but mostly because everything before it was OK at best. Not as hard hitting as Bret and Nash's match at Survivor Series '95, but there are some good moments. Nash goes full heel here, putting Shawn through the announce table, and even taking off a prosthetic leg from a retired wrestler in the audience. That gets huge heat, almost too much if you ask me, but Shawn wins, so it's all good. I would've preferred a rematch between him and Bret, but this is an alright substitute. Nash would jump ship with Hall to WCW in a couple months also, so it was a good match for him to go out on. Rating: 4/5Final Rating: 4 out of 10. The show isn't good, the only above average match is Shawn's match, which in the grand scheme of things isn't as good as other matches from him you could watch. The show needed guys like Taker and Bret in it to keep from being stale. I will say this though, the show's less than 2 hours, I'd rather watch a bad show that's short instead of a terrible show that's almost 3 hours long.

(04.28.96)Live from Omaha, NebraskaAttendance: 9,563Your hosts are Vince McMahon & Jerry LawlerThe British Bulldog (W/Owen Hart, Jim Cornette & Clarence Mason) Vs Jake "The Snake" Roberts Jake is ordered to take the snake to the back. He terrorizes Camp Cornette with the snake before taking it to the back. Jake brings out plan B, Ahmed Johnson. This is now a tag team match.The British Bulldog & Owen Hart Vs Jake "The Snake" Roberts & Ahmed JohnsonBulldog and Owen win after Bulldog makes Jake submit with a leg hold. It took Cornette's tennis racket to do it, though. This was a decent way to start the show. It did just enough to make you care throughout. The finish was a tad weird. It may have been better for Bulldog to nail Jake in the head with the racket, in lieu of the submission**1/2Intercontinental ChampionshipGoldust (C) (W/Marlena) Vs The Ultimate WarriorThis match takes FOREVER to get going. Goldust is too afraid to get in the ring with Warrior. Warrior ends up doing nothing but smoking Marlena's cigar for over 5 minutes or so. The match finally commences, but Goldust runs away and gets counted out. Seriously, that's it? I get you had to protect The Ultimate Warrior, but this was a complete waste of time. Goldust could have easily retained by DQ. This makes everyone involved look pathetic. DUDOstensibly, The British Bulldog's wife, Diana Smith is in Shawn Michaels locker room. Davey is livid and flipping out backstage.Thoughts: This would set up a feud between Shawn Michaels & The British Bulldog for a couple of months. Vader (W/Jim Cornette) Vs Razor RamonVader wins with a sit-down splash. This was a really competitive match, if nothing else. Even though Razor was on his way to WCW, he certainly wasn't buried here. He got in a significant amount of offense and made you believe he could pull off the win on a few occasions. **1/4Dok Hendrix informs Vader and Jim Cornette that Vader will face Yokozuna at the next In Your House. Tag Team ChampionshipThe Bodydonnas (C) (W/Sunny) Vs The Godwinns (W/Hillbilly Jim)The Godwinns have the match won after Henry nails Skip with the slop drop. Sunny distracts Phineas with a photo of herself, allowing Zip to pull the Bella Twins switch with Skip. Zip gets Henry Godwin in a small package for the win. I'm kind of glad this was short. I wasn't really looking forward to this match. Looking at Sunny is rather painless, to say the least. *1/4WWF Championship (No Holds Barred)Shawn Michaels (C) (W/Jose Lothario) Vs DieselShawn retains the title with the superkick. This is an excellent match that was quite brutal at times. You really believed that these two hated each other with how they beat the crap out of each other. Some of the spots in this match were rather shocking for the WWF at this time. The biggest shocker is Diesel using Maurice Vachon's synthetic leg as a weapon. My only complaint is that Michaels got up too quickly from a jackknife through a table, He didn't exactly sell it and got up too quickly.****This PPV is worth watching for the main event alone. Nothing else on the show is all that memorable, though. The Ultimate Warrior Vs Goldust is a humongous waste of time and really ruined the mood for me as far as the show was concerned for a while. WWF was about to rebuild in a major way. Razor and Diesel left the WWF shortly after this PPV for WCW. 6/10

In Your House 7 was easily the weakest such PPV since the third instalment, but wasn't a complete waste of time. After his stunning title loss at Wrestlemania 12 Bret Hart left the WWE for most of 1996, leaving WWE Champion Shawn Michaels to re ignite his rivalry with former friend Diesel for this PPV. Also at Wrestlemania 12, The Ultimate Warrior had returned to the WWE with an emphatic victory over Hunter Hearst Helmsley and here would try and win the Intercontinental Championship from Goldust.The night started off with a rather bad tag match, won by Owen Hart and the British Bulldog over Ahmed Johnson and Jake Roberts. Roberts, unfortunately, was just about gone by this stage and Johnson was poor worker on his best day. Hart and Bulldog didn't have their finest hour in this match either. Shame it existed really. This match came about as a result of the opening match at Wrestlemania 12. Bulldog won after illegally using manager Jim Cornette's tennis racket to take out Robert's knee and forcing him to submit with a boston crab.Next came the big IC Title match between Goldust and the Ultimate Warrior. This was not a good match. Goldust, over powered by the Warrior, got himself counted out to retain the title.Vader then defeated Razor Ramon in on of "The Mastodon's" better WWE matches. Not terrific, but blows away anything on the card up until this point.Next up saw WWE Tag Team Champions the Body Donnas (Skip and Zip) defeat the Godwinn Brothers Henry and Phineas in a pretty average match. Tag team wrestling was rather weak at this point in time and this match was a pretty good example of that.This brings us to the main event, in which Shawn Michaels defeated Kevin Nash with Sweet Chin Music after hitting him with a prosthetic leg he'd stolen from a spectator. This was far and away the best match of the night and was quite enjoyable, despite the silliness with the leg.So a pretty forgettable night, probably the weakest In Your House PPV so far.

1. "Wildman" Marc Mero defeated The 1-2-3 Kid via disqualification.2. "The British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith & Owen Hart defeated Ahmed Johnson & Jake Roberts. The Bulldog nailed Roberts in the knee with manager Jim Cornette's tennis racket before applying a leg submission for the win.3. The Ultimate Warrior defeated Goldust via countout. Goldust retained his Intercontinental Title as a result.4. Vader scored a pin over Razor Ramon. Razor attempted a Sunset Flip, but Vader countered with a Sit-Down Splash for the pin. This would be Ramon's final WWF pay-per-view match before departing to rival orginization, World Championship Wrestling.5. The Bodydonnas (Skip/Zip) defeated The Godwinns (Henry O./Phineas I. Godwinn) to retain the World Tag Team Championship. Skip pinned Henry for the win.6. Shawn Michaels pinned "Big Daddy Cool" Diesel to retain the World Heavyweight Title. The finish saw Diesel attack retired pro-wrestler "Mad Dog" Vachon (who was sitting ringside for this show), removing his artificial lower-leg. He took a swing at Michaels, which was ducked; Shawn nailed Diesel with the leg himself, following it up with his Superkick for the pin. Like Razor Ramon, this was Diesel's departing pay-per-view match.Overall Mark: B-