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WrestleMania 36 wasn’t quite the same as a normal WrestleMania, thanks to the lack of a big venue and accompanying live crowd due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that doesn’t mean the WWE Superstars didn’t give it their all. They put their bodies on the line for our entertainment like they always do, whether it was Jimmy Uso in a ladder match against John Morrison and Kofi Kingston, or Kevin Owens executing the biggest spot of the weekend in his match with Seth Rollins. Since then, reports have come out that Uso and Owens are both injured, although there’s a big difference in severity and how long they’re expected to be out of action.

Kevin Owens tweaked his ankle in his match with Seth Rollins, but according to Dave Meltzer at the Wrestling Observer, he’s only expected to be out for a couple more weeks. Hopefully on his return he’ll be able to keep building on the babyface momentum he’s been building these past few months.

Jimmy Uso, on the other hand, suffered a pretty serious knee injury in that aforementioned ladder match, and he’s expected to be out of action for six to nine months. Meltzer also says that the Usos being unable to work has altered the booking of the Smackdown tag team division, with the Forgotten Sons getting called up to fill a hole in the multi-team match being planned for the Money in the Bank PPV. It’s a shame he’s going to be out so long, because the tag division just isn’t the same without him and Jey.

On Mondays, Billboard reveals what songs occupy the top ten spots of the upcoming Hot 100 chart, and today’s dispatch was full of fascinating bits of trivia. They mostly relate to Travis Scott and Kid Cudi’s collaboration “The Scotts” debuting in the No. 1 spot, but this week also put a new trophy on Megan Thee Stallion’s shelf: Thanks to the new Beyonce remix of “Savage,” the single has become Megan’s first top-10 song.

“Savage” jumped ten spots on the chart dated May 9, up from No. 14 all the way to No. 4 (so yes, “Savage” is also Megan’s first top-5 song). Megan offered a simple reaction of “OMGGGGGG” on Twitter, but elaborated more in an Instagram post, writing, “I really want to cry right now like oh my god !!!! This is my first top 10 b*tch my first top 5 !!!! Likeeeeee hottiessss we really doing this sh*t ! We aint never give up we doing everything they said we wouldn’t!!!! I said jwhite give me a beat I can go off on and he did. Thank you @beyonce ! I’m just happy to be here man THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU !!!!”

Megan was beyond pumped when she first heard Beyonce’s contributions to her song, saying in a recent Instagram Live session, “I know that they say manifest it, but b*tch: that’s a real thing! That is a real thing. Manifestation is a real word. I ain’t know that! […] I just really can’t believe it. I heard it for the first time and I called my grandma, and I was like in f*cking shambles. I was really crying, I was like, ‘I really got a f*cking song with Beyonce.’”

Kid Cudi’s decade-plus career has earned the rapper a number of accolades, including a prominent role in this season’s Westworld. Even with his awards, Kid Cudi has never had a song reach No. 1 on the charts… until Monday. The rapper recently joined forces with Travis Scott for the hard-hitting track “The Scotts,” and the single earned him his first No. 1 ever.

“The Scotts” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated May 9. Along with marking Cudi’s career first No. 1, the single became Scott’s third time achieving the feat. It’s only the 37th song ever to debut on top of the chart. Upon its debut, the single garnered over 42.2 million streams in the US alone and was purchased for download 67,000 times, according to Billboard. The single’s impressive number of downloads makes it No. 3 in digital sales so far in 2020, following BTS’ “On” and Justin Bieber’s “Yummy.”

Kid Cudi shared his unabridged excitement to social media upon hearing the news. Cudi thanked both his fans and Travis Scott for the achievement: “THIS MEANS SO MUCH TO ME!!! IVE BEEN IN THIS GAME FOR 12 YEARS AND I FINALLY DID THIS W MY MUTHAF*CKIN BROTHER!”

Along with the single earning Cudi his first No. 1, this weeks’ charts also give Megan Thee Stallion a career first. Megan’s “Savage (Remix)” with Beyonce jumped to No. 4 this week, making it the rapper’s first Top-10 single.

Americas’ national parks are slowly starting to reopen, after being forced to shut down back in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Zion, one of the most heavily trafficked parks in the country, is allowing guests to return on May 13th. Nearby Bryce Canyon is opening certain trails this week. It may feel small, but for lovers of the outdoors this news is certainly a long-awaited ray of hope, especially as summer approaches.

The thing is, parks won’t just be flinging open the gates so that everyone can flood back in. There are likely to be some serious rules in place for social distancing. Meanwhile, all services — restrooms, campgrounds, concessions, lodges — are still shuttered for the foreseeable future. Some of the parks, like Denali in Alaska, are only opening up small stretches of their roads in order to limit access.

In short, you can’t just show up and hope for everything to be as it was before the shutdown. The most important advice is to go to nps.gov, find out if the park you want to go to is even open, and check on what’s accessible. If the park is open, you’ll need to know the National Park Service rules, created in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control. They’re in place to make sure you don’t spread or contract COVID-19 when traveling to or visiting a park, so follow them.

The guidelines for visiting national parks in the wake of COVID are listed below. A quick note, these are for the National Park System — not local or state parks. Policies vary wildly state to state and sometimes county to county and are often subject to rapid change. It falls on you to be aware of and comply with the precautions in place.

Only Visit Parks Close To Your Home

There’s a good reason for this. According to the CDC, “traveling long distances to visit a park may contribute to the spread of COVID-19.” If you’re spending a day on the road, you’re going to need to stop for gas, bathroom breaks, and probably food. That means contact with people and surfaces you wouldn’t normally be in contact with. You could, theoretically, be spreading the disease or pick it up somewhere and take it with you.

Instead, find a national park near you. There probably is one, even if it’s not on your radar. You can travel straight there (and preferably back) without stopping too often and widening the number of people you come into contact with.

Prepare Before You Visit

Part of this is simply going online to figure out if the park near you is even open. Another big part is recognizing that even if the national park you want to see is open, pretty much all the services in the park will be suspended, including toilet facilities. That also typically covers food options, lodging, and visitor’s centers. Campgrounds are also gated as well.

All of this means that if you do plan to go to a park, it should be a day trip and you’re going to need to bring everything you need with you. So ask yourself: Is it even worth it, knowing you won’t be able to use the bathroom or stay the night? It may seem trivial, but simple things like toilets being closed might be a deal-breaker for some.

Always Adhere To 6-foot Social Distancing

This seems pretty obvious, but news reports from beaches from California and Florida show that it’s just not. A statement from the National Park Service indicated that rangers will be on hand to “ensure those [reopening] operations comply with current public health guidance.” And public health guidance includes six-foot social distancing at all times.

It’d be a shame if these parks had to re-close because people refused to maintain social distancing practices. We understand that this can be a bit hard, given that people tend to crowd in areas close to striking vistas or other photo-ops. But the fact is, that really has to stop for now. Our guess is that if, say, a thousand people gathered on the south ridge of the Grand Canyon for a sunset next weekend, they’ll shut it back down. As they should.

Do Not Use Pools, Spas, Hot Springs, Water Parks, Playgrounds

This one is a little murkier. Individual parks will be deciding where you can swim or not in regards to natural water areas. But overall, the CDC recommends you just don’t for now. The CDC notes that water park areas, swimming holes, and pools “are often crowded,” and they “can be challenging to keep surfaces clean and disinfected,” and that the “virus can spread when people touch surfaces and then touch their unwashed hands to their eyes, nose, or mouth.”

Basically, the main facilities at hot springs or spas will probably be closed anyway. As for beaches, lakes, springs, and rivers, please look up and follow the rules prescribed by the NPS and CDC.

Do Not Visit A Park If You’re Sick Or Have Had Contact With Someone With COVID-19

This, again, sounds obvious. But given that a lot of people are asymptomatic, it’s hard to know where to draw a line in the sand if we ever want to open the world back up.

Our advice would be to play it safe. Even if there’s a minor reopening in a park, maybe give it a little more time before you jump in the car and head out. Testing is the only way for us to really know where we stand. And that’s nowhere near universal yet. So… going back to the earlier question, do you really need to go to a national park right now? Why exactly? What about researching less-crowded BLM land? Or hiking a local trail?

Meanwhile, visit most parks online from your couch (we know it’s not the same, but still!). While you wait for the coast to be clear, Find Your “Virtual” Park is a great outlet for experiencing national parks from coast-to-coast.

Drake may miss out on the top spot of Billboard‘s album chart for the first time in a decade thanks to a surprising competitor for the No. 1 spot. While Drake’s albums generally outsell the competition by a large margin — especially after Billboard changed its rules in order to count streams — his latest release, the surprise mixtape Dark Lane Demo Tapes, is reportedly locked into a neck-and-neck race for No. 1 with country legend Kenny Chesney’s Here And Now, according to Hits Daily Double.

The insider trade magazine reports that Drake’s tape is ahead on streaming, enough to amount to 230-255k equivalent units, while Chesney’s ticket bundle has him close enough to touch Drake’s totals at 220-235k units. Drake’s first-place finish would likely be contingent on fans continuing to stream his project at rates consistent with his last few projects. While Dark Lane‘s numbers are impressive for an album that released with no real promotion, Drake’s become accustomed to living at the top of the charts.

If Dark Lane Demo Tapes misses out on No. 1, it would be the first of his full-length projects to miss ever; his highly anticipated debut album Thank Me Later debuted at No. 1 in 2010, followed by a string of No. 1 debuts that continued all the way up to his most recent drop, 2019’s Care Package, which was also a collection of B-Sides and previously released singles that arrived with little-to-know promotion.

It remains to be seen whether Drake will ask fans for a last-minute push the way his countryman Justin Bieber did during the competition between his “Yummy” and Roddy Ricch’s “The Box,” but Drake may have little to worry about anyway. Within hours of releasing Dark Lane Demo Tapes, Drake had already begun teasing another full-length release — this time a proper album — for later this year.

Dark Lane Demo Tapes is out now on OVO Sound/RCA Records.

In its gripping new trailer for the true crime documentary, I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, HBO pulls viewers into Michelle McNamara‘s relentless investigation into hunting down the Golden State Killer.

Based on her bestselling book of the same name, McNamara was a dogged writer whose obsession with unsolved cases led her down the path of attempting to unravel the identity of the serial killer who had plagued California during the ’70s and ’80s. Tragically, McNamara died in 2016 before her book could be finished, but her husband, actor/comedian Patton Oswalt, dedicated himself to completing her book and enlisted the help of his late wife’s colleagues Paul Haynes and Billy Jensen to wrap up her investigation.

I’ll Be Gone In The Dark hit bookshelves in 2018, and less than two months later, the Golden State Killer was finally arrested by the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department, bringing a bittersweet ending to McNamara’s passion project. Now, under the direction of Emmy winning director, Liz Garbus, McNamara’s investigation will unfold in a six-part documentary. From HBO’s synopsis:

I’LL BE GONE IN THE DARK is a detective story told in McNamara’s own words, through exclusive original recordings and excerpts from her book read by actor Amy Ryan. The series draws from extensive archival footage and police files as well as exclusive new interviews with detectives, survivors and family members of the killer to weave together a picture of a complex and flawed investigation. It is a frightening document of an era when victims were often too ashamed to speak out and sexual crime was minimized in the press and the courtroom. Echoing McNamara’s writing, the series gives voice to the victims, and their experiences speak to the far-reaching, human cost of the decades-old case.

I’ll Be Gone In The Dark will debut on HBO on June 28.

There probably isn’t anyone painted in a more poor light by The Last Dance than Jerry Krause, the Chicago Bulls former general manager who had a contentious relationship with the team’s superstar, Michael Jordan, throughout Jordan’s tenure in Chicago.

Krause was the butt of many jokes, typically about his height and weight, as Jordan and Scottie Pippen never missed a chance to verbally dunk on the team’s top executive. They also made sure to try and make him look bad at every possible moment on the court, attacking anyone they knew to be a personal favorite of Krause’s on the opposing team. This is what led to Toni Kukoc’s baptism by fire in the 1992 Olympics and Jordan said he went after Dan Majerle in the 1993 Finals for the same reason.

Krause died in 2017 and as such is not able to defend himself in the documentary, as it must lean on past interviews for his side of stories, but Krause was working on a memoir when he died that explores a lot of these issues. K.C. Johnson of NBC Sports Chicago was given excerpts of Krause’s memoir by the Krause family, and on Monday he published one that details Krause’s fraught relationship with Jordan — one that was driven by both men’s intense desire to win at all costs.

It goes into Jordan’s foot injury his sophomore year and the minutes restriction he was placed on — which was the start of the tension between the two. Krause explains his side of certain decisions and how he was always looking to do what’s best for the team, but in one section he notes that Jordan did the same at the end of his career.

After the 1998 season, prior to officially announcing his retirement, Jordan severed a tendon in his shooting hand with a cigar cutter — the most Jordan injury possible — and required surgery. As Krause recalls in the memoir, Jordan very easily could’ve decided to force the Bulls into giving him a contract and gone on the disabled list with the injury to collect millions, but instead retired.

To his everlasting credit, at the end of his time with the Bulls he could have really screwed the franchise big time and he didn’t. In the summer after winning the last championship he’d cut his index finger of his shooting hand very badly with a cigar cutter. It was seriously questionable if he could regain enough movement in the finger to be himself again as a shooter. He could have easily put us in an extremely tough situation by saying he wanted to play and force us to sign him to the biggest contract in team sports history. It would then have been easy to go on the disabled list with the finger injury and spend the rest of that strike-shortened season picking up checks every two weeks and not playing at all. But Michael being Michael, once he signed a contract, he gave you a thousand percent effort and would not think of stiffing you.

The entire excerpt Johnson published is an interesting look into how Krause viewed Jordan and their relationship that was fraught with issues. Throughout, there’s a level of respect for what Jordan did, but an acknowledgment that while they both had the same goal, their methods and thoughts on how to get to those goals was different.

While the coronavirus pandemic is undeniably a devastating global crisis, it’s also an unprecedented opportunity. A chance for humanity to take a pause. A chance for us to step back and examine the world we’ve built. A chance to decide if what we have to look back on is really the “normal” we want to return to.

This idea of reimagining normal is explored through a child’s bedtime story in the now viral video called “The Great Realisation.” Released on YouTube on April 29 by a new channel called Probably Tomfoolery, the video goes through four minutes of rhyming poetry that outlines where we were before the pandemic and where we end up in the future.

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The Great Realisation

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The story is profound, beautiful, and most importantly, hopeful. It gives fulfilment to the desire so any of us have to not return to the normal that was, but to build a new normal that befits humanity true potential. And it does so in a way that doesn’t preach or point fingers, but rather pushes us to think about what we want the world to look like on the other side of this pandemic.

Definitely worth four minutes of your time.

Matthew David Hughes has been stalking Eminem for a long time. The man who was arrested after breaking into Eminem’s home near Detroit last week reportedly has a history of trespassing, according to TMZ. Hughes was arrested in June 2019 for trespassing on two properties — one owned by Eminem — as he pursued the goal of meeting his hero.

According to TMZ, Hughes’ M.O. for his breaking-and-entering ways remained consistent in the previous incidents as well — particularly the “breaking” part. He allegedly threw a rock through a front window at a house in Rochester Hills, MI at 2am, waking up the homeowner. Hughes left before deputies arrived, but the homeowner told them he returned later, saying he was “looking for his brother Marshall.” He then moved on to another property, this one in Oakland Township, which was previously owned by Eminem.

At this house, he apparently climbed a fence and wandered the property at around 4:30am, ringing the doorbell and asking where Eminem was. When he was informed that Em no longer lived there, he hid under a bed on the second floor of the gatehouse, where police found him when they arrived. Hughes was arrested, charged with malicious destruction of property and breaking-and-entering, and sentenced to 90 days in jail. He also failed to pay the fine of around $1,400 by deadline, so an arrest warrant was issued.

He was arrested again on Thursday last week when he threw a rock through Eminem’s kitchen window, waking the rapper and alerting sleeping security guards. His motive was apparently only to meet the rapper, who incidentally wrote the song “Stan” about a delusional fan over 20 years ago and coined the term that would come to be associated with overly passionate fans everywhere.

Watch the video for “Stan” above.

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: A drunk Stone Cold Steve Austin and an even drunker Shawn Michaels brought it via satellite to challenge Mr. McMahon to a steel cage match at St. Valentine’s Day Massacre: In Your House. Also: Bluedust appeared and was way too important, Chyna betrayed D-Generation X to join the Corporation, and Val Venis had a Canadian shower with Ken Shamrock’s sister.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes of classic Raw you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. Head back to a time long forgotten when WWE TV was fun to watch, and things happened!

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for February, 1999.

Best: Time To Play The (Big) Game

On January 31, 1999, at Miami’s Pro Player Stadium — the only stadium fit for professional players — John Elway led the Denver Broncos to a 34-19 victory over the Atlanta Falcons and their legendary quarterback, Chris Chandler. The most important thing from the game, however, at least from the perspective of someone reading about it on a wrestling blog over 20 years later, is that 99’s Big Game® saw the debut of the World Wrestling Federation’s Super Bowl commercial. There are two versions, both of which you can watch below.

If you ever wanted to have zero faith in humanity’s ability to watch and understand the basics of pro wrestling, a WWE.com blurb about the commercial from 2013 notes that the commercials created “urban legends” about how folks thought the WWF Headquarters was really like that. You know, with wrestlers walking through the halls in their gear while employees riot and try to kill each other.

The spot lived up to its purpose — capturing the spirit, not only of The Attitude Era, but also of WWE overall. The chaotic scene of The Texas Rattlesnake whacking a shiftless executive with a chair and a blind referee roaming the halls captivated viewers around the world and created urban legends about what takes place inside the Stamford office building.

Of course, the employees crashing through conference room windows were created for dramatic effect, though we’d be remiss if we said we never saw a sleeper hold in the cafeteria. Nevertheless, even though the commercial aired more than a decade ago, WWE staff are still asked, “Do Superstars work there?” or “Are there wrestling matches in the office?”

The funniest part? WWE’s about to have wrestling matches in the office, and no, the Superstars have never technically “worked there.”

Best: t’s Halftime, Lookin’ At My Foley It’s About That Time

They’re about to have matches in the office, the Superstars don’t work there, and they’re having championship matches in empty arenas. Did the World Wrestling Federation enter into a Monkey’s Paw situation with Super Bowl XXXIII?

Thanks to a special edition of Sunday Night Heat where they aren’t afraid to cut away from Big Boss Man vs. Jeff Jarrett to get the timing right, WWF aired a pre-taped, empty arena, championship match between The Rock and Mankind. The match was actually taped on January 26 at the Tucson Convention Center in Tuscon, Arizona, the site of the February 1 Raw you’re about to read about … meaning Tuscon got a full episode of Raw with Mick Foley as the champion three days before he technically won it.

If you’ve never seen the match, it’s roughly 17 minutes of Rock and Mankind wandering around the building doing stage combat improv. Highlights include Mr. Socko rising up from a sea of chairs in the background while Rock tries to give a mid-match interview, Rock answering telephone calls while beating up Mick in somebody’s office, and, best of all, that moment where Rock throws salsa in Mick’s eyes, tastes it, and angrily declares, “It’s MILD!!” There is nothing worse than taking bite of salsa and finding out it’s mild, Rock, I’m with you. Mild salsa is like non-alcoholic beer. You may be familiar with the finish, in which Mankind pins Rock with a forklift which has, for some reason, been fitted with a WWF camera pointing straight down. Also The Rock’s face is a camera.

And there you have it, folks, the birth of one of WWE’s strangest idiosyncrasies: the idea that when you’re in the ring there are a fixed number of cameras, but when you’re in the back (or especially in the parking lot) there are like a billion nanomachines filming you from every imaginable angle. It’s why the truss falling on Roman Reigns randomly had a camera behind it, and how John Cena’s unconscious body became a camera when JBL tried to hit him with a car. So dumb.

Anyway, Halftime Heat is an absolutely terrible match that I fully recommend watching, as it’s two of the most charismatic stars of all time having fun and throwing food at each other. A truly unique, quarter-hour time capsule that at the very least served as a break from Chris Chandler interceptions and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s Celebration of Soul, Salsa and Swing.

Best/Worst: (Royal Rumble) Victor In Victoria

Our main story this week concerns Mr. McMahon, who has decided to go on a field trip with The Stooges to southeast Texas to try to find Stone Cold Steve Austin and goad him into throwing hands, thereby nullifying the steel cage match at St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Vince has a great backup plan — a 7-foot tall man hiding under the ring to pop up at the end and throw Austin at the cage wall, which will probably not backfire — but first he’s going to try to bail on the entire thing thanks to a technicality.

McMahon spends the entire episode touring Victoria, with the major beats being:

• Patterson and Brisco dressing up like cartoon cowboys and getting hit in the nuts while trying to flirt with locals at a bar
• going to a barbecue restaurant because they heard it was where Austin has his “night time snack” (what is he, a toddler?), which ends with Vince hating common people food and Brisco, looking 100% like Tommy Lee Jones from No Country For Old Men, getting beans poured on his head for being a Karen about it
• going behind the counter at a GUN STORE in TEXAS, accosting a man they mistakenly identified as Austin, and almost getting shot to death
• finding Austin at a bar and trying to provoke him, only for Austin to calmly walk out and leave his friends in low places to handle McMahon and the Stooges themselves

This is a completely original idea from Vince Russo, which means it’s just a dumbed down version of a thing he watched a long time ago and assumed nobody else had seen. This one’s a gritty reboot of that time James J. Dillon went to Dusty Rhodes and Blackjack Mulligan’s ranch and got r-u-n-n-o-f-t with shotguns. McMahon is funny, but I’m not sure he’s “J.J. Dillon deadpan complaining about being chased by armadillos” funny.

Best: The Last Dance

At the Royal Rumble, Vince McMahon promised 100K to anyone who could eliminate Stone Cold Steve Austin. The Rock did that with a distraction, kinda sorta, so McMahon decided to give him the cash … only Mankind was there to attack the security guards, steal the money, and threaten to throw it out into the crowd unless Rock righted the wrongs of the “I Quit” match and gave him another shot at the WWF Championship. That was Halftime Heat. Mankind won, but … well, “changed his mind,” and decided to keep the money. This week, he uses the money to give Kurrgan a nest egg to support his family, buy Debra McMichael a sweater so she doesn’t catch a fatal chest cold, and, for undisclosed reasons, purchase a little person. That’s a maskless Max Mini, by the way, looking way too much like the WWE 2K Battlegrounds version of Justin Long.

Upset that he’s lost enough money to buy “five shirts,” Rock calls McMahon in Victoria and demands satisfaction. When McMahon can’t do anything about it, which makes sense as he couldn’t even get through a bowl of beans without them ending up on an old man’s head, Rock decides to take matters into his own hands. He challenges Mankind to a WWF Championship rematch at St. Valentine’s Day Massacre under Last Man Standing rules. This is a first in WWE, not to be confused with the “Armageddon Rules” match between The Undertaker and The Executioner that required decisions before the 10-counts. Mankind, who just got screwed in a pay-per-view match against The Rock with broadly similar rules, accepts the challenge. Sorry about your brains, Mick.

Worst: Successful Debra McMichael Line Reads

Mark Henry swipes right on Debra McMichael, who now owns a sweater she’s never going to wear because it doesn’t make her look enough like Lisa Ann in porn parody of The Office. Debra, being Debra, responds with, “Can you make me HOT … CHOKlit??” And then she looks at the camera and raises her eyebrows and nods a couple of times, for emphasis. You know, sometimes they pull back the veil and you can really see what Debra and Mongo had in common. Mark gets attacked from behind by Jeff Jarrett and Owen Hart, because the WWF can’t seem to decide whether or not we’re supposed to cheer Mark for his rampant and aggressive sexual perversion, or be ashamed of him. Maybe it’s both?

Worst: Not The Mama

Over the past month or so, D’Lo Brown has been subservient to Terri Runnels and her girl gang because he thought he accidentally caused her to miscarry Val Venis’ love child. This week, Runnels convinces D’Lo that if he really feels bad about being nearby while she tucked and rolled off the ring steps, he’ll get his ass kicked by the Big Boss Man. Nailz was right about that guy, that’s all I’m saying.

Afterword, Henry and Brown have a conversation about the miscarriage in front of a WWF doctor, who is straight-up Dr. Nick Riviera from The Simpsons. The doctor reveals a shocking truth: he examined Terri, and Terri has NEVER BEEN PREGNANT. Not “she wasn’t pregnant when she fell,” she has never been pregnant. He says it a couple of times to make sure it’s clear. I uh, guess we’re going to have to have a difficult conversation about Dakota?

Dust To Dust

Speaking (indirectly) of Goldust, he shows up to kick The Blue Meanie’s ass for being “Bluedust” in the middle of Meanie’s audition to be the “Raw Boy.” Not sure why they needed to bag on the Nitro Girls almost two years after they debuted, but whatever. Lots of violence against commercial break dance troupes on this week’s shows. Goldust kicks Meanie in the balls while the fans cheer, and not a single person on the Earth knows which one of these dudes is supposed to be the good guy. I think “what if the weird guys hated each other” was as far as the writing team got.

Best/Worst: Hangrel

Early in the episode, The Brood is supposed to have a six-man tag team match against the Ministry of Darkness, represented by Mideon, Viscera, and The Undertaker. Only, the Undertaker doesn’t stand on the ring apron, he sits on the stage in his big Undertaker throne like he’s Shao Kahn in Mortal Kombat.

The match ends quickly with a run-in from the Acolytes, and the full strength of the Ministry goes HAM on the vampires. Undertaker finally comes to the ring to order the hanging of Gangrel, which results in an absolutely gag-worthy close-up of Gangrel being strangled with blood and snot coming out of his face. Do not click on this! The line in the sand has been drawn: there’s only room for ONE monster-themed group of magical heels in the World Wrestling Federation.

Later in the night, the Acolytes have a hardcore tag team match — you guys starting a new division, or what? — against frenemies the Road Dogg and Al Snow. They beat the absolute dog shit out of them, because one team is giant football players empowered by the devil and the other is a horny stoner in sweatpants and a sub-Marty Jannetty Rocker who carries around a mannequin head. After the match, the Ministry plus three druids attack the Road Dogg. Quick, can you guess who those three druids turn out to be? There are so many options!

You guessed it! Edge, Christian, and Gangrel are revealed as The Lower Power. It was them, Austin. It was them all along! This unholy union merges the spoopy monster factions, gives some directionless young stars a rub, and gives The Undertaker some low-level underlings that can actually work and aren’t goddamn Phineas Godwinn and King Mabel. Plus, the shot of Undertaker welcoming Edge into the Ministry is a great first step toward the main event of WrestleMania 24. The Brood and Ministry union wouldn’t give us much, but it does increase the amount of bloodbaths on WWF TV, and sets up the dramatic WrestleMania hanging of a prison guard.

Worst: Billy Gunn Auditions For Val Venis’ Latest Film

Let me lay this out as clearly as I can:

• Ken Shamrock gets super pissed and violent about everything
• Val Venis wants to fuck everything that moves
• Bill Ass loves asses
• Val Venis flirted with Ken Shamrock’s sister, which caused Ken to get super pissed
• Bill Ass wanted a match with Shamrock, so he jogged out and pulled down his pants in front of the sister. Shamrock got violent about it.
• Val Venis then made a porno with the sister. Shamrock got super pissed and violent about it and attacks him with a chair.
• Billy made the save, but Val thought BILLY was the one who attacked him for some reason, and attacked Billy

This week, Shamrock sits in on commentary for a Val vs. Billy match and SCREAMS VERY MUCH in the style of STIMPY about how he’s REALLY MAD about what’s been going on with his sister. This exchange happens:

Lawler: “Wait a minute, wait a minute, you’re saying you never watched an adult movie?”
Shamrock: “Absolutely not! That stuff … that stuff is trash!”
Lawler: “Michael Cole has a huge collection of it.”
Cole: “Cover now, and a kickout … King, please.”

Ultimately this all leads to … [checks notes] Shamrock attacking Val Venis with a chair, Billy Gunn making the save, and Val seeing Billy with the chair and attacking him because I guess he doesn’t watch the show and thinks Billy’s the one that jumped him. Again. Pretty sure Russo just copy-pasted that in from last week’s script and meant to change it, forgot, and only remembered when he heard Val’s music.

Mostly Best: Caged (X-Pac) Heat

With Mr. McMahon in Victoria, Shane McMahon is left in charge of Raw. Shane McMahon as an authority figure is always a good idea, am I right, people who lived through 2016-2019 Smackdown? Anyway, Shane sics the Corporation on D-X at the top of the show so he can lower a steel cage — called “ominous” by Michael Cole at least five times — and make an emphatic point about how nobody can touch him. Only, you know, X-Pac has been hiding on the top of the cage this entire time, apparently, and rides it down to the ring (pictured). He kicks the shit out of Shane for a few glorious moments until Chyna, dressed in modern championship pay-per-view whites, gets into the cage and uppercuts Pac in the thing. Shane wears mom jeans and hugs a lady for winning a fight for him in a beautiful encapsulation of the kind of dude you want to see get the piss beaten out of him the most.

The main even to the night is Triple H vs. Kane in a steel cage match, which, you guessed it, also includes interference from Chyna. WWF cage match rules always involve you having to win by escaping the cage, which is antithetical to how fights work, but whatever. It’s a forever-year-old problem. At the end of the match, H and Kane are climing up across the ring from one another and Pac shows back up to climb up the outside and try to kick Kane back in. This brings out Chyna to attempt to do the same to Triple H, but H kicks off the “big bitch” — his words, not mine — and escapes to the floor to win.

Three notes:

• this surprisingly good match sets up a surprisingly GREAT Kane and Chyna vs. Triple H and X-Pac match at St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
• Kane sets off the post fire during the match, which briefly triggers the lights and turns the arena red. After a few moments, it fades back into normal light. Am I the only one who wishes that was a regular Kane move, and that it gave him a burst of invincibility? At least red light having supernatural power for those who learn to command it would explain why nobody could hurt early Kane or The Fiend until the lighting changed
• I think somebody put the cage walls on backwards, because Kane’s arm is FUCKED UP by the end

Also On This Episode

Droz continues running the Oddities gauntlet by defeating Kurrgan with a broomstick (?) to the throat. He continues beating down Kurrgan after the match for what feels like forever until the Oddities return to make the save. Between this and last week’s George Steele beating, you’d think the dumbass Oddities would stay near the ring, or at least pay attention? The Insane Clown Posse thinks magnets are miracles and were the smartest dudes in the Oddities by MILES.

Next Week:

Al Snow faces Al Snow in a hardcore match (not a typo), Val Venis continues to make great life decisions by hooking up with Ken Shamrock’s sister in front of everybody, and Stone Cold Steve Austin attempts to run the Corporate Gauntlet. Plus, the Steve Blackman vs. The Rock dream match you never knew you needed! See you then!