That Time Vince McMahon ACTUALLY Stopped Booking WWE

In the opener, the Undertaker, Diesel and Shawn Michaels were defeated by the Camp Cornette trio of Owen Hart, the British Bulldog and Yokozuna. Watching it back will, incidentally, make New Gen geeks mourn a nonexistent high-profile Michaels Vs. Yoko pay-per-view singles match. In the post-match, Mabel and Dean Douglas joined a brutal attack - Michaels took a particularly gruesome bump on the stairs - divorced from the WWF's in-house style. Seeing the '95 iteration of the Undertaker selling such a big heat angle to unconsciousness is particularly striking, watched back through a 2020 lens.

Watts envisaged this as the main event, consistent with Vince's own edict to counter WCW with a more modest budget and taped schedule. Each show, explained Vince at the talent meeting, would end in the style of 'Melrose Place'; a tantalising morsel footage of next week's show would air in a bid to hook the audience. To Watts, this was not the opener.

This was the episodic cliffhanger, the moving parts of which created scope for several match-ups further down the road, the dramatic tension of which was designed to create anxiety within the audience. Vince overruled him; the match and angle started the show, and later in the broadcast, Dok Hendrix provided a medical update that, equipped with this knowledge, is quite amusing.

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