Garth Reviews Shotgun

Last week on Shotgun Saturday Night, the WWF invaded the All-Star Cafe in New York City! The Sisters of Love were arrested and booked for solicitation, but good news, the Headbangers were available and worked Doug Furnas and Phil LaFon in their place (and the match was in progress as we went off the air). Marc Mero did the job for “Diesel”, lost his cool with Sable, and got into it with Rocky Maivia, who later in the show went over “Razor Ramon.” Faarooq got the clean win over Savio Vega, Sunny unleashed her premium content on us with Fondle Me Elmo (DON’T ASK), and Nikolai Volkoff was found living inside a cardboard box.

Last week on the debut episode of Shotgun Saturday Night… The Flying Nuns defeated The Godwinns with help from Brother Love and renamed themselves “The Sisters of Love”. It would also mark their last in-ring appearance as the one-note joke was beaten into the ground within 30-seconds… Goldust defeated The Sultan when Marlena removed her top, distracting him with her boobies and causing Bob Backlund to freak out… Ahmed Johnson gave the yet-to-be-named D’Lo Brown a Pearl River Plunge on the roof of a car after a cheap DQ victory over Crush… Mascarita Sagrada defeated Mini Vader and gave us some classic Jim Cornette shenanigans… Sunny promised us a “home sex video” because she wanted to one-up Marlena for her stunt with the Sultan…

Welcome to one of the many examples of Vince McMahon’s new toy syndrome. I’ve written this introduction several times, and I still don’t know if there was a clear direction for what Shotgun Saturday Night was supposed to be. Before it became “just another show” that is. The idea to film in exotic locations like nightclubs seemed to be an attempt to attract the more mature audience, but at the same time, there wasn’t going to be blood or crowd brawling (or any other of the extreme nature of professional wrestling made famous by ECW). While keeping a “cleaner” image, it was still designed to be an attraction more than a wrestling show, with comedy and unpredictability being the focal point, and a late-night time slot seemed to be the perfect opportunity to push the envelope. As we’ll see from the first six weeks, there is definitely an effort in moving away from being a PG product, but if you’re going into this with no prior knowledge, I just want you to keep your expectations at a minimum.