WWF Wrestlefest 1997 (Revenge of the Taker) [VHS]

Once again, another internet source had me check out one of the original In Your House events. Now for those that don't remember, these events were only 2 hours long & for the most part focused on the in-ring action than anything else. During this time, The Undertaker had recently won the WWF Championship at WrestleMania 13 but was back to feuding his arch rival Mankind due to a plot by Paul Bearer to burn the face of the Undertaker. Along with that, Bret Hart, a few weeks ago, reunited the Hart Foundation & lead an anti-American crusade with their mission being focused on taking out Stone Cold Steve Austin once & for all.WWF Tag Team Champions Owen Hart & British Bulldog vs The Legion Of Doom. This match started off with a bang as Hawk & Animal tried to end this match as quick as possible to avoid any outside interference from Bret Hart before Owen & Bulldog were able to slow the pace back down & take control of the action. However the match takes a unique turn when a miscalculation by the champs lead to what seemed to be a new title change until another referee had the match restarted due to the illegal man being pinned. From there, they went back & forth before Bret Hart came out to cause a cheap disqualification finish.Intercontinental Champion Rocky Maivia vs Savio Vega. For this match, Faarooq was doing commentary along with the rest of the Nation being surrounded around the ring. This was a good average match between these two talented athletes with Rocky showing another side that most fans may not know of. The bigger story around this match was that you can see the tease of a split among the Nation as Savio & Crush had words including at the end in which Savio won the battle but didn't win the war or the title before Faarooq had to calm everyone down.Jesse James vs Billy Gunn. Before they would go on to become one of the most entertaining tag teams of the WWF Attitude era, Jesse James was doing the "Double J" gimmick while Billy was doing the "Rocka-Billy" gimmick with the Honky Tonk Man. Neither guy are that great in the ring & I thought this was the worst match of the night as I found it to be dull.Around this time, WWF President Gorilla Monsoon made the announcement that due to Austin's injury, the Bret/Austin match would be moved to the main event slot in order for Austin to get some time to recover.WWF Champion The Undertaker vs Mankind. The classic Taker/Mankind feud continues here in what was their first ever Championship encounter that wasn't announced as a No Disqualification match but certainly seemed that way. They just went at it at the opening bell & kept up the aggression throughout with Taker sending Mankind head first to the guard-railing, not once but twice. It would get hardcore at times with steel steps, the urn, a chair & water pitcher being used with the highlight being Taker hitting Mankind with the steel steps that sent him flying through the wooden announce table headfirst. Taker wins & gets his revenge on Paul Bearer by throwing a fireball in his face.Stone Cold Steve Austin vs Bret Hart. Before the match got underway, the officials of the WWF made sure that we weren't going to get a repeat of the opening contest by sending Owen & Bulldog back to the locker room to make sure that this was a one on one contest. Based on how this feud was picking up as time went on, Bret & Austin started this match into a brawl that even lead to a hilarious moment of Austin actually taunting Bret with his own taunt. However, the match quickly turned around once the referee went down that allowed Bret to use a chair to attack the injured knee of Austin including doing something nobody had done which was take the knee brace off of Austin. Karma would play a factor later on as Austin began to target Bret's knee & even applied the sharpshooter on Bret before Owen & Bulldog returned the favor back to Bret.Overall, the highlights of this event was the opener & the main events but the best match on this event can be found on Taker's "Tombstone" DVD while the other two matches weren't the best encounters that each side has had so I would only recommend finding this online or at cheap price.

Revenge Of The Taker: In Your HouseApril 20, 1997Rochester War MemorialRochester, New YorkWWF Tag team Championship:Owen Hart & British Bulldog (Champions) V. Legion Of Doomok match with a few good spots. LOD wins the titles. Oh wait, they pinned the illegal man. The match is restarted and LOD wins the match again, only this time by DQ after Bret Hart's run in. ** First, now-a-days, if you pin the illegal man, the ref doesn't care. Second, another ref had to come down to tell the first ref that they pinned the illegal man. I think that is the first time I have ever seen that happen.WWF Intercontinental championship:Rocky Maivia (Champion) V. Savio VegaHorrible Intercontinental Championship match. no good action and the moves were stupid. Savio Vega wins by Countout. 1/4* why would you book a champiionship match to end in a countout? Two matches and two cheap endings. Horrible and this is in my hometown. Vince, you're killing me!Double J Jesse James V. RockabillyProbably the worst match I have ever seen. It had one good roll up at the end and that's it. Jesse James wins. DUDWWF Championship:Undertaker (Champion) V. MankindAwesome match. This match is one of my favorites. Great bumps by Foley (as always) and taker wasn't half bad in this match. Undie wins. ***3/4 This was the match were Foley took a head first bump thought the Spanish announce table. I mean, when he landed, his upper body was under the table and his lower body was above it!!!"Stone Cold" Steve Austin V. Bret HartGood match. This match wasn't like their classic matches at Survivor Series or WrestleMania but it was still pretty solid with Austin winning by DQ after the Hart Foundation run in. ***3/4overall not a good show. Two of the Five matches were good and three of the five ended in either disqualifications or countouts. not a good ratio.

I recently purchased this show and I though it was pretty good.It has been called the worst WWE PPV ever but I beg to differ.The 1st hour was admiditely all junk:Bulldog and Owen vs LOD had a sucky ending,Rocky-Savio was bad but pretty funny looking back years ater,and Jesse Jammess-Rockbilly is horrible but falls under the Savio-Rocky match of funny to look back on.The 2nd hour,however,rules.Mankind and Undertaker fight for Taker's WWE Title and the Main Event sees Steve Austin taking on Bret Hart in a rematch from Wrestlemania.Also you get Sultan-Flash Funk from the Free-For-All.

Hello alll, well this is how it goes, i originally bout WWF Winter Combat '96 but instead they gave me the case but the wrong video, they gave me this one, i was very mad but my review is this one is great! PPV after Wrestlemania 13 and seeing Austin vs Hart in a rematch was good along with the WWF Championship match between The Undertaker and Mankind was spectacular! Also along with Rocky Maivia, Road Dogg, Rockabilly (Billy Gunn), Owen hart and british bulldog (R.I.P) this is a MUST buy!