#155 – WWF In Your House 16: Canadian Stampede, USA vs Canada, July 6, 1997
Dre and the Black Cat go back to the beginning of the Attitude Era to discuss one of the craziest WWF matches ever – a ten man tag team match between the Hart Foundation and the team led by Steve Austin – wrestled in the home of the Harts – Calgary, Alberta, Canada! We also talk to Robert from the Atomic Elbow and go in-depth on the inner workings of apartment wrestling…… o_O. Please support the show and pick up our new SEASON 4 BOX SET including two unreleased episodes of reviews for the 1987 Jim Crockett Sr. Memorial Cup Tag Team tournament and the documentary “Heroes of World Class Wrestling” available on DVD or for direct download. Please support the Old School Wrestling Podcast by visiting oldschoolwrestlingpodcast.com where you can find links to all of our great products. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you…..at the matches!
Podcast: Download (Duration: 2:04:10 — 98.3MB)
Amazing pick! The US/Canada feud was possibly my favorite WWF storyline, since it carried over so well week to week on RAW. It was amazing to see the WWF bounce back and forth from US to Canada and get polar opposite crowds for the lead babyfaces and heels. I remember watching this on PPV and the crowd totally making this match! I don’t think this feud and Bret’s heel work gets enough credit for WWF’s turnaround.
At the time I was a big Austin fan, but was also huge for the Harts. I even had a WWF Canadian Hart Foundation t-shirt they were selling at the time it was sick!
However, best part of the show was definitely the discussion on Shamrock’s nighty/robe wtf. Only explanation is Ken purposely wore a woman’s robe to try to instigate people to tease him so he could have a reason to knuckle up legit. Wish they had a better idea for him following this PPV than the dog food match vs. Bulldog.
Hey guys, glad you picked this show. I was there live and the main event was the most fun I’ve ever had at a wrestling event with the loudest crowd. Just a bit of background, the show took place during the Calgary Stampede which goes on for 10 days in July. This was on the first Sunday of Stampede. Now what a lot of people don’t understand about Stampede is that in addition to the rodeo, chuckwagon races and typical state fair games, food and rides the Stampede is a 10 day long drunk-fest. Lots of bars around town set up big outdoor tents to accommodate big crowds and most companies have a Stampede lunch at a bar – this involves leaving work around 11:30, having a steak sandwich, then drinking your face off for the rest of the day (and sometimes into the night or whenever the bar tab is cleared off) and stumbling into the office the next day around 10 or so hung over to the gills.
Back to the show, I recall that we had been to a big outdoor beer garden the night before and once we got going around 2 or so in the afternoon went over to friends place for a few beers, hit the grounds had a couple at the beer tent on the grounds and then a few more at the event. I recall that the beer lines were long and the lines to the men’s room were even longer. I think that this helped to remove some of the traditional Canadian reserve and made for a rowdy, but fun crowd. Lastly, back when Stampede Wrestling was running it was tradition for their biggest show of the year to be held on Stampede week where they would bring in Andre or the world champ to meet the top face and this seemed like a throwback to that tradition.
Pillman was not only trained by Stu, but he had also played briefly for the Calgary Stampeders of the CFL and was a tag team partner to Bruce Hart (I think Bruce was wearing his Bad Company gear – a bad look in the late 80s and even worse in the late 90s). I think Owen was more over as the crowd remembered more of his Stampede days in the late 80s (Bret, Jim and Bulldog had finished up with Stampede by 1984). Plus he was always cast as the undersized baby face with his biggest feud against Makhan Singh (Mike Shaw aka Norman the Lunatic)and even when he was starting out had more babyface fire in the ring and on the mic than Bret had.
It was a great night and I always think of it as the final Stampede Wrestling event (kind of like how I think of the first ECW One Night Stand).
Was this match pretty much the swan song for the Road Warriors in terms of big matches/angles? I think after this, they won the tag belts from the Godwinns and then did the J.O.B. to the New Age Outlaws. Then it was the LOD 2000 era and well…yeah.
Curt Henning, Earl Heffner and Bill Apner can all go grab a hot cup of coffee at Tim Horners (Hortons) in Calgary, ALBERTA, CANADA!
Great show as always guys. I loved this feud, it was fun to relive it!
Going in to the topic of world of apartment wrestling I was already to have the mind set of making fun it for the how crazy it sounds. Then I got to thinking, remember a little movie called “Django Unchained” where two slaves are beating the crap over each other for a bottle of booze in one of Leonardo DiCaprio rooms at the plantation. I wonder did Quentin Tarantino read the same magazine article back in the 80’s. Instead of two bucksome beauties fighting out on Donald Trump floor he simple re-wrote it putting two slaves from 1860 plantation. I back this up this theory because most writers take something they saw or read once then later putting in to their work. For example every Quentin Tarantino or John Carpenter movie/story.
Great podcast this week! As a resident of southern Alberta, I have to tell this Bruce Hart story:
Mid-2000s, I’m attending the University of Calgary. I had no classes on Wednesdays, so I’d regularly go to the YMCA a couple blocks from my place to shoot hoops. They had this huge gymnasium, and sometimes they’d cordon off half of it so that an elementary school could come in and have their gym class in there. One such day, I see a group of young kids being led into the gym by this gnarly looking old woman. She had longish blonde hair, tattered jeans, and cowboy boots. I’d never seen a chick like this before in my life until, upon closer inspection…. holy shit that’s Bruce Hart!
Obviously, the Harts are well-known in Calgary. And it’s fairly common knowledge that some of the brothers were either full-time teachers or substituted from time to time. I know a cousin of mine had Keith Hart for History in Grade Ten or something like that. But I didn’t know Bruce taught at all. So the kids are playing dodgeball, he’s standing there completely oblivious to his surroundings, and I decide to approach him.
I had no plan in mind, I just went up and said, “Are you Bruce Hart?” He gave a bit of a sheepish grin and said yes. The conversation was a bit of a blur because I regretted it the moment it began. I mean what do you say to Bruce Hart other than hello? I do remember asking him if he still watched wrestling and followed RAW at all… and his response, while repulsive, still makes me chuckle to this day. “Yeah, they’re all faggots now. Vince uhhh, he’s just a faggot.” I was like, “Yeah, yeah… well it was cool to meet you.” And I picked up my basketball and got the hell out of there.
I threw a nervous glance at my office door about once every three seconds throughout the entirety of apartment wrestling. My fault for forgetting headphones.
Great episode! I was really excited to check this one out once I saw the title. I remember feeling like IYH: Canadian Stampede was something of a turning point when it first aired. As has noted previously, the WWF was sort of in the midst of a really interesting transitional period from late ’96 – mid ’97, with an awful lot of shit being thrown at the wall, and this felt like one of the first shows where, for one night at least, every sort of clicked and they really seemed to gain some traction. Were there better moments elsewhere in the year? Sure. But a better overall event? Maybe not. Aside from the stellar main event, the Foley/Helmsley feud was shockingly brutal (for it’s time and place, anyway), the Sasuke/Michinoku match was a welcome surprise and gave me hope that a WWF Light Heavyweight Division might succeed (…sigh) and the Taker/Vader match was a perfectly serviceable last minute audible when Ahmed Johnson went down with yet another injury. And, y’know, none of it was hurt whatsoever by a wonderfully vocal crowd. It was one of my favorite WWF PPVs of the day and one of the first shows that I revisited after the Network launched.
Hoping for a Roddy Piper tribute show like the fantastic Dusty one you did.Loved when he destroyed Cyndi Lauper and her manager.The Hulkster promo saying Dick Clark would never be the same is still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.