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Pro Wrestling

RDT Reviews WWE No Way Out 2004

2004NoWayOut

No Way Out 2004
February 15, 2004
Daly City, CA
Reviewed April 17, 2014

Background: Eddie fuckin’ Guerrero.

I could end right there. This PPV is 90% about the rise of Eddie Guerrero. For the last year Eddie Guerrero was the most popular wrestler in WWE period. He’s a perfect example of a guy getting the World Title purely on how the crowd reacted to him. No one deserved it more at the time other than perhaps Benoit, who’d get it himself a month later.

WWE had been in their Brand Extension format for nearly two years now. It seemed that Smackdown was the “wrestling” show where RAW was WCW-lite (HHH wrestled Booker T, Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner and Goldberg in PPV main events in 2003…nevermind that Evolution is a Four Horsemen ripoff anyway). And Eddie Guerrero was the perfect guy to represent the wrestling part of the company.

The other major thing to note is we do see a bit of the continued rise of John Cena here. Obviously, that would be important later.

The Card

Sable and Torrie kick off the PPV. They were not feuding here. They welcome us to the PPV. Nice waste of time.

WWE Tag Team Championship-Handicap Match
Rikishi and Scotty 2 Hotty© vs. The Bashams and Shaniqua

I usually hate this idea.

Rikishi gets a good reaction. To be honest…we are way past Rikishi being a guy that matters and in fact he’d be released a few months later.

I swear Scotty would have been way more successful is he didn’t have the WORM. He gets attacked during it or after it every time.

Nice slam from Shaniqua to Scotty.

Rikishi and Scotty 2 Hotty retain when Rikishi pinned Shaniqua in 8:16. Banzaii Drop for the win. This was the end of the Linda Miles era I believe. Match was pretty boring, and perhaps the most formulaic tag team match I’d ever seen on PPV. I mean whoever put it together didn’t even try.

Half Blindfold Match
Jamie Noble (Blindfolded) vs. Nidia

Ugh.

Story here: Noble and Nidia’s relationship went to hell. Tajiri blinded Nidia with the Mist and she was blinded for weeks. Noble treated her like crap. Nidia got revenge by putting a $5k mink coat in a woodchipper. And she got this match.

Noble takes off the hood early on and the ref says he would DQ him.

Match goes as you’d expect it. Nidia with a lot of funny hit and runs.

Nidia pants Noble.

Jamie Noble beats Nidia by submission in 4:23. Noble cheats and peaks under the hood and tosses Nidia off the top rope. Then he locks in a Dragon Sleeper which seems a bit excessive for the win. Obviously this was absolute crap. Tajiri, Sakota and Akio vs. Paul London, Billy Kidman and Ultimo Dragon was bumped to the pre-show for this crap.

Kurt Angle interview. John Cena interrupts. They had feuded and teamed in 2003. Cena slaps him and they go at it.

The World’s Greatest Tag Team vs. The APA

Someone want to explain why this isn’t for the Tag Team Titles but the earlier BS was? Even worse since these four teams would be against one another at Mania anyway.

Story: Bradshaw’s arm was injured on Smackdown. He comes out with a soft cast.

ONE OF THESE MEN WOULD BE WWE CHAMP IN FIVE MONTHS!

Benjamin works the arm. Go psychology!

Bradshaw basically ignores his injury after the hot tag.

The World’s Greatest Tag Team win when Benjamin pinned Bradshaw in 7:19. Clothesline from Hell…but he hurt his arm doing it and Benjamin got a superkick for the win. Not good. APA didn’t seem to really try. I guess it was matches like this that people pointed to when JBL won the title.

Goldberg is here. He has a front row ticket! Him and Lesnar had been feuding. Lesnar cost Goldberg the Royal Rumble match.

Paul Heyman is out here. He’s pissed about Goldberg.

Brock’s out here now too. Heyman wants to get Goldberg arrested.

Goldberg gets in there and gets a Jackhammer! Time for him to get arrested. I like how his theme plays when he gets arrested.

Hardcore Holly vs. Rhyno

Story: None, this match was made on Smackdown. Actually, half this card was.

Funny note about Hardcore Holly. Holly came back with that mini-feud with Lesnar. And once Lesnar beat him at the Rumble…that was it. Like they didn’t even think past that match for anything Hardcore could do. I don’t even think he’s on the Mania card.

Holly does come out when Lesnar is still in the ring, so there’s that I guess. Not that it went anywhere since Lesnar was leaving next month.

Cole tells us the match was made Sunday Night on Heat, so I gave WWE too much credit with the Smackdown origin then. (Cole says they wrestled on Smackdown though, so whatever).

I like Hardcore Holly and Rhyno…but no one cared about either of them at this point.

They are trying to do the whole smashmouth hard hitting match…but it just isn’t working here.

Rhyno with a great spinebuster there.

GORE…but Holly rolls out of the ring to avoid being pinned.

Hardcore Holly pins Rhyno in 9:54. Bad looking Alabama Slam for the win. Bad match. Very boring. No one cared. Bad first hour of wrestling here.

Rey-Chavo promo.

UNDERTAKER PROMO! Crowd popped huge for that. He’s coming in 28 days!

WWE Cruiserweight Championship
Rey Mysterio© vs. Chavo Guerrero

I feel like I just reviewed this match (I did, GAB 04).

Story focuses on Chavo’s heel turn and alliance with Chavo Classic.

Rey has famous boxer Jorge Paez with him. No idea why.

Chavo Classic breaks up a West Coast Pop, and gets knocked out by Paez. Paez gets thrown out. Big pop for the KO though.

Awesome Moonsault near the end from Rey.

Nice West Coast Pop reversal into the half crab.

Chavo Guerrero wins the title in 17:21 by pin. Chavo Classic comes back and knocks Rey off the top, and Chavo rolls Rey up and holds the tights for the win. I didn’t write a lot, but it was the standard Chavo’s mat game vs. Rey’s air game. A good match that this PPV dearly needed.

Not Chavo’s best post-match promo.

#1 Contender to the World Title
John Cena vs. Big Show vs. Kurt Angle

A lot of stories intertwined here to get to this point. Show and Angle had feuded in the past. Angle and Cena as well. They were all in the same match at Survivor Series where Cena pinned Show to win.

A lot of 1 on 1 stuff early on.

Angle actually tries to German Suplex Big Show off the apron. That would have been something.

Pretty sure Cena has FUed Big Show in every match he ever had with him.

Kurt Angle wins when he makes John Cena submit in 12:18. Angle dumps Show over the top rope…and he makes Cena submit to the Ankle Lock. Second half of the match was fun and the first half really wasn’t bad either. Surprised this wasn’t longer. Fans wanted Cena here to be honest. But, while Cena is hurt…Eddie chants start, so you know what the fans want.

WWE World Championship
Brock Lesnar© vs. Eddie Guerrero

Story: Eddie won a Smackdown Rumble to get a shot at the title. Then, the classic underdog story.

Lesnar owns early with power moves. Good start to this story.

Lesnar just drops Eddie on his head. Sure that might have been a botch…but it looked damn sick.

All Brock early.

Man Lesnar does the Shell Shock a lot better than Ryback.

Eddie gets some offense…but Brock takes him right back down. Love how this match is structured.

Eddie works on the knee…before he’s stun gunned into the top rope. Really making it look like Brock is far superior than Eddie…which works VERY well here.

STF from Eddie. Huge pop! People might have bought this as a finish as the STF wasn’t widely used yet.

Lasso From El Paso! Then back to the STF…which again gets a nice pop.

What a spinebuster! Ouch.

Great psychology with Lesnar selling the knee everywhere, even when he’s doing a vertical suplex.

Lesnar yells at Eddie to “JUST DIE”. Just a great match in every way here.

“GIVE UP LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO!” Lesnar is awesome.

Three Amigos to Lesnar!

Frog Splash…misses! I think everyone thought that was hitting.

F5…but Guerrero accidentally takes out the ref with his feet! Brock has Eddie beat, which was a great way to keep him strong (even though it wasn’t needed).

GOLDBERG. SPEAR TO LESNAR!

Amazing false finish as Lesnar kicks out!

Time for Eddie to cheat!

A great swerve as Lesnar actually ducks the belt shot and goes for a F5…the crowd loudly groans…but Eddie turns it into a Tornado DDT on the belt!

Eddie Guerrero wins the WWE Title by pin in 30:07. Guerrero hits the Frog Splash for the win and MONSTER pop. Great celebration follows. Incredible match, arguable Match of the Year for 2004. Great story, great psychology, great moments, great false finishes, just wow all around. And it furthered the Lesnar-Goldberg feud (also great idea that the Goldberg spear wasn’t what beat Lesnar, Eddie beat Lesnar). Shame that Lesnar left at Mania, as Eddie vs. Lesnar could have been awesome to go through the summer with.

I mean, this was basically advertised as a one match show, but wow did that match deliver. A lot can be forgiven when the main event is incredible.

The first hour and fifteen minutes of this PPV sucked. Four bad (or awful) matches. Rey vs. Chavo helped, and the three way was good. Main event was of course, awesome.

Something that hurts the PPV a little bit is that there’s no historical value here. Unfortunately, while it was great to see Eddie as champ, it didn’t last and it didn’t lead to an era of change for WWE. Cena and Batista were the champs 13 months later. Lesnar was gone. Cena had a role, but nothing big for him. Angle was a bit stale at this point. I mean the man who eventually beat Eddie for the title was pinned in a throw away tag match.

Due to the awesome main and awesome moment, I wanted to go B+, but the really crappy beginning and lack of historical influence knock it a little bit. Without the main though, this is a C at best.

Final Grade: B

Pro Wrestling

RDT Reviews WWE Summerslam 2003

SummerSlam_2003_poster

WWE Summerslam ‘03
August 24, 2003
Phoenix, AZ
Reviewed on August 2, 2014

We are in the era of Triple H and his wannabe Ric Flair run. The Brand Extension is off and running, although the talent level still hasn’t quite caught up. In June we just started with Brand-specific PPVs which led to a rather weak Bad Blood 2003 and Vengeance 2003 (although, neither show was really weak, it was just a clear talent dropoff from the combined PPVs from before).

The Smackdown Brand seems strongest wrestling wise, although holding them down a little bit was perhaps the weakest Undertaker year, the back in the main event Big Show and the injury to Edge. It still had Guerrero, Benoit, Angle, Mysterio and Lesnaretc., so not all was lost. RAW was the HHH vs. WCW show, as through 2003 HHH would go over Scott Steiner, Booker T, Kevin Nash, and now, he is matched up with Goldberg.

Goldberg wasn’t working as well as WWE liked, a lot of that was his booking. Goldberg is limited in that he is only really effective as a top guy destroying everyone. Remember that for the review.

Also worth noting that a some of the seeds of the future were planted around this time. Batista was injured (some things don’t change), John Cena was fighting Undertaker and Randy Orton is notably in the main event. In fact, Orton’s PPV debut was in a main event World Title match. You don’t see that often.

2003 was a tough year for WWE. Let’s see how they did with Summerslam!

The Card

I always approve of a Lilian Garcia National Anthem.

This is one of the best PPV intro videos for sure. Sadly, the Network doesn’t have the St. Anger theme.

World Tag Team Championship
La Resistance © vs. The Dudley Boyz

I could name probably three teams off the top of my head would should be in this spot other than La Resistance. But, when you got Pat Patterson connections it doesn’t really matter…(one of those teams would be The World’s Greatest Tag Team).

This feud did have the debut of Rob Conway, if that matters at all.

The Dudleyz were staler than stale at this point.

Nice telegraphed hiptoss by D-Von, although not sure who’s fault it was.

More mistiming between the two when a D-Von tackle is off.

Greiner and Dupree were just too young to be in this spot. Dupree would get better later on at least.

WASSUP! I can’t believe this was still a thing in 2003.

La Resistance retains when Dupree pins D-Von in 7:49. 3D to Dupree, but Bubba and Greiner go at it and the ref doesn’t see a cameraman nail D-Von with a camera. Totally killed the crowd. Camera man was Conway obviously. Match sucked and the fans really wanted the belts on the Dudleyz. And I don’t think it was just because they were the faces.

Coach interviews the Dudleyz and mentions that La Resistance was clever in their tactics. Bubba doesn’t have the strongest interview.

Christian questions Eric Bischoff about the IC Champion not having a match (great question!). Bischoff blames Stone Cold Steve Austin.

The Undertaker vs. A-Train

The A-Train run in 2003 was not a good one. Pretty horrible that this is Taker vs. A-Train and not Taker vs. John Cena.

By the way, who the hell thought this was a good idea? Taker vs. A-Train? DIdn’t Taker beat him AND Big Show in a handicap match at Mania?

A-Train brings out Sable with him. Sable’s 2003 comeback was a little funny considering her role and what she sued WWE for 4 years prior.

This feels like a Smackdown main event. Not sure if this is a compliment or not.

This match isn’t much so far. Basic Undertaker offense and A-Train doesn’t really offer anything unique.

Sleeper from the Undertaker! Woo! I don’t remember seeing a lot of that.

Blocked Snake Eyes looked botched to me. It wasn’t though.

Ref takes an awesome bump on the Taker clothesline.

Undertaker pins A-Train in 9:19. Taker goes for the Tombstone, but it’s countered and Taker gets a chokeslam for the three. Why tease the Tombstone? Sable postmatch saves A-Train from a Last Ride trying to seduce Taker, but Taker grabs her throat forStephanie McMahon to come out and take her out. Woo? Anyway, we are 2 for 2 in bad matches.

Eric Bischoff vs. Shane McMahon

This was a spinoff of the Kane turn after he tombstoned Linda. Bischoff put JR in a position to get burned alive, and this led to him having to face Shane. Shane was back obviously defending his mother as well.

This match seems like it should have many bucketloads of money. Shame that Bischoff’s name value was lowered too much at this point.

The idea that Bischoff raped Linda McMahon is pretty uncomfortable, although to his defense Bischoff isn’t presenting it that way.

Shane kicks Bischoff’s ass all over, leading to…

The Coach HEEL TURN! Coach smacks Shane with a chair twice, and Bischoff declares the match no DQ and Falls Count Anywhere!

Really, the Coach heel turn is so out of nowhere it’s awesome. Lawler and JR was in total shock.

Bischoff cuts JR and Lawler’s mics off. He lets Coach do play by play and he makes fun of JR. It’s not bad!

It does go a little too long. Shane gets a comeback, but Coach hits a low blow.

Here comes Stone Cold!

Coach reminds Austin he can’t touch him unless physically provoked, but Shane shoves him into Austin! Charles Robinson’s reaction is great here. Coach doesn’t last.

Shane makes Bischoff slap Austin, and Austin responds with a Stunner!

Shane McMahon pins Erich Bischoff in 10:33. Shane decides to put Bischoff on the announcer’s desk and drives him through with a top rope elbow drop. Sure why not? Match wasn’t really a match, but I got a laugh out of the whole Coach deal. Still, did the Coach heel turn need to be at the 2nd biggest show of the year?

Ric Flair tells Randy Orton that HHH has to leave the Chamber as World Champion. No what ifs.

United States Championship
Eddie Guerrero© vs. Tajiri vs. Rhyno vs. Chris Benoit

Guerrero had just won the new US Title beating Benoit. He also was part of a team with Tajiri when Chavo went down, but turned on him after Tajiri landed on his low rider. Benoit and Rhyno had also been feuding.

This Eddie heel run didn’t last. He needed to be a face at this point and the fans wouldn’t stop chanting “Eddie” until he was.

At least we should finally get some good wrestling here!

Funny Eddie stuff with him running from everyone, but sneak attacking everyone when he can.

Eddie just non-chalantly suplexes Benoit over the top and out of the ring.

The issue with this match is that it has no flow. It’s some good spots, but then someone breaks up something.

Lasso From El Paso!

Crossface! Nice spot.

Eddie breaks Benoit’s crossface by hitting a LOW dropkick to Benoit. Nice!

Tajiri goes for his handspring again but he runs into Rhyno on the apron, which leads to Benoit hitting a German. That spot woulda been better if Benoit just caught the normal move and Germaned him.

Tajiri with the best German Suplex of the night!

GORE to Eddie…but Eddie had the title belt and Rhyno hit his head!

Tajiri with an awesome save! He went from the Tree of Woe to stopping a pin in a second!

Eddie Guerrero retains when he pinned Rhyno in 10:50. Tajiri and Benoit fight to the outside and allows Guerrero to hit the Frog Splash for the win. What a shame. If this got five more minutes I’m sure the middle sequences would have been better and there woulda been more flow. Instead we get a disjointed four way with an awesome finish. Oh well. Still pretty good.

We see a video of Lesnar getting close to killing Zach Gowen.

Matt Hardy also made sure that Gowen lost by forfeit on Velocity.

WWE Championship
Kurt Angle© vs. Brock Lesnar

Angle won the title he lost to Lesnar at Mania XIX back at Vengeance in a three way. Lesnar turned heel and aligned with Vince as he felt Angle stole his title. Basically, the roles are now reversed from Mania XIX. Lesnar was a lot better as a heel.

Fun fact, the build-up contains the only Lesnar vs. Vince match ever.

This is a pretty action packed match, but I will say it’s not their Mania match so far.

Lesnar actually presses Angle over his head and throws him out of the ring. For someone with a fragile neck as Angle, I’m surprised they did that. Then again, Angle’s nuts, as we all found out later.

Crazy tilt-a-whirl from Lesnar.

Lesnar seems to be doing more power stuff and less technical stuff, probably because he’s a heel now.

Good psychology with Lesnar holding the shoulder as he’s German suplexed (he hit the post before).

Lesnar barely survives an Angle Slam!

Angle took off the straps for the Angle Slam. Hilariously, he puts them back on, just to take them back off for the Angle Lock!

Angle puts Lesnar in a crazy sleeper, but with his legs. Tazz calls it as a Figure Four which is incredible for all the wrong reasons.

Birthday Vince breaks up an Angle Lock when the ref was out.

Kurt Angle retains by submission in 21:17. Angle Lock gets it done. Lesnar tapping is an odd choice. Angle hits an Angle Slam on Vince through a chair, which had to hurt. A very good match, but not as good as Mania XIX. Lesnar tapping seemed pretty counterproductive, but it IS Angle and it didn’t matter in the long run at all.

Jaime Koeppe won the Diva Search. I have no idea who that is.

No Holds Barred
Rob Van Dam vs. Kane

This was the blow off for the Kane taking off his mask angle. I love RVD, but lol at this whole idea. The Kane taking off his mask angle could have made HUGE money.

This feud also already lost steam as Shane McMahon and Kane already began interacting.

The idea that the Kane mask angle had nothing to do with the Undertaker is ridiculous.

Moonsault from the barricade from RVD!

Some ladder action. RVD seesaws it into Kane’s face.

To be honest for a big monster they are having Kane give way too much here. This and Unforgiven 2003 were big reasons this Kane run went nowhere.

JR calls Kane and hideous and smelly monster. That B.O.!

Match really slows to a crawl with Kane’s offense.

It’s edited out, but Kane actually falls off the top rope going for a flying clothesline to the outside. He misses anyway.

RVD begins killing Kane. Rolling Thunder on a chair and a skateboard!

RVD actually goes for the Van Terminator, but Kane moved out of the way…JR calls it as it hit. Moving JR and Lawler away from ringside was a bad idea.

Kane pinned Rob Van Dam in 12:49. Kane tombstones RVD on the steps. That’s it for RVD. This match had some good spots a lot of meh inbetween. Like RVD was ever winning this anyway. Kane for some reason doesn’t make a convincing monster here, probably because Brock Lesnar looked a lot more intimidating as a monster earlier. At least he hasn’t yet been owned by a non-wrestler!

Linda gets a good slap on Eric Bischoff!

World Heavyweight Championship Elimination Chamber Match
Triple H © vs. Randy Orton vs. Kevin Nash vs. Chris Jericho vs. Goldberg vs. Shawn Michaels

Fun fact about this match. It was supposed to be Goldberg vs. HHH, but HHH suffered an abdominal injury (we’ll get to that) and we got this instead. I wonder what this card would have looked like otherwise.

Also, there are 3 minute intervals between each entrant as opposed to five last November.

Nash had lost a hair vs. hair match with Jericho right before this on RAW. Needed it for a movie.

HBK and Jericho start us off!

HHH is wearing longer tights, so maybe it was a quad injury.

Jericho beating Rock and Stone Cold in the same night kept him over for a LONG time. I mean, he woulda stayed over anyway, but this only helped. I wonder what the last PPV that was brought up in is. This is 21 months later.

Good opening sequence but no one cares. They want Goldberg.

Here comes Orton.

Orton’s old finisher, the High Crossbody, comes out here!

Not much to say there. Here comes Big Daddy Cool!

Best sidewalk slam in the business!

Jericho eliminates Nash after a HBK SCM. Two minutes of work for Nash there. With one bump. This would be the last time we’d see him in a WWE ring until the Royal Rumble in 2011.

HHH is next! HBK promptly superkicks him and HHH falls back into his pod.

Nash powerbombs Jericho and Orton as his last act. The Nash 2002-2003 run wasn’t pretty.

A little preface here. HBK, Orton and Jericho (and HHH, kinda) are left. What is about to happen is the best 3 minutes of booking that WWE Goldberg has ever had.

Goldberg kills everyone not named HHH, as HHH is still in his pod.

Goldberg nearly breaks Orton in half.

He almost does it again as he spears Orton! Orton is gone.

Goldberg proceeds to destroy Y2J next, tossing him from the ring into the chain wall.

Goldberg actually breaks Jericho in pieces when he spears him through the pexi-glass! It wasn’t a clean break, but, um…yeah it looked awesome. Poor Jericho is 2 for 2 in being thrown through pod class walls.

We get some Goldberg vs. HBK, which is historic I suppose. Goldberg kills him too. Jackhammer and he’s gone.

Goldberg pulls what’s left of Jericho and spears him again for good measure. Jackhammer and we are down to HHH vs. Goldberg.

Fans are in a frenzy! Anything that went wrong with Goldberg before this show was fixed by those three minutes.

HHH hides in the pod, so Goldberg BUSTS through the glass!

Goldberg begins to whip HHH’s ass. This is like the rich man’s December to Dismember Chamber match.

HHH comeback! Er…what? Goldberg ends that quickly thankfully.

HHH retains the title when he pins Goldberg in 19:12. Goldberg goes for a spear, but Flair throws the sledgehammer into the ring through the chain wall, and HHH gets Goldberg in the head mid spear! HHH pins him for the win. Well, that put the nail in the coffin for Goldberg’s WWE run. He’d win the title the next month in a 20 minute boring match and the draw was just gone.

I mean isn’t this the perfect way for Goldberg to win the WWE Title? Destroying everyone, spears and jackhammers everywhere? That is what Goldberg is! What a horrible result of the reign of terror from 2003 HHH. Unreal.

Nevermind that HHH wrestled a total of 3 minutes here because of his injury! Once HBK superkicked him we didn’t see him until the end! Just horrible all around.

Historically, Goldberg won the title but no one cared anymore. Angle and Lesnar kept going and Lesnar would win the title, but he would be gone six months later. Kane was done after Taker beat him at Mania, although Benoit almost brought him back.

I mean, Eddie Guerrero won, that matters right? Oh and Randy Orton’s PPV debut (how many people have made their WWE PPV in a world title match? It’s him, Hogan and Piper, right?)

A lot of bad stuff, some good stuff, nothing really great or notable here. And that finish is just incredibly bad.

Final Grade: C

Pro Wrestling

RDT Reviews WWE Armageddon 2002

Armageddon02

WWE Armageddon 2002
December 15, 2002
Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Reviewed on March 13, 2014

Background: 2002 was perhaps the strangest year in WWE history. What started with a HHH comeback and the end of the InVasion era with the NWO ended with two new (for different reasons) faces on the top of the card. Those faces were Brock Lesnar, someone who received a ridiculous mega push and impressively handled it, and Shawn Michaels, who was out as an active wrestler for four (of the most profitable) years but made a very unlikely return. Never mind that there are now two World Champions, a splitting of the roster (Brand Extension!) and just a real overall change of who WWE was going with. Gone were the days of Stone Cold vs. The Rock headlining (although they’d have one more big match). It was now guys like Lesnar, HBK, HHH, Kurt Angle and Undertaker. A lot of the Alliance guys had spots on the card and would be all over the place. For the first time, I’d argue there were too many guys that could have been at the top, and not enough in the midcard (which is why guys like Jericho, RVD and Kane would never stay in the main event.

I didn’t even get into the WWE debuts/returns of Hulk Hogan, Scott Steiner and Eric Bischoff.

With that being said, let’s see how it all comes together.

The Card

I am always going to be a fan of the Armageddon theme.

World Tag Team Championship
Chris Jericho and Christian© vs. The Dudley Boyz vs. Lance Storm and William Regal vs. Booker T and Goldust

Quick 2002 recaps for these guys: Jericho went from Undisputed Champ to midcard with random main event runs, Christian was in an awesome team with Storm, Dudleyz were broken up most of 02 due to the Brand Extension…but at Survivor Series they reunited. Storm and Regal were in the midcard. Booker T hadn’t gotten a big push…yet, Goldust was lucky to be employed.

As with most 4 way tags, there is no flow early on as there are so many pieces and different teams tagging in and out.

For some reason Goldust and Bubba Ray Dudley are working together. This is exactly what I mean about flow.

First elimination is botched. Storm top rope legdrops Bubba Ray and Regal tries to pin him and get the tights…only he pulls so hard so Bubba actually pins him…then Regal redoes it to get the pin. Goldust then pins Regal anyway, so we’re down to Jericho and Christian vs. Booker and Goldust.

Goldust takes a nice bump by missing a crossbody and flying out of the ring.

Fans are really into Booker T here.

This tag match really went up quality wise when we went to two teams.

Nice false finish with Jericho hitting Booker with the belt and a Lionsault!

Booker T and Goldust win the title when Booker pins Chris Jericho in 16:43. Jericho tries to hit Booker again with the title, but Booker turns it into a Book-End for the win! Pretty good match once it went down to two teams. Didn’t see the point of adding Storm and Regal and the Dudleyz considering how they went out. Nice opener.

Josh Matthews backstage interviews Brock Lesnar. Lesnar was turned face here because of the Paul Heyman turn at Survivor Series. He’s here to make an impact!

Edge vs. A-Train

Here comes the A-Train push. I thought he was actually better than people give him credit for in 2003. Doesn’t mean he was good though.

Story here: A-Train is looking to make an impact. He beat up Rey Mysterio Jr.. Then attacked Edge. Here we are.

A-Train took a weird bump on a roll-up. Match has been pretty uneventful.

Edge with a tornado Edgeucator? The way he pin A-Train was dangerous though…(unless you’d want to see A-Train’s balls).

Edge wins by DQ. A-Train nails Edge in the leg with a chair. That’s a TV finish, not a PPV finish. Edge gets revenge though and kinda kills any monster gimmick from A-Train there. Match was uneventful and boring. A-Train still isn’t ready as his timing was off (weird roll-up bump, dove on a facebuster are two examples). Whatever.

World Champ Big Show is angry about Brock being in Kurt Angle’s corner later. Heyman said he’ll take care of it.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Chris Benoit

No crowd reaction for either guy…but that’s because Benoit kinda sorta turned when Eddie attacked him. He’s still probably a tweener here.

Even though it’s been a fast paced hard hitting start, some small errors by Eddie and Benoit on armdrags.

Eddie with a sick looking legheadlock.

They kinda mess up the skyhigh pancake as well. Timing very off between the two.

Indian Deathlock from Eddie! One of my favorite holds!

Totally forgot about Eddie’s Lasso From El Paso submission hold.

German suplex after German suplex after German suplex etc. etc. Poor Eddie.

More Germans. Eddie finally counters and gets some on Benoit though!

Perfect Frog Splash from Eddie! Kickout from Benoit!

Chavo’s out here. He smacks Benoit with the tag title belt!

Lasso From El Paso! I think it’s a variation of the Texas Cloverleaf, so maybe it’s a Malenko tribute.

Ridiculous powerbomb by Benoit. Wow.

I cringe a bit when I see the Benoit Diving Headbutt, but it’s still damn impressive.

Chris Benoit makes Eddie Guerrero submit in 16:47. Benoit tries to lock in the Crossface, then makes an awesome switch of the sides when Eddie went for the ropes. Roll through…but Benoit holds on and Eddie taps. Sure, it was a slow start, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a great match. I’m sure that surprised no one.

Heyman-Stephanie interaction. Nothing special here, Steph just holds that Lesnar will be here.

We get the Dawn Marie, Torrie Wilson, Al Wilson angle. Dawn Marie tries to show the night her and Torrie spent together. Of course, it’s teased, but we don’t see anything significant before Al Wilson calls it off. Fans are pissed, and rightfully so.

Interestingly, WWE was doing a bunch of gay and lesbian angles through 2002. HLA. Billy and Chuck. Now this. Torrie and Dawn do make out in the video, I’m not sure if that’s considered risky TV in 2002.

Anyway, this is ultimately a waste of time. This was the highlight of the angle.

Kane vs. Batista

It’s easily forgotten, but it wasn’t as if WWE just suddenly pushes Batista to the moon in 2005. They were trying since 2002.

Batista had an ugly spear.

Kane looks like he’s moving in slow motion.

Ric Flair with the highlights of the match as he viciously attacks Kane…and Kane no sells it all. It was pretty funny.

Batista was really really green here and it shows. Everything is off.

Batista botches the Batista Bomb. Couldn’t get him up all the way.

Pretty bad spinebuster that JR calls the Sidewalk Slam.

Batista pins Kane in 6:38. Kane hits the chokeslam, but Flair distracts the ref. Batista Bomb for the win. You know Kane was on fire (not literally) when he came back in July. Once the whole Katie Vick deal happened the idea of a serious Kane push was gone. Now he’s making a rookie Batista look good in 6 minutes. They’d try again with Kane next year too.

Angle’s looking for Lesnar!

A VERY early Thuganomics John Cena is out here for a rap. He’s with B-Squared! Um..ok then. That was it.

WWE Women’s Championship
Victoria© vs. Trist Stratus vs. Jacqueline

Psycho Victoria was an awesome gimmick.

Wow crazy start. Skinning the cat from Jackie. Victoria with a somersault legdrop on Trish from the outside.

Trish’s Stratusfaction gets turned into a double back suplex!

Sick superplex on Trish from Victoria.

Jackie and Trish mess up a pin spot as Jackie released before Trish kicked out.

Trish with a great kick combo to Victoria!

Messed up pin there. Victoria wasn’t in position to break it up, so Trish unnecessarily stalled on a pin and it looked bad.

Victoria retains when she pinned Jackie in 4:28. Victoria whacks Trish in the head with the title belt when she had a pin, and Victoria steals it. Had a great start, but fell apart midway unfortunately. Still, I mean, usually if the Women’s match is good it’s a bonus.

Angle gives Lesnar a tape of Heyman screwing him over. Really trying to convince him to be in his corner.

WWE Championship
Big Show© vs. Kurt Angle

Story: Show vs. Lesnar at Survivor Series. Heyman screws Lesnar. Lesnar attacks all of Smackdown and gets suspended. Angle wins #1 contendership and asks Lesnar to help him in return to helping gets his suspension lifted. Question is, can Angle beat the Big Show?

Honestly, this would be solid. Except…Big Show had been an absolute joke for 2 years before the title win. While this would rebuild him, it didn’t help the story. Big Show couldn’t be a more obvious transitional champion.

Angle was also in the Benoit type tweener role…but since this is the Big Show, he became a face by default.

Show accidentally tosses Angle over the top rope onto Paul Heyman. Pretty funny.

This was Big Show’s weird black jeans wearing period.

BEARHUG!

Tornado DDT was pretty cool. Match was pretty boring before that.

Top rope missile dropkick from Angle! Don’t recall seeing that often.

Crowd is not into this…because they are waiting for Brock.

Angle Slam…but Show kicks out!

Kurt Angle wins the WWE Title by pin in 12:36. Angle makes Show tap but there’s no ref. A-Train runs in and takes out Angle. Chokeslam by Big Show…but here comes Lesnar, F5! Angle gets the pin there. This match wasn’t good, but Angle jumping all over the place gave it something. For the record the twist in this storyline to get Angle on Heyman’s side made no sense.

RVD is at The World live from Times Square! What a waste.

World Heavyweight Championship: Three Stages of Hell
Shawn Michaels© vs. Triple H

Fall 1 is a Streetfight. Fall 2 is a Steel Cage. Fall 3 is a Ladder Match.

Story: HBK returned after HHH turned on him. HHH vs. HBK at Summerslam was arguable match of the year. HBK then went into the first ever Elimination Chamber and won HHH’s World Title. This is HHH’s return match.

This is still the period where we were all kind of shocked that HBK was wrestling at all, nevermind the champ.

This was a true throwback to 95-96 HBK. He has the hat, the outfit and the red heart pants.

HBK mocks Flair to start which is pretty funny. It gets Flair banned, which is also funny.

Opening sequence is oddly timed, it even had a part where HHH just shoved HBK into the ropes.

Shawn with a crossbody into HHH and a trashcan. That made no sense to be fair.

HBK with a table. I think this is a first for HBK (that isn’t an announcer’s desk).

They’ve set two tables on the outside. I hope they use them before the cage match, as if they don’t it will be obvious it’s going three falls (I guess it’s obvious anyway).

HHH messes up blocking Sweet Chin Music, as it clearly hit him before he grabbed the foot.

This street fight is not clicking for me. Very slow.

Figure Four! I’m beginning to think HHH and HBK wanted to do a straight wrestling match but someone told them they had to do a Street Fight.

2×4 with barbed wire. Weird weapon to have in this feud.

Now HHH lights it on fire. Even weirder.

HBK gets possession and nails HHH with the 2×4 wrapped with barbed wire on fire! Again, I get it’s supposed to be a real hate feud and all that, but it’s not a weapon that makes sense for these two. Now a sledgehammer I would understand.

That also wasn’t the finish of fall one. Just weird.

HHH wins the first fall in about 20 minutes. He hits a messed up pedigree (HBK’s foot never left the canvas). Also, HBK was been selling the leg since the Figure Four. I did not like that street fight. All over the place. No psychology whatsoever. Barbed wire/fire seemed really wasted here.

Cage time.

HHH brings a table into the cage before it drops.

Flair’s back as HHH and HBK go at it at the top of the cage.

Flair sets up another table out there. To be fair, they are selling the whole they could fall from the cage through the table idea.

Flair’s in the cage! Kinda defeats the purpose of the cage.

Flair takes an entertaining ass-kicking. Flair has been one of the best parts of this show.

HBK sets HHH on the table. Top of the cage splash through the table! HBK gets the pin, and its Ladder Match time!

Flair’s a bloody mess.

HBK misses a top of a big ladder splash. Ouch.

Another Pedigree where HBK doesn’t pick one of his feet from the canvas. Weird.

HHH wins the World Title in 38:35. HBK nails Sweet Chin Music! HBK slowly climbs to the top of the ladder, but HHH is back and shoves him off through the stack of tables! HHH grabs the title for the win. Really didn’t like this match for some reason. While I loved how it was structured (1st fall should be the longest, 3rd should be the shortest) I felt as if it just dragged. The first fall didn’t know if it wanted to be a wrestling match or a street fight. 2nd fall seemed to be more about Flair. 3rd fall being a ladder match was okay I guess. It was just one or two high spots then the finish. Not a bad match by any means, but not even close to what they did at Summerslam in just a Street Fight.

This isn’t a bad PPV by any means, but you can tell this was just a lot of transition. Benoit was in mid turn. Angle was in mid turn. A-Train was being established, which sucked. Big Show was an odd champion and a clear transitional one. HBK was supposed to be temporary. Three title changes as well. Nothing really hit the ball out of the park for this PPV, but I did think Eddie vs. Benoit was very good.

2002 was a strange year indeed, and to be fair a lot of the card looked nothing like it did at the beginning of 2002, so I guess there’s some extra credit for transition or something.

Final Grade: C+

Pro Wrestling

RDT Reviews WWE Summerslam 2002

SummerSlam_2002

Summerslam 2002
August 25, 2002
Uniondale, NY
Reviewed on April 18, 2014

Background: 2002 was all about change in WWE. After purchasing WCW in 2001 Vince had a virtual monopoly in the wrestling business. This led to some guys not getting pushed as there just weren’t enough spots. Even with the Brand Extension there was just not enough room at the top. Guys like Chris Benoit, Booker T and RVD…and to an extent Jericho still had to wait for their chance.

There are three reasons why spots weren’t available, but one of those reasons was in the process of solving itself. This reason was top guys weren’t going anywhere. Triple H and Undertaker were going to be top guys however you looked at it. This was solving itself though, as The Rock had become a part timer and Stone Cold walked out after Vince tried to shunt him down the card a bit.

The other two reasons are on full display on this PPV. The first is older stars coming back. Hulk Hogan grabbed a main event spot for a few months before this PPV. Here, Shawn Michaels was coming back. That’s another top spot gone (not saying the HBK return was bad, because it wasn’t). The other is Vince still went with his development territory. I’m sure tons of guys were downright shocked when Vince megapushed Brock Lesnar, heck some theorized that’s why Hardcore Holly was stiff with him (and Brock broke his neck). It’s interesting to point out though that Vince was on the money with both of these (even if Brock left two months later).

But change is the theme. If you told me at Summerslam 2001 that Brock Lesnar and Shawn Michaels were going to be in the top two main events at Summerslam 2002…I would have asked who Lesnar was and reminded you that Shawn’s career was over.

Summerslam 2002 is also a great example of just how much talent Vince McMahon actually had of his disposal here. WCW guys, ECW guys, legends, rookies with huge potential, top WWF Attitude guys, it’s all here.

The Card

It is worth mentioning that the theme for Summerslam, Fight, is pretty awesome.

Kurt Angle vs. Rey Mysterio

Story: I don’t quite remember it, but I recall Rey getting a couple of pins on Angle in tags, and Angle being angry about it.

The circumstances of this match are far more interesting anyway. Mysterio had just debuted in WWE about six weeks ago. It was cool that instead of just putting him in the Cruiserweight Division, they gave Rey a top tier storyline right off the bat…which led to the incredible Tag Title matches later in the year with The Guerreros, Edge, Angle and Benoit.

Rey attacks Angle with a springboard headscissors from behind as his music still plays!

Fun opening sequence with leads to Angle almost getting the Ankle Lock.

Mysterio goes for his bodyscissor bulldog, but Angle turns it into a German!

There’s a good story here as Rey had been doing a lot of high flying stuff that we may be accustomed to now as we’ve seen 12 years of WWE Mysterio matches…but at the time was absolutely awesome. But Angle had scouted many of them and comes up with great counters for a lot of it. It was like this way Rey’s first chance with the big leagues, if that makes sense.

Awesome spot where Rey was gonna fly over the top but the ref stopped him…then Rey just jumped over the ref instead! Great stuff.

Rey flips off the top to counter Angle, then hits a springboard dropkick!

Kurt Angle makes Rey Mysterio submit in 9:20. Top rope hurricanrana, but Angle counters by landing on his feet…then getting the Ankle Lock for the win! Incredible opener. Like I said earlier it loses a little luster as we’ve seen these Rey Mysterio matches for years now, but at the time it was something new in a WWE ring. It’s one thing to have that match with Juventud Guerrera. It’s another to have it with a main event guy like Angle. This match is also an example of putting a guy over even as that guy loses. Rey looked great here.

Looks like Eric Bischoff and Stephanie McMahon have to share the General Manager’s office. What an early waste of Eric Bischoff this was.

Chris Jericho vs. Ric Flair

Story: Flair attacked Jericho during a Fozzy performance. They went at it for weeks, and Flair ended up destroying the set in a Fozzy performance.

Flair does not make his flip here.

Pretty much all Jericho early on.

Pretty stupid idea where Jericho had Flair in the Figure Four, but Flair grabbed the ropes and tapped out at the same time. Kinda confusing.

Ric Flair makes Chris Jericho submit in 10:22. Flair gets the Figure Four and someone actually taps out! Match was pretty disappointing considering who was involved. Just a lot of punching and chops. This was during Flair’s no confidence in himself part of his career. Flair going over also seemed odd, but according to Jericho he thought it was a great way to re-establish Flair.

Heyman pep talks Lesnar. THE ROCK IS THE UNDERDOG!

Eddie Guerrero vs. Edge

I believe this rivalry spawned from when Rock and Edge fought Guerrero and Benoit. They went the jealously route then, Edge looks handsome, got everything, etc. etc.

Edge hurts his shoulder on missing a spear and landing on the outside, and the psychology of the match begins.

They even tie in the whole Edge’s shoulder was injured months ago, so good storytelling here.

Eddie with a top rope leap into an arm DDT. Nice!

Eddie is twisting Edge’s arm in every way available. Good stuff.

Edge hits a flying press from the top to the outside, and Eddie takes this awesome bump where he just bounces off the barricade. Just looked cool.

Frog Splash on the arm! Nice idea!

Edge pins Eddue Guerrero in 11:47. Edge gets a Spear out of nowhere for the pin. Finish is lame as it came out of nowhere…and Edge’s arm was suddenly just fine. But the match itself was really good, with great psychology all around.

World Tag Team Championship
Lance Storm and Christian© vs. Booker T and Goldust

Un-Americans in the house!

I never liked Booker T’s delayed kneedrop.

Goldust gets thrown over the top turnbuckle onto the floor, crazy bump for Goldust.

Good heel spot where Booker gets the tag but the ref didn’t see it cause of Storm. You just don’t see that anymore.

Another good heel spot where Storm pulls Booker off the apron, and Goldust gets there and tags no one.

Un-Americans retain when Christian pins Booker T in 9:36. Storm bumps the ref, and Booker hits a double Scissors Kick. He has it won. Test comes down and hits Booker with the big boot for Christian to get the win. Decent match with some good heel stuff. Finish sets up a rematch. A little too much Goldust for my tastes, at least 2002 Goldust.

Makeout contest in WWE New York. Winner makes out with Nidia. Highlight being JR saying he entered the contest a couple of time.

Intercontinental Championship
Chris Benoit© vs. Rob Van Dam

Benoit beat RVD for the title…then jumped to Smackdown. Rematch here. Truthfully I wish there was more story here, as this was one of the few interpromotional matches at the time of the early Brand Extension. There was some part with Dawn Marie and Stacy Keibler messing up paperwork or something, but come on, one RVD attack on a Smackdown could have been cool.

Benoit is another example of someone who deserved to be in a higher spot, but there was no room at the top. Benoit just came off of a year long injury and got no hype coming back and then just got slotted in the IC level as he always did. What a shame.

This was actually kind of a dream match for me when I was kid. Even before I got all smarkish, I knew Benoit and RVD were awesome in the ring.

Benoit has dominated this match, and while it’s been a hard hitting affair it’s a bit disappointing.

I believe this is the only show ever where RVD loses his ponytail.

Benoit with one of my favorite submissions, the double self choke.

Benoit is doing some awesome technical wrestling and really working on the arm…shame that RVD hasn’t sold any arm damage.

Of course now RVD is selling the arm. At least he finally did it.

Rob Van Dam wins the IC Title when he pinned Benoit in 16:30. Five Star for the win! It’s a good match, but really disappointing when you consider these two should have been having incredible matches. RVD seemed a bit out of it. This match was supposed to lead to a Unification match vs. HHH (RVD has unified the Hardcore and European titles earlier in the year), but it didn’t end up quite going that way.

Steph with some creepy laugh to Bischoff. Crazy what a better performer she is now.

The Undertaker vs. Test

Story: Test is the muscle for the Un-Americans, Taker is the American Bad Ass. This had a Taker face turn in it, which was done out of necessity as Lesnar, HHH, Angle were all on the heel side.

Pretty boring match here.

JR saying Oh My God when Test kicked out of the chokeslam was a sign of everyone just trying too hard to get Test over.

The Undertaker pinned Test in 8:18. Storm and Christian show up, but Taker takes them out of course. Taker finishes Test with a Tombstone (what made this match special enough for that?) Taker goes all American out (continuity from Survivor Series 93?!?!). Anyway, match sucked. I feel like this was Test’s last chance to have a good match (see Billy Gunn vs. Benoit at Armageddon 2000), as his career nosedives after this. To be fair though, the booking is the kinda stuff we hate about John Cena today. Did Taker have to bury all three UnAmericans?

Weird crowd shots. I wonder what WWE was censoring there.

Un-Sanctioned Match
Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels

Storyline: HBK brought HHH to RAW. HHH and HBK were going to recreate DX…but HHH turned on HBK. Now, the standard young guy thinks he surpassed the older guy story. HHH is the ungrateful star. HHH thinks HBK used him to stay on top five years ago.

Real life story: HBK’s career ended at Wrestlemania XIV. His career was as good as over…but his life turned for the better. HBK changed from the pill popping jackass he was to a born again Christian. HBK also said in his book the more he worked out, the better his back felt. He wanted to do a Streetfight because it was easy to do, and his back wouldn’t take damage (and he was originally gonna do it vs. Vince). This was a HUGE deal. I’m actually shocked it didn’t go on last. It was also supposed to be a one time thing…but as we all know he lasted 8 more years.

I think it’s insane that HBK just went all out right away. I mean 40 seconds in and we already get an over the top rope bodypress.

HBK dominates the first few minutes. Great way to show he’s still at a main event level (kayfabe).

HHH uses the obvious psychology available: Backbreaker from the Game.

HHH continues working on the back, and HBK sells it like a million bucks.

Also worth pointing out that JR is amazing here…talking about how he wants to see HBK’s arms moving to make sure he isn’t paralyzed.

Great heel spot with HHH holding the top rope right in Earl Hebner’s face while HHH had HBK locked in the abdominal stretch. The HHH-Hebner history comes into play here too.

Brutal chair shot to the back. Just awesome psychology.

Sweet Chin Music out of nowhere…which is actually a bit disappointing as it’s the first SCM in a match in like 4 years.

HBK with the nipup and HUGE pop.

Bulldog on the steps!

We’ve got a ladder. Still crazy how HBK went all out here.

Table! HBK didn’t even use tables in his prime.

Splash from the top rope through HHH through the table! What was Shawn thinking?! (Of course, I assume he thought his back was still fucked at this point).

Shawn Michaels pins HHH in 27:20. Elbowdrop off the ladder! Time for SCM…no, blocked! But HBK counters a Pedigree into a pin, 1…2…3! Huge pop! HHH nails HBK in the back with the Sledgehammer, and HBK is carried out. Amazing match, purely five stars. Crazy how HBK just comes back and owns right away. Arn Anderson told HBK before the match, “You need to practice, it’s not like riding a bike”…and then afterwards said “I guess for you it is like riding a bike”. Match of the Year for 2002 Contender for sure.

Absolutely random Howard Finkel banter. This is the first PPV he has announced since Wrestlemania II in this arena! And baseball may be going on strike…but they will always have the Fink. Here comes Trish! Finkel compares her to other Long Island skanks. Trish apologizes for anything she’s done to the Fink…and tells Fink she loves his sexy voice! Now he points out that Trist has the puppies and Finkel has his weiner. Trish then brings out Lillian Garcia and she beats Finkel up. Random fun I guess to serve as a buffer between the two main events. Poor Fink.

WWF Undisputed Championship
The Rock© vs. Brock Lesnar

Story: Brock won this title shot after winning KOTR 2002. Rock won the title in a three way with Angle and Taker. Brock retained his title shot when he took out Hogan on Smackdown. And here we are.

Did anyone look like a superstar from the beginning more than Brock Lesnar?

You can tell they are a little short of time. I assume HHH and HBK went extra.

Lesnar gets a really quick belly to belly and a 2.

Fans are AGAINST The Rock here…they knew he was leaving for a movie.

Double nipup was cool.

Weird selling from the Dragon Screw there.

Let’s Go Lesnar chants!

Worst Sharpshooter ever.

Bearhug spot actually works…as Brock established it when he killed Hogan.

You can tell Brock still didn’t know how to sell correctly at times…he clearly oversells a punch when he flies over the top rope.

Rock drives Paul Heyman through the Announcer’s table with a Rock Bottom!

Lesnar survives a Rock Bottom!

Rock survives a…Brock Bottom?!

Brock Lesnar wins the WWE Title in 16:10. People’s Elbow…but Brock gets up before Rock finishes it and hits a huge clothesline. Finisher reversal sequences ends with a F5 and the title. Big props to the Rock here, not only did he just put over Lesnar clean, but he got a good match out of him (Lesnar was still quite raw here). This match and Lesnar’s HIAC with Taker solidified him as a top guy for good. Well done.

And well done is what you can say about this PPV. But there’s a hidden shame in here. This PPV had A+ potential. You had a match of the year candidate with HBK-HHH, a solid main with Lesnar-Rock. A great Rey-Angle match. A very good RVD-Benoit match. A very good Edge-Eddie match. Historically the show mattered two, Brock Lesnar would be an over main event staple for the next two years…and HBK of course was on the top of the card for the next 8. Rey also showed he could hang with top guys too…and that the idea of being too small didn’t really apply to him (Finlay said it in a shoot once that small guys would hurt the title…except Rey because he was THAT good).

What brings it down? While decent, it’s a shame Jericho and Flair didn’t click. Taker vs. Test was whatever and the tag title match, while solid, also seemed a little off (too much GOldust, not enough Booker T).

But I mean, there’s some great shit here. And The Fink was pretty funny!

Final Grade: A

Pro Wrestling

RDT Reviews WCW Greed

GREED

WCW Greed
March 18, 2001
Jacksonville, FL
Reviewed on March 2, 2014

Background: I think it is well documented that WCW was in deep trouble at this point. Buyrates had plummeted in 2000, and the word plummeted is no exaggeration. The company (smartly, I should mention) was riding on Scott Steiner as a top guy and giving him a lengthy reign. Whether you hate or like Steiner, it was nice to see someone get a steady reign at the top and actually be a new star. Now obviously there were a lot of other problems with Steiner, but this booking was a huge upgrade from the non-stable hot potato the WCW Title went through in 2000. It was too little, too late though.

I don’t know if the wrestlers knew at this point, but this would be the very last PPV for World Championship Wrestling. Vince McMahon would buy the company a week later.

The Card

Tony Schiavone: If it’s professional wrestling, it’s Greed. What does that even mean?

Kwee Wee vs. Jason Jett

Apparently this is an unadvertised bonus match.

Jason Jett kicks Kwee Wee but it’s blocked. Jett backflips out. That was cool.

Jett puts on a reverse crab and a surfboard combo move, which was a cool submission.

Kwee Wee with the suicide dive that had no chance even if Jason Jett stood in the same place. At least he tried I guess.

Jason Jett seems pretty good. Standing moonsaults, 180 springboard DDTs (I remember Matt Hardy having that). Not bad.

Just quickly looked up if Jason Jett was anyone, apparently he’s EZ Money. How about that.

I guess Kwee Wee’s gimmick is his temper? Angry Allan?

Top rope powerbomb reversed into a hurricanrana. Funny, I recall EZ Money doing a spot like that in TNA…although I think he was the hurricanrana giver there.

Jason Jett pins Kwee Wee in 12:17. Jett hits a suplex where he just drops the guy mid-plex. Pretty cool finisher honestly. Solid match too, even if I can’t take Kwee Wee too seriously. A lot of great spots, mostly from Jett.

WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Championship Tournament Final
Rey Mysterio Jr. and Billy Kidman vs. Primetime Elix Skipper and Kid Romeo

The idea of the Cruiserweight Tag Title would have been a lot more interesting in the mid 90s.

I am surprised Skipper never became a bigger deal. Has a cool entrance where he walks the ropes then backflips in.

I hated the Filthy Animals.

I hate this half-mask Rey Mysterio is wearing. I wish this version of Rey was just stricken from history.

I think it’s weird that all of Billy Kidman’s talent seemed to disappear when WCW did.

This has been a solid match so far. Kidman just hiptossed Skipper off the stage into Romeo, then Rey and Kidman both did running dives off the stage. Fun match.

Before this match I would have thought Romeo and Skipper were not in Rey and Kidman’s league, but Skipper and Romeo are showing otherwise.

Sitout powerbomb from the top is always a great spot from Kidman. I really didn’t understand how Kidman looked washed up 8 months later in the WWF.

Rey is taking over. Senton bomb rolls into a suicide dive through the ropes into Primetime!

Kidman with the springboard Shooting Star Press to the floor! Kidman-kaze? Whatever, great move.

We’re just ignoring the idea of a legal man here I guess. Whatever.

Wow, arm trap suplex from Skipper…top rope legdrop from Romeo. Poor Rey!

Powerbomb by Rey, top rope splash from Kidman! Skipper saves Romeo!

I always loled at Rey doing the Bronco Buster.

Kid Romeo and Primetime win the title when Romeo pinned Rey in 13:46. Romeo catches Rey’s springboard moonsault and hits the last kiss, which is a powerslam-brainbuster combo. Very fun match! Great start to this PPV so far!

We have Buff Bagwell backstage and he comes into CEO Ric Flair’s office. Jeff Jarrett, Flair and Road Warrior Animal are in there, hyping up how the Magnificent Seven is going to win all their matches and all that stuff.

Shawn Stasiak vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

Stacy Keibler is so hot.

Shawn “The Star” Stasiak. Right.

The Mecca of Manhood is another Stasiak nickname. Right.

I didn’t even know Bam Bam made it to the end of WCW. I assume he doesn’t care at this point.

Stasiak has photos of himself for the fans! In case they forget him. Because they will.

Bam Bam still threw dropkicks at this point. Nice.

Shawn Stasiak pins Bam Bam Bigelow in 5:55. Stacy throws hairspray to Stasiak and he uses it to blind Bigelow. A neckbreaker leads to the win. Honestly, it wasn’t horrible, but it’s boring and not good either. But, if you are going with Stasiak, then Bam Bam put him over just fine.

Stacy makes out with Stasiak. His career highlight I’m sure.

Romeo and Skipper are very excited about their title belts. As they should be.

Team Canada (Mike Awesome and Lance Storm) vs. Konnan and Hugh Morrus

I always mark for the Canadian National Anthem. We don’t get it though as we get the maniacal laughter of Hugh Morrus. Morrus runs in without Konnan to start the match, but Konnan comes in soon thereafter.

Konnan tries to break up a Storm pin attempt, but Storm gets up and faces Konnan before he gets there. I don’t remember seeing that before and it was kinda cool.

Konnan with the rolling clothesline. That and the Tequila Sunrise are cool moves.

Team Canada is beating up on Konnan for most of this match, but it’s not really exciting or anything.

Lance Storm clearly misses a dropkick that Konnan sold.

Mike Awesome with an awful…awful piledriver on Konnan. Konnan landed on Awesome’s legs.

Storm not on his best game here. His top rope splash attempt was clearly mistimed and Konnan got the foot up.

Morrus is in. No drama here whatsoever.

Mike Awesome and Lance Storm win when Awesome pins Morrus in 11:28. Storm interrupts No Laughing Matter, and Mike Awesome turns that into a running Awesome Bomb for the win. Match was not good. Blown spots and downright boring at times. Storm was disappointing here, and the rest are who they are. Morrus and Konnan just seem like two guys thrown together, and not like a tag team at all.

We’re in the Rhodes’ locker room. Dusty ordered burritos! 240 of them! There is gonna be a match between Dusty’s ass and Flair’s face and he’s gonna smell the burritos! That’s coming from one of the best promo men in the history of the business ladies and gentlemen!

More of this Bagwell documentary. He’s interviewing US Champ Rick Steiner. I think Rick said the F-word here. Something about Midajah as well. Not notable.

Quick Natural Born Thrillas promo. Chuck Palumbo would be Chucky this time next year.

WCW Cruiserweight Championship
Chavo Guerrero Jr.(c) vs. Sugar Shane Helms

That theme song is absolutely awful. God damn.

Chavo has a cool remix of Eddie Guerrero’ theme.

Chavo Guerrero’s career peaked in 1998. Unless you were a Lt. Loco fan.

Some good chain wrestling here.

This has been a technical wrestling match with no highflying. Scott Hudson mentions this on commentary. It isn’t bad though.

Chavo kinda botches flipping Helms to the outside.

This match feels like a match that is happening because all the top Cruisers were unavailable.

Chavo with a nice reversal into a sitout Curtain Call. Nice move.

Nice block of the Tornado DDT into the Nightmare on Helms Street.

Crowd with a boring chant. Weird, because the match was boring earlier on but has picked up.

Helms with a frog splash press to the outside on Chavo. Very nice.

Shane Helms pins Chavo Guerrero Jr. in 13:57 to win the title. Top rope back suplex is blocked and Chavo goes for a Vertebreaker. Helms reverses and hits the Vertebreaker for the win. Alright match with some good moments. Felt like a poor man’s version of a WCW Cruiserweight Title match.

More Bagwell documentary. Flair is mad about what Dusty said.

Booker T interview. The US Title has eluded him for 8 long years! This is a former WCW World Champion here.

WCW World Tag Team Championship
The Natural Born Thrillers (Chuck Palumbo and Sean O’Haire)© vs. Totally Buff (Buff Bagwell and The Total Package Lex Luger)

Luger and Bagwell may be my least favorite tag team ever.

Luger reminds us that Totally Buff were the ones that ended Bill Goldberg’s WCW career. What a nice thing to do.

Now Totally Buff are burying the Tag Champs but saying they don’t know who they and that they are rookies. Sigh.

The Natrual Born Thrillers retain the titles with a double pin at 0:54. You know what, that was very well done. Superstar diva heels talk trash about the young champs. Young champs kick ass. What a way to put over the young blood. Sean-ton Bomb is pretty nice.

Scott Steiner promo! Page is going down!

Wow they are really selling the ass kicking Totally Buff got. They reference the time Bagwell broke his neck three years ago.

Ernest Miller vs. Kanyon

Apparently Kanyon did a Kanyon Cutter to Ms. Jones, The Cat’s valet. Kanyon goes right after Ms. Jones after a Cat calls Kanyon ugly.

Kanyon looks like a demented stalker when he’s close to Ms. Jones.

Kanyon with a top rope Rocker Dropper. Not bad.

The Cat does some dancing and splits with uppercuts and elbows and stuff. I guess it’s not bad, but it takes away from the seriousness of the match a bit.

Kanyon somehow botches a Boston Crab, as the Cat ends up on his side.

Kanyon survives the Feliner, which looks a lot like Kofi Kingston’s Trouble in Paradise.

Ernest Miller pins Kanyon in 10:31. Ms. Jones tries to kick Kanyon, but he ducks and she knocks down The Cat. Kanyon then grabs Jones by the arm, and she misses a kick. She gets a 2nd kick though, and the Cat hits the Feliner for the win. Kanyon attacks The Cat afterwards, then MIA Smooth or something comes in with a chair and chases off Kanyon. Match was boring and the storyline is not good. I guess it wasn’t horrible overall though.

More documentary stuff. Luger and Bagwell arguing!

Dusty apparently ate all the burritos and he says he thinks they are down to ass. Seriously what the fuck.

WCW US Championship
Rick Steiner© vs. Booker T

Steiner is beating the crap out of Booker early on.

Ugly looking double underhook powerbomb. Still all Steiner. Booker got some punches that had no effect on Steiner.

Wow Steiner is no-selling everything here. Backsuplex and Steiner is right back up.

This is still all Steiner. Making Booker look horrible.

Booker T pinned Rick Steiner in 7:31 to win the title. Booker accidentally takes out the ref, and Steiner hits a German Suplex. No ref for the count. Rick Steiner goes up top, but Shane Douglas nails him in the head with a cast (and Rick lands on his feet!). Booker gets the Book-End for the win. Awful match. Steiner no sold everything and dominated the rest. Booker couldn’t win without help. Terrible.

Documentary time. Buff Bagwell has been knocked out! Luger accuses Animal.

Dustin Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes vs. Ric Flair and Jeff Jarrett

Flair comes out with a shirt full of flowers and dress pants. He says he’s not wrestling and Jarrett will beat them both up by himself.

Ref sends Road Warrior Animal to the back.

Wasting a lot of time here.

It feels weird in 2001 to be chronicling the Rhodes vs. Flair feud over the last 20 years.

Jarrett and Dustin start us off.

Flair’s in there. Punching and chopping away at Dustin.

Flair just lets Dustin tag in Dusty. First thing I think Dusty does is fart. Ugh.

Crowd very into Dusty. I think he farts again. I mean seriously.

Dusty’s elbows are pretty good though.

Jarrett and Flair are doubling teaming Dustin. I guess that makes sense in the context of the match.

Dustin gets the tag, Flair vs. Dusty!

Bionic Elbow from Dusty…but Jarrett makes the save.

Dusty and Dustin Rhodes defeated Ric Flair and Jeff Jarrett when Dustin pinned Flair in 9:58. Finish is botched as Dustin was supposed to take down Flair somehow for the win. It’s not clear how but it looks terrible.

Flair needs to kiss Dusty’s ass now.

The last thing this PPV needs is Dusty’s ass.

Stinkface to Jarrett. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

On the replay it looked like Dustin was going for an inside cradle, but Flair thought it was something else? Anyway, that match was a bit of a mess. I guess it was to get Dusty a pop? I don’t know. Whatever.

WCW World Championship: Falls Count Anywhere
Scott Steiner© vs. Diamond Dallas Page

The story is Steiner has taken out ever top contender, and all that is left is Page. Not bad honestly. Puts over both.

I wonder if Michael Buffer was embarrassed to be a part of this crap at this point.

Even though I know he had a heel turn somewhere in 1999, Page is basically the same exact wrestler he was in 1998. Just with shorter hair.

In 20 seconds Page had more offense on Scott than Booker T had on Rick.

Page is all out on the attack early on. Makes sense within the story, as Page said he was the hunter and not the hunted.

Some garbage can action. Steiner then takes a crutch from a fan and nails Page.

Page elbow drops Steiner through a table…although the table crumpled slowly. This has been a decent brawl so far.

Steiner was a good suplex-type guy. Those suplexes look vicious.

This match is better than I expected it to be. A solid brawl.

Diamond Cutter! 1….Rick Steiner pulls out the ref. DDP takes out Rick.

DDP shoves Scott into Rick and rolls him up…but a near fall only results.

Page gets busted open from a shot to the face with the WCW title.

Page is busted open badly. Jeez.

Steiner Recliner! Page gets to the ropes though.

Scott Steiner retains the title when DDP passes out in the Steiner Recliner. For some reason Midajah distracts the ref while Steiner nails Page with a lead pipe (it’s No DQ you know). Second Steiner Recliner ends it. Steiner continually nails Page with the pipe. Really not a bad match, it’s quite okay and better than I thought it would be.

Overall, I don’t think this is an awful Pay-Per-View at all. There are some good matches, some bad ones and some average ones. It is a bit sad that this is the last PPV we’d see from WCW.

I wanted to put it in C+ range, but you can thank Rick Steiner and Dusty Rhodes’ ass for me having to knock it down a bit.

Final Grade: C

Pro Wrestling

RDT Reviews WWF No Way Out 2001

No_Way_Out_2001

WWF No Way Out 2001
February 25, 2001
Las Vegas, NV
Reviewed on February 8, 2015

AKA: The Final Ass Kicking.

This would be the last WWF PPV to take place while WCW was still alive. No Way Out was the final PPV spot before what is shaping up to be the biggest Wrestlemania of them all.

As I wrote in my Royal Rumble 2001 background…the WWF was rolling. But admittedly, there were subtle signs that things may not be going as smoothly as they were say, 12-18 months ago.

For one, some star making attempts hadn’t went well. Rikishi’s heel turn had just about fizzled out at this point. Billy Gunn was pretty much given up on after Armageddon 2000. Eddie Guerrero was having personal problems. Even Chyna went from the WWF’s version of Wonder Woman to someone who’s ego may have been getting way too big. She wouldn’t last much longer (of course, who knows how much the HHH-Stephanie deal played a part in that). Then again, this is nitpicking. Kurt Angle was doing just fine afterall.

Also, it seems that the WWF may have been running out of ideas. The Armageddon Hell in a Cell back in December was a cool concept on paper (and was a very good match), but it also hurt the aura of the Hell in a Cell itself. The post-Wrestlemania scene is probably going to have a lot of familiar faces in it (which it ultimately did), and at some point that’s not just going to draw huge. When I get to those PPVs I’ll write about that.

Lastly, and something I did address in the Rumble ’01 review, ratings were down during Austin’s comeback. While they got back in the 5.0 range during Rumble time, we’re still a bit under 5 in February. That’s about a 16% decrease from the same time the year before. And that’s WITHOUT Austin.

Still, the WWF was rolling and rolling strongly at this point. There’s nothing to be alarmed about…

Yet.

The Card

WWF Hardcore Division
Raven© vs. Big Show

This was an odd period for the Big Show, where he came back at the Rumble…but was immediately regulated to midcard status after being a main eventer his whole career.

Also, the WWF brought in Raven, but still held on to the 24/7 Hardcore model for the title. It was kind of a waste since well, this is Raven we’re talking about here.

In a forgotten angle, Raven’s ninja (Tori) attacks Show, but she doesn’t help.

Crash Holly as a popcorn vendor gets involved…then Steve Blackman and Hardcore Holly get involved as well. It’s 24/7!

Billy Gunn runs in and he gets a pin on Raven for the title!

Raven gets his title back.

Big Show pins Raven in 4:20. Big Show gets a chokeslam. He gets the pin. Billy Gunn keeps trying, but Big Show fights him off. It’s a fun start to the show at least.

Kevin Kelly talks to an arriving Kurt Angle. Angle says he’s ready.

Lillian Garcia asks Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit how they will co-exist. Well, they are going against one another so…that’s not really necessary is it? At least JR points that out.

Fatal Four Way Match: Intercontinental Championship
Chris Jericho© vs. Eddie Guerrero vs. X-Pac vs. Chris Benoit

A lot of stories here. Jericho sidelined X-Pac for a few months in their cage match at No Mercy. Jericho also sidelined Guerrero according to the Guerrero interview we just had. Benoit and Guerrero are part of the reformed Radicalz. Lastly, Jericho beat Benoit for the IC title at the Rumble in a great ladder match.

Radicalz do work together early on, but seeds of doubt are planted when Benoit tries to go for the win when Guerrero went up top for a Frog Splash.

Something else weird. Jericho is the only face here…but X-Pac took a lot of the Radicalz beating early on.

Guerrero and Benoit come to blows!

Beautiful hurricanrana by Guerrero to Benoit.

We get a few minutes of some Benoit-Jericho greatness.

Jericho gets everyone in the Walls…until Justin Credible provides a distraction for X-Pac.

X Marks the Spot (double superkick) by X-Factor to Benoit!

Guerrero breaks up a Benoit Crossface with a flip over neckbreaker. Wow!

Chris Jericho retains when he pins X-Pac in 12:17. Roll-up with a bridge for the win. Wow, match really picked up in the 2nd half and was pretty good the whole way. One of the more entertaining four way matches you’ll ever see.

Vince McMahon tells William Regal that he’s confident he’ll do the right thing for the Stephanie McMahon vs. Trish Stratus match. Regal doesn’t have a damn clue what to do. Regal’s hilarious.

Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley vs. Trish Stratus

After Vince asked Linda for a divorce, Linda went into a catatonic state. Stephanie planned to be the dominant female in the WWF, but with Vince’s affair with Trish, she feels threatened. This actually started a bit earlier when HHH took on Kurt Angle at the Rumble, and Trish managed Angle.

One of the biggest shockers here: Trish and Stephanie BRAWL. No catfight here, just a flat out brawl.

Stephanie jumps off the barricade with a clothesline to Trish. What?

Trish with a hangman’s sleeper in the corner. This is crazy good.

Stephanie powerbombs Trish out of a hurricanrana attempt. I mean just wow.

Regal is here after a double KO. Will he do the right thing? He puts Trish on Stephanie!

Regal changes his mind as the ref counts and puts Steph’s foot on the rope!

SMH wins by pin in 8:29. Trish yells at Regal…and gets a neckbreaker for her troubles. Stephanie gets the pin. Did Regal do the right thing? Anyway…that’s one of the greatest women’s matches in WWF/E history right there. No exaggeration. I assume this spawned Trish actually becoming a wrestler later in 2001. Just wow.

And no…REGAL WAS WRONG. Vince chews him out.

Three Stages of Hell
Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Triple H

This feud really began back at Summerslam ’99 when HHH took Austin out after their three way with Mankind. They feuded a bit for the rest of the year…but then Austin was run over. After the failed idea that Rikishi was the driver, HHH was revealed to be his accomplice. Austin dropped HHH from a crane in a limo (another one of those shortsighted ideas that showed the WWF was running out of ideas), but HHH returned in like a month and cost Austin the WWF Title. Austin cost HHH the WWF Title at the Royal Rumble. HHH tried to screw Austin over at the Rumble…but Austin somehow won anyway. Vince wanted to protect the big money match, so he had Austin and HHH sign no contact waivers. If Austin violated it he would lose his Mania match. If HHH violated it, he was suspended for six months. In an AWESOME heel moment, HHH pretended to sign it, then beat the hell out of Austin. THEN he signed the contract (Austin did already). Austin gave Stephanie a stunner, which was a pretty sick response. HHH went after JR of course. Just an amazingly built feud here.

First Fall: Straight Wrestling Match. Second Fall: Street Fight. Third Fall: Cage Match.

There’s the assumption that HHH was a lock to win the first fall, but Austin was a lock to win the 2nd. This line of thinking played out beautifully here.

Austin is outright WHIPPING HHH early on.

HHH finally gets control and works on the neck. Smart, since Austin was out with a neck injury twice in his career, specifically from the hit and run.

Huge pop for a HHH Figure Four. Fans are really into this.

HHH comes off the top, but Austin catches him with a boot and the Stunner. Austin wins fall one. My only nitpick is that it was a little too short at about 12 minutes. But it was an awesome 12 minutes for sure. Just non-stop action.

Austin tosses HHH out of the ring for fall #2!

Well look at that, Austin did the whole Mania X7 chair shot deal to HHH first in this match. Austin is destroying HHH here.

Austin brings Barbie into the mix. Barbie is a barbed wire 2X4. HHH gets control of it though and takes out Austin with it. And now we have blood.

Austin backdrops HHH from once announce desk through the other! A holy shit bump if I ever saw one. Also a nice touch of psychology right before that as well. HHH was going for the Pedigree, but tended to the arm first. Austin worked on the arm in the first fall.

HHH gets two neckbreakers on a chair and a back suplex as well on the same chair. All focusing on the neck.

ANOTHER great HHH bump, this time he gets backdropped over the top from a Pegidree attempt! I mean god damn what a match.

Damn what a chair shot by Austin.

HHH brings in the ultimate equalizer…the sledgehammer! Austin goes for a stunner, but HHH shoves off and takes Austin out with the sledgehammer! Pedigree gets the pin. Awesome finish to the 2nd fall! Brilliant booking too, which I’ll get into.

Third fall coming up. All the weapons are still in the ring for the cage too!

The violence continues! Austin eats cage twice, then gets Barbie to the heat. Austin comes back with another chairshot!

Now HHH gets a face full of Barbie.

Austin survives a Pedigree.

Catapult into the cage by Austin! Anything can finish at this point!

HHH survives a Stunner!

Triple H wins 2-1 when he pinned Austin in 39:26. One of my favorite finishes ever. HHH gets the sledgehammer, and Austin gets Barbie. Both men hit one another at the same time…but Austin falls down first and HHH lands on him for the pin. Let’s talk about all the awesome booking points of this match here. First, Austin winning the first fall and HHH winning the second fall was smart in itself. This is because it furthered HHH’s run as a top tier guy. Even though HHH had been on top in 2000 and even proved himself brawl wise in his feud with Foley…he could arguably still be perceived as a tier lower than someone like Stone Cold. Austin putting over HHH in the 2nd fall ended that perception. The finish itself was brilliant, as it can be seen as practically a draw for Austin, not hurting him one bit…but also putting over HHH as a top guy. This should have led to a further feud after Wrestlemania and not been the blow off. What the WWF did instead was one of the dumbest booking decisions in history and one of the reasons they lost so much steam. Even if Austin still turns heel, your top tier babyface is RIGHT THERE in HHH. The crowd even told us this on the RAW after Mania with the huge reaction HHH got when he was out to save Rock from Austin. Instead, all the work this match did for HHH got undone when he suddenly played second fiddle to Austin in the Two Man Power Trip. Damn shame. This booking is actually an offshoot of Bret-Owen, where Owen got the win first, and thus was the clear #1 Contender when Bret won the title.

That doesn’t change the fact that…and it’s close with TLC II…but that this is my 2001 Match of the Year. It’s just incredible. Austin gets a stunner in for good measure.

If Jerry Lawler wins, The Kat gets naked, if Steven Richards wins, The Kat joins the Right To Censor
Jerry Lawler vs. Steven Richards

Here is your cool down match.

Tazz is out here to replace Lawler on commentary. What a thirteen months for him.

The RTC-Kat storyline should be pretty clear.

Richards using his own version of the Ho Train avalanche is pretty brilliant.

Steven Richards pins Jerry Lawler in 5:32. Richards holds Lawler for no reason other for Kat to accidentally hit him with Ivory’s Women’s title. Terrible finish that made no sense. Match was bad too, Richards’s timing was clearly off.

We wouldn’t get the payoff either. WWF fired Kat basically as soon as she got to the back. Lawler, Kat’s real life then husband, quit in protest as well. This is the last time we’d see Lawler until after the InVasion.

World Tag Team Championship: Three Way Tables Match
The Dudley Boyz© vs. Edge and Christian vs. Undertaker and Kane

An odd match that really got thrown together at the last minute, at least the Taker and Kane part. The Dudleyz won the tag belts from E and C at the Rumble.

Undertaker is oddly wearing tights that resemble his Ministry look.

Bubba busts his ass sliding on a chair. Good thing that was after some sick chair shots.

This has been two different matches so far. The Dudleyz beating up E and C, and Taker and Kane beating up E and C.

Now Taker and Kane beat up the Dudleyz.

Taker and Kane destroy everyone with chokeslams and the win seems academic…although it isn’t…

Because Rikishi and Haku are out here to stop Taker and Kane from winning.

The Dudley Boyz retain in 12:04. 3D to Christian through a table. Good match, but we didn’t need to see Taker and Kane bury the tag division. It was necessary though, since Taker was slated to face HHH at Mania (although, was the original plan Taker and Kane vs. Rikishi and Haku…and perhaps Austin vs. Rock vs. HHH? Probably not). Really just a placeholder to get to TLC II at Mania for sure though.

WWF Championship
Kurt Angle© vs. The Rock

Really obvious who’s winning here, but that’s okay. Angle beat Rock back at No Mercy to win the title in the first place. Rock beat Big Show for this title shot.

Kurt Angle established the Ankle Lock as a finisher in this feud with the Rock.

Angle and Rock with a great start. I like Rock’s exaggerated Russian Leg Sweep.

JR sells the Ankle Lock like death. What a great finish that turned out to be for Angle.

You can tell they are working at an accelerated pace due to them running short on time. As a result they just do everything faster without resting. Sometimes the psychology doesn’t work…but it’s working here for sure. Reminds me of the Summerslam ’02 main.

For some reason The Big Show has decided to come out here midway to chokeslam the ref, Angle and The Rock. This didn’t lead to anything though, as Show was in the Hardcore division for the next couple months. Anyway, back to our four star match.

Crazy intensity from Angle when he traps Rock in the Ankle Lock. “Give it up before I break your fucking ankle!”

Angle shockingly survives a People’s Elbow. Angle still looked like a million bucks here. Huge bullshit chant too.

Great false finish with Angle sending Rock into an unprotected corner…and an Angle Slam.

I think the finish gets screwed up here. Rock Bottom gets two, and Earl Hebner doesn’t count three despite the fact it looks like Angle doesn’t move. Weird too, considering Rock would just hit another Rock Bottom.

The Rock wins the title by pin in 16:53. That Rock Bottom wins it, which makes me wonder why they just didn’t go with the first one since Angle didn’t kick out. Nonetheless, this was a great match, obvious finish aside. Angle’s first title reign put him in that main event category. It’s amazing to look at the difference between Angle’s 1st reign and Jericho’s Undisputed reign a year later. Angle was booked strongly all reign and looked like a star afterwards. Jericho was booked like a chump mostly and struggled afterwards.

Anyway, this show owns. Can’t give it the full A+ as there’s a little too much lack of direction with some guys. I mean what the hell Big Show? Taker and Kane being in the tag title match and being attacked by Rikishi and Haku is another example. But those are nitpicks. The show was great. Angle vs. Rock? Great. Austin vs. HHH? Incredible. Even Stephanie vs. Trish was great considering expecations. The WWF might have been nearing the end of its peak, but damn what a peak it was.

Final Grade: A

Pro Wrestling

RDT Reviews WCW Superbrawl Revenge

2001-SuperbrawlRevenge

WCW Superbrawl Revenge
February 18, 2001
Nashville, TN
Reviewed on April 25, 2014

Background: I wrote a little about where WCW was status wise in the Greed review. Basically it was on its last legs and were relying on Scott Steiner to get them out (actually not the worst plan, and I’d argue that it’s even a good plan). But it was too little too late. While WCW was actually showing signs of life in 2001, the damage of 2000 was just way too much for WCW to live through. Vince McMahon was about six weeks away from buying the promotion at this point, although I assume as of this date people still thought Fusient and Eric Bischoff were going to get it at this point. Maybe that’s why there was some motivated stuff going on here.

Alas, the dying days of WCW present Superbrawl REVENGE!

The Card

What a strange opening video. Hard to explain.

I don’t like the Revenge part of the title. Superbrawl is the 2nd biggest WCW PPV of the year. It’s like calling a PPV Summerslam Revenge or something.

Road Warrior Animal attacked Billy Kidman earlier in the show. Apparently he’s out of the Cruiserweight Six Man Match.

Cruiserweight Six Man Four Corners Elimination Match
Jamie Knoble vs. Evan Karagias vs. Shannon Moore vs. Shane Helms vs. Kaz Hayashi vs. Yun Yang

Um…this is just Three Count vs. The Jung Dragons. Although I guess neither of these groups are together at this point. There’s no reference to the history though, except a bit for Hayashi and Yang.

Shannon Moore is still introduced as a member of Three Count.

Maybe I’m wrong. Helms and Moore are still in Three Count. I guess Karagias just isn’t. And Knoble was masked before, so they probably just pretend he wasn’t part of the Dragons.

Helms replaced Kidman in this.

Winner gets a shot at the Cruiser title at Greed.

Nice double team leading to a powerbomb from Helms to Knoble.

Awesome camera work getting Moore going flying out of the ring.

All the history is being brought up now, even with Knoble. My mistake. Not used to WCW referring accurately to history.

What an awesome springboard Tornado DDT from Yang.

Awesome portion when everyone goes to the top and misses a huge move. Pretty cool.

Shannon Moore with an Asai Moonsault…but he springs off the TOP rope.

Just amazing spot after amazing spot here. What a great match and no one’s out yet!

Screwed up kick and Russian legsweep from Yang to Karagias.

Yang pins Karagias for the first elimination.

Knoble tombstones Yang to get rid of him.

Shannon Moore takes an awesome bump off a dropkick off the apron from Knoble!

Top rope Rocker Dropper (Bottoms Up from the Top!) from Moore to Knoble gets rid of him. Three Count vs. Hayashi here.

Backslide into Guillotine Legdrop. What? Crazy innovative.

Moore turns on Helms!

Nightmare on Helms Street takes out Moore. Down to 2!

Shane Helms wins when he pinned Hayashi in 17:30. Vertebreaker for the win. Wow. Just wow. Incredible match. Probably a top 10 all time PPV opener, that’s how good this is. Awesome dynamic having three teams with history be in an every man for himself match. Led to a lot of great double teams. Just amazing. Also makes me wonder if Helms could have been a bigger deal. And what the hell happened to Shannon Moore?

Video camera catches Chavo Guerrero striking a deal with Ric Flair and Animal.

Kevin Nash was hurt on Monday. WILL HE MAKE IT TO THE MAIN EVENT TONIGHT. Er…don’t they always?

Hugh Morrus promo. Ugh, whatever. This is the fallout of the MIA I think. Apparently Hugh Morrus is back TONIGHT. Um..woo?

Flair gives Scott Steiner an envelope.

Now Lance Storm and Kronik have a confrontation about doctors. This was Commissioner Lance Storm. I don’t remember that.

Hugh Morrus vs. The Wall

Couldn’t we just have given the Cruisers 30 minutes?

Morrus kicks the steel steps into the Wall’s head. Interesting spot which would be great…although it kinda shows the steps are a lot lighter than you’d think.

Somehow we’ve gotten to the laying down part of the match. We’re only like 4 minutes in.

Nice screwup on the stun gun. Not sure which that was on.

Hugh Morrus pinned The Wall in 9:43. No Laughing Matter for the win. I actually though this had a solid start, but then turned into a boring “brawl” with a lot of laying down. But I mean, this could have been a lot worse I guess.

Konnan attacks Animal because of what he did to Kidman. Security runs in to break them up…although it was implausible how all those security guards were just around the corner.

WCW World Tag Team Championship
Chuck Palumbo and Sean O’Haire© vs. Mark Jindrak and Sean Stasiak

I know these teams were matches differently at one point.

Four green guys in one ring, although there is loads of potential here. Who’s better anyway, Stasiak or Curtis Axel?

Stasiak makes fun of the Tennessee Titans not winning a championship. Um, wasn’t that 2000?

I actually forgot how solid of a team O’Haire and Palumbo were. Shame the APA buried them as fast as they did.

Mark Jindrak is pretty awful tough. Just got catapulted into his partner…and totally forgets to sell it.

Palumbo is your future Chucky in peril.

Palumbo and O’Haire win when O’Haire pins Stasiak in 11:37. Senton Bomb! Really well done tag match. I’m shocked. Put Palumbo and especially O’Haire over nicely. I know everyone says O’Haire was wasted in 2003…but he was wasted here too. There was huge potential here and he was someone WCW could have built the company around 2-3 years from this point. A shame. Pretty solid start to the PPV.

Dustin Rhodes trashes Rick Steiner and Ric Flair.

WCW Cruiserweight Championship
Chavo Guerrero Jr.(c) vs. Rey Mysterio Jr.

While Chavo’s peak as a wrestling character was 1998…he was probably as his peak as a wrestler in 2001.

Ugh, Rey with devil horns.

A hard clothesline knocks the horns off. Best think Chavo ever did.

Tony says Rey has had four major knee operations. No wonder he can barely walk now.

Rey telegraphs a counter while in the tree of woe. Come on Rey.

Gory Special is a cool submission. I don’t like the Gory Bomb though.

Rey seems off, just not smooth climbing Chavo’s shoulders and the telegraph earlier.

Rey is even a bit low on the moonsault. He’s just off.

Maybe I’m just biased again non-masked Rey.

Really digging Chavo here. Nice heel stuff from him.

Chavo puts a Rey Jr. mask on Rey Jr. I expect a comeback now.

Rey now puts the mark on Chavo.

Nice over the top somersault from Rey.

We have a chair in the ring!

Rey with a cool Hurricanrana off the apron from a wristlock…but he unfortunately screwed up the setup twice.

Chavo Guerrero Jr. retains in 15:53. Rey tries to use the chair…but ref takes it and Chavo uses that distraction to hit Rey with another chair! Brainbuster wins it. Good match…but Rey actually brought it down a bit by being sloppy. Solid heel finish. This set up Chavo vs. Helms.

WCW US Championship
Rick Steiner© vs. Dustin Rhodes

Somehow Kevin Nash made this happen storyline wise. Dustin had problems with Owner Flair here.

Rick actually drops the US title on the way to the ring. Real nice Rick.

Rick actually sells some punches here. Already more than the Greed match with Booker.

I think it’s weird that 2014 Goldust is in twice the shape 2001 Dustin was.

Probably the worst looking jawbreaker ever by Dustin…it looked like Steiner hit a Rear Naked Choke Drop.

Rick Steiner retains in 9:11 by pin. Steiner slams Rhodes into an unexposed turnbuckle…then uses the ropes for the pin which is a good heel finish. Match sucked though. Expected from Rick Steiner at this point. Post Match Shattered Dreams owned though. Sorry Dustin, unless you are Goldust, no one cares.

Flair tells Commish Storm Dustin needs to get kicked out. Winner of Totally Buff and Kronik gets a tag title shot.

Page and The Cat are left from team non-Flair I guess. What about Nash? Page says they need the Cat to win back the Commissionership.

Totally Buff vs. Kronik

Luger rambles. Great. He even begins to imitate Flair.

Bagwell buries our Tag Champs. Although…the champs get their revenge at Greed.

Apparently Bryan Clarke isn’t medically cleared. So we have a handicap match.

Clarke comes out anyway. So what’s the point of the storyline?

Hey a fake Bryan Clarke. It’s Mike Awesome. I gotta say, that’s nicely done. He attacks Adams of course.

Totally Buff defeats Brian Adams when Bagwell got the pin in 6:45. Match sucked, but I admit I liked the finish. Put over Adams I guess.

Lance Storm tries to kick Kronik out of the building. Lance Storm does seem like an awesome Commissioner actually.

WCW Commissionership On the Line
Lance Storm© vs. The Cat

The Cat calls Lance Storm a fake Power Ranger. I don’t get it.

On one hand I feel like Storm deserves better…on the other it’s cool to have a storyline instead of just having matches.

They do tell a good story with Storm working on a knee he attacked on Thunder.

The Cat pins Lance Storm in 8:07. Mike Sanders causes a distraction and the Cat hits the Feliner for the win. Total mismatch of ability here. Okay for what it was.

We are supposed to get DDP vs. Jeff Jarrett…but Jarrett makes Page go through a warm-up. Oddly remixed video of DDP challenging Kanyon. Anywhere, anytime! So Jarrett says now.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Kanyon

Kanyon attacks Page from behind and here we go.

Kanyon with a Rocker Dropper on the steel steps. Unique I guess. Page is bleeding.

Cool suplex where Kanyon was standing on the 2nd rope and Page was on the apron. Kanyon then suplexed him. Creative indeed.

KANYON CUTTER! Page survives!

Jarrett’s here. Ref is out. Stroke!

Kanyon pins DDP in 8:15. Flatliner for the win. I think that’s an odd choice since Page is gonna fight Jarrett now…but I guess the idea is that Kanyon wore down Page for Jarrett. Anyway, solid match. Pretty good back and forth.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Jeff Jarrett

Kanyon introduces the next match….a good line here here: “Scheduled for one fall, I don’t know, two hour time limit.”

I like how Jarrett just redoes his whole entrance.

Scott Hudson says “we’ll stay with this as long as we can”. Um..what?

I guess this is no DQ…since we have blatant chair action.

This is a pretty basic match with Jarrett beating on DDP and DDP coming back, but at least it is well done.

Page takes a straight chair shot to the head…but Page kicks out.

DDP pins Jarrett in 8:30. Jarrett accidentally nails Kanyon with a guitar…and Page gets the Diamond Cutter for the win. Another solid basic match. Told the story of Page having to go through two matches well.

IS KEVIN NASH HERE? CAN HE WRESTLE?

WCW World Championship
Scott Steiner© vs. Kevin Nash

President Flair comes to ringside! He’s on commentary!

Wow we get the Sid broken leg spot in a video. Was that necessary?

Flair makes it a retirement match! Those are always legit! That was what the envelope was all about.

Here comes Nash! Wheelchair with two hot nurses. Lol Kevin Nash is cool?

Scott Steiner can’t pronounce sympathy.

Nash is faking. Nash hits Steiner with the WCW Title and pins Steiner, 1…2…3! What a load of bullshit that is. Scott Steiner is supposed to be a MONSTER heel you know.
Flair turns this into best 2 out of 3 falls. It’ll take more than 2 falls to save Steiner’s credibility here. Also, wouldn’t it have made more sense for Flair to have DQed Nash there?

Totally Buff randomly attacks DDP in the back. Ok?

Steiner whacks Nash with a lead pipe…but Steiner can’t get Nash’s dead weight into the ring. So Flair says it’s Falls Count Anywhere. Steiner ties it up.

Kevin Nash just escapes the Steiner Recliner like it’s nothing. I don’t even like Steiner that much and I know that’s awful.

Pretty sure Midajah misses her cue on taking out the ref when Nash had a pin attempt. That was funny.

Jackknife but Midajah and Flair take out the ref.

Flair takes out the ref a second time.

Scott Steiner retains by ref stoppage at 12:29. Steiner Recliner after a chair shot gets it done. Horrible match, horrible booking. It’s crap like this that killed WCW. Not only did Nash pin Steiner in 16 seconds, but he then survived and escaped the Steiner Recliner with little struggle and had Steiner beat twice and got help to kill the count. Horrible main event ruined what was a pretty decent show. I defend Nash at times, but here is just indefensible.

The effort was there. It really was. WCW did some good stuff at the end. It’s too bad guys like Nash were still around hurting the product. WCW was missing some top guys here (Sting, Booker) and still put on a decent show. The first half of it sans Morrus-Wall had some awesome wrestling, especially the opener.

I was ready to give WCW the benefit of the doubt and a B, B- for effort and some legit good stuff, but Kevin Nash just had to come in his wheel chair and fuck that up. Still, for the first half and the DDP stuff, this is a decent PPV. A C+, C ending for WCW isn’t bad considering what 2000 was like for them.

Final Grade: C+

Pro Wrestling

RDT Reviews WCW Halloween Havoc 2000

HH_00

WCW Halloween Havoc 2000
October 29, 2000
Las Vegas, NV
Reviewed on March 6, 2014

Background: Um…WCW was in full trainwreck mode at this point but they were going in a good direction with Booker T and Scott Steiner feuding for the World Title. This card overall looks like a disaster though. By looking at the results I see a First Blood DNA match, a Kickboxing match and two handicap matches. It’s going to be one of those shows…isn’t it…

WCW though, was nearing its end. Hollywood Hogan has departed a few months earlier. Guys like Scott Hall, Ric Flair, Kevin Nash and DDP are nowhere to be found on the card. Randy Savage is gone. The card is made up of young guys that never got the rub they needed from the generation before them. How bad can this be?

The Card

Video asking fans who’s gonna win between Goldberg and Kronik. Some actually said Kronik.

Apparently this PPV was brought to us by the game WCW Backstage Assault. Backstage Assault is the biggest ripoff ever in regards to wrestling video games. It was just the backstage portion of WCW Mayhem.

Sigh, I have to listen to Mark Madden.

WCW Tag Team Championship
Natural Born Thrillers (Sean O’Haire and Mark Jindrak) vs. Billy Kidman and Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. The Boogie Knights (Disqo and Alex Wright)

I like how Disqo and Wright look different, but they basically have the same gimmick they had 3 years ago.

Hm…Jindrak now. Why is it Palumbo and O’Haire later? Anyway Madden just said he sees Arn Anderson in Mark Jindrak.

Rey with devil horns! Just sigh.

Madden: Jindrak and O’Haire remind me of a white Harlem Heat. Mark Madden is the worst.

Just realize that’s Stevie Ray on commentary as well.

Konnan is also on commentary calling everyone a piece of crap. Ok then.

Nice springboard bodypress from Jindrak.

It’s notable that Jindrak and O’Haire haven’t completely grasped the art of selling. Jindrak especially looks raw.

O’Haire and Rey get into a weird punching sequence that O’Haire screws up.

Double toss from the outside INTO the ring on Kidman from NBT. That was cool.

This commentary is awful.

Alex Wright with some kind of attack on Rey…which ends up with Wright dumping himself out of the ring.

So many botches. Disqo misses a kick but still hits the Last Dance (Stunner!)

The Natural Born Thrillers retain the title when Sean O’Haire pins Disqo in 10:06. O’Haire nails Disqo with a Sean-Ton Bomb for the win. The botches really took me out of the match. It could have been fun. O’Haire and Jindrak were not ready for this level yet.

Wow talk about exaggeration. Mark Madden says this was one of the finest matches he have had the privilege of calling. Also, hilariously, Rey Jr. is getting beat up with a chair by Alex Wright…and Konnan debates helping him! I mean he does, but your best friend is getting beat up with a chair! Get in there! They hurt Konnan too, apparently injuring his knee.

Sgt. AWOL for the save!

WCW Hardcore Championship
Reno© vs. Sgt. AWOL

Add the The Briscos and The Midnight Express as teams Madden compared Jindrak and O’Haire to.

AWOL is already through a table.

Apparently WCW has instituted old school hardcore rules. Apparently new school rules meant matches started in the back. Um..ok.

Mark Madden: You can get old school hardcore rules anywhere in Vegas for $150. Thanks Mark.

I don’t know how hitting one another with kendo sticks and garbage cans could be boring…but this is.

Reno hits the Roll of the Dice on the floor! That’s Cody Rhodes’ Crossroads for anyone wondering.

Backstage Assault advert RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MATCH.

Reno through two tables. Even that looked boring.

I guess putting people through tables has no effect on anyone.

AWOL decks…Finlay? How random.

Reno retains the title via pin at 10:50. Roll of the Dice on a table. Reno wins. That might have been the most boring hardcore match I’d ever seen. It was basically the definition of going through the motions.

The Perfect Event (Shawn Stasiak and Chuck Palumbo) now attack AWOL. He comes Lt. Loco (Chavo Guerrero) and Cpl. Cajun (Lash LeRoux) for the save!

Hilarious backstage segment. It’s not supposed to be, but here is why it is. The Perfect Event was just in the ring attacking AWOL in their wrestling attire. Well backstage Shane Douglas is telling O’Haire and Jindrak good job on the attack on Konnan earlier, like it is a live backstage segment….except The Perfect Event is there too in different attire. Great planning WCW!

Video showing what happened with Goldberg hitting his head on the ringpost against Kronik.

Backstage, Kronik says that they don’t think Goldberg will show up.

Lt. Loco and Cpl. Cajun vs. The Perfect Event

Bonus match! You know, there doesn’t really seem to be enough time on this show for this.

At Greed, Chavo was normal Chavo. I wonder what the storyline progression was there.

Mark Madden: You know Stevie, as a member of Harlem Heat I know you were used to bad teamwork.

You know Mark, they only won like 7 or 8 (maybe more) World Tag Team titles. For fucks sake.

Apparently the Perfect Event are having problems getting along or something.

Backstage Assault ad AGAIN. In the middle of the fucking match.

Stasiak can’t even taunt naturally.

LeRoux basically no sells a big boot from Palumbo, that even seemed to surprise Tony Schiavone on commentary as he stuttered when it happened.

Mark Madden fawns over Chuck Palumbo’s chain wrestling. I wonder if Mark Madden has ever even watched wrestling before.

Chavo is by far the best wrestler in the ring. By far.

Lt. Loco and Cpl. Cajun win when Loco pins Stasiak in 9:23. Palumbo accidentally superkicks Stasiak into a Loco Tornado DDT. This match was boring and it sucked. Lash LeRoux is awful. Palumbo and Stasiak aren’t ready yet.

Konnan is tending to his knee. He asks other members if the Filthy Animals to take his place, but they all had a match already. Konnan gets mad and says whatever. Ok then.

The Franchise and Torrie Wilson vs. Konnan and Tygress

Torrie Wilson is in sexy Wonder Woman gear for no reason. A positive!

Mark Madden practically admitted to jacking off to Wonder Woman as a kid. Thanks Mark.

Tygress is willing to do a handicap match as Konnan is hurt. Didn’t Konnan say he was coming out?

Why is Tygress even in the ring. She’s already done a horrible armdrag and she can’t even do stomps correctly. Stomps!

Here’s Konnan(from the crowd for some reason)…and Douglas takes him out.

Apparently it’s a back injury and not a knee injury. He still got in the Rolling Clothesline though. Nice selling.

I feel like if DC Comics knew this match existed they would have sued WCW so fast.

Tygress misses a baseball slide. Totally misses. At least Torrie didn’t pretend to sell it.

Tygress is owning The Franchise. I guess Douglas wasn’t getting a main event run.

Tygress gets punched in the face by Douglas. You know it’s bad when I practically cheered that happening. Mark Madden said the punch was justified…and you know what, he’s right.

Stevie Ray calls the Camel Clutch the Boston Crab. Great stuff.

Tygress was in a Crossface Chicken Wing from Douglas, but she escapes by slowly running around the ring and then sending Douglas through the ropes.

Torrie with the Franchiser on Konnan! Good thing I hate Konnan.

Konnan and Tygress win when Konnan pinned The Franchise in 8:38. Konnan pins Douglas after they hit a double Stuff Buster (X-Factor) on Douglas. For some reason Torrie doesn’t break up the pin. Awful. Absolutely awful.

A little storyline behind this next match. Stacy Keibler found out she was pregnant at New Blood Rising (I think). She cheated on David Flair with Buff Bagwell. Now we get a First Blood DNA Match. Believe it or not, I don’t think that’s that terrible. I mean it’s bad, but it’s a creative way to figure out if Buff is the father!

First Blood DNA Match
Buff Bagwell vs. David Flair

“It’s time to find out if Buff Daddy is the real daddy!” Clever one Buff.

The first move is botched. Bagwell tries to slam Flair face first into the turnbuckle, but he lost grasp of David’s head.

Is Buff the face? He yawns, which is a heel thing to do, right?

Flair does his dad’s turnbuckle flip then is thrown off the top rope like his dad. Nice I guess?

Wow he just did the Ric Flair falling face first spot. That was a bit much though.

This match is Buff Bagwell beating up and mocking David Flair. This is practically a comedy match.

Weak chairshot from Bagwell, and David goes over the rope and clearly hides by the apron to blade. Come on.

Buff Bagwell wins in 5:37. Buff Blockbuster…and the ref sees the blood from the chairshot. Match sucked. I don’t even know what the point of this was other than to beat up David Flair a bit. Lex Luger is here….and he turns on Buff Bagwell! Bagwell into the post and he’s bleeding from the mouth. David Flair gets his sample!

Luger and Bagwell were friends again 5 months later.

I sense that because of Flair’s blood, the sample will be messed up or something.

For the record, Mark Madden used the terms spots and angle in this match. Reality Era 11 years early! Take that WWE!

Goldberg’s in the house!

Scott Steiner interview! Booker T will find out that size does matter!

Kickboxing Match for WCW Commissioner Position
Mike Sanders vs. Ernest Miller

Perfect Event is out there with Mike Sanders. I guess that whole angle with the Perfect Even not getting along earlier is being ignored.

I believe this will be contested with two minute rounds, three rounds total. This is what this PPV needed, a Kickboxing Match.

Mike Sanders: “This is no Tyson Fight, no Thrilla in Manilla, no Rumble in the Jungle…just me being dead in your ass.” What the fuck Mike Sanders.

This might be over in 30 seconds! Miller nails a kick to the face. Sanders makes it up at 8. Damn.

Sanders goes down again. Up at 9.

Round 1 is over. This match sucks.

Mark Madden: “Did the Cat bite Mike Sanders’ ear”? Shut up already.

Round 2 is all Miller. Sanders down again! Up at 7.

Miller with the dancing split uppercut! Sanders is down! Palumbo wanted to throw in the towel, but Stasiak doesn’t let him. Sanders is up at 9!

Shane Douglas is out here. I guess he needs to be involved in two shitty matches tonight.

Final round!

Cartwheel kick to Sanders! He still survives. End this shit please.

Douglas nails The Cat with a chain on a fist!

Miller gets up at 9? Ref stopped counting for some reason with 7 seconds left.

Match keeps going?

Mike Sanders wins. The Cat fights Douglas on the outside…and gets counted out. Literally makes no sense. The round was over. None. Zero. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.

Backstage, Goldberg is tested by some doctors. Goldberg says he’s been a little dizzy since Monday. Even though the post thing happened Wednesday on Thunder.

Mike Awesome vs. Vampiro

That 70s guy!

It takes 30 seconds to see that Vampiro fucking sucks. No selling, and doesn’t even take a back bump correctly.

Vampiro takes out a security lady when he fails to land on his feet in a backdrop into the crowd.

A fan attacks Mike Awesome and Awesome and Vampiro kick the crap out of him. Nice.

Vampiro can’t even stand on a announce table. I wish I was exaggerating how bad this is. Flying clothesline looks terrible.

There is a chair in the ring and they used weapons in the crowd, I guess this is a no DQ match?

Vampiro tries a Van Daminator. Guess what? He fucked that up too!

A clothesline! Seriously. How does that not happen correctly.

Wow. Vampiro almost injures both himself and Awesome with a top rope belly to belly suplex. Vampiro fell of the top and threw Awesome over his head. Just wow.

Vampiro attempts to throw Awesome’s face into a table…but just lets go early and Awesome doesn’t complete the move. What? How?

Mike Awesome hits a really hard forearm on Vampiro in the ring. Vampiro doesn’t sell it. It’s so sad that this match would be one of those that would show a kid that wrestling isn’t real.

Mike Awesome pins Vampiro in 9:49. Awesome Bomb from the top for the win…followed by that terrible music. That was one of the worst matches I have ever seen, and by far the worst match on the show, which is saying something. Vampiro is absolutely terrible.

Mark Madden says that underneath the gimmick, Mike Awesome is one of the best wrestlers in the world. Well no shit (although that’s a little bit of exaggeration). It’s almost like the gimmick should go.

Great, a General Rection interview.

General Rection came back for everyone or something.

Vampiro being helped out. Tony Schiavone says that this is one of the most awesome spots we’ll ever see.

WCW Canadian (US) Championship: Handicap Match
Lance Storm© and Jim Duggan vs. General Rection

Major Gunns is being held captive by Team Canada. If General Rection wins, he wins the title and Major Gunns back.

Not usually a fan of the Handicap Match for the title idea, but it’s more unusual when the team has the title.

Lance Storm’s promo was the 2nd bright spot after Torrie’s outfit.

I assume the Misfits In Action theme is dubbed on the WWE Network. Because it’s awful.

At least the crowd is into it by chanting USA.

Duggan looks horribly out of shape here.

Stevie Ray asks on why she’s called Major Gunns. I think he seriously doesn’t know.

Just curious, any reason we just didn’t get Storm vs. Rection here?

Nice superkick from Storm.

Duggan is the legal man, but ref counts a pin on Storm anyway. Duggan embarrassingly stomps and misses Rection and gets Storm. It looked so bad, Schiavone tried to sell it as maybe Duggan meant to hit Storm.

Storm and Rection mess up a headlock spot. I’m gonna assume that wasn’t on Storm.

Crazy ref bump in all this too.

Duggan with a piledriver! Rection kicks out and sends Duggan onto the ref.

Primetime Elix Skipper is here, but Gunns knocks him off the apron. This distracts Storm.

General Rection wins the title when he pins Jim Duggan at 10:07. Duggan misses Rection with the 2X4 and Duggan gets knocked down. Duggan clearly throws the 2X4 out of the ring, only it doesn’t make it, so he clearly shoves it out. Rection hits No Laughing Matter for the win. Another really bad match. The Lance Storm match isn’t even good.

Sting vs. Jeff Jarrett

Story here is Jarrett has been mocking Sting and saying he has no heart.

Jarrett interview: He’s gonna show a metamorphosis or Sting’s career, from a nobody to a has been to a never was. I do think that’s a good line.

Sting with a chair! I guess this is no DQ.

This is all Sting early on.

Here comes someone dressed as the old Sting. Apparently it is specifically 1989 Sting.

2000 Sting hits 1989 Sting with a Scorpion Death Drop on the floor. Ok then.

Now we have 1990 Sting! Hair doesn’t work here!

1990 Sting botches going over the top rope. Well he got thrown over eventually.

Hiptoss on the stage on the 1990 Sting.

2000 Sting with a Scorpion Death Drop on the stage on 1990 Sting.

Wolfpac music! Wolfpac Sting in the house!

2000 Sting beats up Wolfpac Sting with a baseball bat.

2000 Sting Scorpion Death Drops Wolfpac Sting on the stage.

Jeff Jarrett gets his first offensive move in with a baseball bat shot!

It took three fake Stings and a bat, but Jarrett now has firm control of the match.

Sting’s making his comeback!

Scorpion Deathlock….NWO STING COMING THROUGH THE CANVAS.

Real Sting gets dragged into the hole…but he emerges and has bloodied the NWO Sting.

Two Stinger Splashes and the lights go out.

We get another fuckin’ Sting from the rafters! The wig almost falls off.

The crowd got the wig!

Real Sting puts the 5th fake Sting through the Announcer’s Table with a Scorpion Death Drop.

Scorpion Deathlock on Jarrett…where ANOTHER fake Sting smashes a guitar over Sting’s head. Oh, this is a bloodied fake Sting. So this is Sting #4.

Real Sting recovers easily…and Scorpion Death Drops the fake Sting.

Jeff Jarrett pins Sting in 14:38. Jarrett comes in and smashes Sting (the real one) with a guitar! 1…2…3! What was the difference between this guitar and the last one? Ok so wow. What the fuck was that? Why couldn’t we just run Jarrett vs. Sting? It probably would have been a solid match. This might have been the stupidest match I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know who this was supposed to put over, or what the point was. I’m so confused.

Plus they need to fix the ring.

Booker T interview. He respects Goldberg, so he wants to go on against Scott Steiner now so buy Goldberg a little more time to get cleared so he can face Kronik. I’m sure those 15 minutes are everything.

WCW World Championship
Booker T© vs. Scott Steiner

I feel bad for Michael Buffer.

Scott Steiner beats up an agent in the back because he wanted to go on last and main event.

Steiner just looks scary as hell beating up Booker.

Steiner’s trying to go into the crowd to beat up fans.

Booker with a nice leapfrog to spinkick combo!

Steiner is threatening Stevie Ray. I actually like that. It makes sense…he’s Booker’s brother afterall.

Steiner scarily threatens the ref when he only gets a 2 count.

Steiner with a Samoan Drop from the 2nd rope. Nice.

Booker’s making the big comeback!

Midajah pulls Booker on the top rope, crotching him. Booker recovers and gets a missile dropkick.

Axe Kick!

Steiner nails Booker with a lead pipe. Then he takes out the ref.

Steiner Recliner…then Steiner takes out ref #2.

Booker T retains by DQ at 13:26. Steiner takes out another ref right as he calls for the bell. For the record a chair was used earlier, so why the DQ? To be honest, this match is not bad at all. Best match of the night (that’s not saying anything though). But it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t particularly good, but it wasn’t bad. Really makes Steiner someone to be feared.

I like how Jarrett runs out to calm Steiner down. I’d guess Steiner had a beatdown planned, but with only 10 minutes or so left on the show Jarrett had to run down to cut that short for the main event!

Career Threatening Handicap Match
Goldberg vs. Kronik

Brian Adams promo. Cause that’s what this show needs. Kronik says there is no match, Goldberg isn’t cleared.

Hard to believe this was once Crush. Doesn’t really look like him.

Here comes Goldberg!

Here we go! Goldberg has to beat them both.

Adams gets a table!

Double Chokeslam though the table…no! He spears Clarke though the table! 2 minutes in he pins Clarke!

Goldberg thinks he won…I guess it wasn’t clear he needed to beat both. Adams attacks him from behind.

Goldberg wins when he pins Adams in 3:35. Um.it was 3 minutes. I get it was a Goldberg match, but come on. I guess it was the 2nd or 3rd best match on the show.

Okay.

This show felt like it went on forever.

This shit is the absolute worst. It was horrible. Absolutely horrible. Opener was below average with potential. Hardcore match was boring. Bonus tag sucked. First Blood DNA was bad. Kickboxing Match was awful and made absolutely no sense. Awesome vs. Vampiro was one of the worst PPV matches I had ever seen. US/Canadian Title Handicap Match was bad. Jarrett vs. Sting was unnecessarily stupid. Booker vs. Steiner was decent. Main event was rushed.

I haven’t seen all the WCW PPVs, but I have a feeling this one may be the worst.

It’s amazing how much better Greed was than this.

It doesn’t surprise me that this won the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Awards for worst major show.

It does surprise me that they even made it to March of next year.

If you factor in expectations and the fact that there is a multi-billion dollar organization behind WCW, this PPV may be worse than Heroes of Wrestling.

Horrible.

Final Grade: F

Pro Wrestling

RDT Reviews WWF No Mercy 2000

No_mercy_2000

No Mercy 2000
October 22, 2000
Albany, NY
Reviewed on March 23, 2014

Background: The WWF-WCW war for all intents and purposes was over. The WWF had a checkmark next to every conceivable comparison you could make. Biggest stars? Check. Best wrestlers? Check. Most compelling storylines? Check. Characters fans cared the most about? Check. I could go on and on, but the war was just about over.

But interestingly enough, and this is sometimes forgotten over time, but the WWF had actually passed their peak as well. While numbers were still quite strong across the board, the RAW rating had went from a consistent high 5s to mid 6s (and sometimes low 7s) to high 4s to sometimes 6 flat. Once again, obviously great numbers, but not the super sky high numbers the WWF did through 1999 and early 2000. There were some reasons for that. One of which was the main storyline here, but also who those new characters were.

Although I personally prefer a combination of great wrestling and great storytelling…Crash TV at one point really was the way to go for the highest ratings. In 2000 the WWF moved away from that. There was a new focus on great matches and a lot of it had to do with the new talent WWF acquires or brought up though 2000 (Radicalz, Kurt Angle, William Regal, emergence of Edge, Christian and Hardyz). And well, the real draw of wrestling usually isn’t wrestling.

The other big thing going on at the time that really is up for debate is what Stone Cold Steve Austin’s return to the WWF meant in terms of business. For whatever reason, it didn’t do the crazy great business that Austin’s name on the marquee used to do. Once again it isn’t to say that it wasn’t successful, but ratings didn’t bump and actually trended downward once Austin came back. Now, while I’m using Austin’s comeback as a reference point here, I actually don’t think its Austin’s fault that ratings didn’t rise when he came back. It’s just the WWF, great matches and all, had its time in the Crash TV era. You can only have the same guys on top for so long before people don’t care anymore, at least in TV land. What Austin was doing in 1998 and 1999 was revolutionary. In 2000, it was the norm. I assume that’s why they went with the heel turn in 2001.

Anyway, I do think the main storyline coming into his comeback also hurt a bit. I get the idea to elevate Rikishi to the top, he was getting great face reactions, but this was totally out of left field and even the WWF kinda retconned it when HHH was the accomplice (even though, I did like Rikishi’s reasoning). This storyline needed a big payoff (HHH was logical, although it’s too bad HBK wasn’t active here). For the record this angle is my reasoning of why Undertaker can’t lose his Wrestlemania streak to just anyone to get them over. The fans won’t buy it. It needs to go to a top or near top guy to further cement them (like Daniel Bryan!)

Anyway, No Mercy 2000! The return of the Rattlesnake!

The Card

Awesome opening promo. It’s a takeoff of Stone Cold’s Survivor Series 96 promo with Bret Hart (the black and white I’m gonna kick your ass thing). “I’m looking at Rikishi, and I’m looking at deadman”.

Dudley Boyz Tag Team Elimination Invitational
Too Cool vs. Lo-Down vs. Raven and Tazz vs. the Dudley Boyz vs. Goodfather and Bull Buchanan

Funny enough, Too Cool look like Public Enemy bringing a table with them and dancing.

This is like a Tag Team Turmoil match…just you gotta put someone through a table to eliminate them.

D’Lo looks a bit out of shape. This was his last gimmick before he was gone.

Some talk about Edge and Christian being sick and unable to be in this match. This is part of something awesome later.

Both Lo-Down members end up going through a table. Too Cool advances.

Tazz and Raven next. This could have been an ECW dream match at one time.

Grandmaster Sexay’s feet accidentally destroy a table. That didn’t give away that it was gimmicked now did it? (And Big Show should be angered he lost the IC title for the same thing in 2012).

Scotty does a WORM under a table. Nice.

Scotty gets double suplexes through the table right after. I swear Scotty loses more matches when he does the worm than when he doesn’t.

Dudley time. They didn’t even get last position in their own match.

It’s amazing how the former ECW Tag Champs are destroying two former ECW World Champs.

D-Von legdrops Tazz through a table. Here come the RTC!

The Dudley Boyz win in 12:18. Stupid finish here. Bull accidentally clotheslines the referee. Bubba powerbombs Bull Buchanan through the table, but the ref didn’t see it since he’s out. Goodfather with the chair shot takes out Bubba and he lands in the table wreckage Ref wakes up and calls it for the RTC…which would have been a fine finish for the heels cheating to win. But a 2nd ref comes in and tells the 1st ref what happened…match restart…3D through table for win. So, why don’t we have two referees for everything then? Still a fun little match though.

We get a quick Trish, Test and Albert discussion about it being okay if Trish’s boobs fall out. I’m sure everyone agrees.

By gawd, it’s Rikishi! He’s got a sledgehammer!

At lot of the commentary during the tables match was that Stone Cold wasn’t at the arena yet. JR guarantees he will be.

Lita and the APA vs. Trish and T & A

Lita had the worst theme music in the WWF at this time.

Story here: Strip poker game with Trish, Test, Albert and the APA went wrong. Also Trish hates Lita. SO here we are.

T & A beats the crap out of the APA backstage.

It’s a 3 on 1 attack on Lita…but of course the Hardyz make the save. I mean, it would have been stupid if they hadn’t, right?

No match, which is always stupid, but I don’t think it was made until late anyway, and it’s way to get them all on the PPV I guess.

Edge and Christian backstage and not sick! Pretty awesome interview using the word nuts. Anyway, they’ll be there to watch Los Conquistadores win the tag titles!

Steel Cage Match
X-Pac vs. Chris Jericho

I believe the story stems off of the HHH vs. Jericho feud through the summer. Jericho beat X-Pac at Unforgiven. They’ve been feuding since.

Weird start where Jericho baseball slides X-Pac as he was coming through the door. So they end up fighting around the outside. I usually don’t like cage matches that have outside fighting, with a few exceptions.

Jericho rockets X-Pac into the cage…and I do believe X-Pac injured his neck there which is why we don’t see him again until February.

Backdrop into the cage and X-Pac lands on his head (although the ropes helped break the fall). That might have been where the injury happened.

X-Pac goes for the pin. I never understood those spots where people go for pins in non-pinfall matches.

Big boos for the Bronco Buster.

Powerbomb from the top rope. To be honest, some of these spots are cool, but the match just isn’t clicking.

Jericho gets a Walls on the top of the cage, but it looks like crap…and Jericho goes crashing back into the ring.

Chris Jericho wins by escape in 10:40. Okay, here is one of the best cage match spots ever. X-Pac has it won and is about to escape. X-Pac stands on the top of the open door and celebrates, and Jericho dropkicks the cage making X-Pac crotch the door! Jericho escapes for the win. Finish was great. Match was fine I guess. Problems with it were that fans were disappointed Jericho had went from fighting HHH and Benoit to X-Pac so they never thought he was losing…and X-Pac heat started around this time.

Steve Blackman at WWF New York!

Foley’s Office. Rikishi demands to know where Austin is. Foley said if he doesn’t show, he’ll raise Rikishi’s hand.

Apparently Eddie Guerrero got hurt against Billy Gunn on RAW for an IC title match. So…

Eddie Guerrero and Chyna vs. Val Venis and Steven Richards

This was the last days of Mr. Ass. At least until 2003. Gunn would lose the name to the RTC in a few weeks.

Chyna was still very over at this point. I don’t know where it went off the rails for her exactly, but she was done in nine months. Gunn would be done as a potential top guy after having a bad match with Benoit in December.

I do think they should have went with the Outlaws again here as they would have been a perfect foil for RTC.

Some psychology! They work on Gunn’s shoulder, which he just came back from having surgery on.

Never liked Chyna’s cartwheel elbow. The elbow part was always so weak.

Val Venis and Steven Richards win when Val pins Chyna in 7:10. Goodfather and Bull take out Gunn (to no DQ?). Chyna is about to Pedigree Val, but Guerrero wins in and smashes her in the back with a pipe disguised by flowers. Val gets the win. Nothing really to say here. Not bad, not good. Not anything. RTC were natural heat magnets and Chyna was pretty damn over.

HHH is backstage. This was his small time as a face before the Austin angle played out. Stephanie McMahon wants to be at ringside with HHH. HHH thinks it’s too dangerous for her to be at ringside with Benoit out there. They start to argue a bit when she talks about helping her business partner Kurt Angle.

No Holds Barred
Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Rikishi

Just as Foley comes out to raise Rikishi’s hand…here comes Austin in a truck!

Austin gets a huge pop of course.

This is ALL Austin. All Austin. I’ll explain why that wasn’t the way to go afterwards.

Austin beats the shit out of Rikishi with a chair. Rikishi’s busted. Rikishi has gotten a little offense and a kick in.

Stone Cold and Rikishi wrestled to a no contest in 9:21. Austin puts Rikishi in his truck and brings him to the street. Austin then tries to run over Rikishi, but the police intervene and arrest Austin. Pretty sure that means Rikishi should be the winner, but whatever. The brawl is pretty good for what it is, but the problem is the booking all the way. I’m going to take some time to explain what’s wrong with this angle and where and why it went wrong, assuming that no matter what the WWF was going to go with Rikishi. And by the way, if Austin gets arrested here, shouldn’t Rikishi have been arrested for running over Austin in the first place?

Okay, so I wrote earlier in the background about why Rikishi was not the best choice for the angle…but once WWF decided it was him, they had to stick with it. The first match between the two here at No Mercy needed to be a 50:50 (or even a Rikishi beat down)…although understandably you want Stone Cold to look good and kick ass on his return match. Here’s why you can’t have an Austin beatdown: it kills Rikishi.

Think of it this way. Wrestlemania XXX, John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt. If Cena kills Wyatt in a 10 minute match, what happens? It’s practically the end of Wyatt. What if Wyatt beats down Cena or it’s a 50:50 match where Cena barely wins? Heck what if it’s a five minute squashing of season, what happens? Makes Wyatt look like gold and doesn’t hurt Cena one bit. For example, Wyatt beating Daniel Bryan at the Royal Rumble is perfect. Made Wyatt look great, didn’t hurt Bryan one bit.

Well the idea of taking Rikishi seriously as a top guy went to hell. Rikishi had flashes with the main event…but this was his first true test and he looked like a chump. AND when he went back to a dancing fool eight months later well, I believe that was one of the storylines that killed the goodwill of the fans from the Attitude era. Even if he flopped as a heel (not like his turn to babyface worked or anything), the thing he did (running over Austin) was bad enough that he had to stay there. By the way once HHH was involved in the feud, well, you might as well have stuck a fork in Rikishi as it is. (Also for the record, the four guys WWF was pushing toward the top in 2000 were Angle, Benoit, Jericho and Rikishi. The only one to get a big win over a main eventer was Angle, and not surprisingly, he was the biggest star of the four up until 2008).

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

WWF European Championship
William Regal© vs. Naked Mideon

Regal tells us that Foley said Mideon had to wear clothes. Thank god.

Early on Mideon teases the shirt taking off and Regal is disgusted. Regal’s facial reactions are amazing.

Shirt comes off. Ugh.

OH MY GOD CENSOR THAT SHIT NETWORK. Pants went flying off.

William Regal retains the title by pin in 6:10. There is a funny moment at the end as Regal goes for the Regal Stretch but doesn’t want to touch Mideon (understandable) and goes for the Regal Cutter instead. By otherwise that was awful. How Naked Mideon didn’t win the Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s Worst Gimmick is beyond me. Yes this is worse than the shit WCW did to Mike Awesome.

Now for some awesomeness. They show the Kurt Angle-Rock “interview”. Angle spliced up old Rock interviews to make it seem like he ran down Stone Cold and that fans don’t want Rock to win tonight. Great stuff. Angle was hilarious.

Now for some more awesomeness! The Los Conquistadores! They are interviewed by Kevin Kelly (no idea Kelly made it this long). Of course Kelly gets no answers.

WWF World Tag Team Championship
The Hardy Boyz© vs. Los Conquistadores

Story here: The Hardyz beat Edge and Christian and Mick Foley said no more tag title shots. Suddenly Los Conquistadores returned to the WWF and won a tag team battle royal to win this title shot. Oddly they never seem to be in the same video shot as Edge and Christian…so of course everyone thinks they are Edge and Christian. At this moment we don’t have proof though.

They play it up so great. Somersaults. The way they walk to the ring. Conversing with the Spanish announcers. Edge and Chri….I mean the Los Conquistadores are great.

The worked disgust of Jim Ross is incredible.

Another awesome thing here. The match sucks…but it has to because Edge and Christian have a totally different moveset than Los Conquistadores.

We finally do get a flying dive over the top that Christian normally does. But still.

Los Conquistadores win the title when Uno (I think) pins Matt Hardy. Matt unmakes Dos…but Dos has ANOTHER mask on! Brilliant! Uno hits the Unprettier for the win! Crowd pops for it too! Match sucked…but it was supposed to! Great stuff.

Ugh it must have been cut out for some reason…but there’s an interview afterwards with the new Tag Champs and then Edge and Christian walk into the shot and make the challenge for tomorrow on RAW! That had a great payoff as well. Great angle to extend the Hardyz vs. E and C feud.

Triple H vs. Chris Benoit

Story here: Benoit headbutted Stephanie. HHH wants revenge.

HHH works on the knee. I don’t think the technical route made sense for the story…but that’s not a big deal. Not like it’s Orton vs. HHH at Mania which made no sense.

Lawler and Ross state that they are shocked that HHH is outwrestling Benoit. Which just puts both guys over.

HHH busts out an Indian Deathlock! How come we don’t see that anymore?

He then bridges the Deathlock with a neck vise! Nice!

Now Benoit works on the arm. Hammerlock back suplex. Great old school technical wrestling match.

Perfect inverted suplex from HHH. This is really shaping up as a great match.

Full nelson suplex from Benoit!

Another one!

HHH gets out of a Crossface by getting to his feet and hitting a Death Valley Driver!

Stephanie’s out here! Slap to Benoit! This leads to…

Triple H pins Chris Benoit in 18:33. Great Crossface to Pedigree to Crossface to Pedigree counterfest that HHH ends with a low blow, the Pedigree and the pin. Great match. Shame that it didn’t propel Benoit to the main event. I feel like in this match HHH was out to prove that he’s just as much of a wrestler as Benoit is. He isn’t, but I mean, he can be damn good when he wants to be.

AH! Here’s the Edge and Christian-Los Conquistadores backstage thing I was wondering about earlier!

WWF World Championship
The Rock© vs. Kurt Angle

Story here: Match has weird dynamics storywise, as The Rock is caught between two storylines…the Rikishi-Austin one and the HHH-Stephanie-Angle triangle. Stephanie is in Angle’s corner because she is out to prove she’s not a liability at ringside.

Match is suddenly announced as a no DQ match.

Really driving home the Stephanie factor early as Angle takes control over a Steph distraction.

Also establishing the Angle meanstreak with a chair shot.

HHH is watching this match on a TV that is seriously blue.

Rock smashes a steel chair on Angle’s ankle! Ouch!

Rock with a good sharpshooter! Angle taps…but Steph distracts the referee. I don’t like Angle’s tapout there to be honest, way too early.

You know what’s weird? Watching an Angle match with him going for the Ankle Lock every two minutes. Angle didn’t have that in his arsenal I believe until February 2001 and the rematch with the Rock.

More Steph interference…and Angle gets a belt shot to the head on The Rock! But Rock survives!

Rock and Angle just have awesome chemistry.

I always liked Rock’s belly to belly suplex/throw.

Rock Bottom to Stephanie!

Angle just stops the People’s Elbow on Stephanie though.

HHH is down here. Pedigree to the Rock after he attacked Angle!

Now we have Rikishi down here.

Angle knew to attack him…Rikishi hit him back and rolled him back into the ring.

Kurt Angle wins the WWF Title by pin in 21:01. Rikishi accidentally nails Rock with a butt avalanche and a superkick. Olympic Slam to Rikishi! A perfect Olympic Slam to The Rock for the 1…2…3! Angle ends the show with one of the most iconic World title victory celebrations with the dropping to the knees and crying. Rock bitches out Rikishi, and rightfully so. Interference was a bit much, but a great match is a great match.

I already expressed my frustration with the Rikishi-Austin angle earlier. The rest of it was fine, although proving Stephanie matters was a bit much. I can’t put this show in the A range though. While there is some really good stuff, including basically all of the last half of the show there was a lot of stuff that didn’t matter (Cage, sadly Austin-Rikishi). Also Naked Mideon is the absolute worst.

I can’t get past Austin-Rikishi. Fun brawl sure, but if I paid for this show when it first aired, I would have felt a bit ripped off with it. And it was the first step that killed Rikishi.

Very good show overall though.

Final Grade: B+

Pro Wrestling

RDT Reviews WWF Summerslam 2000

SummerSlam2000poster

WWF Summerslam ‘00
August 27, 2000
Raleigh, NC
Reviewed on August 1, 2014

Could the WWF survive without Stone Cold Steve Austin?

The answer was clearly yes. The Rock and Triple H carried the main events while newcomers like Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit were all on their way to becoming stars. Add in a fresh Undertaker and you were still very strong up top. Ratings had survived Austin’s departure just fine with consistent low 6s and high 5s each week. It may have not been quite the Attitude Era, but people were still watching.

Interestingly though, the WWF Attitude product was different by this time. There were still your Attitude gimmicks…but it wasn’t AS much as 1999. Instead, you got top notch wrestling from Jericho, Benoit, Angle, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Edge and Christian, The Hardyz and Dudleyz. Even guys like Tazz, while not a big a draw as he hoped to be, was an improvement in opening matches than the Blue Meanie.

Of course, there is a small debate that this style led to ratings falling off at the end of 2000 (I think the real reason is “I did it for da Rock” and that disappointment), but for now, it was full steam ahead. As a bonus, WCW was practically dead at this point quality rise. I had reviewed New Blood Rising and it would only get worse with Halloween Havoc a couple of months later.

So, Summerslam 2000!

The Card

Interesting intro promo for Summerslam, going with the love triangle of Angle-HHH and Stephanie, playing Ode to Joy, which coincidentally was HHH’s old theme.

I also think a lot of the visuals were in Christian’s future titantron (white masks in opera).

Right to Censor vs. Rikishi and Too Cool

Right to Censor is one of the greatest midcard acts in wrestling history. Perfect heel group for this era.

The Rikishi heel turn sadly killed Too Cool…although Christopher would have done that in 2001 anyway.

Victoria actually debuted as a Godfather ho at this time, then joined Rikishi and Too Cool when he turned into the Goodfather.

Goodfather actually shoves Victoria and ho #2 down. “Save the hos” chant. Good heat.

For those who think the RTC killed the Godfather and later Val Venis, I think the WWF going public killed that.

Right to Censor defeats Too Cool and Rikishi in 5:12 when Richards pinned Scotty. Scotty goes for a WORM that will obviously be countered somehow as Buchanan is in the middle of the ring and Scotty doesn’t have room to do it. Richards Steven Kicks him and that’s that. Match wasn’t much, but the crowd was hot for the whole thing as Too Cool and Rikishi were over as hell, and so was RTC.

We get a history of the Kurt-Steph-HHH triangle…and Kurt kissed Steph on Smackdown, which added a whole new element.

Hardcore Champ Shane McMahon! Steve Blackman finds him. Although I am not a big Shane fan, this is my favorite feud of his.

Road Dogg vs. X-Pac

People stopped caring about the rest of DX after King of the Ring 2000. Road Dogg and X-Pac kept going, but eventually had problems and this led to a “friendly rivalry”. Considering Road Dogg was rapping with K-Kwik a few months later and X-Pac was nowhere to be seen (due to injury to be fair) that should tell you how this went.

Road Dogg kicks X-Pac in the ass and he sells it as way stronger than it was and goes flying out of the ring. Looked funny I guess.

To me since I just watched Mania XI, this feels like a culmination of a five year storyline (the Kid vs. Roadie stuff after the IC title match).

To be clear, no one cares about this. DX died with the McMahon-Helmsley Era. I think it always hurt, especially Road Dogg, that Billy Gunn got injured as the Outlaws were still a big deal earlier in the year.

X-Pac pins Road Dogg in 4:42. Low blow from X-Pac and X Factor for the win. Pretty bad. And still no one cares. X-Pac declares it’s over, Road Dogg fakes a handshake and gets revenge. X-Pac would get to fight Jericho before he got hurt at least.

Intercontinental Championship
Val Venis© and Trish Stratus vs. Eddie Guerrero and Chyna

The catch here is Val can lose the title if Trish is pinned or made to submit.

The Eddie Guerrero and Chyna team seemed so random after years of HHH and Chyna. Of course, it was entertaining, probably because everything Guerrero did was. Trish laments Chyna being centerfold material and asks Val Venis who’s prettier, and Val snaps at her. I always liked this dynamic, as Test and Albert were always clearly Trish’s henchmen, while Val actually stood up to her. Not that it mattered soon.

Weird double team mistiming early on where the ref just lets Eddie do it after stopping him.

At this point if you told me Trish would be arguably the greatest WWE Women’s wrestler of all time and Chyna would be unemployed in 8 months I wouldn’t have believed you.
Chyna wins the title when she pins Trish in 7:13. Chyna gets Trish alone and press slams her for the win. Match was a surprising mess, as Guerrero seemed off with several timing issues. The booking is weird too. I’d get protecting Val if he was gonna be in the hunt, but Val joined RTC right after this. So why the tag? Why not a triple threat. I do understand Chyna needing to win as it set up Guerrero’s heel turn. Match quality wise, this card is off to a tough start, but the characters not Road Dogg and X-Pac are over and it doesn’t really matter.

It’s amazing how much better Stephanie McMahon is now than she was in 2000.

Jerry Lawler vs. Tazz

Yeah, the Tazz run didn’t last. The feud here is Tazz came back as a thug after a middle of the year injury and attacked guys like Al Snow and Rikishi. Then he attacked JR for some reason and this led to a feud with Lawler. Tazz did have one of the all time great heel lines to JR: “I’d slap you in the face, but it looks like God already did it”, a reference to his balls palsy. Tazz looked pretty bad ass in this build up, too bad it’s being wasted on Lawler. On Smackdown Tazz smashed in the window on Lawler’s rental car, with JR in it (blinding him).

Tazz comes out with a cowboy hat acting blind, which is pretty funny.

Lawler dominates the first part of the match. Well then.

Tazz takes over, but it’s nothing exciting at all.

Tazz with a missed senton bomb, which is odd considering I’d never seen Tazz do that and his neck was always an injury concern.

Tazz no sells the piledriver! How ECW of him!

Jerry Lawler pins Tazz in 4:24. Tazz chokes Lawler out with the Tazmission, but the ref was knocked down. Tazz calls out JR while choking out Lawler…so JR gets a glass jar of candy and smashes it over Tazz’s head. Lawler gets the pin to a big pop. Good moment, but if Tazz wasn’t dead before he was as good as dead losing to Lawler. Also, another subpar match.

WWF Hardcore Championship
Shane McMahon© vs. Steve Blackman

Shane gets interviewed…but Blackman finds him again. We head to the ring!

For those who liked the 24/7 Crash run, I always thought Blackman’s run was more entertaining.

Shane runs for his life!

Shane takes an entertaining ass kicking in a garbage can.

Lawler is disappointed that he doesn’t think Shane can tap out in a Hardcore match. Er…why not?

Jeez, a half crab, but Blackman also wraps a strap around Shane’s throat and pulls. Sick hold.

Here comes T and A to “even” the odds! This is how Shane matches should be booked.

Good midcard note you don’t see anymore. JR explaining why Test, who was left at the altar by Stephanie last year, is helping Shane (Test last saw Stephanie and was counting his blessings). You just don’t see that anymore.

They go for a drop the amp spot on Blackman, same move they took out Big Show with at Judgment Day. Blackman moves.

Blackman beats the crap out of T and A with a kendo stick, then Shane runs by climbing the titantron!

Steve Blackman wins the Hardcore Title in 10:08. Blackman chases Shane up the titantron and catches his legs with the kendo stick (also underrated, as Shane didn’t just stop to wait for Blackman). Blackman gets some shots to the back…and Shane goes flying 50 feet! Blackman climbs down a little, then drops a elbow drop from about 20 feet up! Wow. Obvious pin here. Really fun Hardcore match that could have helped rebuild the Hardcore division after 24/7. You know what amazes me? Even though fans were really into Blackman and all…he never got over from this at all. Once he stopped fighting Shane, no one cared about Blackman again. Very odd. Really fun match though.

Stephanie is distraught about Shane, and Kurt comes in with the line of the show (“I think he just got the wind knocked out of him”). They hug, but Mick Foley comes in and says that Shane might have hurt his kisser. Funny stuff.

Best Two of Three Falls
Chris Jericho vs. Chris Benoit

Interesting feud here. So, the Judgment Day match seemed to be the blow off between these two as Jericho moved to HHH and Benoit had feuds with Rock and Rikishi. But, once those feuds ended it seemed like there was nowhere else to put these guys, so they just continued their feud. Of course, this feud was incredible and they’d have one more PPV match at Royal Rumble 2001. Then they’d be tag champs.

Jericho and Benoit take the referee out of the ring with their roll around punch sequence. Creative and unique.

STF from Benoit. Regal would be here soon so that would be the end of that.

Benoit gets the crossface 5 minutes in and Jericho taps. Normally I’d be against that, but I’ll explain at the end why I am okay with it and I think it’s actually genius.

Benoit let’s go…and goes for it again! Jericho can’t tap out this time obviously and fights it. Great psychology there all around.

Another unique submission. Benoit locks Jericho in the Tree of Woe, then goes to the outside and puts him in a Full Nelson. Jeez.

Jericho fights back and counters a German into the Liontamer, and Jericho gets the tap out, tying the match at 1-1.

Perfect powerbomb reversal from Jericho, but Benoit reverses one to pin, which Jericho bridges out of it. Perfect.

Benoit then busts out a full nelson (Dragon) suplex!

Top rope frankensteiner…but Jericho actually leaped up there! Jericho lands on the shoulder Benoit’s been working on, so he can’t make the pin right away. Still, some amazing stuff here.

Lionsault, but more Jericho shoulder stuff.

Chris Benoit defeated Chris Jericho 2-1 in 15:33. Jericho gets a roll-up, but Benoit with an awesome reversal in which he also grabs the bottom rope to win! Awesome match with awesome psychology. The commentary really put over that Jericho chose to tap in the first fall to survive, which is why I am okay with it. These last two matches have really kicked Summerslam into gear.

HHH has arrived! They replay Angle and Steph from earlier, and Lawler even thought Angle’s “wind knocked out of him” line was ridiculous.

WWF World Tag Team Championship: Tables, Ladders and Chairs
Edge and Christian© vs. The Hardy Boyz vs. The Dudley Boyz

We already know this is awesome.

Small dynamic change from Wrestlemania 2000’s Triangle Ladder Match. Edge and Christian are now cocky chicken-shit heels. The Dudleyz are faces due to powerbombing women through tables. Hardyz are exciting faces.

TLC was such a cool concept, even if the only difference is that chairs and tables are readily available (because you could use them in regular ladder matches) around the ring. WWE has a PPV named after the match now, which should say how marketable it was…it also should get credit for Money in the Bank as well.

The Hardyz are the hometown team!

Matt Hardy busts out some Sabu chair throwing.

Bubba gets his leg caught in the ladder as he’s thrown off. That coulda been a lot worse.

Bubba Bomb from the top of a ladder!

Matt Hardy gets tossed into a ladder…I don’t know how to describe it, but it also seesaws and takes out Jeff. You don’t see creative spots like that in today’s MITBs.

WASSSSSSUPPPPP!

D-VON! GET THE TABLES!

Jeff Hardy looks dead from the seesaw.

Christian gets 3Ded through the table!

Bubba begins to build his own resting place with the table structure on the outside.

Jeff’s leap over the ladder legdrop always owned.

Jeff goes for another crazy Swanton on the outside, but unlike Wrestlemania 2000…Bubba moves! Jeff’s broken on the outside.

Bubba goes flying through the 8 billion tables on the outside! Serves you right Bubba!

Lita saves the titles for the Hardyz as Edge and Christian were guaranteed to win it!

Matt Hardy gets tosses through ANOTHER table structure I didn’t notice…then Edge takes out Lita with a spear!

First ever hanging from the titles spot from D-Von and Jeff, and crowd pops huge when D-Von actually crashes to the mat.

Edge and Christian retain the title in 19:33. Once Jeff and D-Von crash, Edge and Christian are all that’s left. Somehow still the 2nd best mutli-man ladder match ever (Mania X7). All the MITB’s are great, but there’s so much creativity here and it never looks like they are just setting up spots. Also, big credit for this being the first match at this level of its kind. Absolutely incredible.

It took three days, but HHH finally confronts Steph about the kiss. Steph sells Angle down the river of course.

Stinkface Match
The Kat vs. Terri

For some reason Al Snow is with the Kat.

These two actually fought at Mania.

Oh, Snow was feuding with Perry Saturn here, who was with Terri.

I mean, the crowd loved it, so I get why it’s here. I’ll leave it at that.

The Kat wins in 3:06 Here’s a Al Snow Head shot in this, for what it’s worth. Something to bring down the crowd I guess.

APA is at the bar!

The Undertaker vs. Kane

I sense this was to be Big Show vs. Undertaker, as there is a much forgotten Big Show return and heel turn, but I guess WWE wasn’t happy with him since Taker got revenge and tossed Big Show off the stage and he was gone till the Rumble. Kane then turned heel because Taker returned “as one of them” and Kane is a MONSTER. Really the same logic that he used to bury Taker alive three years later.

This was the start of the new Kane look, the “Bret Hart look”.

Randomly this is a No DQ brawl. We never got a bell here.

Taker rips part of Kane’s mask off, which is the only thing making this match worthwhile.

Taker goes for the mask again!

Taker gets it off, and he kinda see Kane’s face! A lot bigger of a deal then. Then Kane runs for it. The bell never rang, so this isn’t an official match? Not sure why it was done this way but whatever. Not really good either, just a random brawl when we’ve seen two better ones earlier in this show. A very forced storyline.

WWF Championship
The Rock© vs. Kurt Angle vs. Triple H

Angle’s shot at the main event. The HHH-Steph-Angle love triangle was the main part of the feud, with the Rock kinda on the side. They got this title shot by double pinning Chris Jericho.

The love triangle was also smartly hinted at as early as December 99, when HHH and Steph would watch in the locker room and she would call Kurt cute. You don’t see things like that anymore either.

Angle on the mic tells HHH he gave his wife more passion that he ever could. I loved how Angle’s character got more confident after his feud with Undertaker in July. Of course, HHH comes down to beat the crap out of Angle.

The infamous table breaking spot happens here. HHH goes to Pedigree Angle through the table, but the table gives way too early, and Angle gets a concussion. It’s CLEAR what happens to Angle here as well, he looks totally out of it. Really scary moment in retrospect (and then too).

HHH gets the sledgehammer, but here comes the Rock!

For the record, this entire match was improvised from Rock and HHH as Angle had to be carried to the back, and while he played a part in the finish, it’s all HHH vs. Rock.

HHH actually comes down and stops the stretcher and hits Kurt with two punches. Of course they are worked, but it’s interesting they did that (although it made sense storyline wise).

Stephanie comes out to tend to Angle. Even the backstage improvising was smart.

You see Hebner say something to HHH with the camera goes away from while HHH yells at Steph to get the belt for a spot. According to some research, Hebner told HHH that he (I assume Vince) wanted Stephanie to go to the back, to film the upcoming angle.

Sledgehammer to The Rock. I guess it’s a given it’s no DQ for this too.

Backstage Stephanie begs Angle to help HHH as Rock took control. Angle says he’ll do it for her.

Here comes Angle with Steph. Angle is dazed, and I assume he’s acting now.

Angle pulls Rock’s leg as he hits the ropes, leading to a Pedigree. HHH clearly checks on Angle to see if he’s in position, then goes for the pin as Angle breaks it up.

Angle nearly stealing the title got a huge reaction as he pinned Rock after that pedigree.

Angle seems to be on point. While wrestling with a concussion is seriously dangerous, Bret Hart sadly showed it could be done at the end of 1999.

HHH accidentally punches Stephanie, then Angle takes HHH out with the hammer!

The Rock retains the title in 24:33 when he pinned HHH. Rock dumps Angle, then the People’s Elbow to the KOed HHH wins it. Considering the match was already screwed up from the start, Rock and HHH saved it and the ending was very good. In fact, they pulled it all off so well people had no idea if Kurt was really hurt until later. Angle then carries Stephanie to the back, continuing that. I will say though, especially as I’m older and I’ve learned more about concussions, that sending Angle back out there kinda scares me. That doesn’t seem like a safe decision. Also, HHH vs. Rock, while good, didn’t have the normal heat it had earlier in year as Angle vs. HHH was the main story here (and a hot one at that) and Rock was just a part of this one. This is especially apparent as the crowd doesn’t buy too much until Angle returns.

The WWF PPVs of 2000 are…pretty awesome it seems. Summerslam was another excellent show with Beniot vs. Jericho, TLC, the main event and Blackman vs. Shane. Historically it put Kurt Angle in his first PPV main event and he somehow shined despite getting legit hurt and not being in 90% of it. TLC also debuted here and is part of WWE today. Once Austin came back booking did get a bit jumbled (as this whole Angle-HHH thing was leading to a HHH face turn which died when he became Rikishi’s accomplice), although that jumbling seemed apparent with Benoit, Kane, Taker and Jericho anyway.

Can’t give it a solid A as there was some stuff here that was meh (Lawler-Tazz, Kat-Terri, Road Dogg-X-Pac) and the main did have some small issues. But it’s still a great show.

Final Grade: A-