A few notes on this: first of all this was one of the first review series I ever did so the review style isn’t quite down yet and my grades might be a bit off by my normal stuff.

Second this was supposed to start Friday so 88 and 89 will be going up today.  Also I don’t have Big Boss Man vs. Koko B. Ware from the 89 show because I can’t find a copy of it.  Let’s get to it.

Welcome to another of my history threads. As I’ve done with Wrestlemania I’ll be starting with the first ever show in the series and every day put up a new review. This will culminate with this year’s Summerslam, as the 2010 review will be put up the day before Summerslam, and I’ll be doing a live review of the 2011 edition which will be posted immediately after the show, assuming that nothing goes wrong.

I love doing these things and in case you’re wondering, yes, I will be doing Survivor Series, Royal Rumble, and likely King of the Ring and In Your House among other one off shows in the future. Anyway, enough from me. let’s get to me! Wait what?

We have arrived at the biggest party of the summer, Summerslam. In the year of my birth, WWF decided to expand its annual PPV load to three instead of the two they had the previous year. Wrestlemania was fairly entrenched in the business and based upon its success we were given the Survivor Series the prior year, which really was based on the strength of Hogan vs. Andre.

Based off the popularity the company was seeing around this time, the order was given to have another show in the late summer to help further bridge the gap to Wrestlemania. You have to remember that at this time, there was no Raw or Smackdown or anything like that. What you got was a weekly Sunday morning show that not everyone got and was sometimes on in different timeslots depending on where you were.

Think about that: Raw on Sunday morning or Wednesday night depending on where you were? Of course it would never work today, but at the time Superstars, the (typically) Sunday morning show, was the undisputed flagship show of the company. Anyway, since there was nothing else to go on, PPV was HUGE at the time. Today with everything watered down to the point where we have sometimes two PPVs a month, having a third added to the schedule was huge.

This would be the mathematical equivalent of adding 6 more PPVs to the schedule. Think about what a big deal this was. Anyway, Summerslam was added to the schedule to make it the third PPV of the year with the Rumble being made a PPV the following January to finally establish the traditional Big Four.

Summerslam was initially just used as a bridge to get to Mania with a grudge match in the main event before shifting over to being the official second biggest show of the year a few years later. My first ever PPV was Summerslam 1990, so this show holds a special place in my heart. Since this show is considered to be the second biggest show of the year, the shows have to be good right? I certainly hope so, so let’s get things going!

Final Note: Factor in that I started writing these back in June, so many of the references may be a bit dated. For example, I make a reference to a guy being about the level of the Miz, but his character has since changed, so if something makes you scratch your head, that’s likely what’s causing it.

Summerslam 1988
Date: August 29, 1988
Location: Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York
Attendance: 20,000
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Billy Graham

The first show. This show was completely capitalizing on WM 4’s tournament with Savage being the victor. Now I’ve heard two separate versions of what the initial main event for this show was supposed to be.

I’ve heard that the original plan for the tournament was to have DiBiase’s master plan (see the WM history thread for details) to have worked and have DiBiase win the belt over Hogan, leading to Savage challenging him here for it and then we get a 6 month Mega Powers angle, or the same one minus Savage holding the belt which I think would have made more sense given some of Hogan’s promos leading up to Mania 5.

The other version that I’ve heard, and the one I give less credit to, was that the plan was to have Flair come in for a feud with Savage leading to a title vs. title match at Summerslam with Savage, ending in either a draw or Flair winning both titles briefly.

I consider this nonsense because according to EVERY other source I’ve heard and based solely on everything that’s been on WWF television during this time period, to say Savage vs. Hogan was locked into Mania 5 is almost like saying Vince has a bit of influence on the way the product is presented. As for the rest of the announced card, there really isn’t one.

I mean literally, there was nothing else announced for the show and the box art on the VHS is Savage/Hogan and DiBiase/Andre, which is the main event, billed as the Mega Powers vs. the Mega Bucks. I’m not putting a lot of faith into the show, but let’s see if it lives up to its 80s awesoemness.

Intro is as painfully bland as any wrestling intro is in the 80s, with the WWF logo flying over water for no particular reason before we get a shot of New York City with Gorilla commentating about the show, saying nothing that you wouldn’t expect him to say. Of course Madison SQUARE Garden is the roundest building you’ll ever see. We get a more standard intro with the four guys in the main event along with Liz and Virgil and Ventura, who is the referee tonight.

This is more like it with the kick sweet WWF 80s song in the background. After that we hear our commentators, with Monsoon sounding so completely unexcited about this show that it’s pathetic. Now granted it was a new idea at the time and no one really had a clue if it was going to work or not, but at least try to sound excited please? Graham calls Hogan his hero which makes me laugh as Hogan stole half of Graham’s stuff to make himself the legend he is today.

The crowd is counting down something in the background which I’m guessing is the start of the PPV feed. We go straight from this to the first match, as the heels have no music.

Rougeau Brothers vs. British Bulldogs

Oh yeah now this is what I’m talking about. Clearly I’m talking about it because I’m writing about it as you know because you’re reading this since I guess there’s nothing good on TV. I have to turn off the IC Title DVD for this and I’m on the Shawn/Razor ladder match so I really must love you guys. Apparently the French guys are about to move to the US which gets boos from the crowd which I can’t quite get.

BIG pop for the Bulldogs who I think are about done at this point. Matilda clears the ring. The French dudes are heels that try to convince everyone they’re faces but still cheat in their matches. They would also hug each other WAY too much, and on the infamous occasion, one rubbed a Bushwacker’s balls. Very nice old school tag team match going on here with speed and power for the Brits against speed and cheating from your heels.

This is very solid stuff here and these guys are just beating the tar out of each other using some old school tactics. You get not one but two great beatdowns of one face before the hot tag, leading to the second which just makes this even better. During one of the beatdowns, this one being the one on Dynamite, he’s put into an abdominal stretch and Gorilla starts to complain about it.

For the love of all things good and holy, SHUT UP ABOUT THE FOOT. I have seen a lot of Monsoon matches and he has complained about the stupid foot being hooked in an abdominal stretch so many times that I want to hurt someone. Let it go alread. It’s a freaking rest hold that never wins anything at all. Although, maybe if they hooked the foot they would win with it…Oh screw now I’m all confused.

Anyway, in the end the faces just start beating the heck out of the heels but they never quite can put them away. That makes both teams look equally strong as one team gets to show off their offensive skills and the other gets to show how resilient they are. That’s a very nice touch that you don’t’ see much anymore. Eventually both teams hit their finishers but only the faces kick out of them.

They don’t win though as just after Dynamite hits the headbutt, the time limit is up and we’re done. The Bulldogs chase the heels down with Graham saying that’s the right thing to do and to finish it in the shower if they have to.

Rating: B. This was a great way to open things up for both the show and the series, but the lack of a real finish hurts it. Both teams looked good here as neither really dominated either part of the match. Both teams were playing to their characteristics very well and all four men looked good. One thing though: I have never seen a match with so many freaking monkey flips. Literally, I saw at least 5 of them and attempts at two or three more. Why so many I wonder?

We see how Ron Bass injured Brutus Beefcake in one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. The idea is that he choked Brutus out and cut him open with a spur. Since we can’t handle a single cut on a guy’s head, a big red X with the word censored across it comes on screen. The problem is, the X doesn’t cover Brutus’ head but more of his chin, leaving the cut completely visible. This means he can’t challenge for the IC belt tonight.

Bad News Brown vs. Ken Patera

O…….k. Patera is one of the more interesting cases you’ll ever find in wrestling. He was legitimately one of the strongest men in the world as he had came in third in the first World’s Strongest Man contest. He was given the IC Title and was going to be given a main event level push and likely the title at one point. Until one night at a McDonald’s however.

He and a Japanese wrestler were refused service for one reason or another which I believe was that the restaurant was closed. Allegedly, Ken threw a rock through the window, although he still denies he did this. Later, the pair was arrested at a hotel but they beat up the cops. He was put in jail for two years and came back as a face to feud with the Heenan Family.

Allegedly, and that should be heavily emphasized, he and Hogan were supposed to main event Mania 4, which I don’t believe for a second as it just would have been awful. Anyway, at this point he just sucked bad and was a jobber to the stars so the ending here is a tad obvious.

This is little more than a squash although Patera is apparently the favorite. It’s only about 6 and a half minutes though so what do you really want here? Both guys are more power guys so the styles are already clashing. Brown is in control for the earlier part of the match and the rest is just Ken trying to lock in a submission for the win because he doesn’t know how to do anything else, which is rather pathetic.

He’s just awful out there as his only moves are the bearhug and the full nelson. He gets one on but the other, the nelson, never happens. Brown wins it after a running enziguri called the Ghetto Blaster which is just a sweet name to say the least.

Rating: D+. This was bad. Patera was just horrible and while Brown was pretty good, there was just way too much of a clash of styles to overcome. It was a good try I guess, but at the end there was just too high of a level of suck to overcome.

WWF is promoting boxing for some reason.

Hogan and Savage say that Elizabeth is their secret weapon. Doesn’t that kind of blow the secret aspect of it?

Rick Rude vs. Junk Yard Dog

Rude is of course a master on the mic as he always is, despite saying the exact same thing every time. At the same time, JYD continues to be the most overrated wrestler I’ve ever been forced to watch. He does nothing of note ever except head butt people. What’s the appeal of that, seriously? Graham says that he practices headbutting cars. Number one, why would Graham know that, and B, what in the world is Graham on?

Neither guy really does anything special here as it’s mainly rest holds and punching. Eventually Rude puts him down and goes to the top rope where he pulls his tights down to show tights with Roberts’ wife on them. This was in the middle of a huge feud with Rude and Roberts.

Rude has a gimmick of picking a woman to kiss before every match. One night he picked Roberts’ wife Cheryl and the kiss had no effect at all. This started the feud because it was apparently Rude’s fault that Cheryl let him kiss her. Anyway, it’s a DQ finish as Roberts runs down and beats up Rude because of the tights thing.

Rating: D. This was somehow worse than the last match. Back to back matches each running about six and a half minutes and both being horrible is a bad way to get a show going after a good time limit draw match. Seriously, Dog was awful as always so at least he’s consistent, Rude wasn’t sure of what he was doing yet, and Roberts had to save the whole thing. That’s never a good sign.

Honky Tonk Man says he doesn’t care who he faces tonight.

Bolsheviks vs. Powers of Pain

The Powers are actually faces at this point and managed by some guy named the Baron. They were pretty badly hated though while Demolition was ridiculously popular, leading to a double switch at Survivor Series. Once again, it’s a clash of styles. Neither team is popular or hated enough to really be cared about here so this is more filler as they’re beginning to acknowledge that this is a very bad card overall and they have no idea what they’re doing.

The Powers are definitely the best team here though and it’s painfully obvious that they’re carrying this thing. The Baron might be the most worthless manager of all time which is saying something as the Russians are managed by Slick. Warlord never once goes off his feet in this which makes the Russians look even weaker. This is a squash despite the Powers never really being in control until the end. Barbarian hits a sweet headbutt from the top for the pin and a surprisingly good pop.

Rating: C+. This was miles better than the previous two squashes as it was actually a squash and not a squash designed to look like a real match. It was designed to make the Powrs look good before the big showdown with Demolition, but the double turn that was absolutely necessary given the circumstances changed those plans in a big hurry.

Survivor Series promo, complete with footage from WM 3, as WWF continues to attempt to crush the NWA which I’ll cover more in detail when we cover the Survivor Series.

Brother Love Show

Hacksaw is your guest. Love was a parody of corrupt televangelists at the time which is really quite funny when you think about it, or at least it is to me. I used to be scared to death of him. Hacksaw might have been the third or fourth biggest face in the company at this time after the Mega Powers and arguably Roberts. Actually, I’d say he was third and even second after February when Savage turned on my first birthday.

Duggan might be the simplest character of all time yet he’s just flat out awesome and so over it’s scary to say the least. More or less he calls out Dino Bravo, saying that he’s not a good Canadian after Love mentions him. He then just yells at Love to scare the heck out of him which is great because it’s so basic yet so awesome. He looks like this big grizzled mountain man with a stick that he threatens people with as he imposes his will on them. How awesome is that? Duggan chases him off to end this.

Another boxing promo as I guess we’re cross promoting now. Now that I remember it, Leonard was in the front row at Mania 5 and they mention him by name.

Intercontinental Title: Honky Tonk Man vs. ???

This is your famous moment from this show and it’s by far and away the shortest of the matches on the card. Honky was supposed to fight Brutus in a rematch from Mania 4 but he’s hurt so it’s the new #1 contender. Honky still holds the mega record for the IC belt at about 16 months or so. Fink apparently doesn’t know who it is which is stupid as Okerlund knew earlier but Honky didn’t want to know.

Warrior’s music hits and the roof goes off. Warrior beats Honky in about 15 seconds which was just a beatdown. The people are marking the heck out over this and I can’t blame them as Warrior was even more insane back then, making this just sweet to see as Honky was annoying and finally got put into his place. At least he’s not in drag though.

Rating: A+. This is complete and utter perfection for what it was supposed to be. Honky had been the bane of wrestling fans’ existences for about 16 months as he had constantly gotten himself counted out or disqualified to hold onto the title. Warrior just bull rushed him and beat the living tar out of him in like 15 seconds. To say the fans exploded is an understatement. They blew the roof off the place and the moment is absolutely perfect.

Survivor Series 88 is going to be a year after Survivor Series 87. This is three and a half minutes of video from last year’s show. Is there a point to this? I mean we’re getting long clips of it, upwards of 30 straight seconds and a minute a match. They skip the women’s match though as the diva hating started back then. At the end they have Hogan posing, despite him losing that night.

Don Muraco vs. Dino Bravo

Muraco was about done at this point and Bravo was on his way to being about the level that Miz is on at the moment. Yeah, that must have been an intermission. Heenan comes to the broadcast booth before the match to say that the heels in the main event are ready and the faces are terrified. Monsoon throws him out. This is another rematch from the tournament. Heenan comes back.

This match is less about the match and more about Graham and Heenan arguing about who is stronger, despite neither managing either guy. Muraco used to have Graham as his manager and a lot of the criticism comes from an attempt by Bravo at the world bench pressing record at the first Rumble.

He didn’t get it of course but did with Jesse’s help. Yet again, we have a clash of styles but in this one it works a lot better because Muraco can wrestle a technical set well enough to make this work. This only goes about five and a half minutes but they tell a decent little story that ends with Bravo winning with his side suplex.

Rating: B-. This was pretty good I thought. Now it wasn’t a classic, but it was fine for what it was: two power guys hitting each other. It passed the time ok but I wish we had less arguing with the announcers. It was just getting annoying at the end with Graham incessantly whining about how it wasn’t fair.

Holy crap it’s ANOTHER Survivor Series promo. I think WWF is being too subtle here.

Ventura has taken money from DiBiase apparently.

Tag Titles: Demolition vs. Hart Foundation

This is two years before we get what I think is the best PPV tag title match ever. It’s one of the better match on the card so hopefully this is good. The Harts are glorified jobbers here as they’re freshly face and against the monsters known as Demolition. Even though they’re former champions somehow they’re jobbers. That makes limited sense even in wrestling. Jimmy Hart, the former Hart Foundation manager, is a special adviser here.
Axe and Bret start us off here. Billy thinks Bret is the smallest guy out there. Where would we be without his expert wisdom? The Harts speed it up and work on the arm of Smash. Axe kicks Anvil in the back of the head to take over though and the bearded wonder is in trouble. Billy says once they win the tag titles the Harts are going to go outside, grab a girl and do some damage to her. WHAT IS WITH THIS GUY?
Bret gets sent into the post shoulder first and HARD too. That looked very painful and Bret sells it like the master of selling that he is. Neidhart (called Hitman by Billy of course) chases Jimmy to the back as Bret’s arm is destroyed even further. Graham talks about some top rope move Demolition is about to do while Smash just stands there on the apron. Dang I’m getting tired of his idiocy. It’s not even funny.
Hot tag to Anvil after Bret gets a desperation clothesline but of course the referee doesn’t see it. And then he gets the tag like 8 seconds later. I’ve never gotten the point of that. If you’re just going to do it again the next chance you get what’s the point of the false tag? It did add some heat to the second one so maybe that’s it. It would make sense.
Powerslam to Smash gets two. Axe has apparently left to chase an ice cream truck or something as he’s completely gone. Ah there he is to break up a backbreaker from Bret. Fuji is up on the apron but Anvil drills him. The Megaphone from Axe ends this though in a CHEAP ending. That feels like an ending from a house show.

Rating: B-. This was a solid match as you would come to expect from these four. The Harts weren’t very used to being faces at the time as Bret had just turned at Mania. Demolition was so far ahead of them at this point that the Harts got a major rub by hanging with them like this. Solid match, decent length, and so far by miles the best on the card, other than maybe the opening contest.

For the love of god we get it about Survivor Series.

Warrior says he’s proud of his little warriors.

Hercules vs. Jake Roberts

Is it filler? Yep, it certainly is. Honestly, is it that hard to have another big match on the card other than the main event? I know there’s got to be something big out there. Why couldn’t it be Roberts vs. Rude in a big match? That would at least be interesting. Heenan not being at ringside means something apparently, as he’s about to leave Hercules to make Herc a face.

It’s a very basic match here until I get a huge laugh as Hercules puts on a chinlock and can clearly be seen calling spots to Jake. Graham deserves a raise for the save he makes by saying that when he was a wrestler and used a hold like this he would be telling his opponent that he was going down and that there was no way he could win.

That my friends, is an announcer covering for a mistake by a wrestler. It’s plausible at least. It’s complete BS, but it’s plausible. Other than getting a good laugh and a surprise after Graham calls a move a bump, this is a pretty bland match. I can almost call every spot before it happens.

Roberts goes for the DDT, he gets backdropped, he misses a running knee, and we move to the next sequence. That’s just not a good sign at all no matter what. Roberts eventually gets the DDT and that means the end.

Rating: C-. My goodness these matches have been bad. I don’t mean the in ring work is bad as it’s been acceptable, but they’re just there. This would be a kick great house show, but this is a PPV which I guess at the time was fine since no one knew what they were doing with it. This is another match that’s just there. It’s not great but it’s just barely passable.

Far too long of a recap talking about the build for the main event. Part of this is about Jesse being bought off, mainly due to him supposedly being afraid of Andre.

Mega Powers vs. Mega Bucks

The crowd pops big for the announcement as we finally have something good going here. Jesse’s pop is very solid while not being huge. The heels have no music, which is sad considering DiBiase has some of the best music of all time. The pop for the faces is great and amazingly enough they come out to the same music which isn’t Real American. Hogan, actually letting someone else have top billing? WHAT THE HECK???

Liz of course looks insanely good in the red and yellow dress. The start of this takes forever as I guess the WWF wasn’t too hot on the idea of a crowd being into the match so they had to kill it for a bit. Ventura decides to change the location of the tag ropes. Who in the world freaking cares? Hogan just doesn’t look right with writing on his tights. Savage and Andre start which was a big match we never really got the proper version of.

We saw a few of them but never the true showdown we could have gotten. The match is given some time but it’s still less than 14 minutes. It’s what you’d expect from a main event tag though, as the faces start strong leading to a face comeback before the finish. In this case, the finish is pretty famous as the heels knock the faces to the floor and Liz gets up on the apron. She famously takes off her skirt to reveal her underwear and some very nice legs.

This was insane at the time as Liz was always viewed as a lady and for once she’s being viewed as a sex symbol. Anyway, Andre gets knocked down as DiBiase gets the elbow and gets pinned. The pin is funny as Hogan covers after a leg drop and Savage has to shove Ventura’s arm down for the three as he didn’t want to make the count. Post match we get the celebration with Liz in Hogan’s arms which doesn’t sit well with Savage as we plant the seeds for WM 5.

Rating: B. This was fine for a main event tag match as it was all about the biggest feud and biggest team in the company. It also set a very tiny bit of Mania 5 and advanced the major feuds. The wrestling is just what you would expect which is fine. This was perfectly acceptable.

Overall Rating: D+. I know it’s the first of its kind, but this show just flat out sucked. The main event is good and the tag title match was ok but other than that, this was just horrid. It’s a bunch of random matches which meant nothing and no one really wanted to watch. This was like a house show with a title change and a big main event. While obviously the series would improve, this was a very bad start for it. Watch it for the fact that it’s the inaugural Summerslam, but that’s it.

In Your House 17: Ground Zero
Date: September 7, 1997
Location: Louisville Gardens, Louisville, Kentucky
Attendance: 4,963
Commentators: Jerry Lawler, Jim Ross, Vince McMahon

Once again, we have a horrible job of marketing by WWF as I never heard about this show until it was on video. Anyway, we’re after Summerslam now. Austin was semi-feuding with the Harts still, but at Summerslam we had the possibly worst night for the company ever as Austin was piledriven by Owen, breaking his neck. That match got him the IC Title which he would have to vacate the next night.

The tag titles are vacant as well due to Austin’s injury. The problem was that Austin’s neck was bad, but he was on TV anyway. This kept the company afloat, while no one realized that he was really hurt badly. The feuds from Canadian Stampede have split up into single feuds which we’ll get to later. Bret won the WWF Title from Undertaker as Shawn was the guest referee.

He was swinging for Bret with a chair but he hit Taker, costing him the title and setting up the feud for the main event tonight. This is really just a filler show, but it’s the first of the three hour, traditional PPV format. Let’s get to this.

We get a recap of Shawn and Taker’s feud, which also was the groundwork for Shawn’s heel turn. In three weeks there was something that was coming which would change wrestling forever that I’ll cover later on.

Goldust vs. Brian Pillman

The story here, which was VERY controversial at the time, was that Goldust and Marlena’s daughter was actually Pillman’s, at least according to him. This led to Goldust taking off his paint and being Dustin Runnels which wasn’t what people wanted to see. This is the Indecent Proposal match. If Pillman loses, he leaves the company. If he wins, he gets Marlena for 30 days.

Pillman talks about leaving the company forever. That’s so chilling it’s hard to imagine. If you don’t get what I mean by that, I’ll explain at the end of this match. Goldust comes out in full outfit and is over here. Kentucky likes freaks I guess. The roof of the arena is white, which is just a weird thing to see. Lawler implies that Marlena has slept with everyone in the wrestling business. That would be Missy Hyatt I believe.

Goldust works over Pillman’s knee so we have an attempt at psychology. Of course this has no bearing on the ending of the match. Pillman gets beaten on for the majority of the match but in the end we get a ref bump, a loaded purse shot to Goldust, and Pillman wins. He drags Marlena away as she is quite upset. King retrieves the purse which has a brick in it.

Rating: B-. It was fine for an opening match and it had a story behind it so based on that, this was fine. Nothing great here but it was far from a bad match. The purse shot at the end was good for the finish but I would have liked to see Pillman sell the knee and leg work from earlier on.

Now as for what I was talking about it being chilling earlier, Pillman wouldn’t live to see the end of the thirty days. He died of a heart problem about four weeks later, on the night of the next In Your House. The following night, Vince McMahon ensured him place in eternal torment as he had a live interview with Pillman’s ex wife who was in no condition to even think let alone be interviewed on national television. She was pregnant at the time, which Brian never knew when he died.

How do I transition from that? I don’t think there’s a good way to do it, so let’s just move on I suppose.

Scott Putski vs. Brian Christopher

For those of you that don’t know, Christopher is Jerry Lawler’s son. Putski is the son of Ivan Putski, who is another great example of the joke that is the WWE Hall of Fame. He was a onetime tag champion, he rarely won a match, and he’s in the Hall of Fame. You have to love that Vince McMahon logic. Lawler of course denies that he’s Christopher’s father which was a running joke for a long time.

This is another example of how bad the Light Heavyweight division was. There’s no reason to have this match and it’s really just thrown on the card after Lawler and Christopher beat up Putski on Raw. No thought to it other than that.

The problem with this match is simple: Putski mainly wrestles a power style despite being officially a light weight. He’s kind of like a Matt Hardy: Small size, mostly regular offense with the occasional high flying move thrown in. The end is abrupt as Putski legit hurts his knee and has to be counted out. His knee is clearly dislocated.

Rating: D. This was bad, mainly because it wasn’t a light weight match. It was two small guys wrestling. What’s the point of this? There isn’t one other than to try to compete with the cruiserweights in WCW. It just didn’t work, plain and simple. Putski never did anything in his career, and that’s being generous about it.

We see a recap of the Nation splitting into three gangs. Yes you read that right. Gangs, not factions. We have the New Nation, which is Farrooq, Kama, D’lo and Rocky. We have the Disciples of Apocalypse, which was a biker gang and Los Borecuas, which was a Puerto Rican street gang. This went on for almost a year, with no one at all getting what the point of it was. It’s known as the Gang Wars period, and it never panned out at all. I think this ended at Mania 15 but I’m not sure.

Savio Vega vs. Farrooq vs. Crush

This is for supremacy or something like that. It’s standard triple threat rules which was a new idea back then actually. Soon after this Crush would leave and Chainz, more commonly known as Brian Lee from ECW would take over. I always liked what I saw from him and it’s a shame he didn’t get to showcase himself more often. Savio’s white pants just look weird.

You could tell they really weren’t sure what they were doing with this format of a match and were kind of playing it by ear which makes this a fun match to see. Even the announcers are talking about how what Crush is doing makes no sense. Farrooq is on the floor so Crush puts on a chin lock. He must have trained Randy Orton. There’s really not much to this so far but it’s not bad.

Like I said the psychology isn’t there yet as this was such a new idea at the time. Savio botches a spinning neckbreaker fairly badly. Eventually he’s beaten down and the power guys go at it, which is what it should have been the whole time. They trade off picking on the third guy which makes sense. Savio wins by kicking Crush after Crush takes out Farrooq.

Rating: C. They were unsure with the concept but at least they were giving it a good effort. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t bad. For a first time thing this was well done I think. It’s kind of like the Bret/Shawn ladder match. They had no clue what they were doing and other matches would easily surpass it but this was fine.

El Torito vs. Max Mini

Oh great it’s small people wrestling. Why do people insist on these matches? They just flat out suck. They’re at a total combined weight of 184lbs. What in the world is the point of this? Someone tell me that please. One of the guys weights 86lbs. My lord this is going to be a long match. While some of the moves are flashy, you could see Rey and Kidman do the exact same things in WCW.

The difference there is they were full sized. I just don’t get the appeal of something like this. Oh dear this match is getting time. We’re at 5 minutes already. It not that it’s bad, it just that it’s a waste of time. Seriously, why is this considered good? The fans are dead for it as no one knows who these people are and we don’t care. FINALLY this ends after nine full minutes plus. Hokey smoke. The Max guy wins with a sunset flip.

Rating: D. What the heck were they thinking here? This match was just not interesting. It wasn’t bad, but the size was just annoying. I don’t want to see people that are praised for a move off the middle rope. That makes no sense and is just a waste of my time. What is the appeal here? Can someone explain that to me? If this was a three minute match I could see that, but this went almost ten minutes. Was there nothing else they could have put on the card at all?

We see a recap of Austin’s injury and the fallout from it. Commissioner Slaughter says that Austin can’t wrestle until he is healthy. Austin and Dude Love were the tag champions at the time (since Michaels had to forfeit the titles, Owen and Bulldog won a tournament to face Austin and a partner he picked for the vacant belts. Austin didn’t want a partner but Love volunteered and they won the belts). Love had debuted that night I think as Mankind was gone by this point. I always loved that music of his. Anyway, this is them giving up the belts.

Austin comes out to no glass shattering after Dude says he can’t defend them on his own despite wanting to. Austin calls out Vince which amuses me as that feud was on the horizon and would explode very soon. Stone Cold is at the top of his game here, talking all kinds of trash to Slaughter and making so much fun of him that it’s great. He even gets on JR, calling him a fat man.

Vince is losing it on commentary which is just such great foreshadowing. JR says he hopes he gets better soon. You know what’s coming don’t you? Yep, there it is. Kick, wham stunner. Love holds back Austin until he leaves. The fans have lost their minds as this is Austin at his best. They’re all over Slaughter here as it was him that decided to strip the belt from Austin.

Doc is in the back with Owen and the Bulldog who are FURIOUS over what Austin did. They say he should be arrested for assault which is just incorrect. He should be arrested for battery. Vince calls Austin a jackass on commentary.

Tag Titles: Headbangers vs. LOD vs. Godwinns vs. Owen/Bulldog

This is elimination style which is a fun way to make the title match interesting. No one knew what to make of the Headbangers at the time. They were just weird to say the least. We get a mini advertisement about One Night Only which was a European PPV which had Bulldog vs. Shawn for the European Title. Hawk and Animal say they want the belts back and to beat up the Godwinns.

LOD’s pop is massive to say the least as they’re just legendary at this point. One of the rules in this is anyone can tag anyone which makes this even more fun. I’ve always liked things like this and tonight is no exception. It’s more or less just random combinations for the early going with nothing of real note. Eventually we get our big war going and it ends with LOD being disqualified for hitting the Godwinns with the slop bucket.

Of course this isn’t a popular move and I think it hurts having them being eliminated first. It sort of makes the match seem weaker as the big name tag team is eliminated first. Very soon thereafter the Godwinns are eliminated by the Headbangers. This match really isn’t as good as I expected it would be. The USA chant starts up which is as tried and true of a way to get support as there ever has been.

Lawler talks about how there are 600,000 people at Stu Hart’s house watching this match and to imagine the cheers. Vince of course wastes this great set up line by saying if you think that’s loud imagine the cheers at next month’s PPV! Vince just amazes me with his tunnel vision when it comes to business sometimes. They brawl for awhile but of course in the end Austin runs out and stuns the heck out of Owen for the ending and gives the Headbangers the titles.

Rating: D+. This match is just freaking boring. I don’t get the appeal to something like this. The idea is cool, but it just goes to show you the shambles that the tag division was in around this time. There’s nothing at all of interest here and none of the teams grab you at all. The Outlaws are coming though to save the day soon.

After the Headbangers celebrate at the concession stand, we see JR complaining about getting stunned. Good for him.

Recap for the WWF Title match. Tonight, we have Bret defending against perhaps the most bland main event gimmick I have ever seen: The Patriot. He’s a guy that loves America but wears a mask. Of course then, they show him playing football at South Carolina. Why? You can see his face there so why wear the mask? He has this match because he pinned Hart.

There’s little point to watching this match as he’s about as likely to win the title as Shawn Stasiak was. He was bland and plain and no one cared at all. They show him in Japan where he is getting his head handed to him by Misawa. What’s the point to showing his face in interviews and having him in the mask in the ring?

He’s in the back with Sunny and actually is built very well. He says he’s not afraid of Bret.

WWF Title: Bret Hart vs. The Patriot

You know, just by listening to Patriot’s music I’m already starting to dislike him. Asctually it makes me think he kind of sucks. I think I’ll chant that. YOU suck! You Suck! Dang, what kind of patriotic character has music that you chant you suck to? He won the match over Bret in Pittsburgh apparently. That’s quite a coincidence. Bret gets a bigger pop than Patriot does which is amusing.

Patriot is left handed which is just a bit odd looking. Of course Patriot controls things early on and then gets slowed down to allow Bret to get things even. So far this is a pretty slow and bland match and pretty typical for any Bret match. That’s not to say it’s bad but it’s just not that interesting. Patriot just has no credibility at all at this point or ever. Lawler is great on commentary for some reason here, snapping off all kinds of stats and facts.

You can tell Patriot is bad as the fans are clearly cheering the heel here since they simply don’t care about the challenger at all, and why should they? Bulldog comes down to ringside for no apparent reason. Patriot is getting a few cheers but it’s not as big as what Bret gets.

After a mistake by Smith, Bret gets hit by Patriot’s finisher, the Uncle Slam. Yeah I know just go with it. Vader comes out and beats on Smith to take him out of the equation after Smith breaks up a pin which for no real reason doesn’t cause a DQ. From there it’s pretty bland to put it mildly.

For the most part it’s just Bret faking being close to losing the title until Patriot hits his finisher again and it still doesn’t work so he goes for Bret’s. Bret reverses and Patriot taps. What a “real American.” Post match Bret beats on him some more and takes the flag to break it and choke Patriot with it. Bret beats up a lot of the officials afterwards.

Rating: C-. There was no heat for Patriot to win at all. That’s what killed this match. Bret was fine and the match was fine but it was the Patriot vs. Bret Hart. That’s the problem in this match. Aside from that you get a long match that’s pretty back and forth which means it’s not terrible.

Recap of Taker vs. Shawn which is more or less one chair shot. Other than that it’s nothing but the recaps of their feuds over the past few months. I’ll say one thing for this feud: it got taker to actually do a sit down interview which is just weird to see. We see the chair shot which gave Bret the title as show counts the one, two, three four. Yep it’s clearly a four count to get the belt off of Taker.

In the back we see Shawn who is apparently heel now. He says he’ll win.

Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker

They actually say this has PPV time remaining. What an odd thing to hear. Shawn’s pyro messes up which is funny to see his reaction to. Taker’s entrance is another classic one with the lightning, the thunder, the smoke and the silhouette of the Phenom as he stands at the entrance. He raises his arms really fast to turn on the lights now and they come on with an explosion.

I think I like that version better than the slow rise. Match starts off kind of odd as Shawn hides behind the ref forever until Taker just nails the ref. Shawn runs but Slaughter, the worst commissioner of all time orders him back into the ring where Taker throws the referee onto Shawn. Massive brawl ensues. Shawn is bumping like a crazy man here as each punch sends him at least 10 feet.

They brawl all over the place until finally Shawn gets his head handed to him in the ring. Hebner comes out to be the referee and Shawn uses the distraction to chop block the Undertaker and we get a bell. What’s going on? They’re still fighting, and apparently, NINE MINUTES after the brawl started, that’s the start of the match? What the heck??? Nine minutes and THEN the bell rings? Give me a break here people.

This is a very hard hitting match that’s working very well so far. It’s rare to see Shawn as a heel but it’s more or less the exact same style. Now I’m not sure if that’s good or not but it’s pretty entertaining if I do say so myself, and I do say so myself. Shawn apparently has a back injury. Can you imagine Taker hurting Shawn’s back? I certainly can’t. We have another ref bump which I think makes three so far, which isn’t good for 8 minutes into the “match”.

Rick Rude, Shawn’s insurance policy, comes to the ring and gives Shawn brass knuckles. However, since we’re having a three for one referee special, the fourth is late counting the pin. HHH and Chyna are here, and all of a sudden I think I see a stable in the making. HHH is starting to get some muscles on him and he even throws in a crotch chop.

According to every source I can find, DX didn’t officially form until about two weeks after this at One Night Only, but they look pretty formed here to me. I know the name wouldn’t be for about another month and a half, but they look pretty united to me. Oh, another referee went down a little bit ago, so the fourth ref is slow getting to the count. Since he’s slow, Taker chokeslams him.

A FIFTH referee comes out and finally calls for the double DQ. Post match, Shawn hits SCM to tie Taker in the ropes. He breaks out as Shawn has a chair and beats on HHH and Shawn. As he’s about to kill them both, about fifteen guys from the locker room run out to stop him.

He throws them off and debuts the over the rope dive which has Lawler screaming like a girly man as he nearly kills Shawn dead with it. About ten more guys come out to finally separate them as Taker poses in the ring with the lights going out to thunderous cheers as we go off the air!

Rating: B. WOW. This was far less of a match and more of a fight. It was the prototype for what the Attitude Era main event would become. No one really knew what to expect from this match and I’m not sure if it was good or not. The ref bumping went WAY too far for my tastes as it was just getting ridiculous. However, with these two it was great as you know they’re going to put on a good match. There would be a rematch the following month inside the debuting Cell, which is the far more famous of their wars.

Overall Rating: B-. While it was the first of its three hour formula, this IYH left me wanting more. With a double DQ for the finish to the main event and a pretty bland world title match, I felt like there was no payoff to the show. I got to the end and I was thinking I wanted a better way to close out the show. It felt like the way a Raw should end instead of a PPV. The rest of the show is just ok as well, but it’s slightly better than average. Not great but not awful, watch it if you’re intrigued but don’t go out of your way.

Invasion
Date: July 22, 2001
Location: Gund Arena, Cleveland, Ohio
Attendance: 17,964
Commentators: Michael Cole, Jim Ross

So this is easily the most requested show since I’ve stated doing the reviews so I might as well get it out of the way. This is the infamous INVASION of the WCW/ECW Alliance. Since I’ve already explained my thoughts on the Invasion as a whole in the Survivor Series 2001 review the talking about it here is going to be somewhat limited but I’m sure I’ll have something to go on and on about in here somewhere.

The main event is the Inaugural Brawl, which is just a big ten man tag. Other than that the card is relatively boring other than Hardy vs. Van Dam for the Hardcore Title. Let’s get to it.

The opening video is about Roosevelt and the Nazis and Japanese Army. ARE YOU SERIOUS? Ok, I know Vince likes things big, but this is ridiculous. The logo for the show is this weird hybrid of Shane and Vince’s faces. It’s kind of cool but more creepy.

Mike Awesome/Lance Storm vs. Edge and Christian

Hmm I wonder who is winning here. Edge and Christian’s music cuts Storm off. That’s rather amusing. I’ve always liked Storm so that has something to do with it. Edge is the reigning KOTR at the moment if that means anything to anyone. Christian and Awesome start us off. Storm vs. either of the faces could be most interesting. Edge gets down and Christian goes for a dive over the ropes. He slips though and nearly has a very bad fall.

Odd hearing WWF fans say YOU F’D UP. Awesome sans mullet is odd looking to put it mildly. Christian is getting beaten down for the most part here as you would expect. Why you would expect that I’m not sure but it sounded right in my head. Cole is really new at this whole commentary thing at this point and it shows badly. Edge gets the tag and takes out various heels. Edge rams Storm into Christian which would mean something in a few weeks/months.

The rollup only gets two though and we slow down for a bit. The crowd is hot here as they tend to be in Cleveland. Pretty decent tag match here. Awesome sets Edge for a powerbomb but Christian spears Awesome so that Edge falls on top for the pin. Nice ending.

Rating: B. Very good choice for an opener here as both teams were trying out there and it showed very well. Edge was getting hot around this time and it would have been a world title reign had a few things gone right. This was fun though and a great opener.

Vince is happy. Regal, in a collared WWF shirt and tights, says Austin is here. He gets Raven later. Well that’s an odd combination if there has ever been one.

We recap the feud between the referees. Yeah it was bad. It results in this.

Earl Hebner vs. Nick Patrick

Of all people, Mick Foley is the referee here. Yeah I don’t get it either but whatever. He’s wearing a Marvel t-shirt so I can’t complain at all. Nick comes out with an army of referees which is just funny looking. Earl does the same. It looks like the world’s weakest gang. Oh and they’re in refereeing gear.

Take a wild guess as to the quality of the work here. Do I need to offer commentary on this one? It’s a glorified lumberjack match. Foley throws out the WCW referees. Earl hits something resembling a spear for the win. Patrick gets in Foley’s face and guess what happens. I think you know the drill.

Rating: N/A. I’m not grading two non-wrestlers like I would grade regular wrestlers.

We recap Debra getting abducted on Smackdown. Debra complains about it. She makes Stephanie look like a great actress. Taker’s wife Sara isn’t much better. She’s attractive though.

We recap the APA vs. Palumbo and O’Haire. It’s tag champions vs. tag champions. Basically the APA called for the WWF locker room to join forces to fight in the war. The WCW Champions jumped them at WWF New York.

APA vs. Sean O’Haire/Chuck Palumbo

No titles on the line here, despite them both being champions of some sort. Dang O’Haire had the look down to a science. So did Palumbo. We get a mention of Kevin Nash. He and DDP were the guys O’Haire and Palumbo beat. Teddy Long informs them they have seven minutes. Oddly enough Farrooq was managed by Long back in the day.

Oddly enough this is a pretty back and forth match. Bradshaw busts out a DDT of all things. Never seen him use that I don’t think. Farrooq gets a standing switch. This is FREAKY. Oddly enough this is pretty back and forth with no one really dominating at all. The Clothesline From JBL ends it. This never got off the ground at all.

Rating: D. Just boring stuff here. You could clearly see there was very little thought put into the matches here. These two teams just were kind of there. It’s not bad I guess, but this could have been on Superstars or something like that. Pretty weak.

Vince is with Jericho in the back and says Vince is the difference between ECW/WCW and WWF. He’s exactly right actually. Oh and Heyman sucks.

Stephanie hates Jericho. WOW her acting reaches new levels of suck. Heyman is sitting in the back and then goes off on Billy Kidman, saying he has to win this next match.

X-Pac vs. Billy Kidman

It’s champion vs. champion again. This is in the X-Factor era. Yeah no one cares AT ALL. Kidman’s music was rather groovy. Pac is total heel here but he’s the face because of the company he’s in. Waltman should be good here though as he’s always good against smaller guys. Scratch that about Waltman being the face. They still hate him. I’ve always liked Cleveland.

Apparently you don’t want to be the first to lose. Dang I thought you always wanted to lose. What was I thinking? They got close to the WCW/NWO issue with the announcers being completely idiotic looking by saying one group was the crowd favorite when they were being booed out of the building. They pick it up a bit with some nice high impact stuff. Pac catches a diving Kidman coming off the top in an X-Factor.

That looked pretty stupid, but I’d think that’s because it’s the stupid X Factor. Bronco Buster is blocked with a boot to the balls. I love alliteration. That sets up the Shooting Star Press for the pin. According to Ross, the Bronco Buster is a high risk move.

Rating: C+. Not bad but not great at all. The most interesting thing here was the crowd. The match itself is ok but not bad. Pac was always at his best against small guys and he was far less annoying here. Nothing great but the SSP is always sweet.

DDP babbles about nothing.

Torrie and Stacy try to sound sexy and just fail. They like the Hardys apparently.

William Regal vs. Raven

We get a brief history of Raven’s career, minus Johnny Polo that is which might be his best gimmick. It’s a slugfest to start which Regal is good at. He was very physical around this time and it always came off rather well. His feud with Jericho was a highlight of his career to me. All Regal so far. That forearm to the face that he uses for a cover is great. We get a slingshot as I wonder what the point of this was.

The fans think this is boring and I can’t really say that I disagree. It’s not bad, but this is as basic as you could imagine. They look like they’re both rookies who know very few moves at this point. It’s more or less all punches and clotheslines. They’re crisp and such, but this just isn’t that interesting. You know what it reminds me of? An old SNES wrestling game where you have like 5 moves and everyone has the same set no matter what their size is.

The boring chant is really loud now. You can tell there is no story here at all. Raven gets thrown to the floor and for zero explained reason, Taz runs out and hits a suplex on Regal to allow Raven to hit the DDT for the pin.

Rating: D-. Just like I said before, this was just boring. I have no idea what the point was here but this didn’t come off well. It was just a wrestling match, but with this being a PPV, this wasn’t acceptable for me.

Taker and Kane get a pep talk from Vince. Taker doesn’t like Vince talking about his wife.

Billy Gunn/Albert/Big Show vs. Kanyou/Hugh Morrus/Shawn Stasiak

Again, what in the freaking heck is the thought process on this show? It makes no sense at all. This was made on Heat. Oh and Albert is IC Champion here. He’s still in X-Factor and the song is still awesome. Stasiak is using Mr. Perfect’s gimmick, down to the music. It was idiotic. In a cool spot we get a triple press slam from the WWF guys. Gunn and Kanyon start us off. This was Billy Gunn push #2837G.

Kanyon does an odd combination from a Russian legsweep into a Stroke. Nicely done. We get the traditional melee and Albert hits a bicycle (Pump kick that Sheamus uses) kick to Shawn and by hits I mean misses Shawn completely but has it sold anyway. This is pretty much all Albert.

Fameasser hits on Morrus. For you newer fans, Morrus is more commonly known as Bill Demott. Stasiak hits a reverse DDT so Morrus can get the pin. This was a MESS. Show hits chokeslams all around post match. Show debuts the Alley-Oop which he should do more often as it looked pretty cool.

Rating: F+. Just horrid here and I have even less clue what the booking here was supposed to be. This was a weird choice to say the least and I guess it was to showcase the WWF guys but it came off like a bunch of jobbers beat them. Made no sense.

Shane talks to Booker and says the Alliance (not named that yet but close enough) is up 4-3 because of Chavo beating Scotty on Heat. That answered a LOT of questions actually as no one got how later in the Alliance said they had an extra win. I was at a friend’s house watching this and we spent 40 minutes after the show trying to figure it out. We had lists of matches and charts etc going and NO ONE got it. Yeah I’m just killing time now.

Regal fires Tajiri up.

Taz vs. Tajiri

This was the ECW Title match at I think Heat Wave 99 and it was a glorified squash. Apparently Tajiri is popular for staying in the WWF. Ok then. Hey they actually mentioned the Heat Wave match! Sweet I’m not insane. Taz hooks a bunch of suplexes and submissions, which makes me think instantly that Tajiri will win. In at least the last two matches and maybe more, the guy or guys that dominate early loses in the end.

Handspring elbow gets a BIG pop. Didn’t see that one coming. We hit the floor for all of 5 seconds and I’m bored out of my mind. The Tarantula helps that a bit. Tajiri kicks the tar out of Taz for a LONG two. Those kicks are LOUD too. Just as it’s getting good, the mist hits as does a kick for the pin.

Rating: D+. This got really good for like 30 seconds. Other than that though it just wasn’t interesting at all. Again, I don’t get the point in these 5-6 minute matches with zero point to them at all. Could have been a lot worse though.

Jeff and Matt talk about Jeff’s match with Van Dam. Van Dam pops up and cracks the HECK out of Matt with a chair. That sounded great.

Hardcore Holly is at WWF New York and gets on a plant for wearing a WCW shirt.

Hardcore Title: Rob Van Dam vs. Jeff Hardy

Why all the TNA on TNA violence? RVD’s outfit is tiger print of all things tonight. He looks like Tony the Tiger in spandex. This should be fun. Hardy isn’t a huge deal yet but he’s in the midcard. Van Dam is WAY over. Crowd is red hot for this as it was more or less the second featured match on the card. Hardy goes for his run the rail spot and Van Dam makes the stop by jumping up on it to stop him. Nice.

Into the crowd now. This is totally sloppy and totally a mess but since it’s a hardcore match, it’s working rather well actually. The crowd is helping it a lot also. Van Dam takes a bow which is a very nice touch. With Van Dam on the apron, Hardy slingshots over the ropes into a powerbomb to the floor. Sweet looking spot and it’s ladder time. This had to happen. In another sick spot, Hardy is on the top of the ladder, and I mean the big one, and is pushed off and crashes to the floor.

This was what gave us the “How do you learn to fall off a 20ft ladder” soundbyte. In another, say it with me, sick spot, Van Dam is crouched but jumps into the air for a Van Daminator that looked GREAT. It knocked Hardy through the hole into the stage to the floor. We’ve reached the part where it’s just them beating the living crap out of each other and the fan are flat out eating it up.

The belt is in the ring as Hardy gets a nice German Suplex. Jeff is bleeding a bit. Swanton misses. With Jeff down, Van Dam puts the belt on Hardy’s chest and hits the 5 Star for the pin. Fun match.

Rating: B+. This is a great example of a match where you have to consider what was going on out there. This wasn’t meant to be a mat clinic or anything. This was about high impact, high intensity over the top spots and that’s what the fans got. This was fun and the crowd loved it. Great match.

Angle is annoyed for some reason. He says he’ll destroy tonight.

We actually have a video package about the bra and panties tag match. Seriously? Short version: Trish and Lita hate each other because of them trying to steal the Hardys from each other. Torrie and Stacy do the same thing. Yeah let’s just get to it. See, the thing they never could get around was that Torrie and Stacy had no talent other than looking good. Trish and Lita at least could fight.

Torrie Wilson/Stacy Keibler vs. Lita/Trish Stratus

Mick Foley appoints himself guest referee here again. This was smart if nothing else as it gave a person people actually care about to the match. Torrie and Stacy have weird entrance music. Lita was a legit big deal at the time and was the biggest women’s star more or less since Sable and Sunny. Seriously do you want commentary here? Trish was getting better every day at this point but still wasn’t that good yet.

Stacy gets her top ripped off. Lita has the same done. Trish vs. Torrie now and Trish loses her shirt somewhere. There goes all of Torrie’s clothes. Stacy gets her pants ripped off to end it. Mick picks up the clothes after the match which is funny.

Rating: N/A. Not a wrestling match, so there you go.

Stephanie gives the pep talk. That’s amusing. Heyman takes over which is a major upgrade.

Austin is acting like himself.

We recap this, which started with Shane buying WCW. They finally switched the roles as a face had WCW and a heel had WWF. Then one night Vince said he was tired of this so he said let’s have a match. The five guys he picked were ECW guys, you get the rest. Dreamer and Van Dam debuted that night. Austin had been an idiot since he turned heel so he started being the old Austin again.

More or less he kept saying he wouldn’t be his old self until he said he’d do it. No big moment of clarity or anything. He just changed his mind. Yeah there wasn’t much of a story other than they don’t like each other, but did there need to be? Oh and DDP stalked Taker’s wife. Stephanie being revealed as the ECW owner is one of my favorite moments ever. Oh and Freddie freaking Blassie showed up for a pep talk.

Inaugural Brawl: Team WWF vs. Team WCW/ECW

WWF – Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, Kane, Undertaker
WCW/ECW – Booker T, Diamond Dallas Page, Rhyno, Dudley Boys

All three Alliance bosses get entrances. Now Vince gets an entrance. It’s been over 12 minutes since the last match ended and we’re not even to the wrestlers’ entrances yet. So yeah for you trivia buffs, this is the other non-ECW PPV that the Dudley Boys main evented. Kane and Taker were still kind of tag partners at this point but not really. So apparently Taker and Kane are balanced out by the Dudley Boyz? Ok then.

Oh and this is just a ten man tag. No special rules or anything like that. And pay no attention to the fact that both Taker and Kane (albeit as a jobber) used to work for WCW. Rhyno makes it the third ECW guy in a row. Talk about a push that died after this. Next is Jericho, who is about as opposite of Rhyno after this show as you could ask of anyone. Stephanie and Jericho was one of the funniest feuds I can ever remember.

Booker is US and World Champion at this time but he would hand the US Title to Kanyon soon after this. This just feels entirely thrown together. Sting is mentioned on a WWF PPV for likely the only time ever. Stephanie dancing to Booker’s music is just hilarious. Angle gets a HUGE pop despite going the wrong way down the ramp.

The level he reached about two months from now was insane. DDP is apparently the biggest deal in the Alliance. Dang did they ever jump the gun here. The 9 mentioned start fighting in the aisle and we have Austin. Notice a certain one sidedness here?

Austin and Rhyno start us off. Austin hits a superplex off the top. Sweet goodness. Jericho gets a NICE pop for the tag. Booker, the only one of the WCW/ECW guys to get a legit push in WWF comes in. Angle gets another great pop. This was after the peak the company had a few months earlier, but it was still a huge deal. This evolves into your standard big time tag match with various people beating on each other with no one really controlling for a ton of time.

DDP hits a Stunner on the top rope on Taker to finally get something resembling control. Austin works on a wristlock on Booker. There’s something you don’t see everyday. We’ve been at this for about ten minutes now and there hasn’t been any long term control. There isn’t much to say here either though as it’s exactly what you would expect it to be. Heyman is awesome at being completely evil when he has to be.

Angle is in some trouble here and the Spinarooni hits. Page hits a spinning powerbomb on Angle which is one of my favorite moves. So after nearly 20 minutes we get to the traditional face in peril sequence of the match. We go old school with Austin getting the tag but the referee didn’t see it. I love things like that. Diamond Cutter on Angle and it gets NO reaction. Cole of course calls it a neck breaker while Ross, 10 seconds after it, says the name right.

And here is the brawl that you knew was coming. Rhyno hits the Gore on Booker and Taker finally gets his hands on DDP again. Chokeslam to Page. Booker and Austin fight on the floor while the WCW referee gets a Last Ride. Taker and DDP go into the crowd while Austin’s knee is messed up after going into the steps. Kane is fighting both Dudleys.

That’s how you can tell Taker is a bigger deal than Kane: when Taker did that, they got their own match. It’s table time. Kane hits a chokeslam through the announce table on D-Von. He got him UP there too. Rhyno and Bubba put Kane through the Spanish Announce Table. Good to see a tradition still alive. Jericho puts Rhyno through the table the Dudleyz set up. Booker and Angle are the only guys still conscious. Oh and Bubba also.

The referee is still looking at Austin’s knee. Yes I’m listing a lot of play by play but you have to here so you know what’s going on. Angle fights off Booker and Bubba with an ankle lock and the Angle Slam, back when it was a good finisher, respectively. And there goes the referee. Cue the finish. Vince grabs the WWF Title and throws it to Angle. Shane gets it though and down goes Vince.

It’s Booker vs. Angle now. Angle hits his pair of finishers on him, Austin throws the referee in, kicks Angle in the head, Stunner, pin, WCW/ECW wins. Austin turned heel again, shocking JR despite him having done the same thing TWO AND A HALF MONTHS EARLIER. Austin and the three Alliance leaders have beers to end the show.

Rating: B. This did something I didn’t think it did: it made the far weaker WCW/ECW team look legit. This was all about making WWF look like they were in danger and it did that. WWF never had the advantage in the whole match until the very end. WCW/ECW controlled this as they should have.

Austin turning heel had to be done given the totally rushed nature of this angle but that’s neither here nor there. The match wasn’t terrible either, so I’d say this was a success. Not a classic or anything, but a success.

Overall Rating: B-. Now think about this for a minute. Yes, most of the matches completely sucked. Actually all but like 3 did. However, this was based around the main event. I don’t recall any other matches other than the hardcore title one being advertised. Oh and Bra/Panties. Other than that, this show wasn’t up to a high quality in the ring because it didn’t need to be.

This was about two things: the main event, and making WCW/ECW look like a threat. Once the PPV ended, no one cared who won the matches or who was even in them. All that mattered was the Alliance won the night and the main event in particular. This definitely isn’t a show you would want to watch for the show itself, but the main thing here is that the huge angle got rolling.

Now to be fair, the angle bombed about as ten times as much as anyone on the planet could have asked it to, but no one knew that at the time. This should have been an angle that went on for at least a year or two, not five months. Anyway, if this was any other show, it would be a C- at best. However, this was a historical show, and as a stand alone show I thought it was successful. On a long term basis though, bad. Like, really bad. Other than for historical issues though, I wouldn’t sit through it.

In Your House 16: Canadian Stampede
Date: July 6, 1997
Location: Saddledome, Calgary *dramatic pause* Alberta, Canada
Attendance: 12,151
Commentators: Jerry Lawler, Jim Ross

Well, KOTR has passed. Your highlights are Steve Austin and the returning Shawn Michaels have beaten Owen and the Bulldog for the tag belts. This happened on a Raw but I’m too lazy to go back and correct it. As for the PPV, HHH is your new King of the Ring, and Taker is pretty much fighting every big named heel on the roster. Austin’s war with the Hart Foundation has reached a boiling point and here is your blowoff to the biggest part of it.

Since Austin has no friends, he pretty much found four guys that hate the Harts just as much as he does: Goldust, who was feuding with Pillman (I think), Shamrock was feuding with no one in particular but would soon begin a feud with Smith, and the LOD was feuding with the former tag champions for all of two days.

Other than that, the only big match is Taker vs. Vader for the WWF Title. The issue with a ten man tag for your main event is simple: we’re looking at a four match card on a PPV. That’s a stretch even for these shows. This show is praised for its crowd involvement, with Bret himself saying it’s one of his all time favorites. I haven’t seen this show in almost 12 years so we’ll see how it holds up.

As a side note, this is the end of the traditional IYH formula. After this, IYH would be the subtitle, such as the next show which is Ground Zero: In Your House. It would also be the last two hour show, so these reviews will get longer.

Free For All: Blackjacks vs. Godwinns

The hog men are back to being heels after I don’t think they’ve been on TV at all, so that’s a bit weird. For some reason that I don’t know, Vince and Lawler are dressed as cowboys so they’re all in JR style hats. JR looks at them like he wants to shoot them. Lawler’s headset isn’t working.

We get some graphics showing the two big matches before the intros of the teams. Taker is rocking his usual sleeveless outfit but he has the title and a cowboy hat on. It’s actually somewhere between awesome and ridiculous looking. Not sure which actually. Anyway, let’s get to this bad match, which to be fair was free so you can’t really complain about it.

The Blackjacks are Barry Windham and Bradshaw, which is a decent pairing as you have two big guys from Texas that are completely opposite styles: Windham has talent and Bradshaw doesn’t. Great combination as pairings like this always work best when they’re opposites. Apparently the Godwinns are heels since the LOD botches their finisher and broke Henry’s neck. Vince says the crowd will be pro-Canadian.

Lawler’s headset is fixed as he saves the commentary by saying of course they will be. THEY’RE CANADIAN! Have to love Vince’s brilliant impact. Apparently all of the Hart Family will be there tonight. Oh yeah the match. The crowd is way hot for it, but it’s a free match to get the crowd excited so what can you expect from it? There’s nothing of note here but double teaming wins it for the Godwinns.

Rating: D. It was just a five minute tag match to get things going so it wasn’t supposed to light the world on fire. It was a way to get things going, which I guess it did. Nothing to really say here.

Very nice video package talking about how things are changing in the company and there’s no more black and white but rather shades of gray. Austin is the anti-hero now but he’s so over that the company doesn’t really care. Bret is going to be god incarnate in the ring tonight and it’s just going to be fun to watch.

Best sign of the night: Brett is King. They can’t spell their hometown legend’s name right. That cracks me up.

HHH vs. Mankind

This is a rematch from the KOTR finals. My favorite entrance music plays as HHH comes to the ring. I mean just that choir singing his praises is amazing. Recap video showing how different these two are. This has spawned Foley’s face turn. Sweet goodness this crowd is hot. Foley imitates HHH’s curtsey which is just freaking hysterical.

I’ve always loved that running elbow from the apron. Who else does that? Foley is just beating the tar out of HHH here and it’s fun to watch. Apparently he’s the prime minister of Parts Unknown. I guess the Warrior is the mayor? HHH gets a freaking sunset flip. I mean really, WHERE IN THE WORLD DID THESE MOVES GO?

Rock is throwing cross bodies, HHH is sunset flipping people, Austin is coming off the top, I mean what the heck? Match gets turned around when Chyna hip tosses Mankind into the stairs where he slams his leg. A chair shot makes his leg hurt even worse. After that we get HHH working over the knee for a long time but Mankind starts his comeback with a shoulder to the balls which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Chyna is really getting annoying here with all of the interfering. I don’t like the constant interfering as it makes her look more important than HHH. It’s just distracting and eventually gets stupid. Finally they brawl to the floor and eventually into the crowd for the double DQ.

Rating: B-. This was a fun, hard hitting match. Any time you can get two guys to just beat the living tar out of each other with a bit of a past together, it’s almost always fun. These two had a great amount of chemistry and it would show later on when they were one on one for the world title in a few years. Great stuff here.

They keep brawling through the crowd which is almost always fun to see. HHH is going at it here and you can see the Cerebral Assassin coming out in him. He’s starting to get some definition as well so he’s really starting to transform into the Game.

We see a recap of Stampede Weekend. There was a parade and all kinds of stuff which is an annual tradition up there. There was a tug of war and a big party which really looks like it would be fun. Bret was a big guest at a rally and there were thousands of people there for him. This seriously is insane.

Bret and the Harts are in the back. Austin interrupts but Bret calls off the dogs, saying he wants it five on five later on. The crowd is hot even seeing him let alone him being in front of the camera. That main event is going to be insane.

Taka Michinoku vs. The Great Sasuke

Fink with a cowboy hat is great. We cut to the crowd and Mankind and HHH are still hammering each other. HHH is busted open but it made him madder. This is a freaking slugout. Now we get to the real match. A graphic says this is a light heavyweight match. Two things: do we really need a graphic to let us know that? We heard their weights and we can see they’re small and thin.

Also, isn’t light heavyweight an oxymoron? If you’re light, how can you be heavy? Why not just lightweight? Actually, why not you don’t have size so you’ll never be a world champion-weight? That’s the real weight class we’re seeing here as WWF tries to make their own cruiserweight division which bombed so badly that words cannot describe it. This starts out as a martial arts match which is ok I guess. Sasuke is the heel here I think.

These two are doing a bunch of random moves which are ok I guess but they have nothing on WCW. Taka however has one of my all time favorite moves as he gets a running start, jumps to the top rope, pauses while on it, and throws a huge dive. That always made me mark out. Sweet looking missile dropkick from Taka. See what I mean? It’s just random moves from all over the place. No psychology or anything involved, just random moves. Sasuke wins with a Tiger Suplex.

Rating: C-. This was wild but not particularly entertaining. This was the difference between WCW and WWF in this division: WCW built up guys over time. WWF’s division is like the women’s division now. There are no stories, very few promos, and the only matches you would ever get are contender’s matches and title matches. WCW had a whole division and not the champion against challenger of the month. It was a copy of WCW, minus the thought and the majority of the talent.

We go back to HHH and Mankind who are still fighting. They’re outside now and it’s still fun, but now we’re getting to the point of overkill. I like it so far but they don’t need to take it too far.

Recap of the Taker feud, which was supposed to be him vs. Ahmed, which is my memory and the stories I’ve heard are true, Ahmed was supposed to get the title here. However he legit got hurt and had to stay out of it. A big brawl explains this.

Vader and Bearer are in the back and a newly clean shaven and blonde Paul Bearer talks about what would become one of the best done stories of all time: Taker killing him family. Through this, we would hear of a man that would be revealed as Undertaker’s brother. His name was Kane. More on this in a few months.

WWF Title: Vader vs. Undertaker

Like I said this was thrown together due to Ahmed being hurt. Taker’s pop is of course epic, even in Canada. That shows how great he is, as Canada is notorious for booing the faces. Taker is the exception to the rule I suppose, as he is in so many other things. He comes to the ring with the I guess you’d say jacket over his ring gear. He takes it off and there it is: the WWF Title. That just looks perfect on him.

Taker starts off by punching the heck out of Vader. This is exactly what you would expect from these two: hard hitting brawling. Taker beats on him for the first 3 minutes or so but eventually Bearer gets involved and the Mastodon takes over. Vader at this time was just freaking awesome to watch but no one knew what to do with him. He wasn’t going to win the belt off a three day notice and after this he would just start flying down the card until he faded into Bolivia.

Part of this might have been due to the absolute worst nerve hold I have ever seen. Vader’s hands aren’t even clenched. It’s him with his hands on Taker’s neck and nothing more. It’s pathetic looking. There’s a serious lack of drama in this match as Taker never really seems to be in any real danger. Vader gets close of course but never puts anything big together.

He kicks Taker low right in front of the referee but there’s no DQ called. JR has no clue why there wasn’t and neither do I. I thought that was the finish actually. Anyway, Vader goes for the Bomb, Taker blocks it, hits two chokeslams and a tombstone to keep the belt.

Rating: C-. Like I said, there was no drama here. It really felt like this was a title match for the sake of having a title match, and that rarely if ever works. Now to be fair they had a week to build this up so Vader really was a last second replacement which likely takes a lot away from this. I just wanted more from this match though which pretty much sums up my feelings as a whole: I wanted more.

We get a recap of all of the stuff that the Harts have had for them this weekend. Allegedly many of the lines to just get Bret’s autograph were a mile long. Now I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it sounds amazing either way.

Video package on the history of this feud. Basic stuff here that I won’t bother going into except this: Mankind is shown fighting Bret. Why then would you put Goldust, a mid card guy, into the main event and not Mankind, a guy with main event experience? I just don’t get that.

Austin’s team is in the back. Each cuts a mini-promo and Shamrock’s is so bad. Austin says nothing and just leads them to the ring.

Austin’s Team vs. The Hart Foundation

Before the match some Canadian band sings O Canada and the crowd is on fire. Hart Family is shown at ringside. Goldust is out first to pretty much no reaction. Hearing that a team’s combined weight is over 1,300 pounds is just odd sounding. No Marlena tonight which is a good thing I think. Shamrock gets a pretty good pop. It’s not mind blowing but it’s good. Three hot women have signs that says the Harts suck. Well I’m shocked.

LOD is very over as well. That’s another gimmick that just works no matter what. And now, the captain of the team: for a guy that is supposed to be the arch rival of the national hero, the guy is pretty freaking popular. He got the biggest pop of the team and while there was booing, it was nothing compared to the cheers.

However, he just got outpopped by a mile by Brian Pillman. All five Harts get their own intro, and the fans are insane the whole time. They progressively get louder until they blow the roof off the place for Bret. His pop is one of if not the loudest I have ever heard. You all remember the sign that says if Cena wins we riot. In this case, that would be true.

The difference between Cena and Austin can be made clear right here though: Cena was visibly shaken at One Night Stand. Austin is thriving in this environment. The Harts come to the ring in unison, all wearing leather jackets. That’s a nice little touch that’s missing from so much today. Tag teams should dress alike. It just makes them look more unified to me.

There’s a great visual to start this as all ten men are in the ring but Bret and Austin are in the middle with their eyes locked on each other. All eight others just fade away and all you see are those two. That’s absolutely great. They start of course which makes me wonder if that should have been your main event: Bret vs. Austin. However, they’ve fought so many times and the crowd is so hot for his, I can’t really see how it would be better.

The ten man is the right decision. Bret actually wins the fist fight to start as the crowd is orgasming on every move. Austin comes back though, beats Bret into the corner, flips the crowd off and THEN whips Bret in. See what he did there? He got a little extra heat going, but it didn’t take any momentum away from the match. That’s a very nice touch.

Eventually Neidhart gets tagged in. I have come to the conclusion that he is nothing more than a fondly remembered Marty Jannetty. He never did a thing on his own. Actually, Marty did more than Anvil did. That’s saying something indeed. Shamrock’s belly to belly is just freaking sweet. I’m not liking the tags at the same time thing over and over. Let us see more than just the rivals. Owen apparently has a new haircut.

It’s so new he’s had it for three months now. Dang this crowd is intense. They’re screaming, yelling, cussing, shouting obscenities at people and will not calm down for one second. You might say they’re just-insane. Bulldog actually gets the delayed suplex on Hawk. That’s quite impressive.

However, he hits the powerslam and Hawk is up within about three seconds. It was one of the worst no sells I’ve ever seen. Goldust is put into a tree of woe in the Harts corner and gets one of the worst beatdowns I have ever seen. The crowd sees him get tied up and rises to their feet.

We finally get our first wild brawl of the night as all ten guys come in. During the fracas, (that’s your big word for the day people: fracas) Owen’s leg is destroyed by Austin. Three times being slammed into the post and a chair shot. He limps to the back with the help of officials so apparently it’s 5-4 now, even though this isn’t an elimination match. Back shot of Pillman which is something I didn’t really want to see.

Bret retaliates by going after Austin’s knee, eventually using the figure four on the post, which when you think about it, doesn’t hurt much with the post. It would hurt, but not as bad as they would like it to. Austin goes to the back too as this is very one sided now. That’s a tactic I use when I write OCW multi-man matches. Ten guys are just too many to work with so I’ll shorten the amount of people in the match.

Vince calls the Harts a nationalistic faction. WELL DUH VINCE! Bulldog beats the living tar out of Shamrock and the crowd is exploding to say the least. Once Goldust comes in, JR does a GREAT Dusty Rhodes impression but I’m not sure how many people would pick up on it. It’s so subtle that it’s hard to catch. Austin comes back out and it’s him vs. Bret again and Austin is beating the tar out of him.

According to Ross, Austin is being excellently executed. That’s a good little line. Austin calls spots to Bret but the beauty of Austin’s character is you could believe that he’s talking trash to him. Bret is in a sharpshooter as Owen comes back to the ring. Soon thereafter, the Hart brothers at ringside get involved by punching Austin and jumping the rail. Within a few seconds it’s a wild brawl and Owen rolls up Austin for the pin.

Post match, we have another wild brawl and for some reason security does nothing to the fans that jumped the railing and lets them get in the ring and celebrate. Austin of course runs back into the ring as the Harts are celebrating with a chair and gets his head handed to him. Lawler’s hatred for Bret will simply never go away.

Of course, Austin is handcuffed instead of the other Harts and is taken away by security. The logic in WWF makes me shake my head at times. Stu gets into the ring afterwards and the crowd is gone completely. There’s almost thirty Harts and all of them come into the ring. Make that fifty. The Harts’ praises are sung as we go off the air.

Rating: A. This was a great ten man match for many reasons, but the one that is forgotten is the wrestling itself. I wasn’t bored once during this match and as someone that can’t stand tags to end a show, that’s saying a lot. It’s probably the best non-gimmick team match I’ve ever seen. I really liked it and the crowd carried this for the most part, which wasn’t actually needed.

Overall Rating: A. The obvious big flaw with the show is that it’s just four matches. However, the weakest by far is the light weight match, which was at least watchable. It’s far from bad, just not that great. The main event is of course the best on the card with a crowd as hot as I have ever seen. Great show, maybe not all time great, but certainly great and probably the best In Your House so far. At worst, it’s second to Mind Games only.

King of the Ring 2001
Date: June 24, 2001
Location: Continental Airlines Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey
Attendance: 17,777
Commentators: Jim Ross, Paul Heyman

Well, we’ve hit a new era, as there is no more WCW. Back in March, Vince bought them out and now owns the wrestling world. This allows for the company to more or less do whatever they want, meaning they can play around a bit more. Also, Austin is back, which is obviously a huge deal.

The InVasion hasn’t started just yet but it begins tonight in the main event. Aside from the tournament, we have Austin vs. Jericho vs. Benoit for the title and an awesome street fight with Shane vs. Angle. This, at least on paper, is about 100x better than the previous two years. Let’s get to it.

Here are your brackets:

Kurt Angle
Christian

Rhyno
Edge

The intro shows a ton of clips of the matches while throwing in shots of a throne. I think I kind of like that but I’m not sure. There’s also a showdown between DDP and Taker because DDP was stalking Taker’s hot wife Sara. This led to DDP being the biggest botch of a character in recorded history but we’ll get to that in another review.

The set is completely awesome as it’s a massive throne that looks like an electric chair and when I say massive, I mean taller than the Titantron is now. DDP comes to the ring through the crowd to bad music. He’s a WCW contracted wrestler so keep that in mind as it means nothing at all. He had been stalking Taker’s wife and filming her all the time, including in the shower etc.

He says he has a big collection of it, and I marvel at how much they would manage to screw this up. They turned him into a motivational speaker character. Think about that for a minute. He has a ticket, which apparently entitles him to his own entrance music, a microphone and ring time. I want a ticket like that.

Apparently either Benoit or Jericho could defect to WCW. That’s a HUGE possible storyline that they just completely failed on as neither did and then other than Austin and Angle, no one that I can remember of any note ever did.

KOTR Semi-Finals: Kurt Angle vs. Christian

Edge and Christian have outgrown the tag division at this point and are rapidly moving up the ladder in the singles ranks. Ok more Edge than Christian but they’re certainly becoming more popular and more talented. Angle beat Hardcore Holly and Jeff Hardy while Christian beat Kane and Big Show. See what I mean? Angle is the defending tournament winner so he could become the first repeat winner.

Also he’s a lot more like his normal self as he’s far more intense and less silly, and the muscle mass is there now so he looks much better too. You can see that there’s a bit more intense style now too as they’re wrestling a more crisp style and staying in the ring more, as the Attitude Era is either dead or close to being dead. They list off Angle’s rookie accomplishments and it’s just freaking ridiculous how hard this guy was pushed.

Angle keeps looking up which implies a run in to me. Christian is hanging in there if nothing else. And yep there’s Shane, who is fighting Angle later on tonight. The moonsault misses as Angle is yelling at Shane and Christian gets two off of it. The crowd is rather hot tonight too. Angle counters the Unprettier into the ankle lock, but after some counters Christian hits the Unprettier, but Shane pulls Christian out.

That does a few things. One, it makes Christian look strong as he had Angle pinned off a clean Unprettier, which would have been the biggest win of his career. Two, it makes sense for Shane to do it, as he wants Angle to have to wrestle twice before the street fight. That’s mentioned later, but it’s a brilliant move here. Christian is getting back in and Angle grabs him from the apron and hits the Angle Slam for the pin. I like that ending.

Rating: B. This was a great choice for an opener. It was hard hitting and fast paced with both guys being over. Like I said it sets up something for later on which is fine as that’s one of the big matches tonight. This was decent enough and it certainly got the crowd going. Shane looks freaking tiny.

Austin is in the back and Coach comes in. The Rattlesnake is looking for Vince and no one has seen him. This is the period where Vince and Austin were best friends which was always weird. Coach mention the Jericho/Benoit to WCW rumor and Austin is stunned. Get it? He’s STUNNED. Oh I kill myself!

We recap DDP and Taker. The thing here was rather interesting, as the angle was cool but six days prior to this we got the reveal, and the reaction was OH CRAP it’s DDP. Then we all said oh….it’s DDP. The initial shock is cool but then you realize it makes NO sense. He says he’s using Taker to get to the top, but still it just isn’t working at all. For some reason this recap is set to Rey Mysterio’s old music from 1996.

In the arena, Heyman interviews DDP, who says he wants Taker. This becomes stupid then as we see a video of DDP ordering lunch in a diner and reading the paper. They try to play this up as DDP being stalked, but it kind of falls short of filming Sara in a pool.

KOTR Semi-Finals: Edge vs. Rhyno

Well at least it’s just the final four again. Edge beat Test and Saturn while Rhyno beat Tazz (in his last real match, as in not against Lawler) and Tajiri. This was when Rhyno was still a monster and not a complete jobber. This match kind of makes the spear look weak. As I’ve said before, two people should be allowed to use that move: Rhyno and Goldberg. Edge is also now a far more serious character.

While I think Edge vs. Christian would have been better, Edge vs. Angle would be fine as well as the point was to elevate Edge and Christian so it works fine, especially given what came from it. They’re on the floor for the most part here, but just as I type that they hit the ring again. At least I still have my timing. Rhyno slips the padding off a buckle and Edge’s back slams into it.

They say that’s setting for the Gore which strikes me as pointless since it’s hardly a move that requires a lot of setup to be effective. This match is going by fast which is a good thing. Rhyno goes WAY old school by throwing on a full body scissors. See, this is what we mean when we talk about psychology. Rhyno’s finishing move hits the ribs, so Rhyno is working on the ribs.

He’s using a variety of moves and offense to hit Edge’s midsection and back, such as a powerslam and a top rope splash. These moves make sense for his finishing move. So many wrestlers work on parts of the body that make no sense. For example if Rhyno worked on the leg, what would the point be? It’s not softening up anything at all for Rhyno other than to maybe slow him down? It’s a little something but it’s a stretch.

Again here, Edge can’t get up to the top because his ribs are hurting. That’s something good by Edge as it sticks to the work Rhyno did earlier. It’s not exactly Steamboat vs. Flair, but for a nine minute PPV match it’s certainly passable. Both go for a spear at the same time which looked kind of cool I thought. After a rollup, Edge dodges the Gore and Rhyno hits the exposed turnbuckle (PSYCHOLOGY AGAIN!!!) and hits the Edgecution which he desperately needs to bring back as a face.

Rating: B. I liked this again. Edge goes over and beats Rhyno at his own game. There’s not a thing wrong with the mentality of this. Rhyno used his head but the cheating catches up with him. It’s no classic, but it’s certainly good, which is all you can ask for here. I’m well pleased.

We get a clip from earlier on Heat where Lillian (hot) interviews Spike and his girlfriend Molly (somehow hotter) who says that he’s challenging the Dudleys for the tag titles with a partner that he’s picking later. We go to a live shot of Spike who is confronted by the Dudleys after he says he won’t reveal his partner until later.

We go to Tazz with Jericho who asks him about the defection rumors. He says that it doesn’t sound so bad, but when asked about if he’s going, he turns in the awesomeness that is Jericho and keeps twisting the lines around. His jersey is sweet.

Tag Titles: Dudley Boys vs. Spike and ???

So we needed the interview to bridge the gap of 45 seconds? Well alright then. The Dudleys just won the titles three days before this by beating Benoit and Jericho thanks to Austin hitting Benoit with the title belt. And the mystery partner is Kane of all people. He’s IC Champion here and the pop is great. I’m loving this crowd. No Molly though which is a shame as she was freaking beautiful around this time.

In a cool spot, Kane and Bubba throw Spike back and forth like a ball until Bubba finally goes to the ground. This was one of the few periods when Spike was bearable. He’s still annoying, but not as much as. He’s like X-Pac. When he was against guys that were average size like D-Von he could put on a passable match, but with guys like Bubba who are bigger, there’s just no validating him having a chance at all.

The fans, to the shock of no one, want tables. That’s something that’s simply never going to die. Heyman goes into one of his legendary anti-women rants that never get old. He’ll never top the Medusa one though. Spike is of course getting the tar beaten out of him. At least some things never change. He goes for a rana and gets the tar powerbombed out of him. He takes that move better than anyone I can ever remember.

D-Von is so far ahead of Bubba that it’s scary. He’s actually a decent worker and has had better characters over the years. He got rid of all the stupid Dudleys in ECW if nothing else. Kane comes in and hits a sweet sounding punch to D-Von. Bubba actually jumps into a sidewalk slam which looks really bad as Kane can’t get him all the way up.

He makes it up with a nice powerslam but they botch the living heck out of it as D-Von misses his cue to make the save so Long has to just stop his count at a long two while Bubba isn’t moving at all. The fans boo it out the building as no one is fooled at all. Spike gets thrown over the ropes in a reenactment of the Bigelow throw. With both Dudleys on the floor, Kane gets on the top on the opposite side of the ring.

He’s never been that smart. Acid Drop hits Bubba but this time D-Von gets the timing right. I types this time D-Von at the exact same time that Ross said it. Kane takes What’s Up, which according to past storylines meant nothing. Spike takes a 3D (for no apparent reason called a DDT by Ross. Heyman corrects him and Ross wakes up) for the pin. They set up a table but Kane stops them, hitting a diving powerbomb of all things on D-Von and Bubba goes through it. Well that was kind of pointless.

Rating: D+. Eh this was about as safe of a match as you could have asked for. That botch on the count was the worst I’ve ever seen though and it’s why this isn’t a C or so. I mean it completely made things look fake. No one expected new champions here and that’s fine and I’m glad they didn’t make the stupid switch. The match was ok at best but it filled in ten minutes, so that’s all well and good I suppose.

Buy Break Down the Walls on the Fanatic Series, which was the forerunner to 24/7.

Christian wishes Edge luck. Thanks for that.

More video of DDP doing nothing of note which makes no sense unless we got an explanation.

Billy Gunn is at WWF New York, which has a big Tough Enough ad, which debuted three days before this. Gunn doesn’t care about the tournament and no one cares about him.

KOTR Finals: Kurt Angle vs. Edge

This show is going by fast, and that’s a good thing. I’m surprised this is going on in the middle of the card though. Oh and Angle has his pyro now. We’re told no one has ever won it twice which isn’t true since Hart won at least two but we’re not told that. Edge and Christian actually had their own WWF site back in the day, as many wrestlers did. The company was just freaking huge back then.

Angle offers a handshake before the match and says that since Edge isn’t going to win anyway, Edge should just lay down for him. I love Angle at times. Edge impresses me by holding his ribs, selling the injury from earlier. That’s just greatness. Angle stomps Edge in the corner and as the referee is counting and gets to three he picks up the pace a lot which is a very nice touch. Heyman says maybe Shane interfered so that if he wins KOTR then the WCW owner could beat the WWF KOTR.

Not bad actually. Angle hits an AWESOME overhead belly to belly to put Edge on the floor. The camera shot was great there too as Edge just disappeared. That was very cool. Also, it works on the ribs which are hurt. I love smart wrestlers. We’re getting too many chinlocks here. This is almost all Angle here as they’re trying to play this up as heel vs. heel for absolutely no apparent reason considering Edge is clearly over with the crowd as a face.

Here’s Edge’s comeback as I’m liking this match. Again it’s no classic but it’s fine for what it it’s supposed to be. And now the referee keeps looking at the entrance like Angle did in the opening match, as they play up that the run in is coming. Here’s Christian but he’s preventing Edge from getting a cover. There goes the referee. Ankle lock makes Edge tap but here’s Shane with a spear of his own. I really hate that move. The Edgecution ends this. That wasn’t bad.

Rating: B-. Edge certainly should have gotten the win here. The match was pretty good and Shane makes sense here too. I guess it’s not right to have Edge win clean, but the spear was weak. At least Edge’s finisher ended it. This wasn’t bad at all and it got Edge over which was the point. Not bad, but it could have been better. Edge would get a trophy that resembled the Stanley Cup which Christian would keep taking, leading to a feud between them.

Benoit is with Tazz who is wearing shorts. The other Chris gets asked the same question as Jericho got and he gets upset about it but says it’s a good question.

We go to the back with Edge and Coach, who is as tall as Edge at 6’4. They have a brief moment of tenseness that was foreshadowing.

Ad for Tough Enough.

Angle is ticked off and says no one from WCW is interfering tonight.

Light Heavyweight Title: Jeff Hardy vs. X-Pac

Thankfully they went to the Cruiserweight belt later in the year. Jeff, the champion, comes out first for no apparent reason. No one remembers this reign anyway but whatever. This was during the time that X-Pac actually led a faction called X-Factor. It was him, Albert and Justin Credible. If nothing else their theme song was decent. We talk about Fully Loaded which never happened as I was trying to recall it.

That show would become InVasion in case you were wondering. This was when this title somehow meant less than it used to but they got the idea right by this point. It didn’t hurt that there was no Cruiserweight Division to make it look stupid though. At least you have two good lightweights here. Thankfully the Bronco Buster misses. They botch the living heck out of something and I have no idea what it was supposed to be.

That rarely happens so you can tell it was bad. Jeff pulls the shirt off to get the female fans moist. X-Pac gets the three but Jeff’s foot is on the rope. One day that’s going to be messed up and it’s going to cost them. Jeff hits the Swanton and gets a weird cover for the pin. They say X-Pac dominated this. Uh, not really.

Rating: C-. This was nothing but a way to give Angle a breather between his second and third match. I get that the idea is to make it easier on Shane, but why does he need to do that? It’s asking a bit much of Angle to go three times, especially when the third is a brutal match. They couldn’t do a sneak attack in the back and have Edge vs. Christian? Anyway, this was fine for what it was but that botch was just awful. Granted it’s a Jeff match so that comes with the territory.

Regal and Tajiri are in the back (Regal is Commissioner mind you) and Austin comes in to use the phone. He calls Vince and says Benoit and Jericho might defect. I love that they imply that the owner hasn’t been watching the show. This Austin and Vince angle was nothing short of surreal.

Lita is in London in Raw magazine. That’s one of my all time favorite photo shoots.

More DDP stalking videos, which somehow have DDP’s voice on them which makes no sense. Yeah because normal fans have mics on them. So he just jumps the railing again and gets in the ring which is fine again apparently. I love storylines. He calls out Taker and we get ANOTHER video and this is just stupid now. And Sara is filming him. Oh good night she has a man face.

The rest of her looks great but I can see why he picked Michelle a bit more now. Taker comes out to Rollin, which is at least better than Kid Rock. Taker, looking very fat, walks slower than he does today. That can’t be a good sign. He has no gloves on and it’s an odd sight. Oh there they are. This would be a dream match three years prior.

I do kind of like that it’s not a match, as Austin put it with Rikishi, “I don’t want a match, I want to kill him (paraphrased)” Sara comes out with a camera and magically we’re hooked up to it. She looks great from a distance but close up it makes me shiver. Taker punches Page a lot and eventually he runs. That was too long but whatever as it filled in time and there was a point to it.

Austin is in the back and wants to know how long it takes to get from Greenwich, Connecticut, since Vince can get there in time for the end of the show I guess.

We recap Shane vs. Angle, which started when Shane interrupted Angle reenacting the Olympic ceremony. The build for this was good for one reason: Shane could win. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility which is something that you don’t get with Vince.

Shane McMahon vs. Kurt Angle

It should be noted that this is one of my favorite matches ever so I’ll be biased in it. Wait, they’re my reviews so I’m biased towards myself, so it’s fine. Angle throws his medals down on the way to the ring so you know this is serious. Again, JR says that after I typed it so I win again. Angle is just beating the tar out of Shane to start here. And just as I say that Shane starts throwing lefts and fights back.

With Shane on the floor, Angle gets on all fours and wants to go amateur, which is more popular that pro in certain areas other than wrestling. Naturally Angle easily gets out and beats on Shane even more. In a nice looking move, Angle hits a gutwrench but it’s overhead instead of to the side. It looked cool. Angle is just throwing Shane everywhere. It looks like a squash but don’t worry. It’ll get better. Shane has had three punches and an armdrag.

He offers Shane another amateur attempt but this time Shane just punts him in the ribs. That’s followed by a jumping back elbow making him awesome. On the floor now, Shane gets on the railing behind JR and Heyman and jumps over both them and the table to hit Kurt with a clothesline in a sweet spot. The guy was athletic and no one can ever argue that.

It’s certainly more entertaining than seeing Vince out there making a fool out of himself. And we have a kendo stick which Shane can swing really well. He actually breaks it over Angle’s back which has to feel like the dickens. Shane uses armdrags on the floor to send Angle into the railing which is a nice spot. Shane goes for a cover and Angle bridges out of it. Think of the Matrix move.

Shane does the smart thing and just hits him in the stomach. Angle does this three times, showing off his stupidity. It’s weapons time now and Shane is dominating. Ankle lock by Shane and Kurt just kicks him in the face. Nothing wrong with that. We get a Sharpshooter attempt and Shane botches it but gets it eventually. It looks bad but it’s ok I guess. Granted almost no one gets it right so it’s fine.

Shane is just beating the tar out of Angle here. He puts a trash can on his stomach and goes to the top for a shooting star press which misses but looked solid. The fans get a holy crap chant going as they’re impressed here. We hit the floor again and Shane hits a suplex, which breaks Kurt’s tailbone. He’s legit hurt which makes the rest of the match even more impressive. His solution to Shane fighting back: slam Shane’s head into a wall.   I like the simple ideas.

In the sickest bump you’ll see in years, Angle suplexes Shane over his head into one of the glass walls with KOR (what, no love for the?) on them. The problem is that it doesn’t break and Shane lands on his head which goes THUD. It sounded and looked SICK.  Shane is more or less out of it.

Angle, ticked off that it didn’t work, picks him up and does it AGAIN, this time having it work, drawing another holy chant. Angle’s arm is bleeding. We’re under the stage now and Angle suplexes him again and AGAIN it doesn’t break. Shane is busted. Angle goes for another suplex and it doesn’t break. In essence, Shane is being thrown into a wall. Kurt is MAD and just picks him up and launches him through a glass wall.

Shane looks like he’s been beaten by an army and raped by a bear while being run over by a train. Angle is spent too. Everyone is just bleeding like a stuck pig. Angle gets an anvil case and puts Shane on it to wheel him back to the ring. That’s a good idea as he’s just dead weight at this point. We’re back in the ring and Angle covers Shane. For two. The place pops like a freaking teenage girl for that. We get a replay where we can see Kurt’s face and he looks like he wants to cry.

A low blow connects and Shane isn’t dead yet. He gets a trash can lid and just pops the skin off of Angle and hits an Olympic Slam for two. Both guys are just freaking spent. Shane gets catapulted into the corner where he just kind of collapses. Angle gets a board from somewhere and just beats Shane about the back and shoulder with it. There’s something awesome about that.

He sets it up on the copes and climbs to the top where he this the Olympic Slam from the top rope. I would say Shane lands in the middle of the ring with a thud, but as they said in Con Air, “the word ain’t land. It’s crash.” They show a bunch a replays and the slam looks cooler and cooler ever time. I mean Shane just explodes on the mat and it looks amazing. Shane’s best match ever by about 1000 miles. They carry him out and he’s just gone.  The Slam off the top got the pin if that wasn’t clear.

Rating: A. This was just freaking brutal. It’s a great street fight where you never really believed Shane was completely out of it. That’s a great thing to be able to say, but Shane took the best beating I can recall anyone taking in a long time. Find a copy of this match as it’s right up there with any beating I’ve ever seen.

Buy Fully Loaded!

Austin is still looking for Vince and tells the guys in the back to tell Vince to come to the ring when he gets here. This was just such a strange angle but it kind of worked.

We recap the triple threat match, which came from the EPIC tag match between Austin and HHH (the one where he got hurt) against Benoit and Jericho for the tag titles. Austin blamed HHH for the loss and says he can beat both of them in the ring, so Linda made the match.

They worked together to beat him and had him in both their submissions at the same time in a great looking moment that I stole about a dozen times in OCW. Austin says Vince needs to pick between Austin and Linda, which is as surreal of a line as you could ask for. Vince says keep the title or they’re through.

WWF Title: Steve Austin vs. Chris Benoit vs. Chris Jericho

Benoit is very hurt here as he got injured in TLC but wrestled here anyway. After this he would immediately go and have neck surgery but miss over a year because of it. The idea here is simple: the faces beat on Austin a lot. Neither of them were on Austin’s level but combined they certainly were. More or less it’s Austin going back and forth from singles match to singles match but both guys are capable of beating him, which makes this more or less impossible for him to pull off.

That turns out to be the case actually, as for fifteen minutes we have Austin vs. both guys, which I would love to see both matches of. Neither guy ever had a real feud with Austin which is a shame as Austin can certainly work a style that would mesh with both of them very well. I know that when Benoit was a heel they had a match on Raw and Austin wrestled nothing but technical and hung with Benoit every step of the way.

His in ring skills were certainly overlooked due to all of his injuries, which is a shame. He would have been one of the most complete wrestlers of all time had it not been for that botched piledriver. Jericho and Austin are another group that could have been awesome in a feud. Can you imagine just the promo wars alone? They keep trying for the double submission but Aust keeps getting out. They’re taking their time here and it’s certainly paying off.

After a very long match, going maybe 20 minutes, they finally hook it and Austin taps out. The problem though is that both made him tap, so it doesn’t count? That makes no sense, as if nothing else Austin should be out of it. The Canadians go at it now with both going for their submissions. Austin grabs a chair after being out forever but Benoit hits a baseball slide to put him down again. Booker freaking T debuts and hits the axe kick on Austin on the floor.

It should be noted that Austin complete no sells it after being dead forever. Booker throws him through the, say it with me, Spanish announce table as we have more hot Canadian action in the ring. Austin finally gets back in and after being knocked down again, Benoit hits a belly to back from the top on Jericho, but everyone is dead. Austin covers Benoit for a kind of weak finish. No Vince surprisingly.

Rating: B+. While not as good as the street fight, this was a very solid match. The story made perfect sense, but Booker running in didn’t do much at all since Austin was beaten half to death already anyway. I with something else had finished Benoit off but that’s a moot point I guess. This was solid and ran almost half an hour, which helped a lot as it gave them plenty of time to get something good together.

Overall Rating: B. While the last two matches are by far and away the best part of the show, it’s not like the rest sucked. The last two were just completely awesome. Edge winning was a great touch and the right choice as he would eventually become a mega star.

It could have been better, but the Invasion changed everything, making this show kind of pointless. It started the next night though, so all is right with the world. Good show and worth seeing, but go out of your way to see Shane and Angle as it’s just awesomeness personified.

This Tuesday In Texas
Date: December 3, 1991
Location: Freeman Coliseum, San Antonio, Texas
Attendance: 8,000
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Bobby Heenan

The main reason for doing this is simply because it’s the only WWF PPV I haven’t done from the first one ever until King of the Ring 1996. Also it’s kind of an anomaly as it’s held on a Tuesday, hence the name. This is 6 days after Survivor Series where Taker won the world title from Hogan and tonight is the rematch. The other main event tonight is the long awaited showdown between Jake Roberts and Randy Savage which was the hottest feud in the world back then.

It’s just two hours long and they were trying to make Tuesday into another PPV night. Since the next Tuesday show didn’t happen until 2004, you can guess how well this went over. Naturally Vince blamed everything other than his brilliance of having two PPVs in a week since he could never have a bad idea.

I remember reviewing the 91 Survivor Series and being TICKED that Jake and Randy, who were scheduled to be in the main event as team captains and had been advertised until 3 days before Survivor Series were pulled as Savage was “injured”. The thing is, that wasn’t mentioned until Sunday morning and then again at the beginning of the show.

Needless to say, people were furious. Other than the Hogan match, that had been the only reason to buy such a terrible show. Along with the double thing in seven days, I’ve always thought that was why the show bombed. Maybe it was the wrestling. Let’s find out.

There were actually about 5-6 dark matches before the PPV went on the air, with the main one being Flair vs. Piper. Other than that it was a lot of squash matches.

After a standard Texas themed intro and Sean Mooney mentioning the main events, we’re ready to go.

Intercontinental Title: Bret Hart vs. Skinner

If you don’t know who the champion is here, you’re beyond my help. Skinner is in the ring when the champion’s music plays so what do you expect out of this? Bret’s singles push was in full swing here, having beaten Perfect in their classic at Summerslam. Skinner is apparently undefeated at this point, meaning he had beaten about three jobbers or something.

Bret gives some girl the shades and she FREAKS. You would think it was 1999 and she was a 13 year old at an N Sync concert. Bret is crisp here, and given that Steve Keirn, more commonly known as Skinner, is a very good wrestler in his own right means this should be solid. He’s the head trainer in FCW, or at least he was as of a few months ago. We get a WILL YOU BE SERIOUS from Monsoon as those two somehow have more chemistry than Ventura and McMahon.

That’s a very high compliment if there ever was one. Bret goes into the post to turn the tide here. That shouldn’t be a DQ as some commentators freak out about. It’s part of the ring after all. Bret goes into his standard great selling as the clinic on psychology that is a Bret Hart match begins. We get an abdominal stretch and say it with me: Gorilla criticizes it. One of my favorite bits that they do is Gorilla saying something and Heenan repeating it.

That’s just great stuff that you just can’t teach. Danny Davis is the referee here, despite being banned from doing so for life plus ten years. We go through the motions of Skinner working over the shoulder and things are working quite well indeed. Just as I say that, he goes after Bret’s leg and even Gorilla points out how stupid that is. Heenan says that it’s like beating on a lizard and goes into a biology thing, which Gorilla is annoyed with.

The crowd is WAY behind Bret here. Skinner hits his finisher, a reverse DDT, but Bret gets out at two of course. Bret plays possum, and despite the fact that he does this IN EVERY MATCH HE HAS EVER HAD, Skinner falls for it and Bret goes into the original five moves of doom, which of course he doesn’t get through before Skinner breaks up the streak, just like everyone else does.

See, the difference between Hogan and Hart is that while they always finish the same, Bret had a million different ways of getting there while you could plot a Hogan match from bell to bell with relative ease. Skinner goes up top for no apparent reason, and in a great impression of Ric Flair, gets slammed off of it. Sharpshooter goes on and the match goes off.

Rating: B. It’s a formula match, but since Bret is the master of formula matches, ok second master after Flair, this was fine. Skinner was built up as the challenger of the week, he went in and did his stuff, Bret survived and got the tap out. Do that about 10 times and you have yourself a dominant champion, which is exactly what they did and it worked like a charm. This was very solid stuff all around and it worked quite well to open the show. The bad part is that it’s probably going to be the best match of the night.

Jake says he feeds off of the screams of Elizabeth. He gets close to saying he wants to have Savage and Liz. Apparently it’s illegal for him to have a snake tonight. Jake’s heel stuff here is just amazing. He has every inch of this persona down to the letter.

Savage babbles and mumbles more incoherently than Warrior ever dreamed of. His outfit looks like an art supply store exploded on him.

Jake Roberts vs. Randy Savage

Savage jumps Jake in the aisle and we’re off. The crowd isn’t cheering so much as roaring. I mean they’re hardcore here. The thing is it’s kind of hard to take Savage seriously here as he’s got a feather on his hat that’s at the very least a foot and a half tall. That’s just freaking huge. Ok good it’s gone now. As for why this feud is happening, Savage had gotten married but Jake wasn’t invited to the bachelor party because he was a heel. Well if nothing else that’s creative.

That led to Savage coming out of retirement to fight him, but one day on I think Superstars, Jake beat down Savage and put his (devenomized) cobra onto Savage’s arm, but it held on too long and the bite was worse than expected. Jake also shoved Liz, which made him the biggest heel in forever. They were supposed to be opposing captains in the Survivor Series main event but due to the cobra attack, Savage was deemed too hurt to fight so we got this instead.

Jake goes kind of low to break the momentum. Savage’s arm is screwed up because of the snake bite injury too. In a nice little touch, Jake rips the bandage off of the arm and there’s blood under the tape. His arm was fine, but they thought about it here enough to make it look like he’s injured worse than he really is.

Since the arm is so hurt Roberts is beating the tar out of Savage. Just as I say that, Savage gets a quick shot in and within 30 seconds he gets Jake down and hits the elbow for the win in a match that felt like it had 3 minutes cut out.

Now we get to the important part though. Savage gets the bell but the referee stops him, allowing Jake to get a quick DDT. Savage is down but Jake is still hurt too so Savage actually beats him to his feet. A second DDT puts Savage out cold though and Jake is up now. After faking leaving, Jake comes back and goes under the ring to pull out a little bag. This doesn’t sound like much but it’s an absolutely INSANE reaction for every tiny movement.

Liz comes running down and is FREAKING on Roberts. Jake is feeding on her fears here and it’s amazing stuff. Savage kind of gets up and he takes an unprecedented third DDT. No one had ever taken more than one before this so that was completely insane. He puts the cobra handler glove on and Liz just completely loses it. Jake slips the glove off and says that Liz better beg if she wants to save him.

They stand up and Jake secures his place in the 7th circle of eternal punishment BY PUNCHING LIZ. Jack Tunney comes out to glare at Jake and suspend him for having a snake with him until he points out there was no snake in the bag, which confuses Tunney to no end, which is impressive for him as asking his name confuses him more than likely.

In the back, Jake says that when he hit Liz, it was the best feeling he’s ever had and he would pay to be able to do that again. He ends it by saying that Savage can come back again, but to bring his wife again because Jake can make her into something even he would want. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but this was one of the best heel promos I’ve ever seen in my life.

Rating: C+. The match is a fast paced mess but the angle is just completely awesome. The problem was there was never the big match that these guys so desperately needed where Savage could destroy Jake with like 5 elbows or something because Flair came in and changed everything around.

Warlord vs. British Bulldog

This is more or less based around Warlord having a full nelson as a finisher and saying no one can break it. Smith says he can. That’s it. Smith was just ridiculously awesome at this point so I’m sold pretty easily here. Naturally there’s not a word said about the match at first and it’s all about the Savage vs. Roberts thing, which is understandable. For some reason there’s a ton of times here where there’s no talking from the commentators which is never a good thing. It’s just dead air.

At least once they got done talking about the angle they focus on the match for the most part. I can understand talking about the angles a lot, but there’s no excuse for ignoring a match entirely. We’ve mainly got a power match here, but in this case it’s working. It’s odd to have Warlord go this long in a match and also against a guy that uses the same style he has. He’s managed by Harvey Whippleman.

That’s a bit early for him I thought but whatever. Hey it’s a power vs. power match and we have a bearhug. Who could have seen that coming? We’re about five minutes in and Heenan insists it’s over ten. I love hyperbole in wrestling. Usually the power vs. power doesn’t work but Smith makes up for it by having the wrestling ability to balance things out. That’s what made him so solid in the ring.

He was a hybrid wrestler that could do both styles and it allowed him to have decent matches with a lot more wrestlers than a guy like Warlord for example did. Warlord gets the Full Nelson but can’t get the hands in. His hands are on the side of the head so in essence this move is doing nothing at all.

That makes the escape look completely stupid. Smith makes the comeback and gets a decent vertical suplex which is borderline very impressive. From out of almost nowhere, Smith gets a crucifix for the quick pin. That was different if nothing else.

Rating: B-. Given what they had to work with here, this came off pretty well. Smith winning with a wrestling move instead of a power move was a nice little twist in there as everyone was expecting it to end in a power thing, but instead he does the exact opposite and it works. That’s a solid bit of psychology and it worked like a charm here. This might be Warlord’s longest match ever and it worked pretty well. Smith carried the majority of this, but not all of it.

Savage says he’s getting Roberts and there’s no stopping him because all of this was Savage’s fault. He winds up on his knees and then on the ground during this. It’s a lot better than it sounds. Savage is messed up out of his mind here and you can tell it.

Ted DiBiase/Repo Man vs. Virgil/Tito Santana

One thing modern WWE programming is great about is recapping stuff. That helps a ton as to someone that is randomly seeing this, this match makes NO sense. In reality, DiBiase had said that Virgil had stolen the Million Dollar Belt and recruited Repo Man to help him get it back, which worked. Since we need to fill in a match slot here, Tito joined Virgil and we get this match. The faces are already in the ring so what do you expect to happen here?

Virgil’s career is in essence over as far as importance goes here. He just had nothing to do once he left DiBiase and that singles feud went on about as long as it could so the WWF kept it going for another few months after it. Repo here is of course Smash from Demolition if you weren’t aware of that. Santana is more or less worthless here as El Matador.

The problem is that after that, no one remembered the great work he did as Tito Santana, as he was just remembered for the stupid gimmick that he did. As for the match, there’s not a lot to say. It’s your standard filler tag match that could have been on any house show or TV show of the era. I don’t know if it’s good enough for here but we’ll see I guess. Repo Man and DiBiase might be the weirdest combination of all time.

The main problem here is that there’s no point to having Santana in there. He didn’t have any feud with either guy that I can remember other than a few random matches with Repo that would have happened just because they were on the same level of the card. This is just a weird combination to have. The wrestling is fine, but it just comes off as weird all around. The match itself is once again the same kind of match that you would expect to see at a house show or on TV.

It’s actually not bad to be fair. It’s nothing to go out of your way to see, but I don’t have a problem with it being on a low level Tuesday PPV. The problem here is that Virgil is the guy that’s getting the hot tag. How is that appealing? With Sherri making a distraction, Repo hits him in the back with a knee to allow DiBiase to get the pin.

Rating: C. This was ok I guess, but it wasn’t anything great. The faces were just overly matched here and it was really easy to tell that. The formula worked fine here as it ca be expected with guys like DiBiase and Santana out there though, so that balances out I guess. This was pure filler.

Hogan says he’s proud of the Hulkamaniacs for sticking up for him. He says for Flair to stay out of this.

WWF Title: Hulk Hogan vs. Undertaker

So as you likely know, Taker more or less cheated to become champion at the last show so Tunney set this up to make up for it. He’ll be at ringside I think. This is Taker’s first title defense, although I’m guessing he did some on house shows. It was fairly obvious that Hogan would get the belt back here, but it was at the same time not a good thing as you could clearly hear Taker being cheered when he won the title, which I always thought was because he wasn’t named Hulk Hogan and he was world champion.

Of course he’s Hogan though so he has to get pushed. Hogan pounds away but naturally Taker no sells the heck out of it. There’s your missed attack though and Taker just covers Hogan’s face, which in theory should kill him. So after that attempt at murder, we’re back up and somehow going even more slowly if that’s possible. Flair comes out and gets in Tunney’s face, so Hogan wipes him out with a chair.

That made no sense at all but whatever. It took Tunney down too so there we are. Hogan keeps beating on Taker but can’t get anywhere with him. Flair brings in a chair to end it like last time but Taker gets his head rammed into it and Flair is taken out by a freaking horrible looking clothesline. After a big boot is no sold by Taker, he gets hit in the head by the urn and then in something completely stupid, Hogan opens the urn and takes some ashes out to throw in Taker’s face.

A quick rollup gets him the title back. Posing takes us out. Seriously? The same urn that the Million Dollar Team couldn’t open for months, Hogan just opened inside of 2 seconds. Only in wrestling could things that huge be completely forgotten. This wasn’t any good at all.

Rating: D. So let me get this straight. Taker is completely invincible to the point where chair shots mean nothing on him, but throwing dust in his eyes is enough to keep him down for three? My goodness what they wouldn’t do for Hogan back in the day. This just didn’t work at all as it was overbooked and their styles have never worked well at all. This was by far the worst match of the night, which reminds me of WCW for some reason.

Overall Rating: B-. This is a pretty good show, but it begs the question of why was this on a Tuesday 6 days after a major PPV? The buyrate was lower than it was previously thought humanly possible and while the show is solid, nothing else about it was. The reaction was completely awful and given that it didn’t happen again for 13 years, you can tell the office wasn’t that pleased with it.

To show you the respect it got, this never got its own official video release. It was put on a compilation tape called Supertape 91. What does that tell you about this? It’s ok, but only watch it if you’re a more hardcore fan as otherwise you might be mildly entertained but not much. Everyone should watch the Savage/Roberts segments though as they’re amazing stuff.

One Night Only
Date: September 20, 1997
Location: NEC Arena, Birmingham, England
Attendance: 11,000
Commentators: Vince McMahon, Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler

So more or less, this is the first European only PPV, meaning it only aired in Europe and Canada because of Bret wanting it to, so there you are. We’re between Ground Zero, where nothing of note happened and Bad Blood, where the Cell and Kane debuted. This is on a Saturday for no apparent reason and other than the main event, nothing of note happens here.

Vince was really just trying to expand his audience a bit so he threw this out there to them to give them something. The main event is Shawn vs. Bulldog for the European Title which doesn’t mean much but over there it would be a big deal. Oh and the other reason I’m doing this is because I want to have done everything in the 90s and this was one of the few I had left. Let’s do it.

Oh before I forget, most of you have likely never seen this whole thing. Unless you have 24/7 or know how to find shows online, it’s unlikely you’ve seen the full show. The American release was heavily cut and is missing 2-3 matches. This is the full show that was only available in Europe or Canada on tape or PPV, meaning you would have had to tape it when it aired at first.

We start with a recap of Summerslam 92 because that’s the extent of mainstream wrestling. This is really just a highlight reel of Smith’s career leading up to tonight, meaning it’s very short. That was rather pointless.

HHH vs. Dude Love

Love had turned into what he is now at Summerslam where he entered as Mankind. Again, this feud was over, but they’re not really putting a lot of thought into it. Should be fine though. The ring announcer is very Irish. Since I just got done doing KOTR 97 about 3 hours ago this is a nice companion piece. HHH is REALLY hitting his stride here as he’s turning into a perfect snob but also has the muscle mass and capabilities coming in for him.

Apparently you have to be a good athlete to be King of the Ring. That’s not true due to Mable but points for trying. Love, getting a big pop, gives a promo with English words thrown in. It’s rather amusing. Foley is freaking TALENTED. I’ve always loved Dude’s music for some twisted reason. They do that annoying air horn thing but accompany it with DUDE LOVE at the end instead of claps.

It’s the thing where it’s 5 blows of it then 4 then two more to end it. Instead of the two at the end they chant the name. Lawler keeps using British insults and Vince is getting ticked off at him for it. Foley puts a leg lock on HHH that if you look at it closely enough you can see that there’s very little pressure on the leg but it looks good if nothing else. Sweet Shin Music misses. Ok now Lawler is just getting annoying.

We get another instance of HHH backing down from the referee which never gets old. HHH is mostly in control here as would be expected. He’s got insane heat on him too. He goes for the Pedigree but Foley reverses with a slingshot where HHH misses the post by about 6 inches minimum. That was just awful looking.

In a spot I like, Foley puts HHH into all three buckles three times each. There’s no tenth into the mat though which is odd. Chyna saves HHH from the Double Arm DDT which ticks off Foley and allows the Pedigree to hit for the pin.

Rating: B+. This was a great choice for an opener. These two have almost always had great chemistry together and this was no different.

We hear from fans about the main event tonight. They need to do that more often. They’re actually fairly split but Bulldog is ahead. One chick here looks EXACTLY like Becca, but Becca would be like 6 at this point so it isnt’ her.

Sunny comes out to be the announcer for the next match to a HUGE pop. They make references to the Spice Girls and Page 3 girls. I actually know what those mean! She always looked like she was having fun so that’s always a good thing.

Leif Cassidy vs. Tiger Ali Singh

Singh was kind of like Ted DiBiase mixed with Muhammad Hassan. He wasn’t any good in the ring but whatever. He’s Canadian too but whatever. His father is Tiger Jeet Singh who was a great wrestler that most of you have likely never heard of. I have no idea who the face is here but I think it’s Singh, which is very odd.

Cassidy is more commonly known as Al Snow, but this is before Head showed up so no one cares and no one has heard of him. goody two shoes but no one likes him. He would become a snob soon after this. Snow works on the arm which is smart enough I suppose.

It’s basic psychology but it’s psychology nonetheless. We talk about Brian Christopher for no apparent reason. A random Tiger Bomb (Pearl River Plunge traditionally but on second viewing it’s a bulldog so that makes no sense) ends this.

Rating: D+. There was nothing at all to this. It was about 5 minutes and just boring. I have no idea why they put this on but it was just a completely uninteresting match. Not particularly bad, but not interesting at all.

Oddly enough I just got done watching Tribute to the Troops which I guess has some similarities to this.

Sunny hits on all three of the announcers which is pointless.

We see a clip from Ground Zero where Austin cost Owen and Bulldog the tag titles in a match for the vacant titles. That leads us to this.

Tag Titles: Los Boricuas vs. Headbangers

The Headbangers had a month long run that no one remembers or cares about. Los Boricuas were just a waste of time. They’re Savio Vega and a guy named Miguel. They were an offshoot of the Nation that went nowhere at all but were given a ton of TV time anyway. For some reason that I’ll never understand, the champions are over. The heels jump them early and it doesn’t work at all.

This crowd is approaching Canadian Stampede levels and it’s FOR THE HEADBANGERS! Then we go to a headlock and the crowd DIES. The only time close to that was when Hogan lost at the Main Event where they went silent. Apparently the Headbangers went to college. Wow indeed. The heels take over so they’re going with a formula. This is surprisingly decent. Good night Miguel is a freaking hairy man.

In something that makes me laugh, the referee calls Thrasher Headbanger. He can’t tell them apart either. I love that. After Thrasher takes a powerbomb, Mosh jumps off the top rope for the Stage Dive (Seated Senton) for the pin. That was a very good and fast paced ending. The pop is very solid indeed.

Rating: B. This was actually really quite good. The crowd helped this match a lot as they were hot the entire time. It helped that I had zero expectations here but this came off pretty good. They were about the same kind of teams with some very basic light power stuff but mostly high flying and speed moves which made a decent match. It’s no classic but it’s not bad at all.

We get a sit down interview with Davey who talks about all of his family in the arena tonight.

Flash Funk vs. The Patriot

Flash Funk is more commonly known as 2 Cold Scorpio and is a pimp without the name of being one. Patriot showed up a few weeks before this and somehow had a title shot at the previous PPV which went nowhere. Naturally he “came within an eyelash” but that didn’t mean anything after that show.

Patriot has Angle’s old music which it’s just odd to hear in 1997. He’s more or less a heel here since he comes out with the American flag. Patriot says he wears a mask because he represents the face of every American. I don’t know that many men that have golden skin like that. Flash is wearing a freaking zoot suit. This isn’t as good of a match as it could be but it’s ok I guess.

It’s about as generic as you could get but that’s fine. Vince calls Flash the Funkmeister. I’m done. Patriot was just annoying as he never went anywhere. He wasn’t that good at all but was built up to be this great worker which he just wasn’t at all. They keep saying the reason they’re not being all violent and crap is because they don’t hate each other. That’s better than nothing I guess.

If nothing else this should tell you everything you need to know about Patriot: his finishers are a full nelson slam called the Uncle Slam and a top rope shoulder block called the Patriot Missile. Funk’s finisher is called the Funky Flash Splash. A full nelson slam ends this. That was a waste of time.

Rating: C-. Again, this was just there. It wasn’t particularly good or bad, but Patriot got some decent heat which is really all you can ask for. Funk went for a big move from the top and it missed for the Uncle Slam. That’s better than nothing I guess. It could have been a lot worse I guess, but this just wasn’t the best choice of a pairing.

The LOD say they’ll win and they don’t like the Godwins. Hawk is OUT THERE.

Legion of Doom vs. Godwins

So yet again the Godwins are heels here and it was another total failure. This started because the LOD botched the Doomsday Device and injured Henry pretty badly. No motorcycles this time in England which hurts things a bit. This was around the time where they were considered American Originals, yet they’re popular here.

That’s just odd as they’re Americans but Patriot is an American character and gets booed. That’s very interesting. We start out with Henry and Animal which I guess would be the best combination but that’s neither here nor there. Ross gets in a not very subtle jab at Bill Clinton that Vince scoffs at which is most odd. Oh the Godwins have a new manager that’s not here named Uncle Cleatus.

It’s Dutch Mantel, who until recently was a booker in TNA. They transition from a line about mad cow disease by saying there’s a lot of beef in there. I’m tired of Lawler’s stupid British lines already which means he’ll keep going all night with them. Henry uses a Fujiwara Armbar which stuns both myself and Ross. I hate to that jump into the boot when the guy is on the mat spot. It’s just freaking stupid.

Seriously, what was Phineas trying to do there? Vince saying do your job to a referee makes me laugh as back then we never knew he could fire the referee. Henry hits the Slop Drop (reverse DDT) on Hawk but waits too long and only gets two. We get a history lesson from Ross about the Confederate Flag. Ok then. After a brief brawl, the LOD hit the Doomsday Device on Henry for the pin.

Rating: D+. This was an ok match I guess, but DANG how many times can these teams fight? They were the Orton/HHH of the tag division of their day as this feud just went on and on and on and never stopped until one team left the company. It never went anywhere and never got interesting at all. Somehow, this might have been the best of their matches, which isn’t saying much at all. This was pretty bad, but whatever.

Apparently Shamrock is hurt and can’t fight Vader tonight due to some injuries. He was just hitting his stride in the ring and was starting to get some reactions from the crowds which was the point all along. Rockabilly, Billy Gunn’s current failure of a gimmick, comes down for no apparent reason. He talks trash and taps to an ankle lock to keep Shamrock hot which is smart I guess.

Bret is in the back and gets another mixed reaction. He’s a heel now but in Europe he’s much more popular. Never mind as he’s getting booed rather loudly again. This is one of the most boring promos of all time and Vince tries so hard to make Bret the heel here as he continues to put idea in the heads of the people which doesn’t work here. Bret admits he cares what the fans think to wrap this up.

Vader vs. Owen Hart

Owen is subbing for Shamrock here and Vader means absolutely nothing anymore. Vader is Patriot’s friend or something like that. It was one of those hey we’re friends now despite having nothing at all in common things. Owen gets a very solid pop. Lawler brings up an interesting point as he says that the fans boo Bret and cheer Owen, which is indeed odd.

This is an interesting matchup if nothing else. So I’m about 8 minutes into this and it’s actually really good. Owen keeps trying to slam Vader for the kind of Hogan vs. Andre moment but of course it doesn’t work as he’s less than half the size of Vader. Vader uses very basic power stuff but it’s working very well. I’m not sure what it is but this is working really well for me. It’s slow but it’s not boring at all really.

Vader uses an ankle lock of all things and gets out by injuring his own leg. Owen keeps trying to get in various holds or shots but the power game keeps getting him out of there. He hits the middle rope splash which only gets two to stun everyone in the world. Owen hit the kick that half killed Shawn to get the Sharpshooter and the fans are INTO this. He actually gets the slam and of course it gets two BECAUSE IT’S A FREAKING BODY SLAM!

One shot from Vader and he sets for the Vader Bomb but Owen gets the knees up. That should have pretty much snapped both of his legs but whatever. He goes up and hits a missile dropkick and nips up and the crowd is going nuts. He goes up again and gets powerslammed for the pin. Awesome match.

Rating: A-. That’s probably high but I really liked this. The fans helped it a lot as they were hot. This was basic big guy vs. little guy which is a formula that just flat out works. It’s hard to mess that up and they certainly nailed it here. Owen and Vader could work very well when given the chance and that’s what they did here. This was likely Vader’s last meaningful win.

Taker says Bret should be ready to rest in peace.

WWF Title: Undertaker vs. Bret Hart

This is the rematch from Summerslam where Michaels cost Taker the title to Bret, leading to the Shawn vs. Taker feud that ended in the Cell. Taker’s entrance is short here, only taking about two or three minutes. Man it’s awesome to think that Bret signed again, and I’m not even a huge fan of his. This is an interesting case as Bret is clearly the big heel in America but worldwide he’s far more popular, yet here he’s getting booed anyway.

Taker’s pop was great. Bret’s…existed. I freaking LOVE that thing where Taker is getting punched in the corner and grabs the other guy by the throat and throws him into the corner to beat on them. It’s easily my favorite Taker move. Less than two minutes in, Bret takes the turnbuckle pad off to really make himself the heel. Oh he didn’t get it off but he tried. Ok never mind it is off. That was odd.

Vince says WHAT A MATCHUP THIS IS about 3 minutes into it. That must have been a heck of a three minute interval. The fans are unsure who to cheer for here. It’s hard to believe that Montreal was less than two months away after this. After we brawl on the floor for a bit we’re back in the ring as Bret uses a DDT, making him instantly cool. This is going back and forth which is always a good thing I think.

If Vince says mixed reaction one more time I’m going to freaking scream. WE GET IT ALREADY. After hitting the buckle, Bret gets his back worked over. Bret comes back and naturally goes after the leg, which makes sense. That of course goes on and on for days. Sorry Maria just came out on Smackdown so the song is in my head.

He gets the figure four on the ringpost that of course does very little pain but we’ll ignore that for the sake of disbelief. Lawler calls Bret Bret-Man for some reason that I don’t get. He goes to a figure four as you could almost plot out a long Bret match. Again we hear that the figure four puts pressure on seven different parts of the leg.

That number has changed about 100 times over the years so we’ll go with 7 for now. After it being reversed, Bret gets the ropes to a chorus of boos. Taker, freaking learn to sell a knee. I’m tired of this. You’ve been a huge part of the company for the better part of ever and you can’t sell a basic knee injury.

Come on man. You’ve had your leg worked on all night and now you have the leg strength to run the ropes back and forth. That’s just freaking stupid. Oh sure NOW your leg hurts. Give me a freaking break Taker. Bret uses the Summerslam 91 counter to hook the Sharpshooter which never gets old. Taker powers out which no one has ever seen before, so obviously they weren’t at Mania 13.

A second attempt is countered by a hand around the throat. And here comes the Pheonom. The chokeslam doesn’t hit, but he’s back again. The lack of leg selling is just ticking me off though. Dude, limp. Is it that hard to do? Bret is even limping a bit after having the figure four reversed. He grabs the bell but a boot to the face stops that. Taker can’t use it either and gets a chop block as a result.

He goes for that cannonball onto the bottom rope again but it fails as Taker kicks him through the ropes and into the camera man, giving us the eternally amusing spot of the camera going all over the place. Old School gets reversed as they’re busting out everything here. Tombstone is reversed into a rollup for two as the fans are into this. Bret, like an idiot, goes for a tombstone. Because he’s not named Kane, it doesn’t work.

Somehow he gets his head stuck between the ropes which has to hurt badly. Taker starts hitting him which draws the CHEAP DQ ending. That earns the referee a chokeslam. Owen comes and gets Bret out along with I think Brisco who gets chokeslammed also. And now Taker gets booed. MAKE UP YOUR STUPID MIND ENGLISH PEOPLE! Bret being announced as still champion gets a, say it with me, mixed reaction.

Rating: B+. This is like Sting vs. Vader: it’s freaking HARD to mess up. Do you remember a truly bad match between these two? I certainly don’t. They had a solid match here but Taker’s lack of selling was complete and utter crap. I hate that about Taker. Also, this was kind of a standard match between these two for the most part, but that’s fine I guess. Either way, this was very fun with the five minutes before the ending being incredibly good.

The cheapending sucked badly though. Seriously, after nearly half an hour we get a DQ over something like that? That doesn’t work for me at all. If those two things are fixed, this is an easy A or A+.

Shawn says he’s ready.

European Title: Shawn Michaels vs. British Bulldog

Now if you want to talk about a mixed reaction, Shawn gets a mixed reaction. I mean it’s right down the middle. Davey of course gets the big old hero pop that you knew he would get. While it may seem obvious as to who is going to win here, this wasn’t as in the bag as it appeared to be. Smith losing here would have caused about as big of a riot as Bret losing in Montreal.

Smith is about as over here as Vince would be in a “Who’s got the biggest ego contest”. Shawn walks up the ramp for no apparent reason before coming back to the ring. Smith starts off by completely overpowering Shawn who again walks up the ramp. In a cool looking spot, with Shawn on the apron and looking away from the ring, Smith hooks him for a reverse suplex and just drops him back into the ring. It looks a lot better than it sounds.

Vince says he’s surprised Shawn didn’t break in half. Say that again in about four months Vinny. How many freaking big time matches have these guys had? They have the final SNME match, they have KOTR 97 and now this. That’s a lot for a series of big matches when you think about it, especially over that long of a stretch of time. Bulldog is ridiculously popular and is dominating.

Apparently he’s dropped about 20 pounds or so, which is about 2 stones. Vince says Shawn is in his prime. I don’t know about that, but it’s close enough. As Bulldog beats on him for a good while, here’s Rick Rude, who was the insurance policy for Shawn in what would form into DX. They had been hanging out lately but nothing concrete had happened yet.

We hit the sleeper now to kill off a bit of time which is fine by me. Lawler says not to adjust the TV. Who does that? I mean really, have you ever adjusted your TV? I certainly haven’t. The pace slows a lot with Shawn working on the arm, which means you know what’s coming. Yep, there it is, as Smith shows incredible power and picks up Shawn while he’s in an arm lock.

Here’s HHH and Chyna as I wonder WHERE ARE THE HARTS??? Shawn starts his finishing sequence and goes for Chin Music in the corner of all places but Smith counters into the powerslam. Rude grabs the foot and we hit the floor where the kick connects. Rude and HHH beat on him as somehow the referee sees none of this which is just completely ridiculous but whatever.

HHH even hits the Pedigree on the floor. Apparently Davey is wearing a knee brace for a bad knee which hasn’t been mentioned until just now. Well alright then. HHH and Chyna help Shawn and pull him about 6 inches. Seriously, how can the referee not freaking notice this??? Now Rude interferes again as this is beyond stupid now. Oh apparently Bulldog slipped off the platform that the ring is on and hurt his knee.

Well that’s something I guess. The referee stops the match to give Shawn the title and the Grand Slam. There are rumors that Smith was supposed to win but Shawn and HHH played politics to get the win as close to two days before this show. Somehow, I could completely buy that. There was zero need for Shawn to win here, especially in a show never mentioned on American television.

I really don’t…oh you have got to be messing with me. Shawn puts the hold back on and Smith’s wife gets in to help but is picked off by Chyna and BRET AND OWEN HART RUN IN FOR THE SAVE. WHERE IN THE WORLD WERE THEY FIFTEEN FREAKING MINUTES AGO??? COME ON VINCE WILL YOU THINK ONCE IN YOUR STUPID LIFE??? THAT MAKES NO SENSE!

If they’re going to run in for the save NOW why not do it when there were three people cheating to help Shawn? DX poses forever to end this. Yeah, after that stupidity, I’d totally buy the HHH and Shawn politics thing.

Rating: B-. The ending here is just so stupid that it makes my head spin, which makes me really think Shawn and HHH had something to do with it. Honestly, what did Shawn gain here? Does anyone remember anything about his European title reign that had to do with him defending the belt? I certainly don’t.

Actually, I remember him losing it on the Christmas show to HHH after Slaughter made them fight because he hadn’t defended it in over two months. What in the world was the point of him getting it here other than to help his own ego? That makes zero sense. Other than that bringing this match WAY down and the Harts looking like idiots, this was a kind of slow match and overly long with the interference sucking the life out of it at the end. It’s not bad, but not great at all.

Overall Rating: B. This was a good show overall. They treated it like a big time PPV and while nothing actually happened, it still came out pretty well I thought. Bret vs. Taker and Owen vs. Vader are both great and the main event isn’t bad at all. The show isn’t bad, but it’s like a lot of other shows from this era: slow at times which hurts it a lot I think.

It’s certainly good with an AMAZING crowd, but the commentary hurts it too as Lawler is beyond annoying with all of the British terms that most don’t get. To be fair though, this was a European PPV so more people would get it. If you can find the full version of this, check it out for sure as it’s certainly something different and worth seeing.

In Your House 7: Good Friends, Better Enemies
Date: April 28, 1996
Location: Omaha Civic Auditorium, Omaha, Nebraska
Commentators: Jerry Lawler, Vince McMahon
Attendance: 9,563

So Wrestlemania has come and gone, and of course the big deal is that Shawn Michaels, the undisputed king of the midcard has broken through the glass ceiling and defeated Bret Hart to become the world champion, ushering in the new era of the company. No one knew what that era was, but I guarantee you no one knew about the juggernaut that was about to steamroll both Vince and the WWF that July when the NWO would form.

Shawn would continue to be the face of the company until around November when a new star would emerge. Little did the company know (whenever I type that I always hear the voice from Stranger Than Fiction which always creeps me out) that by putting the title on Shawn, they ultimately made the move that would save them in the long run, but I’ll remain cryptic and explain that concept for later on for those of you that don’t get the historical aspect which would be impressive as it’s very indirect.

Anyway, as for tonight, the title of our show refers to Shawn and Diesel, who are going to have their big match that would end their feud once and for all: a No Holds Barred match for the title. The most important thing about tonight though was very simple: it was Hall and Nash’s last televised appearances with the company.

These departures, the so called Curtain Call incident, next months’ In Your House, and Bash at the Beach which was held in July of that year, are four nights that shaped the business as a whole and may be four of the 5 nights that are the reason the WWE won the Monday Night Wars. Explanations coming later including one in this review, but for now let’s start the show! Oh yeah and Foley is here now also.

Standard recap video package to open as it once again tries to play this off as equal to Mania but no one really buys that. No one gave Diesel a chance as no one believed that Shawn was going to lose in his first title defense. It was simply not going to happen after the amount of time and effort he had put into his buildup.

Diesel had turned on him at a house show which prompted Shawn to say what the company tried to build up as a famous line “I’m going to kick his 7ft face.” Yeah that really isn’t that famous. Time for the first match.

Owen Hart/British Bulldog vs. Jake Roberts/Ahmed Johnson

This is kind of a rematch from Mania, minus Vader and Yoko per team. The whole showdown with Vader and Yoko never happened as someone woke up and realized that match would just bomb so they turned it into a 6 man by adding these guys. Owen and Bulldog were by far and away the best tag team around this time but they didn’t get the tag titles until September and they held them until May which was some kind of a record or something that I don’t feel like looking up right now.

They were kind of emulating the original Hart Foundation with the power/speed and while it wasn’t as effective, it was good enough to dominate the tag division for about 9 months. Anyway, here we go in a rather pointless tag match.

We get a pre match interview from Jake but Vince of course cuts off one of the best promo men of all time to push some stupid story, as Vince has to be the center of attention. Before the match, Cornette’s annoying lawyer has a court order banning Jake’s snake from being used. Jake of course rips it up and throws the snake on the heels. Why is it that every heel has a horrible fear of snakes? WWE needs a psychologist on staff to help deal with this.

Apparently Johnson was a surprise partner, even though he was Jake’s partner last month. Part of the story is that Bulldog is worried he’s not as strong as Johnson based on arm wrestling or something. Oh and he broke Johnson’s thumb. So far this is a pretty formula based match with Jake and Owen doing most of the heavy lifting. Whenever Johnson is in, Bulldog runs to tag in Owen to avoid the confrontation.

Johnson is over as we have a very hot crowd. Johnson somehow botches a clothesline. That’s like the most simplistic move of all time. DONALD FREAKING TRUMP did a decent one. Apparently this was supposed to be Bulldog vs. Jake. Vince of course says Owen would be nothing without Bret, even though Bret wouldn’t be around for about 6 months at this point.

Jake is in the ring far more than Johnson as the company knew that Ahmed just flat out sucked in the ring but he was over and had a great look. We go to the rest holds as you can tell this isn’t going to be over anytime soon. This should sum up things very well for you: Jake is in the ring for about seven minutes straight, taking most of the offense.

He finally makes the tag to Ahmed, and Johnson is literally in the ring 30 seconds before tagging back out. That’s how much faith they had in him. Ending comes when everyone is brawling and Bulldog hits Jake in the knee with Cornette’s tennis racket a few times and puts him in a leg lock for the submission.

Rating: C. This isn’t a bad match. Ahmed had no business being on live PPV, but it’s not bad. It was decent for an opener and that’s about all you can ask for here. Jake shows he still has it and he would get a decent little push in the next few months. Nothing special really, but just a little something to keep the fans happy.

Intercontinental Title: Ultimate Warrior vs. Goldust

Yes that Ultimate Warrior and that Goldust had a match. Warrior had made a return at Mania, squashing HHH in less than two minutes and taking a Pedigree, yet being on his feet before HHH was. Goldust is accompanied by Marlena, who was supposed to be really sexy I guess, but she never did it for me at all.

He’s also accompanied by his bodyguard Brusier Mastino. Earlier tonight….wait a second. Brusier Mastino? That’s the name that Kane used when he was a jobber in WCW back in the early 90s. That’s clearly not Kane here as he was playing Isaac Yankem at the time. What the heck? Why use the name of a guy that did absolutely nothing in WCW as a character here?

According to Wikipedia, the man with Goldust is the same one that played Mantaur a year ago. Huh? That’s really weird. Anyway, earlier tonight, Warrior was giving an interview when Marlena blew cigar smoke in his face and Goldust threw gold dust into his eyes. Why would you want to tick him off? GOldust ran away and fell, apparently hurting his knee. Goldust is coming off a mini feud with Savio, and McMahon says that he hopes that feud isn’t over. What is Vince on anyway?

The music hits, the crowd pops, Vince screams, and Warrior jogs to the ring. The massive pyro display is kind of a cool touch for him. We haven’t started the match yet and Lawler is up to two movie references. Make that three, and there’s the bell. Goldust starts our epic showdown by hobbling to the back and apparently leaving.

Then, in something you can tell Vince is furious over, the Warrior picks up Marlena’s cigar from the aisle and starts smoking it. The fans have no idea what to think of this, especially after those Warrior PSAs from the late 80s about not smoking.

Movie reference #5 by King. The bodyguard leaves as Warrior gets Marlena’s director’s chair and sits it in the middle of the ring. Mastino comes back with Goldust and Marlena, screaming “HE’S GOT THE CHAIR!!!”, like it’s the end of the world or something. As Lawler makes his seventh movie reference, Warrior is sitting in the chair, smoking the cigar, as the trio leaves to Lawler’s ninth movie title joke.

Warrior keeps messing with his hair as Lawler calls him a Rebel Without a Clue for number 10. Goldust gets on the mic to say something but the fans boo him. He threatens to come out there and kiss every person if they don’t shut up as this continues to be the weirdest match of all time and we haven’t even started yet. Number thirteen hits as Goldust and Marlena get into the ring, while the cameraman keeps getting shots of her back.

Warrior holds up Goldust’s robe like a bullfighter. Warrior gives Marelena her cigar back which she pops right into her mouth like it’s no big deal at all. In what takes another full minute, Warrior gives Goldust his robe back, accompanied by the fifteenth movie pun by Lawler. I know you might be getting sick of my counting them, but seriously, they’re the most entertaining thing going on right now.

This is at 10 minutes and counting so far and they haven’t even touched each other. Apparently Goldust being outside the ring for seven minutes isn’t enough for a countout either. McMahon says Warrior will do whatever it takes to get the match started. I’m not even going to acknowledge that with a joke or an insult. Goldust sits in the chair and rubs his chest as Marlena…does something.

Even Vince is sick of the jokes at #18. Warrior takes the cigar again and puffs away as King is starting to repeat jokes. Vince asks what everyone is wondering: what is going on? Goldust sticks out his hand which Warrior puts the cigar into before clotheslining him to the floor. Goldust walks to the back for the count out. Are you kidding me? THAT’S IT? The bodyguard takes some clotheslines and a slam as Warrior is announced as the winner.

Vince and Lawler both say something to the effect of the winner of what contest? There was a match here? Post match, Lawler breaks into the twenties in jokes as Warrior puts Goldust’s wig on with the bodyguard’s hat over top of that and climbs the ropes to end this.

Rating: G-. This is so bad it’s below an F. This went on nearly 15 minutes and the contact between the two was a cigar to the hand and a clothesline. The crowd was on fire before the “match” and then we get this? This is why Warrior is blacklisted in wrestling forever. Not this particular thing, but the full thing of shenanigans like this. This was a total waste of time, there was no match, and the fans had no idea what was going on. Easily the worst segment of all time.

We cut to the back to see Bulldog FREAKING out about something as he tries desperately to get into Shawn’s dressing room, saying something about his wife Diana. This turned out to be the start of Shawn’s next storyline and his first real feud. The story would go on to be that allegedly Shawn either hit on or attempted to rape Diana backstage, which would turn out to be false and just a way to get Bulldog a title shot. This would lead to a match at the next In Your House.

We come back to the arena with Warrior’s music still playing and you can see that Vince is ticked at what just happened in the “match.” Vince attempts to play off his anger by saying that he’s mad that Goldust was such a coward. While that’s at least somewhat plausible for the time being, knowing that Vince was the boss the whole time makes it laughable. As he and King talk, apparently, IT’S TIME, IT’S TIME, IT’S VADER TIME!!!

Vader vs. Razor Ramon

And it’s official: Razor is jobbing on his way out. Since no one knew he was leaving though, this wasn’t a given domination by Vader at the time. This is an interesting pairing here, as Razor usually does a lot of power moves but in this case, he’s having to do more hit and run stuff.

His size makes this plausible though, so it’s an interesting match. Vader of course dominates most of the match with Razor getting in some shots here and there, but ultimately getting knocked right back down by Vader. In an odd scene, Razor kicks out of the Vader Bomb. Razor amazes me by hitting a standard suplex on Vader after ten minutes have gone by. The more I see of his stuff, the more Razor impresses me.

Razor hits his big man finisher with the second rope bulldog but that doesn’t work. He almost gets Vader in the Razor’s Edge following a missed Vader Bomb but he can’t do it. He does however hit an electric chair drop on him which is quite impressive. Finish sees Razor set him for the Edge but getting backdropped and Vader just sits on his chest for the pin.

Rating: B. This was a very solid match. Razor made Vader look like a million bucks here, just like he should have. Razor’s last night would be three weeks away, but for all intents and purposes he was done after this match. Vader was going to be the top heel over the summer as he would eventually challenge Shawn for the title at Summerslam. I think Vince knew what he had with Vader, but Vader was too much of a business risk with how insane he was.

After the match, Doc Hendrix shows up and says that President Monsoon has determined that based on Vader’s victory here, he’ll be on the next In Your House, facing Yoko. Vader had injured Yoko on Raw by breaking his leg, resulting in a very funny scene where they had to bring a forklift to carry Yoko out of the arena, but apparently it has healed.

Cornette goes into one of his legendary rants, talking about how Yoko is a dead man. He says that Razor is the example of what Vader does to people in the ring. Razor came into this match as a handsome man and left looking like Margot Kidder.

For those of you that don’t know, that’s the woman that played Lois Lane in the Superman movies. What that has to do with anything is beyond me, but it’s Cornette doing what he does best: ranting and raving like a crazy man.

Tag Titles: Bodydonnas vs. Godwinns

Ok, there’s actually a somewhat lengthy backstory here. The Smoking Guns had vacated the tag titles because Billy hurt his neck, leading to a tag title tournament. The finals were held on the preshow of Mania 12. Prior to that, Sunny, the Bodydonnas manager and the woman that I think was most of our first fantasies, won the Slammy for best buns.

At the end of the match, Phineas had the match won and Sunny allegedly flashes him, which is stupid because you can clearly see she’s covered up, but man it was 1996 so it was shocking at the time. This led to the Godwinns losing the match.

This is the rematch, but earlier in the night, once again on the preshow, the cameras saw Phineas and Sunny off in the back of the building and Sunny flashes her chest at him. Another thing, the Godwinns have comical nicknames. Henry O. Godwinn (HOG) and Phineas I. Godwinn (PIG). They have Hillbilly Jim as a manager now, meaning they can use his old music, Don’t Go Messin With a Country Boy, meaning they get huge pops.

We cut to the back where Mr. Perfect, absolutely rocking the suit he’s in, is with Sunny and the champions. Sunny, looking instant orgasm hot, says that she showed PIG a thing or two and hits on Perfect, before saying that tonight the Donnas are going to outwrestle them. Perfect has a great line by saying that Sunny certainly has the greatest, most amazing pair of…….tag team wrestlers he’s seen in quite some time.

Ok it was funnier when he said it.

Anyway, on with the match. Of course, we have the biggest sex symbol in the history of the company on the way to the ring so we stay on a wide shot of the crowd the whole duration of their entrance. This is another standard though not bad tag match which really is a tale of two halves: to begin with the Godwinns just beat the living tar out of the champions before PIG gets beaten down in the other corner.

This is what you would expect from two such teams. The big guys overpower the smaller ones as the smaller heels do what they can to hang in there until they finally get the advantage. This eventually leads to the power guys making their comeback. Anyway, that eventually happens and Sunny runs to the back, drawing all the attention with her. She returns with a signed photo of herself, autographed to Phineas.

This distracts him as Jim is about to throw the slop onto Sunny. In the ring, Henry hits the reverse DDT on one of them, but he’s distracted by what’s going on outside. The BodyDonnas switch and Henry gets rolled up for the pin. After the match, the losers console their love struck partner, but as they leave he hides the picture in his overalls.

Rating: B-. This wasn’t a bad match. It was standard formula stuff which is what most good tag matches are. The main focus was on Sunny which makes sense as she was the biggest star of all these people. There were some great theme-based tag teams back in this era and these were two of the most memorable.

We cut to the back with Mark Mero apparently ticked off at HHH over being jumped earlier tonight on the preshow. Sable is jaw droppingly hot at this point and somehow people care even less about Mero than they would later on.

Time for your main event recap. They screw up by saying No Holds Barred Championship, implying it’s a new title or something. You know what they meant, but it was written poorly. How sad is it that I rented this tape so many times that I haven’t seen this recap in years yet I know the narration word for word? You know, the build up for this is making it feel pretty epic. At the time, this was a big match as Shawn had never beaten Diesel.

Shawn promises the Kliq a party tonight no matter what. Diesel says he’s got a surprise planned. I know what it is, but I won’t spoil it for you.

WWF Title: Shawn Michaels vs. Diesel

JR is an interviewer. That’s just a shame. Maurice Mad Dog Vachon is in the front row. Shawn’s entrance is cool. He throws up a hand sign, power walks down the aisle, and takes off the vest and the belt before sliding in to start the slug fest. This is very fast paced and it’s working really well. We’re a minute into this and Shawn has come off the top rope twice.

Once for a twisting moonsault and the other to hit Diesel in the head with the boot he stole from the Spanish announcer. Diesel gets the best snake eyes I’ve ever seen as he throws Shawn up into the air to smash him down into the buckle. Diesel is just beating Shawn up at the moment but for some reason, considering it’s no holds barred, Diesel takes the tape off his wrist and chokes out the referee.

Then he whips Shawn with the referee’s belt. Diesel hangs Shawn over the ropes, which is pointless as Shawn can clearly touch the floor which would just make him uncomfortable and not unconscious. This is getting very violent. Not as bad as some of the future stuff, but at the time this was big stuff. Momentum swings when Diesel does the classic chair to the top rope spot to hit himself in the head.

Shawn is doing the Ricky Steamboat method of getting the heck beaten out of him then doing something big to win. He’s getting the tar beaten out of him and having him kick out time after time makes him look strong. Diesel was leaving so it wasn’t a big issue at all. Diesel jackknifes Shawn threw the announce table, which was a new thing at the time so there’s no joke to it. Shawn looks dead after this, and rightfully so.

Diesel goes into the ring with the title which is a nice touch. Vince screaming at Shawn to let it be over is so melodramatic it’s funny. Shawn of course doesn’t listen and is up on his feet like the true no seller he is. Shawn starts his comeback and we have no commentary which I really like. We all know Shawn’s moveset down to the letter when he’s making his comeback but it’s nice to just see it.

It gives the sequence the feeling of a house show and it’s a very nice little break from the norm. Of course Vince can’t let us have something cool for awhile without him so he’s back. He hits some of the most wicked chair shots to Diesel I’ve ever seen. These two are putting on a heck of a show out there as you can really feel like they hate each other.

While they were very close in real life, seeing them beat on each other like this is nothing but great as you can feel the natural chemistry that they share. This is great. Shawn hits the screw you elbow after a brief Diesel comeback but the kick is blocked, despite Vince screaming give it to him Shawn give it to him! Now we get the famous part of the match.

Diesel goes over to Vachon, the guy from earlier, and attacks him. He chokes him to the ground and RIPS HIS PROSTHETIC LEG OFF. I don’t care how scripted it was, that was sick. There’s nothing at all that makes you a bigger heel than that.

He attacked an old man and literally ripped his body apart. Shawn low blows him to stop him before hitting him with the leg, then hitting the chin music, after stomping loudly on the mat about 12 times. Seriously, if you hear the stomping, WHY WOULD YOU TURN AROUND? Also, the genius cameramen has the cameras on Shawn’s feet so you see Diesel fly back from the kick but not the impact of it. The pin ends the show.

Rating: A+. I absolutely loved this match when I was a kid and I still love it to this day. It had the big match feel and it never lets up. These two had mad chemistry together and this is probably their best match ever. They don’t use a ton of weapons which is what makes this good. There are indeed a few good things in there but it never overshadows things to become stupid like a hardcore match.

They use a chair, a rope, a boot (one time), and a prosthetic leg. The fire extinguisher and the table are semi weapons as it wasn’t the table that hurt but the power bomb through it, and the extinguisher is more of an annoyance than pain. Even with 6 weapons, it never gets old or boring as they’re well spaced out.

This is just a fun match and a great way to make Shawn look incredibly strong in his first title defense. People still use this as a reference for Shawn’s ability in no rules matches, and it holds up today with ease. Great match and one you should all see.

Overall Rating: C-. The main event is amazing, but the middle is killed worse than Mania 25 was by Kid Rock. It just sucks the life out of the show and it never recovers until the main event. However, I’d recommend that segment just to see how out there it is. Overall, this show is somewhere between good and bizarre.

The main event is a great match and probably somewhere on my list of favorite matches of all time, but nothing else here is really good at all. There’s some ok stuff, but nothing ever rises above that. Avoid the show, watch the main event.

Wrestlemania 18
Date: March 17, 2002
Location: Skydome, Toronto, Canada
Attendance: 68,237
Commentators: Jerry Lawler, Jim Ross
America the Beautiful: N/A

Now this is a very interesting case. WWE had completely bombed the previous year with the Alliance and the Invasion. Those angles had to be pushed forward because HHH was injured about two months after Wrestlemania X7. Since then we had two world titles running around meaning two champions. At Vengeance, they were unified into the Undisputed Championship. That’s the night Jericho references once every 8.3 minutes.

Anyway, your main idea here is that after Shane and Stephanie lost in the Winner Take All Match, they sold their shares to none other than Ric Flair. He and Vince owned half of the company, but Vince couldn’t handle this. He says that if Flair doesn’t sell the shares back to him, he’ll poison the company by bringing in the NWO. Of course this winds up happening and it’s nowhere near as effective as it was 6 years ago in WCW.

They cost Austin the title so he’s mad at Hall and they have a match tonight. Rock challenges Hogan for the super match WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN AUSTIN. Seriously, if WWE wants to kid themselves and try to believe that Rock was at Austin’s level, go ahead. That belongs in the same book that says Attitude was a completely original idea. So instead we get Rock vs. Hogan. There’s one big issue that this causes: no one cares about HHH vs. Jericho now.

People weren’t buying into his title reign in the first place as there’s a common rumor going around that says the Undisputed Title was supposed to go to HHH but he wasn’t healthy yet. I would completely buy that if someone told me it was true. This is the last WM before the brand split made an attempt to kill the company.  Let’s get to it.

Here’s your first clue that this show is going to be bad: Saliva plays Superstar to kick it off. Not O Canada? Seriously, we get this to start the show? Anyone else kind of disappointed? Don’t get me wrong, Saliva is a sweet band (their concerts completely suck though. Save your money and just listen to the CDs. They’re miles better).

The fans aren’t even into it at all as it’s just completely out of place. The standard “This is our Super Bowl” video follows.  That is used a lot but there’s a reason: it’s the truth.  The four guys in the main events tonight get to talk about what Mania means tonight.  They did a good job of making it feel epic if nothing else.  Pretty cool video of people talking about how important Mania is, and 8 minutes after the show started we hear JR. Lawler is back this year and it’s very nice to hear. Those two just belong at Wrestlemania.

Intercontinental Title: William Regal vs. Rob Van Dam

Ladies and Gentlemen (notice the Saliva pun?) we have proof once and for all that Vince hates RVD and anything he didn’t create. If you remember the fall before this, Van Dam was main eventing a pay per view and getting great pops everywhere the show went. He was incredibly over and it’s not like his in ring stuff is terrible. Sure he’s no Lou Thesz but it’s not like he does nothing out there.

Wouldn’t you think a guy that gets pops like he does is worth more than the opening spot? Just shows me that no matter what he did, RVD was never going to get a fair shake. He gets caught with drugs once and he’s gone. Jeff gets caught how many times and still gets a title run.  (Ironically enough I’m rewriting this the morning after Victory Road 2011).  Seriously, there’s something completely not right about that.

Regal is perhaps the most bland heel I’ve ever seen at this point. He was just completely boring. The crowd is chanting for RVD less than 20 seconds in.  Standing moonsault gets no cover by Van Dam as he starts off very quickly.  Regal grabs the brass knuckles very quickly but RVD kicks them out of his hand.  Spin kick misses but Van Dam hits the jump kick to set up the Five Star.

That misses and it’s Regal with a cover for two.  Suplex gets two.  RVD fights back a bit but the Regal Cutter (neckbreaker) puts him right back down.  Off to the chinlock and Regal is bleeding from the mouth.  Rolling Thunder eats knees and a butterfly powerbomb gets two.  Regal Stretch doesn’t work either.

Monkey flip puts Regal down but Rob walks into a SICK half nelson suplex to send him to the floor.  Regal goes out to get Van Dam and finds the knuckles which the referee knocks away.  Regal pulls out more but Van Dam kicks him in the face and the Five Star starts Van Dam’s Mania unbeaten streak.

Rating: C. This isn’t much at all. It’s the second year in a row Regal was in the IC match in the opening, but this is far worse than last year as it was just kind of there. There’s no story, no psychology that’s noticeable, and it’s mainly Van Dam just using his signature moves. It’s not a terrible match, but there was nothing great about it at all.

Lillian is with Christian and we see a clip of him turning on his mentor DDP who helped him get over Christian’s losing streak.  Christian doesn’t need Page or Toronto anymore.  That’s a bad thing for Page apparently.

European Title: Christian vs. DDP

Christian’s At Last You Are On Your Own entrance is just great. He’s announced as being from Tampa, Florida, which is a very nice little heel touch that could be done more often. DDP was the guy that drove the Pink Cadillac at WM 6 in the same building. Page is so ridiculously charismatic it’s unreal. He might even rival Hogan in that category.

Christian jumps him as we get into the ring and it’s on early.  DDP gets a nice gutwrench powerbomb into a gutbuster.  Cactus Clothesline by Page takes us to the floor.  Back in and Page tries the ten punches in the corner but Christian pops Page in the balls to break that up.  Page is knocked to the floor as this isn’t interesting at all.

An attempted crotch shot to the post by Page is blocked.  Nothing of note is going on here.  Back in the ring and we get an abdominal stretch.  Discus lariat misses and it’s back to Christian’s control.  Page gets something close to a powerslam off the top and both guys are down.  There’s the discus lariat and down goes Christian.

Modified spiral bomb by Page gets two again.  Neither the Unprettier or the Diamond Cutter works and Christian gets two off a reversed DDT.  Christian avoids having a temper tantrum which was this stupid thing he was doing at the time.  Diamond Cutter ends it clean and Page retains.  He never got over in WWE at all.  Page makes fun of Christian post match.

Rating: D+. Just like the previous match, this was next to nothing. These matches simply don’t feel like Wrestlemania matches to put it as basically as I can. They’re PPV quality I suppose, but not WM quality. Again, not bad, but nothing special at all.  Like I said, Page just never clicked at all in this company.

Christian has a fit post match.

Coach is with Rock in the back and the fans chant for Hogan.  Rock asks Coach is he said his prayers this morning but Coach says he got busy and forgot. Rock makes him say his prayers, which Coach starts off with by saying “What’s up G?” Rock freaks and throws him out. Coachman getting harassed by Rock simply never got old. Rock rips his t-shirt as he says Hogan will smell what he’s cooking. Good grief he was amazing.

Hardcore Title: Goldust vs. Maven

Yes, Eyebrows Huffman is back and somehow he has a title. This match is happening for the sole reason of having a hardcore title match. Remember 24/7 is still in effect. Maven gets his teeth kicked in beyond belief on the floor, more or less being a crash dummy.  A golden shovel goes into Maven’s ribs.  He then lands the only move he ever really mastered: a standing dropkick. He really was great at that.

Other than that, Maven is beaten inside and out here as this is little more than a squash at this point. They hit each other with trash can lids but Spike Dudley runs out with a referee and pins Maven to win the title?  Yes this clearly needed to be on the PPV as we’re now almost 40 minutes into the show and the highlight is a TV match for the IC Title and Maven’s theme music.

Crash Holly runs down and chases Spike, Goldust chases Spike and Maven chases Goldust. Oh this isn’t going to end with just the match is it?

Drowning Pool performs Tear Away to “tell the story” of the Undisputed Title. Instead of, I don’t know, maybe just telling us? This is overkill at this point and the fans really aren’t that interested. This goes on WAY too long as even I’m fast forwarding. You can barely see the video that the song is supposed to be accompanying. This is a waste of time.

In that back, Crash and Spike are fighting but Al Snow drives a golf cart through a wall of boxes (good thing they were there isn’t it?) but Spike gets away. As he’s about to leave, Hurricane swings in on a cable and kicks Spike to win the title as Al gives chase. Oh this is going to be a long night.

Don’t try this at home.

After a 30 second spot to say don’t try this at home, we get a recap of what we just saw with Hurricane doing stuff that you could do at your own home. I know we have short attention spans but be serious people.

Kurt Angle vs. Kane

I’m trying to think of why this match happened and I’m drawing a blank. Apparently Kurt blames him for not being in the main event tonight so I’m guessing Royal Rumble. You figure it out.  Anyway there’s no video for it or anything like that so how am I supposed to know?  Pre match Angle references the scandal with the Canadian Olympic skating team.  He’s the big red, white and blue machine.  Kane’s pyro cuts him off.  He’ll have to be subject to the blue and white machine aspects of Kurt I guess.

Angle hits Kane with the bell during the pyro to give him the advantage.  Apparently Kane got attacked by Angle a few weeks ago and his head is messed up because of it.  German puts Kane down.  Kane comes back with right hands but walks into an overhead belly to belly and a clothesline.  We keep hearing about Angle not being in the main event because of Kane which I guess could have been due to a Jericho/Angle title match which I don’t remember either.

Another suplex sends Kane down again for two.  Off to a front facelock but Kane is like screw that and tosses him off.  Better than tossing his salad I guess.  Angle busts out a top rope clothesline and the fans boo the heck out of him, which is odd as that was a solid clothesline.  The second attempt at it is caught and down go both men.

Here’s Kane’s comeback with a back drop and powerslam.  Chokeslam gets two and Kane gives us a throat slit.  Tombstone is reversed and there’s the Angle Slam for two as well.  There’s the ankle lock but it gets reversed.  Never mind as it’s right back on again.  Kane gets an enziguri to take down Angle again.  On the bad leg Kane goes up only to get suplexed off the top which never gets old.  Chokeslam is reversed into an incredibly sloppy rollup with Kane’s shoulder up to end it.

Rating: C+. Decent match and by far the best match of the night so far, but that ending really hurts it.  Also, why did this match exist again?  It’s very odd to see WWE give us a match like this with absolutely no explanation.  Nothing too bad here, but dang there was limited chemistry.

Hurricane is trying to hide but winds up in Godfather’s locker room with his ladies. They see him and Godfather chases him off. Point?

We recap Taker vs. Flair.  Taker was eliminated by Maven at the Rumble in a big surprise. Rock made fun of him for it so they have a match at No Way Out. Taker tries to use a pipe on Rock but for no reason at all Flair comes out to stop him. Taker challenges him for Mania but Flair says no.

Taker starts beating up his loved ones such as Arn Anderson and his son David. He threatens to beat up his daughter and that’s enough to get Flair to say yes. Part of the deal with this is that during a fight on Smackdown, Flair hit a “fan”. This gets him arrested and thrown off the Board of Directors (Flair being demoded. Holy crap.) Tough guy Taker with the ability to talk is freaking awesome. This is no DQ also.

Undertaker vs. Ric Flair

Flair still looks human here.  He hammers away to start as Taker is knocked backwards quickly.  They go out onto the table with Flair mauling the dead man.  Back into the ring and Flair hammers away.  All Flair so far at about two minutes into this.  Flair jumps off the apron at Taker but gets caught and rammed into the post.  This of course gives us time to talk about the plane crash.

Taker sends Flair into the steps, prompting a fan to say that had to hurt which makes me laugh.  Back in the ring and they hammer away even more.  Flair goes into the middle buckle and somehow isn’t bleeding yet.  Back to the floor again via a Flair Flip and a big boot as Taker pounds Flair into a chair.  Flair is, say it with me, busted open.

Back into the ring now and Flair is getting hammered down.  BIG chop out of the corner by Flair and here he comes.  Ross is into this too as you would expect.  Taker’s face is cut a bit as he hits a superplex to kill Flair dead.  That of course gets two as Taker hammers away while pulling Flair up every time.  Taker goes up for Old School and wastes enough time to have it countered.

We hit the floor again and Flair finds a lead pipe on Taker’s bike, popping him in the head with it.  That doesn’t put Taker down of course and we fight up the aisle with Taker bleeding but in control.  Flair finds a metal sign to get some shots in as we head back into the ring.  Big kick to the balls breaks up a chokeslam attempt and it’s time for the leg.

There’s the Figure Four and Taker is in trouble.  Taker grabs the throat ala Big Show back in 96 and chokeslams Flair for two.  To be fair it was a pretty weak chokeslam.  Does goes the referee and according to Taker it’s pipe time.  Arn Anderson pops up out of nowhere and DRILLS Taker with a spinebuster to a huge pop and a two count.

Taker brings in another weapon, this time a chair, but according to Law #8 of wrestling, Flair gets it and pops Taker with it a few times.  A big boot stops that and it’s time for the Last Ride.  For some reason Flair dead weights him so instead it’s a Tombstone (BIG pop for that) to end it as that looked great.  Flair is victim #10.

Rating: B. Leave it to the old guys to come out there and have one of the better matches of the show.  I don’t think anyone thought Flair would win but it was fun to see him go out there and just be Flair one more time.  After this it was more or less nothing but Evolution and HHH for Flair so it didn’t mean much.  Flair would be a heel very soon and Taker would be world champion in a few months.  Good match.

Booker talks about how smart he is.  He mentions knowing about Einstein’s theory of relatives.  This was about one of the most creative backstories I’ve heard in awhile.  Booker was allegedly trying to get an endorsement deal for a Japanese shampoo commercial, but before he signed the contract the company found Edge instead. This match is the result of that. You have to say, that’s creative if nothing else.

Booker T vs. Edge

 

So Edge is awesome and it’s his hometown.  Who do you think is going to win here?  JR wants a cheeseburger from the Hard Rock Café.  Funny sign: They Are Fighting Over Shampoo.  Truer words have never been spoken.  Ton of Edge signs and he gets a great reaction.  Basic stuff to start with Booker landing a hot shot to take Edge down.

Out to the floor for just a bit and a missile dropkick gets two.  All Booker so far.  Edge fires back with a big chop but Booker takes him down on the back of his head with an Alabama Slam for two.  Edge botches a top rope rana as Booker lands on Edge’s back which has to freaking hurt.  Spinwheel kick by Edge for two and here he comes (to save the day!).

Scissors Kick is reversed into the Edge-O-Matic for two.  A top rope spinwheel kick (love that move) gets two for the Canadian.  Twisting sunset flip out of the corner is countered into a slingshot by Edge but the spear misses.  Spinarooni sets up the axe kick for two.  Edge gets an arm drag and the spear for a close two.  And there’s the Edgecution to end things.  That came out of nowhere.
Rating: C. While this was really just an excuse to get the hometown boy on the show, the pop he got makes up for it. While not bad, this isn’t the best match for either of them but it’s certainly good. Edge’s super push continues, but would get knocked off the tracks by neck surgery just 10 months later as he was cracking into the main event.

In the back, Hurricane is interviewed by Coach about being Hardcore Champion. His sidekick, Mighty Molly appears and says that they need to leave. She then hits him in the head with a frying pan to win the title. Ok, I get that this is supposed to be silly, but there is no reason why there’s a freaking frying pan there. What’s that for, in case Big Show wants a fried roast? Seriously, at least use a chair or something.

All right ladies and gentlemen, pay attention, because you’re about to see the worst idea in Wrestlemania history.

We recap Austin vs. Hall.  In short it was Austin vs. the NOW and the first person he went after was Hall.  That’s about all there is to it.  However, the first thing I want to know is what the heck? Austin is main eventing the show one year ago and is now the midcard special? No wait that would be Rock and Hogan. Austin is now doing the Angle/Benoit match from last year.

This should have been Rock or someone else, leaving Austin vs. Hogan, end of discussion. Your story here is that the NWO took out Austin at No Way Out and cost him the title. Austin kidnapped Hall and tortured him, leading to the NWO attacking Austin and breaking a cinder block over his knee. In a move that was never explained, Austin’s OTHER knee is bandaged the next week. Anyway, let’s get on with this.

Scott Hall vs. Steve Austin
As soon as the bell rings we see your basic problem: Austin is viewed as a superstar, Hall is viewed as a joke. Hall is good enough in the ring to hang with Austin, but no one is buying this. Nash is out with him and helping Hall so at least it’s Austin vs. the Outsiders, but this just feels weak all over.

Austin would soon go on hiatus for several months (I saw his last match before he did this, or at least one of them) and I can’t say I blame him. His character was dead and buried at this point and he would only hang around for about another year.  Anyway let’s get to this.  Austin pounds away to start and it’s about what you would expect.

Thesz Press and the middle finger elbow connect before Hall can even get the vest off.  Hall takes a ton of shots into the buckle and it’s off to the floor now.  Austin pops Nash and heads back into the ring only to take a clothesline for two.  They slug it out even more as Hall is shall we say limited at this point.  Hall sends him to the floor and Nash hammers away.

Back in goes Austin and it’s more basic offense by Hall.  WORST FALL AWAY SLAM EVER gets no cover.  The fans chant Razor as he gets a clothesline for two.  Nash adds in some shots to try to make the inevitable ending a bit less annoying.  Austin grabs a weak spinebuster for no cover.  Hall fires more punches as that’s about all he can do here.

Hall hits the ropes but runs into a Stunner out of nowhere so Nash pulls the referee out and drills him.  The double beating begins but Austin fights them off and it’s a Stunner for both with no referee.  Nash takes out the replacement referee as well so Austin backdrops Hall to the floor.  The fans all look at something and it’s a bunch of referees to get rid of Nash.  Hall hits a Stunner for two and then Austin gets a Stunner as well to end this for good.

Rating: D. I hate this match. It’s almost filler and for Austin, that’s a slap in his face. Put simply, he deserves much better than this. Hall and Nash just aren’t a legitimate challenge for the guy that was the world champion most of the previous year. Hall is ok to feed to someone like Edge or Benoit, but putting him in there with Austin? In no way, shape or form is that acceptable. I’m actually ticked off about this now. This is flat out stupid.

We see a video on Access. That really is a cool idea. It’s like a convention where you can meet wrestlers, call matches, etc.

Tag Titles: Billy/Chuck vs. Dudley Boys vs. APA vs. Hardys Boys
Saliva plays the Dudleyz theme and Stacy looks insanely hot dancing with them. That’s your match highlight. This has elimination rules. The APA are purely here to fill a spot as they would be split up a month later. Lita is in a match later so she’s not here either.  Still just one set of titles at this point.  You Look So Good To Me is freaking catchy.

This is under elimination rules by the way.  The APA jumps the champions as they come in.  Bradshaw and Chuck start us off and some double teaming puts Bradshaw down.  Crowd is dead here as you would expect them to be.  The APA and the champions (Billy and Chuck if I didn’t mention that earlier) have done the whole of the match so far.

Farrooq hits a spinebuster on Billy and then it’s off to Bradshaw.  D-Von finally comes in and gets beaten down also.  Total mess so far and we’re only about two minutes in.  Farrooq hits a spinebuster on Chuck outside and the Clothesline ends Billy.  Before Bradshaw can cover though a 3D puts the APA out.  The Hardys come in to fight their old rivals.

The key word there is old, as neither of them meant anything anymore and both would go their separate ways very soon.  Double DDT on Chuck clearly doesn’t hit the mat but who cares?  The Dudleys set up a table on the floor which is for later I’d assume.  Whisper in the Wind takes down Bubba but Stacy gets on the apron and pulls her shorts up into a thong.  Jeff spanks her and shoves her down.

Bubba Bomb takes down Jeff who is a very pale man.  Bubba hammers on him for awhile as we couldn’t be going through the motions more if our lives depended on it.  We hit the chinlock as this is just boring.  D-Von comes in to change a few things.  Jeff gets caught in the Tree of Woe and Bubba steps on Jeff’s balls.  Edge and Christian did that to Matt last year.

Matt comes in to send Bubba to the floor, knowing what Jeff’s balls feel like.  Jeff gets a reverse DDT to bring in Matt.  D-Von brings in Bubba and I’d rather watch some old 95 Raw than this.  It’s that boring.  Bubba misses his big back splash which has never hit once, likely for the sake of people’s lives.  Billy saves Matt from What’s Up by shoving D-Von through the tables.

Twist of Fate and the Swanton put the Dudleys out.  Chuck kicks Matt’s head off immediately after and we’re down to two teams here.  Matt grabs a Side Effect on Billy as the crowd is more or less silent here.  Poetry in Motion to Billy and the double finisher to Chuck.  Billy gets a Fameasser to Jeff for two but then a belt shot to Jeff ends it.

Rating: F. How in the freaking world do you go from TLC 2 to this in just a year?  The tag division was completely dead at this point so they split the belts.  Well of course they did because that’s the dumbest thing they ever could have done.  This was awful and everyone knew it.  Boring all around with only Stacy being at her hottest to be worth anything.

Outsiders say they’re going to help Hogan. Hogan says don’t do it.

Molly runs into a door and Christian pins him. Tell me it’s over. I need to hear that it’s over.

Now it’s time for the REAL main event of Wrestlemania 18: The Rock vs. Hulk Hogan.  This all starts with a tale as old as time: Rock wants to know who the better man is. In this case, that’s all this feud needed.  Anyway, Hogan pins Rock with the leg drop in a 6 man on Raw, so we already have a reason to believe Hogan can win. Seriously, that should be enough right?

The scene with Rock and Hogan standing toe to toe in the ring on Raw in Chicago to start up the feud is incredible.  Rock: “You talk about headlining Wrestlemania after Wrestlemania after Wrestlemania.  Well how do you feel about headlining one more Wrestlemania with THE ROCK?”  Game on.

Now we get to the really idiotic part as Hogan hit Rock in the back of the head with a hammer.  When he was loaded into the ambulance, Hogan commandeered a semi truck and plowed into it.  Rock was of course back on Raw the following week because that’s how he rolls I guess.  Vince thought that two of the biggest names of all time facing each other wasn’t enough so he threw in a pointless story. That was just a waste to me and always will be.
The Rock vs. Hulk Hogan

Hogan’s pop is insane as the fans show that Hulkamania will indeed live forever.  When Hogan is in the ring a HUGE Hogan chant starts up.  Rock’s pop is clearly smaller, but it’s there.  Ross tries to call this a mixed reaction which is just laughable.  The staredown is indeed awesome.  The guys seem really confused about the crowd.  They pop for the bell.  When do you ever hear that?

Hogan sends Rock flying off the lockup and the place erupts.  I’ve always liked Hogan talking trash in the most basic of moves.  In a headlock for example “Ask him ref or I’ll rip his head off!”  Hogan shoves him away again and says just bring it.  Hogan hammers away, saying “You ain’t nothing meatball”, which is a line from Rocky III.

Rock gets the big jumping clothesline/forearm and is booed out of the building.  Rock hammers away and almost goes over the top but instead hits the floor under the ropes.  An attempted Rock Bottom is blocked and Hogan “hits” an elbow to the top of the head and pounds away at Rock on the mat.  Rock spears him and pounds away as the crowd is all over him.

Hogan gets a belly to back suplex to calm the riot.  He throws on an abdominal stretch and rolls Rock up for two.  Let the back raking begin.  Time for some punches in the corner and Hogan can do no wrong more or less.  Rock comes back with chops but Hogan gets what looked like a chokeslam of all things but I think was supposed to be a clothesline.

The wrist tape comes off and Hogan chokes away but Rock fires off some punches, only to be sent to the floor.  Almost all Hogan so far as Rock can barely get anything going.  Hogan starts setting up the (English) announce table but Rock rams him into the table to save himself.  Rock tries a chair shot as more or less he’s turned heel mid match.  The referee stops it though and we head back in.

Down goes the referee and it’s a spinebuster by Rock to set up the Sharpshooter.  Rock might as well be eating a bowl of puppy and rainbow stew at this point.  Hogan taps but there’s no referee.  See, why in the world would Rock let Hogan go to wake up the referee?  He’s going to get up on his own and Hogan is more or less dead.  LOUD Rocky Sucks chant starts up which hasn’t been heard in years.

Rock takes a low blow and walks into his own Rock Bottom for two.  The weightlifting belt comes off but Rock gets a DDT and more booing.  Rock whips Hogan just like Hogan whipped him as the referee is down again.  There’s a Rock Bottom to Hogan for two as the Hulking Up begins.  The usual finishing sequence including the legdrop blows the roof off the place but only gets two, blowing what’s left of the roof off the place.

A second big boot hits but the leg drop misses.  Rock Bottom plants Hogan but Rock isn’t done yet.  He adds a second Rock Bottom to more or less kill Hogan.  He nips up and it’s the People’s Elbow to get something close to a pop and send Hogan into vibrating fish mode.  That’s enough to get the pin finally.

Rating: C+. There’s good and bad here. The crowd was electric the whole night and the nostalgia levels were off the charts. There’s one simple problem though: Hogan didn’t have it anymore. He was old and bad at this point, and his stuff simply wasn’t credible. While it’s fun, it’s not that good. The crowd and the atmosphere is all of the grade here.  They had a great story of having Rock be the younger and in better shape guy that outlasted Hogan in the end.  Well done and it worked very well by the end.  Good story, good crowd, weak execution though.

Hogan offers Rock a handshake post match and we get it to a big pop.  Rock leaves and the Outsiders come down, all ticked off about the handshake.  They beat him down until Rock comes back for the save.  Hogan tries to leave but Rock wants him to pose, and you don’t have to ask Hogan twice to do that.  That eats up a few minutes and Hogan raises Rock’s hand as they leave together.
Big Show is at WWF New York as we have a new attendance record.

Women’s Title: Jazz vs. Lita vs. Trish Stratus

I’ve been watching wrestling over 20 years and I have never heard a more dead reaction for a champion than Jazz gets here. Literally, not a sound. No booing, no anything at all. It is complete silence. Lita gets a nice pop as I remember how completely awesome she was as a face. The song is perfect for her and her gyrations could give Melina a run for her money.

Trish of course gets the mega pop as the hometown girl. The problem here is simple: this match is following The Rock vs. Hulk Hogan. No one cared and I don’t care now.  Well I do care about Trish in the tiny white shorts with the maple leaf on her trunks.  Lita and Jazz go at it before Trish gets there.  The two that people actually care about go at it on Jazz which doesn’t really work.

Half crab goes on Trish and now she’s in trouble.  Double chicken wing to Lita as it’s all Jazz.  Crowd is dead and you can clearly see a lot of people walking around and heading to the concession stand.  This is one of those matches where nothing that happens actually matters so I’m not really going to bother with telling you what’s going on.

Trish is apparently hurt so of course Lawler offers to give her mouth to mouth.  Trish rolls through a top rope cross body by Lita to get two on the redhead.  Bulldog gets two as Jazz saves.  Lawler lists off various countries that the show is airing in because they don’t want to call the match which I completely understand.  I don’t want to either.

Lita and Trish go at it before this was a huge rivalry and before they had fought a dozen times on PPV.  They slug it out with Lita mostly getting the better of it.  Jazz interrupts the Twist of Fate and then stops to let Lita hit her.  Lita takes her top off and tries a moonsault on both of them but winds up hitting Trish’s knees.

The two attractive ones hit heads and Jazz beats on them.  Trish’s bulldog is blocked by Lita but Lita gets crotched on the top.  Trish is knocked to the floor and a fisherman’s suplex off the top keeps the belt on Jazz.  Yes, Jazz beat Trish in a title match in Toronto.  Let that sink in for a minute.
Rating: F+. This is all based on how hot Trish and Lita look. The booking here is ridiculous to say the least. Trish gets the huge pop, comes out third, and doesn’t win? No. In no way, shape or form is this logical.

Christian tries to get a cab and escape as champion but Maven runs up on him and rolls him up to leave Mania with the title.  At least it’s over.

WWF Undisputed World Heavyweight Title: HHH vs. Chris Jericho

It’s main event time and Drowning Pool plays HHH to the ring.  Since there’s no backstory, here I am for the rescue.  HHH and Stephanie are divorcing so Jericho teamed up with Stephanie so he’d have an advantage. HHH is back from the quad tear and won the Rumble to earn this shot.  People are leaving the arena early as they know the ending already.  What does that say about the main event of Wrestlemania?  It’s that obvious that HHH gets the title back tonight.

Jericho has both belts because the Undisputed Title was supposed to go to HHH so he gets the big unified belt.  Stephanie looks great in the skin tight leather body suit but the hair isn’t working at all.  The crowd of course is confused because Jericho is Canadian but HHH is rather awesome at this point.  Jericho has the bright green tights here to (not really) match Stephanie.

The champion wisely goes after the leg to start us off.  Jericho chops away but HHH gets the jumping knee, only to limp away afterwards.  HHH gets sent to the floor although he manages to send Jericho out as well, landing ribs first on the railing.  We set up the Spanish announce table but Jericho gets a kick to the knee to stop HHH again.

Back in the ring and a spear by HHH takes Jericho down for a bit.  We’re only a few minutes into this and they’re having some issues really getting going so far.  HHH goes after the knee of Jericho to be funny I guess.  Ironic maybe?  Whatever.  A Flair knee crusher sets up a Figure Four.  Stephanie gouges his eyes to break that up though and the stalking is on.

That was another thing: everyone knew that HHH would get the Pedigree on Stephanie at some point tonight.  Jericho charges at HHH but takes Stephanie down instead.  Pedigree attempt to Stephanie but Jericho gets a missile dropkick to break it up and take over.  The bad leg goes around the post a few times and Stephanie kicks it as well.

Jericho works on the knee some more in the ring and the Canadian is in control.  Back to the post again as Stephanie adds a leg wrap in also.  There’s the Canadian favorite of the figure four around the post.  Back in and HHH tries to fight but gets taken down by a drop toehold.  Jericho cranks on the leg as we’re steadily into the formula here.

Spinning toehold goes on by Jericho as the fans chant for Hogan.  Well of course they are.  HHH sends Jericho shoulder first into the post to break the momentum and adds a neckbreaker which Jericho is up from first somehow.  Clothesline gets two for HHH.  Facebuster hits but HHH can barely move after it.  His offense is so knee based it’s unreal.

Spinebuster, perhaps his only non knee based move, gets two.  Jericho reverses to send HHH out to the floor and therefore end the momentum that HHH had going for him.  Jericho sets up the table again but can’t get the Walls of Jericho on there.  Pedigree is broken up also and it’s a backdrop through the table.  That and the Lionsault both gets two in the ring.

HHH gets back up but again can’t get the Pedigree.  Jericho gets a shot to the knee and there are the Walls.  After wasting some time with Jericho pulling HHH back to the middle he gets the ropes as we all knew he would.  This is why heels not named Kurt Angle shouldn’t use submissions: they never work.  HHH gets the rope of course.

Jericho hits the floor and grabs a chair.  HHH grabs a DDT onto it and no one cares.  Just get to the ending already.  Stephanie gets in the ring and shoves the referee down.  There’s a Pedigree for your efforts woman.  Jericho gets a chair shot to the head for two and freaks out as only he can.  Jericho tries a Pedigree and it naturally gets reversed.  He tries to come off the middle rope and the real Pedigree finally ends it.

Rating: C+. It’s ok, but that’s it. The crowd was so dead it’s not even funny and it hurt the match really badly. Had this match gone on during the middle of the show or even just switched places with Rock/Hogan, it goes up in value at least 3x. The finish was anti-climactic and while it wasn’t one of the worst WM main events of all time as it’s certainly not a bad match by any means, it’s certainly not a good main event.

Massive posing takes us out.  HHH would lose the title the next month to Hogan.

Overall Rating: C. I picked C because a C is average, which is what this show is. While it’s not terrible, it’s also not great and it falls somewhere in the middle. However, there’s too much filler which would become a problem with many of the Manias to come.

The problem here is simple: a lot of these matches either need to lose 5-10 minutes each, or be on Raw/Smackdown. Angle, Kane, Booker T and Edge all should be on WM, but their matches had next to no story to them. This is a situation in which the MITB match was a GREAT idea. All those pointless matches with wrestlers that certainly should have been on the card got thrown into a match that fit their level on the roster but also had a point to it.

Instead of getting these random one on one matches that are ok but tiring, we get one big exciting match instead. Overall the biggest issue with this show is obvious: the main event wasn’t the last match of the show and it killed the ending. If you want to make this Mania much better, don’t watch it in order and skip some of the boring stuff that no one cares about. Not bad but not great, watch it if it’s raining outside and you’re out of alcohol.

Wrestlemania 17
Date: April 1, 2001
Location: Astrodome, Houston, Texas
Attendance: 67,925
Commentators: Jim Ross, Paul Heyman
Star Spangled Banner: N/A

And here it is. This show makes up for the back to back lousy shows. This review is going to be extremely biased as I’ve made no secret to the fact that I think this is the greatest PPV of all time, as do many others. Some, including me, say that this was the end of the Attitude Era. WCW and ECW were both gone in their original forms by this point and the WWF reigned supreme.

While I’ll save the backstories for the individual matches, WCW going out of business plays a role later on in the show in case you didn’t know. I used to have the original on video but I’ve misplaced it since then. It might have ran away as I’ve probably watched this show 75 times all the way through. Does it still hold that honor, almost 8 years later? Let’s find out.
We start with a bit of a strange video of people all over the world watching Wrestlemania, implying that it’s almost a spiritual event. One thing I don’t get though: a man and a woman curl up in the back of a car to watch it. Since when can you get PPV in the back of a car? I think I’m looking too deeply into this. Let’s get on with the show.

The main event here is the face vs. face rematch of Austin and the Rock, which was absolutely the only choice for the main event as neither had anyone even remotely close to them. If this tells you anything, the second biggest match on the card was Taker vs. HHH. Even that, two of the biggest stars of all time going at it pales in comparison.

The version I’m watching has Limp Biskit’s My Way in it.  The edited version sees it replaced by a song called Adrenaline Rush. This was used as the recap song for Impact, and this DVD of WM came out after that song was used by TNA. There’s something great about that. We are live in the Houston Astrodome, making this the first of the stadium Manias in quite some time.

It really makes it look better to me as there are almost 4 times as many people as there were at some Manias. The ring looks tiny and I love the visuals here. Paul Heyman is your analyst tonight as Lawler had quit the company. His wife, diva the Kat, had been released from the company for reasons unclear. Lawler thought it wasn’t fair so he quit as well. The witch then left him, causing him to lose his pride and come crawling back to Vince.

Enough talking.  On with the action!  And more talking, but I guess that goes with the territory.
Intercontinental Title: Chris Jericho vs. William Regal

This was during the time when Regal was the Commissioner of the company. On his first night with that job, Jericho had some out and asked him to shut up. Regal responded by putting Jericho in various handicap matches. Jericho fights back by having Kane and Undertaker destroy his office and relieving himself in Regal’s tea. We get this match to resolve this feud. In the time it took me to type that, Jericho has finally made his way to the ring.

Jericho also did a thing on Raw where he dressed up as Doink to beat up Regal. Never got the point of that one. Another aspect of the story is Regal beat up Jericho on Smackdown, injuring Jericho’s left shoulder with his finishing move known as the Regal Stretch.  During Regal’s entrance we see the recap of what I just told you about.  The aisle is LONG here so there’s time for a lot of talking and recapping during entrances.

Jericho gets a clothesline to start and the forearm sets up some mounted punches.  Spinwheel kick puts Regal on the floor and Jericho is like screw it and hits a plancha to take Regal down.  Heyman is fired up to be here to put it mildly.  Top rope back elbow gets two and Jericho tries the Walls which he can’t hook on.  Regal’s chest is RED from those chops.  He manages to send Jericho shoulder first into the post and there goes the momentum.  He does it again just for emphasis.

Suplex gets two and Regal works over the arm again.  Jericho tries a quick Lionsault which misses and Regal gets a rollup for two.  Another suplex gets two.  Regal pulls the turnbuckle pad and Jericho’s shoulder goes into it twice.  The referee is all cool with this I guess.  Jericho fires off some enziguris to break things up a bit, called martial arts by Ross.

Missile dropkick from the middle rope gets two for Jericho.  He charges at Regal in the corner but misses.  Regal manages to get a butterfly suplex off the top which oddly works for him.  No cover though as Regal is down.  Scratch that as it was just delayed and it gets two.  Belly to back is reversed into a Walls attempt but the shoulder gives out and he can’t do it.

Regal locks on the Regal Stretch and Jericho is reeling.  There’s the rope though with a lunge.  That’s not quite the STF as it’s more of a half nelson instead of a crossface.  More chops by Jericho and he rams Regal into the buckle that was exposed.  Bulldog sets up the Lionsault and it’s over very abruptly.  I think they ended it early as Ross sounded surprised that it ended there.
Rating: B. Not long enough to be great, but there’s no dead spots and both guys beat on each other really well. Solid opener between two guys that know what they’re doing out there.  It always helps when you can tell these guys know what they’re doing and want to be out there.  Good stuff and a very good opener.

Shane arrives late, complete with a WCW license plate.  Surely a collector’s item.

APA and Jackie are in the back but they can’t find Tazz. Bradshaw doesn’t like that, and he says a great promo: “You don’t understand. It’s Wrestlemania! Heart are going to be broke. Legends are going to be made. Egos are going to be shattered and people are going to be kicked. We’ve got a match, LET’S GO!” Dang indeed.

APA/Tazz vs. Right To Censor

It’s my Lee special here. Very simple backstory here: RTC hates the APA because they smoke and drink. Tazz is just kind of there for the ride. I think RTC got on him for being a thug but that was minor. Paul Heyman makes some jokes saying they’re extremists, and when I hate something extreme, you know it’s bad. The one flaw to this show might be the entrance to the ring. Tazz is still walking when APA’s music hits.

Heyman’s jokes about Texas are great as you can tell he doesn’t like the place. If there’s a bad match on the show, this is definitely it. RTC in this case is Val Venis, Godfather and Buchanan.  Jackie and Stevie are the backups on the floor.  Val and Taz start slug it out on the floor and then in the ring so they start us off I guess.

Jackie DDTs Stevie as this is a big brawl to start.  Ok never mind as it’s Buchanan vs. Farrooq to officially get us going here.  Buchanan could certainly move for someone his size but he walks into a powerslam by Farrooq.  Off to Tazz now as the beating is on.  Big boot breaks that up and here comes the RTC.  That could be a really bad sitcom.

Val comes in with some knees to Tazz’s ribs.  Russian Leg Sweep gets two.  Tazz is sent into the ropes and falls into them in something resembling a botch.  Goodfather gets an elbow to take him down and a belly to back gets two.  The former Ho Train hits but a Vader Bomb misses.  Bradshaw comes in and cleans house, barely getting Goodfather over with a backdrop.

Everything breaks down and it’s a double spinebuster for Val, followed by a belly to back off the top rope.  The roof looks like a spaceship or something and every time they show it the thing looks awesome.  Another not Ho Train misses and the Clotheslin ends Goodfather.

Rating: C-. It wasn’t exactly bad, but it was far from great. They kept this short, which is good because there was really no point to this. Fast paced and the APA beating people up was always fun.  If this is the worst match on the show, I can more than live with it as this was perfectly fine but would have been better suited on Raw I think.

In the back, Trish brings in Linda in her wheelchair to meet Stephanie. Might as well give you the story now. Vince had said he wanted a divorce from Linda, who had a nervous breakdown because of it. Vince put her in an asylum or a rest home or something like that while he had an open affair with Trish. This was highlighted by a famous scene where Trish said she’d do anything for him so in the ring he had her strip to her underwear and crawl around, barking like a dog.

Shane reappeared and was furious with his dad for all of this so he challenged him to a street fight. With HHH’s help, Vince beat Shane down. However, the Monday before Mania, it was announced that Vince had (legitimately) bought WCW. However, in kayfabe, he had wanted to sign the contract at Wrestlemania.

Shane took this opportunity to sneak in and buy WCW from Vince, signing the papers that Monday instead of waiting. Shane showed up on the final Nitro to announce it, 6 days before the street fight. This eventually led to Stephanie “buying” ECW and the dreadful Alliance angle that took over the company all Summer. Had it not been for HHH tearing his quad, this angle could have been the biggest of all time. But that’s another story for another time. Anyway, Stephanie treats Trish like crap and she just takes it.  There’s a joke there somewhere.

Hardcore Title: Raven vs. Kane vs. Big Show

No real story here other than giving Raven an impossible set of opponents to defend the title against.  Paul’s advice to Raven: run a lot.  I can’t say I disagree.  Heyman says he’s a fearless man which gets a funny response from Ross of “let’s not get carried away here.”  Kane and Raven go at it before Show gets here.  Raven jumps him with a piece of plastic which gets him nowhere.

Here comes Show who takes his time getting to the ring.  Someone in the front row wave a Twinkie and he’ll be here in seconds.  With Show on his way, Kane presses Raven onto him over the top.  Show catches him and tries the Final Cut (why call it that anyway?  I never got that name) but Kane takes Show down with a top rope clothesline to the floor for two.

We’re in the crowd already and that’s the last time we’ll be in the ring all match.  Show is in his swimsuit here.  The cameraman has to try to follow these guys which doesn’t work at all.  Show and Kane hammer on each other as Raven is nowhere to be seen.  Ah there he is with a plastic something or other.

Kane grabs Raven and throws him into a wall which has a hole in it now.  Show slams Kane onto some pallets that are made of wood and chases Raven down.  They go into some caged storage area which Show locks.  Kane is like screw that and rips the door off and they keep up the fight.  They look like it’s all cleaning supplies or something like that.

Raven tries to choke Kane with a gardening hose and they go out of the cage place.  Kane keeps choking with the hose and then picks him up, throwing him by the neck through a glass window of an office kind of place.  Show, not to be out done, knocks Kane through the door.  Show wants the chokeslam on the floor but Kane fights him off, knocking him through the wall into another room.

Raven stumbles in and tries to get a shot in which gets him nowhere.  The champion steals a golf cart but Show jumps on the back.  Kane gets one of his own and brings the referee to chase after Raven and Show.  He almost runs over Raven’s leg as we hit catering.  Raven is thrown into the Snapple and the coffee much to Paul’s dismay.

You can tell they’re getting tired here as we hit the Gorilla Position.  They come out to the stage as the giants stalk Raven.  Kane goes off on Show but runs into a clothesline to take him down.  Show picks up Raven to toss him off the stage but Kane kicks Show off the stage and into part of the set.  Kane drops an elbow/leg onto them and pins Show to get the title.

Rating: C+. Not bad but not great. It was meant to be a wild brawl and that’s exactly what it was. We knew Raven would lose, just not who he would lose to. Quite well done and fine for what it was.  This was designed to be a fun hardcore match and it worked just fine as that.

Angle is watching a video of him tapping to the Crossface. Edge and Christian come up to talk but Angle doesn’t feel very chatty. He looks for what it means to officially tap out, saying that since it wasn’t a match, he didn’t actually tap. This is intense Kurt and it works really well.

Jimmy Snuka is at WWF New York, a nightclub/restaurant that was WWE themed. That would have been awesome.

There’s an Aussie at the show. Kind of cool actually that someone flew 30 hours from Australia for the show. There’s a REALLY bad edit here as I remember the woman saying WWF at least twice. It’s really badly covered up here.  Stupid panda loving hippies.

Rock arrives at the arena, 45 minutes into the show.

European Title: Eddie Guerrero vs. Test

Always sad to see the two dead people wrestling on any show.  Dang Eddie’s music was sweet. Don’t really think there was much of a story here other than Eddie is your challenger. That belt just looks tiny on Test.  Eddie was a guest referee on Raw in a match with X-Pac which I think happened once the match was made.  Paul explains that Texas is part of Mexico.  I love Heyman at times.

Test gets a gutwrench powerbomb almost immediately so we hit the floor after the two.  Saturn is on the floor and in Eddie’s corner.  Test dominates with power here but gets caught going up on the inside.  Eddie tries a rana and either they botch it or Test didn’t know what was coming as he just stays there.  Test gets a shot from the middle rope for two and hammers away even more.

A big boot by the Canadian misses and Test gets all caught up in the ropes.  Eddie more or less rolls his eyes as he has to unhook Test who falls to the floor.  Eddie hammers on the ankle and we go back into the ring.  We kind of hit a lull as there isn’t much going on here.  A sleeper by Eddie wastes some time.  Test gets a tilt-a-whirl slam to break the momentum and they slug it out some.

Another tilt-a-whirl is spun into a powerbomb by Test for two which looked awesome.  Test wants the Full Nelson Slam but Eddie gets a low blow, allowing Saturn to hit the Moss Covered Three Handled Family Credenza (it’s a neckbreaker and yes that’s the real name) for two.  Ross shouts about there being a third man in the ring.  That’s very true JR.  He’s called a referee.

Frog Splash misses and the pumphandle slam only gets two as Saturn distracts.  Big boot is loaded up and Saturn interferes again, taking the least convincing big boot ever.  Another boot to Eddie gets two as Dean Malenko interferes.  Test had to wait to cover Eddie forever because Dean took awhile to get to the ring.  Saturn throws in the belt and Eddie pops Test to win the title.
Rating: C-. This is easily the worst match of the show and it’s not completely terrible. Eddie clearly carries it but Test’s power offense was always fun. Not terrible, but for a Mania match, this was pretty bad. Definitely could have been left out and put on Heat instead.  Also this probably should have been about two minutes shorter.

Mick Foley, the guest referee for the street fight says that he’s not at all biased towards Vince for beating him up and firing him on national TV. He’s calling a fair match tonight.

And he’s going to do it right here, in Houston, Texas!

Austin is just getting here. Good grief the tardiness!  We’re an hour into the show almost and he’s just getting here?  Someone fine this guy and give him a stern lecture!

Kurt Angle vs. Chris Benoit

Ok, here’s your story reenactment. 6 days ago on Raw:

Benoit: I don’t have a match at Mania.

Kurt: Neither do I.

Both: Let’s have a match.

Seriously, that’s it. This was thrown on the card because two top stars had nothing to do at all.  Angle runs down the Texas fans for the cowboy hats.  Also the flag is missing 49 stars.  That’s hilarious.  Paul: “This is as excited as a man can get with his clothes on.”  Never let it be said he doesn’t say what he was thinking.

Naturally we hit the mat to start as this is about as technical as you can get.  The fans applaud the standoff as they probably should.  Back to the mat and it’s another standoff.  We hear about how great they both are and it’s amazing to me that Angle has only been a pro for a year and a half now.  That’s incredible.  Angle overpowers Benoit and grabs a suplex kind of move.

Back to the mat again as this is almost all grappling so far.  Angle tries for the ankle but it’s back to just laying on Benoit.  This is very different but still incredibly interesting as you can see that they both know what they’re doing on a man.  Benoit almost gets the Crossface but Angle makes a rope.  Another single leg by Angle but Benoit tries the Crossface again, only for Angle to get to the ropes again.

More grappling and again Benoit can’t quite get the hold on before the rope is grabbed.  Angle pops him with a right hand and it’s time to fight.  Out to the floor and Angle whips Benoit into the steps to really take over.  Back in the ring and Angle gets a vertical suplex for two.  Make it a pair of both.  Benoit fights back with HARD chops but walks into a belly to belly to get a woo out of Angle.

Another belly to belly has Benoit in trouble.  We get a Jack Brisco reference which results in another argument from Ross and Heyman.  More chops by Benoit and momentum shifts a bit.  Snap suplex gets two as Benoit channels his inner Dynamite Kid.  Superplex off the top puts Angle down but Benoit can’t cover.  Blast it stop with the delayed covers!!!  It gets two as you would expect.

Time for the Rolling Germans as Angle is in trouble again.  Angle reverses into the ankle lock attempt but Benoit counters into an ankle lock of his own.  Crossface attempt number four but Angle has a hand between the grip and the face, allowing him to get a rollup to escape.  Angle grabs a Crossface of his own which might look more painful than Benoit’s.

Down goes the referee (of course) and Benoit gets the Crossface.  Angle taps (of course again) but there’s no referee.  Benoit (of course) lets go of the hold instead of waiting on the referee and Angle gets the Angle Slam for two (wow these guys are predictable).  Moonsault misses (that might have hit 5 times ever.  I’ll stop with the parentheses now) but the headbutt gets two.  Benoit tries a suplex but Angle gets a low blow and cradles Benoit with tights to end this out of nowhere.
Rating: B+. The finish kills this for me. These two are two of the best workers of all time and we need a pull of the tights for a pin? That doesn’t fly with me. However, the other stuff they did is absolutely great. If you can believe this, this isn’t even close to their best match ever. For that, check Royal Rumble 2003. That match is a candidate for greatest match of all time. I’ve been watching these two for years and I’ve yet to see a bad match from them.

Kamala is in William Regal’s office. Hilarity ensues. Heyman shakes his head like he’s waking up from a nightmare.

We see a video of a Wrestlemania pep rally in Fort Hood, Texas. This was really cool I thought. A bunch of wrestlers, mainly some divas, Angle and Taker visited the soldiers. Factor in that 9/11 was about 5 months away so soldiers at home were still the biggest thing I suppose. The commander got a nice WWF recliner and the wrestlers got plaques. Lita doesn’t seem thrilled about being there. Angle like it but would rather have a medal.

Angle is upset about something, saying he deserves the title. Benoit attacks and locks on the crossface and Angle taps again.

We see the recap of Chyna vs. Ivory. The idea here was that Chyna had a bad neck, allegedly caused by Ivory. Ivory, as a member of RTC, wasn’t happy with Chyna being in Playboy. Now this is the time where I’ll embarrass myself.  At the time, Ivory was kind of like the evil feminist. To steal the term from JR, imagine Lillith from Cheers or Frasier as a wrestler.

Women’s Title: Chyna vs. Ivory

The only good thing here is Chyna more or less in a purple bikini.  She launches a bunch of pyro with this big gun she carried with her at this time.  What do you expect here? This might last three minutes as Chyna annihilates Ivory.  Ivory gets in a few shots and that’s about all.  It ends with a press slam and Chyna officially murders the division to get the title. It took that mistress from Canada and the redhead to save it.

Rating: N/A. Not a match, but a squash. The problem here was that Chyna was a former IC Champion and had some great matches with men, including clean pins over guys like Jericho. Why should we believe that anyone else had a chance against her? Simply put, we didn’t. There was one good thing though. At this time, Chyna wanted money the likes of which Taker and HHH were getting.

Vince is a bit loony some times, but even he knew that was never going to happen. Chyna was gone within three months and the real women’s wrestlers were able to revive the division, including one of the best rivalries I’ve ever seen in Trish vs. Lita. This was a total slap in the face of the Women’s Division though.

In the back, Vince tells Michael Cole that he’ll get something shocking tonight.

I already recapped this feud above so read about it there.

Vince McMahon vs. Shane McMahon

Naturally this is a street fight.  Can someone explain why Shane, the face, is the one owning the invaders but Vince, the guy that represents the home grown talent is the heel? No one else could either so finally in June they made the change to fix this and we got the Alliance. We see some WCW people in a box in the rafters. Some faces I can identify: Stacy Keibler, Shawn Stasiak, Bobby Eaton, Chavo Guerrero and that’s it. Seriously? That’s the best you’ve got? And people have the nerve to ask why this bombed.

Vince and Shane have the same music which is kind of odd. Foley is the referee. Stephanie is with Vince and there’s no sign of Trish or Linda.  Vince pummels Shane to start us off and Shane is in trouble.  Shane fires back with basic strikes until Stephanie comes in to distract him.  He hammers on Vince with a sign of some kind and adds a clothesline to keep Vince down.  Some kendo stick shots have Vince in big trouble.
After some punches, Shane smashes him in the head with a monitor in an absolutely sick shot and lays him on the… wait for it. Wait for it. It’s coming. HE LAYS HIM ON THE SPANISH ANNOUNCE TABLE!!! WOW! What a cool idea! Who would have ever thought of putting someone on there? Also, who makes those tables? They’re making a fortune which is impressive because they apparently make REALLY bad tables.

Shane goes to the top and launches a picture perfect elbow drop onto Vince but Stephanie pulls him out of the way as Shane “crashed, and he for sure, BURNED!” according to your favorite Oklahoman. At this point, Trish brings out Linda in the wheelchair.  The cleavage on Trish is mind blowing here, especially compared to Stephanie who hasn’t had her plastic surgery done yet. It’s kind of odd looking actually.

Anyway, Trish starts helping Stephanie up but turns face by slapping the tar out of Vince.  We get a cat fight and Foley pulls them apart before Stephanie slaps him. Trish chases her down the aisle and in the worst acting job of all time, she “falls” running down the aisle and Trish nearly catches her. Back at ringside, Vince nails Foley with a chair as Foley tries to protect Linda from Vince.

Vince puts Linda in the ring. He throws Shane and four garbage cans into the ring. Linda stands up and the crowd pops. Vince turns to see her and spreads his legs open to set up Linda kicking him low. Foley beats the tar out of Vince to allow Shane the chance to set up a Coast to Coast in an amazing athletic move to get the pin, as apparently he, Trish, Foley and Linda worked together to screw Vince over. They walk to the back as Vince’s, uh I mean Shane’s, or is it Vince’s, no wait it’s Shane’s I think, music plays. Get your own bad rap music already Shane!

Rating: B. This was a messy brawl, but given who it was and the ending, it was fun. Vince and Shane aren’t wrestlers, but they can put on a passable fight. That dropkick from Shane is always cool and this was its debut.  To have all of these angles come together in one match is really quite impressive.

We see the Hardys at Access talking about how they’re going to put their bodies on the line to win the tag titles. Truer words have never been spoken.

We cut to HHH getting ready for no apparent reason before cutting to Taker for no apparent reason. Dang that X7 baseball jersey was sweet. Always wanted one of those.

Tag Titles: Edge/Christian vs. Hardy Boys vs. Dudley Boys

This is yet another match with no story but it never needed one. These three teams all wanted to be the champions and this match was fairly obvious.  The Dudleys come in as champions here.  All four faces jump the Canadians to get us going here.  The Dudleys hit a flapjack to Christian as the beating is on.  The Hardys take down the Dudleys for awhile until Edge and Christian bring in a ladder.

Edge grabs a chair and he and Christian stand on Matt’s balls in the corner.  A double drop toehold by the Canadians puts Jeff into the chair.  Edge tries to get the belts but Jeff makes the save.  The Hardys get a double baseball slide into a ladder into the Dudleys on the floor.  Using a pair of ladders, Matt drops a leg and Jeff drops a splash on Christian at the same time.  Nice move.

There goes Matt’s shirt and there go the girls.  What’s Up to Edge And now it’s table time.  Edge is laid out on one so Bubba picks up Jeff and powerbombs him right through Edge and in turn the table.  On the floor now and the Dudleys stack up two tables on top of two more tables for the big spot later in the match.  Paul talks about Big Daddy Dudley’s construction company in Dudleyville.  Oh dear.

More ladders are brought in and in a spot that still makes me and the crowd breathe in, Bubba takes a ladder and just bashes Matt in the head with it.  That has to hurt something fierce.  All six guys go up at once and all six guys come crashing down almost at once with some hitting ropes, some hitting mat and some hitting ropes.  Christian goes flying to the floor which looks AWESOME from the above the ring camera.

He sets up a table on the floor as Edge tries to go up.  Spike Dudley who was injured by Edge and Christian’s friend Rhyno, comes out and takes down Edge and hits a Dudley Dog to Christian through the table.  Jeff goes up but it’s Rhyno out now for the save.  Gee I wonder who will come out to help out the Hardys.  Rhyno destroys everyone and here’s Lita.

She stops Edge from going up but gets caught in a gorilla press by Rhyno.  Spike saves her and it’s a Litarana for Rhyno.  Spike hits Rhyno with a chair and he falls into a ladder, sending Edge down.  Dudleyville (Doomsday) Device to Rhyno and he’s finally down.  Lita takes her top off (looking incredibly good in a black bra) but walks into a 3D.  Chair shots by the Canadians take out the Dudleys and Edge wants the big ladder.

Jeff gets the large ladder though and hits a Swanton onto Rhyno and Spike who are both on tables.  Spike takes the whole thing and Rhyno’s table doesn’t even break.  That was ALL Spike.  The big ladder is in the ring now and set up in the middle of the ring.  Christian and D-Von go up but Matt moves the ladder under them (with a shout of HERE WE GO first) and they’re stuck hanging there.

After both fall, Jeff walks across the top of the three other ladders (kind of as the third one falls) to get to the titles.  The big ladder is in the corner and Jeff goes up a regular one.  The ladder is moved by Bubba and since Jeff’s feet were on it, Jeff goes swinging in the opposite direction, right into a spear by Edge from the super ladder, which is not only Edge’s Wrestlemania moment, but the moment that made him a star.

Back after about 5 replays with Bubba and Matt going up the big ladder.  Rhyno shoves the ladder over and they go crashing through the four tables that were set up at ringside earlier.  D-Von and Christian go up but Rhyno gets beneath Christian and climbs up with Christian on his shoulders, giving him the needed assist to win the titles again.  Incredible match all around to say the least.
Rating: A+. These guys nearly killed each other. You can see that it’s miles better than last year because they knew what they were doing to a greater extent. That spear from Edge more or less ended Christian’s usefulness in the WWF as Edge began to get the singles push from here on out.

Either way, this match is great as it’s a total spot fest but it is still better than all of the MITB matches that would follow in its footsteps. If you’re bored here, go get a blood injection. The crowd ate this up and it just clicks all around as they somehow top the other matches they had which are also greats.

JR looks at the carnage and says it looks like a tornado went through a mobile home park.  There are wrestling rings and ladders at a destroyed mobile home park?

Video on Axxess, which looks AWESOME.  Various wrestlers say this is awesome, and they’re right.  You can call matches, get autographs and see all kinds of exhibits.  I’d love to go to something like this to say the lease.
There’s a record crowd for the Astrodome of 67,925. That’s very impressive.

Gimmick Battle Royal

Luke, Butch, Duke Droese, Iron Sheik, Goon, Doink the Clown, Kamala, Kimchee, Repo Man, Jim Cornette, Nikolai Volkoff, Michael Hayes, One Man Gang, Gobbledy Gooker, Tugboat, Hillbilly Jim, Brother Love, Sgt. Slaughter

To any other old school freak like me, welcome to nostalgia heaven. We have 18 men in this and it’s nothing but the most off the wall gimmicks that the company could think of. Given some of the stuff WWF had done up to that point, this could be mind blowing. As an added bonus, Gene freaking Okerlund and BOBBY HEENAN do the commentary.

Oh my goodness, we have found the greatest Wrestlemania match of all time.  During the entrances Bobby calls Gene Tony in a funny bit.  Butch licks Mean Gene just like he did to me at a house show.  The pop for Jim is ridiculous.  You need to look all of these people up if nothing else to learn what bad gimmicks are all about.

The introductions took 5 minutes and the match lasts three minutes. The commentators mention that they’ve never seen a battle royal that ends so fast. Doink getting eliminated brings forth the loudest booing all night which doesn’t surprise me at all. The fans are totally into this which makes me smile.

Sheik wins if you’re interested. After that Slaughter comes back in and beats him up. Sheik won this because he wasn’t able to be thrown over the top rope due to age.  Nothing in the match means anything which is why I’m not even going to list it off.  Slaughter puts him in the Cobra Clutch post match because he’s an AMERICAN.

Rating: N/A as it’s not a serious match but I don’t ever remember having more fun with a single match. Even at 13 I knew this was cool and it still is to this day. The fans being 100% into it makes me very happy as it’s obvious they still like these guys. While a lot of matches like these bomb badly, the battle royal was a great idea as it kept things quick. Excellent match and all kinds of fun.

Now it’s time to get to the real meat of the show. Somehow, everything we’ve seen so far has been appetizer. That is unbelievable considering what we’ve seen so far. Seriously, TLC, Benoit/Angle or the street fight could be the second big match on any other card, but that’s not what we get as the second big match. We get this.

We recap HHH vs. The Undertaker.  HHH beats Austin twice in a row and says there’s no one left for him to beat. We hear a gong, and I lost it. This was amazing and I knew it would be a classic. Taker gets in HHH’s face and says that HHH has never beaten him, but if HHH tries, Taker will make him famous. Over the next 5 weeks, we got the great build up.

HHH destroyed one of Taker’s bikes, had Taker sent to jail, etc. Taker gets ahold of HHH one night, so Stephanie issues a restraining order on Taker. However, there isn’t one against Kane. Kane chases Stephanie, allowing Taker to beat up HHH. Kane holds her over his head and threatens to throw her down from a balcony, unless Regal makes the one on one match at Mania. Taker obviously gets his wish, and here we are.

Undertaker vs. HHH

Back then, HHH was a bigger star than he is now. He beat Austin, the king of the world, twice in one night the previous month. Taker was about 8 months into his biker gimmick and was a step behind what he used to be at though. However, this was his hometown and it’s Wrestlemania, although this is before the Streak became important.

Motorhead plays HHH to the ring and it is freaking awesome. They play the verse and chorus all the way through before we cut to a long shot of the arena and we see Triple H, Start Game flash on the screen, then a small object appears beneath it. Cut to a shot of HHH and then back to the arena. My goodness these stadiums are awesome. The live band is always cool as they play him through the long walk down the aisle.

HHH does a double water spit so you know this is an important show. The song ends and HHH paces back and forth. We hear gong strikes, and the lights go out. DEAD MAN WALKING. Instead of walking down the huge ramp, Taker drives his bike down instead in another famous shot. The cool thing here is it’s long enough that he can crank it up and gets the bike flying down the aisle. Taker jumps in the ring, rips the shirt off and we’re on.

Just as Taker is about to start the fight, JR mentions that he is 8-0, undefeated at Wrestlemania. Ladies and Gentlemen, the streak is born. That’s the first time that it’s mentioned on WWF television to my knowledge, but certainly the first time at Wrestlemania.  The fight starts on the floor with Taker hammering away.  Guess what Taker knocks HHH through. Go on, I want you to guess. It rhymes with French announce table. You guessed it. Twice in one night has to be a record.

They slug it out in the ring and the knee to the face gets HHH nowhere.  BIG back drop puts HHH down.  Powerslam gets two and a big clothesline takes down HHH.  Old School is countered. Not sure how HHH knew it was coming. Might be that Taker shouted out OLD SCHOOL right before he went for it. Just a hunch mind you. The Game hammers away on Taker including a trio of elbows.  That and a neckbreaker gets three straight two counts.

HHH goes after the ref and gets shoved back which gets a huge pop. My goodness this crowd is white hot. Six minutes in and HHH gets the sledgehammer. Referee takes it from him so HHH tries a Pedigree which is blocked into a catapult and the referee goes down. Chokeslam gets two because the referee was slow thanks to him getting bumped.

Taker, being the ticked off man that he is, beats the referee up because of this. The throw that Taker sends HHH to the floor with is either great selling or a real throw. We go into the crowd and actually wind up at the production tower which has been seen maybe twice in company history. This is what the cameras sit on in the arena and where the sound is adjusted etc. Quite simply if they screw up here, the PPV goes off the air.

HHH now has a problem. He’s trying to run from Taker, but the only way to run is to keep climbing the tower. HHH finds a chair up there though and lands about 10 sick chair shots to Taker. They’re in a tiny place so Taker is laid out and HHH just hits him wherever he can with the chair. Great visual on that. Taker gets up and catches HHH after the Game poses. The flashbulbs are going so crazy it’s hard to see them for a little bit.

He then chokeslams him off the tower. Now think about why this is cool. No one has ever seen them fight here before so it’s unknown. There’s no referee as Taker beat him up. Most importantly, we don’t see HHH land. What did he land on? That’s what makes this cool: the total mystery of it. Sadly, we see he landed on a big pad, but it still must have knocked him out a bit. If not, the elbow Taker drops on him does. What’s a good American to do now? He beats up the EMTs of course.

They fight back to the ring and the referee is still down. What the heck? He got kicked and elbowed, not shot in the forehead. Taker gets the hammer and a low blow to make him drop it a few seconds later. Heyman talking about how dangerous weapons are is either a rib by him or the best unintentional comedy I’ve heard in a long time. HHH gets a tombstone countered because he’s not the Undertaker, and Taker breaks out the Tombstone for maybe the first or second time in a year plus.

The crowd loves it, but still there’s no referee. In a sweet finish, Taker goes for the Last Ride but HHH picks up the hammer and nails him in the head with it. That somehow only gets two. Taker is bleeding and HHH sends him to the corner to rain down right hands. He pauses for a split second to yell at the crowd, and Taker reaches up and grabs him before stepping forward, lifting him into the air and drilling him with the Last Ride! He gets the pin as the crowd explodes.

Rating: A+. This is an outstanding match and would have main evented any other show of the year. The story was great, the fighting was off the charts, and you never knew who was going to win until the very end. Excellent job from both guys involved and probably the true forgotten classic in Wrestlemania history.

Rock has a song coming out called Pie.  The CD has Rock’s custom internet browser.

A kid that talks way too fast made some poster or visual thing and won a contest.  Ok then.
Good grief what in the world could follow that? Somehow, that’s nowhere near the main event, as no one came to see anything but the real main event: the two biggest stars on the freaking planet, one on one for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship.

I can’t say anything that’s going to build this match up better than the actual video, so here it is.

[youtube]DxttU7_2-WA[/youtube]

If that doesn’t embed for you, go Youtube it.  It’s incredible.

I’m not a big fan of Limp Biskit, but that was awesome. By far the best recap video I’ve ever seen and one of the only times the theme song could not have been any better for an event. Great job.

WWF World Heavyweight Title: Steve Austin vs. The Rock

This is made No DQ just before the match starts which is a surprise to everyone and it comes back to play a factor later. JR’s saying WHAT as soon as that’s announced made me laugh quite loudly. The glass shatters and the ovation is deafening. Austin is so over it’s amazing. He hits the first corner and the pop grows somehow. He turns around to cross the ring and it’s as if everything goes into slow motion. Austin climbs to the middle rope, throws two fingers into the air, and the flashbulbs go insane. It’s that moment that defines this whole show I think.

All of the other great matches all night long, from the wrestling classic to the ladders to the war we just saw, none of that means a thing anymore and every single eye in the building is on this man right here. It’s the peak of Steve Austin’s popularity and it’s amazing to say the very least. JR’s commentary is absolutely perfect here. It’s that perfect voice that we all know, but the words simply couldn’t be better. He builds this match up to be as epic as it should be. The music ends, and we hear the sound of his opponent.

Rock comes out to an INCREDIBLY mixed reaction. He’s either being cheered all the way to heaven or being booed out of the building. Not sure which. He hits the corner, throws the belt over his shoulder with his arm raised in the air, and we get the staredown from one side of the ring to the other. The feeling is all there too. You can tell what you’re watching is absolutely epic and it feel just right.

The fight starts almost immediately with Austin jumping Rock as he gets off the ropes.  Thesz Press takes down Rock seconds into it but Rock fights back with a swinging neckbreaker.  Rock Bottom and Stunner both don’t connect and we hit the floor.  Out into the crowd they go with neither guy keeping an advantage at all.  Back to the ring now with Austin having a brief advantage.

Superplex gets two and Austin takes the turnbuckle pad off.  Rock fights back to massive booing and a clothesline for two.  Back out to the floor again and Austin gets a shot with the bell to take Rock down.  Rock is sent onto the table which breaks on a delay so the camera misses it.  This is so epic.  These two are the biggest stars in the world and this is the biggest match of the year.  What more can you ask for?

Austin hits a neckbreaker for two.  Mudhole stomping commences but Rock comes flying out with a clothesline to huge boos.  More slugging it out with Rock in control now.  Rock grabs the bell and gets a shot to the head with it for two.  Austin is busted open and Rock hammers away.  Oh man he’s bleeding BAD.  Back to the floor again and they fight it out even more.

Another important thing to note is Ross.  Ross has been mostly reserved all night but now he’s pouring it on.  This makes this look FAR more interesting and intense while at the same time not diminishing the other stuff.  Austin gets a slingshot to send Rock into the post.  Monitor to the head and Rock is down on the floor.  THAT gets two.

Austin flips Rock off and gets caught in the Sharpshooter for his efforts.  Rock is busted now too.  Great throwback here to Mania 13 as Austin screams in the hold.  Rock pulls him back to the middle and Austin is in big trouble.  Finally there’s the rope.  Now Austin throws it on Rock and the people are loving it.  After it gets broken it goes on again and this time it’s a rope used to escape.  HUGE booing when he gets there too.

The Million Freaking Dollar Dream goes on and the bloody Rock is in trouble.  Rock pushes off the corner ala Bret vs. Austin at Survivor Series 96 but this time Austin kicks out.  Little things like those make matches AWESOME.  Rock gets a Stunner out of nowhere for two.

And now we set up the ending as Vince McMahon is here.  Both guys get spinebusters but Rock’s sets up the People’s Elbow.  Vince slides in and breaks that up though, shocking everyone.  Rock chases Vince but runs into a Rock Bottom from Austin for two.  Crowd is losing it on these kickouts.  Stunner is blocked and there goes the referee again.

A low blow puts Rock down and Austin asks Vince for a chair.  Vince cracks Rock with it as the crowd isn’t sure what to do.  Vince puts the referee back in but THAT gets two.  A Rock Bottom out of nowhere but Vince has the referee.  Rock pulls Vince in but walks into another Stunner for ANOTHER two.  Austin is all ticked off now and Vince hands him a chair, drilling Rock with it for two.  Austin absolutely explodes, drilling Rock with the chair an insane 19 times and getting the academic pin for the title.  Rock is DEAD.

Rating: A+. The repeated finishers and chair shots hurt this quite a bit, but the crowd, the commentary and the overall feeling push this to the sky easily. Epic feeling the whole match and the crowd was in the palm of their hands. Not great wrestling, but the crowd carries this to greatness.

Austin and Vince shake hands, ending the Attitude Era and also ending the superpower that WWE was and marking the beginning of the decline of the company.  They share a beer and another Stunner to Rock ends this very long but incredible show.
Overall Rating: A+. This is the greatest PPV of all time, bar none. The worst match is passable at worst. The crowd never once dies, even popping a bit in the European Title match. Looking back, you have the following matches that would either steal the show or main event any other show: Angle/Benoit, TLC 2, Street Fight, HHH/Taker.

Those are all top shelf matches anywhere you look at them, and then with the crowd as hot as they were for the main event and how it’s solid in its own right, this show is amazing all around. All night long the stuff was fast paced, everyone was having fun, and the matches are all intriguing. Can’t recommend this one enough.