#WWF287 – Action!

James Dixon: Harking back to old school releases from days long forgotten, this is a compilation tape promising “action”. Replacing what would have been the superior Sean Mooney as host, is the far less endearing Jonathan Coachman.

 

WWF Hardcore Championship
Raven (c) vs. Tazz
First up is the WWF’s answer to what they perceive to be ECW; the hardcore division, taken from the New Year’s Day episode of RAW from 2001. The two brawl around the building as is customary in these things, with one particularly unpleasant spot seeing the two battle into a women’s bathroom, where Tazz flushes Raven’s head in a piss-filled toilet. Charming. As ever, others want to get in on the act and the Holly trio and Steve Blackman join the fun. Raven wallops Crash with a fire extinguisher and then pins him to win the match, which doesn’t make any sense at all.
Final Rating: ¼*

 

WWF Hardcore Championship
Rhyno (c) vs. The Big Show
Four months later Rhyno was the reigning champion, because he was another ECW guy that the WWF didn’t quite understand what to do with. In many ways he was similar to Tazz, in that ECW booked him well and made him seem like a monster even though he was chunky and short, the opposite of what the WWF want. Thus, they squandered his undoubted talent and made him work these short and pointless garbage matches. Big Show can probably empathise a little, though ironically he has the opposite problem in that he is too big for the brain trust that is WWF creative to come up with how to book him. How is it hard to book a giant? Keep him strong, put him in fairly short matches, don’t use him on television every week and kill the special attraction, and this is key; do not have him do half assed comedy weapons matches where he sells being hit with a bin lid like he was just shot. Because Rhyno has been with the company for, oh a couple of months at most, the WWF obviously has to job him endlessly until he learns how to work in a way that they feel is marketable. And also learns how to grow six inches. A chokeslam onto a soft aluminium bin ends it.
Final Rating: ½*

 

WWF Hardcore Championship
The Big Show (c) vs. Chris Jericho
A week later in Canada, Chris Jericho is forced so low down the card that he is competing for the jobbers’ comedy belt. They sure were on the ball in 2001. The match is very short, or at least what we get shown here, with Jericho kicking the steps into Big Show’s face (which is telegraphed horribly by the lumbering Show) and then winning the match following a Lionsault to add the Hardcore title to the tag team gold he already holds. But as he is walking up the ramp Rhyno appears through the curtain and smashes Jericho with a Gore, taking advantage of the 24/7 rules to reclaim the title. The footage of the match is too short to rate, but that Gore on the ramp was pretty sweet.

 

We change tact for a new form of action, according to Coach, one that promises the liberation of puppies but almost never delivers. Yes, the dumb Divas and their staple bout of the pre-PG era: the bra and panties match.

 

Bra And Panties Match
Trish Stratus vs. Ivory
This comes from March 2001 on SmackDown! and Ivory is the reigning WWF Women’s Champion. She is also part of Right To Censor, and thus refuses to compete in this “degrading encounter”. Trish isn’t interested and jumps her, and the match is on. Is Trish ripping Ivory’s clothes off against her will a form of sexual assault? Things don’t last more than 30-seconds before Chyna wanders down and forces Ivory’s garments off, as the build for the pair’s match at WrestleMania X-Seven continues. Much like in that bout, Chyna is completely, overwhelmingly dominant here. Ivory scarpers with her, erm, tail between her legs, thoroughly humiliated by the experience. Again, this can’t really be rated.

 

Bra And Panties Match
Terri vs. Trish Stratus
From May, and this is the only kind of match that Terri can actually do, because she is not a wrestler by any stretch and has zero aptitude for in-ring competition. She sure can gallop around the ring though. Paul Heyman on commentary mocks the WWF’s absurd booking and treatment of its womenfolk, claiming this is in keeping with the spirit of the Funks and the Briscos. The whole thing when looked at objectively is a somewhat perverse voyeuristic practice. “Come to the sports entertainment and see our girls pretend to fight in a really fake looking way while trying to strip each other of their clothes”. Usually the stewards need mops for those kind of shows. Questionable moral practice aside, this is what it always is; two girls rolling around and embarrassing the great traditions of the business before revealing as much skin as the network will allow. This time though, we have the added bonus of Perry Saturn wandering down and revealing himself to be wearing a bra and thong of his own. Hey, nothing sells tickets and signifies career progress like a man turning to cross dressing. I know he used to do it in WCW too, but if the WWF are going to copy their harebrained ideas then we might as well all pack up and go home. The distraction causes Perry’s manger/girlfriend/whatever the hell Terri to get her skirt ripped off, costing her the match and revealing her barely covered ass. And by barely covered I mean fully exposed, with only the tiniest sliver of skin coloured thong visible at the very top or her cheeks. Other than that, there is more crack on display than at a Sunny house party.
Final Rating: DUD

 

Joy of joys, the next segment is the “recent evolution” of Perry Saturn! It starts with the APA repeatedly powerbombing him on his head during RAW, in a couple of really vicious bumps. Backstage Saturn’s eyes are crossed, and all he can manage to mutter is “You’re welcome”. Then on SmackDown! things get worse for poor Perry, when Raven hits his Raven Effect DDT onto a steel chair. Backstage, Terri is concerned. Rightly so it seems, because Saturn comes out of his locker room acting all loopy. To SD again and Saturn teams with Dean Malenko against the Dudleys, but spends the majority of the match stood on the outside staring out the timekeeper. When the Duds hits “Wazzup” Perry grabs a pair of their glasses and mounts the top rope, as he wants a go of doing the move… on his own tag partner! The Dudleys are amused and let him. Saturn then grabs a mic, pushes D-Von and tells him to “Get the muffins… You’re welcome”. That rather dies with the crowd, and Saturn gets drilled with 3D to finish the match. These silly antics continue over the next few weeks, with Saturn and Terri going out on a double date with Dean and a random model. Saturn, who orders a bowl of mustard and a side order of crayons, gets hit on by Dean’s date, and it pisses off Terri. Deciding she has had enough, Terri goes to wallop her with a tray but misses and hits Perry. Yes boys and girls, repeated blows to the head ARE funny. Chris Nowinski would hate this angle, he really would. Instead of getting Perry proper treatment, the WWF continues to book him in weapons matches, and he squares off with Test on SmackDown! in a hardcore match. Saturn tries to belt Test with a mop but a kick in the face, another blow to the head, wins it for Test. Afterwards, Saturn gets all concerned for the wellbeing of the mop, and thus “Moppy” is born. Clearly inspired by Tom Hank’s character in Castaway, who makes friends with a volleyball, Saturn gives the mop a face and treats it like a person. A jealous Terri (yes, she is jealous of a mop) asks him to chose between them. He chooses Moppy. He chose… wisely. Now while I cannot condone using concussions and head injuries as a silly angle now, at the time the issues caused by repeated head trauma were not widely known. The WWE later developed a very commendable attitude towards concussions and other head injuries, working alongside Chris Nowinski to get better educated on the subject and introducing ImPACT testing to make sure guys were okay to work after suffering blows to the head. So while this Saturn stuff is all slightly unsettling viewing when you consider what concussions did to his one-time Radicalz partner Chris Benoit, the intention was merely light entertainment and it was never supposed to be taken too seriously, and when viewed from that perspective it is a lot of harmless fun.

 

Vince McMahon’s obsession and affair with Trish Status comes next, starting when Steph talks to Vince (who is supposedly at a soup kitchen) on the phone during the Christmas Day episode of RAW, and hearing a woman’s voice in the background. Vince claims it is just some giddy women thrilled to meet him, and throws in a McMahonism: “Quite frankly Steph, they’re asking for me to come back and ladle out some more soup”. Steph confronts Trish about the rumour that she was the “giddy woman” and becomes increasingly disturbingly jealous about the Vince-Trish affair. There is every chance that this may well have been the start of a proposed Vince/Steph love affair/pregnancy story that Vince had talked about doing… because he is a nutcase. Thankfully more than a few people talked him out of that one, Steph and Shane included. It all boils down to a match between Steph and Trish at No Way Out, which was the idea of WWF commissioner William Regal. Vince warns Regal that because the match was his idea, that he has to “do the right thing” with regards to engineering the outcome. Regal gets flustered trying to decide, and in the end drills Trish so Steph can win. Seemingly that was the wrong decision and he is forced to team with Steph against Vince and Trish on RAW. At one point it looks like Vince may deck Steph, but instead he turns on Trish and the three beat her up and throw dirty mop water on her to “clean this situation up”. Yuck. Vince calls her a toy he got bored of, which translates to: he got to kiss her on screen and now it is someone else’s turn to be part of his disturbing middle aged crisis fantasies. The next week on RAW, Trish begs for forgiveness, leading to an infamous and controversial angle where Vince tells her to get on her hands and knees and crawl around like a dog. “I want you to tell me in dog language just how sorry you are. Speak Trish, speak. Bark like a dog! Come on, tell me you’re sorry!” What the hell were they thinking with this? Vince later made Trish strip down to her bra and panties, which is shown only in photos, and when she takes her bra off it convinces Vince that she has done enough. “You have no idea how far I would degrade myself for the right cause” she tells him. Oh that could be said of many people who have worked for Vince. After Vince kisses Trish in front of Linda on SmackDown!, Shane turns up on RAW and batters him for his indiscretions, leading to their match at WrestleMania X-Seven. The WCW purchase is deemed so insignificant to their rivalry that it is not even mentioned.

 

Street Fight
Shane McMahon vs. Vince McMahon
This is the well executed and very well booked smoke and mirrors brawl between father and son from WrestleMania X-Seven, which is joined in progress with Shane diving through a table from the ring. Shane being out cold allows the sedated Linda (though it is hard to tell much difference to the norm) to be wheeled out, and then Trish and Steph take centre stage. Trish slaps Vince to break up their relationship for good, so Steph slaps her in return, and that leads to a brawl. Guest referee Mick Foley breaks it up so Steph slaps him, then legs it down the aisle with Mick and Trish in pursuit. But then the footage from the bout suddenly ends, cutting out the best part (Linda’s zombie rise from the wheelchair to kick Vince in the plums)! Well that is a very strange editing choice, I must say. Once again, not enough of the match is shown to rate, but the full thing is an easy *** slice of sports entertainment.

 

On SmackDown! Spike Dudley annoys Crash Holly by talking to his cousin Molly, leading to a match later on. We see the last five seconds, with Spike winning, which pisses off Hardcore Holly. Spike and Hardcore then have a match, which we get a little more of. Hardcore wins but he is still ticked off with Crash, who gets hit with a 3D following the bout. The Spike-Molly relationship continues to blossom as an Attitude Era version of Romeo & Juliet with the addition of incest, tables and man-on-woman violence. The Hollys and the Dudleys have a match on RAW which ends when the Duds 3D Hardcore through a table. They spot Molly and try to powerbomb her through a table, because they are the Dudleys and that is what they do, but Spike pleads with them not to. Bubba pie faces him, so Spike lies on the table to protect Molly from the impact and sacrifice himself. On SmackDown! Spike tells Molly through the camera that he “really likes her”, and she responds from WWF New York on RAW that she “really, really likes him too”. During a match on RAW soon after that, the two end up face-to-face in the ring with everyone else down, and they do the clichéd slow movie walk towards each other before finally embracing with a kiss. Aww. The crowd mostly pops this, and the whole angle and love story has actually been really well booked, with an air of innocence (well, tables aside I guess) that you rarely see from WWF storylines. I suppose we have Steph and her team of soap opera writers to thank for this one. Hey, at least someone on the undercard actually had a storyline. Guys in the PG era would have given anything for an angle like this.

 

Steve Austin is the next focus, as the tape finally gets a bit of star power. A brief highlight video shows Austin turning heel at WrestleMania X-Seven and joining forces with Vince McMahon. To SmackDown! where Jim Ross interviews Austin and tells him he feels like he is losing his best friend. Austin doesn’t care, knocking JR’s hat off and telling him to take a swing at him. Ross declines and apologises for getting out of line, but Austin belts him from behind and beats on him. Vince comes out and makes him stop, then tells him to bust Ross open. Austin obliges. Three months later Austin is forced by Linda McMahon to defend his WWF Championship against both Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho at King of the Ring, and he is livid about it. He forces Vince to choose between him and Linda, then goes on a rampage attacking people. He starts a petition to get the match cancelled, but Spike Dudley rips it up when Austin insults Molly by calling him a bimbo. Austin is incredulous and cries to commissioner William Regal about it and demands a match with him. We see very brief footage of Austin beating Spike on SmackDown! before going back to Austin’s ultimatum to Vince: him or Linda. Vince is torn and tells Austin that “I think you know which way I’m going to go” implying he will choose Linda, but Austin misunderstands and thinks Vince is going to pick him, and gives him his favourite hunting crossbow and hat as a present. Hang on, just a few months ago Vince and Linda were getting divorced and Vince was dicking around, literally, with Trish! It’s sometimes impossible to keep up with the McMahon family leanings and relationships. In keeping with most everything else on this tape, just as one’s appetite is whetted, we move on to something else. How frustrating.

 

Vince McMahon and his “challenging year” are featured next, and the Vince-Linda issue is covered, with Vince sharing his opinion that he believes divorce should be outlawed. Vince, as a “role model for America”, refuses to grant Linda a divorce. For whatever reason, Debra comes out and tells Vince she doesn’t believe a word of what he just said, and that he has had a negative influence on her husband Steve Austin. Vince denies all accountability, something he has become pretty good at over the years, but does say he is proud of what Austin has become. Vince then tells Debra that she is the exception to the old adage that “behind every good man there is a good woman”, so Debra slaps him. Meanwhile, Trish over at WWF New York says she will fully support Linda if she wants to go through with divorcing Vince. Time travel then occurs, as we go back a month to Vince buying WCW and the famous simulcast on RAW and Nitro. We see Shane informing Vince, from Nitro, that he has bought WCW, which is footage that should obviously have been shown earlier when the Shane-Vince feud was covered. The schizophrenic editing continues as we skip forward three months to June and a backstage segment with Kurt Angle, Steve Austin, Vince McMahon and hanger on Debra. Kurt tells Steve that they have a lot in common and could “almost be related”, then we go to the segment in the ring where Austin tells Kurt that he is no longer welcome in the Vince-Austin relationship and calls him a jackass. The two then bicker, with Angle professing that he is a hero, but Austin squabbling back that he is a jackass. Vince has had enough of the childish jaw jacking and tells them to fight, but instead they take turns hugging Vince. I love the Austin-Angle-Vince segments and relationship, I think it is one of the finest things the WWF ever did in the post Attitude Era. As I have said before; the Austin heel turn was a huge mistake for business, but the character was a riot.

 

Now the WWF’s worst ever botch: the invasion angle. Instead of making millions of dollars for years on end and running two viable companies that toured separately, instead the WWF systematically destroyed everything about the fantasy warfare that fans had been begging for over the last decade. Not only did they not bring in the key players and big stars that would have made a difference (the likes of Goldberg, Hulk Hogan, Scott Steiner, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Jeff Jarrett, Ric Flair, Rey Misterio Jnr and even Eric Bischoff) but they also booked the whole thing like it was just another scripted storyline. We start out with Mike Awesome winning the Hardcore title in the hallowed halls of MSG, prompting Vince to declare that “he raped me”. Booker T then shows up at WWF New York and calls out Austin, so ‘Stone Cold’ and Kurt Angle go to find him, only to discover he has already left and gained access to MSG, where he beats up Vince before fleeing. A decent start, but hardly the mass hostile takeover attempt the thing was screaming out for. Within a few days it became all about Vince and what a stud he is, when Torrie Wilson turned up backstage on SmackDown! and implied that she wanted to nail him. A jealous Austin hugs Vince, and when McMahon invites Torrie to dinner, Austin says “I’ll check my schedule”. “Me too” says the equally oblivious Angle. It’s funny stuff, but this is supposed to be the ultimate showdown between the two biggest wrestling companies in the world, there is no place for silly comedy. Alas the courtship continues, with Vince and Torrie looking for a place to shag, but finding themselves frequently interrupted by Kurt and Austin. Torrie takes Vince to a laundry closet and strips him off, then tells him to close his eyes. When he opens them, he sees his wife Linda standing there in Torrie’s place. Yes, it was a set-up all along. Vince stammers a denial while stood there in his pants, but Linda has heard enough. So now the potentially biggest angle and feud in the history of wrestling is serving as a mere backdrop for the trials and tribulations of the McMahon family.

 

And it gets worse too. After the WWF nearly saves the angle with the reformation of ECW on RAW, they then blow a year’s worth of storylines in one night by having the WWF and WCW unite (which made no sense) to combat the ECW threat, only for the WCW and ECW crews to merge into one big super faction. This sort of made sense because of the sheer lack of star power on the WCW side, but it meant that the invasion was in fact not an invasion at all, but rather just a faction of WWF midcarders and a few new names alongside them. It could have been avoided if the WWF had brought in all the big stars from WCW, but they didn’t want to pay the contracts. Ultimately they all, except Jarrett, ended up back with the company on fat contracts anyway, and they would have easily repaid what they were earning with the mass amount of tickets and merchandise revenue they would have generated, not to mention the buyrate spikes. Things actually get even worse before the night is out, with Shane introducing Stephanie McMahon as the new owner of ECW, instantly killing the entire thing dead on the spot. The last thing ANYONE wanted to see was the McMahon fingerprints all over this thing. Eric Bischoff should have been leading WCW, Paul Heyman ECW and Vince the WWF, with the rest of his family off television and out of the way. As soon as they were involved it was just another angle and despite the strong buyrate for the InVasion pay-per-view, it was just a spike because of the novelty. After that things flattened out and the whole thing was dead in the water by Survivor Series just four months later. I specifically avoided covering any invasion era shows in this volume because of how furious it makes me, and now I am all riled up about it. Well over a decade later, the missed opportunity and unfathomable booking still pisses me off.

 

For reasons I cannot begin to explain, we go back to April prior to the invasion, for the fantastic segments with Steve Austin and Kurt Angle singing to Vince McMahon backstage. I love these things, but why are they being shown now? Honestly, you can get a headache from watching this. It’s impossible to follow!

 

Fast forward again to Vince begging Austin to become the “old Stone Cold” once again and lead the WWF into InVasion. He wants the needy, guitar-playing, hug-giving Austin to disappear and the ass kicking Austin to return. He begs for Austin to beat him up and give him a Stunner, but Steve walks away dejected. Austin spends an episode of RAW in a bar contemplating what to do, while the WWF faction gets inspired and focused thanks to stirring speeches from Bradshaw, the Undertaker and the legendary ‘Classie’ Freddie Blassie. Meanwhile over in the WCW/ECW locker room, Steph rouses her troops. Yeah, you can see why this failed. While the Steph stuff undoubtedly sucks, the Austin inner turmoil is fantastic and the brilliantly made music video outlining all of this causes goosebumps, especially when Austin snaps and hits the arena, taking out everyone that moves from the Alliance side. The old ‘Stone Cold’ had indeed returned, and on SmackDown! the following week Vince sings to him to welcome him back. Austin tells him his guitar is out of tune and then smashes it over Vince’s head to a big pop. Then as InVasion, Austin nonsensically turns on the WWF and joins the Alliance, becoming the new leader of the group. They needed the injection of star power for sure, but Austin shouldn’t have been that guy. Austin should have been the one leading the WWF in the fight. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it made sense, but Austin spent the entirety of the InVasion main event beating on the Alliance, only to join them at the end. It’s one of many, many plot holes. Austin’s justification for turning on the WWF? Vince was hugging Kurt Angle and grooming him as the next WWF Champion. Right, great.

 

To counter the defection of Austin, Vince reinstates the Rock. Shane however makes a play for him, reminding Rock what Vince has done to him over the years. We don’t see the payoff, instead seeing Kurt Angle beat Booker T to win the WCW Championship and thus giving the wacky scenario where the WWF Champion is with WCW and the WCW Champion in with the WWF. Oh, did I say wacky? Sorry, I meant FUCKING STUPID. To annoy me further, Coach then says we are wrapping up and thus we don’t even get to find out whose side Rock joined. What an incredibly annoying tape!

 

Summary: It’s all over the goddamn place. Six months of action, cut up and shuffled around, with illogical and baffling editing decisions that confuse timelines and ruin the flow of the stories shown. It’s a shame too because if it was done coherently with a sense of structure, it would be a good tape. There is a lot of very entertaining footage on here, but it is strictly snippets and the impact is lost for some of the stuff with it appearing out of context. The inclusion of the invasion angle ruins things for me too, because that whole period of time really killed wrestling for me. As a tape to throw on and relive some footage rarely revisited by WWE it is worth your time, but it certainly doesn’t work as a timeline piece.
Verdict: 48

#WWF286 – Best Of Raw Vol. 3

James Dixon: This is the third and final installment of the rebooted “Best of RAW” series, covering late 1999 until the end of 2000. Hosted by the Coach

 

We begin with the Attitude Era’s answer to Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth: the relationship and proposed marriage between Stephanie McMahon and Andrew ‘Test’ Martin. “The power of their love would soon be tested by real life’s uncertainties” says Michael Cole in the most contrived manner possible. Who talks like that? The relationship hit a few snags, not least Davey Boy Smith inadvertently hoying a metal bin in the direction of Steph’s face and causing her to have that old soap opera staple; amnesia, forgetting all of her feelings for poor Test. When reminded of them, she broke with tradition and proposed, which summed up who wore the pants in that relationship. To the ceremony, which is interrupted by Triple H and his revelation that he is already married to Steph, thanks to a helping hand from Rohypnol and a less than observant attendee at the drive thru chapel. Rather than having the marriage annulled, which seems like the most logical thing to do, instead Hunter and Vince McMahon have a match at Armageddon to determine the future of young Stephanie. Only in wrestling. Vince agrees to the stipulations imposed by Triple H that if he wins he gets a title shot but if he loses then Steph is free, and his face furls with apoplectic rage when Hunter seals the deal with a kiss. Erm, with Steph, not Vince. Either that or he had a particularly perilous situation occurring “down south” that had already started to rear its ugly head, so to speak. It’s hard to tell with him sometimes. Even though this is a tape covering happenings on RAW, we see the finish of the Armageddon match and Stephanie’s subsequent heel turn on her pops, which ushers in a horrifying new era: the McMahon-Helmsley Regime. Reality aped storyline over the next few years, with the two hooking up for real and ending up married with kids. Incredibly, some fourteen years after this there was another McMahon-Helmsley era in WWE, only this time they gave themselves the scripted and forced moniker of ‘The Authority’.

 

Back to RAW, and an irate Vince smashes DX’s locker room door down with a sledgehammer as he tries to find Hunter. Later on in the ring, Steph explains her actions and… her justification actually make sense! She brings up the angle from a few months back where Vince was the infamous “higher power” in the Ministry of Darkness, and had Steph abducted and almost forced into a Satanic marriage to the Undertaker just so he could screw with Steve Austin. You can see how something like that would mess with a girl’s head. I am actually not sure how Vince is the babyface in any of this when I think about it. Steph puts an exclamation point on things by gleefully telling her dad how much Trips turns her on. There is something not quite right about that family.

 

With the power mad McMahon-Helmsley era gathering momentum, Hunter targets the Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection, and he declares partners Rock and Mankind will compete against each other in a “pink slip on a pole match”, which means the loser gets fired. It’s a smart angle, and eventually resulted in the brilliant Hunter-Foley feud of the next few months. We see action from the match, which is joined in progress with Al Snow coming down and belting Rock with Head to prevent him from winning. Mankind doesn’t want to win it that way, and instead of grabbing the slip he belts Al. They brawl back-and-forth some more, with Rock hitting a Rock Bottom and Mankind the Socko Claw, but neither gets the job done. They fight up by the pole where Mankind takes a bump to the outside, and Rock grabs the slip and seemingly ends Foley’s career. Rock’s reaction to winning is great, as he just storms off in rage because of what he has been forced to do.

 

Triple H continues to jibe at Foley after he has gone, which is in keeping with the WWF’s unflattering tradition of ripping into guys when they leave the company. Hunter hires an imposter to mock Mankind (Dennis ‘Phineas Godwinn’ Knight in the only entertaining role of his career), and this results in some genuinely funny skits as “Mankind” finds himself in various embarrassing scenarios. It is the real Mankind who gets the last laugh though, as the entire roster clubs together and demands he be reinstated or they will go on strike, which leads to an 8-man tag on RAW featuring Triple H and his DX buddies against Rock, the Acolytes and Mankind. Hunter and Mankind end up as the last two guys standing, but WWF Champion Helmsley pins Foley to prove his superiority. The real story comes after the bout, as Mankind symbolically removes his mask and beats the crap out of Hunter, and he stands bloody and proud afterwards.

 

A few weeks later Mick Foley has transformed into Cactus Jack, and is credited for bringing the Radicalz quartet of Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn and Dean Malenko into the WWF. They joke around backstage about the fact there is a crowd out there, which they are not used to, but soon afterwards Hunter reveals that it was he who gave the group contracts, and they turn on Foley and beat the crap out of him to tremendous heat. “Cactus Jack doesn’t have any stroke” says Benoit in order to justify their actions.

 

More footage not from RAW, with Tazz making his debut against Kurt Angle at the Royal Rumble in what turned out to be the highlight of his WWF run. Back on RAW, Kurt protests that he is still undefeated because he was illegally choked out, and he challenges the Rock to a match later on the show. We get a decent chunk of the bout, but again not the whole thing. It’s a strong back-and-forth contest, though not a patch on their excellent PPV outing at No Way Out the following year. Angle at one point goes to leave but is prevented from doing so by Tazz, and Rock befalls him his first pinfall defeat, in front of his hometown crowd no less.

 

The night after Royal Rumble 2000, the Big Show complains to Triple H that he was robbed in the Rumble match because Rock’s feet touched the floor first. He is right, but listening to Show talk is a chore because he is really bland when it comes to delivering promos. It is one of the reasons he didn’t get over to the level many thought he would, because he was surrounded by a bunch of guys who could talk up a storm. Show wants a match with Rock at No Way Out for a title shot, and Hunter agrees if Show can give him evidence to back up his claims. Show gives Polaroid shots, testimonies from a security guy who had a close-up view of the elimination and finally footage, getting him his match with Rock. He wins thanks to help from Shane McMahon, and Hunter beats Cactus Jack in the title match on the same show, setting up the horrific sounding Triple H vs. Big Show WrestleMania main event. “If Triple H vs. The Big Show is going to be the main event of WrestleMania, then WrestleMania is going to absolutely suck!” says the Rock. Oh, he is so very right. Much convoluted McMahon-heavy nonsense follows, resulting in the even worse fatal four way match also including Rock and the suddenly unretired Mick Foley, with the joyous addition of a McMahon being in every corner. They should have just had a McMahon family four way, because that was the real focus of the match. It all ended up with silliness as it always does, with Steph and Vince forming an alliance and uniting behind Hunter (rendering the past few month’s storylines as nonsense), who became the first heel in history to walk away from WrestleMania with a successful WWF Title defence. Of course he did.

 

Hunter was not amused with Rock decking his wife with a Rock Bottom following WrestleMania, and set about tearing him apart in a cage, busting him open and leaving him lying after smashing his face in with brass knuckles. This kind of thing happens to Rock after ‘Mania every year. This would result in an epic showdown at Backlash, but before that Triple H was forced to defend the title on RAW against the red hot Chris Jericho. Jericho won the match to an immense pop, but later in the night Hunter bullied pussy referee Earl Hebner into reversing the decision because he “screwed” him and counted the fall fast, before firing him and beating the snot out of him. Anyone who saw this that was still a fan of WWE in 2013-14 probably experienced a strong sense of déjà vu, because the exact angle was repeated between the Authority and Daniel Bryan following the latter’s WWE Championship win over Randy Orton at Night of Champions.

 

More Jericho next as we finally take a break from Hunter, and we bafflingly get clips from his match against Chris Benoit prior to the previous bout, with Kurt Angle serving as the commentator. This ended up leading to a triple threat match at WrestleMania, but the post match attack on both guys from Angle is missed off and the inclusion of this on the tape is rendered somewhat pointless.

 

Next we see the same Hardcore Title 24/7 video that has turned up on a bunch of these tape releases, showing the trials and tribulations of poor Crash Holly as he strives to retain his belt. We go to a King of the Ring qualifier between Crash and his cousin Hardcore, which ends in a DQ win for Elroy thanks to interference from Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco. Brisco ends up decking Crash and beating him to win the Hardcore Title, but when celebrating backstage with Pat he gets turned on by his fellow stooge and smashed over the head with a champagne bottle and pinned.

 

Next up: sex! Included in the segment is the harrowing relationship between Mae Young and Mark Henry, which results in them in bed together with the insinuation being that they have just bumped uglies. We then briefly see Kurt Angle wearing a billboard promoting abstinence and a really bizarre Trish Stratus promo where she gets aroused by tables. Following that, we see Eddie Guerrero trying to gain access to the Playboy mansion so he can destroy Chyna’s recently shot pictures, presumably as a service to all mankind. Eddie apologises then claims to be ill so that Chyna will wrestle her friend Rikishi in his place. Eddie turns up at ringside and ‘Kishi beats him up, but Eddie maces him. Unable to see, Rikishi hits the Samoan drop on Chyna and then when he can see, he crushes her with the Banzai Drop. Eddie does nothing to save her. A little more about the relationship and the aftermath of this would have been beneficial and appreciated.

 

Charisma black hole and original Vince McMahon approved automaton Linda McMahon gives Kane, the Undertaker and the Rock a stern ticking off for fighting each other, then tells them to be united in order to get the WWF Title back off Triple H. This leads to a nonsense match at King of the Ring where Rock pins Vince to win the title in a six man tag. How horrible. The next night Vince hijacks a Rock promo to talk about how from this point on he is going to dedicate himself to Linda, and that the two are going to try for another baby because he is a “genetic jackhammer”. What gruesome imagery that conjures up. Rock is equally appalled and calls Vince an “asshole” before giving him a Rock Bottom. Also that night, Shawn Michaels turned up with a major announcement: Mick Foley is the new WWF commissioner… Pleasingly that means a Foley skit with Edge & Christian, who were perfect foil for him, the one shown being where the duo are forced to defend their tag titles against the Undertaker and Kane because they disrespect Mick by making him get them sodas. The chemistry the three have is wonderful.

 

More from Kurt Angle next, who comes over all King Mabel following his King of the Ring victory, and dresses in the full regalia while taking his new position altogether far too seriously. Angle’s program with the Undertaker follows, which was a bad idea. The build up is decent enough but the 7-minute match at Fully Loaded 2000 was crap, with Angle’s momentum dealt a major blow by an unnecessary clean and decisive job. Once again this “best of RAW” tape shows highlights of the PPV match, meaning what this release actually appears to be is a “best of 1999-2000” tape.

 

While Angle’s feud with the Undertaker was booked badly, his love triangle with Stephanie McMahon and Triple H was brilliant. Initially. First Angle complains about Mick Foley and gives Steph an innocent hug that Triple H sees and gets all pissy about. Angle protests his innocence and gives Michael Cole a hug to show that it meant nothing. Things take a turn for the worse for Hunter when Steph walks in on him demonstrating a dodgy looking reversal on Trish Stratus that leaves the two in a compromising position, and Steph flips her lid and trashes the locker room. The two make up but Mick Foley calls them on it all being a public facade, and then backstage Trish apologises for her role in their problems. Steph doesn’t buy it and claims Hunter and Trish have eyes for each other. Steph then asks to be shown the same reversal that Hunter showed Trish, which Trips does, but then he accidentally calls her “Trish”. Uh oh. Steph needs space, but things get worse when Hunter ends up getting a chair shot from the Rock and ends up in a “69” position with Trish, and Kurt Angle steps in to be the shoulder to cry on for Steph. Unfortunately the payoff doesn’t come, because they have decided to split the story into two parts on this tape. How frustrating.

 

We see the formation of Right to Censor, which came about because of unbearable real life do-gooders the Parents Television Council, who wanted to police all television that didn’t meet their so-called standards. They campaigned hard against the WWF for their supposed excessive violence, negative portrayal of women as sex objects, lurid characters and whatever other drivel they came up with in their smear campaign to try and get them off the air. The WWF’s typically mature response was to mock the group on TV by forming their own storyline censorship group, which served the dual purpose of mocking the PTC but also removing some of the edgier characters from television to reduce the flak. When Steven Richards forms the group, he tells the crowd: “You do not know what’s good for you, but I do” which is an obvious and fair jab at the PTC. Richards converts the Godfather, Val Venis and Bull Buchanan to his cause, and then finally Ivory who we see chastising Trish and Lita for having a bra and panties match. Good LORD the ass on Trish… Ivory claims to have “seen the light” and says “not only have you been stripped of your clothing, you have been stripped of your pride”. She plays the “prissy teacher” type very well.

 

To William Regal, who is sitting having a tea party giving lessons in etiquette. His British accent and persona was so very stereotypical and cartoonish that it bordered on ridiculous, but he played the role so well that it was richly entertaining. He tries to teach Americans how to use a handkerchief, and offers the brilliant words of wisdom: “never wipe or smear, that is for another orifice”. Jericho interrupts and promises a tablecloth magic trick, but instead just throws the contents of the table out of the ring. That doesn’t lead anywhere in particular, but the focus stays on Regal as he commentates on a European Title match featuring champion Al Snow, who has perturbed Regal by confusing Greece with Grease. We don’t see any of Al’s match, just the comments from Regal that Al is disgracing his continent. Regal then beats Al for the title when they go head-to-head soon afterwards. His disingenuous manic smile after a vicious assault is great and almost Hannibal Lecter like.

 

Back to the Angle-Hunter-Steph love triangle. Hunter asks Steph to stay out of his match with Angle and she intends to, but then runs into Chris Benoit backstage and slaps him. Not wise. She decides to come out and get involved in the bout anyway because she can’t follow instructions. She stops Angle using a chair but then Benoit pulls her off the apron and smacks Hunter with a chair, and Angle hits the Olympic Slam to win. Hunter storms off, furious with Steph. This leads to an assault from Benoit and Angle on Rock and Hunter, with Steph berating Angle for attacking her husband, before Benoit promptly shuts her up with a headbutt. Ace.

 

Steve Austin had been gone from screens for almost a year, brief appearance at Backlash aside, but the RAW’s debut on TNN saw him return to TV, and the whole “who ran down Steve Austin” can of worms gets reopened again after nearly a year on the shelf. Austin does some investigating, but he is the worst sleuth in history because he doesn’t even really question anyone, he just beats the shit out of people. Mick Foley cracks the case: it was Rikishi. This was one of the worst payoffs to an angle that I can remember, just illogical, nonsensical bullshit. He wasn’t even at the show where it happened! If ever an angle jumped the shark, then it was this one. Backstage before a tag bout, Rock gets attacked and taken to hospital, so Austin has to work the match as a handicap bout. He gets the shit kicked out of him. It then turns out that Triple H was responsible for the whole hit and run thing and was the mastermind behind the attack. Of course he was involved, he just has to have a hand in everything.

 

We finish things with Mick Foley and Kurt Angle arguing about being each other’s wives, and Mick forcing Angle to defend his title against bosom buddy Vince McMahon. Naturally Vince is able to ground the Olympic gold medallist during the course of this with an amateur takedown. Mick gets involved and ends up beaten up by an Edge & Christian Conchairto, but Steph comes down and prevents further assault because she has some… papers! The papers apparently say that due to “mental incompetence” Linda McMahon’s CEO powers have been given to Vince. There are a whole host of jokes relating to that one. Vince immediately fires Mick and that finishes up the tape.

 

Summary: There is plenty of good stuff on here, though very little of it is actually given time to be digested before we move onto the next thing. Except Triple H and Stephanie of course… Oh there is plenty from both of those on here, and if you are not sick enough of them and can stomach it, their angles and segments are actually pretty good. The biggest bugbear with this tape is obviously the glaring lack of wrestling, with no matches shown in full and in truth very little actual wrestling shown at all. But that is RAW in the Attitude Era for you, and you know what to expect when coming in. Scatterbrained and occasionally suffers from the typical WWF questionable slicing and editing, but the near two hours go past pretty quickly and there is definitely nothing you would categorise as “bad” on here. Well worth your time.
Verdict: 73

#WWF283 – Triple H – That Damn Good

Arnold Furious: Of the three of the scribes in this office, I think I’m arguably Triple H’s biggest fan. In that I don’t completely hate him and at one point, admittedly not for very long, he was my favourite WWF wrestler. Pretty much just for 2000 and early 2001 until he tore his quad. This is a tape that covers that particular era, so we’re all good. Host is Triple H. He calls this a highlights package of some of his best matches so we can see why he is “that damn good”. The first bout is from Armageddon. It is a terrible pile of shit and not the best match to demonstrate Hunter’s ability in the ring.

 

No Holds Barred
Triple H vs. Vince McMahon
The stipulations are as follows: if Vince wins, Hunter’s marriage to Stephanie is annulled. If Hunter wins he gets a title shot and the marriage continues. Interesting to note this match takes place after Vince had been “banned from WWF TV forever” about six months ago. He’s actually had a WWF Title run since then. Only in wrestling. I remember being shocked by Steph’s post match heel turn as she’d been utterly useless as a babyface, but she took to the role like a duck to water. It’s just a pity Hunter and Vince decide to have a dick measuring competition first, as they go 30-minutes. Vince isn’t a wrestler and doesn’t have any spots. Hunter, with all due respect, has never been adept at carrying people of lesser ability. It’s a recipe of disaster and the match is a humongous waste of PPV time. Seeing as Vince can’t wrestle at all they fill the match with brawling. Unlike when Austin-McMahon headlined a PPV it’s not filled with moments to excite. The difference with that match was, as a heel, Vince was getting his comeuppance. With this match it’s just brawling for the sake of it. Yes, it is a personal feud, but Hunter as the wrestler should dominate, and he does but why, unlike the showboating Austin, does he not go for the finish quickly? He doesn’t want to punish Vince, he just wants to win so he can go back to what really matters; the WWF Title. The match is dying a death so Mankind wheels out a shopping trolley full of weapons for Vince. His “use these bad boys” assertion makes me chuckle. Hunter at least inserts psychological common sense by washing his eyes out about 10 minutes after a powder shot from the chairman of the board. As if to say “I was only losing because I couldn’t see”. Mick’s hardcore weapons make the match marginally more interesting but it still drags something fierce. It boggles the mind that the WWF won the wrestling war with PPV main events like this. It goes to show just how awful WCW was at the same time.

The set for Armageddon features several military vehicles. Hunter gets creative with the props and uses a machine gun to knock Vince down. Vince manages the same with a flap from a helicopter. The weird thing about all the garbage shots is the lack of selling. Various objects are bounced off Hunter’s head, then off Vince’s head, rinse, repeat. When that gets boring Hunter just flat out disappears. As in we head to the parking lot and he’s nowhere to be seen. This is the month after the hit and run on Steve Austin and Hunter tries a similar trick on Vince, but McMahon hops over a rail to survive a badly lit, badly shot attack. A replay shows how close Vince came to serious injury. After that they resort to the same deal; bouncing heads off objects over and over again. To mix things up they add in a silly bump with both guys climbing a tower by the entranceway before Vince falls off onto a safety landing mat. Vince blades from the bump, which makes little sense. The match contains shit for the sake of it. It needs blood so Vince just bleeds. Hunter stops off to cut a promo in front of Steph before grabbing Sledgie, his trusted sledgehammer. Vince kicks him in the balls, steals the hammer and Steph leaps in the ring to demand her own vengeance. Hunter takes the hammer off her and wears Vince out with it for the pin. At least they never lost the crowd, apart from me, so it stays out of negative snowflakes, but it’s a chore to sit through and I don’t recommend it.
Final Rating: ½*

 

Back to the studio and Hunter mumbles through another segue before calling the upcoming match with Cactus Jack one of the best matches of his career. This is a fine choice for the tape as the energy levels and emotion are superb. Foley does an amazing job of covering for his lack of conditioning and a lot of that is on Hunter and how good he was at the time.

 

Street Fight
WWF Championship
Triple H (c) vs. Cactus Jack
Interesting they don’t bill Cactus as being from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Plenty of “Foley is God” signs out there. To this point I felt Mick’s best match in the business was his classic with Shawn Michaels at Mind Games, despite the lack of finish. That’s about to change. The only beef I have with this match is that it should have gone on last, after the Rumble. Foley was so broken down by 2000 that it’s a minor miracle he can move around with the athleticism that he does. I guess he knew he had two matches left so he could leave it all in the ring. This match is all about progression and building. They start out on the floor brawling and Cactus takes a shot with the ring bell, which was enough to put Mankind down. But Cactus Jack isn’t Mankind. Not anymore. He’s gained a mythical power that lifts him above that. Hunter grabs a chair so Cactus demands a shot with it and Hunter delivers. Mick goes down like a sack of spuds but he gets back up! They don’t do much wrestling, they don’t need to, but Jack uses swinging neckbreakers and backdrops on the floor, as if to pay homage to wrestling in an unusual setting. They insert a crowd brawl but it’s merely to get to a New York style alleyway part of the entrance. This leads to Hunter taking a suplex on a pallet. Much to his horror he discovers a piece of wood stabbed him in the leg during that spot. Lots of blood from that and it’s right in the calf. For all the flak we’ve given Hunter, he sure knew how to man up and work with pain. In order to push the envelope Cactus grabs his 2×4 wrapped in barbed wire, which gets a massive pop. As per usual for Mick, bringing a weapon into a match backfires, as Hunter nut shots him and uses the 2×4. The WWF had seen nothing this violent beforehand. Double arm DDT but, in a rare moment of weird selling, Cactus stays down for too long before pinning. Hunter rolls his shoulder while the ref is hiding the 2×4 so they can switch to a fake weapon. “Where’s the bat?” screams Cactus at Earl Hebner. Jack lays out Hugo Savinovich for not giving him the bat from under the Spanish announce table. Hunter then takes a 2×4 shot right in the noggin. Hunter kicks out and the fans are already biting on the near falls. Also Hunter is bleeding like a stuck pig from the head and the leg. He’s having to earn this title in blood, sweat and tears.

Like his hero Ric Flair, Hunter’s blond hair is turning a shade of red as Cactus beats at his bloody head. It’s a crimson mask! Cactus, remembering his last win over Hunter, goes for a piledriver on the announce table to replicate that famous MSG win from RAW in 1997. Hunter feels it coming and backdrops out, breaking the table before the main event. Hunter sets for the Pedigree and unfortunately does it in line with the buckles, rather telegraphing the reversal. Hunter then face bumps onto the barbed wire… for 2. Hunter has juiced so much that the fans buy everything as a near fall now. Cactus Clothesline sets up Jack to take a hip toss onto the ring steps. Cactus follows that with yet another knees-first bump into the ring steps, which makes you wonder if he was planning on even walking after this match, let alone wrestling a main event the following month. Hunter, always the cerebral assassin takes out Cactus’ leg. This allows him to handcuff Jack. People get depressed at the sight of Mick Foley getting cuffed as it brings back memories of the Rock’s brutalisation of him at Royal Rumble ‘99. It also ends the fans hope that Cactus can win the title. Hunter goes after the ring steps but Cactus manages to drop toehold him, in a superb piece of defensive wrestling. Hunter then wears him out with a chair, which creates a great visual as part of the chair breaks off and flies towards the crowd. As Jack starts begging Hunter to hit him properly, the Rock runs out and chair shots Hunter so the cops can unlock Cactus’ cuffs. Now it’s a fair fight again and Jack’s first call of business is to hit that piledriver on a table. The Spanish table does not oblige and stays in one piece. Because it’s not falls count anywhere Cactus has to take it back into the ring and on the way picks up a massive bag of thumbtacks. Stephanie McMahon can’t take it anymore and runs out to appeal to Jack’s sense of fair play. Hunter takes the opening and backdrops Cactus into the tacks. Great sell from Stephanie on that. PEDIGREE! ONE-TWO-THR… NOOO! KICKOUT! This was outstanding business as the Pedigree was death and nobody ever kicked out of it. Hunter’s one-legged complaint to the ref is brilliant, but as soon as Cactus is up a second Pedigree on the thumbtacks gets the job done. A brutal ballet that had a ridiculous escalation of violence for the WWF. Hunter’s selling and bleeding made the match and the match made him.
Final Rating: *****

 

Back to the studio and Hunter calls Chris Jericho “a constant thorn in the side of me” and implies that when Jericho got his real shot at ‘the Game’, he came up short, before putting him over as tough. He also puts the match over as great, which it is. He’s already 2/3.

 

Last Man Standing
Triple H vs. Chris Jericho
The opening shine sees Jericho beat the crap out of HHH and if there’s one thing Hunter did well in 2000 it was getting other people over. It almost pains me to watch Hunter in 2000 because he was such a tremendous talent and yet he deliberately stopped being it. Jericho has an out as Hunter injured his ribs with a sledgehammer prior to the PPV and HHH works that area. Like a bastard. There’s a bit where Hunter rams his shoulder into Jericho’s ribs in the corner relentlessly. It shows both his cardio and his aggression. He’s a beast. Jericho takes such a beating on the ribs that you feel he’s done, which is a huge turnaround from the opening shine. Jericho gets a series of hope spots culminating in the Lionsault, which gets knees into the injured ribs. Because Jericho can’t catch his breath he can’t stand. Hunter goes to finish with the Main Event Sleeper, eager to capitalise on the situation he’s created. Jericho does a great job of selling how close he is to being finished with his rubber legs and his begging Hunter to kick his ass, if he can. Jericho manages a weak crotch chop and a Pedigree! As Jericho starts to stir Hunter bails for a chair, pissed off that Chris won’t stay down. He even chair shots the ribs, continuing his unrelenting focus. The escalating violence was a trademark of Hunter’s best matches. Hunter figures a Pedigree on a chair will do it, but Jericho goes low to save himself. Jericho comes back with a chair shot and Hunter bleeds a gusher off that. It’s hideous, a massive cut with loads of juice from it. Now it’s a total reversal as Hunter has the weakness and Jericho, like a shark, smells the blood. The match had previously worked on a “periods of dominance” strategy. They switch to a back-and-forth, which creates an exciting conclusion as the match is wide open. They duel with monitor shots but both survive the 10 count. Pedigree is countered into the Walls of Jericho and Hunter taps out, but that’s not in the rules. Jericho just wants to cripple Hunter’s legs so he can’t stand. Hunter gets into the ropes then realises there’s no DQ so the ref can’t break it. Steph realises that means she can interfere and jumps in there, only for Jericho to slap her in the Walls of Jericho and Hunter has to save. Hunter pulls out the sledgehammer but misses and he gets catapulted into the post. Jericho gets in one of those sledgehammer punches to set up a table spot. Hunter goes low to block it and back suplexes Jericho through the announce table. Jericho’s defence for losing is that his head hits the floor after the table. Hunter gets up, just, and Jericho stays down. Hunter wins. Great match. Another classic from Hunter’s 2000 run.
Final Rating: ****½

 

Back to the studio and Hunter, showing an increasing lack of charisma, recaps the issues with Kurt Angle at SummerSlam 2000 and how proud he was of how the match turned out.

 

WWF Championship
The Rock (c) vs. Kurt Angle vs. Triple H
Before we get underway, and before the Rock is even out here, Hunter and Angle brawl all over the place to get over the hatred between them regarding Steph. See, Kurt was in the Helmsleys’ business and had “carnal intentions” towards Steph, which royally pissed off Hunter and practically turned him face for a while in 2000. His assault on Angle leads to a Pedigree through the Spanish announce table and the table gives way mid-move, thus dumping Kurt face first on the surface. As JR points out “his eyes are glazed over” as Kurt is just staring off into space and can’t do anything. With Angle out of the game, Rock and Hunter have to improvise a match, which isn’t hard for them seeing as they’ve worked a bunch of times since 1996 and they’re both considered top guys in the company. The only real issue is throwing the whole match out of the window, thanks to Kurt’s head injury, and coming up with something new on the fly. That’s probably why Hunter likes it enough to feature it on this tape as winging a match is a lot harder when you need to call everything in the ring. Angle gets stretchered out, unable to do anything and there is a suggestion that it’s a work as Hunter goes after the stretcher to get another lick in. I don’t know what Hunter was thinking seeing as Kurt genuinely had a concussion, but my guess is he wanted it to feel like a legitimate match. To make a real injury look like a worked one, which is the opposite of what they usually go for. The idea being that they incorporate a real injury into the worked match. Hunter actually dealt with the whole situation supremely well from the point of impact and Angle’s recovery as he holds Angle down when Kurt tries to get back up. Steph comes out and they improvise a goofy missed belt shot, which presumably was supposed to be an Angle spot. Hunter decides he doesn’t want to do any more of those spots and sends Steph to the back, which makes sense after her miscue and also because improvisation isn’t her strong point. Hunter grabs the sledgehammer as there’s no DQ, not that there’s ever DQ’s in a three-way as you can’t DQ one guy and then carry on. He hits Rock in the ribs, not the head, and uses the spot to build rather than a false finish. It’s a combination of things as Hunter needs to reinforce his heel status as the stuff with Angle was turning him face and he wants to wear Rock down and beat him his way. Hunter is looking very muscular by the way. He’s carrying none of the weight around that’d plague his later career and he looks incredible. You can see his quad muscles straining as he walks around the ring and you can see why it snapped like a guitar string. Considering the lack of structure this turns out to be a decent match, which is testament to Hunter’s leadership and Rock’s raw ability. It’s also the answer to a frequently asked wrestling question; what would happen if something went wrong in a big match? Well, they’d improvise and carry on wrestling. The show must go on!

Steph drags Kurt back out and he looks goofy but not as out of it as beforehand. Angle trips Rock to set up the Pedigree and also manages to pull Hunter off the cover. Concussed Kurt even gets a near fall off Hunter’s hard work. Angle manages to get himself enough together to come up with a belly-to-belly and they try to return to the match. Rock is very careful while setting Angle up for a DDT, but Kurt’s composure has returned. Hunter prevents a pin after a Rock Bottom, with excellent timing all around. Steph gets to do some more plunder improvisation by throwing the sledgehammer in, but Angle grabs it and Hunter accidentally punches Steph out. That was a much better spot. Angle nails Hunter with the sledgehammer but Rock spit-punches him out of the ring and hits the People’s Elbow on Triple H to retain. They did one hell of a job to get a match together after the early injury to Angle, but it does make you wonder how great the match could have been if everything played out as it was supposed to. I remember slightly disliking this at the time, but in retrospect it’s a commendable effort. If there’s ever been a match to get over Hunter’s ability to lead in the ring it’d be this one.
Final Rating: ***

 

Back in the studio Hunter gives a seriously neutral shill for his Three Stages of Hell match with Steve Austin at No Way Out . He calls it the highlight of the Austin rivalry and “one of the craziest matches you’ll ever see”.

 

Three Stages of Hell
Steve Austin vs. Triple H
First Fall: As Hunter puts it this is “straight up”. Hunter, the cerebral assassin, goes after Austin’s surgically repaired neck. When Austin comes firing back Hunter takes the permanently injured knee instead. Showing Austin’s weakness right from the off immediately casts doubt over what seemed like an obvious Austin victory. The way Hunter dissects those body parts, which are already injured, serves to make him the favourite. It also allows them to slow the pace, which is smart because it’s not a short match. Hunter then hooks a figure four putting doubt in Austin’s mind because it’s 2 out of 3 falls. Will Austin give up to save his knee and instead come back in the last two falls? Eventually he manages to turn it over, thus reversing the pressure (what a load of bollocks that is) before waffling Hunter with his knee brace-covered leg. Hunter just about avoids the Stunner and counters into a neckbreaker, even inserting a deliberate switch in position to not confuse the fans by thinking the Stunner hit. Hunter tries for something off the top, which is somewhat out of character and drops right into the Stunner. 1-0 Austin. Which, if anything, is the only major flaw in this match. The face shouldn’t really take the first fall in 2 out of 3 falls. It should always be about his fight to overcome the odds but I guess they wanted to throw some realism in there.

Second Fall: Street Fight. The street fight stipulation REALLY suits both guys as Austin loves brawling and Hunter has his best matches in a no DQ environment. Austin wears Hunter out with a chair, which gets a massive ovation. Austin gave Hunter a hellacious shoeing there. Austin pulls out a barbed wire 2×4, which Mick Foley must have left lying around, but it backfires and Austin blades off it. Hunter gets caught calling spots on camera again. Maybe it’s just his deep, manly register but it’s amazing how many times he gets caught, compared to everyone else. Austin bleeds a gusher so Hunter lines up a Pedigree only to get backdropped through the Spanish announce table in another hellacious spot. Lawler getting freaked as Hunter passes him in the air makes for a wonderful visual. Maybe he’s just freaked out about having to follow this as his match is next. Hunter goes back to his original tactic and hits a neckbreaker on a chair. In an even better spot Hunter counters a headlock into a back suplex on the same chair and they nail it. Hunter goes after his Scott Hall-esque “finisher by the ropes” spot and gets backdropped to the floor. On the floor Hunter gets whacked in the face with a chair and that allows him an opportunity to bleed too. Austin adds in the ring steps to make sure but he needn’t have… there’s blood everywhere because both guys are bleeding absolute gushers. Hunter grabs his trusty sledgehammer and Austin goes for the Stunner, but Hunter pushes him off, hits him with the hammer and finishes fall two with the Pedigree. Outstanding second fall. The crowd jeer the finish but they’re getting a third fall!

Third Fall: Down comes the cage to the ominous “cage lowering music”. The cage leaves no space around the ring but all the weapons were left in there including the barbed wire 2×4. They both use that, which causes more blood and more vicious plunder shots. The match starts to slow down at this juncture as both men are fatigued and the crowd is burned out after the second fall too. After a few minutes of whaling on each other Hunter goes to climb out with JR pointing out you can’t win by escape, only pinfall. The slower pace of the third fall puts over how tiring the match has been. Stunner is countered into the Pedigree, but Austin shoots his shoulder up at 2 ½ with the fans going nuts at the prospect of Hunter going over. Hunter adds in a chair shot and simply tosses the chair to one side. It reminds me of the match with Cactus Jack, where he got a bit dispirited at not winning with a Pedigree and felt all melancholy about the violence for a moment. Austin gets a sloppy Stunner after countering another Pedigree but this time Hunter kicks out. Very weird bump. Hunter grabs the sledgehammer and Austin the 2×4 and they hit at the same time, but it’s Hunter who lands on top for the pin. The match is a brutal ballet (I know, I know, I’ve already used that one once) and I like it slightly more than James. It’s not quite full boat because of the third fall where they tried to force spots to mean a lot. Also, as a traditionalist, I think Hunter should have gone over in the first fall but hey, these are minor quibbles and it’s a very, very good match, but it’s often somewhat forgotten because Austin and Rock went and had a barnburner at WrestleMania the next month.
Final Rating: ****¾

 

Back in the studio Hunter talks about tearing his quad in May and missing 8 months. He points out he wouldn’t take no for an answer and “made my triumphant return”. Video Control gives us footage of Hunter’s return on RAW in January 2002. The respect Triple H gained from finishing the match when he tore his quad turned him into a legend while he was away. He gets a loud and sustained pop, one of the biggest of his career. “I am the Game and you can bet your ass I’m back” gets an enormous pop. Back in the studio Hunter, in his silly worked voice, points out he won the Rumble and went to WrestleMania to once again become champion.

 

WWF Unified World Championship
Chris Jericho (c) vs. Triple H
I think this match about sums up why Hunter’s face turn failed. When he returned the fans were jazzed about it and thrilled to have him back, but two months later a large chunk of the audience has mentally checked out. That’s how little they now care, having already been treated to one of the great pieces of sportz entertainment earlier in the night with Rock vs. Hogan. Unlike that match, this one is a foregone conclusion with Jericho being treated as an afterthought to the Hunter-Steph storyline. Hunter tries to bring a storyline with him, as his leg is heavily taped, and he sells it hard from the opening. At least that brings some cohesion to the action, even if the fans don’t give a crap about it. The camera constantly lingers on Hooty McBoob at ringside and her enormous cleavage. Steph is completely uncoordinated and an attempt at raking Hunter’s eyes results in her falling over like a chump. As if it wasn’t immediately obvious what the real match was; Hunter drags Steph into the ring and looks for a Pedigree only for Jericho to save. Jericho is so unimportant to the booking, he might as well have been replaced by a cardboard cut-out. But hey, he’s headlined WrestleMania! Jericho continues to work the leg while Steph gets in cheap shots. It’s not a bad match, but for the main event of WrestleMania it’s a massive underachiever. I don’t remember the match at all back in 2002 as I’d been drinking rather heavily during the undercard and myself and the people I was watching with were still talking about Rock-Hogan. In fact, I think another friends of mine may have called me up during this match to discuss said contest, as it was so important. That feeling is evident on tape too as the fans start aimlessly chanting “Hogan” at one point. That about sums up WrestleMania X-8. Not that either guy wanted to go on last, citing that the fans wouldn’t be into it. I think if they’d gone on third last, this match might have gone over a lot differently and be remembered with greater fondness. But the crowd is dead and the match doesn’t do enough to get them involved. If you have to follow Hogan vs. Rock you’d better have a big match and the limb work doesn’t really cut it. Maybe if it was a focus of part of the match it’d be okay but Hunter is so into selling it, the leg takes over. They do work in an announce table spot for the first half-decent pop of the match, where Hunter signals for the Pedigree but is predictably backdropped through the other table. Hunter kicks out of the Lionsault, not that Y2J had used that as a finish for his entire WWF run. They run a flubbed bulldog counter, which leads directly into a Pedigree, countered into the Walls of Jericho. Hunter passes out from the pain, which doesn’t make a jot of sense considering he carried on working with a torn quad. Eventually Hunter gets into the ropes and there’s no reaction at all from the crowd. Steph jumps in the ring hoping for a DQ, which would prevent Hunter winning the title, but the Tripper hits her with a crowd-pleasing Pedigree, showing from a reaction stand-point what the fans actually wanted to see. Hunter turns into a chair shot and the kick out gets popped as the match is finally getting some traction. They work in a nice counters sequence before Jericho falls to the Pedigree and Hunter takes the title off him. Honestly, you could clip this down to the final quarter of the match and lose nothing of consequence. From a storyline perspective it makes sense to finish here as Hunter won the title, but the match is decidedly mediocre.
Final Rating: **¼

 

Summary: I could have lived without Hunter’s in-character links in the studio. Rather the tape would have benefitted from a little insight from ‘the Game’ on why he thought stuff was good and why he’d picked these matches to represent his time at the top of the industry. That said, there are several belters here. The Royal Rumble Street Fight is one of Hunter’s best matches, the Jericho Last Man Standing Match is another. I’m pleased to see Hunter-Austin from No Way Out 2001 on here too, as I thought I was going to miss out on that one. During the planning of the tape reviews I pointed out how great I thought it was, and luckily James came around to my way of thinking when he re-watched it. Considering this is a two hour tape, you’ve got three great matches on here over ****½, which is grounds for an easy thumbs up and the strongest recommendation. Even more so when you look at Triple H’s “definitive” DVD collection Thy Kingdom Come, which features none of these top matches.
Verdict: 92

#WWF281 – Divas In Hedonism

James Dixon: Yes, it is another tape dedicated to the WWF’s fairer sex contingent, with the usual promise of breasts that aren’t delivered upon. This time we are in Jamaica. WWF Senior Photo Editor Noelle Soper gets booted off the beach because she is in shot and her breasts are too natural, presumably, before she discusses the shoot in past tense before we have even seen it. She tells us that over 20,000 pictures were shot, which is a ridiculous number. For those interested in this sort of thing, the girls choose their own clothes. Noelle talks about the hard life the Divas all have, as we see shots of the girls basking in the sun. It certainly looks tough.

 

Terri
We start with my favourite haggard Diva, who lets some locals paint her up while she stands there with her shirt off and her arm covering her tits. Terri says she wants to represent the WWF, which is a horrific thought. What is she a representation of? Someone with no wrestling talent who married into the business and got a spot based on a willingness to flash her ass and get implants? Terri reconnects with her roots as she rides some horses, then claims to be allergic to them. Nice try. “For some reason, everyone associates me with horses” she says. Gee, I wonder why!? This whole bio is one of the fluffiest pieces of glad-handing trite I have ever seen, and nothing she says here means anything at all.

 

Jacqueline
I have noticed this before, but Jacqueline talks like a female Stephen Hawking. Her interview is even less interesting than Terri’s. Did you know that in her spare time she likes shopping and hanging out with friends!? What an animal, huh? Oh, and she is proud of her ass: “I have such a small round butt, like an onion”. She then turns from female Hawking into every black stereotype ever, all rolled into one unintelligible package. It’s like listening to Faarooq but with the addition of enormous silicone honkers. We don’t get many sexy shots of Jacqueline during this, but instead footage of her in the ring. That is for the best as wrestling is definitely her better quality, because she isn’t exactly a looker and her promo skills are worse than Dean Malenko’s.

 

Tori
Tori gets all philosophical about the pace of life in Jamaica, and calls the culture “more evolved” than in America because the folk over there are kinder to each other and are not swamped in commercialism and TV culture. Kind of a strange thing to say for a woman representing an American based global corporation that makes the majority of its money from television rights and sponsorship… Tori then puts on some burlesque outfits and does some squats, with her full areola area clearly visible in some shots. Thus it is delightfully ironic when Tori talks about the things that you don’t see being more exciting. Ah the good old slow motion video makes a comeback, with an awful lot of footage of Tori bending over while wearing revealing thongs. No prizes for guessing her position of choice. Tori goes diving in the sea for the first time, overcoming her previous fears, then revealing her antisocial side as she talks about the potential for escape underwater to get away from the real world.

 

Trish Stratus
“There’s just so many locations to shoot at” says Trish. There sure is; the beach, the pool, further up the beach, deeper in the pool, even further up the beach. She shows a surprising childlike delight at the daily appearance and disappearance of the sun and then takes up waterskiing for the first time and says “it’s a lot like skiing”. Yep, she is blonde alright. “I was supposed to be a doctor” she later claims. Sure you were love, sure you were.

 

Debra
Here is someone I just don’t understand the appeal of. She looks like someone in her fifties trying to dress herself up as a younger woman. She makes me chuckle by referring to her “Debra character”, which is a laugh because her so called character is just the same hick she is in real life but with a low cut suit on. She says she is really, really sensitive and doesn’t like large groups of people, which makes one immediately question her decision to get into wrestling. “I wanted to be in soaps”. I see. Debra talks about then husband Steve Austin and says he is a strong personality, but she likes that because she doesn’t want a man she can push around. No, apparently she prefers a man who can push her around… Debra overcomes her fear of heights to dick around on a trapeze, because she would have regretted it for the rest of her life if she hadn’t, apparently.

 

Chyna
Chyna spends a lot of time pointing out that she is a girl who likes girly things, and that people shouldn’t get the wrong idea from the way she looks. She reckons that once people hear her voice they change their perception of her. They sure do; once they hear that grating nasal whine they want to leave the room. Chyna talks about the shoot and talks about the “odd looking plants” in Jamaica. You might know them as trees. She then claims to have picked bold colours for all of her outfits for the shoot that represent her personality. Then they show her in bright pink. Yes, we get it, she is a girl! Of the outfits, she says there is “something very Chyna about them, but without the black leather”. So, not very Chyna at all then. She talks a bit more and at one point refers to some coffee as “Chynalicious”. How did Trips put up with her for so long!?

 

Lita
Most of this is also featured on the Lita tape which came out two releases before this. “It’s hard to piss me off” says Lita, who professes to be mellow. We see footage from the shoot on a beach, which is apparently not typically clichéd according to our gal, because she had never done it before. Yeah, it might not be clichéd for you, but the whole practice sure is. She goes over her journey into wrestling via Mexico and her current relationship with the Hardy Boyz. She considers their relationship with her to be “brotherly”, which is pretty sick when you think about it. She mentions how she loves being on the road but enjoys going home to pay bills and remember what her place looks like. Remember what it looks like!? From the footage we have seen of her house on various releases, there is nothing even in it! Talk moves on to her tattoo which she says was unplanned (no kidding) and that it represents her spontaneity from when she was in Amsterdam. Her stupidity more like; it’s horrid. Apparently her exposed thong look came about when she bought one and showed it to EDGE, saying of her pants that she “pulled them down for him… but not in that way!” in order to show him how it looked. Wow, this shit writes itself.

 

Noelle sums things up for us by pointing out how women in wrestling have never been portrayed this way in the past. Well yeah, but who the hell would have wanted to see the likes of the Fabulous Moolah, Judy Martin or – God help us – Bertha Faye like this anyway? “I have never seen such great photography from a sports entertainment company as what we are gonna have in this magazine” says Noelle. Wow, that goofy WWF-speak really sounds extra stupid when you hear it used in sentences like that.

 

Summary: The relative lack of slow-motion videos that offer nothing makes this a little better than Divas – Postcard From The Caribbean, and is really more a series of brief bios featuring a few gratuitous shots here and there. Some of the pieces are okay, others are screamingly dull, it depends who is featured, but they are all so brief that it doesn’t really matter. Once again, who the tape appeals to outside of undersexed perverts, I don’t really know. If that is you, pick this tape up and get your jollies on, but for the rest of us who like wrestling for the, you know, wrestling, it is a definite miss. Avoid.
Verdict: 15

#WWF280 – Best Of Raw Vol. 2

Lee Maughan: Hosted by Jonathan Coachman, sporting a WWF New York denim shirt that I can’t imagine was even considered cool back in 1999. Coach brings us completely up to speed on where we left off last after Best of RAW: Vol. 1, noting that the Undertaker had a Ministry, Mr. McMahon had a Corporation, Steve Austin was kicking ass, and Mankind was always having fun. Given that this tape picks up from the night after Survivor Series: Deadly Game, I’m not sure I’d quite buy that assertion, but that’s a WWF studio host for you.
1998 Survivor Series Aftermath
Steve Austin presents a legally binding contract to Mr. McMahon, guaranteeing him a shot at the Rock’s newly “won” WWF Title. We know this contract to be legally binding because professional boxing referee, Celebrity Deathmatch claymation character and reality TV courtroom judge Mills Lane is on hand via video link to authorise it. McMahon however makes Ken Shamrock an offer he can’t refuse, and Shamrock officially joins the Corporation by saving Vince from a vengeful Mankind (always having fun, remember?), allowing the Undertaker to smash Austin over the head with a shovel behind the distracted referee’s back.
Following the gardening-based attack, Austin “blacks out” after a house show match at the San Jose Arena (in a ring still sporting the old red, white and blue rope motif, incidentally enough), and then, in a truly ridiculous angle, Undertaker and Paul Bearer attempt to “embalm” Austin alive, only for Kane to make the save. Austin returns fire by whacking Undertaker across the face with a shovel of his own, then he and Kane shove Bearer down a manhole into a sewer, somehow leading to McMahon announcing a Buried Alive match for Rock Bottom: In Your House.
This was all basically just presented as a promo package for that pay-per-view, which on the one hand managed to cover a month’s worth of main event angles in one fell swoop, but on the other, just served to hype up a match that you obviously weren’t going to be seeing here. Never let it be said that the WWF didn’t maximise the footage they already had though – a re-cut version of this hype video actually aired directly before the Austin-Undertaker match on that very show.

 

No Disqualification
WWF Championship
The Rock (c) vs. Mankind
Weirdly, the on-screen graphic places this match at August 30th, 1999, which obviously isn’t the case. Sadly we skip the pre-match angle here in which Mankind, having been robbed of the WWF Title twice (at both Survivor Series and Rock Bottom) kidnaps Shane McMahon and threatens to break his arm unless he gets another shot at the Rock’s title. Mr. McMahon agrees, and believe it or not, there’s an actual match on this tape!

Naturally it is joined in progress with Rock getting two off a side Russian legsweep and another two off the Corporate Elbow, but you can’t win ‘em all. Mankind fires back with a swinging neckbreaker but the Big Bossman gets involved, allowing Rock to deck Mankind with the belt. A second shot misses so Mankind hits a double arm DDT on the belt and clamps on the Socko Claw, and then it all kicks off as Ken Shamrock dives in the ring and belts poor Mankind over the back with a steel chair. This is a No Disqualification match however, so Billy Gunn jumps in to kick-start his feud with Shamrock over the Intercontinental Title, and then DX engage in a mass brawl with the Corporation on the outside.

That ruckus is halted only by the sound of glass shattering that can only mean ‘Stone Cold’ is on his way! The reaction is absolutely thunderous, and he puts Rock down with a steel chair across the skull that’s enough to give Mankind the pin and his first WWF Title. Austin flips Vince the bird, Vince flips out, and Mankind cuts an impassioned Rocky Balboa-esque victory speech which Vince and Shane in particular sell with incredible gusto. When wrestling is done right, there’s nothing on earth quite as much fun, or quite this exciting, and while the match itself isn’t much to write home about, this is one of those moments so thrilling that you can just watch it over and over again, and it never gets old. Just a truly heart-warming piece of business that the great Mick Foley deserved entirely, and a great slice of television that proves sometimes, just sometimes, nice guys do finish first.
Corporate Rumble
#1 is Ken Shamrock and #2 is Billy Gunn but Shamrock eliminates himself immediately by leaping over the top just to kick the shit out of Gunn. Man, what a mercenary. #3 is the Big Bossman who predictably works Gunn over before the Outlaws’ music plays to herald the entrance of #4… Test. I smell chicanery! X-Pac joins the fun at #5 but Billy and Test trade some hiptoss reversals that end with Gunn getting tossed all the way out of the ring.

Test drops X-Pac with a pumphandle powerbomb before Road Dogg joins the fray at #6, still covered in blood thanks to a bloodbath earlier in the night from the Brood. Kane is #7 (after not winning the title earlier in the evening), and he puts Road Dogg out with a clothesline right across the nose. #8 is Triple H, who ducks a clothesline from Test, Test nailing Kane instead before getting chokeslammed out for his troubles. Kane quickly follows thanks to a double clothesline from behind from Triple H and X-Pac, and Bossman dumps X-Pac in kind leaving Triple H and the Bossman as the final two. And then the buzzer sounds…

#9 is Mr. McMahon who slinks in and dumps Bossman and Triple H from behind, the tears his tank top in half like the ghost of Hogan. And then the buzzer sounds again… #10 is Chyna. Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco attempt to block her path so she decks them both, and then out comes Steve Austin to draw Vince’s attention, allowing Chyna to hurl him over the top and out to earn the #30 spot in the actual Royal Rumble match. Vince it should be noted practically took his own head off like a guillotine taking that bump over the top, the mad old bastard.
Final Rating: ***
Mr. McMahon Prepares for the Rumble
Vince had designated Austin the number one spot in the Royal Rumble but had delegated authority over all other WWF superstars to Commissioner Shawn Michaels. When Vince himself opted to enter the Rumble, Michaels figured that made him a WWF superstar and subsequently ordered Vince to enter the match at number two. Vince tried to worm out of it by ordering the Corporate Rumble that we’ve just covered, but when that plan backfired, he had no alternative but to actually train to fight Austin. Cue a truly hilarious Rocky-style montage with Shane McMahon barking out classic lines while Vince gulps down raw eggs (“You gotta eat lightning and crap thunder!”), chases a live chicken through a snow-laden field (“Grab that chicken, make the Colonel proud!”), beats his meat (“Tenderise Austin’s face!”) and drops Dr. Tom Prichard with some truly rotten Stone Cold Stunners (“Number two in the Royal Rumble, number one in your heart!”) Absolutely classic stuff.
Chyna and Mark Henry
For some reason, presumably because Vince Russo thought it was funny to pair up a chunky black man with a muscular ugmo, heel and former Nation of Domination member Mark Henry began courting DX bodyguard Chyna, taking her on a cheap date to Baltimore Jack. Mark reads poetry to Chyna as Percy Sledge’s ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ plays in the background (I’m surprised that scene wasn’t cut given the royalties they’d have to pay on it) then takes her dancing where a group of local douchebags hit on Chyna. When she rebuffs them, one calls her a bitch so Mark batters all three of them. That chivalry, as am I sure you all guessed, leads to Chyna bringing her girlfriend Sammi into the relationship for a threesome, only for Mark to find a cock and balls in his hand when he goes to give Sammi the magic fingers, causing him to vomit uncontrollably in a toilet. Har har har, transphobia, cheap laughs, giggle, guffaw, vomit.
Leading to WrestleMania XV
After Mankind beat the Rock for the WWF Title as covered earlier, the two continued to square off in a series of rematches for the belt. A brutal I Quit match at the Royal Rumble was followed by a silly but highly entertaining empty arena match on a special Super Bowl Sunday edition of Halftime HeAT. A last man standing match followed at St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, with the final confrontation coming on RAW, a ladder match with Steve Austin at ringside. Sadly, this is covered by a quick series of clips rather than the full outing, but the Rock wins when Paul Wight chokeslams Mankind off the ladder, setting up both Rock vs. Austin for the title and Mankind vs. Wight at WrestleMania XV.
Corporate Ministry into Austin as CEO
Right then, let’s see if we can make sense of this enormous pile. One week on RAW, the Undertaker cut an in-ring promo on Mr. McMahon, stating that “in time, your World Wrestling Federation will belong to me” and claiming to “own the key to [McMahon’s] heart and soul.” Later that night, Undertaker’s Ministry of Darkness abducted Shane, gave him an envelope and told him to deliver it to Vince on behalf of the “Lord of Darkness.”

 

Rather unhelpfully, none of that is explained on the tape and coverage instead picks up with Vince angrily booking Undertaker in an Inferno match against unwilling Corporation robot Kane, which Undertaker wins. During the match, Paul Bearer brought a bear to guest commentator McMahon, which the Undertaker then burnt as McMahon fell to his knees, melodramatically screaming “Noooooo!”

 

Following on from there, Vince began talking about the Undertaker as a character, labelling him a “creation” that Mark Calaway had actually morphed into. You know, because as per the Vince Russo directive, everything you’ve seen previously has been fake, but what you’re watching now is actually real. He also revealed that the envelope contained photographs that invaded the privacy of his daughter, Stephanie, the first time her presence was acknowledged on WWF television. The bear was also Stephanie’s, a present Vince had given her as a child.

 

Later, the Ministry abducted Stephanie from the McMahon family mansion and attempted to crucify her in a black wedding to the Undertaker, only for Steve Austin to make the save with a steel chair and Mr. McMahon thanking him for his help. Then, as if this heel vs. heel feud wasn’t convoluted enough, Shane overthrew the distracted Vince as the leader of the Corporation, firing corporate stooges Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco along with him, and turning Vince babyface in the process, before merging the Corporation with the Ministry.

 

With Shane admitting to being the mastermind behind Undertaker’s abducting of Stephanie, Vince gets his ass handed to him by the entire Corporate Ministry prior to a McMahon vs. McMahon showdown on the May 3rd, 1999 edition of the War Zone.

 

Vince McMahon vs. Shane McMahon
Shane destroys Vince in the aisle, Vince himself having apparently been destroyed in the locker room by Triple H and the Undertaker, and works in the Bronco Buster early. Vince’s selling and movement is appalling by the way. Shane gets in Vince’s face and gets cocky before Vince comes back with a clothesline and a Stone Cold Stunner for the pin in short order. I think it’s fair to say the dynamic worked much better at WrestleMania X-SEVEN, with Vince as the heel and Shane as the babyface.
– Ridiculously, the Undertaker began talking of a “Higher Power” even greater than he, leading to many fans guessing his identity at any number of names from Mankind to Raven to Jake Roberts. All would have made solid candidates, but instead it was revealed that Vince himself was the mastermind all along in one of the biggest brain farts in RAW history. It was yet another one of those mystery storylines that Vince Russo was so fond of, where he began with a great idea but had no clue what the payoff was going to be until he just wrote himself into a corner and delivered an outrageous ending that defied all logic and common sense. Vince (in character) explained it as “just business” but how can anybody justify the things he did, the terror he put his daughter through, the beatings he took from those he was secretly allied with, and the lengthy feud with the Undertaker? Why go to such elaborate lengths? And who was the hoax even aimed at, Austin? I mean, what did they even accomplish? It’s not like this whole charade cost him his title or anything, or even included that as part of its agenda. I mean the Big Bossman got HUNG at WrestleMania XV, for heaven’s sake! It may have kept viewers guessing week after week back in ‘99, which is all that was important to Russo, but this was just a useless storyline that led to absolutely nothing other than changing then restoring the status quo of Vince as the tyrannical boss and Austin as his blue collar employee. Drek.

 

But it doesn’t end there, as Undertaker beats Austin for the WWF Title thanks to a fast count from special referee Shane McMahon, making this one of the very rare instances of footage from Over the Edge ‘99 making it onto an official WWF release. That leads to Vince’s wife Linda McMahon installing Austin as CEO of the WWF for some amusing skits all compressed into about 30 seconds of music video-style recaps, much as the entirety of this Corporate Ministry nonsense has been presented.
Beer Truck Incident
We shoot schizophrenically back in time to the March 22nd, 1999 edition of RAW as the Rock threatens to kick Mankind’s ass until suddenly, Steve Austin arrives with a beer truck. He cuts a pretty standard promo building up his match with Rock for WrestleMania XV, then sprays Rock and the McMahons with a giant hose full of joy juice. A classic RAW moment.
WrestleMania XV Aftermath with Title Belt
At WrestleMania XV, Steve Austin beat the Rock for the WWF Title in a **** match. Austin soon introduced his own custom made “Smoking Skull” belt design (so you can indirectly hold him responsible for John Cena’s ludicrously garish blinged out spinner belt years later) so the McMahons stole it and gave it to the Rock. In a neat call-back to Austin tossing Rock’s Intercontinental Title in a river (back in December ‘97), Rock tosses Austin in a river and chucks the belt in after him.

The next week, Rock holds a funeral for Austin, yet curiously, he’s wearing the Smoking Skull belt he’d purported to have thrown in the river last week. Austin arrives in a monster truck and crushes the Rock’s new Lincoln with it. He then drives the Truckasaurus 3:16 into the arena and drives over the funeral hearse for good measure before meeting Rock head-on in the aisle for a red hot brawl. Austin dumps Rock in the grave and pours beer all over him, only for Shane McMahon to blast Austin from behind with a shovel during his post-fight celebration. Hilariously nutty stuff that had the crowd going wild. Unfortunately for the Rock, Shane’s special guest refereeing at Backlash did him no favours, so he cut a solidly babyface promo the next night on RAW, rid himself of the Corporation, and kicked Shane’s ass for fun too.
Triple H
Having been a part of D-Generation-X, the Corporation and the Corporate Ministry, Triple H finally struck out on his own in July ‘99, calling out Steve Austin. Oddly enough, his big coming out party at SummerSlam ‘99 actually saw special referee Jesse Ventura raise odd man out Mankind’s hand at the end of a triple threat bout for Austin’s WWF Title. Hunter however would only have to wait 24 more hours before his crowning glory.
WWF Championship
Mankind (c) vs. Triple H
The action picks up here with a brawl around ringside where Chyna (in the middle of a weird period where she’s still seconding a heel Triple H and works accordingly, despite feuding as a babyface with Jeff Jarrett, often on the same show such as this one) slams Mankind legs-first against the steel steps. In the ring, Mankind misses a weak clotheslines and gets hit with a neckbreaker. Hunter throws Mr. Socko into the crowd and sends Mankind shoulder-first into the post, then avoids a Mankind comeback with a jumping knee. “Mankind sucks!” declares special guest commentator the Rock.

A double clothesline puts both guys on the outside where Mankind throws Triple H onto Rock’s lap. Shane McMahon then hits Mankind from behind with a chair before Hunter blasts him with one of his own, then in an awesome spot, rears up for a second swing but turns at the last second and decks Rocky. Shane then knocks Earl Hebner out and Triple H lands a Pedigree with Shane making the pin to give Hunter the first of many WWF Titles. “The first of five times” as Coachman notes. Keep counting, bud. Rather pedestrian match for a World Title change, and Rock’s commentary was rather obnoxious, even if he did keep telling Michael Cole to “Shut up!”
Final Rating: **
‘Y2J’
During 1999, talk of the new millennium had reached a fever pitch, and the WWF began airing a clock counting down to it. Only, it wasn’t due to reach zero hour at midnight on New Year’s Eve and herald the next century. No, this clock was due to count down during an episode of RAW, coincidentally right as the Rock was in the middle of cutting an angry promo on the Big Show. The explosion that greeted the arrival of former WCW midcarder Chris Jericho was absolutely enormous, but the promos that followed saw Rock completely put Jericho in his place as just that, a midcarder.

Jericho also managed to make political enemies in the WWF during his feud with new Intercontinental champion Chyna, fresh off her victory in a “Good Housekeeping match” over Jeff Jarrett at No Mercy. Chyna would bafflingly win their scrap over the gold at Survivor Series, but as Jonathan Coachman points out, Jericho eventually became a three-time champion anyway. That statement there dates this release as being from 2001, as Jericho would actually go on to pick up the belt a further six times after that.

 

Rock ‘N’ Sock Connection
At the end of August, Mankind offered himself up as a one-time only tag team partner for the Rock in a tag team title match against defending champions the Undertaker and the Big Show. When Undertaker walked out on the match, Rock blasted Big Show in the head with a steel chair, and a double People’s Elbow signalled new champions.

Injecting a healthy dose of comedy into proceedings, Mankind began using the Rock’s catchphrases before hosting a special, improvised edition of This Is Your Life during a record-setting episode of RAW. Jerry Lawler’s joyous reaction to Rock’s debuting of the “poontang pie” line is a thing of beauty. In another trivia note, this was the sketch in which Mankind actually named the team, presenting Rock with a black sports jacket with ‘Rock ‘N’ Sock Connection’ emblazoned across the back in gold lamé. Less successful was the introduction of Mankind’s latest sock puppet, Mr. Rocko.
The End of D-Generation X
Kevin Kelly narrates a piece on the demise of DX next, as the fun-loving group of rebels fell apart amidst greed and jealousy (apparently) as Chyna turned on Triple H with a low blow, Triple H turned on X-Pac at WrestleMania XV, the New Age Outlaws turned on each other… and then they all reformed as heels when X-Pac turned on the Rock during a match with Billy Gunn.

For reasons not covered here, Mr. McMahon insists “We’re not going to have another DX night!” (it also goes unexplained what exactly a “DX night” is, but it was simply DX running the show one week), so Vince books Road Dogg against Rock (Rock wins by disqualification when DX get involved), Gunn against Steve Austin (Austin wins by disqualification when DX get involved), X-Pac against former partner Kane (Kane wins by disqualification when… well, you get the picture), and a WWF Title match with Triple H defending against Shane McMahon. Unfortunately for Vince, an errant belt shot from Vince knocks Shane out, giving Triple H the victory.

At Survivor Series, Mr. McMahon made himself the special guest referee for a Triple H vs. Rock vs. Austin triple threat title match, only for Austin to get run down in the parking lot by a high speed car, later revealed to be the masterplan of Triple H himself. On to Armageddon, and Triple H beat Vince in a bloody (not to mention bloody boring) No Holds Barred match after Stephanie turned on her father and sided with her husband.

 

1999 Highlights
Oddly, this selection of clips features the No Mercy ladder match between the Hardy Boyz and Edge & Christian, before finishing with a montage of 1999’s champions, reminding everyone of the absurd fact that the WWF Title actually changed hands an astonishing twelve times over the course of just one calendar year.

 

Summary: There’s two ways you can divide this tape up. The first way is that the content at the beginning of the tape covering late 1998-early 1999 is generally highly entertaining stuff, whilst mostly everything from around spring 1999 onwards is pretty rotten. The second is to say that most of the material centred around Steve Austin, Mankind and the Rock is well worth watching, whilst the content built around the Corporate Ministry and Triple H is anywhere between faintly tedious to completely dire. As for Mr. McMahon? Well, his entertainment value stretches both ways, largely depending on who he’s working with/for/against, and you’ll grow sick of the sight of him before long. It’s a shame because although this release starts out fairly strongly, I was just begging for it to be put out of its misery as it limped over the finish line, much like the majority of the WWF’s output in 1999. Mildly recommended, with a suggestion to hit the eject button sometime around April.
Verdict: 51

#WWF279 – Lita – It Just Feels Right

James Dixon: Having debuted in the WWF as the valet of aerial sensation Essa Rios, Amy ‘Lita’ Dumas quickly gained a cult following due to her unique grungy look and high-octane involvement in her charge’s matches. It didn’t hurt that she was pretty hot either. Outgrowing Rios, Lita was teamed up with the Hardy Boyz to form Team Xtreme, and she was a perfect fit, with her look and style proving to be the missing piece of the puzzle for Matt and Jeff. Lita was a trailblazer in the women’s division, and while she was pretty appalling in the ring at times, her popularity, especially amongst teenage girls, was never in question. Well, that is until she became a filthy two-timing ho-bag and copped off with one of her boyfriend’s (Matt Hardy) best friends (Edge). But that was all later, and when this tape was released, Lita was still over as the cool alternative chick that the girls wanted to be and the guys wanted to bang.

 

Stephanie McMahon, looking all gangsta in her leather hat, opens the tape by calling Lita “sexy”. We get further talking head intros from JR, an uninterested Jeff Hardy, Trish and Matt Hardy. Matt refers to her as a pioneer, which she probably is. Essa Rios turns up to offer a few words! “She is something marvellous” he says in subtitled Spanish. Well, yeah, she got you over! Lita talks about her style and says she has added her own elements to standard wrestling formula. By elements does she mean the ability to make all of her moves look like she is falling uncontrollably from a height, only to recover at the last moment and bust out a flip? She is the only worker in the world whose style I would describe as “baggy”. She is to wrestling moves what super loose fitting clothes are to fashion. Almost on cue, we get lots and lots of footage of her rana and moonsault, done on various people. They are her only two moves…

 

Next, Lita talks about the trials of the road: “we are a strange breed” she admits. Lita then claims to be living the dream and says she can’t think of anything else she would rather be doing… expect being in a band, I guess

 

Back we go to her childhood, which is a feature of these tapes that I find incredibly dull. At least it is brief before we move on to her athletic background, which WWF loves of course, and it’s revealed that she trained in muay thai kickboxing and judo. If she had come along a decade or so later, she might have ended up doing MMA and throwing down with the likes of Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate in the UFC, rather than as a sports entertainer. But as it is, she says she got hooked on wrestling after watching, get this, SUPER ASTROS (the WWF’s attempt to crack the Hispanic market by featuring Mexican wrestling stars in self-contained within the program storylines), which only actually first started airing in 1998, two years before her company debut. Her excessively subtitled book Lita: A Less Travelled R.O.A.D – The Reality of Amy Dumas actually contradicts that somewhat, with her claiming to have been a fan of Rey Misterio Jr. and deciding to train after seeing him work. Either way, Lita had her mind set on becoming a wrestler so in a bold move she upped and left for Mexico to seek training. She talks about how she fell in love with the culture in the country and embraced it, and that she loves new experiences. Whether that includes her time spent as a club dancer to pay for her bills, is not mentioned…

 

We go to her kitchen at home and see her vast mask collection, with her pointing out the likes of La Parka, Rey Misterio Jr, Psicosis and Aguila -mentioning that he became Essa Rios, which I am pretty sure the WWF didn’t mention when the character debuted- as well as outing Val Venis as having worked under a hood across the border in a pre-porn star life (as Steele). I didn’t realise she was such a super geek, but I kind of like her for more knowing that she is. It is interesting that all of her influences and heroes were guys that had at this point made their name in America with WCW, and the WWF having recently bought out the company are only just willing to show brief snippets of footage from the group.

 

After a spell in Mexico working for EMLL, next up for Dumas was a return to America. She tells the tale that she turned up at an ECW show and got talking to Tommy Dreamer, asking him for a chance to work out with some of the guys and just generally hang around. She ended up talking to Tajiri and Super Crazy, who she knew from Mexico, and worked out in the ring with Tajiri a bit, which got her on the evening’s card. She had a run as Miss Congeniality, but it was hardly a memorable one, truth be told. It wasn’t the ECW run that got her in the WWF but rather her training at Dory Funk Jr’s Funkin’ Conservatory, with the immortal Hoss having got her a spot in the company after going to bat for her. For whatever reason, the WWF decides to ignore this and skips right over it. Talk about gratitude. Lita says that for her meeting with the WWF, she wore a suit for the first time in her life. Despite going against her roots and natural instincts, she was still hired because JR saw her potential (and had obviously seen Dory’s tapes) and liked her positivity.

 

The Lita character was introduced alongside the former Mr. Aguila and Papi Chulo, the artist now known as Essa Rios. The two fiery characters were a perfect fit for one another, and as the accompanying footage shows; they were an explosive and exciting doubles act. We see Lita’s company debut alongside Essa on Heat where Rios defeated Gillberg to win the presumed abandoned WWF Light Heavyweight Title, a belt that Rios competed for but never won while under the hood as Aguila years previous. An amusing piece of commentary crops up here, with Kevin Kelly saying of Gillberg: “He is yesterday’s news, he is so 90s”. Lita was a breath of fresh air to a stagnant women’s talent pool, and at times she really WAS great in her first few months. Watching the duo at the time, you could feel the swell of support for them, and for Lita in particular, as they started to get over more and more. They were explosive and used their precious TV minutes well. Lita’s gimmick was mimicking Essa’s moves, and it worked a treat, but the WWF couldn’t help themselves and split them up after just a few months. They had bigger plans for Lita.

 

Enter: The Hardy Boyz. The split takes place after Essa first annoys Lita by having sexy time with the Godfather’s hos, so she shoves him off the ropes during a subsequent match and causes him to lose. Then in a bout against Matt Hardy, Essa uses Lita as a human shield, and she gets bumped during the contest. Post match after he loses, a frustrated Rios powerbombs Lita, and mid-move her peachy little bottom gets exposed to the world. Before selling the considerable viciousness of the move, Lita first stops off to pull her trousers back up, rather lessening the impact somewhat. I guess this was a lesson to her about the perils of not wearing underwear, because in later years she became famous for having her thongs pulled high above her trouser line. Rios follows up the powerbomb with a beautiful moonsault, and that brings out the Hardys to save Lita. And thus, a union was formed. It was a shame for Essa, who I really enjoyed, but he is reflective about it, and says how happy he is for her subsequent success.

 

It turns out that Lita knew the Hardys before their WWF grouping, having trained in their OMEGA promotion and became good friends with them. We see home shot video of the Hardys, Lita, Shannon Moore and Shane Helms having a good time, as Jeff says they taught her “how to jump off buildings”, which would be about right. Matt then kayfabes their storyline relationship and plays it off like it was real, describing their first onscreen kiss in far too much detail. Urgh, he is like a friggin lovesick Disney puppy. “I think of them as big brothers” says Lita. SICK.

 

We break from the storyline for Lita to tell an amusing story about her entrance, which she says was unplanned and she just went with the flow, because when she was told from behind the curtain: “Go! NOW!” she didn’t have much time to think about it. She adds that she enjoys the walk to the ring and reading the signs that the crowd bring, because it is like instant feedback.

To WrestleMania X-7, the greatest WrestleMania ever. Lita talks us through the full week’s worth of festivities that occur before the event itself and we get exclusive footage of the building the night before the show when it was empty, which is pretty cool. Lita counts the experience of being on the card as the greatest of her career, but hindsight rather ruins it thanks to this unintentional humdinger on commentary from JR: “By God, Lita’s here, jerking Edge off!”. Given what occurs between them in a few years time, that is a belter.

 

The problem with Matt’s earlier kayfabing is that when Lita then marks out over being beaten up by Steve Austin on RAW in a vicious chair assault, it just makes her seem like a sadomasochistic mental case. She says how thrilled she was to have been trusted enough to be involved in the main event, and with someone like Austin. It didn’t do a great deal for the Hardys mind you…

 

Back in time eight months to the feud with Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley over the WWF Women’s Title, which Steph-Diddy calls “a challenge”, because Lita’s high flying moves are apparently hard to take. They are not really, you just lie there for the moonsault and all you have to do on the rana is stand solid and catch it, then go with the flow. If you can’t wrestle, Steph, then why were you the Women’s Champion in the first place, you silly cow?! “She paraded around like she was the Women’s Champion” says Lita. Erm… she was the Women’s Champion.

 

Extended highlights air (without music, thankfully) of the main event title match from RAW on August 21, 2000, with Steph accompanied to the ring by Kurt Angle and Triple H, which worries the challenger. Fortunately WWF Champion the Rock is the guest referee, giving her some protection. To her credit, Steph does at least give it the good old college try, and she had clearly worked hard to be up to a semi reasonable standard, but parading around as Women’s Champion rankled with me. I guess it is sports entertainment and she is no worse than most of the Divas anyway, it’s just the sheer unabashed nepotism that pisses me off. Triple H helps out Steph by tripping Lita, so the Hardys come out and belt him one. Steph hits a pretty decent looking DDT, but only gets two off it, and Rock has to keep her in line when she gets all pissy about the count. The finish to the match is spectacular, with Rock preventing Angle from interfering with the title belt, and then beating the piss out of him for trying. Triple H “nearly decapitates” (JR) Rock with a punch, then almost makes a bollocks of the planned spot that follows, where Angle accidentally clobbers him with the title belt. Rock needed to be standing so that Angle could charge him from behind, but Hunter went for the Pedigree by kicking Rock in the gut, which would have make Angle look like a complete fool flying in from behind and swinging at a bent over Rock, only to then shift and go high to hit Trips. Fortunately, Rock realises this and stands up and then ducks instantly, in a piece of perfect timing that shows what a true ring master he was. “Oh shit” says Kurt as he decks Hunter, before eating a Rock Bottom from the champ. Steph motions to nail Rock with the belt, but Rock catches her with a spinebuster and tells Lita to go up top as the crowd explodes. She hits her moonsault and covers for the win and the title, as the place goes crazy. It’s women’s wrestling in the Attitude Era at its absolute best and most dramatic, even if it did involved SMH.

 

We skip Lita losing the belt to Ivory in a four-way match on SmackDown! and go to the rematch at Survivor Series 2000. Of note is that Lita gets busted open in the match when an errant boot catches her in the face during an innocuous spot. In a shoot interview with Kayfabe Commentaries, Ivory later referred to Lita as “like wrestling Gumby” (the claymation character), because you never knew if she was going to just suddenly fall out of the ring, land awkwardly off something innocuous or cut herself open hardway from seemingly nothing, as she did here. The match doest even come close to the Steph battle on RAW, and barely scrapes onto the snowflake scale. After highlights of the match set to techno dance shite, which Lita lost, she calls her mom to tell her she is okay. Cute. That segues into Lita’s relationship with her mom, who she claims to be closer to now she never sees her, and basically calls her a mark. We meet Lita’s dog, and also see a little more of her house. She has no furniture at all! Not even a couch! Maybe she had just moved in. What happens to the dog when she is on the road?

 

The feud with Trish comes next, even though the matches featured took place months before the prior footage (and there it is, my old Coliseum Video continuity migraine has returned), set to more repetitive techno music and some sound bites from Michael Cole. It’s the perfect marriage of horrid and horrible. Trish puts Lita over big, then we see more from RAW is Techno as Lita teams with Rock to take on Trish and Triple H, all of this prior to the Steph match. Before her association with Edge, Lita was previously rubbing shoulders with the top of the card because of how over she was. I can’t concentrate for the mind altering music, but I do catch JR putting over H’s decapitating clothesline again…

 

Chyna next, who comes out for her match with Lita at Judgment Day 2001 (almost a year after the previous bout) looking like a cross between a peacock and a Vegas drag queen. “Is there any way I can get out of this?” said Lita of the bout. Chyna smashed through her, just like she did all the other women on the roster, then they have a hug and a smile immediately afterwards. Wins and losses don’t matter; this is the WWF!

 

Next, Lita gets sexy in a program with Dean Malenko. I didn’t like this at all. Malenko was just too good a technician to be reduced to stupid angles. I have to muster all my resolve to refrain from making any wildly inappropriate and tasteless comments when Chris Benoit interjects himself into the feud and puts a Crossface on Lita…

 

“It’s hard to piss me off” says Lita, who professes to be mellow. We go to a Diva shoot on a beach, which is apparently not typically clichéd according to our gal, because she had never done it before. Yeah, it might not be clichéd for you, but the whole practice sure is. But hey, they released those cut and paste identikit Diva tapes year after year, so obviously people were buying them. Dirty people, who you would never borrow a tube sock from…

 

Talk moves on to her tattoo which she says was unplanned (no kidding) and that it represents her spontaneity from when she was in Amsterdam. Her stupidity more like; it’s horrid. Apparently her thong look came about when she bought one and showed it to EDGE, saying of her pants that she “pulled them down for him… but not in that way!” in order to show him how it looked. Wow, this shit writes itself.

 

Then, yet another photo shoot, because nothing screams excitement like watching someone take pictures. We get lots and lots of talk from Lita about her fans, and I tell you what she has some very odd people who like her, some of whom are probably stalkers for sure. She gets all manner of crap sent to her from people with too much time on their hands, from poems to letters to oil paintings and pictures, even scrapbooks of her STORYLINES. My God, I would love to meet some of these people to hear their take on some of the WWF’s glaring inconsistencies over the years. I can only assume that any WCW fans who attempted something similar gave up and threw themselves in front of a train out of sheer frustration and desperation.

 

“Lita, like Chyna, has done a lot of stuff with some of the guys”. Thanks Steph, that will round us off nicely…

 

Summary: I came into this with preconceptions and expected it to be a wholly uninteresting and insufferable experience. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Lita came across exactly as she was portrayed at the time; as a cool girl you would want to hang out with, but who you would also want to do lewd things with given the chance. As well as opportunities to grab an eyeful now and again, there is also a lot of genuinely good content on here. The stuff with the masks is pretty neat, some of the footage is unique and rare and a lot of the action is quite exciting too. Lita was not a good wrestler by any means, and when she started working longer matches she was rather exposed. But with either smoke and mirrors or in the role of a corner person, she was made to look pretty great. I am a fan of Lita from this era, and this tape is a very good representation of what was one of the most fun times in her career. A must have for any fans of hers, and a pretty damn good watch for everyone else too. To my huge surprise, this comes recommended.
Verdict: 73

#WWF278 – Hardcore

James Dixon: Having been a delightfully cheesy real life cartoon throughout the previous two decades of its existence, the WWF drastically changed tact in 1997/98 and decided to borrow liberally from the red hot ECW and embrace blood, guts and weapons. This tape is a celebration of all things hardcore from the WWF’s infamous Attitude Era.

 

Tazz presents from a dilapidated building, and we start off with various WWF superstars discussing what the term “hardcore” means to them. Bradshaw thinks people enjoy it because they like to see violence whereas Christian takes on the question literally, and reads the Webster’s Dictionary definition. Matt Hardy mentions injuries while his brother Jeff claims his dad is hardcore. This is not the tape for soppy nonsense and glowing soliloquies, Jeff. Even the Fink gets a few words, which tickles Tazz because of how out of place Fink is on a tape like this.

 

The tapes moves on to feature talent who have made the term hardcore popular, and naturally we start out with Mick Foley, one of the key perpetrators of the style in the company. Foley says he was doing hardcore matches in the WWF before the term became vogue, such as his slightly underrated and perversely entertaining Boiler Room Brawl from SummerSlam ’96 which was completely different to anything else the company was doing at the time. Highlights from Mick’s various violent battles from over the years follow, including slightly extended footage from his wild brawl with mentor and best friend Terry Funk on RAW in 1998. As a thank you from Vince McMahon, the Mankind character was awarded the brand new Hardcore Championship, which was just an old winged eagle WWF Championship belt smashed to pieces with “hardcore” taped onto it. It was actually a really fun idea because it gave the plethora of otherwise fairly useless undercard guys a purpose and the chance to be entertaining, especially when the WWF introduced the wild 24/7 rules. For once the company didn’t take itself too seriously, and it resulted in some memorable outings for guys who would have otherwise been afterthoughts. Like Al Snow…

 

No Holds Barred, Falls Count Anywhere
WWF Hardcore Championship
Road Dogg (c) vs. Al Snow
…Who is featured in this match from RAW against Road Dogg. Snow wrestles the match in a blood-soaked t-shirt, with the crimson coming from a Brood bloodbath two weeks prior. Al is at his most unhinged in this, hiding underneath the curtain prior to the bout and shooting crazed looks like a guy who has just drank all of Randy Savage’s coffee stash. He takes some nasty bumps too, including a moonsault off the barricade through a table and some violent tray shots from Dogg, which he laughs about. The brawl heads all over the building and utilises all manner of comedic props along the way, including a potted plant. It’s reminiscent of every backstage brawl you have ever seen, but it is still entertaining to watch. Why is it so fun to watch guys walking around taking the odd bump into something unusual? I have no idea, but it is! Al plays around with some metal poles and twirls them in his hands as he channels his previous one-off gimmick Shinobi, but Dogg fires back and they end up outside the building, where it just happens to be snowing heavily. How fitting. Dogg hits Snow with a snow shovel, which makes sense as a weapon to defeat someone called Snow I guess, and then pins him to lift the title after a piledriver onto a crate. That looked less than a barrel of laughs to take in that temperature! Both of these guys were really good at these type of matches because they were excellent at using their surroundings creatively, and this was no different. Hardcore matches I don’t rate compared to actual wrestling bouts, I almost rate them in their own category because they are so far removed from actual wrestling. Thus, a *** hardcore match obviously doesn’t compare to a *** standard bout, but is as entertaining in its own right nevertheless. This was a fun one for sure.
Final Rating: **½

 

Back to the talking heads, and Chris Jericho thinks the Undertaker is hardcore because of the way he works and how long he has been around. Not that he is trying to score political points or anything. It seems they have ran out of guys who want to talk about the subject, so they go to timekeeper Mark Yeaton who throws out the names Mick Foley, Al Snow and Steve Blackman. This is fairly redundant. A few more guys chime in as this just becomes a list of names of guys on the roster. Tazz in the next link marks out for Edge mentioning him, thrilled that someone has remembered that he was a wrestler once before he became a bad announcer.

 

Hardcore Match
Ivory vs. Tori
To the women, and a thong-wearing Tori attacks Ivory in a bathroom while a naked Jacqueline watches from in the shower. Ivory calls Tori a “little slut” so Tori throws tampons at her. “What are those!?” asks JR. Ivory takes to washing out Tori’s mouth with soap and scores a near fall in the wet shower, before the brawl ends up in the men’s locker room. Albert, Droz and Viscera get an eyeful of Tori’s very exposed ass as she shoves Ivory off a table. They continue to fight/throw things at each other, and then things go from perversely amusing to slightly uncomfortable when Ivory smashes a mirror over a barefooted Tori’s head and scores the win. Things get more disturbing after the “match” when Ivory grabs an iron and brands Tori in the back with it, causing her to scream in agony as hissing sound effects are pumped in from the truck. There is a point where things become just a little bit too much and go too far, and watching two half naked ladies beating the piss out of each other with weapons while their nipples and their dinner’s are exposed, seems like that is probably it. What it says about me that I hypocritically had a good time watching it, I do not know.
Final Rating: **

 

WWF Hardcore Championship
Hardcore Holly vs. Al Snow
This comes from St. Valentine’s Day Massacre with the belt currently vacant. Michael Cole throws out the “cup of coffee” line about Holly’s previous Intercontinental and Tag Team Title reigns, which bothers me. A cup of coffee reign is brief, so I can accept that being the case with the tag belts, which he held for a couple of days. But Holly was never Intercontinental Champion, he just wasn’t! The WWF have claimed this before, but in reality champion Jeff Jarrett was beaten by Holly in 1994, but the decision was overturned and the belt held up, with Jarrett winning the rematch. Holly was never recognised as the champion. If you are going to count him as a title holder, then we need to count Savio Vega too, we need to recognise Chris Jericho’s 2000 WWF Championship victory over Triple H, and also count Andre the Giant and Ted DiBiase as former WWF Title holders. I know it doesn’t really matter, but things like this where they chop and change their history and don’t really pay it any respect, grates on me as a wrestling historian. The majority of this bout takes place outside in the dark, which makes it tough to see what is actually going on. The endless plunder shots are now losing their lustre having just watched plenty in the previous bouts, and the relative lack of creativity in this bout combined with the messy nature of it leaves one uninspired. The finish sees Holly wrap Snow in a mesh fence and pin him, with the idea being he is unable to get his shoulder up. Only, his shoulder is CLEARLY up, making the whole thing pretty dumb.
Final Rating: ¾*

 

A bunch of the guys discuss the worst injuries they have sustained, with many seeming to view them as badges of honour. There was a time when wrestling injuries made you tough, and working through them even tougher, but years later it just seems idiotic. The main feature of the piece is Hardcore Holly, who had his arm broken in half by an errant Kurt Angle moonsault during a match on SmackDown! and just continued anyway because he is a badass. What this has to do with a tape about hardcore matches I am not sure, because the bout was just a standard match with a botched spot. In his book The Hardcore Truth Holly talks about how when they were planning the match backstage, it was his idea for Angle to hit the moonsault, as previously he always missed it. Angle was not confident about it, but Holly told him it would be fine. Famous last words. When the spot came, Holly realised that Angle had placed him too far away, and when Kurt launched himself into the move, Holly rolled towards him to protect himself but ended up taking a shin to the forearm, resulting in the following exchange:

 

Holly: “You broke my fucking arm! Cover me!”.

(Angle did, but Holly decided to show he was tough and stick with the script, so kicked out.)

Angle: “What the fuck are you doing?!”

Holly: “Just hit me!”

Angle: “What!?”

Holly: “Fucking hit me, Kurt!”

 

I get that Holly is a hard guy and wanted to stick to the script, the show must go on and all of that, but it was just a throwaway match on a taped show, and he was losing anyway. Just stay down! Holly claims he figured it was just badly bruised because he had been able to continue, but from the way he was favouring the arm it was clear to everyone watching that it was broken. For his part, Angle was incredibly apologetic and did everything he could to make it up to Holly, such as turning up at the hospital, helping him make his flight the next day and sending him care packages while he was off. Commendable stuff. Vince McMahon later called Holly and praised him for working through the injury but chastised him at the same time because of the potential risks of doing so, such as if one of the broken bones had cut an artery and caused Holly to bleed to death. Like I said, he should have just stopped the match.

 

WWF Hardcore Championship
The Big Bossman (c) vs. Al Snow
This comes from SummerSlam ’99, with Road Dogg coming out and earning his money by becoming the “roving Road Dogg” and following Bossman and Snow around to provide commentary. This doesn’t even make the ring, and they brawl backstage, using all manner of plunder including a product placement Pepsi machine, which is empty. In a funny moment, a random guy on crutches is hobbling past and Bossman casually takes one of his crutches and belts Snow with it. Is it wrong to be amused by that? They brawl outside of the arena and into the street, and smash up some of Minneapolis on route to a bar. The drinking establishment is full of people wearing WWF merchandise, which rather gives away that this is all set-up and they are plants. Well, expect one drunk homeless guy who shouts obscenities and one delighted mark on his mobile phone, who gets in the way and is thrilled that he is on PPV. The bar brawl is good fun, though obviously it is all just hitting each other with stuff and there is no actual point or purpose to it. A technical masterpiece it ain’t, but it is entertaining for sure. Road Dogg is a riot on commentary, but Bossman gets annoyed with him shadowing them and shoves him away, so Dogg belts him with a nightstick and Al pins him on a pool table. Al runs back to the arena, making sure to avoid traffic when he crosses the road, and catches Stevie Richards and the Blue Meanie seemingly trying to dognap Pepper. The poor guy from earlier is still hanging around, so Al takes his other crutch, which sends him to the floor, and he beats on the former bWo members while his music plays in the background. It is like an additional scene in a movie that runs during the end credits. This was all harmless fun and entertaining to watch.
Final Rating: **½

 

In a link, Tazz claims to be a tough guy and tells a story about smashing someone’s face into a brick wall in a bar. Well, let me tell you another story about Tazz: once he pissed off Rob Van Dam so much that RVD came up to him backstage at an ECW show and told him calmly: “Pick the hand”. Tazz, unsure what he meant, laughed it off and asked him what he meant. Van Dam responded that he wanted him to pick either his left or right hand, because he was going to smash his face in with one of them and he didn’t care which. “Tough guy” Tazz backed off.

 

Next we go to the classic brawl between Cactus Jack and Triple H from Royal Rumble 2000, a bout that did more for Hunter’s career than he gives credit for. Mick Foley made Triple H, there is no doubt about that. The match itself was a 30-minute war, and there is not enough tape time to feature it in full here, so we get highlights of the big bumps and stunts set to the creepy choir music that the WWF liked to use in their video packages at the time. It makes things seems intense, real and dangerous, as opposed to the wink-wink, nudge-nudge nature of modern day WWE from the Cena era, where everything is just a big joke. The match sees both guys take a pasting, with Hunter suffering a huge wooden splinter from a smashed crate going through his leg, and Cactus taking shots from Barbie and bumps into thumbtacks. Furious rates the bout at the full ***** shebang elsewhere in this book, though I don’t quite go as high as that, but I agree that it is a sensational match and probably the best hardcore style outing that the WWF ever did. Following the highlights, we get another highlight package of the same bumps we have just seen, set to different music. Erm, okay then.

 

The riotously entertaining Crash Holly and his 24/7 title defences are covered next, and man was this ever a blast. Crash found himself in all manner of increasingly ridiculous scenarios, including fighting in a children’s play area, being smashed over the head with a glass jar by Ivory while getting a massage and being attacked by referees, and he made every one of them work brilliantly. Crash was booked perfectly in this role, and it is a shame the run didn’t last longer than it did. Some think it cheapened the title to have silly champions and 24/7 defences, but the hardcore division was a bit of light entertainment and an excuse to do silly things in one place at the bottom of the card rather than in the important matches. I was fine with it.

 

The series of ladder matches between the Hardy Boyz, Edge & Christian and the Dudleys is featured next, though again these are not really hardcore matches as such. I mean, you would never describe Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon and their ladder bouts as being “hardcore”, and the same applies here. Full of stunts and big bumps sure, but hardcore is a different thing.

 

Next, the talking heads discuss their favourite hardcore memories. Steve Lombardi and Howard Finkel both go old school, with Lombardi picking Superfly Jimmy Snuka’s much hyped cage leap and Fink going for the famous Alley Fight between Sgt. Slaughter and Pat Patterson from 1981. We get more of Mick Foley’s wild bumps from over the years and then the APA smashing through everyone. None of this has much in the way of structure or any threads holding it together, it is just footage.

 

Because Shane McMahon is such a tough guy, he had to have a Hardcore Title run to go alongside his equally unwelcomed European Title reign from the prior year. We see highlights of his match with Steve Blackman from SummerSlam 2000, which is a sluggish and dull affair, remembered only for the ridiculous bump that Shane takes at the end. The glory stealing McMahon sibling ascends the scaffold surrounding the set and is chased up by Blackman, and takes a few cane shots to the leg that cause him to fall backwards onto a big landing pad. What an egotist. Hey, watching people fall from great heights just over a year after the death of Owen Hart, who fell from a great height, is just swell.

 

And that is your lot, other than Tazz reminding everyone that “I am Tazz, and you’re not”. Great, thanks for that.

 

Summary: The content on offer is all for the most part entertaining, but there is just too much of it in one go. My complaint is actually that the tape is too long, and would have been better served at 45-minutes. There is just not enough variation for over an hour of stuff when the majority of the matches are very similar. Hardcore wrestling works well as an interlude and a change from everything else on a card, not as a whole standalone presentation. By the end of this I was completely desensitised to the weapon shots, big bumps and blood. It is all very samey after a while.
Verdict: 47

#WWF277 – Mick Foley – Hard Knocks And Cheap Pops

James Dixon: With Mick Foley having retired from active full-time competition in favour of a position as an onscreen authority figure, one much kinder to his battered body, this tapes covers the fun he had in that role as well as revisiting some of the tremendous performances he put in at the back end of his career. I have always been a big fan of Mick Foley, in terms of both his work and personality, as well as his books too. The last tape of his that I reviewed, Three Faces of Foley, scored a perfect 100 in The Complete WWF Video Guide Volume #4, so I am looking forward to this.

 

Host is Mick Foley himself, obviously. He starts out by talking about his favourite subject for ridicule; Al Snow. He discusses their relationship and brings up a match with Hardcore Holly where Al took a bunch of chair shots and decided to smile instead of sell them. The poor guy was just trying to play his unhinged character, but it garnered him some heat from the boys. At Mr. Socko’s birthday party on Sunday Night Heat, Mick mocked Al by saying: “I’d first like to send congratulations to Al Snow for landing that lucrative endorsement deal with La-Z-Boy, which is surprising because Al doesn’t usually sell chairs”. Great line. Mick claims their relationship became strained because of his constant ribbing, and that his countless Al Snow jokes in his book Have a Nice Day were his backhanded way of apologising. People latched onto Mick in a big way after that book came out, and art imitated life on television as Al and Mick become onscreen best friends, and even tag champions. We see footage of the pair in Vegas, which leads to some fun segments with a planted fan pretending to be the Rock, who pesters them mercilessly. During a poker game, Foley states: “I’ve been dreaming about a hand like this all my life”, to which Al quips: “You dream about your hand all the time.” “Shut up, Al” barks Foley in response. The two had great chemistry.

 

Foley says that in 1999 his body told him to retire, but the money told him otherwise. At least he is honest. He says that’s why he ended up teaming with the Rock, basically so he could coast by and do far less of a physically demanding style, instead relying on comedy, which he happened to be great at. The tandem had immense chemistry, they were perfect foil and a wonderful opposites attract partnership. They weren’t together long, but had a host of fondly remembered moments together, and they delivered big time in the ratings. The segment with Mick throwing a “This is Your Life” celebration for his surly partner remains the highest rated in the history of RAW. Foley was on fire during the entire union, with his self-deprecating act winning him a lot of new fans, and producing some classic lines, such as a backstage interview where he says: “It doesn’t matter what my name is, Michael Cole”. Nobody was willing to “show ass” like Foley was. Unfortunately the duo didn’t last, coming to an end when Mick found a signed copy of his book that he had given to Rock in the trash, and Mick cuts a vicious promo on his partner, getting angrier than he had been in years. Stupid airhead Divas idiotically gurning into the camera and delivering fake sounding scripted lines, this ain’t. It turns out it was all a big misunderstanding though, and it was a jealous Al who had put the book in the bin. This results in a brief TV feud, with the match shown (in brief highlight form) ending when Rock belts Al with a couple of chair shots off camera, in what turns out to be his locker room.

 

We go to Mick’s final program as a regular performer, his feud with Triple H, which is the meat of this tape. The rivalry is covered in detail, from Mick losing a Pink Slip on a Pole match to his big return a few weeks later. Trips batters and bloodies Mankind, resulting in him demasking in a subtle act of symbolism. Foley’s full transformation from Mankind to Cactus Jack in a truly brilliant segment on SmackDown! (shown here set to the harrowing tones of ‘O Fortuna’) is not so subtle, but then it was never supposed to be, and the crowd react to the metamorphosis brilliantly. Equally superb is the reaction from Triple H, who sells this better than he did anything else in his career. He puts the Cactus Jack character over as a main event title threat more with one look than he did with everyone he ever worked with, as he became a burial specialist down the years. I guess he knew Foley was retiring and thus wasn’t a threat to his position. Not that his position could ever possibly be under threat what with him NAILING THE BOSSES DAUGHTER! To his credit here, Trips downplays his role in making Cactus, saying that he was already a mythological being, and he just reacted to him. Mick rightly points out that if Trips had laughed him off when he in reality did little more than just take his shirt and mask off, it would have killed it. Taking angles like this seriously in wrestling makes a great deal of difference in generating interest in a contest. That is why long time fans got frustrated in the WWE PG-era, when everything was tongue in cheek, done with a wink and a nod or just downplayed as “part of the story”. Wrestling was cool in 2000 because everyone was a badass, rather than everyone being a pretty boy with a tan and perfect hair. Can you imagine someone like The Miz or any of the stream of cookie-cutter generic sports entertainers working a feud like this?

 

We get footage from the epic and supremely violent Royal Rumble 2000 match, which Trips says was brutal, but that they had already apologised to each other in the back so it was all okay. Goodbye, kayfabe. We see brutal chair shots to the face from Hunter, the sickening sight of a piece of wood from a broken pallet stabbing Hunter in the leg and the introduction of barbed wire into the WWF. Now, a note on that: when they first brought out Barbie, the wire was very real, and when Hunter used it on Cactus you could see it sticking in his shirt. As the match progressed, the old switcheroo was implemented by the Fink and the Spanish announce team, and the barbed wire bat replaced with a replica that featured rubber wire. The problem was that this bat looked new and fresh, whereas the old one has already began to unravel from getting stuck in Cactus’ shirt. The change was made because Hunter was taking a bunch of shots to the face and understandably didn’t want to risk losing an eye or ripping his skin open. I guess the question becomes: why didn’t they just use that from the start? Mick didn’t need to take any more brutal weapon shots to prove his toughness in this environment or to get another hardcore badge of honour. He already had plenty of those, and frankly no one would have known any different anyway if it had been gimmicked from the start. One thing they could not fake was the thousands of thumbtacks that Cactus introduced, and of course he was the one who took the bump into the pins. Hell, it was his specialty. We get around 15-minutes of the tape devoted to this remarkable match, which is probably the greatest hardcore outing in history, coming it at around ****¾ in this writer’s view.

 

I want to briefly stop off to mention the music that has been used on this tape. On a lot of other releases that I have covered in this book, the choice of music has been pretty crappy and generic, with everything from incessant techno noise to soulless throwaway half-assed nu metal dirge delivering an aural assault over the top of the footage. On this, it has been brilliant. Whoever was in charge of picking the accompanying music obviously knew what they were doing, because everything fits perfectly, and there is not a hint of P.O.D. in sight.

 

Even though Hunter went over at the Rumble, the feud between the two continues. What strikes me is that a lot of the angles and storyline progression came on SmackDown!, which is remarkable to me having gotten used to so many years where literally nothing at all happens on the show to move things along. Trips on RAW then challenges Cactus to his last shot at him or the title at No Way Out 2000, with the bout in question being Hell in a Cell with Foley’s career on the line. This was the second match that made Triple H into a bona fide star, with Mick Foley once again putting his body on the line for the sake of his art and in an effort to help the career of his opponent. There are few as selfless in an industry full of bastards as Mick Foley. Mick talks about the tough legacy that he and Hunter had to live up to following their bout the previous month, and of course his own past shenanigans in the cell. “I didn’t fancy my chances of winning, if you know what I mean” he offers with a winking glance as this tape continues to let the world in on the big (but really, not so big) secret. Foley mentions how he broke his own nose in the bout delivering a chair assisted elbow drop, and points out that it’s a good job it wasn’t Hunter’s nose that got broken, or “we both would have drowned”. Because it’s enormous, you see. We see a spot where Cactus fell from halfway up the cage and through a table, which was a good bump and all but nothing compared to the one against Undertaker, and if you can’t at least match something you have done already then why bother doing an inferior version? We see footage from the forgotten Hell in a Cell on RAW (why would you ever put the Cell on RAW!? Oh, right, Vince Russo was booking…) against Kane, where he took the same bump and missed the table by a mile, which looked hellacious. That begs another question: why would you take a bump like that again when it went so wrong the first time!? We don’t get full highlights of this, but rather just the big bumps, with a flaming barbed wire bat brought into play, and then Cactus getting backdropped through the cage and indeed through the ring. The difference between this cage bump and the King of the Ring ’98 one is that this time, the cage was supposed to give way, and the ring had been played around with by the crew so that the bump was far more delicate. Again though, why try and recapture magic and run the same thing twice? That never works. Cactus was still alive so Hunter followed up with a Pedigree and that was it for Mick’s fairly brief in real terms (four years), but still legendary WWF career…

 

…Only it wasn’t, because he took the first step towards the complete and total bastardisation of his legacy by returning to the ring the following month at WrestleMania 2000. I don’t blame the guy, because the promise of a WrestleMania payoff should always trump a kayfabed promise to the fans for anyone with any business sense, but at the same time it did retroactively cheapen the No Way Out battle. The pop that Mick got for his return on RAW was something else, but the shape he showed up in was embarrassing. He was way heavier in just a month, which Foley claims was 20lbs,  but it looks more like 30lbs at least. I have never seen anyone change shape so much in such a short space of time. In the ‘Mania match, Foley shows that he has no sense again, repeating a spot from Survivor Series: Deadly Game where he made a mess of a flying elbow off the top through the announce table, severely and permanently damaging his knee in the process. It was one of the reasons he ended up having to retire early. In his infinite wisdom, Mick decided to repeat the spot again at WrestleMania, only with an extra tyre of tubbiness around his waist and the aforementioned jiggered knee. He came up short, VERY short, and smashed his chest into the table then bounced off in a heap, not even coming close to hitting the Rock. The silly bastard.

 

Now to a fun time in Mick’s career, when he served as WWF commissioner. He was introduced by Shawn Michaels on RAW, complete with freshly shaven head and with a seriously crappy dress sense. Seriously, you think he looked scruffy in Mankind’s later years? Just check him out in this role, with his baggy sweatpants, occasional charm necklace, t-shirt and sleeveless flannel shirt. He wouldn’t have even got on WWE TV in the John Cena era, because the company was so cute about its own image. On the brief occasions he was involved on camera during that time, there was a strict directive to film him from the waist up. Hell the poor guy had been retired from full-time competition for over a decade, just let him eat his junk food and enjoy his life. He deserved any comforts he could get for what he had put his body through over the years. Annoyingly, one of the chief orchestrators of said directive was none other than one Triple H. I don’t know if it was for the good of the company or Mick Foley’s legacy, but whatever his rationale, he should show more respect to the man that made him into the top tier star he became. Back to the tape anyway, and we see the birth of the cheap pop during a promo with Triple H (with Stephanie nodding furiously in the background, completely out of synch with what is being said, making her look like a clueless imbecile), and then a collection of some of the better ones.

 

Foley continues his tradition of putting up and coming guys in his video tapes (he did the same thing for the Hardys on Three Faces of Foley) by featuring Edge & Christian. The two were at their absolute best as a doubles act around this time, and one of the segments shown that doesn’t even involve Foley is the Kurt Angle birthday party, where they rile up the moody Triple H by wearing Teletubbies party hats, blowing streamers and playing theme songs on a kazoo. It’s one of my favourite comedic segments in wrestling ever, and for me the peak of both Edge and Christian as entertainers. More so even than ‘the Rated R Superstar’ and more so than ‘Captain Charisma’ and his “peeps”, I absolutely adored Edge & Christian as a team, because they left you wanting more each week. One segment of theirs also involving the kazoo that still cracks me up to this day is when they played Chris Benoit’s  theme while singing in monotone “Chris Benoit is here and he’s really mad”. It’s utter genius.

 

We see more from Edge & Christian, who sit and talk with Foley about some of their finer moments onscreen together. Some of the wonderfully fun skits are shown, including an exchange backstage when the duo want their own locker room like the Rock, and Foley says how he never had his own locker room, and he was WWF Champion. Edge points out that: “You never change your clothes!” while Christian adds: “You just wrestle in what you are wearing!”. The delivery from all three is perfect. They continue to shoot the shit, laughing about Foleys toy dog “Sarge” (named as a tribute to previous commissioner Sgt. Slaughter), Christian pretending to be sick to get out of a match, Christian trying to shed weight for a Light Heavyweight Title match by wearing a chicken suit, and Edge saying Mick is “full of poo” when he notices his Winnie the Pooh shirt. These interactions between the trio are one of the reasons that I enjoyed Foley in this role so much.

 

We stop off briefly to see Mick building Stephanie up with kindness before cruelly breaking her spirit, and then get some more amusing segments from his run in the role, including a doozey where he accidentally smashes Pat Patterson’s hand with his gavel. Next a remarkably serious promo from atop a truck on Triple H, then onto the investigation into who ran over Steve Austin back at Survivor Series 1999. ‘Stone Cold’s’ method of interrogation involved running through everyone with Stunners, which is probably the worst technique for gleaming information ever. I mean, they are all knocked out! Foley told Austin to stop interfering in matches, which he didn’t, so Foley suspended him. That resulted in Stunners, obviously, and Mick in real life worrying about being a heel. We then take a brief look at Mick’s children’s Christmas book, as he sits down with the book’s artist Jerry Lawler to discuss the kid that inspired the story, and to talk about some of the quirky art.

 

To the end of Foley’s Commissioner run now, with Vince McMahon demanding that Foley resign from the role. William Regal speaking on behalf of the locker room requests the same, but Steve Austin comes to his defence and decks Vince, as Foley tears up the letter of resignation. But that was only a brief respite, because he was fired by Vince soon afterwards and beaten up by Edge, Christian and Kurt Angle. It was a shame. Foley leaving the screens was soon followed by Steve Austin turning heel, The Rock disappearing to make movies and Triple H getting injured. The glory days were over, and the WWF was a very different and much worse place in 2001 because of it.

 

Summary: Well, Mick opened up the businesses secrets in his first book, and now he spreads its legs on this video tape, delving deeper behind the curtain than anyone ever has previously. It’s one thing to talk about things from the distant past in terms that make clear they were not so real, but to do it about feuds from a year prior seems a little strange. Kayfabe issues aside, the tape is constantly entertaining and has a very different feel to most other releases. You get the impression that this is exactly the tape that Mick wanted, and it does him justice both as a hardcore icon and as a happy-go-lucky, loveable entertainer. I don’t think it quite reaches the heady heights of Three Faces of Foley, but there is plenty good on here to make it well worth your while. It brings back fond memories of a time when wrestling was still fun and not a corporate shell of its former glory. For that I can’t do anything other than recommend it.
Verdict: 84

#WWF263 – Kurt Angle – It’s True It’s True

James Dixon: The bio starts on the set of a commercial that Angle is apparently filming, with him acting like a prima donna in an attempt to get over his character as that of an asshole. Is he in character or is it real? It’s hard to say, because the real life Angle is pretty off the wall and at times appears to be borderline insane. Unfortunately, all of Angle’s interviews for this tape are 100% kayfabed, which thus makes everything he says utterly worthless. Jerry Lawler puts over Angle’s gold medal that he won at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. The WWF loved that little fact of course, because it added legitimacy to their product to have not only an Olympian (which they have of course had before), but a genuine gold medal winner. It rather puts them championing Mark Henry’s 16th place finish at the same games into perspective. Stevie Richards, in full RTC gimmick, puts over Angle’s strength of character, while Rikishi gets a kick out of him because he is funny. Angle remains in full-on character mode and claims he was hired because of his “three I’s” and then we see his WWF introduction vignettes, which are not really any different to his exclusive interviews for the tape. We see Angle’s debut promo at Survivor Series, where he got booed essentially for being an 80’s style babyface. The difference between him and say Rocky Maivia, is that he was supposed to get that reaction. Vince McMahon is a smart guy some of the time, and he realised that a clean-cut all-American babyface was exactly the antithesis of the company’s current modus operendi. It worked a charm. It does lead one to wonder just what the hell Vince Russo would have tried to do with him. He probably would have made him into a cross-dresser or something. Steve Blackman, Angle’s often forgotten about tag partner from his early weeks, talks about Kurt being a pain in his ass, which led to a match at Armageddon. Angle and Blackman both talk about the program in character, which makes this whole thing feel like a promo piece produced by non wrestling folk who think it is all real. I guess kayfabing should be commended, but you expect something more from these tapes now.

 

We see Tazz’s sensational WWF “debut” the Royal Rumble 2000 (in reality he worked “ECW RAW” back in February 1997), with Angle protesting that he didn’t know who he was facing and that he lost to a choke, which was an illegal hold. “The next night” says the video when footage from SmackDown! taped two days later (and airing four days after the Rumble) airs, with Angle attacking Tazz. The pace continues at a scatterbrain pace with no time to pause for breath or indeed take anything in, as Angle rips off the Rock on RAW to set up a match between them, which he lost. That loss somehow made him the number one contender to the European Title, which he battled champion Val Venis for on SmackDown! ten days after the Rock defeat. Brief highlights are shown set to the dulcet tones of Michael Cole and with basic rock rumbling in the background. It sounds like Jim Johnston knocked it out in about 15-minutes. Angle wins with the Olympic Slam and celebrates like he just won another medal. Overblown performances like these are what endeared Kurt to not only the fans but the office as well, because he clearly “got it” as far as the sports entertainment aspect of the business, and he managed to ascend the ranks in record time because of that.

 

We go back to the set of the phony commercial, with Angle complaining about how long a shot is taking and telling the director to speed it up. The director shows why he got into the business of movie making rather than acting, because the exchange is completely hokey and unbelievable. Even Chris Jericho gets in on the kayfabing, repeating Blackman’s sentiments about Angle being a pain in the ass. We go to their feud and the match for Jericho’s Intercontinental Title at No Way Out 2000 that Angle won, and the generic backing track returns as we see various moves from the match out of context, including a spot that highlights Kurt’s inexperience when Jericho tries a silly Asai moonsault from the steel steps, but misses by a mile. With a few more months under his belt, Angle probably would have compensated for Jericho coming up short. The match isn’t as good as you would expect when hearing the names Angle and Jericho, but for a guy with three months experience it was pretty sensational.

 

Back to the set, and Angle continues to act like a diva, complaining that the director said he had made a mistake in a previous take, before whining about the following scene taking an hour to set up. This whole segment is pretty much a complete waste of tape. More complaining follows, this time back in the WWF with Angle unhappy about having to defend both of his titles in a three way at the singles match bereft WrestleMania 2000. “The first fall will be for the European Title, the second fall will be for the Intercontinental Title” says Cole in the build up, which as ever with Cole is wrong. In his defence, that was certainly the logical assumption, but for whatever reason they did it backwards with Benoit pinning Jericho to win the IC Title, then the match immediately continuing with the second fall for the almost worthless European Title. It’s another decent encounter, but again fails to thrill in the manner you might hope given the talent. There are plenty of big suplexes and fun spots to make it worth checking out still though, including the debut of Angle’s beautiful technique moonsault, which of course misses. The second fall comes when Jericho pins Benoit following the Lionsault, meaning Kurt lost both belts without getting beat. Still in character, he says the experience taught him life was unfair and he learned from it. What tosh.

 

Oh Jesus friggin’ Christ; Steve Lombardi is here to pollute yet another bio tape with his verbal tripe. Lombardi’s insightful offering this time out? He thinks Angle’s gold medals are not real and are made of “chaw-ko-layte”… So either he is in denial that the 1996 Olympics existed or he thinks the whole thing is a work. Either way he is a fucking mook. Jerry Brisco calls Angle arrogant and hard to get along with, which is rich from a two-faced stooge, and then Harvey Wippleman calls Angle hard to get along with too. This from a man who washes his clothes by putting them at the bottom of the basket and figuring that after weeks in there, they will probably be clean. Rikishi tells Kurt to shove his medal up his ass and then we see Kurt getting a Stinkface. “What does a Stinkface actually do!?” asks Kurt quite rightly. He says he wasn’t humiliated by the experience. To the King of the Ring and the final seconds of his tournament matches, including the qualifiers, which basically consists of Angle doing the Olympic Slam then winning over and over again. Not thrilling. The final gets a little more airtime at least, with two of the new flavours of 2000, Angle and Rikishi, meeting in the showdown encounter. It’s not much of a match, and really Rikishi was a poor choice to work with Kurt both stylistically and in terms of stature, because no one thought he was going to win the thing. The WWF got things right with the Angle push, for the most part, and he warranted and justified his place at the top of the card, but Rikishi was a novelty act and a fad who got over for his dancing.”I don’t look up to him, I think he’s a piece of gawbayge” says Lombardi. Urgh.

 

Meanwhile, Tazz is pissed off that Angle stole his towel while he was taking a shower. It’s like preschoolers bickering. We get some more fake behind the scenes footage, this time of Kurt taping off a small square area of the locker room as his own so that everyone else knows not to enter his personal space. If he did that for real, he would have had the piss beaten out of him and would be forced to endure the infamous wrestler court. Back to the infernal set, with more made up nonsense that is supposed to somehow put Kurt over, but just makes him look like an ass. Okay, his gimmick might be that he is an ass, but do we need a tape, an eternal documentation of a performer, blighted by a waste of time like this? If they had dropped this, then instead of the schizophrenic highlight reels, we could have seen one or two, you know, MATCHES! But no, and the next blink-and-you-will-miss-it feud to get airtime is Angle’s program with the Undertaker, which was a bad idea. The build up was decent enough but the 7-minute match at Fully Loaded 2000 was crap, with Angle’s momentum dealt a major blow by his clean and decisive job here.

 

To the really tremendously booked Angle-Hunter-Steph love triangle from summer 2000 next (read elsewhere in this book for more on this), as Steve Lombardi calls Angle “poison” and says Triple H was justified in being annoyed with him and wanting to take him out. The story had incredible momentum and fans latched onto it in a big way, but then the WWF went and had Kurt lose, again and again, and killed it stone dead. This was the first, last and only time I have ever found Stephanie compelling and interesting viewing. Usually I find her to be as enjoyable as and similar sounding to nails on a chalkboard. What we see of the build up is just the same video that was used to promote SummerSlam. The feud was all about the love triangle, but the match was a three way also featuring WWF Champion the Rock, who was the spare wheel afterthought here more than at any other time in his career. Angle got taken out of the match with an injury after Hunter Pedigreed him through a table, but later made a miraculous recovery and a Stampede comeback when Steph begged him to return to the ring to help Hunter. After fighting valiantly, he got pinned by the Rock and then carried a hurt Steph to the back while Hunter was out cold.

 

The blow-off came the following month at Unforgiven, and again we see the same video that aired countless times on free TV, and then more brief highlights from the actual match, with Triple H pinning Kurt. It was an incredibly flat ending to what had been a wonderfully crafted story. This was probably one of the first instances of the internet beginning their backlash against Triple H for holding someone down and going over when he didn’t need to. Of course, it wouldn’t be the last.  This being the WWF where wins and losses don’t matter a jot, consecutive defeats over the last three PPVs are enough to garner Angle a WWF Title shot against the Rock at No Mercy 2000. This is the first match that actually gets a decent amount of airtime, and as well it should because Angle shocks the world and completes the most successful rookie year in history by capturing the belt after interference from Rikishi and an Olympic Slam. That is still not enough for Lombardi, who decides he just doesn’t like Angle. Well you know what, Lombardi? I don’t particularly care for you either. Is there a more pointless person in all of wrestling? “I don’t want them to know the real Kurt Angle and what’s inside” says Kurt in conclusion. Yeah, I figured that from sitting through an hour of this completely pointless tape!

 

Summary: What do you get when you take a guy who only has a year in the business and try to do an hour profile tape on him without offering any insight or behind the character interviews? Boredom. Complete boredom. Kurt staying in character throughout the tape really hurt it, and the talking heads playing along and kayfabing everything ruined it further. Kayfabe is fine, but this is an era where excellent bio tapes are being released that delve further into the person behind the guy on the screen, so there is no excuse to not do the same with this. What it boils down to is a tape full of highlights and hype videos, with little substance, few threads holding things together and nothing new at all. Entirely missable.
Verdict: 25

#WWF262 – Chris Jericho – Break Down The Walls

James Dixon: We open the profile tape deal with a bunch of fans (each subtitled “Jerichoholic” and then a number), who talk about how much they love Jericho. I feel the focus group used may be slightly biased. One of the marks says how they like Jericho because of his “charasma”, which about sums up the bunch that were interviewed.

 

The best place to start is… the start. Or at least Jericho’s WWF start, with his much anticipated debut on RAW covered extensively and accompanied by talking heads the Rock, a jealous Edge (“Damn!” he thought, when hearing the reaction Jericho got), a tired looking Michael Cole and of course Jericho himself. For those unaware, Jericho’s debut was hyped for a month with a mystery “Countdown to the Millennium” clock which didn’t mention him by name, but pretty much everyone had it figured out. It was Jericho’s idea, one he got while in a post office when he saw a real countdown to the Millennium clock on the wall, and thought it would be a cool way to bring someone into a wrestling company. He was absolutely right; the idea and debut is absolute genius because it builds anticipation, gets people talking and has an exact time and place that people can write in their diaries to make sure they tune in and don’t miss it. The countdown just happened to climax during the middle of a Rock promo, and the pop for the word “Jericho” appearing on the Titantron is something else. It is one of my favourite crowd reactions ever. Jericho’s subsequent promo is decent, but he does an anti-WWF gimmick which was clearly going nowhere because there are too many holes in what he was saying. He makes outlandish claims such as the WWF’s ratings and buyrates plummeting, which all the fans knew was bullshit because the company was on its hottest streak in years and interest in the group was through the roof. Perhaps the idea was that he was delusional or something, but that was always doomed to failure. Rock counters Jericho’s proclamation of being the “Y2J problem” by talking about his “KY Jelly solution”, which of course involves a boot in the ass. The pervert. Automaton Michael Cole thinks the best way to make an impact in the WWF is to interrupt the Rock, but Rock actually ended up promo-schooling Jericho with his retort, which rather undermined him from the off. Within a few weeks Jericho was shunted into the midcard working a feud with Road Dogg, as he quickly became yet another example of the WWF’s inability to use talent correctly and to the best of their abilities. Don’t get me wrong this is a fun promo from both and a wonderful way to debut, one of my favourite debuts ever in fact, but it should have propelled Jericho to the main event right away and it just didn’t do that. It would be two years before he won the WWF Championship and even then he was treated as something of a joke champion, playing second fiddle to Stephanie McMahon and Triple H. It wasn’t until his WWF return years later and program with Shawn Michaels that he finally became accepted as the man, briefly, and given the respect his talent deserves.

 

We go back to the start of Jericho’s career, and he tells a cute story about meeting Ricky Steamboat at a convention and asking him how tall he was. When he found out they were the same size, he realised he had a shot of being a wrestler, though he was some 70lbs short of his weight. Jericho went to train at the Hart Brothers’ school in Calgary, where he and Lance Storm (who is not mentioned) were the standouts. Jericho says how pleased he was that he came through a good school that taught him the proper values of the business and also beat him up day after day to see if he had the heart for it. A far cry for the WWF Development Center then, which churns out manufactured, cookie cutter robots. Jericho’s career in Japan and with ECW is touched upon very briefly, with Mick Foley giving himself credit for recommending Jericho to Paul Heyman, having seen him work for WAR in Japan. WCW is not brought up at all.

 

From there we cut abruptly to Jericho’s feud with Chyna, a battle based around misogyny but that echoed the views of many fans. Chyna as Intercontinental Champion was a disgrace to the rich history of the belt. She was an average at best worker by WWF women’s standards, never mind compared to some of the finest workers of a generation. Guys should fight guys and girls should fight girls, it just isn’t realistic for a women, even one like Chyna, to beat a highly trained male athlete at the top of their game. There is a reason that literally every other physical sport in the world separates the two genders. Could Chyna beat up some random dude on the street? Sure, but that is different. I thought this whole feud was lame and the matches were invariably poor. It was a waste of Jericho and a bastardisation of a once great belt.

 

We once again delve into Jericho’s personal life, as his discusses his father Ted Irvine, a former hockey player for the New York Rangers in the NHL. Hockey continues as the focus, with a bunch of actors talking about a charity hockey game that Jericho played in. I couldn’t give two shits about hockey, so let’s move on…

 

…Unfortunately moving on proves to be tough as the hockey thing last forever. Honestly, the segment has been going a legitimate ten minutes now. I thought this was a wrestling profile tape!?

 

Next up Jericho’s strength; his promos. Chris watches a promo of his from 1990 on a lavish big screen in his house, and mocks his accent and cheesy babyface nature. It’s pretty terrible. We cut to modern times, with Jericho mispronouncing everyone’s names on purpose. Kirk Angel (Kurt Angle), Raisin (Raven) and countless others feature. Jericho is a funny guy. He then tells Vince McMahon he has a small penis.

 

We continue with Jericho’s excellent feud against Chris Ben-oyt (Benoit), which featured some brutal matches full of manly striking and reckless abandon. One such bout profiled is from Backlash 2000, which clocks in at ***¾. We get extended highlights set to an upbeat, high-tempo, generic rock track, which encapsulates the action and drama nicely. The finish is a disappointment, with Benoit going over on a DQ when he goes for his flying headbutt and Jericho belts him with the IC Title. Benoit got his nose legitimately broken and bloodied from the shot, and on SmackDown! a few days later where Jericho finally won the belt, his nose juiced another gusher. Watching these matches back the difference in the tightness of the work and the level of intensity and execution compared to flailing limb specialists like Kofi Kingston or our favourite target, the faker than fake John Cena, is striking. The feud between Jericho and Benoit continues into SummerSlam and their slightly underwhelming by their lofty standards 2/3 falls bout. Again we get highlights, though thankfully this time we are spared the bad music. At first anyway. We join things at the end of the first fall with Benoit tapping out Jericho with the Crossface, and then trying to do the same thing instantly, only to end up caught in the Walls of Jericho and tapping himself. 1-1 then and now the music and sped-up footage kicks in, all made to look more exciting with clever editing that repeats the key spots, before Benoit finishes with a cheeky pin.

 

Back to Jericho’s massive home, and Christian is randomly there watering his plants like a house boy. Jericho shows off his self-mark wall, which has a bunch of magazine covers framed that feature him, including two covers from TV Guide that he marks for big. He then shows off his CD collection and kayfabes about Fozzy, acting like he is just a big fan rather than the lead singer. Jericho puts over Fozzy lead singer Moongoose McQueen (himself), and that leads to a Mick Foley esque split personality spot and an interview from Moongoose. My wife loves Fozzy, which about sums them up. Personally, I think they are the drizzling shits. I love heavy metal, but Fozzy are neither of those things. Man, this is like Jericho’s second book Undisputed, where he spent half of it droning on about his crappy rock band instead of wrestling, which no one reading cares about. This is now just a Behind the Music parody, with Moongoose purposely acting like a clichéd rock star diva asshole. From what I have heard from some people who have met him, it’s no act.

 

Finally back to wrestling, and Jericho’s vicious barbs at Steph McMahon that resulted in a classic bout between Y2J and WWF Champion Triple H on RAW with the belt on the line. This is out of sequence mind, but sure, let’s go with it. This was Jericho’s night, with a rabid crowd firmly behind him in his quest to smash through the glass ceiling and lift the gold. And that is exactly what he did, pinning Hunter to a huge pop after Hunter and replacement referee Earl Hebner had a shoving match and Earl got knocked on his ass, causing Jericho to catch a pin and Earl to count quickly. Unfortunately, two-faced pussy Earl got forced into reversing the decision, and the result was stricken from the record. Poor decision, WWF. This was the time for Jericho, the proverbial iron was hot. Once he had pulled a Lex Luger and missed out on his big shot, it took him an age to rebuild his status. In fact, I would be tempted to say this was the most popular that Jericho was at any time in his WWF/E run. The Triple H feud carried on, with Jericho continuing to verbally humiliate Steph gleefully, leading to a sledgehammer beat down from evil DX that left Jericho bloodied. The blow-off came at Fully Loaded 2000 in an epic Last Man Standing match. It is bloody, brutal and intense, and in 23-minutes they assemble a highly physical encounter that often gets forgotten about, but is one of their best outings opposite each other. There was just so much that was good in 2000 that it became hard to differentiate between the plethora of ****+ matches on offer seemingly every week. Once again no full match here, but the highlights are done well again and sum up the action nicely. Triple H is modest about the bout, calling it a match of the year candidate. Not that he has a major ego that needs stroking constantly or anything.

 

Jericho closes out the tape by saying he is here to entertain, and then bedecked in a suit, jumps into his pool.

 

Summary: This is an excellent profile tape about Chris Jericho’s early WWF career, though anyone looking for anything deeper that covers his pre-WWF days is looking in the wrong place and would be better off seeking out his 2010 Breaking the Code: Behind the Walls of Chris Jericho DVD. This tape offers plenty of entertainment during its 60-minutes of runtime though, with the majority of the wrestling on display ranging from stellar to superb, and the stick work from Y2J always entertaining, especially that killer debut. I could have lived without the tedious hockey and Fozzy segments, but the top quality action more than makes up for it. As far as WWF bio tapes go, this is one of the better ones.
Verdict: 70