Category: Other

2005 Royal Rumble

Match 1 – Edge Vs Shawn Michaels – Nice story behind this match. Edge returned in 04, was getting booed despite being a babyface and whatnot. He slowly starts to get pissed off by it, then the shit hits the fan at Taboo Tuesday when fans voted for HBK over him to face HHH for the WHC. Then at NYR inside the elimination chamber, HBK was the referee and superkicked Edge (after Edge attacked him I think) and counted the 3 to eliminate him. So Edge feels that the fans turned on him AND HBK screwed him out of the title twice, so he wants revenge. After all the build it’s a shame this one was never really viewed as a BIG match, though it probably should have been. Being at the RR doesn’t help either as I never really see it as being the PPV for big grudge matches, or at least I haven’t since something like 2002 onwards. Edge does a pretty great job controlling the match. He’s got the crazy edge to him, but not the “spasm in the corner” kind of crazy he would get to that was terrible. I like how he uses HBK’s hair to counter a HBK comeback, then just because he’s a bit of a prick, he uses the hair about 4 times in a row to aid him in hitting moves though he didn’t need to. Then he mocks HBK’s pose. Shawn’s comeback is… pretty poor tbh. But Edge puts a stop to it with a SPEAR on the floor. Follows it up with a SPEAR in the ring… and HBK kicks out lol. Edge’s gets a little more crazy and tries for a high risk move, a superplex, but HBK knocks him off the ropes, lands the elbow, then begins to set up Sweet Chin Music! COUNTER INTO THE ELECTRIC CHAIR. EDUCATION! I miss that submission hold. Remember in like 02-03 and a bunch of guys on SD started using new submission holds? Edge with the Education, Brock with the BROCK LOCK and Eddie with the Lasso from El Paso? Those were awesome. Plus you already had Benoit with the Crossface and Angle with the Ankle Lock. Basically any of the top or high mid card guys had multiple ways to win and it really helped get over the awesome “competition” period on SD at the time. Edge wins using the ropes for leverage. Good match. ***1/4.

Bischoff and Long backstage with a tumbler so wrestlers can draw their own numbers. Flair and Guerrero draw their numbers. Flair is dancing for job at his, Eddie looks horrified. So he steals Flairs! He shows his number off, and they are baffled as to why he is so excited! GUERRERO STOLE MY NUMBER!

Heidenreich backstage talking about how he hates caskets. Gene Snitsky shows up. He doesn’t like caskets either. But they like each other.

Match 2 – The Undertaker Vs Heidenreich – Casket match time! Heidenreich has screwed Undertaker out of the title on a couple of occasions, and they had a legit GREAT match at Survivor Series where Undertaker put over Heidenreich in a huge way. Now it’s time to settle their feud in Undertaker’s signature match. Well one of them anyway. Heidenreich isn’t afraid of Undertaker, but he IS afraid of caskets (as is all of Undertaker’s opponents lol). Undertaker uses basic holds like an arm bar and a headlock, and he keeps edging Heidenreich over to the casket just to mess with his mind. Awesome stuff. Credit to Heidenreich too for playing his part really well. Heidenreich throws some pretty good punches, similar style to Undertaker. He pummels Undertaker in the corner then talks shit to him, then tries to throw another punch, but Undertaker catches the arm and counters with a TRIANGLE CHOKE. Fuck yeah, awesome shit. Heidenreich is fading… and Snitsky shows up! Double team time. They begin to drag Undertaker to the casket, the referees open it up… and it’s KANE! KANE IS IN THE CASKET! He’s feuding with Snitsky so it makes sense… though he and Undertaker never exactly made up lol. Kane and Snitsky take their fight to the crowd and then backstage, leaving Undertaker to continue this match one on one. I remember the rumours of a tag match at WM to end these two feuds. Thankfully we didn’t get it. Not that I necessarily think it would have sucked, but because we got the incredible Undertaker/Orton match and Kane did one hell of a job in the Money in the Bank Ladder Match. LMAO at the spot where Heidenreich runs the casket into The Undertaker. Undertaker is pretty much UNDER THE RING and the casket just bounces off the ring apron. LMAO at Undertaker trying to punch Heidenreich in the fact while he’s in the casket. Ends up decking the middle rope the first time. HOLY SHIT, apron legdrop to Heidenreich, with Heidenreich’s head trapped in the casket! Just like Survivor Series, Heidenreich takes all of this punishment and STILL comes back. Whips Undertaker into the turnbuckle and the sound its makes made me think they broke part of the ring lol. Man, Heidenreich looked REALLY GOOD in these matches with ‘Taker. Sure, he’s in there with one of THE best ever, but he did his part for sure and he did it real well. Shame Heidenreich never went anywhere after this, and looked terrible with everything he did. Undertaker of course wins. Great match, surprised even me because I never thought this was particularly good. ***1/2.

Backstage again, and Teddy is trying to get Eddie to give back Flair’s number. Evolution show up to get it back. Eddie reluctantly gives it back… but turns out he still has his wallet too lol. TENSION between HHH and Batista. This feud was really fucking well done.

Christian getting ready to pick his number. He’s trying to get Bischoff to reveal some people’s numbers. Teddy Long gets back and Christian mentions how he just signed a petition to get him kicked off Raw! Cena shows up for his number. The beginning to their feud that would kinda happen after WM but not quite because they threw Jericho into it and made it all about those two. CHRISTIAN RAPS.

Match 3 – JBL Vs Kurt Angle Vs The Big Show – Triple threat match for the WWE title! JBL and Angle selling injures from their LMS match on SD just 3 days ago. I should look that match up, don’t remember anything about it. Show and JBL start the match, and with JBL hurt Big Show can dominate him, all the while Angle who is also hurt stands on the outside and watches on before making his move to prevent a possible pin. Fun “Big Show Vs The World” stuff early on as he’s the freshest man, making him the biggest threat for the title. Show attempts to Chokeslam JBL from the steel steps through the announce table, but Angle hits a low blow, then nails the giant with a monitor and Show falls back through the table himself! Now Angle and JBL can fight one on one and continue their match from SD and not have to worry about the 7ft monster for the time being. Show eventually gets back into this thing and he’s PISSED. Guy looks unstoppable, until Angle clips his knee while JBL lands a Clothesline from Hell! Even then he’s back up to his feet moments later, only to get Angle Slammed. BIG SHOW DRIVING BRADSHAW THROUGH THE BARRICADE! JBL is pretty much dead. Show just has to finish off Angle and he’ll be the NEW champion! THE CABINET show up to check on JBL, while Angle’s boys show up to take out Big Show. While all this is going on, JBL lands a Clothesline from Hell on Angle and survives with his WWE Title! This is a TON of fun. Always loved it. Nothing has changed. One of the great triple threat matches. ***3/4.

Carlito wants Batista to sign the petition to get rid of Teddy Long. He isn’t going to sign it, so Carlito teases spitting in his face. Batista threatens him and he swallows for a change haha. Batista continues to pick his number, while Bischoff and Teddy argue about shit. Bischoff bans Evolution from ringside for the WHC match so the Raw title match isn’t a mess of interference like SD’s!

Match 4 – Triple H Vs Randy Orton – WHC match. Urgh, not looking forward to this. HHH and Orton just have dreadful chemistry bad like, 2 matches. RKO COUNTERED. HHH counters it by sending him over the ropes. Orton thanks his lucky stars that his shoulder didn’t crumble. Trips goes after the shoulder following that move, by driving Orton into the steel steps. Then in the ring he goes after the knee. Odd that he switches up like that, but Orton apparently hurt the knee on Raw and has it taped up so HHH is just being the “cerebral assassin” and targeting the injured body part. LOL sign guy didn’t think this match was worth seeing, so he went for beer. So far I’ve been pleasantly surprised with this one. HHH has been good working over the legs, and Orton sold well and made a sweet comeback at one point with some great punches in the corner. His selling is dodgy though as he seems to mostly ignore his bad knee during said comeback. Orton gets his lip busted open from a sweeeeeet high knee. HHH keeps avoiding the RKO. Some more great punches form Orton. HHH sells them awesomely. HHH blocks a DDT and Orton goes CRASHING to the mat, and thus begins the “out of it” part of the match for Orton, and THIS is how I remember the match. Didn’t think there was so much stuff BEFORE it lol. Which makes me wonder how long is left and if it’s going to reaaaallly drag on. Time for THE GAME to slowly work over the head of his former Evolution team mate. The ref is down so HHH slowly goes for the sledgehammer, but gets sent face first into the ring post instead. Ha. Trips tries to use it again but notices the ref is stirring so he gets rid of it just in case. PEDIGREE instead. Orton is done. Huh, this match was… VERY DIFFERENT to how I remembered it. Did they have a Raw match like a week or two after this? If so maybe I remembered that match. Anywho, I thought this was great. Second best match these two ever had, not that that’s saying much lol. ***3/4.

Kurt Angle steals Nunzio’s number for the RR. Why didn’t Nunzio go tell Teddy Long about it? Speaking of, Long and Bischoff talking backstage again, this time about how good the Raw title match was. Long agrees and says it gave him a great idea. JBL and the Cabinet bust into the room celebrating, and Long informs him that at No Way Out, he’ll be defending the title against Big Show in the first ever BARBED WIRE STEEL CAGE MATCH! WHAT’S HE GONNA DO? EAT ME? I’M A WRESTLING GOD. I’M A GOD. I’M A WRESTLING GOD.

Match 5 – 30 Man Royal Rumble Match – #1 is Eddie Guerrero, the man who last year won Smackdown’s RR match to determine the #1 contender for NWO against Lesnar, where he WON the title! #2 is… Christ Benoit who won the RR last year from the #1 position and went on to WM to WIN the WHC! DANIEL PUDER. Tough Enough winner. He didn’t even live up to the likes of MAVEN. He basically gets set up by being in the ring against veterans who take RESPECT OF THE BUSINESS very seriously, and he gets knife edged chopped to SHIT from Benoit, Guerrero and then Hardcore Holly lol. Man, if only TAZZ could have been part of this match too lol. Eddie and Benoit work together to eliminate a few people, but at the same time try to take cheap shots with each other in an attempt to eliminate the other as well lol. DAT TILTAWHIRL BACKBREAKER ON REY BY EDDIE. Lol, Tazz thinks Booker T and HHH main evented WM last year. He’s already forgetting BENOIT. TAZZ SEES THE FUTURE! Bischoff and Long show up at ringside to cheer their guys on. Nice stuff all night between the two, putting over the brand extension and competition between the two, without getting into petty insults and shit. 4 Raw guys and 4 SD guys end up in the ring at the same time and they do the old Brand Split battle which is a cool moment. Then Muhammad Hassan comes out and both sides join forces to beat the crap out of him and eliminate him. HATERS. LOL SCOTTY 2 HOTTY continues his RR curse as he gets attacked by Hassan on his way to the ring. Ring starts to fill up with a bunch of nobodies. Eddie gets eliminated. Then HBK comes in and get rid of some of the trash. LMAO at Edge chasing after Rey, and Rey keeps escaping by rolling away or crawling through his legs. Edge gives up. ANGLE! SUPERKICK! NO MORE ANGLE! More jobbers enter. Angle returns and eliminates HBK then processed to beat him up. Beginning of their great feud leading into WM. LONDON AND SNITSKY. GOAT ELIMINATION? Good GOD at the pop for Batista. Batista and Cena the final 2. 1994 RR flashbacks. Vince tears both quads just to tell them to restart the match. BATISTA wins. Good Rumble, and like most things on this show, better than I remembered. ***3/4.

2004 Royal Rumble

The only RR where NOBODY wins. Honest!

Match 1 – The Dudley Boys Vs Ric Flair & Batista – The Dudley Boys once again in a tag match at the RR lol. Tables match too, making it the second tag team tables match at the RR, both involving those damn Dudleys! Only ONE person has to go through a table though. Boring. Nic is gay. I often wonder why people go to the bother of making shitty signs like that. LMAO, Bubba and D-Von are attempting to suplex Flair through a table, but you can see them looking over and waiting for Batista to get back in the ring so he can move the table. Then when he does it falls back on the Dudleys. Some pretty shitty brawling. Flair hasn’t quite hit his stride yet since returning to WWE (rarely working matches until the end of 03), and Batista is still green as fuck. Coach shows up (he was on commentary) to distract the Dudley’s, and while he gets a beating, it works. Batista hits a SPINEBUSTER to D-Von through a table. Champs retain. Meh match. At least it was short. *.

Cena interview. He raps. RVD interrupts. Cena insinuates that he has smoked some weed. Ok.

Match 2 – Rey Mysterio Vs Jamie Noble – Ooooo, a match with potential. Genuinely don’t remember this. At all. CW title is up for grabs. Nidia is blind. DR PHIL REFERENCE. Somewhere Dr Shelby is raging. Oh man, in years to come someone might come across this and have NO IDEA what I’m on about. That makes me smile. Damn, this one doesn’t get as much time as it deserved. Was looking really good, with Rey controlling the match with his speed, then Noble counters a cross body into a rib breaker, but before he can fully take advantage, Nidia on the outside “accidentally” grabs Noble’s leg and Rey hits a 619 and a springboard leg drop. Too damn shot dammit. DAMN. **

Match 3 – Eddie Guerrero Vs Chavo Guerrero Jr – Jr being in this match makes me want to skip it and just say NO… but dammit, Eddie is fucking EDDIE and I can’t skip that. Imagine if Chavo was born nearer to Eddie and HE was his tag partner in WWE and then THEY feuded, rather than Chavo Jr. CHAVO CLASSIC. Did ANYONE buy Chavo Jr beating Eddie btw? I mean really? Eddie laughing after he chops Jr is awesome. Then he gives Jr the middle finger when Jr knocks him down and thinks he’s the greatest thing ever. Then follows it up with more CHOPS. Eddie’s stratergy in this match is to out wrestle Jr to prove he’s the best (not that anyone needed proof lol), so even when Jr mocks him and Chavo on the outside smashes his face into the steel steps, Eddie continues to OUT WRESTLE his nephew. 3 Amigos. Frog Splash. And this is over. Uhhhh ok. Well Eddie did what he said he was gonna do. He out wrestled his nephew and got the win. But the match is over now. KILL HIM. KILL THE BAD CHAVO. Match is kinda sucky. Jr sucks. Eddie sticks to wrestling, but it’s nothing fancy and the match isn’t that long either. *1/2.

Great promo backstage. Benoit is about to be interviewed but Evolution interrupt and Flair cuts a great promo about despite the fact Benoit is GREAT, he can’t win the big one.

Match 4 – Brock Lesnar Vs Hardcore Holly – LMFAO. Chavo Jr has no chance against Eddie, and Holly had less than zero chance of winning against Lesnar lol. Match only happened because Lesnar broke Holly’s neck and they couldn’t really ignore it. That being said they could have done it on SD… ah well. Holly keeps going for the Full Nelson, Lesnar just powers his way out of everything and tries to wear Holly down. F-5. Over with. Oh yeah, this was the WWE title match btw. LOL. *.

Match 5 – Triple H Vs Shawn Michaels – LMS match for the WHC. Not looking forward to this. Not a fan of their chemistry at all. All the matches prior to this on the card got less than 10 minutes. This match gets more time than all of them COMBINED. Shave 10 minutes of this crappy match and give it to Rey/Noble dammit. BLOOD. TABLES. CHAIRS. They so do their best to make this EPIC but it comes across as too long and boring (like most of their matches). Don’t mind the finish because it works beautifully leading into WM XX and the big triple threat. SOME good to this, but not enough for me to call it good. **.

Before the RR match can start… we get some segment with Bischoff and Paul Heyman, the GM’s of Raw and SD. They fight and Austin, the Sheriff, comes out stuns them both. I can see why this was needed…

Match 6 – 30 Man Royal Rumble Match – What a terrible undercard this show has had. Thankfully, it is main evented by a fantastic RR match. Last time I saw this was… about 3 weeks ago haha. Still fairly fresh in my mind. #1 is Chris Benoit, but he doesn’t even make it to the ring. He never enters the match, and he most certainly DOES NOT WIN. That’s what WWE want you to believe anyway. Randy Orton is #2. Some awesome talent early on, giving us Benoit and Orton along with Henry, Tajiri, Rhyno, Matt Hardy, Bradshaw and a few others. MATT MORGAN. I think he’s actually worse now than he was in 04. KANE. BUSINESS IS ABOUT TO PICK UP. Chokeslams to everyone. UNDERTAKER GONG!!! Gets a bigger pop than practically everyone on the roster. Loved the build up to the return of the DEAD MAN Undertaker. As much as I liked the ABA Undertaker, by 03 he was getting a little stale and everyone were wishing he would come back as the Dead Man. So he did. Yey! Spike Dudley gets a chokeslam on the steel rampway. Ha. Guess Scotty 2 Hotty wasn’t available? RIKISHI owning bitches with his superkick again makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. WELCOME TO RIKISHI’S ASS, ROOKIE. Matt Morgan gets a stinkface. Rikishi mocking Rene Dupree’s dance behind his back then superkicking him out of the Rumble is awesome. Man, RIKISHI is awesome in Rumble matches. LORD TENSALBERTRAIN! He looks weird here because he shaved his beard. Obviously he miss-heard the fans… Ring begins to empty and we are left with #1 and #2 still! SOMBODY CALL MY MOMMA… BECAUSE SOMEONE STOLE MY GIMMICK IN THE FUTURE! Ernest The Cat Miller. He dances and gets thrown out. KURT ANGLE. Dedicates his RR victory to the American troops. He loses. NOW THAT’S HOW YOU BOOK A HEEL! LOL. Test is supposed to come out at one point… but someone has taken him out backstage! Austin is furious and demands the attacker take his place. MICK FOLEY! HE’S COMING FOR ORTON! Both men end up eliminated and then brawl for a while. Awesome stuff, loved their feud. Great build up. Shame it ended up as a shitty fucking handicap tag match at WM instead of a singles match, but their Backlash match made up for it. The ring starts to fill up again until all 30 guys have entered. THAT SPEAR TO NUNZIO FROM GOLDBERG. F-5 from Lesnar! Angle eliminates Goldberg! Show and Benoit end up the last 2 and we get an epic struggle from Benoit before he finally wins I MEAN NOBODY WINS HONEST. A great Rumble match. Benoit’s performance from #1 to winning is great. Far better than HBK’s in 95. Up there with Flair in 92. Plenty of great talent, a couple of WM feuds kicking off here too, and a lot of fun. ****1/2.

2003 Royal Rumble

The first RR event where the WWE and WHC were featured in separate matches!

Match 1 – The Big Show Vs Brock Lesnar – Winner of this gets to enter the RR later tonight. Michael Cole claims they will be the 30th entrant. Yeah, not quite true lol. This is Lesnar’s big chance for revenge after Show & Heyman gave him his first pinfall loss and ended his WWE title reign. Not really the big “blow off” match you’d expect, but they continue their feud following WM and do give us some big matches. Still crazy to see BIG SHOW take an overhead belly to belly. Multiple times. Love how they manage to put over the sheer power of both guys in this match. Lesnar is able to throw Show around with those belly to belly suplexes, and Show is able to launch Lesnar about as well. Makes both men look like beasts, helps put Lesnar over even more when he wins, and makes Show look strong in defeat. I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot more overhead belly to belly suplexes on this show too. Lesnar here, Angle likes to use them too, and then of course the infamous Steiner/HHH match! Lesnar gets the win with an F-5 and even kicked out of a chokeslam before hand too. Short match, like I said not a blow off match like you would have expected, but it seemed to be more about Lesnar proving he can beat Show and then getting into the RR match. I like this a lot. ***

Match 2 – The Dudley Boys Vs Lance Storm & William Regal – 4 years in a row, The Dudley Boys are in tag team action! Did they ever enter the RR match? I don’t think they did. Strange match. Dudley’s dominate like 90% of it with a very, very short and basic control segment from the heel team. “hot” tag, Bubba comes in and they just destroy the champs for a few minutes. Chief Morley (Val Venis) tries to distract the ref so Regal can use the knucks. 3-D to him instead, D-Von grabs the knucks and knocks out Storm for the win. New champs. Though I believe they get stripped of the belts the next night. This could have been so much more. **

Match 3 – Dawn Marie Vs Torrie Wilson – NO.

Match 4 – Triple H Vs Scott Steiner – It’s time for one of the most talk about matches of all time. Not because it’s good, but because it’s so god awful!!! Triple H came back in 2002 bulky as shit and wasn’t as mobile as before. He was having bad match after bad match with just about everyone. His 2003 is wildly regarded as a dreadful year for him. Steiner was never a god in the ring, and when he bulked up in the late 90’s he got even worse too. Plus he had a foot injury that wasn’t fully healed when he joined WWE. So HHH is on the worst run of his career. Steiner is injured. This COULDN’T be anything other than terrible. Just a shame that Steiner essentially took the heat for their matches being bad. TAKES TWO TO TANGO. Triple H was having bad matches with SHAWN MICHAELS. Steiner most definitely didn’t deserve to take all the heat, but he wasn’t fucking Stephanie so what ya gonna do? OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX! Match is terrible. DUD.

Match 5 – Chris Benoit Vs Kurt Angle – A match that a lot of people consider to be the GOAT. Or at the very least one of the best ever. And then there are people who believe it’s ok at best. Once upon a time if you asked me what the 3 greatest matches ever were, I’d probably have told you Undertaker/HBK HIAC, Undertaker/Angle NWO 06… and this match. I’ve since lowered my opinion of this one but still consider it to be a great contest. However my taste in wrestling has changed vastly over the last few years and it would be interesting to see how I feel about this match now, considering some of the people who don’t think much of it are people whose opinions are usually similar to mine. Starts off good at least, both guys look vicious and want to beat the shit out of each other, and Benoit comes out on top because he’s probably a better “brawler” than Angle at the time. Nice DDT on the apron from Benoit, shades of Regal last year. Transition spot into Angle’s control segment was a little odd though. Benoit goes for a diving headbutt and misses… and I thought “yeah, perfect time for Angle to get in control!”. Instead 10 seconds later Benoit has Angle in a Sharpshooter. Angle gets the ropes, then hits an overhead belly to belly… and THAT leads to Angle controlling. Ok lol. This match has been called “robotic” at times due to them seemingly going through the motions and being “too smooth” with reversals and transitions and whatnot that make everything look fake and planned out and co-operative as opposed to any combination of Regal/Benoit/Finlay where every hold and counter is fought for. Half way into the match I really can’t say I agree with that, just because there isn’t really anywhere for them TO have smooth reversals and counters or anything where it could be done “better” (depending on your preferences. For me I love the gritty nature of Finlay/Benoit/Regal). Then they seem to go into a big counter hold counter hold finishing stretch and THIS is where it definitely deserves the “robotic” label. Now don’t get me wrong, seeing 2 guys countering moves and whatnot can be extremely fun and exciting to watch… but when it comes to submission holds and anything done on the mat, being smooth makes everything look far to unrealistic and can take me out of the match a little. And of course when it comes to the submission holds, they lock them in so many times and counter so many times, it’s hard to get excited over them after a while because you expect them to be countered and don’t think they will end the match because, well, they’ve managed to survive the hold long enough already lol. Also, I honestly think that between this, HHH/Steiner and Brock/Show, we may have seen at least 50 suplexes on this PPV so far! Best part of the match is probably the crowd giving Benoit a standing ovation after the match despite the fact he lost. A great organic moment that unfortunately WWE would exploit and attempt to force in the future. So the match overall? Well it’s nowhere near as good as I remembered it to be. Or maybe it’s the exact same as I remembered it, only know I don’t enjoy this kind of match as much as I once did. I could go on and on about how I prefer the more gritty stuff from Benoit/Finlay/Regal, but this match didn’t have to do that to be great like they are. It could easily have been as good (albeit in a different way), but that finishing stretch that essentially lasted half of the match featuring dull counters and nonstop submission holds that never looked like they could truly end the match (ironic that the match DOES end in submission) bring it down for me. ***1/4.

Match 6 – 30 Man Royal Rumble Match – Jericho won a battle royal or something on Raw to pick his number, and he wanted to be #1 so he could win from that position and prove he’s better than HBK. However Vince had already given HBK the #1 spot, so Jericho had to settle for #2! HBK comes out to the ring, Jericho’s music hits and… Christian! Jericho comes in from the crowd, attacks HBK from behind, busts him open then throws him out! And thus their feud picks up some nice heat leading into WM 19. Some really great action early on with guys like Jericho, Edge, Mysterio, Christian, Tajiri and the Hardy Boys. This is the first RR since the brand split and we get a nice little standoff between both brands at one point. Say what you want about the brand split, but if done correctly I think it could have been a great feud for WWE. They did a couple of good angles with it (Survivor Series 05 for example), but other than that they kinda sucked at it, and now they still claim to have brands but completely ignore the split. Fun moments with Christian and Matt Hardy (heels at the time) trying to buddy up to their “brothers” (putting it in “” because Edge & Christian aren’t really brothers, something like legit shocked me when I found out), only for Edge & Jeff having none of it. Matt Hardy has a great performance, lasting quite a while and having some fun moments with Shannon Moore (his MF’er, Matt Follower lol) on the outside preventing him from being eliminated. Man, Rikishi is lethal with that superkick. Takes about 9 guys out with it lol. Nobody eliminated with it, but all taken down lol. Jericho lasts longer than anyone overall, but HBK shows up again to try and get some revenge… and TEST of all people throws out Jericho! Brock Lesnar is #29, and he eliminates both Team Angle at the same time… then F-5’s Matt Hardy out of the ring and onto Team Angle! Awesome. HE MAY BE THE BIGGEST, AND THE BADDEST, OF AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLL TIME! A returning Undertaker is #30 and everyone gonna get GOT. Awesome callback to last year’s RR as Maven dropkicks Undertaker from behind again… but doesn’t eliminated him! Undertaker hits a chokeslam and out goes the Tough Enough winner. Kane eliminates his tag partner RVD, and Undertaker looks to get on the same page as Kane once again only to eliminate him! Undertaker and Lesnar are the final 2, with Lesnar getting in from behind after Undertaker eliminates Batista, and Brock wins! This is a super fucking fun match. Lots of great talent, nicely worked brand split feud, some cool moments and an awesome return from Undertaker, and Lesnar winning was great too. ***3/4.

2002 Royal Rumble

Original theme was “cocky” by Kid Rock. But of course the Anthology set gives us some crappy generic shite in place of it.

Match 1 – The Dudley Boys Vs Tazz & Spike – Mmmmmm Stacy. LOL Tazz gets a back suplex/neckbreaker double team move done to him on the floor. Then Spoke gets it in the ring. He’s neck is fooked from being 3-D’d in the parking lot last week. Tazz it out on the outside. Instead of the back suplex/neckbreaker combo… why not a 3-D and get it over with? Because they wanna FUCK him up, that’s why! DICK MURDOCH MENTION. Spike takes one hell of a beating, but not for too long unfortunately. Tazz gets the tag and SUPLEXES THE SHIT out of The Dudley Boys. TAZZMISSION ON STACY. TAZZMISSION ON D-VON. Match is over. Well this was fun. Very short, but The Dudley’s put on a great beating on Spike in the time they got, then Tazz fucked shit up when he got in and managed to retain the tag titles. With more time this could have been pretty awesome. **3/4.

Match 2 – William Regal Vs Edge – A VERY underrated series of matches. They wrestle at Vengeance, her, then NWO and have 3 great, physical matches. Ref finds some brass knucks down Regal’s groin region. KNEE TREMBLER about a minute into the match. Not his finisher yet though, so Edge doesn’t sell it like death lol. I like how Edge goes after Regal’s nose early on, since he destroyed it with a DDT on a chair a while back. Regal has some of the most awesome suplexes ever that we don’t really ever see anyone else do, at least not in the likes of WWE and TNA. Maybe Japan. Man, if you don’t come out of this match loving Regal, then you suck! Or don’t like this kind of unique physical style. Either way you suck lol. DOUBLE ARM UNDERHOOK POWERBOMB. DDT ON THE APRON. Honestly don’t think Edge ever wrestled this physical before or after the series with Regal, which is a shame because he probably looked better in these matches than he did for the majority of his career imo. I wish Regal had more of a chance to work with upper mid-card/main event guys in his career. A 15 minute competitive match with Cena? Would probably be some of Cena’s best stuff. Match with Lesnar? Eddie Guerrero? UNDERTAKER? Man, the possibilities. Shame we didn’t get to see those. BREAK HIS NECK REGAL! Gotta love the fans. A second pair of knucks, and BAM, out goes Edge. NEW CHAMP. Great match. ***3/4.

Match 3 – Jazz Vs Trish Stratus – Women’s title. Trish has a bad hand. PURPLE PUPPIES. A BIG SPLASH RIGHT ON THE PUPRPLE PUPPIES. Another physical match, this time from the women! Jazz is one of the more TOUGH female wrestlers, so Trish has to take some hard shots and big bumps here, and she does it all well. Then Trish wins with a bulldog (ordinary one, she did the Stratusfaction one from the ropes earlier and Jazz kicked out). Short, but decent. **.

Match 4 – Ric Flair Vs Mr McMahon – Street fight between the two owners of the company. I remember this sucking. Hope I like it this time around. 1992 RR winner Vs 1999 RR winner! Both former WWF champions too! Flair hasn’t wrestled in nearly a year, and Vince has the POWER advantage allowing him to control the early stages. But it seems that Vince having the upper hand just motivates Flair to come back, until the power of Vince comes back into play. LMAO at Vince’s face while he’s getting chopped. Flair bleeds because, you know, he’s FLAIR. Vince is a great DICK with his beatdown on Flair, doing it in front of his family and shit. Then using the figure four too. PIPE. LOW BLOW. SHOT TO THE HEAD WITH A MONITOR. Love how they show the replay of the monitor shot with a second monitor that Flair grabs and throws down. Great shot. Vince is bleeding now, and he drags him over to his kids and gets them to take photos. Awesome. PIPE TO VINCE’S HEAD. FIGURE FOUR. FLAIR WINS. FLAIR WINS. This was great. Crazy to think that I didn’t like it before. ***1/4.

Match 5 – The Rock Vs Chris Jericho – First and ONLY time the Undisputed WWF Title was defended at the RR! I remember trying to watch this back when it happened, then again a couple of times when I bought the Anthology box set. I kept falling asleep legitimately and could never get through it. Not because it sucked, but because for some reason I always got tired when watching it (actually yawned while writing that LOL). Jericho tells Rock to bring it. Rock punches him in the face. LOL. Poor Jericho. His title run was just so bad. He was made to look like shit. The entire build up to this match was built around EVERYONE assuming that Rock was gonna win, so they would tell him they looked forward to facing him at WM when they won the RR. Then nobody saw him beating Austin at NWO. Then the HHH WM match was build around HHH and Stephanie, with Jericho being Steph’s bitch. ASK HIM. Jericho in control isn’t really interesting, but there is more back and forth stuff than a Jericho control segment anyway (because Jericho can’t look better than The Rock for too long…). Christian & Storm try to interfere, Rock takes them both out but walks into a Rock Bottom! People’s Elbow attempt from Jericho too, but Rock launches him out of the ring instead, and then BAM, Rock Bottom through the table. HE LOOKS LIKE THE SCORPION KING! Match just seemed to go on and on and on and on and was in finishing stretch mode for like half of it lol. Lots of good stuff, but not nearly as great as I remembered. ***1/2.

Match 6 – 30 Man Royal Rumble Match – One of the most star studded RR matches ever. Undertaker, Kane, HHH, Austin, Angle, Big Show, Mr Perfect, Booker T, RVD, Goldust etc. Some great talent, some great returns (Goldust and Perfect being the best, shame Perfect got fired a few months later), and some great moments. Rikishi is #1, and the returning Goldust is #2. Goldust might be the only person who wants to get a Stinkface. BOSSMAN. He returned not too long ago. Not really sure why.  BRADSHAW. Love him just running over people with the Clothesline from Hell. STINKFACE TO BOSSMAN. I remember when he “threw up” on Michael Cole I think it was after taking one. He doesn’t throw up here, but he does end up being eliminated. Ring fills up a bit and OMG WHAT A CLOTHESLINE FROM HELL TO STORM. So yeah, ring fills up a little but everyone there are just jobbers for UNDERTAKER to dominate. Storm and Al Snow have a nice little battle on the apron. Undertaker as a heel was beyond EPIC in late 01/half of 02. One of my all time favourite runs of any wrestler ever. Matt and Jeff are the next 2 entrants, returning to action after Undertaker too them both out (and LITA too). He eliminates them both, but along with Lita they don’t leave and end up distracting the Dead Man enough for MAVEN to dropkick the Phenom out of the ring! Maven looks like he’s king of the world… then he realises just what he’s done and oh man… Undertaker KILLS that kid. Awesome brawl. Scotty 2 Hotty comes out during this, and gets a right hand from Undertaker that knocks him out for a while LOL. Match essentially starts again now as we go back to just 2 people and then slowly fill the ring up until Austin channels his 1997 self and dominates. Then HHH comes in and IT’S ON. They fight each other, then work together to eliminate anyone else who comes in. Stuff with Hurricane is hilarious. MR PERFECT. Love his theme. Guy in 2002 was still better than most of the roster. Once he gets in, the ring begins to fill up again rather than being eliminated one by one by Austin and HHH. Austin, HHH, Kane, Big Show, Perfect and Angle are all in the match at the same time at one point. Kane picks Show up, walks him to the ropes and dunks him out! Impressive elimination, but it took so much out of Kane that Angle hits a modified Angle Slam to eliminate him. Angle and HHH are the final 2, and HHH wins. Extremely predictable finish, but yeah, a great fucking match still. One of the best Rumbles ever. ****1/2.

2001 Royal Rumble

Time to find out if this awesome event holds up!

Match 1 – Edge & Christian Vs The Dudley Boys – Some great tag team action to kick us off! Belts are on the line too. Dudley’s took a beating on both Raw and SD leading up to this show, so WWE logic tells us that The Dudley Boys are getting the win tonight lol. Good team work from E&C, going after D-Von’s head which was injured in the attacks last week. Hot tag is really a HOT TAG with the crowd going fucking nuts. Great finishing stretch with some awesome near falls that don’t require them using finishing moves. E&C getting cocky and trying to do the WASSSSUUUP headbutt backfires and The Dudley Boys land a 3-D and become new champs! Everything you could want in a tag match and a hot opener for the show too. Not the best tag match going or anything, add another 10 minutes and it probably could have reached those levels. ***1/4.

DREW CAREY. I’m a fan. Love Whose Line is it Anyway? and The Drew Carey Show. The All Star Improv shows that he is plugging here are great too. His stuff with HHH and Stephanie is pretty great.

APA. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. RR entrant numbers of course. The world needs more APA. CRASH HOLLY. He’s come to tell them that even though they’re friends, he’s gonna throw them out if he gets the chance. AND THEY CALL US DRUNKS! God I love the APA.

Match 2 – Chris Benoit Vs Chris Jericho – Ladder match for the IC title. FUCK YES. These guys started feuding back in 2000 leading into WM (along with Angle). Did a couple of months after that too, then moved on to other things but every so often they’d have some interaction, which leads back to this “blow off” match (they would eventually team after WM). They have the long rivalry and plenty of HATE~! to build upon. Some great ladder spots, and holy FUCK at Benoit’s dive through the ropes, where he goes head first into a chair that Jericho holds up. Looked and sounded SICK, and probably didn’t help Benoit… XFL MENTION. This match essentially takes the original classics between HBK and Razor, with the one on one action and plenty of WRESTLING in between spots, then mixes it with the tag matches we’d started to see (E&C, Dudleys, Hardys) and throws in big sick spots like they were giving us. All these combined give us perhaps the greatest singles ladder match ever. May have to give HBK/Razor SS 95 another watch to see which I prefer (WM 10 would definitely be just below this one). ****3/4.

TRISH AND DREW CAREY. He’s trying to come on to her. She’s not interested, she’s doing Vince. Vince walks in and says he can impress Trish by… ENTERING THE ROYAL RUMBLE. I’m marking out, bro!

Match 3 – Chyna Vs Ivory – Women’s title match. Guess the world needed a piss break. Val gave Chyna a piledriver and she “injured her neck and nearly had to retire”. Story of this match is that Chyna might have come back too early. Best part of this feud (aka the only good thing) was Ivory mocking Chyna and doing a parody of her sit down interview with JR. Chyna dominates Ivory, then hits that shitty elbow (backflip makes it more powerful!) and collapses with her neck. Ivory wins. Commentators act like someone died. Fuck off. DUD.

STEPHANIE~! She needs her hair fixed. TRISH~! Stephanie says she will have no problem touching her. HLA!!!

Harvey Wippleman hands Drew some wrestling gear. Drew meets Kane. Not for the last time tonight!

D-Lo and Chaz with Tiger Ali whatshisname. Trying to decide who will be in the RR. None of them will be because they got replaced by DREW CAREY. Ha.

Match 4 – Kurt Angle Vs Triple H – WWF Title time. Trish is out with Angle, and Stephanie with HHH. Fun start to this with Angle outwrestling THE GAME. HHH can only turn the tide by turning the match into a fight on the outside. With HHH in control, he goes back to his early style of being more “technical” and begins to work over the leg of the champ. HHH uses the ropes of leverage during a figure four, so Trish gets in the ring to try and tell the ref, leading to Stephanie dragging her out and they both CAT FIGHT. Match stops for all of this lol. WWF Title match on the Royal Rumble PPV is just to build to a women’s match at the next PPV! LOL! The distraction allows Kurt to recover a little and get back into the match. RAZOR’S EDGE BY TRIPLE H. FUCKING EPIC. Kurt has a bad leg. So he tries to go for a moonsault. TWICE. First time is countered into the Razor’s Edge, second time actually hits. And doesn’t break HHH’s arm, so that’s a plus. Still a fucking stupid move. In fact, has Kurt EVER done a moonsault when it wasn’t fucking stupid to do so? The answer is no, btw. LMAO, Earl Hebner gets his head smashed into the steel steps. TWICE. Austin costs HHH the title, revenge for a few weeks ago when HHH cost Austin the belt. Good match, not as great as I remembered, but still really good. ***1/2.

Lame Rock promo. He tries to be funny. He fails.

Match 5 – 30 Man Royal Rumble Match – #1 is Jeff Hardy, #2 is… BULL BUCHANAN. Matt and Jeff end up fighting themselves. DREW CAREY. Hardy’s eliminate each other. KANE. Drew Carey + Kane was awesome. Tries to make friends with him. Tries to bribe him. Is about to get Chokeslammed until Raven shows up for the save. Drew eliminates himself so he gets away unharmed lol. One of my favourite parts in a RR match. Screw the haters. Love the hardcore aspect of this RR match. Plenty of fun shit going on until Kane goes crazy and eliminates everyone. BIG SHOW return was awesome. Chokeslams the fuck out of everyone… and then Rock eliminates him in under 2 minutes. So Show chokeslams him through a table lol. I remember watching this on channel 4 back in the day, and there was an ad break just as Big Show was making his entrance! UNDERTAKER AND KANE BACK TOGETHER. Poor Scotty 2 Hotty. He has terrible luck in RR matches. He looks terrified as he has to enter the match alone with just Undertaker and Kane waiting for him. HAKU RETURN. Austin gets attacked and busted open by HHH on his way to the ring, but still makes it unto the match and… wins. Bah. Kane was awesome throughout. Lasting nearly an hour and eliminating 11 men, breaking the previous record of 10 by Austin in 1997. Took a bunch of chair shots to get him out. Made Kane look strong as shit, shame they didn’t really follow it up as he ended up tagging with Undertaker, but hey, that was awesome too.  Immensely fun RR match, one of the best. Kane’s performance is great, Drew Carey was fun, some cool returns, Undertaker and Kane reuniting. ****1/2.

2000 Royal Rumble

I has super fond memories of this event! My first wrestling PPV in over 2 years at the time!

Match 1 – Kurt Angle Vs Tazz – Angle is undefeated, and this is Tazz’s debut for the company! It’s shot, but it’s fun. SUPLEXES. Tazz chokes out Angle, gets a big win in his debut, while Angle can still claim he’s undefeated due to the fact he was choked out and that’s illegal. Everybody wins! **.

Match 2 – The Dudley Boys Vs The Hardy Boys – First ever tag team tables match in the WWF! And honestly based on my memory (which I admit isn’t the best source lol), it’s probably still the best. Best tables match in general as well actually. Yeah, I love this match. Some great spots. Matt and Jeff jumping at the same time and landing on Bubba putting him through a table is great, especially with the camera angle as we don’t even see Jeff, he just flies across the screen and lands on Bubba. The spot with D-Von avoiding near death twice, resulting in both Hardy Boys putting themselves through tables is awesome. Tables, Ladders and Chairs are all used in this match too! Final spot is nice and memorable too, with Bubba falling through 2 tables then Jeff Swantoning D-Von through one for the win. It’s the first tag team tables match (first ever tables match in WWF then? Were there any singles ones before this?), and has a ton of unique spots, most of which were never replicated. Really helps the replay value of the match too imo.  ***3/4.

Match 3 (I guess?) – The Kat Vs Terri Vs Luna Vs Ivory Vs Jacqueline Vs B.B. Vs Mae Young – Miss Rumble Contest. A bunch of legends (and Tony Garea) are the judges. Lawler is the host. The Kat has the worst outfit by far. Bubble Wrap. Which looks terrible and isn’t revealing or anything haha. Terri looks great if you ignore her face. Ivory is nice. Jacky is alright. BB is hot. Luna can GTFO. Mae Young gets her tits out. Eeeewwww. She wins because all the judges are old people. DUD.

Match 4 – Chyna Vs Chris Jericho Vs Hardcore Holly – First ever triple threat match at a RR event! IC title on the line. Jericho & Chyna are currently co champs. This is kinda slow and not very good. Chyna sucks. Literally from what I hear (no way I’m watching her pornos lol, so I’ll take other people’s word). Anywho, the match is slow because she’s terrible and can’t really go at a fast pace. Plus most offence done to her or she does looks bad too. LOL at Holly having to take a Pedigree from her. At least he kicks out. Jericho wins. Didn’t care for this one. *.

Match 5 – The New Age Outlaws Vs APA – APA. Fuck YES. One of my all time favourite teams. NAO were awesome too. With the tag division hitting an all time high in 2000 (well, since the mid-late 80’s anyway), I just wish the NAO could have been around to join in (Billy got injured a few weeks after this). E&C, Hardys, Dudleys, T&A (LMFAO, wrote that as TNA first), 2 Cool and some others all did great, and Road Dogg/X-Pac were a good team but throw the NAO into that time too and yeah, could have been epic. This match is super shot but good GOD is it fun. FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN. APA just massacre the tag champs, with NAO taking some great bumps (BIlly’s bump from the Clothesline from Hell is probably the best thing he ever did). X-Pac interferes, kicks Bradshaw in the head and allows Billy to hit the Fameasser for the win. Under 3 minutes long, and might be the greatest match ever under 3 minutes lol. **.

Match 6 – Triple H Vs Cactus Jack – Fuck yes, time for the epic street fight over the title. Build up for this is just awesome. If anyone gets the chance to, go back and watch Raw and SD in 2000 to see how all this comes together. The SD where Mankind “transforms” into Cactus Jack is tremendous. The Raw before that which leads to Cactus returning is awesome. 2000 in general was just fucking awesome. I don’t think there was a single bad show all year. Even if a show didn’t have a “great” match on it, you’d damn sure get a handful of fun matches at the very least, along with some great promos and segments. Oh how I miss those days. Today we might get 1 good match per Raw and SD, then the rest is pure shite (which is even worse now Raw is 3 hours). RR Anthology edits haven’t bothered me much at all so far (except for the one edit of Bossman’s theme), but this event is where it gets bad. Different music for the opening video package. Different music for the build up video of this match, and different fucking music for Cactus Jack. The fuck? Plenty of blurring out the WWF logo too because it seems to be plastered EVERYWHERE at this event lol, but I can manage with that. It’s the audio edits that annoy me. Their choice in music the first time around was great and really helped MAKE those video packages. Replacing it with generic music is terrible. JR reminds me of my grandma at one point, when she tries to say someone’s name and runs through everyone else’s name in the family before getting to it. Manki…Mic… CACTUS JACK. DING DONG THE CHALLENGER MAY BE DEAD. One of the best street fights ever no doubt. Cactus is the MAN in it too. HHH may have been champion a couple of times by now. Feuded with Austin and McMahon in main events. But it was THIS match and MICK FOLEY who truly got him over as a main eventer. Looking back I’m not sure if we should be thanking him for that or not lol. Plenty of blood here, and not just for the sake of it. This has the story and HATE and buildup that a match should have for there to be the kind of blood and weapon shots used in it. Man, that gash in HHH’s leg is pretty sick. I do find it amusing that this match is NO DQ, absolutely anything goes… but a 2×4 in barbed wire is TOO MUCH DAMMIT. So much so they have to replace it with a fake one when it comes to HHH’s time to be hit with it LOL. Last year, the announce table broke far too early. This year, it barely even breaks! Repeat of last year with Foley getting handcuffed. Luckily HHH isn’t a cunt like Rock and doesn’t go to town on his head with a steel chair. Rock makes the save and a cop releases Cactus. PEDIGREE. KICK OUT. THUMBTACKS. PEDIGREE IN THE THUMBTACKS. Epic match. Pure awesomesauce. ****3/4.

Match 7 – 30 Man Royal Rumble Match – LOL, D-Lo and Grand Master Sexy as #1 and #2. Pretty piss poor haha. Tom is Gay. I don’t know who this Tom is, but he’s gay. Gotta love signs in the AE. PORK was my favourite. If you watch back a bunch of shows from the AE you’ll see it numerous times. KAI-EN-TAI. Not in the match, but they get eliminated anyway. A bunch of times. Taka’s face smashes on the floor at one point and he’s injured for a couple of months. Rikishi comes in and he becomes the main focus of the match for a while, eliminating the most guys this year. 2 Cool and Rikishi are left alone at one point and they dance, and fuck me it’s the most over thing ever. And then Rikishi throws his buddies out lol. Rikishi Vs Viscera still makes me mark out a little lol. Not as much as BOB FUCKING BACKLUND. Even my 11 year old self marked out for BOB back in the day lol. A group effort finally takes care of Rikishi and the ring starts to fill up. Some good, some meh guys. Better than the previous year that’s for sure. Road Dogg is awesome when he just lays down on the floor and holds onto the bottom rope hoping nobody bothers him. Fans get bored and chant “We want Rocky” for a good few minutes before he shows up. I don’t give a fuck. BIG SHOW gets a big reaction because they KNOW shit is about to go down. MEAN STREET POSSE. They eliminate Farooq, then come back out for Bradshaw but he takes care of them, only to have the Outlaws come from behind and eliminate him! Final Four are Kane, X-Pac, Show and Rock. X-Pac gets eliminated but the refs miss it, and he is able to eliminate KANE of all people before being eliminated a second time. Show takes a People’s Elbow and NO SELLS the fuck out of it (and why shouldn’t he? It’s a terrible move and nothing more than a basic elbow). AWESOME Chokeslam to Rock, then he throws him out! Rock holds on though, and despite the fact ROCKY’S FEET HIT THE GROUND FIRST, he’s given the win. Bah. Solid match. Gets a little dull in parts though, so certainly not one of the best. ***.

1999 Royal Rumble

Oh god.

Match 1 – Road Dogg Vs The Big Bossman – Oh god. Bear Hug. Urgh. Only good part was Road Dogg screaming “OHHH SHIIIIT” when he gets caught in it. Bossman makes a lazy cover, and Lawler responds with “BAD COP. NO DONUT FOR YOU!” LMAO. Match sucked. DUD.

Match 2 – Billy Gunn Vs Ken Shamrock – THINK ABOUT HIS HAIRY BUTT RIGHT IN YOUR SISTER’S FACE. Some ok stuff here. Literally nothing worth writing about though. Val appearance. Shamrock still wins. *.

Match 3 – Gangrel Vs X-Pac – This is fun. Not great, but a fun sprint that doesn’t go too long. Teddy Long botches a pin at one point by counting to 3 when it was supposed to be a 2 count… then pretending he only counted 2 and letting the match continue until the real finish lol. **.

Shane McMahon. With some really strange shitty theme music. He introduces Luna. Ok.

Match 4 – Sable Vs Luna – Oh god. Women’s title match. Strap match. This is gonna be terrible. So I’m skipping it. NO.

Match 5 – Mankind Vs The Rock – I Quit match for the WWF title. STEEL STAIRS INTO THE BACK, WHAT A CHAIR SHOT. Vintage botch commentary from Cole! LOL, an announcer botches, followed by the announce table! Breaks while both guys are just stood on it, before they can do the Rock Bottom spot. YOU GO PISS YOURSELF. Liked how the turned out the lights when Mankind takes the bump into the electrical equipment. Little things like that add to the realism of the match, something I doubt we’d get today. So this match is most known for THOSE chairshots. You know, the ones to Mankind’s unprotected head. Where Rock nails him MORE than they had agreed. FUCK YOU ROCK. Overall though, match is a good brawl. ***3/4. Bright spot on one of the single worst PPV’s ever.

Match 6 – 30 Man Royal Rumble Match – Austin is #1, McMahon is #2. $100,000 reward to whoever eliminates Austin. There are literally only about 3 people out of the 30 who realistically have a chance of winning this match. And none of them win. Match is 90% filled with JOBBERS. Austin and McMahon end up brawling backstage, Austin gets sent to the hospital, then comes back at the end to take out McMahon but McMahon ends up eliminating him and winning the RR match. Yeah. Worst. Royal Rumble Match. Ever. Highlight is definitely GILBERG though. DUD.

1998 Royal Rumble

First PPV in 1998, following a number of incidents in 97 that were starting to gain the company momentum.

Match 1 – Vader Vs The Artist Formally Known as Goldust – Ever need proof that Vince Russo is NOT a creative genius, look no further than the massacre of the Goldust character (one that Russo himself had a HUGE hand in btw…). Shitty gimmicks aside, on paper this should be great. Dustin is great, Vader is great, they’ve had great matches in the past back in WCW. Then again… Dustin was having problems at this time which affected his work, and Vader was never allowed to be VADER in the WWF. That and the heel/face roles are reversed. Goldust takes what might be the worst steel ring steps bump I have ever witnessed. Goldust kisses Vader, so Vader clotheslines him straight, or at least attempts to. Finish sees Vader hitting a Vader Bomb with Luna on his back. Not as bad as I remember, but has nothing on their WCW matches. **.

Austin arrives, ignore Michael Cole. Godwins… or Southern Justice I think they go by now(?) chase after Austin, who is a marked man. Whoever stops him winning the RR or something gets money.

SUNNY. Short shorts. Nice. As a ginger, being out in the sun for too long isn’t the best thing, but I’d happily risk getting burnt to spend some time in Sunny. Too much information? Tough!

Match 2 – 3 Minis Vs 3 Other Minis – Not sure if a match or Jerry Lawler challenge for most bad midget jokes… either that or an excuse to put Sunny in shorts. I choose to believe the shorts thing. Match is filled with arm drags and head scissors. Then the babyface minis win. 1/4*.

Backstage and the Nation of Domination are looking for Austin too. They decide to send in Mark Henry first so he can prove himself. They charge into his locker room and find a giant foam middle finger in a chair waiting for them. Mike Tyson is sat watching the event in a skybox with Vince and Shane.

Rock getting interviewed before his IC title defence. They show footage of the free for all show where all the NOD members argue over who will eliminate Austin. Nothing worth mentioning from Rock’s promo. No surprise there.

Match 3 – The Rock Vs Ken Shamrock – Intercontinental title is on the line here. Not too much to say here other than its actually a good match. Shamrock looks like a competent pro wrestler, and Rock isn’t nearly as annoying and shitty in the ring as he would later become. Though he does rake the eyes of Shamrock about 20 times because apparently he doesn’t know any other heel ways of stopping the momentum of his opponents. D-Lo and Kama show up and get knocked on their arses… well… D-Lo gets his leg caught in the ropes for about a minute lol. Rock uses some brass knucks, Shamrock kicks out and no sells, hitting a Belly to Belly to win the IC title! Until Rock tells the ref he got hit with knucks, and the ref checks Shamrock and finds them on him, and reverses the decision. Had to rewind to see how they got there, turns out Rock put them there after he used them. I quite liked that idea. Rock can’t get caught with them if they are in his opponents crotch region, and should things go wrong (like Shamrock kicking out), he has a great way to cheat his way out of a loss. ***1/4.

Backstage, Shamrock attacks The Rock in the locker room. Los Boricuas are also backstage and now looking for Austin too. They attack some bald guy and it turns out to be someone from the DOA who brawl with Los Boricuas. Fuck, how many stables did WWF have back then? And how many were actually good? Too many and not enough is the answer.

Match 4 – Legion of Doom Vs New Age Outlaws – Tag titles on the line now. LOD want to MURDER the Outlaws following a vicious beating a while back which resulted in Hawk’s legendary Mohawk being cut, and Animal powerbombed through the announce table. Animal walks to the ring like he’s shit himself. Wow, NWA and AWA mention. Outlaws get the shit kicked out of them in the early going. Road Dogg’s mouth is busted open. Oh wow, Hawk applies an STF that looks worse than Cena’s. Seriously! After some heel tactics the Outlaws gain control, and Road Dogg gets revenge for being busted open by literally kicking Animal while he’s down. Repeatedly lol. Then Hawk gets pissed off and starts manhandling the tag champs until he goes shoulder first into the ring post. Now BOTH of LOD are down and hurting! So what do the Outlaws do? Handcuff Hawk to the ring post of course! I like how the ref doesn’t give a shit and just carries on refereeing the match like normal. Animal manages to hold his own for a little while and nearly wins the match, but Road Dogg cracks him in the back with a chair repeatedly and gets DQ’d. They really wear out Animal’s back, which I *think* was genuinely injured at this time, and Hawk finally breaks free to come to the aid of his partner. Match is nothing special but certainly fun. **1/2.

Mildred wins a pickup truck.

Match 5 – 30 man Royal Rumble Match – So Austin is the big focus of this match, with McMahon putting a bounty on his elimination. I wonder who will win… Anywho, CACTUS FUCKING JACK carrying weapons is the first entrant! All hail Mick Fucking Foley. And #2 is… TERRY FUCKING FUNK. All hail Terry Fucking Funk. Ok, so he’s Chainsaw Charlie here. Which means Funk carries a chainsaw around and puts a stocking over his head. Only Terry could do that and still remain the greatest thing ever. They destroy each other with chairs. Funk removes the stocking so Cactus can see its him under there. Because it’s the greatest disguise since Superman’s glasses. They both take turns at letting each other hit them with chairs. Crazy, awesome bastards.OMG ITS TOM BRANDY! TOM BRANDY! TOM BRANDY! He gets eliminated immediately. Damn, I put money on him to win. Rock is in next, and he went from looking good in his IC title match to looking fucking terrible here. Awful kicks, awful punches. Foley and Funk beat the shit out of him, but only knock him through the ropes rather than over dammit. JARRETT IS NOTHING BUT A BACK JUMPER. His man boobs must be freezing. Ahh Kurgan. The Great Khali of his time. Tall and useless, comes in as a big unstoppable monster, then becomes a dancing joke. If Andre’s body didn’t let him down in his later years, I wonder if he would have been “getting down with it” at some point… MANKIND. Didn’t Foley already enter? Yes he did! Which makes this whole thing awesome. Don’t remember when he got eliminated though haha. He eliminates Funk, who eliminated Cactus… at some point. Goldust (in a new outfit) eliminates Mankind. I’m sad. If only some dude could cheer me up. Jarrett gets the biggest pop of his career… when Owen Hart eliminates him. Honky Tonk Man? Uhhhh ok. HHH and Chyna follow him out, and distract Owen Hart, hit him with a crutch (HHH was on crutches at this time), and eliminate him. DX really didn’t like the Hart family. LMFAO they show Owen run after HHH through the curtain… and he falls over. And Lawler acknowledges it. Ahmed Johnson comes out, and JR mentions that he’s had numerous injuries but he’s 100% now. He barely manages to slide in the ring and stand up. Looks fat and out of shape. Not as bad as his BIG T days in WCW though. Austin finally shows up, and everyone stops fighting each other and turns to the entrance way to meet him. He comes from behind, eliminates a few people… and everyone else IGNORES HIM. They built up the fact that EVERYONE is out to get him all through the PPV. Then when he comes out nobody gives a shit. Good job guys! THE ROCK AND KAMA, JUST WAILING ON EACH OTHER’S NOB HERE. JR is coming out with some funny shit lol. DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE LOVE! DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE LOVE! Austin wins. Christ this match seemed to last forever. Wiki claims its 55 minutes, but it could be wrong. Felt like 2 hours. Not the worst Rumble match by any means, but honestly the only highlights are Cactus and Funk battling at the start, then Foley entering the match 2 more times as Mankind and Dude Love. **3/4.

COLD STONE IS MY MAN! Mike Tyson can’t even say the name of his favourite wrestler.

Match 6 – Shawn Michaels Vs The Undertaker – WWF Title Casket Match time! Good god what a build up video package for this match. If only the AE was more like this… and less like the utter shite we mostly got (SWERVE~! TRANNY~! CHOPPY CHOPPY YOUR PEE PEE~! SWERVE~! MAKES NO SENSE~! SWERVE~! SWERVE~! SWERVE~! NO SENSE~! NO LOGIC~! SWERVE SWERVE SWERVE~!). Great display of power from Undertaker early on and then…. CRACK. Bye bye HBK’s back. See you in 4 years. Crazy that he didn’t feel anything until the day after. Kinda hard to watch him take all those back bumps afterwards when you know what happened to him lol. But I’m still able to watch and love this match regardless lol. They mention that Undertaker has only lost 1 casket match, to Yoko at the RR in 94. Uhhh… didn’t he lose to Goldust in 96? Man I love that piledriver on the steel steps. Did HBK do it to anyone else other than Undertaker and then Cena in 07? Undertaker pretty much has the match won and then… New Age Outlaws + Job Squa… no, Los Boricuas, show up to beat the hell out of him. Cue KANE to make the save… and then its SWERVE~! time. Undertaker loses, then gets locked in the casket, and then MY GOD THE CASKET’S ON FIRE! THE CASKET IS ON FIRE! UNDERTAKER IS IN THE CASKET AND ITS ON FIRE! Home Video exclusive shows the fire being put out… and NO UNDERTAKER inside! Where could he be? Yeah this rules. ****.

1997 Royal Rumble

Still remember the day I bought this on VHS lol.

Match 1 – Hunter Heart-Helmsley Vs Goldust – IC title match. Build up video sees Lawler ask Goldust if he’s queer. He says no and decks Lawler. I guess all that molesting men thing was just experimentation, right? LOL. HHH has Mr Hughes randomly with him. Brawl early on, and Goldust uses the ring steps and the ref doesn’t DQ him. Oh, it’s Earl “I make up my own damn rules” Hebner. Match is pretty dull. So much so they have Todd Pettengill interview someone in the audience. Felt like it lasted an hour. *.

RR interviews. Bret is determined to win. Mankind just wants to beat people up.

Match 2 – Farooq Vs Ahmed Johnson – Who WERE all those people in the original NOD? There were like 20 of them and only Farooq and Crush were wrestlers. JUOR GUING DURN. Gotta love Ahmed’s promo ability. Or general speaking ability. His wrestling ability is on par too. This match has been brewing for a long time according to Vince. Speaking of brewing for a long time, I need to toilet. And I’m back. Is this match No DQ? Because Ahmed used a chair while the ref was right there. Then again, the ref took it away so it must be illegal. What the fuck does it take to cause a DQ? All the NOD members piling into the ring and getting their arses kicked, apparently. BAD. 1/2*.

Match 3 – Vader Vs The Undertaker – Ahhh, two of my favourites (one being my all time fav of course), beating the fuck out of each other. Given some of the shit I’ve watched so far today (Impact and SD, first 2 matches of this show), I’m hoping to just get ANY kind of enjoyment out of a match. Vader and ‘Taker smashing each other in the face should do it. Some fun offence from both men… and Todd interviews some random fan who follows HBK across the country or something. She saved up money from babysitting. How many fucking babysitting jobs did she take to be able to follow HBK around? And why did we need to know about that? In the middle of a match? Not often you see Undertaker powerbombed. Or Vader powerslammed while jumping off the ropes. Fans are horrible, usually only making noise when a big move is hit. PAUL BEARER. JR: I see Paul Bearer!. Vince: I don’t see him THERE HE IS. Bearer cracks the Urn over Undertaker’s head, Vader hits the Vader Bomb from the corner and this one is over! Solid match, nothing too special though. Vader 93 Vs Undertaker 07 would be epic though. ***.

Austin RR interview. YOU TV GUYS ALWAYS GOT THE CAMERA WHERE YOU DON’T BELONG. LMFAO, it’s Bulldog. BECAUSE I’M BAZAAR.

Match 4 – Héctor Garza, Perro Aguayo & El Canek Vs Jerry Estrada, Heavy Metal & Fuerza Guerrera – They’re in Texas, so they decide to throw in a random Mexican 6 man match. Wow this fucking SUCKED. I actually used to think very highly of this match. I must have been high. Except I don’t get high. So I was drunk. That’s it. 2 guys flip about. Slowly and with little shit given. They each tag out. Repeat the flipping about slowly while not giving a shit. Tag out. They do that a few times, then someone randomly gets a win. The fans are silent until the match ends. They cheer because they are glad it’s over. DUD.

Match 5 – 30 Man Royal Rumble Match – #1 is none other than the awesome, the legendary, the amazing, the one and only… CRUSH. Maybe #2 will be good. It’s Ahmed Johnson.  BOTCH TIME. FAKE RAZOR. He doesn’t even get entrance music lol. He gets eliminated in seconds anyway. Johnson eliminates himself. Because he’s retarded. He sees Farooq and chases after him. Hey Ahmed, you could have gone UNDER the ropes and chased him still. Then come back later to possibly win the match. Oh well. I’m 16 years too late in telling him. LMAO, they have clock problems so nobody knows when someone is gonna enter. Austin is #4. He’s pretty badass here. I liked Austin’s character around this time, more so than in 98/99/00/01 when he was the uber popular babyface. BRITISH BULLDOG. HE’S GONNA WIN BECAUSE HE’S BAZAAR. Ring fills up. Half WWF guys, half AAA guys (that nobody gives a fuck about). Austin clears the ring. Bret’s music hits and Austin looks terrified. Lawler’s music hits. He says “it takes a King”, then gets in the ring, gets knocked out straight away, returns to the announce table “to know a King” and pretends that he never even entered lol. FUNK. MANKIND. FAKE DIESEL AKA KANE. 2 Cold FLASH FUNK. A young Rock. So mostly great talent in the ring lol. IT’S FUCKING VADER TIME BITCHES. GOAT #30… The Undertaker of course! Poor Fake Diesel is just stood in the corner minding his own business when Undertaker punches him in the face. So next year he comes back and sets a casket on fire with Undertaker in it. Austin wins despite being thrown out by Bret, but the refs didn’t see it. Fake Diesel is in the final four, but for some reason is excluded from the FINAL FOUR match at the next PPV. No wonder he went around setting people on fire a year later! First half of this match is pretty shitty, second half is really good. ***

Match 6 – Shawn Michaels Vs Sid – WWF Title time. HBK’s home town. Or state. Whatever. Fans still chant for SID. Take that, boy toy. Sid gets too much hate. He’s good. He knows how to draw heat, he knows how to get fans to cheer him, and he knows wrestling psychology. Nice back work from Sid, which will aid him when it comes to the POWERBOMB. He even uses a bear hug and I’m NOT pissed off. That’s a feat in itself. Oh and Sid has great facials too. LMAO at HBK’s parents sat watching looking bored shitless. His mum looks like “oh shit, did I leave the oven on?” and his dad is like “hmmm… I wonder how being bazaar was really going to help Bulldog win the RR…”. POWERBOMB ON THE FLOOR. Shawn practically no sells it. Chokeslam. Sid should have won but the ref was down. Bah. Camera to the back of Sid as revenge for Survivor Series, followed by SWEET CHIN MUSIC (minus the awesome call from Vince like we got at SS). New champ. Good match, enjoyable. **3/4.