The Undertaker Vs Brock Lesnar – Unforgiven 22/09/2002
One of the things I loved about Smackdown 2002/2003 is how a lot of the matches and feuds were mainly based around competition and being the best. No crazy Attitude Era style bullshit, which could be entertaining but also could be stupid as fuck, and got boring after a while too. Brock Lesnar was the young rookie with tremendous power and amazing amateur wrestling skills. The Undertaker was the legendary phenom who had been on top for the last 12 years. Lesnar had beaten the likes of the Hardy Boys, RVD, Hogan and even The Rock to become the KOTR (RVD) and WWE Champion (Rock). Now he would face his biggest challenge to date against The Undertaker. Simples!
Of course, they added some more to that to make it a little more interesting, since it WAS the main event feud for Smackdown. Undertaker’s wife at the time, Sara, was pregnant. Lesnar and Heyman brought up how Undertaker had his family to look after, but Lesnar considered the WWE Title family, and he would have to look after that. Cue Heyman being all creepy around Sara, Undertaker getting pissed off, and Lesnar cheapshotting the Dead Man and we have a personal feud in the making by doing very little really. Goes to show you that you don’t need to go all Vince Russo to create interesting storylines…
The match begins with Undertaker getting the better of Lesnar, showing his 18 years of experience (12 in WWF/E). Lesnar gets frustrated and the Dead Man capitalises on the mistakes the rookie is making. Nice simple start to the match, but extremely well executed! Again, just goes to show you that you don’t NEED crazy shit, whether it be storylines or SPOTZ~! to create a good match. It’s all about the storytelling, and sometimes the simplest stories are the best.
Undertaker is in firm control for the first 5 minutes or so, using his experience to his advantage. He knows when to use his strength and when to use his speed, and when to use his wrestling ability, to throw Lesnar off his game and remain in control. Unfortunately the wildcard for the match is Paul Heyman, the agent of Brock Lesnar, on the outside. One small distraction from Heyman and even The Undertaker loses focus (after Heyman nearly loses some teeth via a Big Boot lol).
The powerful Brock Lesnar locks his arms around the waist of The Undertaker and begins to squeeze as hard as he can, along with powering up the Dead Man and slamming him to the mat just like his amateur wrestling days. Again though, experience shines through and The Undertaker escapes, and begins to give Lesnar a taste of his own medicine as he works over the body with vicious rights and lefts.
But, just like Undertaker’s experience keeps coming back to help him out, the distraction of Heyman is there again to give Lesnar an opening, and he opens up Undertaker’s head with the WWE Title! It doesn’t quite work the way Brock would have hoped; instead Undertaker gets pissed off and unleashes hell on the champ.
One ref bump and Matt Hardy interference attempt later, and Lesnar is back in charge and going right after the open wound in Undertaker’s head.
Things start to get really crazy now with yet another ref bump, and its times like this that remind me of the HBK/Undertaker feud from 1997. I’ve said it a few times in the past, but the build up to the HIAC matches in both feuds are pretty similar. With the HBK feud, Ground Zero is the first match they have, which ends up becoming a crazy brawl with no winner, leading into a HIAC match between the two. Here, we get something similar with the ref constantly getting talking out, weapons getting involved, and then both men refusing to stop punching each other in the face causing a no contest, leading to a HIAC match between the two :).
Both the Ground Zero match and this match have pretty cool endings too. Ground Zero sees The Undertaker diving over the ropes onto the entire roster, just to get his hands on HBK. Here we see Undertaker launch Lesnar through the Unforgiven ring set.
So yeah, awesome match here. Not entirely sure which I prefer now; Ground Zero or this. Like I said, both are similar in how they help build up to HIAC matches, but both are executed very differently. The fight at the end of this one is probably better than the HBK brawl as both men can really go back and forth, whereas HBK was more about running away lol. The storytelling here was pretty great too, definitely better than the GZ match. Yeah, think I prefer this one now lol. Not only does it do an awesome job of building to HIAC, but it’s a fantastic match on its own too. It’s been so long since I saw it that I don’t remember is being anywhere near this good!
Rating: ****1/4