(Re)watching Terrible Shows

[The Gaffer]

19 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

Superbrawl 2000

Cheers for the suggestion @Gay as FOOK -

I felt bad so I bit the bullet and had a whack at a stinker in work. 

 

Bad Blood 2003 - 'Live' thoughts!

 

- Vignette hyping up tonight's blood feuds. It's a pay per view of personal grudges from Houston, Texas. Particular prominence is given to tonight's Hell in a Cell. I love that "It is a perverse. Vile. Diabolical. Structure" J.R. soundbyte.  

- IT'S TIME TO GET RAW! First up is the Dudleyz Vs. Chris Nowinski and Rodney Mack. Cut to past issue on Raw. Nowinski is backstage asking D-Von "why do you always get the tables when your white brother tells you to?" Alright, then. Nowinski - a brilliant natural heel from Tough Enough III - is wearing a broken Cody Rhodes face mask here which makes him look like a Bret Easton Ellis creation. All I can remember about Rodney Mack is that he was dating Jazz. The heels pick up the win in no time at all. Lifeless stuff. 

- The Redneck Triathlon gets under way with a recap of the wheel spins to decide tonight's contests on Sunday Night Heat. King can't wait for the pie eating contest. Neither can Ross. We get the burping contest underway backstage They're worked burps, playing from a soundboard. It's 2003, though, so Austin is shoot drunk. Bischoff concedes defeat with "Congratulations. See a doctor." Doubtless Vince is laughing his head off behind the camera.

- Test! Steiner! For Stacey!. Stacey gets the only pop. Test's off his testicle push and back to mid card heel mediocrity. Steiner's stock has cooled to where it will stay for the rest of his 'E run, although he's technically become a fan favourite as of late for being racist against the chickenshit, war hating French and for wanting to own Stacey in the good way a good wrestler can own a sexy lady. Test does some push ups in the ring for some heel heat, which gasses him for real. Steiner wins, but this is a story that would drag on until September's Unforgiving. 

- Bischoff shows off the pies for tonight's pie eating contest. The pie tonight is four attractive ladies, who positively beam at the prospect of receiving oral pleasure from the Texas rattlesnake and Easy E. Austin says he wants to pick which pie Eric eats. Eric says fine, I love 'em all. 

- Christian and Booker next. King's still mired in Booker being a dirty gangster. "What did you say Booker's mother was like, Ross, she do a good job with him?" Another nothing match, really, from the dullest period of both men's careers. Can't remember who won it, and it's just happened. 

- Nash is backstage taping his wrists so they don't snap off when he fist bumps. 

- It's the pie eating contest. Austin pulls a swerve by bringing out Moolah and Mae. No connection to the other four, presumably. Mae young gives Bischoff the bronco buster. Austin stuns her to forfeit the round. This is on my work computer. It's one of the worst things ever in wrestling that nobody talks about. 

- Kane & RVD versus those chickenshit French. Kane is getting disillusioned with everything. The de-masking and subsequent rampage - brilliant at the time - would carry Raw over the next two months without a PPV. The heels win. La Resistance can't work anything above a first month and the gym chain of moves, and Kane and RVD sure weren't going to help that.

- Goldberg Vs. Jericho. Not a bad story on this one. There's loads happening. 2002-2005 was all about vehicular homicide. Rock/Hogan, this, Heidenreich driving into 'Taker's hearse. The match isn't up to much though. Even with these two, there's just a whack of era Raw-itis off it. Both guys don't mean nearly as much as they could have. 

- Flair/Michaels is next. The build up package is great for this one with both men crying, Shawn explaining what Flair means to him etc in the wake of the great Flair/Triple H Raw match with the locker room pouring out etc. The whole thing has this beautiful sense of respect and dignity until Flair remembers he's a heel and goes to town on Shawn not being the man he is, being a Ric Flair wannabe etc. Unfortunately the match doesn't quite measure up, though, going just about ten minutes.  It's well performed, but it just wasn't the place or time. Fortunately everyone had forgotten by the time WrestleMania 24 rolled around. 

- Three Stages of Hell finishes with a singing competition. Bischoff mimes to his own theme music, even though I'm fairly sure he's the one singing on it? Suddenly it becomes a hog pen match instead. Oh look, there's a hogpen! It was on the roulette board I guess. Bischoff gets chucked in to make the fans happy and end one of the worst angles of all time. 

- Main event time! The cell comes down as we recap what got Nash and The Game together tonight. They had an absolutely nothing brawl at Judgement Day 2003 after one of Triple H's "You're my buddy! Just kidding, I'm going to murder you" angles. The refs refuse to work the match, leading to Austin booking Foley as the ref. He fell off the cell once, so he knows all about it. This is Foley's weaselling in for an eventual - hugely succesful - return to put Randy Orton over. One of the brilliant, brilliant things from 2004. 

- The crowd isn't buying that Nash can win this thing and Triple H is at his lowest ebb ever - where not even his match quality of fitness could seemingly cover for the "You're only being pushed because you're marrying the bosses daughter" arguments. To be honest I think it's an enjoyable enough brawl. Neither man can do much but there's a toolbox. Some toolbox spots. And you get the sense because they're mates that they are really trying to make it work. It's a bloody, NWA style hoss battle. The crowd are fairly into it in the end. They know Nash won't win, but they wouldn't mind seeing Hunter get murdered. He wins, though, and that's more or less it for Nash's return run. 

 

 

And there we have it. A ruthlessly shit show to sit through, and I was paid for the pleasure. Either we're picking genuine duds, here, or we're putting a whole lot of effort into revealing these terrible shows as being nothing more than a waste of time. This one doesn't have the breakneck speed of an In Your House, British show or WCW show, though. It's just a slog. 

Still, the Redneck Triathlon served its primary purpose:

Yee-Haw!

 

Edited January 29, 2020 by Gay as FOOK

[PowerButchi]

The Redneck Triathon was achieved better in Cole vs JR as they competed in the Michael Cole challenge. A fine wrestling moment, much celebrated on here at the time.

 

 

[tiger_rick]

Cole was a brilliant heel. The concept of the lead play by play guy being a heel was absolutely ludicrous. It'd work these days. they've got a load of Cole clones to take over while he behaves like a prick.

[PowerButchi]

JR was probably even less popular thaat MC Tommy at the time on here too, which helped.

[BomberPat]

19 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

Cole was a brilliant heel. The concept of the lead play by play guy being a heel was absolutely ludicrous. It'd work these days. they've got a load of Cole clones to take over while he behaves like a prick.

I think Cole was superb in his job, but having him still doing play-by-play all the time made it a bit much. Having him think he was too good for it, and briefly transitioning into another role for the duration of the angle would have made it a little less insufferable. And then by the time he actually had to wrestle, WWE just had no idea how to effectively book a shithead heel to get their comeuppance, so it just dragged and dragged.

 

I remember loving Nash vs. Triple H - this show fell at a time when I'd been watching regularly for a few years, enough to have started absorbing all the old smark opinions, without really developing much of my own thoughts on the show. But I was a Kevin Nash and Mick Foley mark, and Hell In A Cell at this point still felt like something special. You knew no one was going to come off the top (which, after '98, seemed to be a lot of people's sole measure of whether a Cell match was any good), but I put it alongside the Undertaker/Lesnar cell match as one where the Cell was there more as an indicator of the sort of match, the sort of violence, you could expect. Like you said, it felt more like an old NWA cage match than a WWF match, with the added bonus of referee Foley taking some absolutely bonkers bumps.

Wasn't the build to Foley getting the gig the "Tim White suicide attempt" skit, that ended up becoming its own web series? Or am I mixing up my Cell matches?

The rest of that card sounds absolutely abysmal, though. Test and Steiner's angle felt like it went on for five years.

[Lorne Malvo]

Cole's heel run was absolutely brilliant. Him burying the NXT Divas division, banging his gong and walking out of the show was class.

[Liam O'Rourke]

33 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Wasn't the build to Foley getting the gig the "Tim White suicide attempt" skit, that ended up becoming its own web series? Or am I mixing up my Cell matches?

That was 2005 at Armageddon to build Taker and Orton. And then they sent Juventud to the ring,

Edited January 29, 2020 by Liam O'Rourke

[BomberPat]

Ah fair enough - in my head, they'd do a "no one wants to risk refereeing this match" angle, using Tim White to sell how dangerous the match is even for refs, to build to bringing Foley in. That Orton match was the one that got Bob fired for not disclosing he had Hep before bleeding on Undertaker, right?

[HarmonicGenerator]

Just now, BomberPat said:

Ah fair enough - in my head, they'd do a "no one wants to risk refereeing this match" angle, using Tim White to sell how dangerous the match is even for refs, to build to bringing Foley in.

I don't know if it was HHH-Nash but that's definitely ringing a bell for me. It must have been one of the next Cell matches after HHH-Jericho, so either Lesnar-Taker, HHH-Nash, or ... the HHH-Shawn one that's still going on now?

[Liam O'Rourke]

4 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Ah fair enough - in my head, they'd do a "no one wants to risk refereeing this match" angle, using Tim White to sell how dangerous the match is even for refs, to build to bringing Foley in. That Orton match was the one that got Bob fired for not disclosing he had Hep before bleeding on Undertaker, right?

That's right, although its a bit murky on whether Johnny Ace actually knew and didn't tell anybody.

[The Gaffer]

Echo the love for Cole's heel run. It should have ended at WrestleMania or gotten toned down and kept on fully, though. It got to be really overbearing and then he just snapped back into being Vintage Cole. 

 

[Otto Dem Wanz]

7 hours ago, Gay as FOOK said:

Echo the love for Cole's heel run. It should have ended at WrestleMania or gotten toned down and kept on fully, though. It got to be really overbearing and then he just snapped back into being Vintage Cole.

 

Edited January 29, 2020 by Otto Dem Wanz

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

9 hours ago, Gay as FOOK said:

Echo the love for Cole's heel run. It should have ended at WrestleMania or gotten toned down and kept on fully, though. It got to be really overbearing and then he just snapped back into being Vintage Cole. 

 

It was Lawler's heart attack that caused the snapback, as a lot of Cole haters gave him props for how he handled the rest of the episode

[Jazzy G]

Is this Bicycle Shorts Tripper era? I can't remember. 

[simonworden]

5 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Is this Bicycle Shorts Tripper era? I can't remember. 

It's about two months prior if we set the date as when he first wore the shorts (Summerslam 2003 I think). But this is a fair way in to his neverending former wcw champion crushing title run.