2001: A Wrestling Odyssey

[air_raid]

I’m here to talk about Rob Van Dam.

Robbie V is a polarising guy both in the ring and what people think of him personally, with many people thinking him an idiot for either not achieving or squandering his full potential (2006) due to his own mistakes. An equal number of people think that his actual talent for wrestling didn’t live up to his popularity or hype. Personally I think he was a patchy performer in a sense, that he could face a fantastic match with a wrestler to the calibre of Jerry Lynn, Eddy Guerrero or AJ Styles, but he’d live down to someone else’s level and If you’d put him on last with a Balls Mahoney and expect him to deliver a match worthy of a PPV main event, you’d probably get something meandering and disjointed. However, he had an ability to excite a crowd and a unique style and repertoire that set him apart from almost the entire scene in the late 90s/early 2000s. I remember the buzz around “What is the Van Terminator?” in the build to the Riggs match at Heat Wave 2000 and since then I haven’t lived through such anticipation of a wrestler promising to debut a new move - unless you count Sid and Sin 2001. He wasn’t a “ring general” but he was undoubtedly special, over like Rover everywhere he went, and 2001 was the year he turned up to work the WWF full time and for half the year became a genuine highlight and threatened to become a full blown main event star despite coming over from the “bingo hall” off the back of the hottest 18 months in WWF history from the most loaded roster the company ever boasted.

Rob’s booking in the first three PPVs was fantastic. Jeff Hardy was the ideal guy for RVD to wrestle in an ECW style match to highlight his positives exactly as Heyman had for years. Jeff was an absolute symbol of the WWF during their best period and had just come off pinning HHH for the Intercontinental title, while not being untouchable from a star power point of view, and for fans that might not have actually watched any ECW but were long term enough to remember the brief invasion of 97, there was a history to refer to. It added up to a perfect set up and not only did the whole F’n show get to score a clean win for the Alliance, he got to win a belt too. Hard as this may be to believe but winning the Hardcore belt could still seem a big deal if you won it clean from a Jeff Hardy on a PPV. Knocking him off again in his preferred gimmick match at SummerSlam was effective too and Rob was already getting pretty good babyface reactions partly due to the fact that he was never really booked as a heel and partly because he was a breath of fresh air. Van Dam continued to elevate the Hardcore title at Unforgiven by defending it against Y2J who was at a level where he wouldn’t have been seen dead fighting for the Hardcore title on PPV six months earlier. Steph involvement be damned, RVD beating Jericho was another step up the ladder. That Y2J got his win back on TV didn’t matter because the storyline played into dissension within the Alliance leading into RVD as a quasi-tweener challenging Austin for the WWF title and Alliance leadership in the three way with Kurt Angle at No Mercy, during the build for which Van Dam was allowed to score a pin on The Rock in a tag match. The match at No Mercy itself was set up brilliantly to imply that while moving the big belt onto Rob at the time might seem illogical, there was a chance it might happen. It didn’t, but there were times during the match they had me fooled, and that’s the magic.

Of course, once the WWF/Alliance story ended and RVD was presented with clarity as a face, he hit an Undertaker-shaped roadblock and the end of 2001 symbolically marked the end of his first tilt at the main event. At other times with other wrestlers after a strong start centred around the Hardcore title, another 12 months wrestling Eddy, Benoit and Jericho for the Intercontinental title might have been natural to keep a guy moving up, but Rob Van Dam in 2001 wasn’t that guy and while his next 12 months produced some great matches he became just another midcarder doomed to not quite make it, ended up stuck in “thrown together tag teams” hell and it wasn’t until his injury and ECW reboot that they remembered he’d once been something a bit special.

But hey, we’ll always have 2001.

 

On 8/14/2021 at 1:40 PM, DCW said:

a love Angle with Steph

There was only one love Angle (cough) they should have ran with Steph and it wasn’t with RVD.

Edited August 17, 2021 by air_raid

[The Gaffer]

What role do we reckon Triple H would have played in the invasion angle had he not torn his quads? It's really difficult for me to envisage. Or more to the point, it's really difficult for me to envisage him making it any better. Which is right on point with how a lot of us over the years have started to evaluate The Game's real contributions in all but two or three years of the product - a few big moments and angles aside. 

I remember him getting big pops during that love triangle storyline. He was pretty much a dyed in the wool babyface against Angle at Unforgiven 2001. Then Austin came back, brought some of his 99 dogshit on to the lovely 00 carpet, and we're right back to "I crippled the Rattlesnake!" and being a bad bastard. The two man power trip is decent enough for a quiet spell (what else does heel Austin do post X-Seven with Rock off to do Scorpion King) but it's jarring to see the top heel in the business from the year before as the bridesmaid again. That's where we're at when the injury happens. 

Do you have him join Shane and Steph to be the active competitor captain of the Alliance? It seems to make the most logical sense given his involvement with Steph and on again/off again with his real dad, Vince. It does nothing to improve the angle from what it already was, though. You surely keep Austin as a babyface then - or as close to it as his new character can be - on team WWF. But then that turns back into - groan - Triple H Vs. Stone Cold. 

Bad as the injury was and all for him, in a way it couldn't have come at a more perfect time. Got a huge return out of it. 

[Tommy!]

10 minutes ago, Gay as FOOK said:

What role do we reckon Triple H would have played in the invasion angle had he not torn his quads

 

10 minutes ago, Gay as FOOK said:

Triple H Vs. Stone Cold. 

The general plan going into 2001 was to go to Austin heel vs HHH face I believe, so what happened but with HHH in the Angle spot seems most likely to me, as boring as it would have been because they are both playing the wrong role and neither were as good as Angle in 2001.

You just know as well he'd be shitting on everyone too. 

Edited August 17, 2021 by Tommy!

[rollthedice]

Surely Steph was only brought into the Alliance because HHH was injured If he doesn't tear his quad I imagine Steph continues accompanying him to the ring and the invasion is just Vince vs Shane.

Would Austin have even been in The Alliance if HHH doesn't go down?  I could see the two man power trip just squashing the WCW/ECW folk.

[Tommy!]

Austin wanted to have a heel run I believe, and all involved felt they were running low of ideas for him. 

HHH didn't want to be second fiddle, be it face behind Rock & Austin or heel behind Austin. 

With rock away and Austin pushing to be heel can't see anything happening but HHH trying to be a face. 

 

Bringing Steph in at all is a stupid idea regardless of anything else, but ultimately they saw it wasn't doing well and needed some star power, and the biggest stars as far as they were concerned was the mcmahon clan. 

[BomberPat]

I can't imagine how bad the Invasion would have been with Triple H in it. It would have been everything already wrong with the Alliance, plus they'd probably have done all the Triple H/Stephanie divorce angle at the same time. 

WCW talent were treated like shit enough between The Undertaker and co squashing DDP and The Rock doing his "who in the blue hell are you?!" to Booker T and slagging off the WCW Title (which we were then meant to care about him winning) - and that's the top guys they had! Imagine the sort of promos Triple H would have done on WCW wrestlers, and how little a babyface Triple H would have given them in the ring. Now retrofit the Triple H/Stephanie feud from 2002 on top of that. I wouldn't be surprised if Triple H would be the one to get the Jericho heel turn and feud in The Rock's place, too. 

Who knows where Kurt Angle ends up in that situation? Quite possibly playing second fiddle in The Alliance, or getting to play Stephanie's lapdog like Jericho did in 2002. 

 

Aside from Angle being generally fantastic during his babyface run in '01, and it having grown quite organically into a babyface run rather than feeling like an abrupt turn, they really lucked out - if you can call it that - by having Angle booked in that position for the main event of Unforgiven, because that meant that the first pay-per-view after 9/11 had a flag-waving American hero winning the belt in the main event. 

[Carbomb]

On 8/13/2021 at 10:01 AM, Tommy! said:

Which 10 years, because 99 & 2000 were bollocks, and 04 was the shits. 

Not having that. 2000 was fucking great - Triple H at his absolute best as a heel including the Rumble match with Cactus Jack, the Benoit and Jericho matches, not to mention their tag-team afterwards, the early Hardy/E&C/Dudley Triangle Ladder matches, Tazz' debut, the midcard actually being interesting with stuff going on for the European, IC, Light Heavy and Tag titles, there's plenty to like. Sure, WM2000 was shit, and there was a fair bit of dross in between, but for the most part, it was a good year that Chris Kreski wrote.

EDIT: For me, one of my favourite bits of 2001 was the Canadian Chrisses vs. Two-Man Power Trip for the tag belts - I always love it when the tag titles become a focus for main-event feuds, it's so rare.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Carbomb

[Kamaras-Tash]

24 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Not having that. 2000 was fucking great - Triple H at his absolute best as a heel including the Rumble match with Cactus Jack, the Benoit and Jericho matches, not to mention their tag-team afterwards, the early Hardy/E&C/Dudley Triangle Ladder matches, Tazz' debut, the midcard actually being interesting with stuff going on for the European, IC, Light Heavy and Tag titles, there's plenty to like. Sure, WM2000 was shit, and there was a fair bit of dross in between, but for the most part, it was a good year that Chris Kreski wrote.

EDIT: For me, one of my favourite bits of 2001 was the Canadian Chrisses vs. Two-Man Power Trip for the tag belts - I always love it when the tag titles become a focus for main-event feuds, it's so rare.

 

He's on about Survivor Series not the whole year

[Tommy!]

27 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Not having that. 2000 was fucking great - Triple H at his absolute best as a heel including the Rumble match with Cactus Jack, the Benoit and Jericho matches, not to mention their tag-team afterwards, the early Hardy/E&C/Dudley Triangle Ladder matches, Tazz' debut, the midcard actually being interesting with stuff going on for the European, IC, Light Heavy and Tag titles, there's plenty to like. Sure, WM2000 was shit, and there was a fair bit of dross in between, but for the most part, it was a good year that Chris Kreski wrote.

We were talking about survivor series specifically, if you want to go to bat for that HHH vs Austin match and Rock vs Rikishi go right ahead. 

It also had Eric Angle and those snakeskin trousers too. 

Edited August 17, 2021 by Tommy!

[Carbomb]

4 minutes ago, Kamaras-Tash said:

 

He's on about Survivor Series not the whole year

 

3 minutes ago, Tommy! said:

We were talking about survivor series specifically, if you want to go to bat for that HHH vs Austin match and Rock vs Rikishi go right ahead. 

It also had Eric Angle and those snakeskin trousers too. 

Like a man wearing orthopaedic shoes, I stand corrected.

[The King Of Swing]

Sid and Sid 2001 sounds like a new and exciting brand of washing powder.