klunderbunker
Welcome to My (And Not Sly's) House
Insurrextion 2003
Date: June 7, 2003
Location: Telewest Arena, Newcastle, England
Attendance: 10,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler
Its the final show in this series and its a Raw show. Im looking forward to getting done with these British Shows as theyre just not very good 90% of the time. This looks pretty weak to put it mildly with HHH vs. Nash in the main event. Hopefully its short is about all I can say here. This card looks awful so lets get to it.
We open with an in memory graphic of Freddie Blassie. Thats always nice.
Austin presents this apparently.
The opening video is about the times changing and new things starting. This is when Austin and Eric are co-GMs.
JR really likes saying hellacious.
Womens Title: Jazz vs. Trish Stratus
Really? Were opening with this? Jazz has the title coming into this. For the life of me I dont get what they were thinking when they picked Jazz to be the new big deal in the company. Teddy Long manages her. Raw airs on Friday here so I need to keep that in mind. I really dont get why they dont do that again. Do we really need to have the show air at 2am? I cant imagine that gets the highest possible audience. Move the show to Tuesday and just let it have the time slot that people are awake during.
The attractive one gets two with a victory roll. Teddy interferes and Jazz takes over. Nothing worth noting at all so far. We hit the chinlock to breathe some workrate into this. Slingshot into the second rope by Jazz which gives us a nice shot of Trishs ass, making that the only interesting thing so far. Release fishermans suplex gets two.
Jazz hooks a bad Boston Crab as this is just boring as hell. Stratusphere and Matrish set up the Chick Kick for two. Crowd is DEAD. Who decided that this was a good idea for an opener? I mean seriously come on here. And now back to the Boston Crab for a little originality. Trish shifts it into an STF which is Jazzs move but heres Victoria to distract the referee. It allows Teddy to throw Trish into the post to end it. Yeah ten minutes for that ending.
Rating: D. This was just painfully boring. Nothing of note happened here as Jazz dominated the vast majority and then Trish hit like three moves before Victoria came out for the save and distraction. They had no motivation out there at all and it was very clear. Granted that could just be that Jazz sucks.
We recap Christian vs. Booker T who were the final guys in a battle royal for the revived Intercontinental Title. Christian was thrown out but cheated to get the belt. Guess what that sets up.
Intercontinental Title: Christian vs. Booker T
Well this should be good at least. We get the Christian You Are On Your Own intro to make up for the horrible Booker T remix. Basically Booker is on fire at this point and Christian is running scared. Very basic stuff to start us off here as Booker sends him to the floor and Christian doesnt want to come back in. And somehow we go from Booker having a headlock to Ross swimming naked in cold water. Where can I see that???
Booker controls early as I hope the whole silent crowd thing is a cultural concept. If not this crowd is insanely bored. Back to the floor again for more stalling. All Booker so far. You know the title isnt changing hands here so Im not sure why theyre bothering. Well ok so I am but these shows always kind of get on my nerves because theyre glorified house shows and rarely good.
Christian takes over with bare bones levels of basic offense. The crowd says Christian sucks. That would be this match rather than just Christian. Apparently Maid Miriam had puppies. Ok then. We crank it up a bit as Booker starts a comeback but a Harlem Side Kick misses and Booker goes over the top to the floor. More chinlock stuff here.
We stall a lot and then back to the chinlock. Christian is having a serious issue with stopping any and all aspects of wrestling and just looking out at the fans. Booker avoids the jumping elbow with a dropkick and both guys are down. The look on Christians face is great as he looks so stupid but for some reason its working. Twisting sunset flip out of the corner gets two for Booker.
Flapjack by Booker allows him to stop everything and do the Spinarooni. Yeah he deserves to lose now. Axe kick hits while Booker is on the apron and it takes the referee down. Missile dropkick gets two as the referee dives in. Christian reverses a rollup into a rollup of his own and grabs the ropes to get the pin.
Rating: D+. This was just boring. It went on for fifteen minutes and just nothing at all happened in it. I kept waiting on this to get out of first gear and it never did. Its fifteen minutes of absolutely nothing going on. Incredibly boring match here but not terrible I guess from a technical perspective.
Austin talks to Teddy and more or less schools him. Teddy is now in a match with his team of Christopher Nowitski and Rodney Mack vs. the Dudley Boys and Spike. Kane looks at Austin and says nothing. As random as it sounds.
Ah heres an explanation as we see a clip from Raw where Austin yelled at Kane and slapped him after Rene Dupree cheated to beat him. No chokeslam though even though Austin begged for it. Stunner ended it.
Raw Tag Titles: La Resistance vs. Kane/Rob Van Dam
Grenier and Dupree here. Standard anti-whatever country were in promo from the French dudes. Dupree and RVD start us off. Van Dam destroys both guys before bringing in Kane. Double teaming works to a degree but Renee tries his dance thing and gets punched in the face for his troubles. Big RVD chant. Ah theres your double teaming to give the heels the advantage.
The fans shout about hating Frenchies (their words not mine) as Van Dam is in trouble. Van Dam gets an enziguri to the shoulder which if you dont know the meaning, translates to a head kick to the arm. Kane comes in to clean a few rooms as he doesnt do enough to classify it as house.
Everything goes insane and RVD gets crotched on the top rope. Double chokeslam sets up a Five Star from RVD who is just fine apparently. Does weed give you magically healing balls or something like that? Apparently so as he was fine seconds later.
Rating: D+. Just another boring match here as they never got going. It once again felt like nothing more than a long Raw match which is never a good thing. You would think this is just a random squash but the titles changed hands at Bad Blood in 8 days. Wow this division was horrid.
Goldust has a speech impediment.
Goldust vs. Rico
And on Pay Per View too! Hebner is in there, you know the chant. Rico keeps hiding from Goldust as we have to stall in this match of all things. Rico really was underrated in the ring as his gimmick always gets looked down on which isnt fair to him. He definitely wasnt that bad in the ring and was clearly always working hard out there which is all I can ask for.
Naturally this is a rather boring match but its not entirely fair to blame that on the wrestlers here. These two had no business being out there as long as theyre being given so they can only do so much in there. We talk about Sean Connery and James Bond to fill in time. Picture perfect moonsault by Rico misses. That was freaking pretty looking. Bulldog gets two for Goldust.
Shattered Dreams is blocked and Goldust goes insane, hitting all kinds of stuff on Rico. Ok so mainly nothing more than punches which apparently are the results of his mental issue. I never liked that angle. Not due to what it was about but because it never really made sense. And theres a powerslam out of nowhere (Ross description) to end it. Oh Goldust won.
Rating: D+. Thats higher than this deserves, but the problem here is that there was FAR too much time given to this match. This got eleven minutes and to their credit it never really got boring. Like I said, Rico was a guy that would always work in the ring which is something you have to give him points for. They were trying out there but this just had no business going this long.
Video about Freddie Blassie, which is always a nice touch. It gets a nice round of applause too so thats nice to hear.
Highlight Reel
Jericho has been feuding with Goldberg lately so expect something about him. How in the world is this show only half over??? Everyone here is a jackass, so says the Canadian. The Highlight Reel is new at this point so this is something close to a big deal I guess. After a LONG and basic insult sequence of the city, he brings out Bischoff as his guest.
He actually goes to dental jokes. Are you kidding me? This couldnt be more clearly filler if they put a big sign in front of it that said THIS IS FUCKING FILLER. Austin comes out to end this horrible segment, which isnt something you would expect to say about a Jericho segment of all things.
Austin throws out all the equipment which is intentionally far worse here than it is in America. Apparently he had 20 pints which would probably mean like death or something but whatever. This is going nowhere if you cant tell. We have three matches left and just over an hour left in the show. This turns into a board meeting between Austin and Bischoff with Jericho there as a comedy character which is ok but Id rather hear Jericho vs. Austin, but hey we have Bischoff to talk instead so why have Jericho do it?
The main event is now a street fight and Eric threatens to tell Linda McMahon. Literally those are his words: Im telling Linda McMahon! Jericho gets into this finally, bitching about all kinds of various British pop culture things in a funny bit. His timing is great. He calls Austin Junior though and you can see the ending coming very rapidly.
Austin offers them some beer and Jericho manages to get this line on television: If you want to see Chris Jericho drink some beer with Steve Austin, give me a doo wah diddy diddy dum diddy do. The whole crowd says it and Austins face is hilarious. If you dont know how this ends, you have no business reading this.
Flair and HHH arent happy.
Rodney Mack/Christopher Nowitski/Teddy Long vs. Dudley Boyz
Nowitski has a mask on because of a face injury. He was an imbecile in WWE but given the work hes doing today you can overlook that I think. D-Von and Mack start us off and nothing of note is going on here. You really can tell here how little thought has been put into this. Why are these teams feuding again? Well of course were not going to be told.
Spike gets thrown over the top onto the heels as were just waiting on the Teddy beatdown. Bubba and Chris do the test of strength dancing spot which makes me shake my head violently. Spike comes in to waste a bit of our time. Nowitski is in the minority team because a Harvard education makes him a minority. Well thats better than nothing I guess.
Mack was a pretty decent badass but nothing ever came of him. Teddy does the Bobby Heenan thing, beating on Spike and then running at the first sign of trouble. Five minutes have passed and not a thing of note has happened. Mack accidently clotheslines Teddy, D-Von takes down Mack, Spike pins Long. There you go and were done.
Rating: D-. This was on PPV in the third spot on a card. But hey, Vince says these individual brand shows are a good idea so they must be right? Theres no need to have Benoit or Angle or Lesnar on the card when we can have these matches right? Just get on to the next match on this tour of fun please.
Post match Chris, the genius that he is, brings in a table. You know the drill Im sure. Takes a few minutes which we have to fill in.
We recap Steiner vs. Test. Stacy is involved too. She likes Steiner and wants to be with him but Test owns her or something. And now we fill more time with this.
Test vs. Scott Steiner
Val Venis is the guest referee for absolutely no reason at all. Stacy is guest ring announcer to fill in even more time. She must have a thing for roided up freaks. Keep in mind that in January and February Steiner was in the world title match on Raw. His matches with HHH really were that horrible. Test jumps him as hes watching Stacy leave the ring, and granted who can blame him, and were off.
Elbow and pushups spot less than 30 seconds in. Test uses Stacy as a shield as I want this to end very, very badly. He hits the floor and wraps Vals towel around Stacys waist. Ross says seeing Stacy in a towel would be uplifting. So far tonight weve heard about him naked in a pool and something uplifting him. I give up.
Belly to belly gets Steiner out of trouble as this is dragging already. She throws the towel in Tests face and Steiner takes over even further. Full nelson slam lets Test take over again. Test shoves Val and Steiner rolls him up for two. Steiner gets shoves into Stacy and Test gets a big boot but does pushups instead of covering. Chair is brought in, Stacy grabs it, Steiner gets a Downward Spiral for the pin, the match was boring as hell.
Rating: F+. And thats just because Stacy looked good. This was boring as hell and more or less just done to give Steiner something to do before he could be released or quit I guess. There would be a match for Stacys services at the PPV where Steiner won. Naturally Test wound up winning both of them back nd Steiner turned heel and teamed with Test, making her the sex slave. Yeah it sucked.
Main event time. Oh joy.
Nash is back, he wants the title, HHH is his buddy, Shawn is his buddy, HHH wants to kill Shawn, Nash is stuck in the middle, Nash picks to help Shawn who is in his corner tonight. Lets get this over with. Theyre in a Cell match in 8 days so its not like anyone buys this as being a legit chance.
Raw World Title: HHH vs. Kevin Nash
Shawn is here as is Flair. Ross says itll be nasty and ugly. Yeah Id think hes right. We get a long rules explanation as weve got 17 minutes left and weve been on the air just over two hours and ten minutes. Flair chokes Nash early and Shawn chases him off. They of course have a match at the PPV too. Hey look Flair is bleeding. Who would have guessed that one?
Nash is very old and very slow here. This is in essence a glorified tag match with Shawn and Flair and Nash and HHH brawling in the aisle. HHH and Nash go to the stage and HHH gets a low blow to take the big man down. The two combatants in the match have been in the ring all of 5 seconds so far. They brawl at the announce table which is up by the stage at this point.
And so much for that as we head back to the ring. In case you didnt guess it, theres no point to this at all and its just them hitting each other with no one caring or buying Nash as having any chance at all of winning. Steps go into the ring. The match sucks if you didnt guess. These two managed to make Hell in a Cell boring in 8 days so a plain old street fight is more or less worthless.
HBK and Flair apparently went off to beat the line at Country Kitchen Buffet so were down to one on one. Oh joy. If you ever want a justification of why HHHs run with the world title at first was absolutely hated, this is exhibit A. There was zero justification to having this feud other than HHH wanted it. It didnt draw, no one cared, and HHH decided that Benoit wasnt worthy of facing him for the title after he got nothing but huge pops for months on end and had classics time after time. Nope. We want Nash, not Benoit.
HHH is busted open thanks to some steps. Down goes the referee. The straps on Nash do the same thing as the referee. Low blow puts HHH down as Flair apparently didnt think his orange juice had enough pulp at the aforementioned buffet and is back with a chair. Chair shot gets two from a fresh referee and HHH punches him too.
Ah theres Shawn. And what a shock it comes down to HHH vs. Shawn again. Superkick to Flair and theres the sledgehammer. Kick misses HHH, Pedigree takes Shawn down. Jackknife kills HHH but the referee is apparently dead from the elbow he took three minutes ago. Flair punches the third referee. Nash sets to powerbomb Naitch and theres the sledgehammer shot to his head to end it and the show.
Rating: D+. The match got a bit better at the end but this was just boring as hell for the most part. Actually thats not fair as this was a fairly good brawl and there were some solid weapons shots in there. At the end of the day though its Kevin Nash as a major threat to the world title in 2003. That just does not add up whatsoever. This wasnt as awful as you expected it to be but at this point it didnt matter at all.
Overall Rating: F. Holy sweet merciful crap this show is bad. NOTHING on this card is good. There is no thought process at all and the highlight, if you can call it that, is Jericho getting the crowd to say silly things. No Jericho match, no Goldberg? Is there a reason those things didnt happen?
Basically it's Bad Blood Lite as this is like a two hour and 29 minute preview (yeah didn't even break two and a half hours) preview for that PPV which sucked too. This show is terrible and by far the worst show Ive done in a long time. Terrible show from a terrible period for the company. Get me ANYTHING else.
Date: June 7, 2003
Location: Telewest Arena, Newcastle, England
Attendance: 10,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler
Its the final show in this series and its a Raw show. Im looking forward to getting done with these British Shows as theyre just not very good 90% of the time. This looks pretty weak to put it mildly with HHH vs. Nash in the main event. Hopefully its short is about all I can say here. This card looks awful so lets get to it.
We open with an in memory graphic of Freddie Blassie. Thats always nice.
Austin presents this apparently.
The opening video is about the times changing and new things starting. This is when Austin and Eric are co-GMs.
JR really likes saying hellacious.
Womens Title: Jazz vs. Trish Stratus
Really? Were opening with this? Jazz has the title coming into this. For the life of me I dont get what they were thinking when they picked Jazz to be the new big deal in the company. Teddy Long manages her. Raw airs on Friday here so I need to keep that in mind. I really dont get why they dont do that again. Do we really need to have the show air at 2am? I cant imagine that gets the highest possible audience. Move the show to Tuesday and just let it have the time slot that people are awake during.
The attractive one gets two with a victory roll. Teddy interferes and Jazz takes over. Nothing worth noting at all so far. We hit the chinlock to breathe some workrate into this. Slingshot into the second rope by Jazz which gives us a nice shot of Trishs ass, making that the only interesting thing so far. Release fishermans suplex gets two.
Jazz hooks a bad Boston Crab as this is just boring as hell. Stratusphere and Matrish set up the Chick Kick for two. Crowd is DEAD. Who decided that this was a good idea for an opener? I mean seriously come on here. And now back to the Boston Crab for a little originality. Trish shifts it into an STF which is Jazzs move but heres Victoria to distract the referee. It allows Teddy to throw Trish into the post to end it. Yeah ten minutes for that ending.
Rating: D. This was just painfully boring. Nothing of note happened here as Jazz dominated the vast majority and then Trish hit like three moves before Victoria came out for the save and distraction. They had no motivation out there at all and it was very clear. Granted that could just be that Jazz sucks.
We recap Christian vs. Booker T who were the final guys in a battle royal for the revived Intercontinental Title. Christian was thrown out but cheated to get the belt. Guess what that sets up.
Intercontinental Title: Christian vs. Booker T
Well this should be good at least. We get the Christian You Are On Your Own intro to make up for the horrible Booker T remix. Basically Booker is on fire at this point and Christian is running scared. Very basic stuff to start us off here as Booker sends him to the floor and Christian doesnt want to come back in. And somehow we go from Booker having a headlock to Ross swimming naked in cold water. Where can I see that???
Booker controls early as I hope the whole silent crowd thing is a cultural concept. If not this crowd is insanely bored. Back to the floor again for more stalling. All Booker so far. You know the title isnt changing hands here so Im not sure why theyre bothering. Well ok so I am but these shows always kind of get on my nerves because theyre glorified house shows and rarely good.
Christian takes over with bare bones levels of basic offense. The crowd says Christian sucks. That would be this match rather than just Christian. Apparently Maid Miriam had puppies. Ok then. We crank it up a bit as Booker starts a comeback but a Harlem Side Kick misses and Booker goes over the top to the floor. More chinlock stuff here.
We stall a lot and then back to the chinlock. Christian is having a serious issue with stopping any and all aspects of wrestling and just looking out at the fans. Booker avoids the jumping elbow with a dropkick and both guys are down. The look on Christians face is great as he looks so stupid but for some reason its working. Twisting sunset flip out of the corner gets two for Booker.
Flapjack by Booker allows him to stop everything and do the Spinarooni. Yeah he deserves to lose now. Axe kick hits while Booker is on the apron and it takes the referee down. Missile dropkick gets two as the referee dives in. Christian reverses a rollup into a rollup of his own and grabs the ropes to get the pin.
Rating: D+. This was just boring. It went on for fifteen minutes and just nothing at all happened in it. I kept waiting on this to get out of first gear and it never did. Its fifteen minutes of absolutely nothing going on. Incredibly boring match here but not terrible I guess from a technical perspective.
Austin talks to Teddy and more or less schools him. Teddy is now in a match with his team of Christopher Nowitski and Rodney Mack vs. the Dudley Boys and Spike. Kane looks at Austin and says nothing. As random as it sounds.
Ah heres an explanation as we see a clip from Raw where Austin yelled at Kane and slapped him after Rene Dupree cheated to beat him. No chokeslam though even though Austin begged for it. Stunner ended it.
Raw Tag Titles: La Resistance vs. Kane/Rob Van Dam
Grenier and Dupree here. Standard anti-whatever country were in promo from the French dudes. Dupree and RVD start us off. Van Dam destroys both guys before bringing in Kane. Double teaming works to a degree but Renee tries his dance thing and gets punched in the face for his troubles. Big RVD chant. Ah theres your double teaming to give the heels the advantage.
The fans shout about hating Frenchies (their words not mine) as Van Dam is in trouble. Van Dam gets an enziguri to the shoulder which if you dont know the meaning, translates to a head kick to the arm. Kane comes in to clean a few rooms as he doesnt do enough to classify it as house.
Everything goes insane and RVD gets crotched on the top rope. Double chokeslam sets up a Five Star from RVD who is just fine apparently. Does weed give you magically healing balls or something like that? Apparently so as he was fine seconds later.
Rating: D+. Just another boring match here as they never got going. It once again felt like nothing more than a long Raw match which is never a good thing. You would think this is just a random squash but the titles changed hands at Bad Blood in 8 days. Wow this division was horrid.
Goldust has a speech impediment.
Goldust vs. Rico
And on Pay Per View too! Hebner is in there, you know the chant. Rico keeps hiding from Goldust as we have to stall in this match of all things. Rico really was underrated in the ring as his gimmick always gets looked down on which isnt fair to him. He definitely wasnt that bad in the ring and was clearly always working hard out there which is all I can ask for.
Naturally this is a rather boring match but its not entirely fair to blame that on the wrestlers here. These two had no business being out there as long as theyre being given so they can only do so much in there. We talk about Sean Connery and James Bond to fill in time. Picture perfect moonsault by Rico misses. That was freaking pretty looking. Bulldog gets two for Goldust.
Shattered Dreams is blocked and Goldust goes insane, hitting all kinds of stuff on Rico. Ok so mainly nothing more than punches which apparently are the results of his mental issue. I never liked that angle. Not due to what it was about but because it never really made sense. And theres a powerslam out of nowhere (Ross description) to end it. Oh Goldust won.
Rating: D+. Thats higher than this deserves, but the problem here is that there was FAR too much time given to this match. This got eleven minutes and to their credit it never really got boring. Like I said, Rico was a guy that would always work in the ring which is something you have to give him points for. They were trying out there but this just had no business going this long.
Video about Freddie Blassie, which is always a nice touch. It gets a nice round of applause too so thats nice to hear.
Highlight Reel
Jericho has been feuding with Goldberg lately so expect something about him. How in the world is this show only half over??? Everyone here is a jackass, so says the Canadian. The Highlight Reel is new at this point so this is something close to a big deal I guess. After a LONG and basic insult sequence of the city, he brings out Bischoff as his guest.
He actually goes to dental jokes. Are you kidding me? This couldnt be more clearly filler if they put a big sign in front of it that said THIS IS FUCKING FILLER. Austin comes out to end this horrible segment, which isnt something you would expect to say about a Jericho segment of all things.
Austin throws out all the equipment which is intentionally far worse here than it is in America. Apparently he had 20 pints which would probably mean like death or something but whatever. This is going nowhere if you cant tell. We have three matches left and just over an hour left in the show. This turns into a board meeting between Austin and Bischoff with Jericho there as a comedy character which is ok but Id rather hear Jericho vs. Austin, but hey we have Bischoff to talk instead so why have Jericho do it?
The main event is now a street fight and Eric threatens to tell Linda McMahon. Literally those are his words: Im telling Linda McMahon! Jericho gets into this finally, bitching about all kinds of various British pop culture things in a funny bit. His timing is great. He calls Austin Junior though and you can see the ending coming very rapidly.
Austin offers them some beer and Jericho manages to get this line on television: If you want to see Chris Jericho drink some beer with Steve Austin, give me a doo wah diddy diddy dum diddy do. The whole crowd says it and Austins face is hilarious. If you dont know how this ends, you have no business reading this.
Flair and HHH arent happy.
Rodney Mack/Christopher Nowitski/Teddy Long vs. Dudley Boyz
Nowitski has a mask on because of a face injury. He was an imbecile in WWE but given the work hes doing today you can overlook that I think. D-Von and Mack start us off and nothing of note is going on here. You really can tell here how little thought has been put into this. Why are these teams feuding again? Well of course were not going to be told.
Spike gets thrown over the top onto the heels as were just waiting on the Teddy beatdown. Bubba and Chris do the test of strength dancing spot which makes me shake my head violently. Spike comes in to waste a bit of our time. Nowitski is in the minority team because a Harvard education makes him a minority. Well thats better than nothing I guess.
Mack was a pretty decent badass but nothing ever came of him. Teddy does the Bobby Heenan thing, beating on Spike and then running at the first sign of trouble. Five minutes have passed and not a thing of note has happened. Mack accidently clotheslines Teddy, D-Von takes down Mack, Spike pins Long. There you go and were done.
Rating: D-. This was on PPV in the third spot on a card. But hey, Vince says these individual brand shows are a good idea so they must be right? Theres no need to have Benoit or Angle or Lesnar on the card when we can have these matches right? Just get on to the next match on this tour of fun please.
Post match Chris, the genius that he is, brings in a table. You know the drill Im sure. Takes a few minutes which we have to fill in.
We recap Steiner vs. Test. Stacy is involved too. She likes Steiner and wants to be with him but Test owns her or something. And now we fill more time with this.
Test vs. Scott Steiner
Val Venis is the guest referee for absolutely no reason at all. Stacy is guest ring announcer to fill in even more time. She must have a thing for roided up freaks. Keep in mind that in January and February Steiner was in the world title match on Raw. His matches with HHH really were that horrible. Test jumps him as hes watching Stacy leave the ring, and granted who can blame him, and were off.
Elbow and pushups spot less than 30 seconds in. Test uses Stacy as a shield as I want this to end very, very badly. He hits the floor and wraps Vals towel around Stacys waist. Ross says seeing Stacy in a towel would be uplifting. So far tonight weve heard about him naked in a pool and something uplifting him. I give up.
Belly to belly gets Steiner out of trouble as this is dragging already. She throws the towel in Tests face and Steiner takes over even further. Full nelson slam lets Test take over again. Test shoves Val and Steiner rolls him up for two. Steiner gets shoves into Stacy and Test gets a big boot but does pushups instead of covering. Chair is brought in, Stacy grabs it, Steiner gets a Downward Spiral for the pin, the match was boring as hell.
Rating: F+. And thats just because Stacy looked good. This was boring as hell and more or less just done to give Steiner something to do before he could be released or quit I guess. There would be a match for Stacys services at the PPV where Steiner won. Naturally Test wound up winning both of them back nd Steiner turned heel and teamed with Test, making her the sex slave. Yeah it sucked.
Main event time. Oh joy.
Nash is back, he wants the title, HHH is his buddy, Shawn is his buddy, HHH wants to kill Shawn, Nash is stuck in the middle, Nash picks to help Shawn who is in his corner tonight. Lets get this over with. Theyre in a Cell match in 8 days so its not like anyone buys this as being a legit chance.
Raw World Title: HHH vs. Kevin Nash
Shawn is here as is Flair. Ross says itll be nasty and ugly. Yeah Id think hes right. We get a long rules explanation as weve got 17 minutes left and weve been on the air just over two hours and ten minutes. Flair chokes Nash early and Shawn chases him off. They of course have a match at the PPV too. Hey look Flair is bleeding. Who would have guessed that one?
Nash is very old and very slow here. This is in essence a glorified tag match with Shawn and Flair and Nash and HHH brawling in the aisle. HHH and Nash go to the stage and HHH gets a low blow to take the big man down. The two combatants in the match have been in the ring all of 5 seconds so far. They brawl at the announce table which is up by the stage at this point.
And so much for that as we head back to the ring. In case you didnt guess it, theres no point to this at all and its just them hitting each other with no one caring or buying Nash as having any chance at all of winning. Steps go into the ring. The match sucks if you didnt guess. These two managed to make Hell in a Cell boring in 8 days so a plain old street fight is more or less worthless.
HBK and Flair apparently went off to beat the line at Country Kitchen Buffet so were down to one on one. Oh joy. If you ever want a justification of why HHHs run with the world title at first was absolutely hated, this is exhibit A. There was zero justification to having this feud other than HHH wanted it. It didnt draw, no one cared, and HHH decided that Benoit wasnt worthy of facing him for the title after he got nothing but huge pops for months on end and had classics time after time. Nope. We want Nash, not Benoit.
HHH is busted open thanks to some steps. Down goes the referee. The straps on Nash do the same thing as the referee. Low blow puts HHH down as Flair apparently didnt think his orange juice had enough pulp at the aforementioned buffet and is back with a chair. Chair shot gets two from a fresh referee and HHH punches him too.
Ah theres Shawn. And what a shock it comes down to HHH vs. Shawn again. Superkick to Flair and theres the sledgehammer. Kick misses HHH, Pedigree takes Shawn down. Jackknife kills HHH but the referee is apparently dead from the elbow he took three minutes ago. Flair punches the third referee. Nash sets to powerbomb Naitch and theres the sledgehammer shot to his head to end it and the show.
Rating: D+. The match got a bit better at the end but this was just boring as hell for the most part. Actually thats not fair as this was a fairly good brawl and there were some solid weapons shots in there. At the end of the day though its Kevin Nash as a major threat to the world title in 2003. That just does not add up whatsoever. This wasnt as awful as you expected it to be but at this point it didnt matter at all.
Overall Rating: F. Holy sweet merciful crap this show is bad. NOTHING on this card is good. There is no thought process at all and the highlight, if you can call it that, is Jericho getting the crowd to say silly things. No Jericho match, no Goldberg? Is there a reason those things didnt happen?
Basically it's Bad Blood Lite as this is like a two hour and 29 minute preview (yeah didn't even break two and a half hours) preview for that PPV which sucked too. This show is terrible and by far the worst show Ive done in a long time. Terrible show from a terrible period for the company. Get me ANYTHING else.