PWInsiderXTRA - WWE News, Wrestling News, WWE

LOOKING BACK AT SURVIVOR SERIES 2000

We’re off to lovely Tampa, Florida to take a look back at the 2000 edition of the Survivor Series which, as the name implies, took place in the year 2000. I feel I should note that this is the first Survivor Series to take place after Stephanie McMahon took over Creative in the WWF.

The Undercard

The show opened with T&A (comprised of Test and Albert…smell that creativity) teaming up with their manager Trish Stratus to take on the team of Crash and Molly Holly as well as Steve Blackman. Even though Trish would go on to become probably the greatest women’s wrestler of this generation, I believe this was her first match and even though she showed some glimmers of something special, she wasn’t there yet. This wass Molly’s first Survivor Series, and for those keeping track, she was the bouncy, smiley, cute little cousin of Crash and Hardcore at this point. As for Steve Blackman, this was around the time of his big run with the Hardcore Title, and I guess the idea was that with a black hole of charisma like Blackman, they would try and get something out of him by throwing him into garbage brawls. T&A pretty much threw Crash and Blackman around for the entire match, but all four men spilled out of the ring, leaving the ladies alone in the ring, and Molly caught Trish with a sunset flip off the second rope, marking the first win of what would become quite an extended series between these two ladies.

After a silly segment where security wouldn’t let Tiger Ali Singh into the building, we moved on to the first tag team elimination match, pitting the Radicalz: Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Eddy Guerrero, and Perry Saturn against the pseudo-mini DX reunion of Road Dogg, K-Kwik, “The One” Billy Gunn, and the original leather clad, bazooka-toting shemale herself, Chyna. This was the latest in a long string of failed attempts to get Billy Gunn over as a singles star, and he ended up getting a one month Intercontinental Title reign out of the deal before he ended up getting buried again for being a lump. Road Dogg, in the meantime, had formed a team with K-Kwik (aka Ron Killings aka R-Truth) after the breakup of DX, and this was the closest we ever got to a reunion until Shawn and Hunter got back together years later. The Radicalz, in the meantime, were almost a year into their WWF runs after their infamous departure from WCW the night after Benoit won the WCW World Title, and though Benoit and Eddy would end up becoming major players in the WWF, the whole group was still floating in the middle of the card at this point. It’s really weird to think that right now two of the Radicalz are dead, Malenko’s an agent, and Saturn’s completely out of the business, weird and somewhat depressing.

Pretty much the only actual feud involved in this match that I can recall centered around Eddy Guerrero and Chyna. For those of you who were lucky enough to see the all-time low point of Eddy’s career (no matter what anyone else of Eddy himself has to say about it), they did this angle where Eddy fell in love with Chyna and made her his mamacita, and they did this long, stupid angle where Chyna helped Eddy study for his GED, and then they got engaged, and then Chyna did Playboy, then Eddy got mad she did Playboy, then Chyna started crying and bleating like a sheep, and then Eddy and her made up, then they broke up because Eddy’s a sleazy, and if anybody thinks Eddy never paid his dues, let me point out that even though all the wrestlers were more or less forced to treat Chyna like she was the hottest babe on the planet, Eddy had the misfortune of being booked to be in love with her. Somehow, with grit and determination for which Hercules himself would have patted him on the back, Eddy got through the angle and eventually wound up with the WWE Title, but it was quite depressing to watch at the time.

Anyway, the match itself: Chyna was mercifully eliminated early after a beltshot from Guerrero, but Billy Gunn turned the tables and put Eddy out with a drop sleeper to even the odds, but Benoit eliminated K-Kwik with a German suplex and then Saturn put Road Dogg out with a Northern Lights suplex, leaving Billy 3-on-1. Mr One Smoking Ass fought valiantly and beat Malenko with the Fameasser, but when Billy tried suplexing Benoit into the ring from the outside, Saturn hooked Gunn’s foot and Benoit fell on top for the win, Benoit and Saturn your survivors.

Up next was a match that came about as the result of another wonderfully wonderful angle, as Chris Jericho took on Kane in a match that stemmed from an incident on Smackdown where Jericho accidentally spilled coffee on Kane. Unfortunately for Jericho, while coffee was a deadly foreign object in WCW in 1996, it just pissed Kane off, who went on a violent rampage afterward, culminating in this match, which was pretty good, if formulaic. There were a couple of blatantly blown spots, such as Jericho nearly killing himself when he caught his leg on the top rope on a plancha attempt, and then later in the match when Kane shifted himself about three feet across the mat to get into position for the Lionsault, but sadly the comedy came to an end when Kane caught Jericho by the throat coming off the Lionsault attempt and chokeslammed him for the win.

Following this was a nothing match for the European Title with William Regal defending against Hardcore Holly. Both men had recently returned to WWF action, Regal after being fired due to personal issues, following which he put on such a good showing against Chris Benoit at the Brian Pillman Memorial Show that the WWF hired him instantly and still has him under contract to this day. Hardcore Holly, on the other hand, was put out of action after Kurt Angle accidentally broke his arm doing a moonsault. Like I said, nothing match that ended when Holly got pissed off that Regal was working over his arm and got himself disqualified for blatantly hitting Regal with the European belt right in front of the referee.

Up next, the Rock took on Rikishi, who had recently turned heel after being revealed as the man who ran over Steve Austin at the previous year’s Survivor Series and then went on to claim the Rock as the mastermind behind the attack. Rikishi’s heel turn pretty much ruined his career, because he was really over as the big fat dancing guy in a thong, but the heel turn brought that to a screeching halt. Rikishi went for the stinkface (which still got a babyface pop), but Rock came out of the corner with a big clothesline, and then hit a spinebuster and the People’s Elbow for the win. Rikishi attacked the Rock after the match and hit three Banzai Drops, then beat up a few refs and was about to leave, but changed his mind and came back to give Rock one more Banzai Drop just to be a jerk.

Ivory defeated Lita to retain the WWF Women’s Title. This was during the Right To Censor era for Ivory, who was playing the role of the prudish, morally snobby elitist to the hilt. She would mock Lita for the way she dressed, including…having her underwear stick out the top of her pants. HORROR OF HORRORS!! Anyway, another match seemingly thrown onto the card to fill time, Lita got busted open hardway by an errant right hand, and Ivory pinned her with her feet on the ropes to retain.

The other tag team elimination match on the 2000 Survivor Series pitted the Hardy Boyz and the Dudley Boyz against Edge, Christian, and Right To Censor members the Goodfather and Bull Buchanan. By this point in 2000, Edge & Christian, the Hardyz, and the Dudleyz had had two TLC matches, held the Tag Team Title multiple times between the three of them, and had established themselves as the centerpieces of the tag team division when it actually meant something, and the RTC were thrown in here for laughs since they were the champions at this point. Anyway, the heel team went up 4-on-2 against Jeff and Bubba (the two guys on the team anyone really cared about anyway), but the faces evened it up when miscommunication caused Buchanan to be eliminated when Edge accidentally speared him, and then Bubba eliminated Edge as well after Christian missed a splash onto Bubba but missed and hit Edge. The Goodfather hit a Death Valley Driver about a minute later to eliminate Bubba, but Jeff came back to win the match by himself. The RTC beat up Jeff after the match, but Matt and the Dudleyz came back out to make the save and do the usual 3D and Whazzup and Bubba getting wood and putting people through tables gimmick.

The Main Events

The first of two central matches on this show was Kurt Angle defending the WWF Title against the Undertaker. The Undertaker was doing the American Badass gimmick at this point, and for some reason was wearing these ridiculous gold pants at this show that looked like he had raided the Godfather’s closet. Regardless of that, though, I think I’m able to appreciate the American Badass character more now than I did at the time, because back then I just wanted the Deadman back, but in retrospect it was interesting seeing Undertaker do something different where he was able to show more personality than he’s really able to while doing the Deadman gimmick. Angle, in the meantime, was just hitting his one year anniversary in the WWF, during which time he had won the European and Intercontinental Titles and held them at the same time, then went on to win the King of the Ring tournament, and finally defeated the Rock to win the WWF Title, all in his rookie year. This was probably the strongest push anyone had gotten at that point in their career up to that point with the possible exception of Diesel in 1994.

This was the second time these two men had met on PPV, with Undertaker winning their first meeting at Fully Loaded, and the odds would seem to have been in Undertaker’s favor as they pointed out that only one time before this had the WWF Title been successfully defended at Survivor Series, but they also played up that somebody had gotten screwed in the WWF Title match in the previous three Survivor Series.

The screwjob seemed to be in here as Edge and Christian came out to distract the referee, who didn’t see Kurt tap out to a Fujiwara armbar and also missed an Undertaker cover after a chokeslam. Kurt did come back and actually pulled out the Bret Hart ringpost figure four, but Undertaker came back and took over the match, but Angle got knocked out to the floor and pulled the old Doink angle where he crawled under the ring and switched places with a double, in this case it was his brother Eric Angle, as we later found out. Undertaker gave Eric Angle the last ride and went for the cover, but Earl Hebner realized it wasn’t Kurt that was being covered and stopped counting, allowing the real Kurt to sneak in and roll Undertaker up with a handful of tights for the win, then run to the back and into a waiting car which then sped away. For the first time since 1992 and only the second time ever, the WWF Title was successfully defended at Survivor Series.

The REAL main event, though, was a no disqualification match between Steve Austin and Triple H. As you may recall, Steve Austin was the victim of a hit-and-run vehicular assault at Survivor Series the year before, and although it eventually turned out that Rikishi was the one driving the car, it was actually Triple H who was the mastermind of the whole plan, and he used Austin’s absence to basically take the WWF over. Austin found out, got pissed, and we got this match as a result.

As usual in WWF PPV main events of that era, Austin spent the first ten minutes or so dragging Triple H around the floor and beating up him, but they finally made it back to the ring where Triple H hit a low blow to get a little breathing room. The match kept spilling in and out of the ring until Austin hit a Stunner on Triple H, but instead of going for the win, he tried to Pillmanize Hunter’s neck with a steel chair. Triple H rolled out of the ring and ran to the back, and Austin took chase but was attacked in the back by the Radicalz as Triple H ran out to the parking lot and got in a car to make his escape. Unfortunately for Triple H, though, Austin made his way through to the parking lot and used a forklift to pick up Triple H’s car and drop it from about 20 feet up. That was the end not only of the match, but the entire show, and you would think that Triple H would be seriously injured by this incident, but in true Looney Tunes fashion, he was back walking around just find the next night on Raw with little more than a few bruises.

Final Analysis

With a card like this, on paper it looks like it could have been something really special, but instead it just seemed to fall flat. No issues got resolved, there were a lot of stupid finishes and silly angles, and the wrong guys were doing jobs in a lot of places. I think Triple H being dropped from 20 feet up in a car only to be perfectly fine the next night is right up there with any stupid deaths or reincarnations the Undertaker ever had. The Triple H-Austin match was a great brawl and there were some other good matches here, but nothing really memorable and this was one of the first Survivor Series shows that felt like it was just put on for the sake of putting on a PPV. Nothing really worth seeing here, so don’t lose too much sleep if you missed it.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back soon with Survivor Series 2001. As always, all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com, and if you want to catch me on MySpace, you can find me at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider. Take care, and I’ll see you all next time.