Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
Survivor Series 2002, emanating from the Mecca of Sports Entertainment, Madison Square Garden in New York City, took place about a year after the end of what most people considered to be the end of the Attitude Era, and the difference was noticeable because even though everybody worked really hard and this was a great show in terms of the wrestling, there was this general feeling of apathy that had permeated WWE for most of the year. Though the traditional team elimination matches were nowhere to be found this year, the elimination theme was found in several matches on the show to indirectly pay homage of a sort to the original concept of the show.
The Undercard
The show opened with Jeff Hardy and Bubba & Spike Dudley taking on Rico and Three Minute Warning, Rosey (who would go on to become the Hurricane’s Super Hero In Training) and Jamal, who would of course go on to be Umaga. This was the closest any match on this show came to the elimination tag concept, as it was an elimination Tables Match where you eliminated your opponents by putting them through tables. Jeff Hardy was really floating around with no direction at this point, and while he was taking all the risks he always did here, everything was really sloppy and he seemed burned out and as if he didn’t care anymore. Bubba and Spike were teaming since D-Von got split off from them in the brand extension and sent to Smackdown as Reverend D-Von. The match came down to Bubba alone against Rico and Jamal, but he ended up going through both of them, including an impressive powerbomb on Jamal through a table to win the match for his team. Rico and 3MW attacked Bubba after the match, but he was saved by D-Von, who came back out in Dudley Boyz attire, jettisoning the Reverend gimmick and going back to what brought him to the dance.
The second match was Jamie Noble defending the Cruiserweight Title against Billy Kidman. While I never really appreciated Kidman as much as some people seemed to, I’ve always been a big fan of Jamie Noble and this ended up being a pretty good match. Noble spiked Kidman at one point with a top rope DDT that looked really ugly and as if it could have legitimately broken Kidman’s neck, but Kidman ended up coming back and hitting the shooting star press to get the win and the Cruiserweight Title.
That was followed by another title match, as Women’s Champion Trish Stratus put the title on the line against Victoria. The backstory to this was that Trish and Victoria had both been fitness models, but Trish went on to great success in both modeling and later WWE while Victoria had been left behind and forgotten. Now Victoria had finally made her way to WWE and snapped, brutally attacking Trish and setting up this match. This was way stiffer than you might expect, and neither girl held back at all, using anything they could get their hands on and both bumped like crazy. In the end, Victoria grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed it in Trish’s face to blind her, and then after this brutal match, she came back in the ring and beat Trish with a vertical suplex to win the Women’s Title 100% clean. Trish and Victoria both worked really hard in this one and showed why they were two of the best female wrestlers of our time, and it really depresses me to see how awesome Victoria was here and how she’s been relegated to basically a women’s enhancement talent for women whose only qualification is that they’ve been enhanced.
The championship fun continues, as WWE Tag Team Champions Rey Mysterio & Edge defended against Eddy & Chavo Guerrero and Kurt Angle & Chris Benoit in a triple threat elimination match. These six guys had been taking turns wrestling one another in both singles and tag matches for weeks, and a lot of people at the time felt that these six guys (often referred to as the Smackdown Six) were the only reason to even watch Smackdown at that point. The matches were all really good, and even though this wasn’t the best of the series, it was still very good. Angle & Benoit had won the tournament to become the first champions, but lost the title shortly afterward to Rey & Edge, and so all three teams got together here to settle once and for all who would really be the best. The action was nonstop until Benoit went for a cover on Eddy, but Chavo hit him in the back of the head with one of the title belts, which then wound up in the hands of Kurt Angle, so when Benoit turned around and saw Angle with the belt he thought it was Angle who hit him, and this led to the two of them arguing and allowing Edge to hit a spear on Benoit to eliminate them. At this point Angle and Benoit lay the remaining four men out before leaving the ring, arguing the whole way to the locker room. The match continued until Eddy caught Rey in the Lasso From El Paso, making Rey tap out and winning the WWE Tag Team Title. It’s so cool to look back and see when that title actually meant something.
Before we get to the main events, they took a break before the Elimination Chamber where Chris Nowinski came out to the ring, ran down the Yankees, and called New Yorkers stupid. This brought out Matt Hardy who took exception with Nowinski calling New Yorkers stupid because they’re actually losers, and then made fun of the Knicks. Finally they come to an agreement that they’re both stupid and losers, or loopid. Finally after a few minutes of this, the sirens hit and out comes Scott Steiner, making his big WWE debut after having not been seen since the demise of WCW. Steiner came into the ring, tossed Nowinski and Hardy around, then did his catchphrase about freaks and hollerin’ if you hear me before heading to the back. The segment sounds lame when you read it, but the crowd went nuts for Steiner, and even his signing was treated like a big deal and was put up on the from page of WWE.com, and he got the superstar treatment for several months until he had one of the worst PPV matches in WWE history against Triple H at the Royal Rumble and was immediately depushed and buried until he left the company about a year and a half later.
The Main Events
The two top matches each focused around one of the top championships, and the first saw Brock Lesnar defending the WWE Title against the Big Show. A bit of background here: Big Show had basically been a seven foot tall jobber for a couple of years over on Raw, but then he jumped to Smackdown where he immediately laid out a challenge to Brock Lesnar for the WWE Title at Survivor Series, and the match was set. It seemed like Big Show would just be the flavor of the month challenger while Brock headed toward his match with Kurt Angle at Wrestlemania, but he got injured during a house show match against Big Show about a week before this and suffered some rib injuries which were serious enough that we didn’t know if Lesnar would even be able to wrestle at Survivor Series, but he ended up wrestling anyway. Backstage before the match, Heyman’s manager Paul Heyman expressed concern before telling Lesnar that he was confident that “his client†would walk out of Survivor Series with the title. If that didn’t give away the finish of the match right there, then you’re officially the most dense substance on the periodic table.
Anyway, the match happened and if Brock was injured, you would have never known it because he was tossing Big Show around like he was a baby, hitting a German suplex, a belly-to-belly overhead suplex, and finally the F5 on Big Show, but Paul Heyman pulled the referee out of the ring before he could count to three. A screwjob? At Survivor Series?? Who’d have thought? Anyway, Brock turns his back, allowing Big Show to get ahold of a chair which he rammed into Brock’s ribs then cracked over his head, and then finally chokeslammed Lesnar on the chair to pick up the win and the WWE Title, and also end Lesnar’s undefeated streak in the process.
The entire match lasted all of three minutes and pretty much dashed any faith I had left in WWE at that point. It’s possible that Lesnar was injured enough that they thought he needed to drop the title, but the way he was throwing around Big Show would seem to contradict that. Even if they just wanted to get the title off of him to build to him getting it back at Wrestlemania, they went about it all wrong. Lesnar was undefeated, and he could have only suffered his first loss once, and it could have been something that was built to and made a big deal out of rather that having them throw it away on a slug like the Big Show who nobody had taken seriously in years. Worse than that, they took Brock Lesnar, who had been the most indestructible monster WWE had seen since the Ultimate Warrior, and made him look like a wimp by having him get dusted by Big Show in three minutes, injury or no. This was the match that I can pinpoint as the very momeny when I knew that I was not going to ever enjoy WWE again the way I had during the Attitude Era, and was the moment when I gave up all hope, and they’ve done nothing to prove me wrong since then.
The show was closed with the first ever appearance of the Elimination Chamber, as World Champion Triple H defended against Kane, Booker T, Chris Jericho, Shawn Michaels, and Rob Van Dam, so basically you had Triple H, who had pretty much defeated all contenders already in singles matches, now defending against all of them at once, plus Shawn Michaels. Shawn had, of course, spent four and a half years out of action due to a back injury that was so bad he thought for a long time that it would be career ending, but had miraculously returned to the ring at Summerslam 2002 where he defeated his former partner in Degeneration X, Triple H, clean in the middle of the ring, after which Triple H cracked Shawn in the back with his sledgehammer and put him back on the shelf. This would be Shawn’s first match back after that attack, and even though they were still taking it really easy on Shawn, the Summerslam match had apparently gone well enough that he felt he could go a few more times.
Triple H and Van Dam started the match, followed by Jericho and then Booker T. At one point, Rob Van Dam came off the top of one of the cells and hit a Five Star Notebook Splash on Triple H, but Van Dam came down awkwardly and not only apparently injured one of his own knees, but his other leg came down across the throat of Triple H and hurt him pretty badly. Triple H was in a lot of pain and had trouble breathing through the remainder of the match, but still toughed it out and amazingly went almost another 25 minutes in the match after suffering the injury.
The match continued and Kane came in, followed by Van Dam and Booker T both being eliminated before Shawn Michaels even came into the match. Triple H had spent much of the last few minutes down in the corner trying to collect himself to get through the rest of the match. Kane started chokeslamming everyone and was about to go for a Tombstone on Triple H, but ate a superkick from Shawn Michaels, followed by a Pedigree, and finally a Lionsault from Jericho was enough to put Kane away, bringing the match down to Hunter, Jericho, and Michaels. At this point Michaels is busted open and bleeding pretty badly, but he showed he still could sell a beating like a champ and spent several minutes getting beaten up by Triple H and Jericho, but finally hit a superkick on Jericho to eliminate him, so it now comes down to the former friends and partners and they put together a hell of a finishing sequence where Shawn hits the elbowdrop off the top of one of the chambers and then goes for the superkick but Hunter blocks it and hits the Pedigree. Hunter was too tired to cover right away, but finally crawls over to make the cover, but the extra few seconds allowed Michaels to recover enough to kick out. Hunter went for another Pedigree but Michaels reversed out and hit the superkick for the win and the World Title. Michaels celebrated in the ring as confetti came down from the roof, and you would have thought from the scene that it was New Year’s in Times Square.
Final Analysis
As I said, there was some great wrestling on this show and I was pleased as punch to see Shawn Michaels defy the odds to come back and regain the World Title, but other than that, this show was difficult to enjoy for some reason. As I’ve said, Lesnar losing the title here was the moment when I knew WWE was jumping the shark and that the Attitude Era was well and truly over and never coming back. The Elimination Chamber was a lot of fun and well booked and the hardcore Women’s Title match was something you had to see to believe, but other than that stay away from this one, the headache you’ll get will make the wrestling hard to enjoy.
Thanks again for reading, and I’ll be back before you know it with Survivor Series 2003. Until then, all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com and you can catch me on MySpace at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider. Take care, and I’ll see you all soon.
