WWE Armageddon
December 10, 2000
Backstage, The Stooges welcome Vince to Armageddon. Brisco tells McMahon that the HIAC is above the ring. Well where else would it be?
The Hardy Boyz and Lita vs Saturn, Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko w/ Terri - 6 Person Intergender Match
Survivor Series was last month guys. This all stemmed from a match that Malenko had with Lita. If Lita won, she'd become the Lightheavyweight champion. If Malenko won, he won a date with Lita. Dean would win and get a date with Lita. They ended up at a hotel at the end where the Hardy Boyz attacked Malenko. The Radicalz jump Team Xtreme before the bell. Lita hits Twist of Fate on Eddie and Jeff nails the Swanton Bomb to eliminate Eddie early on. Great idea, remove the most over heel right off the bat. Poetry of Motion on Malenko, but Saturn catches Jeff and hits the Death Valley Driver when they try it on him. Jeff is eliminated. Nice sequence. Saturn is eliminated by Matt after the Twist of Fate. Dean pushes Matt into Lita and then rolls up Matt to eliminate Hardy. It's down to Dean and Lita, the two that started this whole feud. Lita gets in a few near falls before Dean manhandles her. Dean has enough of playing with her so he locks in the Texas Cloverleaf and wins the match. Far too short of a match with 5 eliminations. While the final pairing of Lita and Malenko proved to be the best part of the match, even that lasted only a couple of minutes. This should of been a Raw or SD match with Matt Hardy challenging Dean for the Lightheavyweight Title for this PPV. They could of put on a much better match then this. I'm not sure why they even had Eddie Guerrero in this match. Terri was Saturn's manager, just make it Malenko, Saturn and Terri. Anyways, a few good spots, but overall nothing special.
9 Minutes 1 1/2 Stars.
Backstage, Lillian tries to talk to Kurt, but Kurt tears her a new asshole. Angle says he has no fear going into the HIAC. An overly long interview that took time away from the opening match. Egotistical/Annoyed Kurt isn't as fun as Goofy Kurt.
HIAC Moment - Triple H back body drops Cactus Jack through the HIAC at No Way Out.
William Regal vs Hardcore Holly - European Title
Since Survivor Series, Regal dropped the European Title to Crash Holly at Rebellion. He would win it back soon after on Raw. Since this show takes place in Alabama, Hardcore Holly once again gets a European Title Match. Never mind the fact he got himself DQ'd at the last PPV for no reason. Before the match, Regal insults the citizens of Alabama. Let's see, "Insulting the natives" Check. "Having opponent from the state" Check. Looks like they found a way to have Regal booed this time. This one is a lot less focusing on one body part which is good since that's all the previous match did. Holly busts out the Holly slam (Jackhammer turned into slam, I think it has another name based from Japan). Holly even uses the Alabama Jam (Made famous by another Alabama native, Bobby Eaton), but only gets a two count. Eaton would of been so pleased if his move won a title. Holly uses his steel rod arm (From the surgery) and knocks Regal out (Think Lex Luger in 1993). While the ref is concentrated on Regal, Raven runs in and hits a DDT to Holly. Regal covers and picks up the win. I believe Raven's interference came as the result of an argument he had with Holly recently. Much better match than their Survivor Series bore. Thank God Regal started to be better used in 2001.
5 Minutes. 2 Stars.
Backstage, Kevin Kelly interviews Rikishi. Rikishi is ready to sacrifice 5 people to finally become WWF World Champion. This time the interview is kept short and to the point. Much better.
Chyna vs Val Venis w/ Ivory
With her storyline with Eddie over, Chyna became the target of the RTC because of her Playboy shoot. Chyna attacks Venis on his way down to the ring. Ivory tries to help Venis, but Chyna lays her out. Inside the ring, Venis sells for Chyna. Venis hits some knees, but misses the Money Shot. Ivory trips Chyna which allows Venis to pin Chyna with the Perfectplex. Post match has Chyna trying to get revenge on Ivory, but Venis destroys Chyna. Much better than I had expected. It wasn't memorable and had zero business being on PPV, but it was good. Chyna really should of wrestled Eddie Guerrero instead. Give a proper big show ending to storyline.
5 Minutes. 2 1/2 Stars.
Backstage, Stephanie McMahon tells Vince that she's scared for Hunter tonight.
Earlier tonight, Kevin Kelly interviews The Undertaker in the ring. Cool little segment with Taker talking about past HIAC moments and the WWE showed them in a blue-grey color. Longer than the Angle interview, but this one at least had a purpose.
Vince McMahon and the Stooges heads to the ring. McMahon informs us that he meant everything he said on Smackdown (Telling Linda he wanted a divorce). He then says that the blood of the wrestlers are on the hands of Foley and the fans.
Chris Jericho vs Kane - Last Man Standing Match
Jim Ross summed this up nicely, "I can't believe this all started out from spilled coffee." Kane doesn't even let Jericho get to the ring before he goes after him. They immediately head backstage. The WWE crew were either ill prepared or Kane/Jericho went backstage before they were supposed to. Either way, they don't have a camera ready yet. In the meantime, we keep a far shot of the entire audience while Lawler tries to get the attention of the director. Finally, we have a camera and the two are fighting backstage. Hey, there's Mideon and he's fully clothed. Jericho and Kane stops for a moment to both punch Mideon. Ha, even enemies like Jericho and Kane loves beating up jobbers. Back to the ringside, it's all Kane. Referee Teddy Long keeps having to count on Jericho. In comes a chair and Jericho nails a Lionsault on Kane. They head back to the entrance where Jericho bulldogs Kane off of some stagebox through a table. Kane starts to get up so Jericho heads over to a tall wall made up of barrels (Maybe 25ft high and 6ft wide?) and knocks them over. But since the barrels are either glued or welded together, they stay a wall and safely hit some more stage equipment leaving Kane plenty of room to be safe (Think McMahon's Raw fall). Teddy Long gets to 8 when Kane's arm reaches in between the barrels, but Jericho just kicks it. Teddy doesn't notice it and it's all over. Terrible ending aside, this was much better than what I had read. The biggest flaws besides the ending was how long the counts were. Teddy Long must be the slowest counter ever. Not the greatest Last Man Standing Match ever, but being the only match that got some time (besides the main event) it had it's moments.
18 Minutes. 2 Stars.
Over at WWF New York, Shawn Michaels puts over how dangerous the Undertaker is in the HIAC. JR also likes Shawn's cowboy hat.
RTC (c) vs The Dudley Boyz vs Edge and Christian vs Road Dogg and K-Kwik - 4 Corners Tag Titles Match
As everyone is making their entrance, we're showed highlights of Smackdown when the Dudley Boyz appeared to join RTC, only to turn on them. Meh, the New Age Outlaws did the exact thing to the Corporation a year prior. K-Kwik is in the match for the majority of the time getting worked over by E&C and RTC. Killings may be entertaining when he's on offense, but he's a bore when selling. Later on Bubba Ray and Road Dogg does a double Road Dogg punch, shake routine. Once they see they're both doing the same thing, they punch each other out. Soon all 8 men are fighting. K-Kwik tries to hit a crossbody on the outside, but RTC catches him. Inside, The Dudley's botch a 3D on Bull while hitting a better one on The Goodfather. A spear on Bubba only gets a 2 count. Christian hits the Unprettier on Bubba and Edge covers him for the win. We have new tag team champions. Well that was weird. After all of these months of feuding, the RTC and Dudley Boyz feud comes to an end without a proper PPV match. Furthermore, RTC isn't even involved in the finish. This is burying 101. RTC would go on to be in a C level feud against the APA before finally calling it a day and splitting up. Once again, this match didn't belong on PPV, very unmemorable.
10 Minutes. 2 Stars.
Backstage, Stephanie begs Hunter to not go in the HIAC. Trips tells her that the World Title is the only thing that matters to her. Well, that should make your wife feel good.
Billy Gunn (c) vs Chris Benoit - IC Title Match
As I said in my Survivor Series Review thread, Gunn won the IC title right after the PPV. He continues to not be over, so they book this match. Billy Gunn gets the advantage early on in the match hip tossing and arm dragging Benoit all over the ring. Benoit takes over working on Gunn's left knee. JR brings up how most wrestlers have been going after Gunn's shoulder (Remember it's the one he had surgery on) which really just shows how smart Benoit was. Just about everything Gunn did relied on his legs, his shoulder not so much. Benoit dragonscrew whips Gunn. Benoit locks in the Crippler Crossface, but Gunn is too close to the ropes. Gunn hits a very weak Jackhammer. JR blames it on his hurt knee, so I will too. Hmm...the second show in which I had to blame the bad Jackhammer on something other than Gunn just sucking. Gunn botches a tilt-a-whirl slam completely. Benoit is tired of being in the ring with someone so terrible, so he just locks in the Crossface one more time away from the ropes. Gunn quickly tapes. With that, Gunn's latest singles push came to an end just a couple months after it began. This would end up being Gunn's final single's push until 2003, which was cut short when he...you guessed it, got hurt. His last major push before being released was in 2002 with Chuck. Big surprise, that ended when he got hurt as well. I can't believe he lasted as long as he did. As for Benoit, this win might be seen as a depush down the card, but this was really just to get the title off of Gunn and onto Jericho so he and William Regal could feud over it. Benoit proves that he can get a good match out of even the worst men.
10 Minutes. 3 Stars.
Earlier tonight, JR talks to his teenybopper crush, Steve Austin. Austin mentions how the HIAC caused him to not get any sleep last night. Pretty boring and lame interview for Austin.
Ivory (c) vs Molly Holly vs Trish Stratus - Women's Title Match
Molly and Trish were still feuding from Survivor Series. Ivory I don't recall had any real meaning in this besides being champion. Molly throws Trish around by her hair. Trish monkeyflips Molly out of the corner, but Molly lands on her feet and is hit with a closeline by Ivory. Wow, you still see this spot being done by Indy wrestlers and it's considered an awesome spot. Ivory and Trish doubleteams Molly until she knocks Ivory down. Running powerbomb to Trish by Molly. Ivory knocks Molly out of the ring and pins Trish to retain her title. Post match has T&APA coming out to scare Molly. Crash comes running out and attacks both of them and gets in the ring. Crash challenges them to get in the ring. T&APA laughs and get in while Crash runs out. The APA music hits and the beer drinkers have returned to the WWE. Bradshaw hits the Closeline from Hell to Albert. Extremely short match which was really just used as a way to bring the APA back. Molly makes it memorable though. How the hell didn't she get pushed hard as a face?! I'll give an extra half star just for how amazing Molly was with pure crap to work with.
2 Minutes. 1 1/2 Stars.
Backstage, the Rock delivers one of his best promos ever by imitating all five of his opponents in the HIAC match. I'm sure everyone has seen it before, so I won't explain it. Easily one of the funniest few minutes of the Attitude Era.
Kurt Angle (c) vs The Undertaker vs Triple H vs Steve Austin vs Rikishi vs The Rock - Hell in a Cell WWE World Title Match
Little did I know, but this was also the PPV debut of the Undertaker using Limp Bizkit's Rollin' for this theme song. Personally, I thought it was his weakest theme song in his undead phase. Triple H also has slightly different music. I assume it's from the most recent WWE theme music CD with various rock bands covering superstar's theme songs. This is also all three of the big matches at the Survivor Series crammed together. I'm not even going to try and give a detail recap, I'll just go over some major moments. Early on all three Survivor Series pairings takes their turn wrestling in the ring before heading back at to wrestle between the cell and the ring. Austin busts Hunter open and rakes Trips' face across the cell. Austin decides that's not good enough so he going all around the cell raking Hunter's face the entire time. Heh, I like it. Out comes Vince McMahon with the truck that we saw backstage during the Jericho/Kane match. Since the match wasn't called off, he's going to stop it. What's the idea of the man who's brilliance ended numerous profitable territories and expanded his little Northeast territory into a worldwide popular company? He's just going to rip the side of the cage off. Yeah, never mind the fact that the cell side would fall on the fans or that the entire cell could collapse on all six superstars. Mick Foley comes out and stops Vince after he only got the cell door off. Security pulls Vince away from ringside. This whole part took up maybe 5 minutes, which was 5 minutes we didn't see a single thing of what was going on in the cell. The truck is left out there though. For some reason the entire back is full of wood chips. Hmm. Triple H crawls out of the cell only for Austin to follow him and beat him up at the entrance. Everyone else eventually spills out. For a good 10 minutes, all of the wrestlers are battling among the cars in the set. Austin pushes a camera into Hunter and the crew shows a replay from the point of view of the camera. Kinda cool. Eventually they become bored of the cars just as they became bored of the inside of the cell, so starting with Austin and Hunter, they start climbing up the cell. Austin, Angle and Hunter was up for awhile before escaping. This left Rikishi and Taker to fight alone up high. The best moment of the match came when the time keeper kept trying to throw a chair up to the Undertaker, but couldn't get it up there. The WWE crew tried to hide it by showing what was happening on the other side of the cell. But with the cell having thousands of holes in it, you could see it easily. Finally, the crowd erupts when Taker catches the chair. Ha, awesome. Rikishi and Taker battle to the ledge of the cell and Taker chokeslams Rikishi off of the cell and onto the bed of the truck. It's always awesome to see someone of Rikishi's size do such huge spots. Austin has one of his best facial expressions ever right afterwards. He looks like he's thinking "Holy crap.
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 20 or greater. You currently have 0 posts." We get a close up of Rikishi and we see that he must of sunk down a lot from the wood chips. Way to pretty much expose your trick WWE. With Taker taking a nap on top of the cell (I don't know why else he would just stay up there), we're left with Austin, Angle, Triple H and Rocky in the ring. Rocky hits a Rock Bottom to Angle, but Austin breaks it up. Stone Cold Stunner to The Rock. Austin tries to hit the stunner on Trips, but Hunter reverses it into the neckbreaker just like he did at Survivor Series. Suddenly, we hear the ref counting and it appears as if Angle got a hand on Rocky. We never actually see Angle's arm on Rocky, but Hebner gets to three and rings the bell. Angle only celebrates a few moments before he gets a Stone Cold Stunner. I have to say that was a lame ending. Angle has been built up fairly strong since No Mercy with him actually showing he can win matches. But to have him just lay a hand on the Rock makes it seem like he just got lucky. This could of been a great chance for Angle to solidify his spot in the main event. Instead, it just made him look even more like a midcarder with the World Title. For a match that's called Hell
IN A Cell, they sure didn't spend too much time
in it. Isn't the HIAC dangerous and interesting enough to stay in it the whole time? I hate when they go on the top of the cell, but to brawl around the entrance for a good third of the match made the cell seem not as important as they make it out to be. A six man HIAC is a great way to make 3 new feuds overnight. The only problem was, with the exception of Rikishi vs Taker and Rikishi vs Triple H, everyone has feuded with each other. So really, what could really come out of this? I mean, is Hunter and Austin going to be even bigger rivals because of this match? Will Rocky want to regain his title even more from Angle because of this match? The only thing this match really did for future booking was start a Rikishi vs Taker feud which would be such a minor feud involving Kane and the returning Haku. So I really don't see how the company benefited from putting 6 of their biggest stars all in one match together. I think buyrates could of been just as good or better if it was just Hunter vs Austin and then maybe have a 4 way for the World Title. But I'll talk about buyrates in a bit. Overall, the match was a clusterfuck. There was too many people fighting to properly follow one fight and there was too many other distractions (Foley/Vince, some people fighting on the cell while others are *Somewhere else*, ect). This is a match where you can have fun watching it, especially with some friends, but I doubt you'd really leave thinking that this was an all time classic like you might with others. I know that there's some people that hates this match, but a smaller group who's entertained by it. I was entertained by it, but I can't say it was very good. It was just mindless fun. For a 10 minute 1999 hardcore match, that's perfect. But for a match that the PPV was built around, that can not be your goal. It needs to be great and a historic match. This is neither.
33 Minutes. 3 Stars Overall
For some odd reason, the WWE decided to invest all of their buildup time to the main event. We don't get any pre-match interviews for the other title matches or anything of the such. This really felt like an episode of Raw with a ppv main event. I made a mention about buyrates earlier. It's clear that they brought back the HIAC to increase buyrates. The buyrate was 1.15. These days, Vince would eat his baby granddaughter alive to get a buyrate like that. However, that's a .2 decline from No Mercy. You know, that PPV with the headlining matches being Angle vs Rocky and Benoit vs Triple H. And then, No Way Out, the next non big 4 PPV, saw an increase of buyrate of .45. Now, looking back, was the 6 man HIAC such a great idea? I would say no. Who knows, maybe if they would of put SOME effort into the other matches, the buyrate would of been higher. However, this ends up being a crowning example of what a one match PPV is and also why one match PPVs are a bad idea.
Best Match: 6 Man HIAC
Worst Match: Ivory vs Molly Holly vs Trish Stratus
Grade: C-
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