______________________________________________________________________ I do not offer subscriptions to a mailing list! I do not e-mail images! ______________________________________________________________________ - The WWF had Backlash on PPV this past Sunday, 04/29/2001. On paper, as mentioned before, the reason to order the show was the Chris Benoit vs. Kurt Angle 30-minute match (and perhaps the Steve Regal vs. Chris Jericho, which was hurt by the less than stellar outing at WrestleMania). Nothing else seemed particularly alluring. In the pre-show Heat, Jerry Lynn debuted, winning the Lightheavyweight title from Crash Holly. You know, I want to get hopeful as a result of this, particularly if Paul Heyman can take control of booking a vibrant division, but McMahon's history in this regard speaks for itself. After the PPV opener, my hope was bolstered again as Jim Ross & Heyman talked about Lynn's debut, in three minutes or less saying "Jerry Lynn" a dozen times. That's a good sign, boys. * X-Pac & Justin Credible & Albert beat Buh Buh Ray Dudley & D-Von Dudley & Spike Dudley: The crowd was tremendously into being entertained, something that always lacked on WCW shows in recent years. This was a generally hard-worked ECW, er WWF, PPV opener. Nothing at all noteworthy workwise, of course. But when the crowd is this into the product, I guess it doesn't matter all that much, except to fans like me. One minute into the match, the crowd started chanting "We want tables!", which speaks volumes. After some pretty lame action of sorts, Credible & X-Pac hit simultaneous super kicks and X-Pac scored the win on Buh Buh. To make sure that the right music and reaction would occur at the end, the Dudleyz drove X-Pac through a table. Uneventful and indifferent opener. The booking was really traditional. * Rhyno beat Raven to win the Hardcore Title: The ECW PPV continued with this nonsensical brawling match. Actually, Raven is often one of the guys who can work this style of match without all of the glaring nonsense. Rhyno opened strong, but Raven rallied on the floor. Raven loaded up the ring, while Rhyno recovered. Raven beat the stuffing out of Rhyno with a "handicapped" sign. Rhyno had even tossed Raven's shopping cart (to carry "plunder" to the ring) into the ring, which required great strength and balance, I would think. Rhyno pressed the cart overhead, but took a gut shot and fell with the cart on his chest. This was pretty much what you'd expect in an ECW Title match. Rhyno waited for Raven to get to his feet to hit his gore/spear. Raven moved, and Rhyno speared the shopping cart, planting himself inside in a great garbagy spot. Raven then whacked the cart with a garbage can and Rhyno bounced around as if he was getting hit. What a sad way to follow up the cart spot. As they showed a replay, the finish occurred. Suddenly, this WWF PPV switched from an ECW PPV to a WCW PPV. It wouldn't be the last time. They showed the gore finish again afterwards. This match was okay. * They aired some ads between matches, hyping the current promotion schedule and the new babe video. They once again aired Shane's fairy tale insult of Big Slow. At this point, I went to grab a drink, while thinking of a rhyme that was more fitting. * Steve Regal beat Chris Jericho: Earlier in the show, "the Duchess of Queensbury" showed up, apparently to witness the match. It was the old formula all over again, with the Duchess playing the role of the heel Vince McMahon, making up rules on the fly. Jericho gets a submission, but the Duchess says the round is over. He gets another one, but she says submissions don't count. Regal uses her sceptre, the ref DQs, but the Duchess says it is okay. The overbooking killed the match, but the Duchess said it was good. You know, after this type of shit killed the Lance Storm vs. Mike Awesome match in WCW, not to mention the indy shows I went to over the past couple of years, you'd think that everybody would realize that this stuff has run its course. They did what has to be described as a cunnilingus tease, with Regal landing in the Duschess' lap and then selling it like he was aghast, while the commentators commented on the smell. Of course, Jericho pulled the Duchess into the ring and put the lion tamer on her. Very high brow stuff, this match. Regal used some chair shots to secure the pin. "How dare he put his hands on the Duchess!" It was like 1980s WWF all over again. Just horrible. * Chris Benoit beat Kurt Angle in a 30-minute msubmission match: These two guys rule. In a recent Observer, Dave Meltzer wrote that Angle is on-track to being the best wrestler in the world inside another year-and-a-half, already once calling him the second-best in North America, behind Benoit. Really weird to have this match come on after the Regal vs. Jericho farce. Now, I thought that this was a half-hour of heaven. They put a clock on the screen. Heyman plugged that Chris Benoit spent a year in the New Japan dojo, acting like that was tremendously significant, although only the tiniest percentage of viewers would realize why. The commentators also delivered good wishes to Stu Hart, who has been in the hospital due to poor health; think of all the shit that has happened to his family in the past five years and how that must have shortened his life. I think the average WWF fan would hate this match or find it boring, but I quite enjoyed it. Really slow match at the start, with nothing but a few takedowns in the first handful of minutes. They tumbled to the floor, with Benoit jockeying things into a crossface. Angle tapped, but the referee said it didn't count. Heyman's commentary was really, really good. He's better than Ross, who benefitted a lot over the years by being primarily compared to Tony Schiavone. Angle came back into the ring and immediately took down Benoit for an ankle lock. Heyman pushed that Benoit tapped because he wanted to minimize the damage done to him. Angle attacked the leg again, with Benoit delivering the best selling in North America yet again. Angle hit a cross armbar after a pretty sequence for the equalizer. In all honesty, given that we were about 8:30 into the match, I felt like the stipulation would bring the match down for me. I guess they needed to do a long match with such great mat wrestling in it with this stipulation because the American fans wouldn't be able to sit through a half-hour of this stuff otherwise. That was the fear, I'd think. In reality, it didn't matter what stipulation they added to the match: if they were going to do all of this mat wrestling stuff, the match was going to be death for most WWF fans, especially those that didn't get to hear the commentary. The live crowd was just not into the bout. Angle used a chair when the ref was down to set up a second tap. Angle immediately applied the crossface for a third tap from Benoit. While the stipulation was meant to keep the fans interested throughout the match, it had a double edge. If the wrestlers submit a large number of times in a half-hour, fans might think that they are wimps, given that nobody gets submissions from "real" stars like Rock, Austin, Undertaker, or HHH, right? This effect was compounded by all of the selling/submitting for armbars and leg locks, moves that are hardly over with the audience. None of those moves drew the reaction that the Sharpshooter drew minutes later. Crowd noise doesn't affect my rating for a match, so I didn't care much, but I felt kind of sorry for the wrestlers being put in this position that seemingly was meant to get them over on skill, but likely will have the opposite effect. Heyman tried very hard to push each submission as a survival tactic. They brawled outside for a couple of minutes, with Angle trying to kill Benoit. Back in the ring, Benoit was just amazing in finally hitting his second submission on Angle. Absolutely remendous sequences. Benoit deserves to put on this sort of show opposite Austin or Rock, to truly get himself over. So does Angle, for that matter. Ah, politics. Angle turned things around. They went to the floor too much for my taste. I was expecting a tie. Sure enough, Angle worked Benoit over for a while, as the clock ran down. Benoit came in, took control, and missed a dropkick. Angle did a neat submission, didn't get Benoit to quit, and then went to a facelock. Both guys were looking at the time. At the four-minute mark, Benoit broke free. But Angle still bounced Benoit around. Finally, Benoit hit a series of German suplexes, leading to an absolutely awesome sequence building to Benoit getting another ankle lock submission, with just two minutes left. It bears mentioning that these suplexes were the first ones in the match, and we've all seen that what seems to draw heat from WWF fans is when these guys suplex each other silly. Makes me feel the match should have been laid out differently. Each guy gave up a submission to his own finisher. Angle kicked Benoit low with 40 seconds to go. Angle tried for an ankle lock several times in a row, but Benoit flipped around and made the ropes. And Benoit ended up in the ankle lock with 9 seconds left, held off tapping. After the bell rang, Benoit tapped, so Angle of course let him go. Does that make sense? Howard Finkel announced that the referee said that "the match will continue until sudden death." Huh? The commentators cleared it up. The overtime was amazing, with Benoit nailing the crossface after yet another great sequence of moves. I really hope they make this match mean something, which will be hard given that the live crowd seemed comatose afterwards; they need ladders, tables, and chairs, I guess. What I loved about this match is that there aren't many wrestlers in North America who could have worked it. No moronic backyard garbage wrestler could do this sort of match, even with a year of preparation time in indy circuits and serious training. This type of match just requires so much wrestling ability and experience, and, as a result, it merits our praise and respect so much more than a garbage or stunt man fest. Screw the earlier matches and the later matches, this match was worth the price of the PPV for me. As a foot note, added after typing up the rest of the review during the live show, this match was so great because while watching it again afterwards so many little things are noticeable and made me say "Oooh!" Honestly, any idiot can jump off a ladder onto a table, but practically nobody can do the sequences of moves that Benoit, in particular, pulled off. * Shane McMahon beat Big Slow in a "Last Man Standing" match: And to underline the closing remarks for the previous match we came to this bout. Overbooked, talentless junk again. Let's see. Shane tried to use the dreaded ether on Slow, but Vince McMahon came out and chaired Shane silly. Slow then repeatedly picked up Shane at an eight count to punish him further. Test ran in to attack Slow, who ended up destroying him. Shane showed up again and climbed the set. Slow followed, but Test pulled him down. There was a platform right next to the tower that Shane had climbed, no doubt a bump landing spot. Test laid out Slow with punches, and Shane jumped off the tower with an elbow on Slow. They didn't show the impact, and, indeed, avoided showing the interior of the platform as much as possible. As the referee counted, Test pulled the microphone/camera boom down and draped Shane over it, so that he'd be "standing," yuk, yuk. Test then carried the victorious Shane off. Well, it was a spectacular bump, but, unlike the last match, any moronic backyard garbage wrestler could do this exact same bump (and match), so please, please, please don't heap your praise or respect onto it, please. And it was made worse by the replays that showed Shane missing Slow. * Matt Hardy beat Eddy Guerrero & Christian to retain the European Title: Nothing particularly bad or good here. This match struck me as another bout that became worse because of the stipulation. In reality, it seems like working Christian into the match just mucked it up for no reason. * Steve Austin & HHH beat Undertaker & Kane to win the WWF Tag Titles: This bout featured two pretty untalented guys on the face side against two guys who haven't been above using their political power to screw people. I can't say that it looked good on the paper, because the faces are just that bad. Without the match even starting, you had to know exactly what flavour it would have. Yep, brawl, brawl, brawl. It was so so long that I could barely stand it. And the story line was that Undertaker was protecting his brother (don't even get into the Undertaker/Kane story history) from his own he-man tendencies. Austin & HHH came to the ring first, which just seemed like a weird gimme for the expected losers. I don't know that it was ever explained how things would work if Undertaker & Kane won. I wasn't sure if they'd win both the WWF & IC titles, awarded somehow, or if the winner of the fall would that appropriate title. Jim Ross called this a "slobberknocker main event, not for the weak of heart" or the fans of talented wrestling. The match was largely a bunch of brawls. They drew heat on Undertaker, which was sad on many levels. But this match drew heat. - I wanted to mention the episode of "The Practice" from a 9 days ago. The story was about a girl whose doctor had prescribed a medication that ended up causing liver failure in the girl. After two transplants, the girl was an emaciated wreck. Her family decided to sue the drug company. The drug company's defence was that the drug was clearly labeled as not being "proven effective for the treatment of children under 16," that the company can't be held responsible for doctors misprescribing the drug, that they can't be expected to do anything more than label the drug, and that the causal link was not clear. The plaintiff's side argued that readily available figures showed that a sizeable percentage of the prescriptions for the drug (and drugs with similar labeling) were made to children, that the company purposely avoided testing the drug on children, and (from the first point) that the company earned a sizeable percentage of its revenue from prescriptions given to children. The argument was that drug company opted to avoid the children issue by saying that they had an advisory label, while all the while reaping huge revenues from children taking the drug. Okay, replace "drug company" by "WWF," "liver failure" by various negative behaviours/actions (some causing harm), "prescription figures" by TV ratings, etc. Oh, you get the idea. Food for thought. ______________________________________________________________________ If you have any feedback regarding my web pages, please send me e-mail. 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