Our Celebration of Professional Wrestling continues!

This weekend is very special for Professional Wrestling.  See, friends, we’re approaching a very special WrestleMania.  What makes this one so special, you ask?  Well, on its own merit, it’s a fantastically-booked card, one of the best WrestleManias, on paper, in YEARS.  A decade, in fact.  A decade since WrestleMania X-Seven, the closest rival WrestleMania III has had to date, for the crown of “Best WrestleMania of all time.”  A decade since WrestleMania X-Seven, the Last Hurrah of the Attitude Era, and the last great wrestling boom.

Heading into WrestleMania X-Seven, the World Wrestling federation had never been more powerful.  It was riding a tidal wave created at the 1996 King of the Ring (Austin 3:16 and such), and with each passing year, the wave grew bigger and bigger.  But, you already know that, so I won’t bore you with the details, and get to the moral of the story.  In 1996, The WWF damn near terminal; by 2001, it owned its two major competitors, and its crown jewel was WrestleMania X-Seven, the first time in almost a decade that a WrestleMania had been held in a stadium.  This was a big deal.

Speaking of big deals, our commentary team for this legendary show is NOT the legendary tandem of Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler!  No, see, several months prior, the WWF fired a lady named Stacy Carter, who was in a relationship with Jerry.  Jerry, getting all uppity, quit in protest.  So, the WWF brought in the owner of ECW, Paul Heyman, to call shows with Jim Ross, creating a GREAT, underrated commentary pairing.  Jim Ross and Paul Heyman were so contrasting of each other, it fit like a glove.  And so, Paul E. got to go to WrestleMania, and you can just TELL that he’s very excited to be there!  In the show’s intro, he hypes and hypes WrestleMania X-Seven the way only he can.  He also coined the term “Showcase of the Immortals,” FYI.

WrestleMania X-Seven kicks off with Chris Jericho vs. William Regal for the Intercontinental Championship.  Two refugees from WCW’s undercard in a feud with a VERY distinct “Attitude” aftertaste: William Regal, then Commissioner of the WWF, was VERY unhappy with Chris Jericho’s childish antics, which culminated with Jericho pissing in Regal’s Earl Grey.  A very good match, a decent opener for Mania.  Jericho retains the coveted Intercontinental Championship, which will go on to be defended only twice more, since.

We follow this up with the Acolyte Protection Agency and Tazz vs. The Right To Censor.  This match has all the character of a mediocre topical skit from MadTV.  I would say SNL, but to me, MadTV was more hamfisted in its topical humour,  See, in case you forgot, in 2000, The WWF came under attack from a think tank organization called the Parents’ Television Council, or something like that.  Some hardcore social conservatives who were upset that the TEE-VEE was teaching kids bad things like swearing and liking boobs and punching other kids.  So, they launched a crusade against the WWF, because it was a popular thing to do.  So, Vince McMahon publicly fought back the only way he knows how, and made fun of the PTC on his wrestling show.  The Right To Censor was a group of formerly lude and reprehensible characters such as the Godfather (Wrestling Pimp), Val Venis (Wrestling Porn Star) and Bull Buchanan (Wrestling… I don’t know what the hell he was supposed to be), lead by their fearless leader, Steven Richards.  Stevie lead the group like some sort of cult leader, and wreaked havoc on the WWF!  he censored Terri Runnels’ striptease!  They ruined hardcore matches!  So, the only people ion the WORLD who could save us from this buttoned-down, straight-laced, horrifyingly sober future for professional wrestling were the APA (Bradshaw and Farrooq) who had the cushiest jobs on the entire roster, being paid to sit around and pretend to play poker, and emerging from the locker room to occasionally powerbomb people.  AND TAZZ!  Can’t forget about Tazz, who’s in this match because… I don’t know why.  The match was completely forgettable, though, so don’t worry about it!

OH, you remember how I mentioned Hardcore Wrestling earlier?  Well, here’s the Hardcore Title match!  You remember that, don’t you?  A belt SO prestigious, it could be defended anywhere, any time?  Yeah, I hated the 24/7 Rule myself.  ANYWAY, we have Raven, who’s here to take sick bumps from the Big Show and Kane, because the WWF didn’t have anything better for these guys to do.  So, why not have some fun!  This is your textbook WWF Hardcore Match, chock full of comedy bits!  Raven flies through a window!  Kane and Big Show throw each other through a wall!  A golf cart chase ensues!  And Cookie Sheets-o-plenty!  OH THE HILARITY!  Kane wins, after he kicks Big Show (who is about to press slam Raven) in the face and off of the WMX7 stage, and jumps on top of him!  HOORAY FOR KANE!  It’s scary to imagine that, one year prior, The Big Show was challenging for the WWF Championship…

We follow this ridiculousness up with one of the most unsettling matches on the entire card, retrospectively.  Eddie Guerrero (with Saturn and Dean Malenko) vs. Test for the European Championship.  Every single aspect of this match no longer exists in pro wrestling.  Eddie and Test are, of course, dead.  Perry Saturn was feared to be dead for a long, long while.  Dean Malenko is long-since retired.  Hell, even the belt they wrestled over doesn’t exist anymore!  Eddie wins by cheating, and I’m left with a serious case of the willies.

SPEAKING of the willies, here’s Kurt Angle vs. Chris Benoit, in a match you will probably never, ever see on WWE OnDemand.  Which is a GODDAMNED shame, because this is a technical masterpiece.  In 2001, there was NO ONE in North America who could claim to be a better wrestler than Kurt Angle or Chris Benoit.  The angle around this was that both claimed to have the superior submission hold, and both had made the other unofficially tap out to their patented lock.  A few years later, the WWF would consider this one of the best WrestleMania matches of all time.  A decade later, WWE refuses to acknowledge that either wrestler was ever employed by them, which is a damned shame, really.

Speaking of damned shames, here’s Chyna!  Man, what the hell happened to her, eh?  She went for being one of the biggest acts in professional wrestling, to all but disappearing, didn’t she?  She’s challenging Ivory for the Women’s Championship, which makes absolutely no sense, seeing as she was IC Champion two years ago, but whatever.  This match was absolute garbage.

For you kids that might be reading this, once upon a time, there was a boy named Shane McMahon.  He liked to do high spots.  He would jump off of anything and on to anything.  Even his very own father!  One day, when it was to be publicly announced that Vince McMahon had purchased World Championship Wrestling, Shane McMahon moseyed on down to WCW Monday Nitro, to announce that HE bought WCW!  This made his daddy very angry, so the only way they could settle this was to wrestle in a street fight match at WrestleMania X-Seven!  With Mick Foley as the Special Referee!  What’s the difference between a Hardcore Match and a Street Fight, you say?  While a hardcore match is all fun and games and comedy spots, a street fight is SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS.  It’s had to determine who’s the face and who’s the heel here.  Vince McMahon is still playing the evil Boss he has played since 1998 (with the added caveat that he is having an affair with Trish Stratus, which has turned his wife comatose…), BUT… Shane McMahon is associated with WCW… Speaking of WCW, Shane has his new employees at Mania!  All of your WCW favourites!  Why, there’s Lance Storm!  And Shawn Stasiak!  And Mark Jindrak!  And Chuck Palumbo and Sean O’Haire!  THEY’RE ALL THERE!  Yeah, in retrospect, we all should have seen the writing on the wall for InVasion at WrestleMania X-Seven.  This match ends in a whole mess of melodramatic confusion, with the comatose Linda McMahon (who was brought down to the ring by Trish, who then turned face by slapping Vince) rising from her wheel chair and booting Vince in his balls, setting Shane up for a BL:ATANTLY STOLEN Van Terminator.  Don’t ask, it was the Attitude Era.

Then, we come to what many call THE Match of the Night, TLC II.  Lemmie tell you kids another story!  Once upon a time, the WWF had something called a “Tag Team Division.”  No, no.  Not the one you’re thinking of, that consists of three tag teams, and one mash-up that rotates every 6 months, adding new teams and breaking up existing ones FOR NO RAISON.  No, there was a nice, hearty Tag Division, that was championed by three very good tag teams: Edge & Christian, The Hardy Boyz and The Dudley Boys.  And since October 1999, they all have been embroiled in a feud with each other over those Tag Team Titles.  They had ladder matches.  They had table matches.  They even had a Tables, Ladders and Chairs match at SummerSlam 2000, which is ranked as one of the greatest ladder matches of all time.  So, they only way they could top themselves is by having an even BETTER TLC match at WrestleMania X-Seven!  And goodness me, they did NOT disappoint.  I dare say that there hasn’t been a ladder match that has come close to being this good.  All three teams brought their A-Game, and created a match that should forever be on every “Best Of Wrestlemania” list until the end of time.  At one point, the sidekick for each team (Lita, Spike Dudley and Rhyno) interfered, only to take a SICK ass bump.  E&C won the day, and essentially, the War.  It’s also funny to think that, out of the NINE people involved with this match, only Edge would remain with the WWF/WWE since.

WOAH MAN, that was intense!  That was an intense match!  We need to cool down.  Sit back, relax, have a laugh even!  OH GOOD!  Gimmick Battle Royale!  The ring is FILLED with Vince McMahon’s bad ideas and WWF Road Agents under Vince’s employ, and we have Mean Gene Okerlund (who makes a really unsettling remark about how Sgt. Slaughter is a “good-looking man”) and Bobby The Brain Heenan at ringside, which would prove to be Bobby’s last, great moment as a commentator.  You know, before his medical problems. 🙁  ANYWAY!  This battle royale goes LIGHTNING fast, as we come down to Sgt Slaughter, Hillbilly Jim, and The Iron Sheik!  As Slaughter and Hillbilly Jim jockey for position on the ropes, Sheiky awkwardly pushes them over and WINS!  But fear not, Patriotic American!  Sgt Slaughter wins the day for AMERICA by locking in the Cobra Clutch on Sheiky!  The best part of this match is when the fans packed into the Astrodome went NUTS when Doink the Clown was eliminated.

Now, we come to the most inconvenient match of the night, Undertaker vs. Triple H.  The first time around, this match came about because there was no one left for Triple H to beat, other than The Undertaker!  Sound a LITTLE familiar?  Regardless, this match is possibly one of the best either have ever had.  Both are at their athletic peak (soon after, Trips will snap his quad, and he’s never been the same, and Taker will just get older and older).  They brawl all over the arena.  They beat the ever-loving piss out of each other.  The finale comes with Undertaker attempting the Last Ride powerbomb, only to get beaned in the head with the Sledgehammer!  Taker regains his composure after a little scuffle and THEN nails toe Last Ride.  Taker is 9-0!

And now, we have the main event, and the true end of the Attitude Era, Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. The Rock.  What makes this the true ending of the Attitude Era?  It’s all about the ending.  See, the match was going along well enough.  The Rock and Steve Austin probably have the best chemistry out of any famous rivalry in pro wrestling, so of course the match is going to be at LEAST good.  And then, Vince McMahon shows up, and HELPS Steve Austin win the WWF Title.  Steve Austin turns heel in his home state of Texas, by siding with his Arch-Nemesis.  Wow.  This was Vince McMahon’s first misstep in YEARS, folks.  However, this will be completely overshadowed and forgotten by Vince McMahon’s WORST IDEA EVER, which looms in the horizon for 2001…

And here we are, 10 years after the fact.  In those ten years, we saw the InVasion, an angle that almost undid all of Vince McMahon’s hard work getting his baby popular again.  We see the WWF become WWE, after losing a court case to the World Wildlife Fund.  We saw WWE try again and again to recapture the attention of mainstream America with a seemingly endless stream of giant monsters (Brock Lesnar, Batista, Bobby Lashley…).  We saw the seemingly improbable return of Shawn Michaels, who puts on some of the best matches of his career.  We saw a string of increasingly disappointing WrestleManias.  We saw two of the most tragic deaths in wrestling history, Eddie Guerrero (which would cement his legacy as one of the most beloved wrestlers in history, and spur WWE to take the drug problems that plagued its locker room seriously…) and Chris Benoit (whose murder-suicide would all but completely erase from wrestling history the work of one of the Craft’s most dedicated students, and bring professional wrestling under the scrutinizing eye of Cable News).  And, near to the end of the Decade, we see the greatest push of New Stars since the legendary year of 1997.

For this event in particular, it’s interesting to note that of all the wrestlers that appeared on this show (aside from the participants of the Gimmick Battle Royale), only seven are still with the company as wrestlers:  The Undertaker, Triple H, Edge, Christian, Kane, Big Show, and William Regal.  Of that Seven, only four of them can be considered regular wrestlers (Edge, Christian, Big Show and Kane).  Six wrestlers (Kurt Angle, Rhyno, the Dudley Boys and the Hardy Boyz) wrestle for TNA.  Three (Raven, Bull Buchanan and Stevie Richards) wrestle on the Indy Scene.  A whopping FIFTEEN wrestlers are no longer active (Steve Austin, The Rock, Chris Jericho, Tazz, Spike Dudley, Godfather, Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko, Val Venis, Chyna, Ivory, Lita, Trish Stratus and the APA).  And, three are dead (Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, and Test).

As we stand right now, WrestleMania 27 could be the best WrestleMania since.  At the very least, it is the first WrestleMania since X-Seven that I have been genuinely excited for.  To me, anyway, WWE seems to be slowly recapturing that same kind of magic they had, way back when, and WrestleMania 27 could be the harbinger of the BEGINNING of a great era for professional wrestling, and not the end of it, like X-Seven was.  Time will tell, of course.

Thank you for reading.

Enjoy the comedic stylings of Al Creed?  Visit TCRComix.com, and follow him on The Twitter @AlCreed!
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