Diamond Dallas Page vs. Chris Benoit vs. Raven, WCW Uncensored (3/15/1998)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from Ko-fi contributor Ri Ri. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication or other processes, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi.

This was a Falls Count Anywhere match for Page’s WCW U.S. Heavyweight Title.

It’s a beauty.

By 1998, it feels too late to call this the first great or even really great three way or triple threat match, but with very little reservation (maybe the Barely Legal three way, maybe this Douglas/Sabu/Dreamer three way from November 1997 that I liked a whole lot), this feels like the best ever three way match up through this exact point in history, and probably for another few years.

The trick is that by the nature of the sort of match this is as well as who it is that’s having that sort of a match, they avoid so many of the usual problems inherent in this sort of a match.

A lot of the times in matches like these, people vanish for a long time in order to create long one on one sections, or you get a lot of convoluted three man spots. The former can be avoided with things so big or wild that you can buy someone being out for a longer time, and the latter with a good sense or feeling for what the right amount is, but neither is an issue here. Benoit, Raven, and DDP are the types of wrestlers at this point (although years later, Benoit will have one of the great fireworks three ways of the era against Angle and Mysterio) not to bother with a lot of complex multi-man spots, but instead spend the majority of the match doing the thing almost nobody does. Enabled by the brawling inherent in this sort of a match, the three are nearly attached to each other for like 80% of the match, and so — save one moment which makes total sense, Page thrown twice through that 1990s WCW lit up logo cube board by the entrance — nobody ever disappears from this match, meaning that it never stops making sense.

What I like so much about this match, which goes hand in hand with that, is how messy it all is.

Raven, Page, and Benoit lean into the chaos of a match like this, as well as the chaos of what a more realistic three way maybe ought to look like, and it’s a wonderful thing. Nobody ever controls, nobody can ever even get a nearfall without a save until (a) the few minutes when Page is out by the entrance, and (b) the very end, and very little ever actually goes right. Whenever someone turns away to try to set anything up, they almost immediately pay for it, and the only ideas that come to perfect fruition are the ones where two of the three work together, so the third cannot disrupt. On a construction level, it’s also so impressive, as the match never stops moving, and every new direction makes sense, is set up perfectly by what precedes it, and escalates the match even further.

More helpful yet is that on top of all that mess, pretty much everything that happens is just as impossibly awesome as it is smart.

Every major moment in the match walks the line in between cool and brutal, again fitting the feeling of the match perfectly. All time bump freak Benoit is absolutely on one, but each of the three is wild and motivated enough that it’s impossible to say anyone was the match’s biggest lunatic. It’s packed full of hard shots, gross landings, inventive prop work, and does it all while maintaining a bunch of different balancing acts, as well as constantly getting bigger and better, up to saving its very best spot for the end.

Benoit fakes Raven out on a double team at the end, but before he can take him off the top through a table, Page knocks Benoit off the top, and takes Raven off the top onto the table — very importantly just kind of toppling it over in the best example of this match’s genuine feeling messiness — and gets the win.

It’s a match that is, objectively, dumb as hell, but in that wonderful pro wrestling way, also achieves so much. On top of simply giving out a great match, the DDP/Raven feud continues, Benoit gets to gain something by not losing and looking about as tough as DDP throughout the match, and on a narrative level, Page being exactly both lucky and smart enough to take advantage of Raven getting a little too smart for himself and finally dipping his head out over his skis is both fitting and the sort of finish that just feels great. It’s a masterpiece of execution and performance just as much as it is booking, one of the increasingly rare times in WCW in which the machine not only works like it’s supposed to, but that it works at all.

Not the highest point that late 1990s WCW would ever reach, but as great of an example of just how and why this company ruled as much as it did. Smart and messy and exciting all at once, totally impossible to look away from.

There’s been little like it since.

***1/2

 

 

Triple H vs. Randy Orton vs. Batista vs. Chris Benoit vs. Edge vs. Chris Jericho, WWE New Year’s Revolution 2005 (1/9/2005)

Commissions return again, this one coming from Stuart. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

This was an Elimination Chamber match for the vacant World Heavyweight Title, with Shawn Michaels as a special guest referee.

I have gone on record, not only when talking about it originally but in year and decade wrap-up lists, saying that the 2014 Elimination Chamber (Cena vs. Bryan vs. Orton vs. Cesaro vs. Sheamus vs. Christian) is the best of its kind, but it is not the only really great one. I’m also a really big fan of the 2003 (the one where Goldberg nukes everyone) and 2009 (the one with the big Edge swerve, but also the insane Rey Mysterio performance) as all-time level Chambers.

Below that level, there’s the level this match is on, along with something like the 2011 (Punk/Cena final, a few months before that would have been huge), 2017 (the Bray Wyatt one), or the 2019 (Bryan/Kofi final) ones. Not the greatest, certainly ones that suffer from less than perfect line-ups despite the talent and strength of the booking, but that I simply cannot deny. Like those matches, while I have some issues with it, it just kind of works for me, one of those classic WWE productions that makes me go, “yes, this is how the system is supposed to work”.

(Less so in that it ought to be Triple H winning, but in terms of all it advances, what it does for Batista, the use it puts a still all-world Benoit to, etc.)

In short, the correct amount of bullshit.

Benoit and Jericho begin the match before Triple H is third (doesn’t fit in anywhere else here, but great political maneuvering to have HHH last longer than actual babyface challenger Orton and survive more, while also having Benoit and Jericho before him to mask it a little bit), and to the credit of both men, they are once again has never been on behavior as good as he is on when Chris Benoit is in a match. As early WAR or WCW Benoit/Jericho stuff showed, that was never exactly a guarantee, but at this point, it at least guarantees a half-decent effort. Like Triple H often did against Benoit, as also seen in this match, or later like Hunter and Orton against Bryan, there is an implicit pressure that comes from being an established Great Wrestler in the WWE, and again, Jericho is on best behavior, being more aggressive and harder hitting than usual.

After that, as everyone pours in, it is the ideal mix of things.

There is only one GREAT wrestler here, but everyone else is on their very best behavior.

Batista is obviously very good as your psuedo-hot tag power babyface, but Randy Orton in this is much better than I remembered as a mechanical babyface. The microphone work still might not be him at his most comfortable, but in terms of throwing hands and showing some energy, he is genuinely really really good in this, already being the second smoothest/most natural feeling wrestler in the match behind Benoit. Edge, Jericho, and Hunter are all limited, but primarily do things they’re best at. For Edge, that means basically nothing until the special referee gets him out first. For Jericho, it mean mostly being beaten into greater effort than usual. For Hunter, it means power moves against great bumpers and benefitting from the bells and whistles of a more violent environment, just like in his prime. Nobody is asked to do more than they can, at least not obviously so, and as a result, the match benefits in the way big gimmick matches with limited wrestlers ought to, both because of the visual bells and whistles, but also because of a larger vision that brings it all together into a larger package.

Really, what stands out the most about this match, so many years later, is how much it benefits from some blood spilled.

Everyone but Edge (coward, not in this too long) and Batista (correct call not to bleed, time isn’t right yet as a character) gets to run the blade at least a little here, and the two real pros at it in Benoit and Hunter get some real beautiful color. The match benefits from this in all of the ways wrestling often does. With blood on on the canvas, and the wounds of war on nearly everyone in the ring for large chunks of this thing, the match gains a certain feeling. We’re not talking Joe and Necro here, it is probably not a top 25 bloodletting of 2005, but on top of the selling and the certain auditory quality of almost everyone banging off the steel floor, the simple visuals make this feel like a genuine ordeal, and so later attempts at exhaustion selling and announce hyperbole from JR (another great performance in this, walking every imaginable tightrope with zero wavering) feel less like bullshit, a little more warranted, and the entire production goes down so much smoother when you have these clear visible signals that this has been a fight with actual consequences.

The other benefit is the layout and the effective narrative work.

Just about everyone reading this knows that this is all build to Hunter vs. Batista at WrestleMania, and it is incredibly effective at that. Benoit, Jericho, and Orton all absolutely die for Big Dave, with him getting rid of those first two on his own, and theoretical babyface Orton also having to cheat to get rid of him. Triple H, despite the maneuvering of suffering more and lasting longer than Orton, comes out feeling more lucky than like any kind of real winner, being beaten up by everyone but Batista, avoiding saving him from elimination, and then taking advantage of all he does.

Something feels a little strange to me about really liking a match that is, essentially, a great larger product ass WWE production than a display of any one great performance or thing to really point to, but when it comes together right, it comes together right. The match is the beneficiary of a few really good smaller performances, and although not as much of a rarity at the time as I think Ruthless Aggression WWE still had something of the magic touch when they really wanted it, also the beneficiary of exactly the right amount of larger picture work and narrative movement.

Great pro wrestling nonsense.

It doesn’t seem all that exceptional, but truly, a stellar of just how easy this all really can be when kept simple, and when given the best crutch a wrestling match can have (two-thirds of the match bleeding a lot).

***1/2

 

Evolution vs. Chris Benoit/Shawn Michaels/Mick Foley/Shelton Benjamin, WWE Raw (4/12/2004)

Commissions continue, again from Shock, as the snake reverses. You too can be like them and pay me to write about anything you’d like. Most people tend to pay for reviews of wrestling matches, but I am happy to talk about real fights, movie fight scenes, movies in general, make a list, or whatever. You can head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon to do that, just make sure I haven’t already written about it first. The going rate is $5/match, or with regards to other media, $5 for every started thirty minute chunk. If you have a more elaborate thing in mind, hit the DMs, and we can talk about that too. 

This is much more like it.

Something you should know is that, at least as it pertains to the upper section of the card, I love 2004-5 Raw.

Call it a guilty pleasure if you would like. You could also call it the tail end of childhood nostalgia, as 2004 was the last year I was really like a WWE Fan proper, before the combination of TNA on free television and starting to regularly download matches from ROH and other indies at the end of the year got rid of that pesky little habit. But all of the different combinations of Evolution tags and matches against a tremendously skilled upper to midcard babyface core (Benoit, Shelton, Jericho and Edge when they were capable of being in good matches, Tajiri) do a lot for me. They’re not always perfect, old man Flair is not the most physically gifted and not every babyface there is great on their own, Shawn Michaels and/or Triple H is often also involved, etc., but any combo of Orton, Batista, and Benoit in a tag in 2004 is a slam dunk, and the brand has an astonishing success rate when attacking the rim here, so to speak.

(does 2004 Raw follow the theme of the year and Go To Work? Some would say yes. There is a man called Big (first name), an undersized all-world talent running the point, part of the team is now a coach for one of the most loathsome outfits in the sport, someone constantly getting in foul trouble, etc. If a basketball cannot hold a grudge, it also probably does not lie.)

I would love to write a bunch of words about the better Evolution tags of 2004, and their many virtues. The way they feel like updated versions of old Horsemen TV tags, the old style structure wholly unique in a WWE environment, the emphasis on hard hitting and violence, the manic finishing runs, all of that. Outside of Bryan vs. The Shield, it’s the best continuous series of matches involving a singular faction in WWE history, and I have a whole lot of time for these matches, and for writing about these matches.

This, however, is not one of the better ones.

Part of that comes down to the line up, as the very best ones tended to have a Benoit/Edge/Jericho babyface core, or the one-off Benoit/Orton/Shelton combo that came after Orton’s turn at the end of the summer. Despite the all-star line up, this makes a few choices that separates it in a more negative way from the better Evolution tags and six-mans that mostly followed.

Specifically, because this is essentially the root of every choice made, there is too much focus here on wrestlers who either totally mail it in or are not very good, and sometimes the two overlap. Almost every other great Evolution tag does not involve Triple H, who is simply not an especially good wrestler on a week to week level. The best Evolution tag work sees Orton and Batista in there for long stretches against Benoit, as he basically spends the year molding them into great wrestlers in a way you may have seen a decade later in the Bryan/Shield series (these have basically the same idea, glue your golden boys to the best wrestler in the company for 6-12 months and force them to get great as quickly as possible). Likewise, there’s a lot too much here of Shawn Michaels and Mick Foley compared to the other two babyfaces, with one (Foley) who would have been out of his element in a match like this even as an active wrestler in his prime and who now is semi-retired and clearly saving himself for the weekend’s pay-per-view, and another (Michaels) who has none of those excuses, but simply turns in an uninspired house show ass performance.

The latter is the one that really hurts, as while Foley is minimized and Hunter only in for bursts, Shawn Michaels is the one who gets the majority of the match’s big moments like the dive into break, the hot tag, and the majority of the finishing run. It’s not surprising, of course it is all about Shawn even when he is like the sixth best wrestler out of eight in the match and the third best on his team, but it’s especially grating when he turns in a dull and passionless performance off the tag and two wildly energetic and/or psychotically intense wrestlers wilt on the apron.

Generally speaking, the match simply lacks the energy of the best Evolution tag work, especially down the stretch, where a lot of things do not go right, and the usually more intricately put together Benoit-led finishing run is instead taken over by a half-speed and quarter-assed Michaels style one instead.

It is not without its virtues though!

The first half in particular is especially good. This is mostly Flair playing the hits against Shawn and then trading leather and some heavy hands (again, Flair never quite gets credit for those great corner punches) with ex-Horseman Benoit. Shelton gets in on the act and the big fella Big Dave has a few really impressive moments. Up until the commercial break, it is a genuinely super fun match. The control work on Benoit and then Shelton is also very good, largely led by Batista and Orton against both guys. The weak spots are there sprinkled in, but most of this is really really good. It’s just that it falls apart in the key moments, and for all of these foundational strengths and great flourishes throughout, it lacks the quality moments in the most memorable parts of the match, and suffers for it in ways other Evolution tags simply do not.

Shawn pins Orton with the kick, whatever.

Real far from the best version of this thing, but a fun enough house show version that just so happened to make it onto television.

three boy

Bret Hart vs. Chris Benoit, WCW Monday Nitro (10/4/1999)

Famously, it is the Owen Hart Tribute Match.

In perhaps the last 100% noble act in the history of God’s greatest promotion, WCW, their first show in Kansas City since Owen Hart’s tragic death is marked by this match. Bret Hart’s request was fairly simple and almost all of it was given to him. Twenty to thirty minutes on television to wrestle the kind of match that they wanted, without any nonsense from WCW as it pertained to the finish and not even the mention of any storylines going on in WCW at this point (be they the bad Bret/Luger feud or Benoit’s split from the bad Revolution stable). The only Bret request not granted is his intention to put Benoit over at the end, although in this case, there is a shockingly correct amount of foresight here, with the post-Bischoff and pre-Russo WCW having the plan for Bret to win the title at the Toronto pay-per-view in November and not wanting him to lose before then.

(yes, he would lose to Luger at Halloween Havoc. don’t worry about that.)

The match itself is beautiful.

Beyond just the tribute aspect, there’s a real weight to it that benefits everything. Bret Hart will wrestle his last match (we have agreed as a people to not count that 2010 stuff, do not at me) in a little over three months, and given what WCW becomes in that time, this match has always felt to me like some kind of in-ring last will and testament. Bret’s last ever chance to not only deliver an all-time classic, but to state plainly and clearly in this one real chance to do so with no involvement from a promotion nor any bad actors within it just what exactly it is he believes and wants for the future. It’s not only this love letter to the old NWA style wrestling that Bret loved and that WCW sprouted forth from, but also this clear and concise picture of all that professional wrestling can (and would) one day become.

It’s the last all-time great WCW match, but spiritually, it also feels something like the first great match of the 2000s, the first all-time great ROH match, the match that so much of the work of the greatest wrestler of all time (Bryan Danielson) seems to move forward from.

This is a match about the past, paying tribute to what was, but at the same time, so much about saying what the future can and would be.

From start to finish, this match is about Bret Hart just narrowly managing to survive a fight with the future of wrestling. At all time, it’s Bret that’s leaning on what was. This match never truly adheres to the classic wrestling formula, instead spending its time slowly escalating the tension and intensity, with each man offering up their vision of things. Bret Hart relies primarily on the old standards. His transitions come through classic North Americam professional wrestling offense. Neckbreakers, DDTs, a Piledriver in one moment. On the other hand, Benoit is all new school and more modern influences. The Tiger Mask flipping mule kick escape from a standing surfboard. He uses a Samoan Crab on U.S. television in 1999, of all things. Beyond this line drawn in the sand, classic offense vs. newer stuff, there’s also a clear passing of the torch on display with something like Benoit being the one to hit the Tope Suicida that used to be Hart’s big match go-to. He’s also the one of the two more successful in hitting the Tombstone Piledriver.

The match may not be so explicit with the stories it’s telling, but if you know how to listen, what they’re saying is incredibly clear.

Another fascinating aspect of the match is the way they approach things in a more topological sense. Every time that Benoit has the room to set something up, to use his greater speed and the deeper reserves that come with youth, he succeeds. Every time he gets in close, and Bret is able to grit his teeth and drag his one-time acolyte down into the muck with him. In the tenser moments, it is all about experience. Experience grabbing his hold out of nowhere, experience getting into the muck and just going for it, and the sort of experience that Benoit simply does not have yet. They’re able to capture this wonderful feeling, which Bret uses to elevate Benoit despite the result, as if this sort of a thing is the only way in which Hart can defeat Benoit any more.

In the end, Bret Hart fights out of the Crossface and into the Sharpshooter.

One imagines this smooth thing. Perhaps a forward roll into the hold. Perhaps the Kurt Angle style ankle wrench to escape, then up into the hold. Thankfully and beautifully, it’s nothing quite so easy or so fancy. Instead, Bret fights for every inch of the thing. The escape from the hold itself is different from his transition to the legs. The transition to the legs is different from getting the hold on itself. At all times, there is this struggle, and I cannot help but think about it in contrast to all the fancy scientific ways that Bret used to get into the Sharpshooter in the early 1990s. At the end of the decade and near the end of his rope, Bret reverts now to pure grit and dirt, slowly forcing his way into it against his heir apparent, as if it is the one final lesson that he has to impart.

Bret Hart leaves his philosophy on display in the ring, a last will and testament for the world to see. If not followed exactly, as the sort of a thing that takes another generation to truly find purchase with, it is one of the most beautiful and endearing matches in the history of wrestling.

(you’re not the boss of me now, and you’re not so biiiiiiiig)

****

Chris Benoit vs. Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels, WWE Backlash 2004 (4/18/2004)

This was for Benoit’s World Heavyweight Title.

Another rematch that doesn’t live up to the original. There’s not any fun interesting reason for it, it’s just not all that interesting or good. The most “interesting” thing about the match is in Chris Benoit’s hometown entrance, where his weird still-alive son David and Benoit’s dad go nuts for him in the front row, and it’s all skin crawlingly weird.

The match itself is frustratingly normal. Triple H and Shawn are no longer on their best behavior, as the right guess is again made that this absolutely doesn’t matter. This exists to fill space and run a PPV main event without actually doing anything. As such, they spend a lot of the match not doing much. As such, they reveal the perfect time and perfect place effect of the match at WrestleMania, and how much was carried both by the moment and by the question of if the moment would ever come. This is worked a lot smaller, and you can very clearly mark the lack of effort Hunter and Shawn put forward by the fact that they don’t bleed. If they gave a shit, they’d bleed, because that’s code at this point for them thinking a match is important. Lack of effort wouldn’t be half as upsetting here if the match didn’t now go half an hour either. Lots of time to fill with either repeat spots or obviously lazy work. Benoit is Benoit, but the focus again is really just on Hunter and Shawn, and he could be anyone. Finish is all about them again, as Benoit makes Shawn tap out to the Sharpshooter, but after he’s in it for like a minute and a half, and just in time for Hunter to start to crawl in and to where they’re fingertips apart. Christ.

The hook is supposed to be that Benoit is super popular here in his hometown and that Shawn is a villain in Canada, but he was already super popular in MSG, with both Shawn and Hunter getting treated poorly by the crowd there too, so nothing about this is all that different besides how two-thirds of the match no longer saw fit to put in the effort.

**1/4

Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Benoit, WWE WrestleMania XX (3/14/2004)

This was, yet again, for Triple H’s World Heavyweight Title.

This is the best match I’m going to review in this project, by a mile or five. Big part of that is that it involves one of the best wrestlers in the company at the time, and he manages to reign in two of the worst wrestlers in the world pretty much on reputation alone.

One of the best things that being the consensus Best In The World gets you is that people try harder against you because it’s obviously a bad look to drag down someone who normally produces gems on a regular basis. I don’t think Benoit is the best in the world anymore in 2004. I’m not really sure if he ever was, on a definitive basis, in the first place. Consensus is what it is though, especially in a kind of a mainstream bubble, and at the time, Chris Benoit was the Best in the World, years before becoming a coward who killed his wife and son and skirted all responsibility. As such, these two absolute dopes are on their best behavior. Shawn needs to preserve the house of cards that is his reputation as a still-great wrestler after the work Chris Jericho, Bill Goldberg, and Mark Henry did in 2003 to prop it back up. For Triple H, it’s the first example on this blog of what’s one of the most fascinating relationships in wrestling history to me. Triple H clearly loved Chris Benoit. It doesn’t stop him from fucking the absolute shit out of this title reign until they simply have to get the title back on Triple H because this experiment “failed”, but he clearly loves working with the guy and tried harder against him than he did against anyone post-quad until like Daniel Bryan and that 2014 patch with Mania and the Shield feud. So, both Triple H and Shawn Michaels are better here than they’ve been in this entire series.

You can’t just flip a switch and make two bad wrestlers magically great again, but there’s more hustle to them. They move faster, they’re more active, and in general, they do as much as they can to keep up with Benoit. It’s a WWE three way, so it has certain one man out, two men in tropes, but like bad commentary, I’ve simply watched so much that I’m numb to it. Here, they’re at least always moving forward and at no point does it feel like any of the three is out of the match for far too long, solely to accommodate this other thing needing to happen. The story of the match is supposed to be Hunter and Shawn trying to get rid of this other guy to continue their feud and Benoit trying to break through the glass ceiling as such. They sell it as these two hating each other so much, but it inadvertantly just becomes a great commentary on class mobility.

This can all be framed it as being Benoit’s big moment, but interestingly, he feels like the third most important guy in the match. The crowd doesn’t feel that way, and he gets the crowning moment, but the match isn’t built that way. Shawn gets the big highspots of the match and is clearly set up as the babyface of the three. He bleeds big time midway through, again getting that crutch instead of the guy who this match is supposed to actually be elevating. The camera at least doesn’t totally expose him blading this time, so that’s something. Once they team up to take Benoit out with the big table bump outside, Shawn and Triple H fight for the majority of what’s supposed to be the big dramatic nearfall run of the match. Triple H also bleeds, because holy shit, he just doesn’t know how to do a big match without the crutch. Like the last match, he has to be the strongest and toughest anyways and comes back faster after hitting a vein than Shawn did. It happens so often by now that it’s becoming funny, and it obviously didn’t harm the moment but like, Jesus Christ you two. Come on. In a match ostensibly built around elevating someone the fans love and giving him a moment, even if it’s ultimately just a lifetime achievement award, they can’t help but expose the entire thing as a crock of shit by taking the shortcuts and little smoke and mirrors displays to try and steal the attention for themselves. It doesn’t work, because the crowd doesn’t let it, but it should never be forgotten that they didn’t just start fucking with the reign after a month or two, but they they started before it even began.

Their run against each other is, once again, real dull. Their individual good behavior against Benoit doesn’t suddenly make their one on one match up any better. However, it is made just a little more entertaining than usual, which is to say at all, by the crowd totally revolting against it. Nothing like the 2014 or 2015 Royal Rumbles or any of that Daniel Bryan adjacent stuff, or any of the other crowd revolts the dregs of the 2010s have seen, but responding to a punch exchange that fishes for a reaction by chanting for the guy on the outside instead. It’s very good, and very well deserved. There’s always that old adage about how the audience Vince pays the most attention to is the Madison Square Garden one, but like so many old truisms and patterns, that’s out the window when it’s at all negative towards Hunter and Shawn, I guess. One more sign that almost nobody in the entire world is as interested in this feud between Hunter and Shawn as Hunter and Shawn. Their fight is broken up, naturally, when Triple H has Shawn defeated with the Pedigree and Benoit saves. Of course. Of course.

Shawn is eventually taken back out, and as everyone knows, Triple H taps out to the Crossface. Not without struggling for a minute while drenched in blood, and nearly escaping, but he taps out. He does the right thing, while absolutely kicking and creaming and being given every concession for it, if only so you can talk forever about how he did the right thing. Proof is in the fact that he repeated it a decade later, since Benoit killing his family and skirting all responsibility meant he could no longer hold this up as proof that he can play ball and elevate people. Shawn’s behavior here is a little less revolting, but it’s still an immensely selfish and embarrassing performance. He at least won’t try and use it for years as some proof that he can do the right thing, but that’s because everyone very willingly bought into him pretending to be born again, so he didn’t have to. Physically, they put in much more effort than usual in an attempt to not get totally blown away by an actual good wrestler, and achieved the best match either had been involved in in some time, but on a political level, this was as deplorable as always.

Triple H’s political instinct is unrivaled, and he rightfully saw that it didn’t matter what the body of the match was so long as the finish was him tapping out to Benoit. The finish is ultimately uplifting, to be fair. An everyman workhorse blue collar worker pushes and pushes, as the upper classes of an unashamed blue blood and a fake populist marketing an obviously false bootstraps story unify for brief moments to stop an interloper from joining the club. He fights through every attempt to hold him back and achieves something he was never supposed to, although on a sub-surface level, his success is ultimately just an illusion, and nothing’s actually changed. Ultimately, the impact of the match is spoiled by them only pretending to let him actually break through the glass ceiling before pretty succintly putting it back over his head within six months and then disavowing the entire thing after he was chewed up and spat out with only lip service paid to all of the problems that his fate brought up to the surface. Still, it’s a great match that actually accomplishes something, which makes it the best match of this specific little project by a thousand miles.

The best matches are about something bigger than themselves, and this was a great match. I usually mean they’re about things like personal growth or the power of self knowledge, and not the sub-prime mortgage crisis, but the 2000s were a weird time for everybody.

***1/2