Opinion
Cook’s Top 5: 2001 Wrestling Memories
Steve Cook continues the stroll down memory lane with a look at the year that could have been: 2001.
Steve Cook continues the stroll down memory lane with a look at the year that could have been: 2001.
2001 could have been a great year in wrestling history.
Sure, losing WCW & ECW in the first three months was a tough blow. It could have been overcome if the WWF managed to capitalize off of it and put together a compelling storyline based off of something that everybody had wanted to see since the beginning of the Monday Night War. I can’t count how many WWF vs. WCW debates I listened to or took part in, and how many times somebody would chime in with “Well, ECW’s better”. Every single wrestling fan wanted to see these promotions face off, and the WWF could have spent years afterward printing off money from it. Oh, and just after buying WCW, the WWF had one of their hottest shows ever: WrestleMania X-Seven. Sure, it ended probably the dumbest way they could have ended it, with Steve Austin turning heel & aligning with Mr. McMahon, but that shouldn’t have mattered too much. They should have had no problem turning all of this into gold.
That didn’t happen. The Invasion was botched beyond belief, and instead of increasing their fanbase by drawing in WCW & ECW fans, the WWF scared a lot of those fans off for good. Indeed, many WCW fans didn’t even make the move to Raw the week after the simulcast where Shane McMahon revealed that he now owned WCW. It was an unmitigated disaster, with some positive moments that we’ll get to.
Oh, and 2001 was also a disaster from a non-wrestling perspective, but we’ll get to that too. We continue my Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration by looking back at a year many of us would prefer not to.
5. SmackDown after 9/11
Many people have wondered why pro wrestling has been so insistent on continuing during the pandemic. It’s nothing new. Vince McMahon has always envisioned his programming as something that people can turn to when the world is facing rough times. That’s why it wasn’t surprising when the WWF held a live SmackDown taping just two days after the events of September 11, 2001. They had to postpone their scheduled taping the day of, but opted to run live on UPN Thursday night instead of cancelling the show outright.
Was it awkward? At times, absolutely. Stephanie McMahon’s speech comparing the terrorist attack to her dad being targeted by the US government several years earlier still ranks high on the “WTF did I just hear?” list. As a fan, having SmackDown on that evening gave me something else to think about. There is something to be said for that, and it explains why major wrestling promotions continue doing their business while most other sports & entertainment businesses have paused.
4. A Lost VAPA Video
Visual And Performing Arts was a class we required to pass in order to graduate high school. Kentucky getting all cultural, right? I remember a couple of things about this class. One was a fellow student that was an even bigger wrestling fan than I was. He was doing the backyard stuff, always wearing Hardyz shirts and had big dreams of making it in wrestling. I don’t think he ever did, but he was a good kid.
We had to make a video about a famous written work, and were assigned Beowulf. This turned into me doing my best William Regal impression as narrator, every fight scene being acted out, and some of us dressing up in white shirts & black ties as the Right to Censor to attack at intermittent times. Ah, it was a classic. I have no idea what happened to it, sadly. We had all sorts of weird video projects that I have no idea what happened to them, but were very fun making.
Also sadly, my performance didn’t impress the girl in class I’d had a bit of a thing for since elementary school. Especially the show-closing scene where a rolled up poster board was winged full-speed at my lower mid-section. That one stung, in more ways than one.
3. Raw & Honors Night
May 14 was an interesting night. Raw was coming to Cincinnati, and my dad & I had tickets to attend. However, it was also Honors Night at my high school, and I was scheduled to be awarded something. This has been a pretty common theme throughout my life: either everybody wants me somewhere at the same time or nobody wants me anywhere.
We managed to do both, getting to Cincy in time for the live Raw portion of the show. Looking at the card now…I wish we’d skipped my accepting an award for best student in Global Issues.
WWF @ Cincinnati, OH – Riverfront Coliseum – May 14, 2001 (12,022)
Leviathan pinned Nick Dinsmore at 4:05 with a back suplex into a modified uranagi
Randy Orton pinned Rico Constantino at 5:54 with a wheelbarrow suplex
Scott Vick pinned Steve Bradley at 4:08 with the Kryptonite Krunch
Jakked:
X-Pac, Albert, & Justin Credible defeated Chris Harris, Doug Basham, & Rob Williams at 4:27 when X-Pac pinned Williams with the X Marks the Spot
WWF Light Heavyweight Champion Jerry Lynn pinned Essa Rios at 5:13 with the tornado DDT
Billy Gunn pinned Race Steele with the One and Only at 3:55
Haku pinned Chris Michaels at 4:15 with the Tongan Death Grip
Raw:
Rikishi defeated Kurt Angle via disqualification
Matt & Jeff Hardy defeated Perry Saturn & Dean Malenko (w/ Eddie Guerrero & Terri)
WWF Hardcore Champion Rhyno defeated Crash Holly
Chris Jericho & Chris Benoit defeated Edge & Christian
WWF Women’s Champion Chyna & Lita defeated Ivory & Molly Holly
The Big Show, the Goodfather, & Bull Buchanon defeated the Acolytes & Test
Kane defeated WWF Tag Team Champions – WWF World Champion Steve Austin & WWF IC Champion Triple H (w/ Stephanie McMahon) via disqualification
I missed out on early Batista & Randy Orton appearances, along with Wildcat Chris Harris and motherfreaking HAKU! Raw itself…not the most memorable show. Benoit/Jericho vs. Edge & Christian was good, the rest was pretty much there.
Looking back now, what stands out to me is my dad being willing to drive me to both of these things. He’d gotten bored with the wrestling thing, but still went along in an attempt to make me happy. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but now, after having made that drive and parked downtown many times myself, I realize that wasn’t easy.
I’ve never really given him enough credit for it, but he did the best he could as a dad with what he had to work with.
2. Fun With Austin & Angle
Not everything about Stone Cold Steve Austin’s heel turn sucked. Austin was amazing in the role. He could be serious, or he could be hilarious. I was a big fan while it was happening, but unfortunately I was in the minority. No matter how good Austin was as a heel, the fans just didn’t want to see it. A shame. There was plenty of good stuff during that time period, especially when Kurt Angle got involved.
Austin & Angle were both banged up and needed some time off. They needed to stay on television because people still wanted to see them. (A lost art nowadays, especially in WWE. Somebody gets hurt and we don’t see them for months. Why can’t they have guys like Xavier Woods do stuff on TV and keep his name out there? Never made any sense to me.) The idea was hatched to have them hang out with Vince McMahon and do some killer comedy that still holds up pretty well today.
And it eventually led to a feud when Austin joined “The Alliance” and Angle stood behind his owner. Good times.
1. A Power Outage
July 9. The power at my house went out sometime in the morning and was out for most of the day. I don’t remember what I did for most of that day, but I do remember what I found when I turned on Raw at around 11 pm or so when the power came back on: a bunch of former ECW wrestlers walking through the crowd to the ECW theme song. Given there was no prior warning or rumor of this that I had seen, I was pretty confused as to what the heck was going on.
I was pretty excited though. The WCW Invasion had already shown signs of fatigue. It wasn’t quite hitting the way most of us fans thought it would. Maybe some ECW flavor would liven things up? It certainly had the potential to…until a few minutes later when WCW Owner Shane McMahon introduced the new ECW Owner, Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley.
Then it went from being a potential cool ECW thing to yet another twist in the McMahon Family Saga. One of the main reasons 2001 is remembered as a disappointing wrestling year. WCW & ECW went out of business, and we didn’t even get a good or even a unique storyline out of it.
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Opinion
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Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
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Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
MONDAY - Bandwagon Nerds (entertainment & popular culture)
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Opinion
AJ’s Top 3 Favorite SummerSlams
AJ is back with his annual opinion article, and this time the SummerSlam buzz got him wondering about his personal Top 3.
It’s been a while since I have done any form of writing and SummerSlam is this Saturday. Of all the SummerSlams I’ve seen over the years; which ones are my favorites? While it’s not a revolutionary idea, I figured everyone loves to debate favorites of well, anything. Don’t worry though because this isn’t just going to be pure recency bias. I’ve watched the majority of them so with the ones I put on the list, it hit me more in some way shape or form whether it was story, a really good match or it just felt like a solid event.
At least this proves WWE is trending in a good direction for me, when it gets the ol’ brain juices flowing just because a show is around the corner!
#3: 2022 (Ol’ Brock Lesnar Has A Farm)
Starting off the show, we get Bianca looking for a rematch against Becky from last years SummerSlam and it was better than the 21 second affair that everyone claims was a squash. This time Bianca holds her own and beats the Man in a fairly decent match, good way to get the event started. Next up is the heat seeking missile, Logan Paul against the former heat seeking missile because, well he wasn’t cut out for it and wasn’t a guy in everyone’s eyes, The Miz. After they had their blow off at Mania with Logan coming out on top which… isn’t awful, I just don’t like Logan Paul because he has that dude bro aura and swagger to make him more hateable than any other person on the card. Which I suppose is his gimmick…so…kudos?
First Championship match is for the US Championship and it’s as expected that in Theory, he should never beat someone to the caliber of Bobby Lashley which is no surprise. Dominik and Rey still back when Dom wanted the good fight against the Judgement Day before joining them later. The former Colts players, which they hammered it dahn in this match up showed that the canal swimming, trash talkin’, podcastin’, current RAW Color Commentatin’ goofball we all love, Pat McAfee came out on top again Bum Ass Corbin.
Usos putting the Street Profits on lockdown in the penitentiary since I believe this was peak Bloodline with the belt collecting and running all of WWE. Liv beat Ronda Rousey which isn’t astonishing but it’s not something people had on their bingo cards for anything with WWE so it was a nice little shock factor. The most memorable part of the night is obviously the Main Event, Lesnar brings the tractor, Roman catching the Microphone and Brock stands on top of the vehicle. Damn good match that showed off what they do in the ring since Roman caught his stride as the main bad guy and Brock… liked people after all of this? That is still a weird statement in my head. Brock being a good guy people person. If Liv wasn’t on bingo cards for wrestling, that is not on bingo cards in any aspect of life really.
That is more of the event that had solid matches and story going for it. No weird double count out, multiple people involved, 5 tag matches on the card. Things made sense and weren’t convoluted, had shocking moments that were great to see like Liv actually getting a title defense and there were the results we all expected at the time like Theory losing in 4 minutes to Bobby Lashley.
#2: 2009 (Are You Ready for The Return?)
This event wasn’t that strong. It was strong with the star power involved in 2009 with guys like Rey Mysterio as Intercontinental Champion, Orton and Cena for the WWE Championship as it was becoming as stale as month old chips and CM Punk was facing Jeff Hardy before he ultimately returned to TNA at the beginning of 2010 after this PPV. For me, it’s not so much of the show itself, it was more of the memories because the Balai as our friends Chris Platt and Rey Cash like to call my brother and I, we were just coming back into wrestling and we were TNA Fans. We didn’t watch WWE that much really, it was just what came on after another channel had old ROH shows before they moved to three hours and swallowed the 8pm Eastern Slot. No, the reason why this has so many memories for me is three main reasons. First, Orton and Cena. They have had their rivalry since the beginning it seems, being each others foils like Hogan and Piper before them and there had to be a stipulation where if Randy was Counted Out or DQ’d, he’d lose the championship regardless. This was prime Viper Randy and the obvious joke we had of Super Cena where he very rarely lost, unless it was SummerSlam surprisingly enough.
Number two reason was CM Punk and Jeff Hardy. Hardys known for the Ladder and TLC matches in the past and this being the penultimate match for this feud and it was a banger of a match. If you didn’t know Punk before, it was a great introduction to his wrestling. I used to like Punk a lot because of this match because he could talk, wrestle… and not insanely personal with things in wrestling. In all seriousness, this was a great match. Ultimate risks, high reward for Punk grabbing the World Heavyweight Championship and he was given his next feud because of the final boss of SmackDown at that time. Thanks, Teddy Long.
The main and final reason though why this match gave me the memories flowing back is more of the fact that one of my closest and longest termed friends of 23 years, also loves wrestling. Back when we were younger, he’d do MoCap videos on YouTube with his figures. We’d have friends come over for parties at his house and we’d do the one thing WWE always told us not to do and that was try it at home. He was always stronger than me, I was always more charismatic. He had the power aspect and did things with brute force, I could talk my way out of trouble with parents if we did something wrong. There was always one thing that our respective mother’s always called us though… it’s on the tip of my tongue… oh right, ‘Degenerates’.
As soon as we were called that, we kind of parodied the DX line. I was limber enough to do the HBK pose and do a Superkick before it became the new DDT and he would just Spinebuster people and knew how to do the water spit. So what do you think was the main reason we even ordered this PPV for his 13th Birthday? I think the two guys we were pretending to be were set to return on a tank and toss out some glow sticks. The return of DX, Shawn Michaels coming back after Mania with Triple H to deal with the Legacy problem was an amazing return for them and made everything so much fun.
So we have the solid card and this one has a personal story… what’s my number one SummerSlam? Is it personal? Well yes but not going into that. Is it a good card? To me, it was a phenomenal card! Is it memorable? Seeing how wrestling fans still mention at least three matches to this day.
#1: 2005 (Octopus in the Washer, Lover’s Quarrel and Where the F%#$ is Vickie?)
Quite possibly some of the best matches I’ve seen and one that was just the most hilarious moments of overselling in wrestling history, I know why I love this SummerSlam but it’s also a really good card at the same time. Redacted beats Orlando Jordan in 25 seconds for the US Title and they made jokes about it like, he can make a coffee faster than he beat Orlando and stuff like that, it’s pretty funny. Angle getting sick of Eugene’s antics for his Gold Medal was also a great bit they had play up, the Year long feud of Randy Orton and Undertaker was still going on where Orton comes out on top this time around to get the win back from Mania, Jericho returning for the match with Cena in a whole promotional thing for each other’s groups, Fozzy for Jericho and the Chain Gang doing Bad, Bad Man for Cena leading up to a match for the WWE Championship. JBL won a 20 man battle royal on SmackDown to win the Championship…… Opportunity to face the newest member of SmackDown, Batista but the three main matches that a lot of people talk about to this day; Edge vs Matt Hardy, Rey vs Eddie for Dominik and Hogan vs HBK in the Main Event.
I have reasons to enjoy the Hardy/Edge match but it looked like a real fight, it really made us believe that Matt Hardy was going to kill Edge because real names were dropped during this tirade from Hardy. It wasn’t Edge and Lita, it was Adam and Amy. Matt was so dead set on beating the hell out of Edge that they made a situation into gold and it was a great moment for this match to happen, I believe it was also an Unsanctioned Match too which added the intensity until matt got concussed and knocked senseless that it looked like he couldn’t fight for anything but the build up was what made it seem like a marque match. It made it feel real, it made it feel awesome and it made it feel personal.
Eddie kept tormenting Rey Mysterio about Dominik not being Rey’s but Eddie’s for the summer. That’s all you heard from Eddie being the weasel he was is hanging out with Dominik, making the world believe it’s his son and what not (Let’s not do a fast forward to today where he has the mullet, mustache and everything like Eddie) but they settle this in a Ladder Match where the top of it is a document for the custody of Dominik and my god, this match is better than it should have been. I expect nothing else from Eddie because the man hated having a bad match, Dom got involved and stopped Eddie, Vickie was late and stopped Eddie. The whole match was good it was just very weird with the premise but was a great match. I wonder if Rey regrets his decision to win the match now…
Octopus in a Washing Machine… those five words have resonated with Shawn Michaels’ performance in this match, forever. It was supposed to be an amazing match up between Hogan and Michaels, Icon vs Icon it said and suddenly Hogan’s back gives out, can’t do a trilogy of matches so we can only do the one and then pull out of everything after. This match was set up to be a classic and instead turned into the most unbelievable sell fest ever. A Hogan big boot caused Shawn to tumble 3 or 4 times, getting crotched on the ropes had HBK bouncing higher than he should have, being tossed out of the ring made it look like Shawn never broke his back in 1998 from how much he flopped and flipped around like crazy. It’s bad… or maybe even good that a lot of current wrestlers watched this match that went, “I can sell like that, I want to be a wrestler” and did. So good or bad, I don’t know but for some reason this PPV has always had a place in my heart for how memorable it was.
Those are my top three SummerSlams so far but who knows, 2024 has potential to maybe bump something or at least get me to consider a shift. Should be fun to see how the show plays out! What are some of your favorite SummerSlams?
About Chairshot Radio Network
Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
MONDAY - Bandwagon Nerds (entertainment & popular culture)
TUESDAY - Musical Chairs (music) / Hockey Talk (NHL)
WEDNESDAY - The Greg DeMarco Show (wrestling)
THURSDAY - Keeping the news ridiculous... The Oddity / Chairshot NFL (NFL)
FRIDAY - DWI Podcast (Drunk Wrestling Intellect)
SATURDAY - The Mindless Wrestling Podcast
SUNDAY - The Front and Center Sports Podcast
CHAIRSHOT RADIO NETWORK PODCAST SPECIALS
Attitude Of Aggression Podcast & The Big Five Project (chronologically exploring WWE's PPV/PLE history)
TheChairshot.com PRESENTS...IMMEDIATE POST WWE PLE REACTIONS w/ DJ(Mindless), Tunney(DWI) & Friends
Patrick O'Dowd's 5X5
Classic POD is WAR
Chairshot Radio Network Your home for the hardest hitting podcasts... Sports, Entertainment and Sports Entertainment!
Powered by RedCircle
Let us know what you think on social media @ChairshotMedia and always remember to use the hashtag #UseYourHead!
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