Evening, folks! I’m Bachur, and I welcome you back to Pops & Botches: The Lesnar Years. Where we left off, Team Angle went singles with Rhyno and Benoit, Los Guerreros and Rikishi beat the FBI, Brian Kendrick got the job, Vince McMahon drew blood from Hulk Hogan and Kurt Angle injured Brock Lesnar. You can watch this week’s episode here. You can also check out all previous entries under the Lesnar Years tag. We’re just days away from WrestleMania, daddy! Next Big Thing!
Rock Rebound
Stone Cold Steve Austin kicks off Raw, calling out The Rock for a little one-on-one talk. Instead of Rock, he’s greeted by… Test? Okay then, Test. Test got a haircut and now looks like any random shitty WWE wrestler between the years 2007 and 2010. He’s also accompanied by his onscreen girlfriend Stacy Keibler, and is currently calling his fans “Testicles”. Remember, this is the guy that dressed like Edge and Christian’s older brother cosplaying as Kevin Nash, and he used to run with the Un-Americans. Somehow, this is not an upgrade. Test has a match scheduled, so he politely tries to reason with Austin and eats a Stunner. Lance Storm runs down for his match and covers Test, and that’s another Stunner. Dear ol’ Eric Bischoff comes out with a restraining order and about twelve cops, and Austin finally powders.
Later in the show, Rock comes up with one of his trademark brilliant schemes. He talks to Eric, who delivers one of his best lines yet:
Rock, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but every time you come up with a good idea, I get my ass kicked.
Since Austin is still hanging near the arena, Rocky tells Bischoff to put a couple speakers outside so Steve can hear the upcoming Rock Concert in high fidelity audio. Also, I’m just now realizing Eric has a picture of himself hanging over his couch. But enough about Bischoff, The Rock Concert’s up next! We’re in Sacramento tonight (shout out to the ref!) and The Rock couldn’t be happier. “The absolute best part about being here in Sacramento is in about an hour and a half, The Rock is gonna LEEEEEAVE Sacramento”. For copyright reasons, most of this segment has been cut from the Network edit, which is downright depressing. If you’ve never seen it, do yourself a favor:
There is not one wasted second in this entire thing; every line gets booed harder than the last. Lawler keeps trying to talk over the songs, because he’s extremely annoying like that, but he’s laughing so hard he can barely get the words out. The Rock’s Hall of Fame video should just be this one segment played in its entirety. This is what peak performance looks like.
Leaving Sacramento, Sacramento, there I go…
Leaving Sacramento, Sacramento, there I go…
They got some fat ass women there, and The Rock is gonna just say no
Well I might take a plane, I might take a train
How do you people live here? You must be insane
I’m leaving Sacramento, Sacramento, I won’t stay…
(Check this out, check this out!)
But I’ll be sure to come back when the Lakers beat the Kings in May
And there it is. The loudest boo this side of “having a basketball team in Seattle”. One song in, and it’s already one of the greatest segments I’ve ever seen. Rock’s never been one to leave good enough alone, so he starts taunting Austin. He achieves this by improvising a cover of his good friend Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again, changing the lyrics to Whip Your Ass Again. He follows up with a touching cover of My Way (the Sinatra one, not Limp Bizkit)
And now, with Mania near, The Rock will face the final curtain
Stone Cold, one-on-one, I’ll win the match, of that I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full, I can get pie, and get it all day
Much more than any of you, Rock did it Rock’s way
(Hey look—I’m not done),
Yes—
(Hold your applause)
Yes, there were times—
(Hold your applause!)
—Austin had fun, when he beat The Great One
But all that is deep is in the past, and now Austin can kiss The Rock’s ass!
(Check this out!)
I will be bold, and beat Stone Cold
And do it Roooooooooooock’s waaaaaaaaay
We see an ambulance drive into the arena (not sure why), followed by Austin’s truck. But it’s not Austin driving, it’s the Hurricane! Hurricane gets escorted out of the building by the police. He doesn’t have a restraining order or anything, they probably think he’s the Hamburglar. As Rock tries to finish his set, Austin emerges from the back of the truck and beats Rocky’s ass. He uses Rock’s priceless guitar as bait to lure Rock into the ring, and promptly stomps a hole into it. Rock sells this like someone shot him in the kneecaps. Well, that’s it for Raw! We’ll see you at—wait, no, wait a second, is that Vince?
SmackDown superstar VINCE MCMAHON closes the go-home Raw, putting over a SmackDown angle. He shows footage of last week’s contract signing and hypes up his Mania match. And then we end the show with… more SmackDown footage? Yeah, the last Raw before Mania ends with a SmackDown recap, which I guess further proves I shouldn’t waste my time with 2003 Raw. See you on SmackDown!
SLIGHT POP: HEY YOOOOOOOU
Welcome to SmackDown! We open the show with Cruiserweight action, as Rey Mysterio and SmackDown staple Brian Kendrick take on Matt Hardy and Shannon Moore. Now that Brian’s signed, he finally got himself a theme song, which I’m pretty sure I’ve heard on a random Cartoon Network commercial before. It’s a pretty awful song, but that HEY YOOOOOOOU cracks me up. Our Matt Facts for the day? “MATTITUDE WILL MAKE WRESTLEMANIA A SUCCESS” and “MATT IS VERY HUMBLE”. This is the first time Brian and Rey team together, and they’re already doing the Cesaro & Tyson Kidd Memorial Giant Swing/Dropkick Combo. Remember Kidd and Cesaro? Good times. Props to Brian, he looks like he dies on impact off every single bump here. He takes a regular back suplex like it’s a Benoit powerbomb, I love this guy.
It may not be the thinking man’s wrestling match, but I can’t knock a good Cruiserweight tag. Great fast-paced opener, with Hardy picking up the win off a Twist of Fate on Kendrick. Rey attacks the heels and hits 619 on Shannon after the bell before walking into another Twist of Fate. Matt Hardy stands tall over Rey Mysterio, not that that’s particularly hard to do.
BOTCH: Get On With It
We’re still on this “20 Years in the Making” thing, huh. We see Hogan arriving to the arena alongside his son Nick and his weird friend Jimmy Hart. It’s safe to assume Jimmy accompanies Hogan into every building. We also get comments from the delightfully devilish “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. We’ll be seeing plenty of Hot Rod soon enough, don’t worry. This is followed by a recap of last week’s events, and then Hogan comes out to cut a promo. They are NOT underselling this Vince/Hogan match, no sir. Cole and Tazz ask themselves if this is the last time they’ll ever see Hogan on SmackDown which, I mean, even if he loses at Mania, it won’t be. C’mon now. Let’s not pretend retired wrestlers don’t randomly show up on WWE television every three weeks.
I can give Hogan credit and say that his promos so far, while extremely formulaic, have rarely been bad. Hogan can be a great talker whenever he doesn’t sound blatantly disinterested in whatever he’s saying, but tonight’s not his best night. The Hogan/McMahon match is now officially a Street Fight (as it should be), and Hogan asks the crowd if it was worth it to put his career on the line. He’s not saying anything we haven’t already heard, but I suppose we need SOME build on the go-home show, and we already blew the “stab your opponent repeatedly, sign the contract with their blood” bit last week. We do, however, get one of my favorite WWE tropes, the Vince McMahon training montage, featuring a rare Shane cameo. And also, more comments from Mean Gene and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m almost tempted to give it a Pop just for Arnie.
SLIGHT POP: Tag Guys in Singles
Last week, Team Angle wrestled their WrestleMania opponents in singles matches. This week, Team Angle wrestles their WrestleMania opponents in singles matches. Hey, if it works, it works. We start with Charlie Haas vs. Eddie Guerrero, a first-time matchup, and it’s fine. It’s one of those matches where both guys aren’t quite in-sync, so while they don’t botch anything and there’s some neat spots, it can get a little awkward at points. Eddie tweaks his elbow off a dropkick and Charlie goes after it, but Guerrero reverses one of those “lift a guy by the arm” spots into a messy flash pin. Eddie might be shoot injured, or he might just be a really good sell.
Shelton and Chavo square up later in the show. Team Angle are in the midst of the evergreen “Champs lose a bunch then retain at the PPV” cycle, so I predict Chavo wins here. It’s a fun bout between these two, though the unexpected highlight is a Pepé Guerrero reference from Tazz. “Hey, did you know Chavo used to have a horse?”. Similar to Charlie, Shelton targets Chavo’s knee and locks in an inverted Figure Four, pretty unique for the time. The leg work is top notch here, Team Angle have the limb offense down pat. After some attempted interference by Haas and a wonderful Aloha Shelton spot (pictured), Chavo catches Benjamin with a Magistral Cradle for the totally unexpected win. I think Haas and Benjamin have a combined 20% win-rate so far. Benoit and Rhyno show up afterwards to run them off, tag titles on the line this Sunday!
???: Can Nathan Wrestle…?
We get the first FBI vignette, as SmackDown’s lovable pin eaters collect some money out on the street. As far as WWE vignettes go, it’s pretty barebones. No music, shaky cam, the whole thing lasts under a minute. It’s quiet and moody, which I dig, but I’m not sure it gels with the FBI’s gimmick of “be Italian” and “lose”.
Speaking of the FBI, Nathan Jones makes his in-ring debut against Chuck Palumbo tonight! Except he doesn’t, he beats up Palumbo backstage, off-camera. Notice how we’re still three days away from his WrestleMania debut and Nathan Jones has had zero matches. This could theoretically turn out to be a Ronda Rousey situation, where they keep someone under wraps until Mania and then they go and have a great match. That’s definitely not happening, but hey, hypotheticals. Also, the FBI suck so hard, they’re losing matches before they take place.
BOTCH: The Fairest of Them All
As Nidia prepares for YET ANOTHER match against Torrie Wilson (we gotta sign more women to SmackDown, man), she and Jamie run into… a giant Torrie Wilson Playboy cover. Just sitting around backstage. Sure. Please notice that gigantic inflatable shark hanging by the ceiling on that picture. This segment raises more questions than it answers. We also get footage of the Playboy press conference, featuring Torrie, Steph and The Hef. WWE’s milking this Playboy thing pretty hard, but somehow not as hard as the Girls Gone Wild partnership. Since she’s a Playboy girl now, Torrie spends most of her entrance shaking her ass at the camera, clearly foreshadowing Billy Gunn’s eventual SmackDown return. I’m only half-joking with that one.
Nidia comes into this match with the intent of making Torrie ugly, so she quickly grabs a steel chair. The visual of Torrie Wilson eating a chair to the forehead like she’s Ken Shamrock would be equal parts awful and funny. We don’t get to see it, obviously, as Torrie dropkicks the chair into Nidia’s face. Tazz, in purest form, stops commenting to sing Love on The Rocks, then forgets Neil Diamond’s name. I like to think Tazz doesn’t know the name of a single singer. He thinks Elvis’ last name is “Wesley”. Back to the match, Torrie catches Nidia with a spinning DDT and picks up the relatively easy win. Business as usual.
POP: Cheat Meal (Evil Version)
Sean O’Haire’s back in the void! The Devil’s Advocate brings us a very special message: eat whatever you want. Gluttony is a sin, so I guess this makes some sense, although I do find it funny that Satan himself took human form and appeared on a wrestling show just to tell us to get some McDonald’s.
SLIGHT BOTCH: Deadman Down Under
Tag title challengers Benoit and Rhyno have a tall task ahead of them against Big Show and A-Train. We haven’t seen Paul Heyman on SmackDown since Brock beat his ass, but considering Train/Show and Team Angle are all Heyman Guys, it makes sense that the big fellas would want to soften up Benoit and Rhyno right before Mania. Heavy Machinery ‘03 run into Nathan Jones (still wearing his gear, for some reason) backstage. I love seeing Train, Show and Jones standing side by side with no one to compare them to, makes them all look 5’10.
The heels have about a one-foot height advantage over both the faces, and Big Show uses it to throw Benoit around like a cushion. I’m a huge fan of those giant biel throws, one of the best spots of all time. Benoit gets his ass handed to him for a while until Rhyno gets a pretty good hot tag, but Nathan Jones eventually runs down to attack the heels and ruin everything. I guess they didn’t want either team to lose so close to Mania, so fine, whatever. The big boys outnumber Nathan until Taker shows up for the save. Where the hell has Taker been the last 20 minutes? He knows he can’t leave Nathan alone like that!
POP, I GUESS?: Here We Go Again
We get a very short WrestleMania montage featuring Limb Bizkit’s Fred Durst, a cornerstone of early 2000s WWE. If you couldn’t already guess, Limp Bizkit composed the official theme song for WrestleMania XIX, “Crack Addict”. It’s not as good as “My Way” (two My Way references in the same article, I’m good at this), and honestly, it’s a terrible song, but it doesn’t need to be good. It exists to be wrestling BGM, and it works. It’s the perfect song to play while two bald guys hit each other, even if I’ll never be able to get that HURRRRRR EEERE WE GO AGAIN out of my head.
SLIGHT POP: Applied Thuganomics
Look, John Cena’s finally back! I wonder if he’ll rap about how much Brock Lesnar sucks—aaaaand there he goes again
Yo yo yo yo, save your breath, kid. I’m here for one reason
My target’s Brock Lesnar, and it’s hunting season
Tonight I teach Brock a lesson, like Mr. Miyagi did
But he ain’t Daniel LaRusso, and this ain’t no Karate Kid
Yeah my pants are bagging, cause I’ve been working my ass off
Tonight I put the wax on a kid who only whacks off
I’m more of a threat to Brock than nuclear fallout!
Tonight’s the night The Next Big Thing gets called out
Word Life, son
Fun fact: John Cena is not wrestling Brock Lesnar tonight. However, and you’re not gonna believe this, we see Brock Lesnar arriving to the arena and getting asked about John Cena. Brock’s immediate response isn’t “who the fuck is John Cena”, amazingly. Still, he’s somewhat preoccupied with main-eventing WrestleMania right now, so he doesn’t give John the time of day. Now that Brock’s injured, Kurt Angle’s feeling lucky enough to taunt Lesnar face to face. Strange behavior, considering Angle’s been ducking Brock since December, but I guess we gotta plug the Mania match somewhere. He tells Brock that he’s not scared of him, and that their Mania match will set the standard for the very future of pro-wrestling. Bold words, coming from a guy with a broken neck.
Back to Cena, today’s episode is EXTREMELY important, as it marks the debut of one of the under-the-radar greatest theme songs of all time: Basic Thuganomics. “I’m untouchable, but I’m forcing you to feel me”, one of the rawest bars in history. Cena takes on former blood rival Rikishi, who’s apparently back to taking Ls after feuding with the FBI. ‘Kishi gets a sizeable pop here, so I guess the crowd wasn’t expecting him. Cena rams Rikishi into the exposed barricade and locks him in a lazy Crossface Chickenwing, the deadliest of submissions. Rikishi fights back and stinkfaces Cena, but John’s able to avoid the Rump Shaker, bump the ref and hit his patented chain-punch for a nearfall. Out of options, Cena’s forced to resort to an actual finishing move. He gets Rikishi in position for an F5 and…
…It’s in the ballpark, I suppose. This is the first version of the FU, a regular Death Valley Driver. Well, “regular”, he hit it on Rikishi, that’s pretty impressive in and of itself. John would later change up the move into more of a kneeling slam, but this works too. There’s a fun fact for you, the Attitude Adjustment and Basic Thuganomics both debuted on the same episode, ain’t that a hoot.
John grabs the mic and calls out Brock, because this kid just won’t take a hint. Brock doesn’t show, so Cena goes to the back looking for him. Brock didn’t even register Cena’s existence while he was calling him out in middle of the ring, he’s just fucking with John at this point. Cena finds Lesnar backstage and the two get into a scuffle, so Angle takes advantage to sneak behind Brock and break a 2×4 over his injured ribs and aw nuts folks we’re out of time, see you at the PPV!
And that’s our show! Join us next time for WrestleMania, featuring:
- Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho
- Big Show & A-Train vs. Undertaker & Nathan Jones (team name: …I don’t know, “Dead Men at Work”?)
- Trish Stratus vs. Jazz vs. Victoria, Women’s Championship
- Rey Mysterio vs. Matt Hardy, Cruiserweight Championship
- Rhyno & Chris Benoit vs. Los Guerreros vs. Team Angle, WWE Tag Team Championships
- Booker T vs. Triple H, World Heavyweight Championship. Oh boy.
- The Rock vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin
- Hulk Hogan vs. Mr. McMahon, Career Threatening Street Fight
- …And Brock Lesnar vs. Kurt Angle, WWE Championship
Make sure to leave a comment below (I’ll read ’em!), share the column around and join the Discord. SmackDown!
