Evening, folks! I’m Bachur and I welcome you back to Pops & Botches: The Lesnar Years. Where we left off, Roddy Piper took a kid’s leg off and made everything awkward, Matt Hardy retained the Cruiserweight title against Tajiri, John Cena aligned himself with the FBI, Chavo Guerrero got injured off-screen and Big Show withstood an attack from Rey Mysterio and Brock Lesnar. You can watch Judgment Day on the Cock or on the Network. You can also check out all previous entries under the Lesnar Years tag. Next Big Thing!
BOTCH: One More Beer
After getting our first look at the absolutely stunning Judgment Day stage, we open the show with a bang, or more specifically, a glass shatter. Raw’s newest co-General Manager Stone Cold Steve Austin strolls down to the ring for a promo. Following his in-ring retirement at WrestleMania XIX (yeah, I know, I know) Steve has become a permanent fixture on Raw, working as General Manager alongside Eric Bischoff and getting into all sorts of crazy shenanigans. Steve tells us how happy he is to be here tonight and says he’ll be watching the show from his skybox atop the arena, in “redneck heaven”. Then he cracks open a cold one with Tazz, who spends the next hour slurring his words after taking exactly one sip of beer.
Unfortunately, co-GM Eric Bischoff also has access to the skybox, so he and Steve spend the whole show bickering in-between matches in extremely long and often very awkward segments. Steve makes fun of Eric for drinking like a sissy and pressures him into downing about 50 cans of beer and eating 12 hamburgers throughout the night. This serves two purposes: one, to waste time, as WWE PPVs often do, with menial segments to pad out the show’s runtime. There’s about 69 minutes of in-ring action in this 164 minute show. And two, so that Bischoff can hurl onto the crowd at the end of the night. Big payoff. HE’S GONNA—he’s gonna—HE’S GONNA PUKE!!!
SLIGHT BOTCH: The Made Men
Our opening match is a 6-man tag; the combined forces of Chris Benoit, Rhyno and Spanky battle John Cena and the FBI’s Palumbo and Stamboli (Team Name: “The New York Yankees”). So basically “SmackDown’s Undercard: The Match”. Cena’s got a few bars for us tonight, and you know how we do this:
This is Thuganomics, but tonight I’m baptized
Now I got family ties with the FBIs
Tonight we handing out a special: two-for-one black eyes
It’s like a mafia movie, I have you cheering the bad guys
Cause we really Goodfellas, making you offers you can’t refuse
Have you jumping off the pier in some concrete shoes
We’ll beat you down so bad, you can’t identify the body
You get baked like manicotti with a new John Gotti
So don’t mess with Nunzio, Palumbo or Stamboli
You’ll be sleeping with the fishes, getting stuffed like ravioli
I changed my name to Corleone like a Godfather flick
Your girl likes Italian sausage, cause she swallowed my…
This seems like your run of the mill SmackDown tag, and it is, except even shorter. I assume SmackDown would give these guys around 7-8 minutes but the PPV opener clocks in at 3:55. The wrestling is good, but what can I really say? Rhyno doesn’t even get to tag in, all he does is Gore Nunzio to stop him from interfering, which is becoming a reoccurring sight in these recaps. The biggest highlight, for me at least, is Chuck Palumbo wrestling with a stogie in his mouth. Pro wrestlers in the US need to bring back the stogie. While Benoit is busy locking Cena in the Crossface, Palumbo and Stamboli hit the “Kiss of Death” (a backbreaker/legdrop combo) on Spanky to score the win. The FBI started winning matches and now they won’t stop! No idea if this Cena/FBI partnership actually goes anywhere, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
BOTCH: Pardon My French
Get a load of this, La Résistance makes their PPV debut against Raw’s top team of Scott Steiner and Test. Yeah. If you’re really curious as to how this match came about, Raw hosted a historic debate between Scott Steiner and Chris Nowinski, where Scott Steiner argued in favor of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I know I say this a lot, like a lot, but you couldn’t pay me to watch 2003 Raw. During this beautiful, beautiful segment, Scotty took a few shots at France, as one often does, drawing the ire of La Résistance. La Résistance’s gimmick is that they hate the US and think Americans are uncultured, which was very topical in 2003. If you wanna know how Raw’s tag division is doing, they’ll be tag champs by July.
The Frenchmen attacked Steiner and Test came out for the save, which makes absolutely no sense because a) Test is a heel, b) Test is currently in a love triangle with Steiner and Stacy Keibler, and c) Test is from Toronto. La Résistance have the exact same fucking gimmick as the Un-Americans, A TEAM TEST WAS A PART OF. So, we get this extremely 2003 Raw affair. Scott’s diminished at this point in his career, and while the match doesn’t fall apart or anything, it’s… not great. Test and Steiner aren’t a tag team, Stacy gets bumped by Test and falls into Steiner’s arms, and Test ends up inadvertently kicking Scott in the face, allowing La Rés to hit Their Move for the win. Oh, and at one point Test wears a little beret. Those Raw tag matches, man. They sure exist.
I’ll close the segment out with this exchange between King and JR:
King: Look at Stacy Keibler… I love that skirt, I can’t tell if she’s inside trying to get out or outside trying to get in, that is so tight!
JR (quietly): …She’s young enough to be your daughter, you know.
King (quietly): …What does that have to do with anything?
JR (quietly): Nothing. I just thought I’d bring it up.
No further comment.
POP: Los Guerreros Orientales
SmackDown’s tag titles are up for grabs in a ladder match, as Team Angle defend against Eddie Guerrero and… Tajiri?! Yes indeed, with Chavo on the shelf for the foreseeable future, Eddie’s picked the Japanese buzzsaw as his partner. And if you’ve been reading this column for any amount of time, you already know how happy this makes me. This is the first official ladder match we get to review on the column, not counting that Three Stages of Hell match from Armageddon ’02. Eddie’s the only one out of these four with any ladder match experience, and unfortunately, you can tell. The match starts pretty rough, with quite a few blown spots early on, but they manage to find their groove and it picks up nicely.
It’s not the best ladder match you’ll ever see – understandably, the bar is high – but these four follow two very simple rules: get creative and eat a lot of shit. The spots here are equal amounts ingenious (like Tajiri’s handspring elbow under the ladder) and painful (like this terrible, terrible idea). This match must’ve hurt like a motherfucker, I’ll tell you. Team Angle are wrestler’s wrestlers, but they give it their all and BOY do they take a whipping here. As do the faces, with special mention to this ladder hilo that Eddie probably felt for the next month.
Eddie even brings back the Greatest Powerbomb Of All Time spot from his No-DQ match with Edge, though it doesn’t quite live up to the original. It’s more than enough to remove Charlie from the match, however, and Eddie takes the opening to go for the belts. Shelton tries to pull him down, so Tajiri sneaks up the opposite side and mists Shelton through the ladder to take him out. With Team Angle down for the count, Eddie and Tajiri pull the belts down, and Los Guerreros Orientales are your new tag team champions.
How sweet it is!
FINE: The Continental
At No Mercy 2002, the Intercontinental Championship was retired in a Champion vs. Champion match between then IC champ Kane and forever World Heavyweight champ Triple H. It was during the whole Katie Vick angle, so we tend to ignore that. Well, one of Steve Austin’s first actions as Raw’s co-GM was to bring the Intercontinental title back to Raw, because Booker T really, really, really needs something to do. We get a great and very extensive video package highlighting the history of the Intercontinental title, and the belt will be presented to the new champion by, take a fucking guess, Pat Patterson. My favorite bit is JR calling the Honky Tonk Man the best IC champ and Lawler (Honky’s cousin) telling JR he must be drunk.
So what we have here is a 9-man Battle Royal for the vacant IC title featuring 8 former champions and also Booker T. Our first participant is the returning Val Venis. No, not Chief Morley, but the actual white towel “Hello Ladies” Val Venis. Apparently Morley was fired from his role as Chief of Staff and was then rehired as a porn star. Val’s theme song is still one of the greatest wrestling tunes of all time, I might add. The other participants are Chris Jericho, Christian, Lance Storm, Kane, RVD, Goldust, Booker T and Test, pulling double duty tonight. It sounds way more fun than it is, as half the field gets tossed out almost immediately and we’re left with Booker, Goldust and the Chrises.
Goldust tries to eliminate his former tag partner but gets outsmarted, and the heels beat on Booker for a loooooong time. Eventually Jericho goes for a Lionsault and Christian stabs him in the back, and we’re down to two. Christian inadvertently dropkicks the lone ref outside the ring and Booker quickly dumps him out, but Christian grabs the belt, levels Booker and tosses him out as the referee comes to. Since the ONE GUY reffing this Battle Royal didn’t see Christian get eliminated, he’s announced as the winner. As you can imagine, the crowd is very happy to hear that. The bad news is that Booker lost, again, but the good news is that Christian is finally getting his singles push, which is great for Raw. And I suppose the IC title’s still got a good few years ahead of it before it inevitably loses any and all importance.
BOTCH: Tit-For-Tat
Weeks and weeks of incredible build have finally led to this: Sable vs. Torrie Wilson in a Bikini Contest. Sable tries to intimidate/arouse Torrie backstage, like usual, and I only bring it up because she says this:
Sable: You know Torrie, you really shouldn’t be nervous.
Torrie: Oh well, thanks Sable but I’m actually not nervous.
Sable: Well, don’t you think you should be a little nervous?
The best part is that someone definitely wrote that and handed it out to them. Tazz (who spends the entire segment with his hand in his pocket) is hosting this contest, which is usually Jerry Lawler’s job. We cut back to King a few times during the segment, though, and the man looks like he’s staring down the front of a moving train. Torrie gets a pretty elaborate PPV entrance, with a live rendition of her theme sung by Lilian Garcia. Wasn’t expecting this type of production value from Judgment Day 2003, to be honest.
Sable is up first, she dances in a g-string for a good minute while a Metal Gear Exclamation Sound plays in Brock Lesnar’s head backstage. Torrie’s up next, she’s got this Playboy themed Bikini, very tasteful. Before the crowd can decide the winner (great system we’ve worked out for these contests), Torrie reveals a second Bikini underneath and gets the easy win. Which seems unfair to Sable, but whatever, I’m not about to scrutinize the legitimacy of a Bikini Contest. Torrie and Sable kiss —for no reason, really— and Tazz almost faints. I’m sure some this segment changed some 13 year old’s life back in 2003.
BOTCH: A Real American Hero
We see the mysterious Mr. America bumping into Ace Reporter Gregory Helms backstage and man, I did not recall Gregory ever doing this bit. They ask each other about their alter egos, shake hands and go on their merry way. Much less amicable is the meeting between Roddy Piper and Chris Jericho which, as is often the case with Piper, gets very tense. These two have been talking shit on each other for a couple weeks, but they’re both gigantic assholes, so they almost get along. As for this match… I don’t want to talk about Rowdy Roddy Piper vs. Mr. America on PPV in 2003. It speaks for itself. Do I need to say anything here?
SmackDown’s big angle is Mr. McMahon feuding with a masked Hulk Hogan and, as of last week, a handicapped kid, while 49-year old Roddy Piper wrestles on PPV with Sean O’Haire watching from ringside. I feel especially bad for Sean because at this point he’s pretty much lost anything that made his character interesting. He’s just a big athletic guy that never wrestles. You’d think pairing him up with Piper would’ve been a slam dunk, but this isn’t like having Harley Race manage Big Van Vader, Sean is Piper’s bodyguard and that’s it. He just stands there in his big black coat while Hot Rod bumbles around. Before the match, Mr. America formally introduces us to Mr. America’s Pal Zach Gowen, possibly the most 2003 SmackDown Wrestler in history.
Mr. America and Piper wrestle, and the only note I have is that Mr. America unmasks ON CAMERA for literally no reason. Wasn’t the entire point of this match to unmask Mr. America and prove he’s Hulk Hogan? What else does Vince need, his dental records? Piper and Mr. America whip each other with Mr. America’s lifting belt, which is somehow not a DQ. Though if I were to pull off my wrestling boot and hit someone with it, would that be a DQ? Is still it a foreign object if it’s something I’m wearing? Vince inevitably shows up to hand O’Haire a pipe but O’Haire is an idiot, so he accidentally smashes Piper with it and gives Hogan the win. Vince tries to break up the pin but Gowen stops him, which means Vince McMahon will now feud with the one-legged kid. Brace yourselves.
BOTCH: Treading Water
POP: I Love Announce Table Powerbombs
Following Backlash’s 6-man tag in which Triple H pinned Kevin Nash, Kevin Nash challenges Triple H for the world title. Just go with it. The story going in is that Triple H turned on the returning Kevin Nash when Kevin didn’t immediately join his side, so now they’re in a HEATED blood feud. The commentators and the promo package are working overtime to sell just how personal this rivalry has become, but the whole “THESE TWO CANNOT BE CONTAINED!” angle basically spells out the DQ finish from the get-go. Even though we’re in North Carolina tonight, Ric Flair does surprisingly little! He and HBK brawl to the back early on while Triple H bumps around in his little purple boots.
It’s not nearly as bad as the Scott Steiner matches from early ’03, but what we have here is a lot (a LOT) of punching and kicking and laying around. As explained, THESE TWO CANNOT BE CONTAINED, so referee Earl Hebner gets bounced around all over the place. He gets bumped, pushed, clotheslined, the whole shebang. Nash kicks out of a Pedigree, so HHH gets desperate and grabs his sledgehammer, leading to a DQ. Now, you may be thinking “isn’t this the exact same finish as HHH/Steiner from Royal Rumble?” No, it’s not! See, in that match, HHH hit Steiner with the sledgehammer and Earl called for the bell. Here, HHH cuts out the middleman and sledges Earl, so the timekeeper throws the match out. At least Triple H resisted the urge to blade.
Obviously, Nash attacks after the bell and leaves HHH laying. I love how Triple H’s feuds have become so formulaic that this is the second time he’s lost a title match on PPV via DQ and gotten laid out to set up a rematch the following month during the same fucking reign. They’ll wrestle inside Hell in a Cell at Bad Blood next month, but that show is Raw exclusive, which means we don’t have to watch it. I might watch it out of morbid curiosity, but my time’s not valuable. As for tonight, Big Kev beats Trips all the way down to the Raw announce table, takes out a returning Flair and even shoves HBK, and then he Powerbombs HHH through the table. And try as I might, I can’t resist giving this spot a pop. I’m sorry, it’s my nature.
SLIGHT POP: Spot, Spot, Spot, Spot
The Women’s title is back! Jazz defends in a 4-way against Trish Stratus, Victoria and Jacqueline, who shows up dressed like Jade from Mortal Kombat. Jacqueline is basically the late 2000s Shawn Michaels of the Women’s division, in that she’s constantly in the title picture and never ever wins the damn thing. We get a fairly entertaining 4-way in the vein of the WrestleMania triple threat, though the spots aren’t as good.
It’s all action start to finish, with everybody getting their stuff in until one wins. It’s fun. Nothing great, but fun. They do a dueling submission spot but it falls a little flat, the art of the double submission hadn’t been perfected yet. After Trish gets thrown face first on the outside, Jazz nails Jacquie with a sudden DDT to keep her belt. This will be the last Women’s title match we review on this column until Survivor Series, but hey, it could be worse! Could be the Cruiserweight belt!
POP: Heavy Machinery
At Backlash, Big Show killed Rey Mysterio. Brock Lesnar had a bone to pick with him over it. So here we are, Brock Lesnar vs. the Big Show for the WWE Championship… in a stretcher match. Scary. Fun fact, the last stretcher match before this one was actually Killer Khan vs. Andre the Giant in November 1981. WWE forgot the stretcher match existed for about 20 years, did a bunch of them throughout the 2000s and then never brought it back again. To win the match, one must place their opponent on the stretcher and wheel them up the ramp past a yellow line. So the question is: How the fuck does Brock Lesnar do that to the Big Show?
Brock and Show have wrestled twice, once at Survivor Series and once at Royal Rumble, and while neither match was great, the idea of them working a stretcher match is at the very least intriguing. Well, I’m here to tell you right now that whatever expectations you might have for this match, it surpasses them. This match rocks, man. It kicks so much ass. It’s 15 or so minutes of Brock and Show beating the living shit out of each other. They slam each other onto stretchers, hit each other WITH stretchers, and toss each other all over the goddamn place. It’s an absolute car crash of a main event, just a blast through and through. And it ALSO must’ve hurt like a motherfucker, so there’s that.
Brock is able to throw Show onto a stretcher, but he can’t keep Show ON the stretcher, so he heads to the back to find something useful. While Brock is gone, Rey-Rey shows up to get even with Show. Big Show deals with Rey in short order, and that’s when Brock heads back down to the ring riding a fucking forklift. Then he climbs on top of it and dives onto Show. Brock jumps back up after the dive like he just activated the Bane venom, hits a vertical suplex just because, lands the F5, rolls Show onto the forklift and drives him past the yellow line. It gets even funnier when you remember Big Show is afraid of heights. Brock Lesnar is still your WWE Champion. Jesus Christ. SmackDown might be good again, guys.
And that’s our show! Join us next time for SmackDown, featuring:
- Team Angle vs. Eddie & Tajiri
- John Cena vs. Spanky
- Chris Benoit vs. Matt Hardy
- Brock Lesnar vs. Johnny Stamboli
- …And Sean O’Haire vs. Mr. America. That should go swimmingly.
Make sure to leave a comment below (I’ll read ’em!), share the column around and join the Discord. SmackDown!
