World Wrestling Entertainment – Judgment Day 2004 – 16th May 2004
2004’s run of pay-per-views has, thus far, been surprisingly fun. An MOTYC on every show, some incredibly memorable moments, a killer WrestleMania and plenty of new blood ascending to freshen up what had become an exceptionally stale upper midcard/main event scene. After losing the likes of Brock Lesnar, Chris Benoit, Edge, Shelton Benjamin and more, Smackdown’s roster took an undeniable hit when it comes to ‘workrate’ talent. That’s not to say that their replacements – the likes of RVD, the Dudleyz and Booker T – weren’t decent names for the blue brand, but having had their identity as the ‘wrestling’ brand stripped away...at this point Smackdown were struggling to regain an even keel. That probably wasn’t helped by the fact that their most popular star, Eddie Guerrero, was having a notorious backstage wobble whilst carrying the WWE Championship…and they also had to find space on the roster for Undertaker to slide back in and crush every up and comer put in front of him. Just like in the ‘InVasion’ days, Booker T is the Deadman’s victim tonight. Freed from the tiresome APA gimmick and apparently hand-selected by Eddie to work a program, Bradshaw (now rebranded ‘John Bradshaw Layfield’) has a huge opportunity to shine in the main event as he challenges for the WWE Title. Truth be told the rest of the card looks utterly diabolical. Mordecai is booked, Rene Dupree has a high profile singles match, Jacqueline is Cruiserweight Champion, Torrie Wilson and Dawn Marie are STILL feuding and we get a grudge match between two of the most super-duper-memorable tag teams in wrestling history as Charlie Haas and Rico square off with Hardcore Holly and Billy Gunn. We don’t even have Kurt Angle to save us since he has more neck issues, so there is a LOT of pressure on the main events to deliver the goods here. No doubt Eddie Guerrero, not this sh*tty card, would get blamed for the buyrate. Michael Cole and Tazz are in Los Angeles, CA.
The Eddie Guerrero-centric ‘how are we judged when we die’ hype video is both touching and unsettling in equal measure.
Rob Van Dam/Rey Mysterio vs Dudley Boyz
This is the first time Van Dam and the Dudleyz have been on pay-per-view since they were drafted to Smackdown. As you can see by their positioning on this card, the brand switch hasn’t exactly made them any more prominent or given them anything more to do. Rey joins them as another perennially over talent who creative didn’t seem to have any long-term plans for. The Dudleyz were in the midst of another heel turn (I always prefer them as heels) and, at the very least, we’re guaranteed that all four of these guys will work hard to produce the best match possible in the circumstances.
‘I don’t like you anymore’ – Bubba Ray to Tazz. The vocal bigger Dudley brother manipulates both the referee and Van Dam into a position whereby the match can begin with D-Von cheap-shotting RVD. Neither Dudley counted on the potato-flinging strikes of Mr PPV though, and pretty soon he’s cleared the ring so he can hit a somersault plancha to Bubba. Mysterio joins the party with a top rope suicide dive to the floor too. Despite not being friends, Tazz compliments the strategy of Team 3-D as they walk away, kill all the momentum of the babyface team and force them back into a wrestling match rather than a spot-fest. Their experience as a team soon shows as Bubba low-bridges Rob then splatters him into an announce table. It is fun watching Bubba and Van Dam wrestle since there are times when it’s visible that neither man is pulling their punches or strikes one bit. Rey gets a hot tag and quickens the pace momentarily but like his partner before him falls victim to the tag team fluidity of his opponents. D-Von stops him hitting the 619, then Bubba counters the West Coast Pop with an alley-oop into the top rope. The Dudleyz isolate Mysterio just as they had been doing to RVD moments earlier. From nowhere Rey hits a super-fast springboard wheelbarrow bulldog (before injuries finally finished off his career he was just insanely athletic), but more crafty tag team deviousness from the Dudleyz means Nick Patrick doesn’t see the subsequent tag. Mysterio battles back again, this time from a tree of woe position, and somehow drops Bubba Ray with a TREE OF WOE ACE CRUSHER! MOONSAULT PRESS! Van Dam gets the hot tag, landing the Rolling Thunder on D-Von for 2. On the other side of the ring Bubba Ray is back dropping Mysterio over the top rope, right down onto his sh*tty knees. Rey rises to stop them hitting the Wassup Headbutt, then sprints across the ring into the POP-UP LEAPFROG FRANKENSTEINER double team on D-Von! Bubba dives in to break the count at 2. RVD breaks up a 3-D attempt, leaving both Dudleyz in position for a double 619! FIVE STAR FROG SPLASH! Van Dam and Mysterio win at 15:15
Rating - *** - A corking little tag match to start the show. All four guys seemed to be using their apparent misuse by the company as motivation, and they all worked damn hard to fit in as much as possible into the fifteen minutes they’d been allotted. Bubba Ray is an outstanding pro-wrestling villiain, although he never really got to show that as effectively in WWE as he had in ECW (or as he would go on to do in TNA). He was the general here, holding all the classic western formula spots together and working the crowd into a frenzy with his classical pantomime bad guy routine. It was an easy script to write – with the bruising, brawling, experienced Dudley Boyz dividing and conquering their smaller, more athletic opponents. The beauty was in the execution and everyone played their part to a tee here. There was also the added bonus of some serious physicality whenever RVD and Bubba were in the ring together. On a show which doesn’t get a lot of love this felt like a real hidden gem.
Josh Matthews enters Booker T’s locker room looking for a scoop. Book is being haunted by Undertaker’s supernatural antics, but still claims to be the biggest star on Smackdown – and now has a mysterious ‘pouch’ to give him the power when he meets the Deadman later.
Smackdown GM Kurt Angle has his own plinth – which has to be pushed down the aisle by his manservant Luther Reigns. He is out injured (I think the knee injury was a cover for more neck surgery) but makes an appearance anyway to run down Los Angeles and Eddie Guerrero. He then decides to level blame for his accident at the doorstep of Torrie Wilson then summons her to ringside. She is informed that she has to win her match tonight or she will be fired…
SIDENOTE - Under most circumstances one would call this a waste of pay-per-view time but I’d probably prefer to watch Kurt Angle make inappropriate jokes at LA’s expense than see the likes of Mordecai, Hardcore Holly, Rico, Jacqueline and Rene Dupree get more time in the ring.
Torrie Wilson vs Dawn Marie
These women haven’t liked each other for endless months, largely because Dawn humped Torrie’s father into an early grave. That ridiculous and flimsy pretence of a storyline rears its ugly head again here, with the added drama of Torrie’s career being on the line.
Dawn’s trousers are so minimal she’s one torn strip of lyrca away from her entire vagina hanging out. Torrie quickly exhausts all her usual spots, then lands flat on her face as she attempts a crossbody from the top. At least she has spots though, all Dawn has is hair pulling, choking and high pitched screeches. You don’t come out of ECW without some guts though, and even if she can’t wrestle all that well, she’s still up for a fight. She hits a baseball slide dropkick, then a leg drop on the floor – both of which look like they hurt her far more than they do to Torrie, so you can’t help but admire her toughness. Remember that torn strop of lycra – it’s happened! Poor Dawn’s entire ass is hanging out now, but she still gamely gets a nearfall with an X-Factor. Since she only has the tiniest of thongs on we are in real danger of her lady parts actually being displayed in front of a packed Staples Center, so wisely the call is made to go home. Torrie wins, and keeps her job, with a backslide at 06:14
Rating - DUD - As usual, you really can’t fault these divas when it comes to work ethic and being seriously tough, game competitors. They may not have much talent, or anywhere near enough formal training, to carry a match on a wrestling pay-per-view but one still has to credit them for the obvious effort they put forth. Unfortunately that, and the unexpected sight of Dawn Marie’s backside, doesn’t make up for having to sit through this match. It was terrible, just as everything else they’ve done together has been. They should never have been put in this position.
JBL bizarrely looked older in 2004 than he does on TV now. His promo is supposed to be comically racist (and it is), but in reality also walks that fine line into what most conservatives/Republicans probably think in private anyway. Whether you sympathise or detest him because of it, that was the inherent intelligence of this character. He may not necessarily have deserved a main event spot, but it really is undeniable that the JBL character turned heads, created controversy and had enough real-world relevance to make him a valuable commodity on the Smackdown roster. In a time where we’d soon have Snitsky, Eugene, Heidenreich, Mordecai, Reigns, Tomko and more running around, the reinvention of Bradshaw was surprisingly cutting edge and thoughtful…if you could look beyond the cheap cracks at Mexicans.
Scotty 2 Hotty vs Mordecai
Speaking of Mordecai – here he is in all his sh*tty Undertaker/Gandalf hybrid glory. I seem to recall this being his in-ring debut, if not his actual first live televised appearance. Vignettes had been playing for several weeks, and the idea was that he was some weird, pseudo-religions nut planning to rid the world of sinners…or something along those lines. It didn’t matter because he sucked so much that the whole angle was dropped within months and Kevin Fertig would go back to developmental. Poor Scotty is the sucker staring at the lights for him tonight.
Mordecai has cool entrance pyro if nothing else. He looks like he should be on a Scandinavian cruise ship waiting to serve you drinks though. The debutant does a number on Scotty’s shoulder, although it largely goes nowhere…then he wins with the Crucifix (Razor’s Edge) at 03:00
Rating - N/A - I’m not going to pretend this was a good match, I’m not going to proclaim that Mordecai/Kevin Thorn/Kevin Fertig is a great wrestler and I’m definitely not going to call the Mordecai gimmick a good idea. However, as far as debuts go this was pretty inoffensive. Scotty got minimal offence in and the newcomer got to dominate. Mordecai did look nervous and somewhat uncertain but that is to be expected of a young talent making his debut on the main roster. The issue was he’d already been in developmental for some time working that sh*t out, and he didn’t get any better in the coming weeks. WWE’s developmental and talent recruitment were the sh*ts at this point, and the likes of Mordecai were the awful results of a system that had gone badly wrong.
Chavo Guerrero conducts a promo in front of his father, who has his pants around his ankles. Jacqueline busts in and gives him some lingerie to wear to the ring…which Chavo Classic then hilariously admires in the background. This skit was, in all likelihood, far more entertaining than their match will end up…
Charlie Haas/Rico vs Billy Gunn/Hardcore Holly – WWE Tag Title Match
Yes, this actually is the Smackdown tag division at this point. Haas wasn’t deemed as marketable as Shelton, so he got held back on the ‘lesser brand’ whilst Benjamin went to Raw for a push. Considered a solid in-ring talent, Charlie’s main role appeared to be having to make all of the talentless, muscled up lugs on Smackdown’s undercard seem remotely credible. However, amidst that he did form a pseudo-entertaining double act with Rico and ‘Miss Jackie’ (who would go on to become his wife) which was, at the very least, fresher than Rikishi and Scotty plodding along with the belts. Billy and Bob presumably bonded over the millions of failed attempts at a push they’ve both racked up over the years – and to gloat at the job security they enjoyed whilst considerably more talented wrestlers were getting cut and/or barely on television at all.
Neither of the challengers want to start in the ring with Rico since he likes to grab ass. You’d think Billy would be used to Rico’s antics given how long he spent under his stylistic consultancy. Although that would give some backstory to this pointless filler, so of course that history isn’t mentioned at all. Watching Haas make Hardcore Bob his bitch on the mat is perhaps the best thing on the entire show so far. Sadly it’s Rico’s ‘camp as Christmas’ antics which entertain the crowd far more. He tries to finger Gunn (yes, really), then pelvic thrusts into his face – with Holly so unwilling to tag he actually watches from the floor rather than the apron. Sparky Bob eventually does tag in, getting the better of Haas by engaging him in a slugfest rather than trying to wrestle. They also play up the ‘tag team specialist’ Billy Gunn as he helps Holly out with a couple of double teams to keep the significantly less experienced competitor on the mat. A rather harsh front row fan holds up a sign which simply reads ‘DUD’. I’m enjoying this one far more than him it seems. Hardcore Bob misses a Hardcore Sack Of Sh*t jump off the top rope and eats Haas’ boot on the way down. Hot tag to Rico…but since he doesn’t have any signature spots that are over his comeback sequence is brief before Billy plants him with the Fame Asser. NECK DROP GERMAN SUPLEX from Haas to Gunn! Holly tries to give him the deadly Alabamaslam, but eats a superkick from Rico and is pinned at 10:26
Rating - ** - I expected absolutely nothing from this, and actually found it rather entertaining filler fun. Charlie Haas (the only real talent in the match) looked great, Rico entertained people with his camp antics, Holly and Gunn actually worked hard to put the other guys over – and the whole thing was worked in an extremely logical fashion. I loved Haas making mincemeat of Hardcore Holly on the mat, until Holly was able to get him brawling (i.e. Bob’s strongest asset). They played up the experience of the challengers, particularly multi-time Tag Champion Mr Ass, and it ended with the most talented man in the match getting the rub. Should this have been on a pay-per-view – absolutely not. If you’d have paid money for this at the time I imagine sitting through this was a bit of a chore. But eleven years later, watching as part of your WWE Network subscription, this isn’t half bad.
Undertaker and Paul Bearer are hanging out next to a smoke machine. They keep it short and sweet, with their sights set on Booker T
Jacqueline vs Chavo Guerrero – WWE Cruiserweight Title Match
WWE had some seriously incredible cruiserweights on their payroll at this point, so it really is inexcusable that this is the best they could come up with. Chavo had been really decent in the ring all year, and his double act with his dad added the much-needed comedic dimension to his character that you felt he might lose once he parted with Eddie. With all due respect to Jackie, you do feel for Chavo getting saddled with this bogus storyline. Names like Noble, London, Yang, Nunzio, Kidman and Ultimo Dragon were all employed at this point – the creative team of the time should hang their heads in shame that they couldn’t come up with something better for the cruiserweight division than this. Chavo is competing with a hand tied behind his back, because fans want to see that instead of old fashioned sh*t like wrasslin’
You can’t even make the argument that this is over with live crowds (like Rico). You can see huge lines of people heading to the concession stands, and it’s only the incessant rambling of Michael Cole which masks the near total silence these two are being met with. Jacqueline hits a headscissors which sends Guerrero’s free arm into the ringpost, which would have been a pretty neat strategy. Sadly that’s not where they go with it and instead we get Jackie swinging away with her flimsy strikes. Taking advantage of some Chavo Classic interference, she connects with a low blow…but doesn’t see her challenger free his arm from its binding. ‘This is a crime’ – Michael Cole, presumably referring to the match rather than WWE charging fans to put this on pay-per-view. Chavo sneakily beats Jackie up with both arms behind the ref’s back, then wins his title back at 04:47 with a Gory Bomb
Rating - DUD - Jacqueline was a hard working performer in an era where athleticism and toughness was secondary to looks and getting your tits out. That’s probably why you remember the likes of Sable, The Kat, Terri Runnels, Torrie Wilson and so forth much better than you can recall anything she did. So for that it is hard to begrudge her a pay-per-view payday. But this sucked, and there can be no justification for putting this on a ppv. Now we have single-brand ppvs the Smackdown roster had the best part of two post-WrestleMania months to build to this event…so the fact that the writers could come up with nothing better than this is truly sad. Even sadder than Jackie’s WWE career being less memorable than Stacy Carter - who’s achievements amounted to flashing at Armageddon 1999, a shrinkwrap bikini at Royal Rumble 2000 and getting diddled by Jerry Lawler…
John Cena vs Rene Dupree – WWE United States Title Match
Initially WWE managed Cena’s babyface turn rather well. They didn’t change his character much at all, they just had him wearing home team jerseys on the road instead of the local rivals' and started booking him against heels. At first it was cool – there was an edgy, battle-rapping, penis joke cracking, cutting edge new superstar who young adult fans could support. But around this time they started losing the plot with him. The idea of pitting him against Dupree was, on paper, not the worst. Cena was over, he represented a new generation of WWE superstar and it made sense to match him up against a young talent who had decent traction as a heel and was genuinely viewed as a real prospect. Even if the presentation of Dupree was barely more than cartoonish, outdated stereotyping it was easy to see the upside in two solid young talents locking horns over a midcard title. Unfortunately they did it by chucking Torrie Wilson into the mix, and having Cena act like a good guy from the 80’s and rescuing a damsel in distress. It was so tired and played out you could almost see Cena’s credibility draining week by week. Can he salvage things by elevating the unproven challenger to a strong match?
Cena starts hot, as you might expect, although his stock right hands needed plenty of work at this stage in his career. You can see daylight between his fist and Dupree’s head! Cactus clothesline spot is fudged next but to their credit this does feel like a fiery brawl. Rene starts working on Cena’s neck, and that’s fair enough considering most of his signature moves impact that body part. Cena takes a hell of a bump on the floor after missing a dive to further exacerbate things. The focus of the challenger shifts to the back and, whilst logical, it loses the crowd because he works a bearhug for two uninterrupted minutes. Five Knuckle Shuffle misses allowing Dupree to hit a spinebuster. Rene then misses the French Tickler and has to settle for delivering a straight DDT. F-U countered to a neckbreaker for 2! Cena is now so injured he has to resort to flash pins…and in his rush to escape those Rene accidentally propels himself straight into an F-U. The champ retains at 09:56
Rating - ** - Not for the first time tonight, had this taken place on a free-to-air episode of Smackdown rather than a pay-per-view it would actually have been perfectly decent. Both guys worked extremely hard to milk the absolute maximum from their limited skillset. Dupree was still incredibly green, and Cena was nowhere near good enough to elevate inferior talent yet. As a result this did feel half baked – however, you can’t deny it had some positive aspects to it. The brawling felt intense, ferocious and looked like two guys fighting, rather than two guys playing make believe. Dupree working the back and neck was a logical backbone of the match and paid off nicely when he used the injury to counter the F-U. It just lacked any sort of spark to make what was a perfectly decent match resonate in any real way with the fanbase.
A video plays hyping Kenzo Suzuki’s pending debut. Seriously, who the hell was recruiting talent at this point? That guy was another swing and another miss…
Undertaker vs Booker T
I liked that Booker came to Smackdown, got a bit of a push and was treated like more of a viable main event talent again. However, in their infinite wisdom the writers chose to push him by devaluing the ENTIRE SMACKDOWN BRAND (you know, the one they’d like you to spend the best part of $40 on by buying this ppv) – and basically had Booker admit on camera that on Raw he was just another guy, so had come to Smackdown to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. If that wasn’t bad enough, his first assignment is to get all his momentum instantly crushed by Undertaker (you know, just like they did before back in 2001 when Booker was one of the few non-WWE guys getting over in the Invasion angle). Taker returned to his Deadman persona at WrestleMania and was still part of the Smackdown roster, albeit at this point this was still hyped as a ‘special appearance’ and he wasn’t necessarily back to being full-time quite yet. If the inevitably of getting squashed like a bug by Taker wasn’t enough for Booker, they also had him embark on this bizarre storyline where he visited witchdoctors and wound up running around with a bag of dirt he’d dug up from a grave – believing it would give him the power to overcome the Phenom’s supernatural methods.
Taker’s entrance, with two huge walls of fire alongside him, is possibly even better than WrestleMania 20. He is probably in the best shape of his career too. Booker tries to be aggressive from the outset, but gets punched in the face and retreats to the floor rubbing his bag of dirt all over him. The mud doesn’t appear to have any impact though, with Undertaker continuing to no-sell anything Booker throws at him so he can plod through his usual spots. Taker takes a rare bump off the Heat Seeker but is soon back up swinging ‘soup bones’. Old School nailed, followed by a flatliner…then more ‘new sh*t’ from him as he goes to his MMA fandom box of tricks with a grounded chickenwing. Book blocks the Last Ride and tosses his bag of dirt into Taker’s eyes like powder. Undertaker won’t even sell for grave dirt it seems! Distraught at the apparent ineffectiveness of his secret weapon, Booker goes to the same tactic that every opponent who ever wrestles the Undertaker uses – he works the leg. And he actually does a decent job of it, violently roughing the limb against the apron and the steps. Naturally therefore, the first thing he does as soon as he gets back into the ring is ignore it and start working a front facelock instead. This is a terrible match. Ghetto Blaster gets 2…before Paul Bearer rubs his urn (not a penis euphemism) and the Phenom sits up. BOTCHED Chokeslam! Booker gets a Tombstone, and gets sent packing back to the midcard at 11:26
Rating - * - People remember the Undertaker for some genuine all-time classics on the biggest stage of them all – WrestleMania. They remember a wonderful career filled with theatrical stage effects and talented opponents who helped him craft some great matches along the way. What they don’t tend to remember is that, more often than not, his matches straight up f*cking sucked. As per usual he trotted through his usual played out routine here, whilst making Booker look like a total jabroni. It’s not that I don’t respect the man for his Streak, for his commitment to the business and for the sheer longevity of his career, but watching these last four years of WWF/E pay-per-views I can tell you that the crap matches like this outnumber the good ones with a marked ratio and I’m a little fed up of having to sit through them.
Eddie Guerrero vs John Bradshaw Layfield – WWE Title Match
As I said earlier, as much as I’ve never been a big fan of Bradshaw as a worker or an announcer (or as a political commentator for that matter) his reinvention as JBL reinvigorated not only his own career but the entire dynamic of Smackdown’s main event picture. Whether you felt his portfolio of work and existing skill-set merited a main event slot or not, he was a serious heat magnet. He worked a character which had a demented logic, was extremely well booked and he was a great foil for the almost-universally popular Eddie Guerrero. This match happens within a fortnight of an angle they’d shot at a house show in Texas where Layfield grabbed Eddie’s mother, causing her to have a (kayfabe) heart attack. It means that Guerrero isn’t a happy camper and comes in swearing bloody vengeance on his challenger.
Bradshaw grabs a mic and offers Eddie’s mother a job as his housekeeper. Again, the content of the promo is extremely vulgar but it draws nuclear heat. It fires Guerrero up so much that pretty soon Layfield is trying to crawl into the crowd to escape his wrath. He gets set into the announce tables next, with cables wrapped around his neck to throttle him along the way. We are nearly four minutes into the match before JBL mounts any kind of offence – aggressively flinging the champion into the ring steps. There hasn’t been a wrestling move yet in fact as the two instead just beat the snot out of each other in a straightforward fight. Bradshaw starts trying to use his size to his advantage by taking Eddie to the mat and getting all of his body weight on his throat with a side headlock. Guerrero in turn looks to quicken the pace, looking for a pescado only for JBL to COUNTER into a fallaway slam on the floor! BACK BODY DROP INTO THE SPANISH ANNOUNCE TABLE! It didn’t break, causing Eddie’s body to ricochet off it right into the guardrails as well. The extent of the challenger’s dominance is emphatically demonstrated as Guerrero looks to roll another back drop attempt inside the ring, but instead is roughly dumped flat onto his stomach instead. His entire body is aching now, and he finds the sizeable arms and body of JBL wrapped around him again moments later with a bearhug. A third back drop attempt is countered with a mid-air dropkick…and somehow Eddie latches onto him to set up for the Three Amigos! Bradshaw blocks the third…Clothesline From Hell ducked…JBL Bomb blocked! Referee Brian Hebner gets clocked next, so expect things to get lawless. Tazz and Cole are taken off the air as Eddie throws Layfield straight at them…so Bradshaw gets up and F*CKING HAMMERS EDDIE WITH A STEEL CHAIR! EDDIE IS BLEEDING EVERYWHERE! His entire upper body is covered in the red stuff, to the extent that his hands and arms can’t even grip the guardrails to hold himself up. Layfield makes it worse by crunching the steel steps into his bloody forehead too. CLOTHESLINE FROM HELL! Luckily for Guerrero, the referee is still unconscious! By the time a replacement official makes it to the ring Eddie has recovered enough to kick out, despite the sizeable pool of blood that has formed next to his skull. Even JBL is covered in Eddie’s blood now, and he lunges into Charles Robinson (the new referee) as he misses with another Clothesline From Hell. JBL Bomb instead…gets 2! Eddie is bleeding to an alarming degree now. You can’t even see his face anymore but somehow he counters a sleeper hold attempt with a back suplex. HE’S DOING THE EDDIE SHIMMY! How can he even stand? FALLAWAY SLAM COUNTERED TO A TORNADO DDT! FROG SPLASH MISSES! Bradshaw grabs another chair as a distraction so he can sneak the WWE Title belt into the ring…but Guerrero snatches it up first. BELT SHOT TO JBL’S FACE! Guerrero is disqualified at 23:12, bringing a rather unsatisfactory end to an astonishing brawl.
Rating - **** - JBL has Eddie Guerrero to thank for turning his career around. With this one feud (which Eddie reportedly asked for) Bradshaw went from perennial midcard also-ran to a bonafide top line heel. Much of his character was tasteless and edgy, and at times they possibly did push the envelope too far. But he was such a natural foil for Guerrero, and the super-talented WWE Champion went above and beyond to elevate him. Most people remember this for the incredible amount of blood Eddie lost – and that is fair enough because it is one of the more disgustingly bloody matches in WWE history. What tends to be forgotten is that this was actually a seriously decent match even before the bloodletting began. The feud had been intensely personal, and it was mirrored with an engaging brawl to begin the match. We weren’t watching Undertaker and Booker trudge around at half speed going through the motions. Here we had two extremely motivated, fired up talents busting their asses and intent on stealing the show. The difference between the sheer tediousness of Undertaker crushing another rising star to the unrelenting ferocity of this one couldn’t have been more pronounced. Bradshaw used his size to bully the champion, but just as he did with Brock Lesnar, Eddie was able to use his speed, resourcefulness and a little bit of rule-breaking to hang in there. As I said during my introduction – as a man and as a worker I’m not a big fan of JBL. But in a painfully poor era for the WWE his new character was a breath of fresh air. The quality of this match ensured he’d spend the rest of his in-ring career in and around the main event
With blood still spurting from the wound in his head Eddie mounts Layfield and continues to pound on him…before giving him a few more shots with the belt for good measure. JBL blades too, then gets whacked with a chair…giving us a bloody, horror movie-esque conclusion to the ppv.
Tape Rating - * - Smackdown had almost two post-WrestleMania months to plan for this pay-per-view, so to fill the majority of it with filler and gimmicky crap is totally inexcusable. The stuff with Jackie and Chavo, Undertaker killing Booker T, the throwaway WWE Tag Title Match, Dupree and Cena, Mordecai’s debut, Dawn and Torrie…this show felt like having to pay money to watch a pretty poor episode of Smackdown. Only the first match and the main event were anywhere near the level one should expect of a wrestling show that you’ve had to fork out more than $30 for. The headline bout featured a star-making turn for JBL and a quite incredible display of courage from Eddie Guerrero (he was still feeling the adverse effects of this match several weeks later)…but unfortunately the total lack of direction of the rest of the event completely lets them down. As a WWE Network viewer, you’re missing absolutely nothing if you skip straight to the main event. Personally I found this show a real slog to get through. I ended up reviewing it across five or six sittings over the space of more than ten days such was the difficulty I found in motivating myself to actually watch it
Top 3 Matches
3) Charlie Haas/Rico vs Billy Gunn/Hardcore Holly (**)
2) Rob Van Dam/Rey Mysterio vs Dudley Boyz (***)
1) Eddie Guerrero vs John Bradshaw Layfield (****)