The Myriad – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma | TV Rating: 4.4
The Good: Nothing, That’s right. NOTHING. At a push, Lance Storm sweeps the floors of WWE New York at least tries to make sense out of the Alliance being banished from WWE forever but it’s Lance Storm, who at the very least could be a very solid mid-card guy, who has to be treated as a joke isn’t it?
The Bad: Yes this is the show where William Regal, erm, inadvertently relieves himself on the Big Show… Trish and Stacy are in a Bra & Panties match over the Women’s Title…seems like we’ve already forgotten that there was a serious match over the then-vacant title at Survivor Series. Trish also PINS Stacy, which I’m sure isn’t in the rules of these things normally.
The Intercontinental Title match between Edge and Test is the third of tonight’s three-minute title match but has the added bonus of a lame DQ finish. William Regal and The Big Show goes one whole minute within which nothing of any note happens before Booker T run’s in which allows Regal to use the brass knuckles to get the win. The Alliance losing at SS really didn’t mean anything did it if Booker can just come back a week later anyway.
The whole “main event” segment revolves around Vince wanting Steve Austin to join the “Kiss my Ass” Club. It’s more than twice as long as any match we’ve seen tonight. And ends with a group of heels fighting to the back with Austin so that JR can be forced into the ring to kiss Vince’s ass (after all, check out where the show is tonight) and The Undertaker turns heel to force him. THIS is what they had in the bag post-Invasion?
The Indifferent: The opening promo where Vince and Ric go at it and we set up matches for the show isn’t awful. It’s just so much of a cliché by now that the fact it takes up so much time just makes it seem like filler. The European Title match between Christian and Jeff Hardy goes three minutes but is more about the ongoing tension between the Hardy’s anyway.
Similarly, the Hardcore title match between Rob Van Dam and D-Von Dudley goes three minutes and whilst it’s not bad (apart from RVD seemingly forgetting how to sell ANYTHING in this match) it’s three minutes and we all know RVD is retaining so all it does is fill TV time.
Rock’s in-ring promo is not one of his better efforts and his imitation of Vince isn’t that good either. The interruption we’re all waiting for from Chris Jericho doesn’t exactly save things either.
It should have been Chris Jericho & Kurt Angle against the Rock but Ric Flair adds Kane to the equation. Not Austin, who will be heading to Vengeance with the three men already in the match for the Unification Tournament. But as we’ve seen, Austin was needed for more important things. The match is ok at best and for those keeping score goes twice as long as any other match tonight…a whole seven minutes.
Overall: There have been some awful shows that I have sat through in my time but few have been as irredeemably poor as this one. There’s nothing that is worth watching at all. Some of it isn’t terrible, some of it certainly is. But this is just nothing of a show that is all over the place to no great effect. And there’s FAR too much Vince on here throughout the night too… Least Lance Storm was good.