Firstar Center – Cincinnati, Ohio | TV Rating: 3.9
The Good
It’s a Kurt Angle heel promo that isn’t exactly mind-blowingly original but it kind of works in retrospect now, twenty years on, we know what comes next. It’s still a missed opportunity. Still, as I say, if you treat it as “Angle telling the Alliance what they want to hear, nudge nudge wink wink” it serves a purpose.
Kurt’s match with Kane is one of the best straight-up singles matches I’ve ever seen involving the Big Red Machine. This could be argued as damning with faint praise but it is actually an excellent match. And as Kurt Angle is WWE through and through in the literal (not storyline) sense he’s allowed a clean win too!
The Bad
Ok so we know it didn’t happen, but Vince calling The Rock selfish to then book himself in the Survivor Series main event just because Shane is on the opposite side must have been a rib. Right?
Seems a shame given that it lasts 90 seconds, but it does last 90 seconds and other than Regal turning his back on the WWE there’s been no real set-up for his match with Tajiri beyond a skit earlier in the night. What is wrong with making people wait for a match that they might be interested in?
The Indifferent
Under normal circumstances, over recent weeks The Rock & Chris Jericho against Booker T & Test match would probably scrape into the Good section by default. But we’ve seen the match before (i.e. earlier this week) and there’s no real reason for it to happen beyond that fact making it obvious that we’re going to see Rock and Jericho fall out again. And they do. Although perhaps the tag team titles switching hands could be seen as a mild surprise.
Adding Lita and Stacy Keibler to the mix doesn’t change the fact that as legendary as their wars maybe there can be too much of a good thing and at this stage, I am utterly bored by the Hardy’s and the Dudley’s facing off YET AGAIN.
Speaking of “we’ve seen this before” RVD and Edge have their second TV match of the week, this time over the Hardcore Title. RVD wins (but needs Test’s interference to do so) so it’s 50-50 booking that does neither man any favours whatsoever.
It’s a fine TV main event between Steve Austin and The Undertaker but hardly their best work. It does however roll us along the road to Survivor Series.
Overall
It may not seem it from the above but this is certainly a “better than average” TV show from the time. It has one very good match, some decent backup and it’s only really booking wise that I have problems with the matches in the sense that there’s a lot that we’ve seen before and what we haven’t gone so short. Still, just for the Angle/Kane match alone this deserves a watch.