WRESTLEMANIA 2000
Or WrestleMania XVI as it should be known! Or 16. Whatever. The hook here is that unless you are counting the “Cat Fight” between Terri & The Kat there are no singles matches on this show. And the main event totally revolves around The McMahons.
Things start with The Godfather & D’Lo Brown (accompanied by Ice-T rapping their entrance) battling the Big Boss Man & Bull Buchanan which is far from great but serves its purpose in terms of an opener, largely because The Godfather is over. His team loses though. This is followed by a Hardcore Title Battle Royale, where the lower-mid card converges in a fifteen-minute match and whoever is champion when the time is up leaves as Champion. It’s nonsense of course, but as a slice of the Hardcore division in the era it sums it up pretty well. Nonsense, but fun. With an apparently botched finish (the story goes that Crash Holly was to retain the title but Hardcore Holly made his last pin too quickly and it was counted before time ran out).
When Jim Ross rolls out his “bowling shoe” line on a WrestleMania you know things are bad and Al Snow & Steve Blackman (aka Head Cheese) against Test & Albert is bad. T&A win but the last visual is Head Cheese beating up their mascot Chester McCheeserton. Luckily the Tag Team Championship Triangle Ladder Match is next. Perhaps the TLC matches that would follow are more “famous” but this first clash between Edge & Christian, The Dudley’s and The Hardy’s is just as good as those that follow. It was mind-blowing stuff at the time and it stands up to this day.
Terri Runnels versus The Kat may well be the worst Mania match of all time so we’ll move on to The Radicalz trio of Eddie Guerrero, Saturn and Dean Malenko taking on Too Cool & Chyna. It’s really all about the Eddie/Chyna rivalry and it’s fun enough to watch and Chyna winning meets the approval of fans, Of course, this is Attitude Era WWE so this is all rendered pointless when the two form an alliance the next night on Raw. But there you go.
The Intercontinental and European Titles are on the line in a Two Fall Triple Threat Match between Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle (our Olympic hero comes in holding both titles). With those three in there it can’t fail to be good, but perhaps falls a little short of being great. Benoit pins Jericho to get the first fall and win the IC title, Jericho returns the favour by pinning Benoit to get the second fall to lift the European Title. Predictable in hindsight that Angle would lose both titles without being pinned but it’s still a good match.
Despite a storyline involving Tori (she was Kane’s girlfriend but dumped him to align with DX) it seems that the only reason Kane & Rikishi versus X-Pac & Road Dogg was on the card was so that Kane could beat up Pete Rose, again, on the show. Indeed, that post-match angle lasts longer than the match.
All we’re left with is the “McMahon in Every Corner” main event which I think is also for the World Title. Champion HHH has Steph, The Rock has Vince, The Big Show has Shane and Mick “I had to renege on my retirement stipulation within weeks because I thought Vince would withhold money due and I wouldn’t be able to put Dewey through college” Foley has Linda. In a way, the match had been set up logically (even if Linda just put Mick in because she wanted to) and the action for the most part is very good indeed. The problem comes at the end when The McMahon soap opera takes full control. Vince turns on the Rock, HHH retains, ho-hum. Look, a heel was going to end Mania as champion eventually, but cutting off The Rock here seemed counterproductive then and seems counterproductive now.
WM 2000 is a show that has one of the best matches in Mania history and one of the worst. In between, it has some good moments and some distinctly average ones. Too much of the undercard is, frankly, inconsequential but the Triangle Ladder match and the sheer star power (even if it descends into overkill) of the main event carries the day.