wrestling / Columns
Against The Grain 01.31.09: WCW Souled Out 2000
Welcome everyone to Against The Grain, my (bi-weekly) take on some of the most unconventional and not-often talked about subjects in the wrestling world. The 2000 edition of WCW Souled Out is one of the weirdest and messed-up PPVs I have ever witnessed in my life for a number of reasons. First of all, no wrestling fan that I normally talk to even remember what PPV I am referring to because a good number of people stopped watching the brand at this point. Second of all, the very odd and significant amount of injuries suffered by key wrestlers before the PPV truly showed the definition of the phase “THIS CARD IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE”. And thirdly, the events that had happened before, during, and after this particular PPV were the starting point of some significant events to happen to the company that some could say that attributed to its eventual demise a year later. So for those who had the unfortunate pleasure of watching this, have fun in this trip down memory lane, and for those who haven’t…you’re in a weird ride.
Before I get into describing this odd travesty of a PPV, I would first like to explain why the hell I would want to order this event in the first place. Firstly, I was working at my local McDonald’s as a restaurant food coordinator (also known as a burger flipper) back in the old days of high school and I had received my annual raise in December 1999. With a long-worked pay week combined with my pay bump, I received a nice big paycheck right after the holidays and had decided to treat myself by spending it on doing the unthinkable act back then (due to my limited budget) of ordering all 3 major wrestling brand PPVs in the same month.
So I had lined up for January 2000: WWE Royal Rumble, ECW Guilty As Charged, and WCW Souled Out. The first mentioned was the almighty and very infamous 2000 edition of the popular Rumble card. With moments like the legendary HHH vs. Cactus Jack bout, the Hardys and Dudley Boyz tearing it up in a great Tables match, and of course the Royal Rumble itself, this PPV was definitely a no-brainer to buy. With ECW Guilty As Charged, it was a little bit of a mixed bag. I didn’t really know what matches were going to be on the card (you know…the norm procedure for ECW PPVs) and had missed a few episodes of ECW Hardcore TV because of my increase in hours as a burger flipper. But luckily the undercard was pretty good and the two match-ups of former friends-now bitter rivals in RVD vs. Sabu paired with the sick and brutal “David versus Goliath” Mike Awesome/Little Spike Dudley main event totally made the $30 spent well worth it. Now with WCW’s Souled Out…it was a totally different story.
I hadn’t ordered a WCW PPV in about a year due to the company’s known “hit and miss” record with their match-ups. But strangely in late 99′, I started to watch and become horribly interested in the “Vince Russo Era” of WCW. I won’t get into my full-blown opinions about this highly talked about time in pro wrestling history (another day, another time IWC), but I saw that the company was having some pretty great highlighted match-ups involving the likes of Bret Hart, Chris Benoit, Sting, and Jeff Jarrett (good wrestlers, but before this not being booked properly). So on top of this potential for a good PPV, WCW dropped a random bombshell in the form of creating a “new” 2000 version of the one-time mega popular New World Order (nWo). Not every wrestling fan remembers this specific edition of the group (I’ll get to the specific reasons in a little bit), but this version of the faction was more like what I called the “cool bits” of the past incarnations (i.e. not having 20+ no name wrestlers in the group). You had the original members Kevin Nash and Scott Hall (The Outsiders), the then WCW Champion Bret “The Hitman” Hart, Scott Steiner, and the great, but sort of random, inclusion of the horribly over at the time, dubbed “Chosen One” Jeff Jarrett. One may automatically talk crap and assume that this group was doomed from the get-go, but at its debut, it really was a nice breathe of fresh (although recycled) air into the “all over the place” type of booking WCW was incorporating.
The main build-up for the Souled Out card came into the form of Sid Vicious (yea…the former Psycho) attempting to challenge Bret Hard for the WCW Title [not too bad], Kevin Nash taking on then Commissioner Terry Funk (yea…Funk as Commissioner…random) in a No Holds Barred bout for Funk’s position as leader on the line [different, but potential to be good], and the one match that made me want to automatically give up the $30 without any question: a “Triple Threat Theater” match-up, which was supposed to be a gauntlet of specialty bouts (a Bunkhouse match [no DQ], a Dungeon Rules match [no ring ropes used] and a Caged Heat match [bootleg Hell In A Cell]) where arch-rivals Chris Benoit and Jeff Jarrett (who tore up the house the month before at Starrcade in an impromptu ladder match) were going to battle it out three times in one night over the U.S. Title. Along with these three bouts, a standard undercard, and other stars who I assumed were going to be present at the PPV (Goldberg, Rey Mysterio, DDP), I had confidence that my precious earned $30 from slaving at the McDonald’s fry cooker would be put to good use. Oh…how I was wrong…horribly wrong. In the moments before, during, and after the PPV, a series of random occurrences happened and it had significantly altered the card for the PPV. Where do I begin…
First of all, a couple of weeks before the PPV, they had a backstage skit where Goldberg was attempting to get revenge on the nWo 2000 (for costing him the WCW Title) by chasing the members to a limo and then having him smash the limo windows with his hands and elbows (you know…to make him look tougher). So while this looked kind of cool, Goldberg got a little bit too wild on the pounding and the shards from the glass severely cut into his forearm and thus placed him out of commission with a serious injury. Great…no Goldberg. Then in an ironic twist, Goldberg’s rival at the time, Bret Hart, was found to have a serious concussion that he infamously suffered in his match against Berg a month before at the Starrcade PPV, so he couldn’t compete at Souled Out as well and sadly enough was forced to retire right after this due to its permanent damage. Damn…no Hart either. To top it all off, Jeff Jarrett was involved in a weird match-up the Monday Nitro before the PPV where he had to face three wrestling legends in one night (i.e. in preparation for the TRIPLE Threat Theater), but in the process had also suffered a pretty bad concussion (not as nearly as bad as Hart’s) due to a flying headbutt Benoit gave him from the top of a steel cage. So Jarrett was out too…wow. Despite having low confidence that the PPV was going to go over well, I still was sticking to my guns and wanted to achieve my rare goal of ordering all three PPVs in one month.
What sadly followed instead was one of the worst undercards I’ve ever seen. You had matches such as the cruiserweight belt being exchanged in a horrible bout between women’s wrestler Madusa (good wrestler, should have never won the belt) and Jim Ross impersonator “Oklahoma”, a 2 minute “real boxing match”, i.e. WWE’s Brawl For All, between Tank Abbott (who?) and Jerry Flynn (double who?), and the talented and then underused Booker T getting the crap beat out of him by a seriously overweight Ahmed Johnson (then known as the stupid “Big T”…get it). Besides this and the other crap that was featured (minus the surprisingly good Buff Bagwell/DDP match…sad that this was the best one of the bunch), my hopeful main events were also all squashed and/or ruined in some type of way: Nash vs. Funk was lame due to the one-sidedness of Nash just killing Funk…not in a good way; the Triple Threat Theater spot with Benoit and Jarrett was instead given to the very awesome Billy Kidman, but turned out disastrous due to the horrible booking behind it (ex. Kidman facing of ALL PEOPLE in the company, the two-moved based “The Wall” in the once potentially good, but now God-awful cage match); and lastly the WCW Title match, which was turned out to be a shocker because it gave the mega-over Chris Benoit a chance to FINALLY win the vacant belt in a bout against the challenger Sid Vicious, turned sour even after Benoit achieved his dreams of winning the “big one” as they featured a backstage skit shortly after (while still being live) with “new commissioner” Nash telling Benoit in a weird “Is it kayfabe or not?” way that he’ll be losing the belt sooner than he thinks.
So instead of fully celebrating that I at least got to see history with Benoit winning through watching this eye-burning PPV, I instead cried in my head thinking that my hard earned burger money was now totally wasted knowing that Benoit would probably be stripped of the belt (…and he was) due to the retarded booking that was apparently going on behind the scenes. As many people may know, due to this crazy booking and lack of legit pushes, Benoit, along with his buddies Dean Malenko, Perry Saturn, and Eddie Guerrero, immediately left the company following this PPV and headed up north to the much more pleasant lands of the WWE. The significant aftermath of this one single PPV had taken away WCW’s major stars, either by injury or by quitting, had produced random and horrible further storyline changes (the brand spanking new nWo 2000 disbanding in just a month due to its major stars Jarrett and Hart being out), and arguably had started the company on a “last rites” march due to their ultimate demise happening almost a year later.
In retrospective, I just wanted to take a trip back in time to revisit this event not just because of my personal scarring experience that I went through of ordering and witnessing it live, but also to point out how a little not-so-known WCW PPV actually had some potential to be a good rival card to the mega-house WWE line-up of events and then flushed it up down the toilet with a significantly strange line-up of injuries to their top stars paired with the overall lameness of their booking abilities. Instead of just recalling this as just another lame duck PPV from WCW, I now look at it as the PPV that I will forever regret ordering but will always and sadly remember watching.
Chris Benoit WCW Title Win
Billy Kidman vs…The Wall?!? (Triple Threat Theater – “Caged Heat”)
Remember the “new” nWo…2000 Sliver & Black Edition? (Chances are…you probably don’t!)
On the recent heels of the “shocking” turn of events with Matt Hardy betraying his brother Jeff and costing him the WWE Title, I wanted to take a look at another “best friend turns against the other” feud in the form of the Rey Mysterio/Eddie Guerrero rivalry during 2005. I talk about why I think it’s one of the best feuds ever done in the WWE and why the subtle complexities of it are somewhat underrated by the fans who have previously viewed it.
