Against The Grain 10.04.09: Smackdown 2003 – What A Great Year

Welcome everyone back to Against The Grain, my take on some of the most unconventional and not-often talked about subjects in the wrestling world. After recently watching the Best of Smackdown DVD, it had me flashing back to the good ol’ Thursday nights that I spent watching Smackdown and had especially thinking about my absolute favorite year of wrestling with 2003. This year on Smackdown (and Smackdown only…sorry Raw) I witnessed so many damn good matches, storylines, and overall great shows week in and week out. Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle wrestling for a hour straight. Witnessing some awesome cruiserweight action with the likes of Rey Mysterio and Tajiri. Matt freakin’ Hardy 1.0. The whole entire year to myself was a sight to behold and I simply wanted to share some of those memories with you all. Plus as always, stick around for the end with my “WTF” section. Topic? Hint: It involves an one-legged man and an egotistical wrestling owner…in a match.

One of the main reasons why I tuned into Smackdown every week in 2003.

2003…Oh Fond Memories
To give you all a brief history of my wrestling watching around the time, at the end of 2001 after the death of WCW and the merciful end of the Invasion storyline, I slowly turned away from wrestling due to a serious lack of good matches and storylines from the WWE. Wasn’t feeling HHH vs. Jericho. Didn’t really care for the return of the storylines with Stone Cold nor Ric Flair. And more importantly I sadly didn’t care for the “epic” return of Hulk Hogan. So towards the middle of 2002, I caught a glimpse of a sick cage match between Kurt Angle (hair piece and all) versus Edge on Smackdown that definitely got my attention. After seeing this, I slowly started watching wrestling again, but now with my major focus on the Smackdown show. So by the end of 2002 with the once-boring monotonous-sounding Brock Lesnar becoming an awesome looking breakout face, I really started to take notice and become a regular watcher of Smackdown. With the opposing Raw show at the time featuring “great” talent (major sarcasm…but no disrespect) such as Rodney Mack, La Resistance, and Scott Steiner (God bless Scotty…but his WWE run sucked major ass), while also featuring Triple H winning tons of fans over (again sarcasm) with his feuds against the likes of Goldberg and Kevin Nash, I seriously had no desire to switch my channel from my Thursday night fun fest. So with this, my 2003 started out with my eyes glued every week on UPN and I wanted to share below why I loved this specific year of Smackdown so damn much.

Matt Hardy
When always watching the Hardy Boyz, while everyone had their attention on the crazy stunts of Jeff, I always slightly noticed that the underrated older brother Matt had some awesome basic wrestling skills that weren’t always focused on (…likely due to Jeff jumping off of 20ft. ladders). But when Jeff left the company and Matt moved on to a solo career on Smackdown, the time was perfect for Matt to finally come into his own. So when I witness the rare talking Matt Hardy become the man known as “Matt Hardy…version 1.0”. The man became a super crazy and massive egotistical heel who called himself different “versions” of himself (like a damn computer), collected a band of lackeys that were known as his “MF-ers” (hehe…MF-ers…with MATTATTITUDE!!), and did funny heelish things like list on his Titantron video various facts each time out about himself and how better he was from everyone (i.e. Matt Hardy likes chocolate ice cream…Matt Hardy can do more push-ups than Rey Mysterio). Plus on top of this, Matt Hardy was a hell of a good wrestling. The man was strangely, but wisely, put into a storyline where he wanted to drop weight to go into the Cruiserweight Division and once he was there, he started to destroy people like Kidman and Mysterio in some great bouts. I (like many others I’m sure) wish and pray one day that Matt may go back to this persona and start putting “fun facts” on his Titantron again.

Eddie Guerrero
Eddie Guerrero has always been known to put on some good to great matches almost every time out in the match on a nightly basis. In his WWE stint up to this point, he had some classic bouts against the likes of RVD and Edge. But I really think that 2003 was truly his breakout year leading up to his first and only World Title reign in 2004. The man first of all started off the year with some nice runs with the Tag Team belts primarily against the oh-too-great to describe in words tag team of…”The World’s Greatest Tag Team” aka Team Angle (Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas). Then he help bring back the once-disregarded United States Championship by feuding and having some great matches with the likes of Tajiri, Chris Benoit, and Rhyno. He then helped get a young dude by the name of John Cena get more over with moments like fighting him in the now infamous “Parking Lot Brawl”. And he concluded it by dropping the US Title to the Big Show and then as a result got even more popular and started his path to winning the World Title. Eddie was definitely one of the top reasons I always tuned into Smackdown.

Brock Lesnar
I previously wrote about Brock before in one of the first “Against The Grain” columns with how I despised the guy at first due to his stereotypical “big dumb jock” look and style. But once Lesnar became a face, starting talking in understandable sentences, and began seriously kicking major ass and taking names, I suddenly became an instant fan. When Brock ran into a random match one night on Smackdown and proceeded to oh so easily lift the 500+ pound Big Show for his F-5 finisher, my jaw easily dropped. The man throughout the year 2003 up until his untimely leave a year later (oh…his Goldberg bout at Wrestlemania…how tragic), did so damn much to become a huge star and awesome in-ring talent. He had some super-sick bouts against Kurt Angle (Wrestlemania, Summerslam, freaking Iron Man), easily gave the Big Show the best matches of his career (along with one of the craziest visuals in wrestling history…superplex…Big Show…ring break…nuff said), participated in some random storylines (i.e. pushing Zach Gowen down a flight of stairs, making Hardcore Holly seem like a legit super bad-ass, making John Cena a main-eventer before he was years before), and simply made Smackdown a must-watch every week. Damn the way he went out, but I still will forever have the memories of when he was actually cool here.

Nice Variety of Matches and Storylines
While Raw featured storylines involving Kevin Nash slowly stalking Triple H (…slowly…) and Test teaming with Scott Steiner to make the “ultimate” tag team (…), Smackdown found the perfect way to blend the good, the awesome, and the weird to make a great weekly show. They had crazy action with regular cruiserweight bouts that were always great (and featured folks like Spanky/Brian Kendrick, Kidman, Jamie Noble, Kidman, Mysterio) mixed with hard-hitting heavyweight fights involving people like Angle, Big Show, Benoit, and Undertaker (who moved on from HHH and Hogan to Angle and Lesnar). The show also had some pretty unique storylines such Stephanie McMahon being General Manager and taking names (some may hate her guts…but here she was pretty cool as tough-as-nails face), Hulk Hogan disguising himself as the masked Mr. America (strange and corny angle, but I loved Hogan just being a goofball here and not pretending like he was “World Title” material again…like his World Title matches against HHH and Taker), and lastly Vince McMahon acting like a crazy person (at some points it was horribly stupid, but it was pretty interesting seeing Vince do truly insane stuff…like hooking up with Sable and beating up an one-legged man).

Overall the year 2003 may not resonate with some wrestling fans with being a great year. But for myself, I found it to be one of the best times I’ve ever enjoyed watching wrestling without any real anger and fallout with the crap shown on the screen. Of all of the years of Smackdown history in the last 10 years, I do really think that this year stands up the most out of them all due to the unbelievable matches, crazy storylines, and overall good feeling week in and week out. I will definitely never forget the great year that was 2-0-0-3.

For Your Viewing Pleasure
Oh…Matt Hardy Version 1.0…you so crazy

Eddie…Eddie…Eddie

The “Best” of Brock vs. Big Show

Mr. America…corny, but fun as hell

WTF?!?
Welcome ladies and gents again to another edition of “WTF”, the section that covers the weird and strange occurrences that I’ve observed in my close watching of wrestling in the last 10 or so years. From the Bananas in Pajamas wrestling in a battle royal to really random face and heel turns that may had made sense at the time but seem really strange now, I want to cover it all.

Vince McMahon…beating up an one-legged kid…WTF?!?
I wanted to mention the one-legged wrestler Zach Gowen up in the good sections above due to his really good in-ring abilities and tons of potential in becoming a breakout star (plus the dude’s from my hometown of Detroit!!), but I really had to include his semi-good, semi-stupid storyline with Vince McMahon down here in “WTF”. To sum it up very quickly: Gowen came to the WWE looking to achieve his dream of becoming a wrestler for the WWE (especially with his disability of having one leg), Vince played up his crazy, insane owner persona and wanted to berate Gowen by doing such things as kicking his good leg out during an arm-wrestling contest, Gowen challenged him to a match, and the epic battle which was Gowen vs. McMahon took place on pay-per-view…yes…pay-per-view. The bout really wasn’t as horrible as a normal Vince McMahon match usually is, but it’s the simple fact (storyline or not) that this was a match that had the crazed-looking Vince beating the crap out of a young one-legged dude.

To sum up the akward feelings around this, I had invited my wife who I was just starting to date at the time to come over and experience a wrestling PPV for the first time, along with her girlfriends, and once they saw this match…again with an old man beating the living bejesus out of an one legged person…my wife and her friends gave me and my guy friends the dirtiest looks ever in the world and as a result it took me like 5 years to get my wife to remotely watch a wrestling event again. Thanks Vince! Enjoy below.

*Also watch the sick and horribly unnecessary blade job from McMahon taking a chair shot at 6:06…blood squirting everywhere. The dude’s sick I say. Sick.

The build-up to the beatdown…

…the actual beatdown from McMahon*