Dark Pegasus Video Review: Judgment Day 2003

Judgment Day 2003 by J.D. Dunn Re: Sean O’Haire “They dropped the “I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know” character for O’Haire because he couldn’t cut a live promo to save his life. They ran the character at house shows and O’Haire kept cracking up on the mic, breaking character, forgetting his words and laughing. And man, he was never any good in the ring. He worked as a tag guy in ECW (sic) because he could come in and hit a few interesting moves, but even before WWE “smoothed out his edges” he had no clue how to work a match. He’s one of the great myths of the IWC – “WWE screwed up a main event prospect when they buried O’Haire for no reason!” (Ian) That really just makes the point for me. O’Haire was put on TV in WCW right out of the Power Plant. Obviously, he wouldn’t be able to work a match at that point. It’s too much to ask of anyone. If he couldn’t work at all, even after two years in OVW, then why bring him up to the main roster in the first place? Clearly, they had confidence in him to at least be serviceable as a wrestler (and besides, when did that ever matter). As far as his promo work, his promos with Dawn Marie and Spanky were just fine. I don’t buy the excuse that he “couldn’t cut a promo live” because that’s something you would (or should) know far in advance of his debut. Even if it were true, that’s something you can work on with him over time. So they either screwed the pooch by debuting the character in the first place or by screwing him over in the middle of a marketable gimmick. I still say it has more to do with O’Haire’s personality, not his ability, and I think the police blotter will back me up on that. By comparison, how many chances has O’Haire’s former partner Chuck Palumbo had to get over again? In memory of Sean’s brief career, here it is in summary. ::sniff:: May 25, 2003 Live from Charlotte, N.C.. Your hosts are Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler, Michael Cole and Tazz. Raw Co-General Manager Steve Austin comes out to announce that he will be sitting in luxury box. Well, that was a worthwhile segment. Opening Match, Six-Man Tag: John Cena, Johnny Stamboli & Chuck Palumbo (w/Nunzio) vs. Chris Benoit, Rhyno & Spanky. The FBI was such a lame stable in the WWE. In ECW, it was a joke because the original group wasn’t actually Italian, and it pissed people off. In the WWE, it was a joke for a different reason. Kendrick wipes them out with a somersault plancha before the match, but he plays face-in-peril for a while. Chris Benoit gets the hot tag and cleans house with German Suplexes. Nunzio tries to get involved but gets gored by Rhyno. Spanky goes for Sliced Bread #2, but Nunzio helps Palumbo block it. The Kiss of Death (Death Sentence) finishes Spanky at 3:57. No. They didn’t do any clipping. That’s really how long they gave this match. *3/4 Why do they need to cut the match short, you ask? Well, Eric Bischoff storms in on Steve Austin’s luxury box and is irate to find that the box is not stocked with scotch… and hookers. Austin calls Bischoff a sissy because he won’t drink his beer out of the can. Time of this segment: 2:57. Recap of the great debate between Scott Steiner and Christopher Nowinski. Let me sum up: Nowinski: Unless the administration can prove that Saddam Hussein is an imminent threat, the United States has no right to invade a sovereign nation in a preemptive strike. Steiner: Shut up, you fucking faggot. U.S.A.! Audience: Yay! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! Anyway, all of that would lead to La Resistance picking a fight with Scott Steiner and Test. Scott Steiner & Test (w/Stacy Keibler) vs. La Resistance. This is a really weird situation where Stacy is a babyface, Steiner is a babyface, Test is a heel, and La Rez are heels. Test gets proxy pops from the crowd because he’s an American. ::cough:: Steiner plays face-in-peril until he catches Grenier in a belly-to-belly suplex. The match breaks down. Test hits the pump-handle slam, but the ref is distracted. Stacy gets on the apron to argue, so Grenier dropkicks Test into her. Stacy falls off the apron into Steiner’s arms. Test gets pissed and yells at Steiner for touching her, allowing Grenier to schoolboy him for two. Test accidentally misses a big boot aimed at Grenier and hits Steiner instead. That allows La Rez to hit the French Connection (or whatever it was called) for the win at 6:21. *1/2 In the back, Gregory Helms presses Mr. America on whether or not he’s really Hulk Hogan. Mr. America asks Helms if he’s really the Hurricane. Both guys agree to let it lie. Elsewhere, Eddy Guerrero reveals that he’s found a replacement for the injured Chavo Guerrero — Tajiri. World Tag Team Titles, Ladder Match: Team Angle vs. Eddy Guerrero & Tajiri. Team Angle shows continuity early, isolating Tajiri and then isolating Eddy. They go up, but Tajiri hits a neat handspring elbow where he ducks under the ladder and rebounds into it. The faces dropkick the ladder into Charlie’s crotch. Tajiri goes up, but Shelton yanks him down and bangs his chin on one of the rungs. In an even sicker spot, Shelton powerslams Eddy into the ladder in the corner. And they one-up *that* by giving Tajiri an AWA Special with Shelton jumping off one ladder and splashing Tajiri, who was stretched across another. Haas goes up, but Eddy shoves the ladder over, spilling Haas to the floor. Tajiri recovers and dropkicks the ladder into both of his opponents. Tarantula on Haas, but Shelton smashes his head in with a ladder shot. Haas gets a ladder, but Eddy monkeyflips Shelton into him. Eddy goes up and fights both guys off. He turns and hits Shelton with the frogsplash. Eddy and Charlie fight on the top of the ladder, and Eddy nails him with the sunset flip powerbomb. Eddy goes up but gets caught by Shelton. Tajiri recovers and mists Shelton, allowing Eddy to grab the tag titles at 14:16. Pretty good, forgotten ladder match. ***1/2 Up in the box, Steve Austin puts over the ladder match and makes fun of Bischoff for sipping his beer instead of downing the whole thing in one gulp and beating his wife. Well, maybe just the former. Apparently, Bischoff has gotten over his phobia of cans because he drinks right out of the can in this segment. In the back, Roddy Piper interrupts Chris Jericho’s interview and they riff on each other for a while. Finally, they just bond over being evil. Vacant Intercontinental Title, Battle Royal: Eric Bischoff retired the title, but when Steve Austin was named the new co-GM, he brought it back. That was about the only good thing to come out of his tenure. Your participants (all former IC Champs except one) are Chris Jericho, Christian, Booker T, Val Venis, Goldust, Lance Storm, Rob Van Dam, Test and Kane. Val is returning to his former gimmick after the Chief Inspector Morley thing didn’t work out. Everyone teams up against Kane, but he fights them off. There goes Lance Storm. RVD dropkicks Kane (his regular partner) in the knee, and everyone else tosses him over. Kane destroys everyone on his way out. Booker tosses Test, his former partner, in all the chaos. Goldust tosses Val. Christian throws RVD to the apron, and Jericho adds a springboard dropkick to eliminate Van Dam. That leaves a final four of Booker T, Goldust, Chris Jericho and Christian. I believe this was around the time Goldust started stuttering because he got electrocuted. Yeah, it’s not exactly Scott Baio in “Zapped.” Goldust tries to double-cross Booker, but it backfires, and Goldie gets tossed. They’re still cool, though. That leaves Booker alone in a two-on-one with the Canadians. They doubleteam him until Jericho goes for the Lionsault only to have Christian double-cross him and shove him over the top. Jericho is flabbergasted. The ref gets bumped by a sliding dropkick, so he doesn’t see Christian get tossed. Christian wakes up the ref, returns to the ring, and tosses Booker in full view of the ref for the win and the IC Title at 11:46. Christian would finally establish himself as a singles star – at least in the midcard – and debut a new look the following night. This was about average as Battle Royals go. ** Bikini Challenge: Sable vs. Torrie Wilson Under the “you learn something new every day” topic, Lillian Garcia sings Torrie’s theme music. Huh. I probably knew that at one point and just forgot it, but I was surprised to see her sing Torrie down to ringside. Sable pins back her wrinkled iguana skin and prances around like a stripper in a hillbilly bar who’s “just doing this to feed her young’ns.” Torrie looks good, as always, but the crowd – who probably feels sympathetic towards Sable because she reminds them of them of their mothers – votes 50/50. Torrie isn’t finished and strips down to some sea shells and a piece of floss to force Tazz to declare her the winner. After the match, Torrie gives Sable a peck on the mouth, which is supposed to be titillating but really just looks like a scene from an uncomfortable Bat Mitzvah. Bischoff is having problems digesting all the beer and hamburgers, so Austin makes him eat peppers – because that’s what *real* men do. Then they die of colon cancer. Recap of Roddy Piper and Sean O’Haire accidentally ripping off Zach Gowan’s prosthetic leg. Mr. America (w/Zach Gowan) vs. Roddy Piper (w/Sean O’Haire). Mr. America is Hulk Hogan in a mask, only Vince McMahon can’t prove it because he’s busy figuring out how Jimmy Carter will solve the gasoline shortage. Oh, wait. Is it not 1979 again? This is about what you’d expect from Hogan and Piper 16 years after they were in their primes and six years after the WWE was berating them for being embarrassingly old. O’Haire interferes with abandon. America takes his belt off and whips Piper’s pasty Sable-like physique. Vince McMahon struts down and hands O’Haire a lead pipe. It backfires, though, and O’Haire nails Piper. Zach Gowan keeps Vince from interfering, allowing America to hit the legdrop for the win at 4:54. Hogan and Vince would have yet another in a long line of falling outs, and the angle would be paid off with Vince showing a piece of footage that revealed that Mr. America was, in fact, Hulk Hogan, and that would be the end of it. In the meantime, we got classics like these. 3/4* In the back, Stephanie McMahon tells Triple H to be careful. General Manager Stephanie was pretty hot. World Heavyweight Title: Triple H (w/Ric Flair) vs. Kevin Nash (w/Shawn Michaels). Shawn and Flair get tossed from the match before it even starts. Nash backdrops Hunter and chases him to the floor. Hunter jumps him and tosses him into the post, but Nash boots him in the mush. HHH goes to the eyes and shoves the ref down when he admonishes him. Nash starts pummeling HHH, and he also shoves the ref, thus tipping the finish. Finally, Earl Hebner grabs Nash by the hair and yanks him off HHH. Gorilla Monsoon: Not your job, referee. Hunter misses a clothesline and wipes out Earl. That allows Hunter to punt Nash in his mini-Diesel and untie the top turnbuckle. Nash catches him for the Snake Eyes and shoves a protesting Hebner down again. I’m not sure what Hebner was admonishing him for because a Snake Eyes isn’t exactly illegal. Hunter slips out and hits the Pedigree, but it only gets two. Finally, Hunter just grabs the sledgehammer and knocks Earl down with it for the DQ at 7:50. Thankfully, the match was short because that sucked a dick and had a worse finish. I know what you’re going to say: Oh, but you see, it was smart to do a DQ on PPV because it set up the rematch. And my response would be: I can’t tell if you’re agreeing with me or disagreeing with me. 1/2* Eric Bischoff has eaten so daggone much that he has to puke all over the crowd. Yeah, the last couple of matches had the same effect on me. Pfft. What a wimp. He probably voted for Obama while holding a latte and discussing French philosophers. Women’s Title, Fatal Fourway: Victoria (w/Steven Richards) vs. Trish Stratus vs. Jazz (w/Theodore Long) vs. Jacqueline. They all look confused early on. I’m not sure if something was supposed to happen and didn’t or somebody did something they weren’t supposed to do. Teddy Long was claiming that this match was part of a conspiracy by “the Man” to keep the title off Jazz. Things I’ve learned from wrestling #25313: all complaints about racism are illegitimate because blacks are just whiners. I think it has something to do with their rock hard heads that aren’t affected by the turnbuckles. Anyway, this was brisk. Trish and Jackie get caught in submission moves, teasing a double tapout. Trish makes the ropes, though. She Matrixes under a punch from Jazz and hits the Chick Kick for two. She goes for Stratusfaction but gets dumped to the floor. Won’t be seein’ her no more. Jackie counters the Widow’s Peak to a Northern Lights Suplex for two, but Jazz flies in with a splash to break it up. Jazz finishes Jackie with a DDT at 4:49. A replay shows Trish took a wicked bump over the top. ** WWE Title, Stretcher Match: Brock Lesnar vs. The Big Show. Show picked up Rey Mysterio’s stretcher and slammed him into the ringpost at Backlash, which Brock didn’t care for so we get this match. This was allegedly the first stretcher match since Andre vs. Killer Khan. It seems like there were others, but since I can’t think of anything off the top of my head, I’ll pass it. Lots of brawling early. Show hits the chokeslam and a legdrop and wheels Brock halfway down the aisle. Brock fights back from the stretcher and starts beating Show with one of the spare stretchers until Show is out. He can’t keep him on the stretcher, though. Show battles back, and they brawl to the entrance. Brock grabs the entrance structure and dropkicks Show backwards and they fight to the ring. Brock knocks Show off the apron onto a stretcher. He still can’t move Show, though, and Show beats him with a stretcher. Brock takes a walk and heads to the back. Rey Mysterio does the run-in and hits the 619 to Show’s gut. Show clobbers him, though, and is about to finish Rey off, but Brock Lesnar rides a forklift to the ring. He dives off and clotheslines Show down and adds an impressive suplex. That sets up an F5 (sort of). Lesnar puts the stretcher on the forklift and hauls Show’s carcass across the yellow line for the win at 15:29. Hey, the booking was great, and Brock showed that he would have been a great wrestler for years to come had ego not interceded. He had amazing quickness and agility for a guy his size. Big Show played the part of a brick wall quite well. **1/2

The 411: This would be the last of the U.S. co-branded PPVs for a while, and it felt no more stacked than any of the single-brand PPVs. Like a lot of 2002-2003 shows, it felt like they were just trying to get through this show so they could get to something big on the next show, but *all* the shows felt like that and they never paid anything off. The ladder match is good but not worth tracking this down for. Thumbs down.

Final Score:  5.0   [ Not So Good ]