Forgotten Favorites 05.11.10: Vengeance 2003 – Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas vs. Rey Mysterio & Billy Kidman

Welcome back, wrestling fans. It’s time once again to turn the clock back and reflect on some great action of wrestling past.

Before we get into this week’s material, I wanted to comment on my recent reading of Vince Russo’s latest book, the curiously titled How WCW Killed Vince Russo. First off, don’t worry, I didn’t pay for this bad boy, as the Baltimore County Public Library has the hook-up. I’m not totally against giving Russo money, but I am against paying for any kind of book when such things as libraries exist. Props to Ben Franklin.

Russo’s book is an interesting read, whether you like the guy or not. I don’t agree with some of his decisions, but I don’t doubt that the guy has always tried to make what he thought were the right moves. The book sheds some interesting light on situations with Bischoff and Goldberg, although in the end it’s impossible for an outsider to know what’s genuine and what’s flat-out made-up. The born-again talk rises to unbearably preachy heights at times, but it’s clear that (as unconsciously condescending as he sort of comes off) Russo has found peace within his life, which I can’t argue against. Love him or hate him, the guy played a major role in wrestling’s last big boom, and that alone makes the book worthy of checking out for any fan of the Attitude Era.

So now that I’ve given Russo his free plug, let’s get down to business.

Who wants great wrestling?

Vengeance – July 27, 2003
WWE Tag Team Championship
Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas vs. Rey Mysterio & Billy Kidman

HOW IT WENT DOWN

One day after Christmas 2002, Paul Heyman, in the interest of protecting his investment in WWE Champion Kurt Ange, introduced the WWE audience to two new faces. Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas were young and successful collegiate wrestlers with a style in the same vein of Heyman’s primary client, hence the three wrestlers being united under the banner of Team Angle. With Angle’s coaching and Heyman’s managerial adivce, it didn’t take long for Benjamin and Haas to acquire the WWE Tag Team Titles and claim their spot at the top of the tag division.

When Kurt Angle went under the knife after WrestleMania XIX, Haas and Benjamin continued to honor the Olympian by competing under the Team Angle name. Success stayed with the rookies in their battles against Los Guerreros, but it was the combination of Eddie Guerrero and Tajiri at Judgment Day which proved to be too much. Haas and Benjamin were in a bad enough way having lost their belts, but word was also beginning to circulate that their soon-to-be-returning Team Angle leader was not happy with their title-less status.

Suspicions were confirmed when Kurt Angle made his return to SmackDown on June 5th, 2003. The former WWE Champion, now a beloved hero of the audience, was a bit upset that his name was attached to two guys who were doing more losing than winning. Unfortunately, Angle was unable to address Haas and Benjamin face to face, as the former Tag Champions both came down with a serious virus of heelocity and called in sick.

One guy who Matt Hardy probably wishes called in sick that night is Rey Mysterio, who, in SmackDown’s main event, defeated the Sensei of Mattitude to claim his first Cruiserweight Championship in WWE. Their multi-month feud, which included a title match at WrestleMania, had finally been settled.

One week later, Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin had made a stunning recovery, although they likely ended up wishing they called out one more week. Upon confronting their leader, they were met with the unfortunate news that they had indeed been fired from Team Angle. The hits just kept on coming that night in the form of yet another Cruiserweight Title match, where Matt Hardy again suffered miserable failure for two weeks in a row, coming up on the losing end in his rematch against Mysterio.

Two weeks later, the cruiserweight division got a little more interesting, as the debuting Ultimo Dragon kicked his WWE career off with a victory over Shannon Moore. During the match, the camera picks up on a certain individual sitting in the audience, keeping a close eye on the cruiser goings-ons inside the ring. His name? Billy Kidman. His new haircut? Sinister.

The newly resurfaced Kidman would pop up again one week later, this time after a successful Cruiserweight Title defense by Mysterio against Nunzio. Following Mysterio’s victory, Kidman entered the ring to congratulate his former Filthy Animals team-mate. The band of little guys was getting back together.

On the same night, Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas, now free of the weight of the name of Team Angle, were gunning for recapturing the Tag Team Titles. Thanks to some serious miscommunication between Eddie Guerrero and Tajiri, Haas and Benjamin proved that they didn’t need Kurt Angle’s guidance or support, beginning yet another reign as the Tag Team Champions.

With new champions crowned, there was need to name new number one contenders. On July 10th, one week after Haas and Benjamin claimed the belts, Rey Mysterio teamed with the returning Billy Kidman to defeat the APA, FBI, and the Basham Brothers in a Four Corners match to earn a Tag Title shot. Number one contenders were named, but their upcoming title-holding opponents had other things on their minds that night, joining up with the Big Show to defeat Brock Lesnar in handicap action, all while carefully minding the ever-present threat of an angry Kurt Angle.

The next couple of weeks saw more of the same. The former WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Champions prepped for their upcoming title shot, getting back in their old tag team groove with victories over Matt Hardy & Shannon Moore and the Conquistadors(!), while Haas and Benjamin spent most of their time fighting alongside Big Show in the war against Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle.

What… don’t remember the Conquistadors’ epic 2003 run?

And so on July 27th, the now-discontinued Vengeance PPV rolled into the Pepsi Center in Denver. It was the first ever SmackDown-exclusive PPV event, headlined by Brock Lesnar putting the WWE Title on the line against both Big Show and Kurt Angle. Arguably as good as the main event was the Tag Team Title match scheduled for the undercard. Mysterio and Kidman were finally getting the title shot they’d earned on SmackDown weeks earlier. Could the cruiserweights recapture the tag team magic they had in WCW, or would the newly-dubbed World’s Greatest Tag Team hold onto their gold?

WHY IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED

So what do you call a great tag team that exists in the timeframe of a not-so-great tag team division?

The World’s Greatest Tag Team.

For most of 2003, Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas were exactly what they claimed to be: the best tag team going in wrestling. Within a few short weeks of their debut they were an established threat inside the ring, moving from decent-enough workers to classic-capable in an astounding amount of time. The tag team match formula is an extremely simple one of fill-in-the-blank, and these guys learned to work it to perfection. Their Vengeance match with Rey and Kidman is an example of these guys pulling out all the traditional spots that still work: the teased unseen tag, the manipulation of the ref, the double-teaming in the corner, the illegal switch of partners. Sprinkle these proven methods over the course of a tag match and that much more drama is added.

Of course, aside from quickly learning the psychology of the tag match, it didn’t hurt that Benjamin and Haas were well-trained athletes with impressive histories in collegiate wrestling. It was only natural that they would be paired with Kurt Angle upon their debut, and it was this pairing, along with their ability to deliver inside the ring, that got Benjamin and Haas over with the fans almost instantly. It didn’t matter that neither man was capable of delivering a classic promo, because when it was bell time, these two guys were the best pure tag team wrestlers on the roster.

Given their level of awesome, it’s a crime against wrestling fans that Benjamin and Haas were not allowed the opportunity to light up the tag division for longer than they did. Aside from their completely failed Raw reunion a couple of years back, the team lasted a little over a year, having accomplished little of note in their last several months together. Not long after participating in one of their last major Tag Title matches at Vengeance, the team went on hiatus for a brief period due to Benjamin suffering an injury. By the time he returned about a month later, it seemed that WWE had given up on TWGTT for reasons unknown, leaving them to languish in obscurity until Shelton became a Raw draft pick after WrestleMania XX.

Looking back and considering the abrupt halt to Benjamin and Haas’s domination, it makes about as much sense to me now as it did then: none. These guys were amazing athletes who were quite over with the audience, and yet all of the momentum was cut short with Shelton’s injury, never to be returned to them. Not that they weren’t capable of recapturing greatness; it’s just that WWE didn’t see fit to restore it to them. After WrestleMania it was decided to begin the Shelton Benjamin Experiment on Raw, which, however over the dude might have become, was doomed to fail in the long run. It became clear over time that Shelton was, for a number of reasons, not going to be pushed any further than a solid singles hand in the midcard.

Surprisingly, Shelton’s Momma did not elevate him to the main event.

Much of the criticism that Benjamin has received in regards to his inability to break the glass ceiling comes back to his verbal delivery and (lack of) personality, but I say now that had WWE kept him in the tag ranks for longer he might’ve been given the chance to cultivate his skills. Haas and Benjamin were always primarily wrestling-guys, without much attention given to their abilities in the promo department. When it came time to split them up, WWE had two great workers on their hands, but neither of them had any idea how to express themselves as a solo character. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to believe that letting the team stick around at least through WrestleMania XXI would’ve given the two more time to develop their characters together, finding the groove of who they were inside the ring. After a year of coasting basically on their athletic ability alone, the added dimension of more promo time and character development would’ve easily given Benjamin and Haas another good year together, perhaps even better than their first. Then when the eventual split occurred, both would’ve been better groomed to breakout as singles stars.

And now here we are nearly seven years removed from this Vengeance match, and not only are Benjamin and Haas not teaming, they’re not even working for WWE anymore. Coincidentally, the man that (kayfabe) brought them into WWE and guided them is also no longer working for Vince McMahon. While he may be on a sabbatical for now, it’ll probably be sooner rather than later that the wrestling-addicted Kurt Angle makes his return to TNA. I’m not sure of the personal relationships that exist among the three former Team Angle members, but you’ve got to figure that some form of communication is going to take place regarding TNA, if it hasn’t already. With competition like Beer Money, MCMG, and even Team 3D, Benjamin and Haas, a lock for Tag Champs if they did indeed sign, could have some classic tag matches in TNA.

WHY IT ISN’T REMEMBERED

A big problem you can have when you’re a wrestling company with a stellar tag team is when you don’t have any other teams to put them up against. That’s not to say that Benjamin and Haas didn’t have some amazing competion — the stacked SmackDown roster at the time speaks for itself — but the tag division didn’t have much to offer in the way of other firmly established teams. Aside from Los Guerreros and the failed experiment of the Basham Brothers, there were basically no other established teams for TWGTT to go up against. Benjamin and Haas had some memorable outings with a number of combinations of Mysterio, Kidman, Edge, Benoit, and Rhyno, but nearly all of these matches have fallen into obscurity because they featured a one-off pairing of two singles stars. Much like Benjamin and Haas, Los Guerreros had some classic tag team matches with singles-pairings on SmackDown throughout ’03, and yet most of these remain hazy in the collective wrestling memory because of the insignifance of the singles-paired teams.

The last great tag team boom is remembered because of the varied competition and the ways in which teams were matched up. People remember the awesomeness of the Royal Rumble 2000 table match because, not only was it a fantastic match, it featured two firmly established teams. There were no interchangeable parts. Compare this to Vengeance ’03, where Haas and Benjamin might’ve wrestled Mysterio and Edge or Kidman and Benoit, and yet the match would’ve been exactly the same. Entertaining, yeah, but ultimately historically insignificant. TWGTT vs. Mysterio & Kidman was a hell of a wrestling match, but it still lacked the power of two teams battling it out for the right to be called the best.

WCW tag team? Yep. WWE tag team? Not so much.

Keep in mind that, for one guy, this Vengeance match could’ve resulted in championships over each shoulder. Rey Mysterio was already Cruiserweight Champion walking into Vengeance, having defeated Matt Hardy one month earlier in one of the most hyped title matches in the E division’s short history. This was a time before Hornswoggle and Chavo Classic, back when the E was still taking the belt somewhat seriously, and Rey was hands down the best choice to lead the division at the time. With all of that going on for Mysterio, it’s understandable that a Tag Title effort with Kidman could get lost in the mix, and it sort of has to a certain extent. Rey’s most significant stuff at the time was with Matt Hardy and Tajiri, not Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin. As great as he and Kidman were, it still comes back to the singles-pairing factor, as Rey had much more important stuff on his plate at the time.

And then even with all of this stuff already working against the match, there was next to no build whatsoever. Mysterio and Kidman earned their title shot in a Four Corners match, then proved themselves as a legitimate threat within the tag division. But all the while, Benjamin and Haas were tying up loose ends with Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar. The Vengeance Tag Title match featured no established rivalry or feud; not that these four guys needed a feud to put on a classic (they clearly didn’t), but the lack of hype sure hasn’t helped this match’s legacy.

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No feedback this week due to last week’s lack of column to provide feedback on. All will be right in the world of Forgotten Favorites next week.

Until next time, stay safe and out of Dundalk.