Forgotten Favorites 05.25.10: Raw 2002 – Booker T & Goldust vs. Chris Jericho & Christian

Welcome back, wrestling fans. We’re one day removed from a PPV that I’m not so disappointed that I missed, partly because it looked less-than-entertaining and mostly because of the greatness of LOST. I will now commence re-watching the entire series in an effort to understand exactly what happened in my brain between 9:00 and 11:30 last night.

But equal to the importance of the island is also the need to recognize awesome wrestling of the past. And if you’re down for some nostalgic looks back at greatness past, you’ve come to the right place.

Although I considered strongly following up last week’s pick with a Great Khali match, I have decided to play it safe and feature a tag team classic from late 2002. It was a time when all of the tag team attention went to SmackDown, even though there was a tag rivalry brewing on Raw that was delivering some classic in-ring action.

So, who wants great wrestling?

Raw – December 23, 2002
World Tag Team Championship
Booker T & Goldust vs. Chris Jericho & Christian

HOW IT WENT DOWN

It was 1990 when the wise and revered prophet Paula Abdul informed the world that opposites attract. Her theory was proven to be true twelve years later when a facepainted sexual deviant and a breakdancing former felon from the streets formed a very special friendship.

In the time that immediately followed WrestleMania 18, the world of WWE was going through some serious changes that have stood until this day. The brand extension caused the entire roster to be shuffled around, with the card being rearranged to accommodate the new era ahead in WWE. New alliances were formed, identities were established, and fresh rivalries were on the way.

Still on the rebound from a WrestleMania loss to Edge, Booker T was fighting for his spot in the Raw midcard. In the midst of his attempts at securing singles gold for himself, he was suddenly having to deal with someone new constantly inserting himself into his affairs. This someone was Goldust, and his never-ending references to things of the homo-like nature did not sit well with the Bookerman.

But seeing as how all Goldust wanted was to prove that the two men could succeed as a tag team, Booker saw no harm in at least presenting the Bizarre One with an opportunity. Strangely enough, on the April 15th edition of Raw, the new tag team of Goldust and Booker T were successful, getting the surprise victory over the Hardys.

It was one week later when the magic between these two guys was clear. The Scorpion King hype machine was in full force, and even Booker T and Goldust couldn’t escape it. Observe…

But just as the seeds of tag team awesomeness were being planted, there were other forces working against the alliance of Goldust and Booker T. On the May 13th Raw, the then-heelrageous Ric Flair selected Booker T as the newest member of the nWo. Booker, excited for the chance to solidify his spot on Raw, was eager to join the ranks of the nWo, paying little mind to the effect the whole ordeal was having on his sort-of tag partner.

Goldust wasn’t handling everything well. He tried desperately to prove himself to the nWo, hoping he might too be allowed to represent the black and white. However, from Kevin Nash to Big Show to X-Pac, the vote was nearly unanimous and not in Goldust’s favor. It was only Booker who mildly stuck up for his halfway-partner, but even then he didn’t seem too concerned. Goldust pleaded with Booker to abandon the nWo, but he couldn’t talk any sense into the five time WCW Champion.

But as Sam Cooke once predicted, change did indeed come, and it was a big change for the nWo. On June 3rd, the still-not-wrestling Shawn Michaels made his return to Monday Night Raw, sporting the black and white and becoming the newest addition to the nWo. Shawn was silent at first, but the following week on Raw, shit got real. Real real.

Prior to the shit getting too real, the night was kicked off by Booker T’s personal interpretation of the newest nWo member’s theme music.

Later in the evening, the nWo all came down to the ring to assess their current situation. Michaels had a lot of heelishness to get off his chest, and he spoke of the direction he was going to go with his new stablemates. However, the new direction that Michaels desired was going to require one less nWo member. Observe as shit gets the realest.

From here on out, Booker T entered a new phase of his career. He was now solidly a babyface for the first time in his WWE career (not counting the Invasion’s first few weeks), and his tag team alliance with Goldust was now allowed to get into full swing. It was now Booker T and Goldust tearing it up in tag team competition, be it up against the nWo or any other heel duo that dared cross their bizarrely paired path.

They came their closest yet to achieving the ultimate goal of the Tag Team Titles when they faced off with Lance Storm and Christian at SummerSlam, but unfortunately, Booker and Goldust came up short in their efforts. Meanwhile, as Booker and Goldust were chasing their dream of tag team gold off and on for months, there was another serious tag team threat forming from two already established singles stars.

While chasing the Tag Titles, Booker T was also constantly in the hunt for the World Championship. In his journeys, he crossed paths with a fellow challenger by the name of Chris Jericho. A rivalry began to develop between the two and was taken to a new level when, on the October 7th Raw, Jericho jumped Booker and beat him to a pulp following a Cage Match victory over Big Show. One week later, Booker sought his revenge by attacking Jericho before he stepped into the ring to challenge for something Booker had been chasing for months: the World Tag Team Titles. Despite Booker’s attack, Jericho and new tag team partner Christian were successful in their match against Kane and The Hurricane, securing the World Tag Titles.

Immediately after the match, when Booker once again jumped Jericho backstage, Raw GM Eric Bischoff intervened to set things straight. He signed Christian and Jericho on for a title defense at the upcoming No Mercy PPV, defending their titles against Booker T and Goldust. On October 20th, Booker T and Goldust gave Jericho and Christian everything they had in a match that saw the ring ropes break, but it wasn’t quite enough to earn them their first set of tag team gold together.

Not long after on the December 2nd Raw, Jericho and Booker were once again mixing it up in one on one competition. When the match went all kinds of wrong with the interference of each man’s tag partner, the esteemed Chief Morley stepped in to restart the contest as a Tag Title match. But again, Jericho and Christian were able to combine their evil forces to defeat the good guys.

One week later, Goldust was feeling pretty down about his recent contributions to the team. He and Booker suffered a loss to William Regal and Lance Storm when Goldie tapped to Storm’s Sharpshooter, and the disappointment was so severe that Goldust insisted that Booker find a new partner, one who can actually attain gold with. But Booker was having none of it, and he assured the former Intercontinetal Champ that there was no “weak link” in their team.

And so when Booker and Goldust walked into Armageddon on December 15th, they were seeking to finally prove they had what it took to stand atop the tag division. They had a serious challenge ahead of them in a Fatal Four Way Elimination Tag, going up against the Dudleys, Storm and Regal, and champions Jericho and Christian. Regal scored the first pinfall, eliminating the Dudleys, but also suffered the second, being eliminated by Goldust. In the end, it was a Book End on Jericho that allowed Booker and Goldust to claim their first World Tag Team Championship together.

The following night on Raw, Jericho and Christian made it clear that they were invoking their rematch clause. The next week on Raw, they planned on reclaiming the Tag Titles.

And so it was on the December 23rd Raw that the matter would finally be settled between the two warring teams. Just prior to their match, Jericho approached Goldust backstage and berated him, both personally and professionally. He questioned his status as a champion and accused him of being a failure as a wrestler, father, and human being. Having already been down on thinking he was the “weak link,” Goldust’s confidence was once again on shaky ground.

So who could prove to be the better team? Could Jericho and Christian win back the gold that they carried for months? Or would Booker T and Goldust prove themselves worthy of being called the best in the world? And was Goldust really the weak link?

WHY IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED

There are two standards when it comes to tag team combinations: the unit of two strictly tag guys or the alliance of two formerly established singles stars. The former method is the simplest, usually pertaining to two sometimes-younger grapplers with some sort of common thread between them, be it brotherhood (Hardys), athletic background (TWGTT), or fluid moves and mad rhymes (Too Cool). The latter method of throwing two singles guys together has a greater number of factors that play a part in determining just who should be paired up with who, being based particularly on the desired longevity of the pairing. For example, putting two popular established names together in order to reignite a stale tag team division is something that’s been done many times over (Jericho/Show, Edge/Orton, Kane/Anybody), but with each go-around it’s hard for whoever’s calling the shots to know how long it will take to accomplish the desired tag team revival, and so it’s unclear how long the two established names will be in the tag division. Seen equally as often is the “exploding” team (Eddie/Rey, Cena/HBK), where two guys are paired up with the focus being on their eventual self-destruction and collision with one another.

But then you’ve got those unplanned successes. These are the times when two personalities clash so stupendously that to keep them apart would be an injustice to the fans. To this day, the highest rated segment in the history of Raw belongs to one such pairing, as more people watched The Rock’N’Sock Connection in a NON-WRESTLING bit in 1998 than anything else that was aired ever on Raw. The Rock and Mankind were two characters that created nothing but awesomeness when they were on the screen at the same time, and although there were no longstanding plans to do such a thing, the two insanely over babyfaces were paired up with legendary results.

When Goldust and Booker T first started crossing paths on a regular basis after the brand extension, it’s highly doubtful that the plan all along was to have a Tag Title payoff eight months down the road. But, much like Rock and Foley, the two personalities meshed in such an incredibly entertaining way that it simply made good business sense to put the two of them together. From their backstage skits to their awesomely awesome face styles in the ring, Goldust and Booker T were a highlight of Raw in a largely highlight-lacking era. Of course, they never reached the level of The Rock’N’Sock Connection in terms of popularity, but Goldie and the Bookerman were over like rover for their nearly-a-year of teaming together.

Back when Lumberjack Matches were a little different.

The reason I chose this particular televised match to cover this week, as opposed to any of the other quality tag matches Booker and Goldust had, is because I think it represents everything that made the team a success, along with everything that could’ve made it an even greater success. First off, there’s the in-ring action, which is textbook tag team wrestling at its absolute finest: the false finish with the heel’s foot on the rope, the ref not seeing the hot face tag, the cleaning-of-the-house when the legit hot face tag is made, etc. Put simply, Goldust and Booker understood the mechanics of a tag team match and knew when to execute the right spots at the right times.

But further than that, past the solid physical capablities of Goldust and Booker, we have two extremely charismatic performers on our hands. Booker and Goldust were able to bring the funny in a way that few other tag teams have been capable of. Putting them up against two fellow would-be-comedians in Jericho and Christian just heightened the goodness of the whole thing, allowing for some truly hilarious dialogue to be exchanged between all four guys. The Goldie Claus video above, wherein Goldust’s Christmas gift to Christian is a giant jar of ass cream, is complete (pardon me, it’s irresistible) gold. And even when Booker and Goldie didn’t have other hilarious performers to play off of, it didn’t matter. All the E had to do was point the camera at the two of them having a conversation backstage, give them a few minutes of dialogue between one another, and the result would’ve been pure pop and money. The fans loved to love both at and along with Goldust and Booker T, and they eagerly ate up anything that was thrown their way involving the two polar opposites.

Further than that, while Goldust and Booker are remembered primarily for the hilarity of their antics outside the ring, this match proves that there was something more to the usually-goofy tandem. In the weeks prior to this particular Raw match, Goldust had been struggling with being the “weak link” out of the pairing, thinking himself to not be on Booker’s level. And then, even after winning the belts, Goldust suffered yet another emotional blow in Jericho’s verbal trashing prior to their televised title match. Accused of being a failure both in his career and family life, Goldust’s character was able to develop a little more depth than simply being the weird guy constantly referencing his genitalia.

The best part of all was that the fans took to it, and while Goldust was far from not-over before, he rose to a new level with the added dimension to his character. You can see clearly in this week’s featured match that the fans are rallying behind the Bizarre One and genuinely want to see the guy win. And it wasn’t just because he was one half of a pretty popular tag team; it was because they wanted to see the underdog prove his critics wrong. When Goldust got the pin on Jericho, the crowd erupted with all kinds of ooey gooey warm feelings on the inside. And when you’re able to get that kind of a result from the wrestling audience, you have indeed (sorry, it’s happening again) struck gold.

The point I’m trying to arrive at here is that, while they were damn funny, Booker T and Goldust were not just a comedy duo. It took the booking team until the last couple of months of the pairing to realize it, but the fans were more than willing to buy into Goldust and Booker as actual human beings and not just cartoon characters. Underneath all of the shenanigans, the whole story of the tag team all along was a bizarre outcast trying to prove he’s cool to a guy he looks up to. It wasn’t until their last couple of months together that Goldust and Booker shifted that story into a more serious direction. Had they kept running with the team, paying mind to add layers over time as they had seemed to be planning on, Booker and Goldust might have enjoyed much more success for a much longer period of time.

WHY IT ISN’T REMEMBERED

When you’re talking tag team wrestling in the latter half of 2002, you’re more than likely going to be talking about the insane goodness that occurred on WWE’s blue brand. Jericho, Christian, Booker, and Goldust were lighting up the otherwise abysmal Raw tag team division, giving fans some guaranteed quality tag action on Monday nights, but even their greatest efforts could not match up to the miracle workers over on SmackDown. Angle, Benoit, Mysterio, Edge, and Los Guerreros were simply too great a combination to compete with, and historically speaking, the four guys featured in this week’s match have suffered the consequences.

Raw’s status in the latter half of 2002 (and through most of 2003) is well known as one of the darker periods in recent wrestling history. Between Triple H’s thorough domination(/burial) of every potential challenger on the roster to the mind-numbingly retarded elimination of the Intercontinental Title, Raw was not in a good way, especially in comparison to the flourishing SmackDown brand.

To prove a point, I offer No Mercy 2002 as an example. In the main event, Brock Lesnar defended the SmackDown exclusive WWE Title against Undertaker in an engaging and brutal Hell In A Cell classic. Earlier in the evening, in a match that determined the first SmackDown exclusive Tag Team Champions, Angle and Benoit defeated Edge and Mysterio in one of the most critically acclaimed tag matches of all time.

Upstage much?

Now compare these two matches to their Raw counterparts and the results are pretty telling. Looking at SmackDown’s intense Brock-Taker rivalry to be blown off in the Cell, Raw puffed its chest out and said, “I will see your intriguing and violent feud, and I will raise you Triple H vs. Kane… plus a Katie Vick storyline!” Raw’s Tag Title match was not so damaged by retarded booking, but the irony of the whole situation is overwhelming when going back and watching Jericho and Christian face Booker and Goldust that night. On the same evening that SmackDown would make tag team history with one of the best contests ever seen, Raw would be forced to cut its Tag Title match short when Jericho’s Lionsault caused the ring ropes to collapse.

SmackDown made history, and Raw couldn’t even keep the ring together.

Of course, a poorly set-up ring is far from the fault of the wrestlers, and I’d never suggest that Raw’s Tag Title combatants that night are anything but four of the best workers to walk through the E’s doors. But I still find it symbolic of the whole state of Raw at the time, considering SmackDown was undeniably kicking its ass in terms of both in-ring action and storytelling.

And even then, ropes breaking and all, it still seems that Booker and Goldust’s battle with Jericho and Christian at No Mercy has held up better historically than their effort on Raw a couple of months later. I chalk this up to (oddly enough) both the rope incident as well as the fact that it was offered on PPV. First, the ropes breaking was a memorable spot that has stuck with me — and likely any other fans who saw it — simply because it was one of those “Oh shit” moments that you don’t see too often. Second, the PPV status automatically cements the match’s spot over its televised rematch simply because PPV cards hold up better over time while TV matches are always slipping through the historical cracks. And when a televised classic takes place in the midst of a torturous era of Raw’s programming, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that said classic would go overlooked as times moves on.

Raw’s lameness at the time aside, the pairing of Goldust and Booker T was seemingly not meant to last much longer after this December classic. Within a couple of weeks they dropped the belts to Regal and Storm, and from there on out Booker T was almost exclusively a singles competitor. It seemed that the goodness he had generated the entire year prior alongside Goldust was finally going to pay off when he challenged Triple H for the World Title at WrestleMania, but this apparently wasn’t meant to be either. Booker bounced around in Raw midcard mediocrity for another year before switching to SmackDown and turning heel. From this point on, Goldust and Booker T was simply a thing of the past.

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That does it for this week. Feedback may return at some point in the near future. I can’t tell the future. Until next time, stay safe and out of Dundalk.