wrestling / Columns

That Was Then 11.16.07: Looking Back At Survivor Series 2003 & 2004

November 16, 2007 | Posted by Sam Caplan

We’re in the home stretch now as we go back to the 2003 and 2004 editions of the Survivor Series. By this point, the elimination matches were being taken a little more seriously than they had from 1999 to 2002, and instead of filling up the card with elimination matches filled with a few stars and a ton of prelim guys, they did two elimination matches per show, one for Raw and one for Smackdown, and each match was treated as a special deal that was not as diluted as they had been in previous years.

Survivor Series 2003

WWE had started building things back up by Survivor Series 2003. They were well past the point where either Steve Austin or the Rock could be counted on as regular top performers, and granted, they were throwing a lot of crap at the wall and seeing what stuck, but you can look back at this show and see where things started turning around and toward the main event scene we see today.

This year featured only two elimination matches, one from each brand, and Smackdown’s started the show as Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, John Cena, Bradshaw (pre-JBL era) and Hardcore Holly teamed up to take on WWE Champion Brock Lesnar, Nathan Jones, Matt Morgan, A-Train, and the Big Show. Pretty much everyone on Angle’s team was out to get Lesnar for one reason or another, and Hardcore Holly’s reason was that he sat out of action with a broken neck suffered in a match against Brock Lesnar. Of course, the neck got broken because Holly was being an uncooperative prick, but that’s neither here nor there as he jumped Lesnar and literally got disqualified within seconds of the match starting, followed by Bradshaw eliminating A-Train with the Clothesline From Hell and Big Show chokeslamming and eliminating Bradshaw, with all three eliminations happening in the first minute of the match. I have to admit I felt pretty ripped off by that, but things got better as Kurt Angle went on to make both Morgan and Jones tap out in rapid succession, but was quickly eliminated by Brock Lesnar via the F5, leaving Lesnar and Show against the uneasy alliance of Benoit and Cena, who had only turned face about a week or two before the show, and did so reluctantly. Lesnar went for the F5 on Benoit, but Benoit countered it to the crossface and made Lesnar tap right in the middle of the ring, followed by Cena hitting the FU on Big Show to win the match for his team. Cena would go on to beat Show for the US Title at Wrestlemania 20, while Benoit would win the Royal Rumble and earn a title shot. Everyone assumed he would use that title shot to challenge Lesnar since he had tapped him out here, but of course he’d go on to challenge Triple H in the classic three way main event and get the biggest win of his career.

Up next was the Women’s Title match between Molly Holly and Lita. This was during the period where Molly Holly was regularly ridiculed for a)being a virgin and b)having a fat ass, while Lita had just returned from having surgery on her neck after breaking it while filming a role on some TV show, so it seemed pretty easy that Lita would get the title, but Molly ended up retaining, which was fine by me because I was a huge Molly Holly fan and thought she had a great ass. That was followed by what I believe is the only Ambulance Match in WWE PPV history between Shane McMahon and Kane, where to win you had to stick your opponent in the back of the ambulance and close the door. Kane had turned completely evil after losing his mask to Triple H the previous summer, and in particular had tortured Shane by giving Linda the Tombstone and also hooking up a car battery to Shane’s nuts (I swear I’m not making that up), so Shane was out for revenge, but unfortunately he wouldn’t get it here as Kane won the match, giving Shane what most people felt was WAY too much offense.

Following that match, we get a backstage segment where Lesnar is whining about his elimination from the earlier match when he is confronted by Goldberg, in what was the start of the build to their infamous match at Wrestlemania 20 where they both got booed out of the building, and then the Bashams defeated the Guerreros to retain the WWE Tag Team Title, then we get the big Raw elimination match pitting Shawn Michaels, Booker T, Rob Van Dam, and the Dudleyz against Randy Orton, Mark Henry, Christian, Chris Jericho, and Scott Steiner. The story here was that Eric Bischoff and Steve Austin were co-GMs of Raw, but were constantly stepping on people’s toes, and there was also the added problem of Steve Austin usually resolving conflicts by beating people up, so Bischoff got Vince McMahon to decree that Austin would be fired if he got physical with anyone without being physically provoked. Therefore, the stiuplation here was that if Austin’s team (led by Michaels) won, he’d be allowed to beat anyone up anytime he wanted, but if Bischoff’s team (led by Orton) won, Austin would be fired. There was also the subplot of Austin’s uneasy relationship with Michaels, since Austin had defeated Michaels for the WWF Title at Wrestlemania 14 and sent him into a four and a half year retirement, but Michaels reluctantly agreed to captain Austin’s team. That decision very well may have come back to haunt him, because the match came down to Michaels 3-on-1 against Orton, Jericho, and Christian. The heels took turns beating up Michaels, who was busted open very early in this sequence and ended up losing quite a bit of blood, but Michaels was able to hit Christian with Sweet Chin Music to eliminate him, then reversed the Walls Of Jericho to a small package to eliminate Jericho, and was about to eliminate Orton as well when Batista (who had an issue with Austin) snuck in behind the ref’s back and gave Michaels the Batista Bomb, allowing Orton to pin him and win it for Bischoff’s team. Austin got in the ring but, instead of kicking Shawn’s ass like he would have any other time, he instead helped a very apologetic Michaels to the back.

Following what appeared to be (but we all knew better than to believe was) the end of Steve Austin’s WWE career, Vince McMahon took on the Undertaker in a Buried Alive match. If you thought this sounded like a terribly one-sided match, you were right, because the Undertaker literally beat the crap out of McMahon the entire match and was about to throw him in the grave when Kane sneak attacked Undertaker and threw him in the grave, giving the win to Mr McMahon. The Undertaker disappeared for months after this, and when he returned to face Kane at Wrestlemania 20 he would revert to his Deadman persona which people had been dying for him to go back to for some time.

The final match of the evening saw World Champion Goldberg defend against Triple H. Triple H had injured his groin and worked hurt at Unforgiven when he lost the title to Goldberg, and had been out of action until this match. He appeared a little bit out of shape for this match, at least by his standards, but had recovered enough to work this match, where most HHHaters expected him to get his title back, but much to their surprise, Goldberg was able to hit the spear and jackhammer for the clean win over Hunter.

Survivor Series 2004

Though 2003’s show was filled with better matches than you saw through most of the rest of that year, 2004’s show was almost entirely a throwaway show that had no real long term significance or impact.

The show opened with two reasonably meaningless title matches, as first, Cruiserweight Champion Spike Dudley retained the title in a four way match against Rey Mysterio, Chavo Guerrero, and Billy Kidman, and then Shelton Benjamin successfully defended the Intercontinental Title against Christian. This was during Shelton’s big 2004 singles push that a lot of people got really into before it was inexplicably cut short and Shelton was buried. Nobody ever figured out quite why Shelton would get the monster push he did only to have it yanked away with no explanation or anything, and no word of any backstage heat or rubbing management the wrong way, but there it is.

Up next was the Smackdown elimination match as Eddy Guerrero, Rob Van Dam, Big Show, and John Cena took on Kurt Angle, Mark Jindrak, Luther Reigns, and Carlito. Gee, looking at these lineups I have no idea who could have won. In fact, Carlito was run out of the building by John Cena before the match even started, so Angle’s side was working 4-on-3 from the start. Thetruth was that Carlito was injured and couldn’t wrestle, but they could have written him out of the match somehow. Anyway, Angle was able to pin RVD but sure enough, Eddy’s team rallied to eliminated Jindrak and Reigns and leave Angle 3-on-1 against three guys who were out for his ass. He tried hightailing it, bot Van Dam came out of the back and made him go back to the ring where he got smacked around for a bit before being put away.

After that foregone conclusion, Undertaker defeated Heidenreich with the less said about this the better, and then Trish Stratus defended the Women’s Title against Lita. Trish and Lita used to be friends, but after turning heel, Trish turned into the most catty bitch on the planet, and took digs at Lita every chance she got, especially once it was revealed that Lita was pregnant with Kane’s baby and couldn’t physically attack Trish. However, once Snitsky injured Kane and killed Lita’s baby (again, the less said the better), Lita heard one quip from Trish too many and finally enough was enough, and she started going after Trish. So after months of being tormented, this match was signed, but instead of trying to defeat her for the title, Lita just came in and beat the shit out of Trish, getting herself disqualified about a minute and a half in. It seems that Lita didn’t care about winning or losing, she just wanted to hurt Trish. Lita would eventually win the title a month or so later, and it was in the main event of Raw and one of the most emotional moments in the history of the show.

JBL defended the WWE Title against Booker T in the semi-main event, and like every match during his title reign, people thought he was going to lose the title for sure, but as usual he found a way to sneak out with the belt around his waist, in this case he hit Booker with the belt for the win. This brings us to our main event in the Raw elimination match, as Randy Orton, Maven, Chris Benoit, and Chris Jericho took on Triple H, Batista, Edge, and Gene Snitsky. That’s right, Snitsky main evented a PPV. To up the odds in this match, Eric Bischoff had announced that he was taking a four week vacation, and the winning team would each get a week as GM of Raw while he was gone. This was also during the period when they were trying to repeat the progression of the Rock by shoving Randy Orton down everybody’s throats as the top babyface in the company. They were partially doing this to erase Brock Lesnar from history by having Orton beat him out as youngest World Champion in company history, though he would drop the title to Triple H a month later in a move that got the company a lot of heat at the time, but looking back was probably a smart move. In fact, I always thought it was really funny how everyone is always burying Orton for one reason or another, but then when Triple H or Hogan or whoever beats him instead of giving Orton, backstage nightmare that he is, the push that nobody seems to think he deserves, everybody’s up in arms. You just can’t satisfy some people, you know? Anyway, it comes down to Orton for his team against Edge and Triple H, and he hits the RKO on both for the win.

* * *

And that’s that for 2003 and 2004, so we’ve got just one more to go, so make sure to check back real soon as I cover the 2005 and 2006 editions. Until then, thanks for reading and I’ll see you soon.

NULL

article topics

Sam Caplan

Comments are closed.