Wednesday, April 4, 2018

WWE Armageddon 2002



The last 2002 PPV from World Wrestling Entertainment, pretty much set's the stage for the PPV offerings of 2003. And believe me when I say this; it's only going to get worse from hereon out.


Booker T and Goldust defeated RAW World Tag Team Champions Chris Jericho & Christian, Lance Storm & William Regal, and the Dudley Boyz to win the titles. Considering how popular the tandem of Booker & Goldie has been getting - not to much how great some of their backstage bits were; I popped at a couple of them bits - I'm surprised they didn't get the rub a hell of a lot sooner. I don't know about this match; it feels like something that was whipped together at the last second so that we don't have two tag matches on the same card or something. It was pretty good for the most part, but I would've liked to have seen a more traditional 2-on-2 contest rather than "toss everyone in there" that is prevalent here.

Edge defeated A-Train (a.k.a. current NXT trainer Jason Albert) via DQ when A-Train smashed Edge's knee with a chair. Crowd shits on the finish; can't say I blame them. The match not being any good doesn't help either. Look, Edge will eventually move on to bigger and better things; Albert has his moments in the sun and the body hair to deflect the rays, but this was just a match that was on while I was staring at a door or something. Not all that exciting.

Chris Benoit defeated Eddie Guerrero in an awesome match... and I will just leave it at that.

And then we get a bit featuring Dawn Marie (of ECW fame), Torrie Wilson (of Torrie Wilson fame), and an old guy named Al Wilson. We get footage of Dawn Marie and Torrie Wilson in a hotel room, undressing and making out as much as possible without dwelling into porno territory. This went on for ten minutes. It was a complete waste of time. Hey, I'm all for that sexual content and stuff, but that's what the Internet is for.

Dave Batista, flanked by Ric Flair, defeated Kane in a pretty bad match... yes, it was pretty bad. But don't worry. We've got a couple more years to make him good or something. And by him, I mean Deacon Dave.

Women's Champion Victoria defeated Trish Stratus and Jackie (a.k.a. Miss Texas) in a pretty short and pretty cringeworthy Triple Threat match to retain the title. This isn't me being in piss break mode here; this was really hard to watch. I guess the only positive to be had here is that it was short, at least. Small favors, I suppose.

Kurt Angle defeated WWE Champion FUCKING BIG SHOW with an assist from Brock Lesnar to win the title. Angle would then "turn heel" to set up the eventual showdown between him and Brock at Mania 19. And that's the only good thing to come out of this whole match because good lord, this was awful. I was not a fan of the Big Show WWE title reign for the past month and I was more than happy to see this one end sooner than later. The match itself was about as good as it could've gotten, but far from a classic or anything worth my attention for too long.

Triple H defeated World champion Shawn Michaels in a best-of-three-falls random. First fall won by HHH was a Street Fight, second fall won by Shawn was a cage match, and the final fall was a ladder match won by HHH after Shawn's ladder was tipped over and he crashed into some tables set on the outside. I remember hating this match back in the day - perhaps due to my disdain for anything HHH - and despite claims that I "eased up on this one" later on, it turns out that I still don't like this match... which is funny, because their Summerslam match (Shawn's first match in four years) was pretty awesome and very compelling. Whereas this match... went on too long and I started to fall asleep. In all honesty, this probably would've been better off as a single fall match and just stick with the one stipulation featured... probably a ladder match or a cage match. Just for some variety and just to focus on one good (enough) match rather than three quick little matches that just suck.

Armageddon 2002 started off well enough, but once you got to the stuff with Dawn Marie and Torrie, everything took a nosedive real fast. I'd say stop at the Benoit/Guerrero match and you'll be fine, but if that doesn't suit your fancy, then there's nothing here that's worthy of revisiting or even visiting for the first time around. Like I said before, this show pretty much set the stage for 2003 and would eventually become the template for every subsequent show that year... and that is not a good thing.

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