Wednesday, March 13, 2019

WWF Fully Loaded 2000


Bit of a heads-up before we begin: the weekly Classic Wrestling Musings are going to take a break for a couple weeks. Reason being there's going to be a week's worth of the things before Mania hits and I'd much rather focus on those than anything. After that, it'll resume around mid-April.

With that said, let's dwell into WWF Fully Loaded 2000, from the month of July 2000, during the peak years of the Attitude Era when things got really, REALLY good. I don't know why I picked this show above all others; all I know is that I just felt like it and that's how we're rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin... wait, we're not at that point yet.





Matt and Jeff Hardy, and Lita defeated Test, Albert, and Trish Stratus (a.k.a. T&A or TNA, har har) when Lita pinned Trish with a moonsault. Lita then gets ambushed by Albert and whipped by Trish, A pretty fun little opening contest with the Hardys playing the little quick dudes and TNA playing.... sorry, poor choice of letters. But in any event, this was a fine match.

Tazz defeated Al Snow via submission. The most generous thing I could say about this match was that it was a thing that happened and at least it was short. Honestly, back in the day, this would've been a piss break, which is not something that I'd associate with the former ECW World Champion. But there you go.

Perry Saturn defeated WWF European Champion Eddie Guerrero to win the title despite interference from Chyna and Terri. Hey, this was alright. Mostly all about Eddie getting his stuff in and Saturn being the guy who cools off the Latino heat. No complaints.

The Acolytes defeated WWF Tag-Team Champions Edge & Christian via DQ when Edge hit Faaaaaaaarrrrooooooooooooqqqqqqq (DAMN!) with a belt. Funny story behind this were the champs faking a disease and getting caught by Foley while in the bathroom... and then like true chicken-shits, they take the easy way out to keep their titles. This wasn't much, but it told the story it needed to tell and did a fine enough job of it. It was fun.

Intercontinental champion Val Venis defeated Rikishi in a Steel Cage match to retain the title with an assist from Tazz, who smashes a camera into Rikishi's face while trying to escape. Rikishi managed a splash off the top of the cage and somehow didn't break the ring on impact, which is quite an impressive feat and leaves me wondering why they're not using THESE rings anymore instead of the ones they use now where two eggs can crack and collapse the ring. This was alright, although I don't get the Tazz run-in.

The Undertaker defeated Kurt Angle. We're about a couple months into Undertaker in his American Badass biker phase when he would come out to Kid Rock (later Limp Bizkit and then later some in-house tune) and while it was nice to see Taker be more Mark Callaway than Deadman, it wasn't as nice sitting through the matches. Kurt tried, but Taker seemed to be not in the mood to care.

HHH defeated Chris Jericho in a really brutal, really satisfyiing Last Man Standing match. One of the better matches between these two if not THE best match that I've witnessed between these two. Told a smart story of HHH going for the ribs, some timely Steph interference, and the finish was good too; Hunter barely keeping up but staying up long enough for the ten count before falling down. Nothing I say can do this match justice. It was just fantastic stuff.

WWF Champion The Rock defeated Chris Benoit to retain the title... well, let's back up. They had a pseudo finish where Shane hit the ref with the chair and the ref thought Rock did the deed, thus calling for the DQ and giving Benoit the title. For you see, there was the added stip of where if Rocky got himself DQ'ed, he'd lose the title. Unfortunately, Foley reversed the decision because there is justice in the world so long as it involved his good buddy Rock and not so much anyone else who got DQ'ed. So after a few more minutes of action, Rock hits Benoit with the Rock Bottom to retain. If you needed proof that Benoit could hold his own in the main event scene, this provided that in spades while Rock was able to hold his own against one of the best technical wrestlers of his time. This was just a great match that gave both guys a chance to shine and that they did. Unfortunately, it's a match involving Chris Benoit and... well, you know.

So the opener was fine, the last man standing and WWF title matches were fine... and then you had everything in between, which featured a bunch of still decent to okay matches and one clunker. As far as I'm concerned, Fully Loaded 2000 is a great little showcase of what may very well be the WWF's best year in terms of wrestling quality and storytelling. Now I want to watch more 2000 PPVs... but I can't because we got other stuff to look at.

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