Royal Ramble 2000

I should probably remember to write a proper intro before putting these thing aside... but here we are. The second Royal Rumble I've watched live, with the first being the one Vince won, which was really, really bad. Maybe this show will be better.

We open the show Kurt Angle suffering his first loss in the WWF to the debuting TAZZZZZZZZ, who gets a huge pop in MSG, gets an even huger ECW chant, and is destined to get buried by bad booking because the WWF people don't like made guys. I watch this match and it makes me so angry that they had someone hot from the get-go and they'd kill him off in a couple months because he wasn't one of their guys. Absolutely short-sighted behavior on the part of WWF and it gets worse from here.

The Hardy Boyz defeated The Dudley Boyz in a Tables match.

There's a Miss Royal Rumble bikini contest that is won by elder stateswoman Mae Young, who has to be censored because she "showed her puppies." The puppies apparently aren't real. I am being purposefully vague here because the less said about this, the better. How you make a segment featuring a number of very fine looking women intolerable is a skillset seemingly exclusive to World Wrestling Entertainment.

Chris Jericho defeated Chyna and Hardcore Holly in a mediocre three-way to become the undisputed Intercontinental champion after weeks of him and Chyna being "co-champions" or something. This was another Stephanie brainfart in a series of Stephanie brainfarts that I'm glad never saw the light of day again... oh wait.

WWF Tag-Team Champions the New Age Outlaws defeated the Acolytes to retain the titles  in a thing that happened. Next.

WWF World Champion HHH defeated Cactus Jack in a street fight to retain the title and if there is a bucket list of WWE matches you should be watching, this is one of them. A fantastic match with a great backstory. For all the shit I would give Triple H later down the road, there was no doubt that 2000 was indeed HIS TIME and this match with Cactus Jack would cement him one of the top-tier names in the promotion.

The Rock wins the Royal Rumble to earn a title shot at Wrestlemania 2000... except he didn't because Big Show claims Rock had both feet on the ropes and then they havez match that Show would win... and then the title match would end up as a total clusterfuck. As for the RUmble itself, it was actually pretty good and certainly better than the one that came before.

The  Royal Rumble show usually kicks off the Road To Wrestlemania or whatever they called it, but it also kicked off what a lot of people felt was the absolute best year of WWF creative and profitability. A year that began without their top draw - Steve Austin was out with a neck injury at the time - this show proved that the WWF was perfectly fine going forward because they had - wait for it - LOTS OF STARS that people cared about and creative that mostly made sense.

A fine Rumble show to kick off the year 2000... now I'm tempted to check out the rest of the 2000 PPVs.