In my previous blog, I detailed my journey into professional wrestling fan-dom. This blog continues this, journeying towards my first Wrestlemania trip.
After The Invasion
After the Invasion angle, I found myself watching WWF more often than not. However, I often found myself questioning storylines due to my new found knowledge about "Sports Entertainment" (I had at this point looked at the WCW back story and found out to my horror that wrestling was not real). I didn't believe that Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock could lose in one night to Chris Jericho at the 2001 Vengeance PPV (I liked Jericho on the microphone in promos but didn't believe he had the skill to beat the headliners of the Invasion storyline). I knew that when Triple H returned to the WWF after his injury (and then won the Royal Rumble) that he was always going to win the title at Wrestlemania 18.
However, all this changed on February 17th 2002. For in The Bradley Center, Milwaukee, something was happening that re-stoked my interest in Wrestling. The No Way Out PPV brought out the young man in me again, for this was the first time I had seen the original 3-man nWo. I had been engrossed by the nWo storyline when I started watching WCW, but I had always seen the nWo in it's hugely inflated state, or with the Wolfpac gimmick. Even though I knew the nWo were designed to be "heels", I could not help but feel the arrival was a huge plus for the WWF, and was hugely excited regarding their arrival. The No Way Out PPV was nothing special, but the nWo storyline really went up a notch in the coming weeks.
Wrestlemania X8
As detailed in the previous blog, my ability to watch Wrestling when I was a child was based purely on Sky Sports showing re-runs of the PPV's and Raw broadcasts. Wrestlemania X8 was the first Wrestlemania I was allowed to watch live (Sky Sports also showed PPV's for free back then) and I was so excited. The nWo had become the dastardly heels that they were meant to be by hospitalising The Rock, including driving a truck into an ambulance that he was in. This was a shocking moment in WWF history and was something that hadn't been seen since the days of the Attitude Era. This set up Hulk Hogan vs. The Rock at Wrestlemania X8, an match that showcased the grandest stage of them all.
The rest of the card was not of interest to me sadly, the only match that mattered to me was Rock vs. Hogan. Watching the match, I felt as torn as the 68,000 people in the Skydome in Toronto felt. I saw my current hero (The Rock) battle with the man who carried WCW for a long while (Hogan). I just didn't know who to cheer for. The match was everything I had hoped it would be, and clearly showed that Hogan hadn't lost any of his skills as a storyteller in the ring. The Rock triumphed (a result I believe to be correct, a"passing of the torch" almost) and Hulk Hogan was back where he belonged, as a face character.
Superstar Debuts
I was always on the lookout for new superstars who offered up an interesting persona. Just before the King of the Ring in 2002, one such superstar (who would end up having a profound effect on the wrestling business) would debut on an episode of Raw. That person was Brock Lesnar. He offered a ring style not seen by myself since the WCW days of Goldberg. He brutalised the KOTR, he won the WWE Championship at Summerslam 2002 from The Rock (a result that was very much believable) and destroyed the WWE Superstars until he lost the title (wrongly in my opinion) to the Big Show at the Survivor Series of that year. He was then triumphant at the Royal Rumble of 2013 and ultimately won back the WWE Championship from Kurt Angle at Wrestlemania XIX (including THAT attempt at a shooting star press that almost killed Lesnar).
They always say the Raw after Wrestlemania is a thoroughly unpredictable affair. This proved to be the case at the Raw in Seattle after Wrestlemania XIX, as a superstar debuted in the WWE that caused me so much excitement I nearly exploded. Goldberg. Goldberg interrupted a promo by a then heel Rock and made the memories of WCW come flooding back (I didn't have access to gossip sites back then so I was not aware that Goldberg would be going to WWE). He then fought The Rock at Backlash, a match he won using his trademark spear and Jackhammer combination. Sadly, the run after the Backlash PPV for Goldberg was uninspiring (there was the World Heavyweight Title run, a run that was ended in a poorly conceived manner), and both Lesnar and Goldberg would be gone in the April.
ECW One Night Stand
In the period between Wrestlemania XX and June 2005, there were no real stand out moments for me. That was until June 12th 2005. In the TV shows leading up to this night, former ECW Superstars were facing Raw and Smackdown Superstars in a "Invasion" angle. What however was different to the previous Invasion angle was that because most of the ECW Superstars I had been watching week in and week out on Raw and Smackdown, so the likes of Rob Van Dam, Rhyno and The Dudleyz were well known to me.
The event itself was unlike any other wrestling event I had ever seen. The action was breathtaking, the language colourful and the promos unscripted. The ECW fans in the Hammerstein Ballroom, while not plentiful, were loud and an integral part of the event. Paul Heyman showed that he was a wrestling genius that night, and the whole event ranks amongst one of my favourites. In a night of stand out events, The Sandman's entrance (including Metallica's Enter Sandman playing him in and the whole crowd chanting along - something not apparent on the WWE Network re-runs) was the moment which I doubt I will ever forget as a Wrestling Fan.
Differing Quality of Storylines
The rest of 2005 would be made up of a changing dynamic in the WWE. Hulk Hogan was in the Hall of Fame part of his WWE run, having returned from his first stint in TNA, and found himself in a promo against Shawn Michaels (who had attempted to turn heel by delivering a Sweet Chin Music to Hogan) leading up to Summerslam 2005. The storyline was ok, but sadly the match was overshadowed by the constant overselling of moves by Michaels.
At the same event, there was two contrasting storylines that the WWE had chose to run with. The first involved the real life rivals Matt Hardy and Edge. It had been revealed earlier in the year that Edge was having a real life affair with Matt Hardy's girlfriend at the time, Lita. This was a storyline in poor taste in my opinion, however there was a certain sense of real life drama in the match that they had at Summerslam (Matt's first with Edge after the affair became public knowledge). The 2nd of the matches with a very poor taste storyline was the match between Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio for custody of Rey Mysterio's son, Dominick. The less said about this match the better. These storylines proved to be one of the main reasons why I gave up on being a Wrestling fan after Summerslam 2005. The WWE had changed in a direction I did not approve of. I felt incredibly uncomfortable seeing two grown men fighting in a wrestling match over custody papers for a child. I would not watch another Wrestling event for about 5 years. Looking back, I missed some key parts of wrestling history. Good points included the two Wrestlemania matches between The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels, The WWE debut of CM Punk, John Cena, Edge and Randy Ortons rapid rises up the WWE ladder and Bret Hart returning to the WWE. The bad points included the weekly reformation of ECW, Donald Trump's involvement in Wrestlemania 23, the double murder/suicide involving Chris Benoit and The Great Khali's run as World Heavyweight Champion
The last part of the blog will come next week. Follow me on Twitter @MalingoIsHere
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