Diving into 2006… yeah, this was another sour year and since this is the road to Wrestlemania and this is a Smackdown PPV, that means Eddie-sploitation is in full swing. But hey, the main event is Kurt Angle defending his Big Gold Belt against… THE UNDERTAKER!
Should be a fun time if nothing else…
Cruiserweight Champion Gregory (a.k.a. Shane) Helms defeated… hold on, lemme check my notes… okay, so… Pscicosis, Super Crazy, Scotty 2 Hotty, Paul London, Nunzio (a.k.a. Little Guido of ECW fame), Kid Kash, Funaki, and Brian Kendrick in what was build a a Cruiserweight Open, but the whole thing came across as more of a Cruiserweight Cluster where you had a million people hitting a million moves and everyone had the bright idea of ganging up on poor Shane Helms until he eventually manages to steal a pin and retain the title.
It’s worth noting that Shane Helms (could never be bothered to call him ‘Gregory’ even when he was doing the Hurricane gimmick and ‘Gregory’ was the Clark Kent type) would hold on to the Cruiserweight title for another year before losing the belt to Chavo Guerrero. And then Chavo would eventually lose the title to Hornswoggle… yes, THAT Hornswoggle. And then the Cruiserweight title would be retired shortly thereafter. If that doesn’t tell you how much regard WWE held for the Cruiserweights at the time, then I don’t know what to tell you. The fact that Helms got a year plus long reign with the title has me assuming that nobody gave a shit about the division and they just did whatever until they decided to kill the division a year later, so… I’m probably giving this more thought than they did, aren’t I?
JBL defeated a youngun by the name of Bobby Lashley with an assist from on Fit Finlay and his stick of doom. A year later, young master Lashley would be ECW Champion and partake in the Battle Of The Billi…. oh… ooh… Yeah, well, the match was alright. JBL and Lashley did some clubberin’ on each other and it was fine. That’s all I could ask for on most days.
Matt Hardy and mystery partner TATANKA (yes, that TATANKA…… buffalo) defeated WWE Tag-Team Champions MNM (Johnny Nitro & Joey Mercury) in a non-title thing that happened. I had completely forgotten that Tatanka was a thing in 2006 and apparently, at some point, he turned heel… now I’m genuinely curious about that… but that’s for another time.
Chris Benoit defeated United States Champion Booker T to win the title in a solid match. Booker and Benoit have always worked well together since their heydays in WCW and this was another great outing from the two of them.
Randy Orton defeated Rey Mysterio via roll-up to earn a World title shot at Wrestlemania… for context, Rey Mysterio won the Royal Rumble to earn said title match and got into a feud with Orton, who had dishonored the name of the late Eddie Guerrero by not only setting his lowrider on fire during a silly bit, but also claimed that Eddie was in hell. So, naturally, Rey Mysterio, who put his World title shot on the line in this match and was on this run in honor of Eddie’s memory and tasked with avenging this disrespect, not only failed to defeat Orton and uphold said honor, but he also lost the World title shot that he stupidly put on the line, thus making him look like a total fucking failure. Yes, Rey FAILED. He FAILED Eddie. He FAILED his family. He FAILED himself… but that’s okay, because the World Title match at Mania would end up being a 3-way and Rey would win that match as well as the title… and then he would go on to become one of the worst-booked World Champions in recent memory, losing every non-title affair in brutal fashion and even in victory, he still looked like a chump. I mean, listen… in a vacuum, the match was fine. But everything around that match was… oy.
And in the main event, Big Gold World Champion Kurt Angle defeated Undertaker via a clever finish that saw Angle – trapped in Taker’s MMA-type submission – somehow manage to cradle Taker into a pinfall to win the match and retain the title. Little things like that are examples of why Kurt Angle was one of the best in the game back in the day. This was an excellent main event match – probably one of Taker’s best matches while it was another day in the office for Kurt Angle. A far cry from their 2000 match, which was… not quite as good. By all means, give this match a watch; it’s fantastic.
I mean, that’s how I feel about this whole PPV as a whole – it’s basically a one-match show and that one match was the main event. Everything before it… yeah, there were a couple fun ones, but the rest of it was just… eh. And that Orton/Mysterio match was just… oy. So, yeah, go watch Angle/Taker from this show. Skip the rest.
dtm666 