Category: WWE PPV Musings

WWF No Way Out 2000

The 2000s were an interesting period in wrestling. It was a period that saw WWF rises to its highest profits at the time, even with their top star on the shelf. It was a period that saw WCW – once on top of the wrestling world for eighty-ish weeks – begin its steep, maddening decline. It was a period that saw the cult favorite ECW get national television exposure on a network that was clearly using them in hopes of securing a bigger promotion to run on their channel. To the common fan who lived through the period, it was a boon of wrestling material.

The year 2000 is probably my favorite year of WWF. The edge of the Attitude Era was still pretty much in full swing and still as edgy as ever, even with the architect of Attitude having long since jumped to the competition. 2000 was where WWF finally got around to fixing its wrestling problem, with the timely arrival of former disgruntled WCW wrestlers as well as the grooming of some true wrestling machines to compliment the big names that kept the crowds coming back for more. In essence, it was the total package. Great angles, great wrestling, and great talent.

So yeah, I’m all but willing to revisit these PPVs… most of them. We’ve already covered the Royal Rumble 2000 years ago and that Royal Ramble post still holds up. So we’ll be diving into the next major show, No Way Out 2000, which saw reigning WWF Champion Triple H put his title up on the line against Cactus Jack inside Hell In A Cell, and if Cactus were to lose, he’d be forced to retire. Clearly, the stakes were high in this main event, so let’s check it out.

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WWE Elimination Chamber 2023

Second night in a row that I’m attending a WWE show… it’s a PPV, this time around; the Elimination Chamber PPV or whatever they’re calling it. Make no mistake, however; the Elimination Chamber may be the gimmick that the show is named for, but neither Chamber match is the focal point of the main event, as beloved underdog and hometown favorite Sami Zayn challenges the dominant Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. This was a major turning point in the story of Sami Zayn and the Bloodline and the way I saw it, there were only TWO ideal scenarios that you could go from here… but did they actually go there?

Unlike the Smackdown musings, I did watch the PPV as it aired on the WWE Network and so there’s a little more structure. And honestly, there’s a couple live notes I could toss there, but on a whole, there’s not much too to it. I think the crowd reactions translated well to television. Maybe a couple localized chants from our section didn’t quite make the cut, which is a shame because you had the one guy who constantly chanting for Mami and there were a couple random chants here and there – see the Smackdown musings because they’re the same chants pretty much. But on a whole, no complains on how it was presented on television other than the usual quibbles about the shitty N64-style graphics for the entrances as well as some of the more atrocious camera work during the Men’s chamber match.

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WWE Survivor Series 2022 – WARGAMES!

Yeah, I’m not going to spend too much time on this one. But the big selling point for this show was the proper WWE debut of WARGAMES, after a couple years of being largely an NXT deal. And of course, we’ve got a men’s Wargames and a women’s Wargames. Not because storylines dictate it, but because the marketing says so. Still, this should be a fun watch and if nothing else, I’m just happy I could watch a Survivor Series show that isn’t about the whole brand supremacy thing that nobody outside of WWE or its most hardest of hardcore fanatics could give two fucks about.
Quick thoughts after the break.

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WWF Survivor Series 1997 (25th Anniversary Re-Post)

The Montreal Screwjob celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary… how does that work, exactly?

Your guess is as good as mine.
I wrote a PPV Musings on this show five years ago to celebrate the event’s twentieth anniversary and while I was tempted to go back and watch this show to celebrate the occasion, it occurred to me that I’d have nothing to add to the proceedings in the five years since I mused on this particular event. And so I’m going to do something wholly unprecedented and I’m going to repost this musings, even though you can look up the original 2017 post, which is the exact same thing as this… except for this intro… and maybe a couple other things.
For those who want a full recounting of the events leading up to the 1997 Survivor Series event and the aforementioned Screwjob (or as WWE calls it, the “incident”), the Wrestling Observer recently posted an article called “Reliving The Montreal Screwjob 25 Years Later“, which is basically a repost of some of Dave Meltzer’s coverage of said events from back in the day, considered to be the most accurate account of said events. And of course, there is Paul Jay’s brilliant Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows documentary film, which you can watch for free on Youtube.

But if you’d rather read my ramblings on the event – for whatever reason – continue onwards after the break.

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WWE Armageddon 2004

Long story short, I found a DVD-R recording of this show and, needing some background noise while I did other stuff, popped it in. And yes, it’s a Smackdown PPV in late-2004, which means this is smack dab in the middle of the John Bradshaw Layfield WWE Championship reign. And he’s defending the title in a four-way against Booker T, Undertaker, and Eddie Guerrero. Well, I can’t imagine reacting positively to this back in the day, but it’s been close to a couple decades. Maybe I mellowed out a bit.

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WWE TLC 2020

“I’M LAUGHING BECAUSE THE FIEND IS BURNT
TO A FUCKING CRISP! THAT’S FUNNY!”
Vincent Verhei
Bryan & Vinny Show
December 21, 2020
Welp, here we are. The TLC show from the WWE Thunderdome featuring Bray Wyatt being burnt to a fucking crisp… and yes, the Fiend still sucked.
Why did I decide to watch this show after skipping it the first time around? That’s a very good question and as soon as I can come up with a very good answer, I will let you know. In the meantime, it’s Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt THE FIEND in a Firehouse Inferno match, which is basically an inferno match in the THUNDERDOME where everything is in a monitor and we do video tricks and shit like that…
Other stuff happened, I guess.

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WWE Extreme Rules 2022

Believe it or not, kids, this is another WWE modern PPV musings and on a Monday rather than the usual Wednesday slot. Meanwhile, I have still yet to watch the past two AEW PPV events. Are the tides turning and I’m slowing veering back to the land of McSon-In-Law? Stay tuned for further developments as they happen, but for now, let’s dip into this Extreme Rules PPV, which wasn’t a total dumpster fire.

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WWE Clash At The Castle 2022

It was a big weekend of wrestling. One night featured the AEW All Out PPV, while the other night featured WWE’s Clash At The Castle show from Wales. Prevailing circumstances prevented me from catching the AEW show, but I was able to watch the WWE PPV and so I’d figure that I would share my thoughts here.
We’re about a month or so removed from HHH’s stint as the new head of WWE Creative and there has been some changes here and there. A bunch of guys who were released have been brought back, there’s more of a focus on wrestling, and people are even allowed to say wrestling and hospital. It’s not exactly a huge turnaround and it’s still going to be a while before we can properly gauge this a success, but it’s steps in the right direction.
So I’m going to give this relatively minor show that’s being treated like a big deal a fair shake. And if turns out good, who knows? I might start watching these WWE PPVs again when they happen. Otherwise, I’ll be more than content waiting until the new year to give this another shot.

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WWE Summerslam 2022

I had a somewhat cute little intro about Summerslam in July, but honestly, I wasn’t feeling it.
I missed the show when it aired lived; had a nice road trip that day with the family and when I got back, I really wasn’t feeling in the mood to do anything but sleep, so I held off until a week or so later. Of course, the musings for this show are only happening now because I wanted to get the last two Summerslams out of the way first.
So it’s live from Nashville and it’s a stadium show, surprisingly enough. So it looks different from the usual homogenized sets they usually use.

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WWE Summerslam 2021

Yeah, I’ve got nothing for this one, kids… so GOOMBA!
Summerslam 2021 took place on a Saturday; the rare instance of the annual PPV taking place on another day outside of its usual Sunday night airing. Summerslam 2021 took place the night after former former wrestler Cookie Monster Punk made his return to wrestling on the second episode of AEW Rampage.
I didn’t watch Summerslam last year; I had better things to do. And reading the results from the show as well as news that it went beyond the promised three-hour runtime meant that it was going to be the first major WWE PPV that I would miss out on. But since this year’s Summerslam is looking to go international, I’d figure that I’ve got nothing to lose and give this show a shot.

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