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Morning Glory
#25: The Fall Of WWF/E (Part 3)
Well, it’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here. The third part of my series, ‘Nostalgia, Necrophilia, and Torn Quads: The Fall of the WWF/E’ is finally here. My reasons for the lack of continuation in this series? Simple, really. I haven’t been as angered by WWE TV recently as I have in the past, so my fury at them was not vented as it was beforehand. Now, however, after a short period of hope, things look as bad as ever. If you check out the second part of this series, you’ll remember that I talked about the blown ‘InVasion’, and how Vince McMahon’s arrogance killed the biggest angle of all time. This piece? It’ll concentrate on HHH’s failed face run, Chris Jericho’s failed title run, and yes, more failures….without further ado…
Nostalgia, Necrophilia, and Torn Quads: The Fall of the WWF/E, Circa 2001-3
After the end of the Alliance angle, in November 2001, while it was clear that the Invasion angle had been badly blown, and had lost the company serious money, things in the WWF seemed to be looking up. The Rock was still around, and was easily the best babyface on the roster, while the rise of Rob Van Dam still seemed unstoppable. Chris Jericho had turned heel, and was relatively fresh in terms of the main event. And of course, Triple H was set for his triumphant return from the horrific quad injury that he suffered back in May. The night after the Survivor Series PPV, the PPV that had seen the death of the Alliance was the moment when things began to change. Firstly, Kurt Angle and Vince McMahon, faces as the Survivor Series closed, turned heel, while Steve Austin, an Alliance heel at the PPV, went the opposite way. The crowd obviously wanted this, and for once, the WWF simply went with the crowd reactions. The turns seemed effective, especially as, on the same show, Ric Flair made his re-debut in the federation. Flair was positioned as a ‘50% owner’ of the WWF, and therefore a major rival to McMahon. Oh, things were becoming interesting indeed.
The first situation addressed by Flair, who was almost like a throwback to Commissioner Foley back in 2000, was the controversy surrounding the company’s top titles. The WWF Title was held by Steve Austin, while the WCW Title, re-Christened as the ‘World Title’, was held by The Rock. So, it was decided that at Vengeance, the re-named December PPV, Austin would defend his title against Angle, Rock would defend his against Jericho, with the winners meeting in a unification match in the main event. At the time, it was thought that the mini-tournament was merely a distraction, and the Rock-Austin showdown, a rematch from the legendary Wrestlemania X-7, was a lock for the unification match. The WWF instead decided to throw a spanner into that plan, a spanner that went by the moniker of Y2J. Yes, Chris Jericho, a man who it seemed the WWF had no confidence in at main event level, was chosen to become the first ever Undisputed Champion. Jericho defeated Austin in the unification match, with the help of the returning Booker T, but the interference didn’t matter. Jericho was champion, and surely this would cement his well-deserved place in the main event, right?
How wrong I was. From the moment Jericho won the Undisputed Title, he was positioned as a Honky Tonk Man type of champion, the type that would get his ass kicked throughout a match, but somehow manage to escape with the title. This would’ve been fine in essence – Jericho’s character is the cocky, pussy heel, and therefore the type of champion who cheats to retain his title would’ve worked for his character. However, the way Jericho was booked made the Honky Tonk Man look like Goldberg in 1998. Constantly jobbing in tag matches and non-title affairs, Jericho’s title reign took a backseat to the antics of Steve Austin, the return of HHH, and eventually the introduction of the nWo. While Jericho was incredibly entertaining as champion, due to the poor booking, his feuds were highly under par, and this resulted in a forgettable title reign. The only good thing about the reign came at the Royal Rumble, when, using an exposed turnbuckle and a low blow amongst other things, Jericho managed to defeat The Rock to retain his title. After this, Jericho moved onto Steve Austin and HHH, and went downhill from there.
While Jericho was retaining his title against The Rock, Steve Austin and HHH, future challengers to Jericho, were involved in the Royal Rumble match, battling it out to get the Wrestlemania title shot. It was largely predictable that the WWF would go with one of those two for the Wrestlemania shot, with Triple H being the most likely candidate. While the returning babyface HHH was a fresh character at this point, Steve Austin had become horrifyingly stale since his face turn. Austin’s heel turn had worked because it had freshened up a stale character – a character that had not really changed since early 1997. While ratings had dropped when Austin turned, this was more a sign of the changing attitudes of the viewers than of displeasure with the WWF product. Austin’s heel turn meant that other, fresher babyfaces could come into the top spot that he had enjoyed for so long. When he was turned face after the Alliance angle, Austin immediately took a huge step backwards. Back to 1998, to be exact. Where his heel character was interesting and broke new ground for the Rattlesnake, his face turn merely retread paths that he had walked on for nearly five years. Austin’s ongoing feud with Vince McMahon began again, with Kurt Angle, the Bossman, and Booker T positioned as McMahon’s lackeys. Austin chased Booker through church, beat Bossman down every week, and generally caused mayhem, but it was nothing but a throwback to 1998.
Incredibly, though, the WWF had a chance to change that at the Royal Rumble. The major story of the match was the rivalry between the two major babyfaces, HHH and Austin, and the fact that for both men, the match was a must-win. When Austin was finally eliminated by Angle and Curt ‘Mr Perfect’ Hennig, he snapped, and took a chair to both men, before nailing HHH with the chair too, for the simple reason that he could. Austin left the arena jawing with fans, to a mixed reaction. This would’ve been a perfect chance to turn Austin again, this time against HHH, and would’ve given him a logical reason – his well-documented obsession with the WWF Title. As it was, the WWF decided to forsake this chance, and continued pushing Austin in an almost nostalgic push, hoping to re-capture the magic of 1998. Recapturing past successes, and trying to make them work in the WWF of today was a major part of the problems caused in 2002, but we’ll get to that later. For now, we’ll return to the subject of the man who did eventually win the Royal Rumble, eliminating Kurt Angle to claim his victory.
Triple H, the man who had fought through eight months of injury and rehab, had finally returned to the ring – HIS ring, and of course received the logical monster babyface push. Upon return, Hunter was as over, if not moreso, than any babyface on the roster. Most fans respected his dedication to get through his terrible injury, and even more had merely been waiting for a chance to cheer HHH, a popular wrestler even when he was a huge heel. At the time, nobody could complain about HHH’s babyface push – it was the obvious route to take – but nobody thought of the limitations of a face HHH. From day one, it was clear that Hunter was not comfortable in the role of the fan favourite, the hero, and would’ve been more suited to the role of the antagonistic heel, a role he had played so well for the past two years. The fan reactions showed that for the time being, that could not be, so the babyface push continued. The other problem with Hunter, was of course his ringwork. Clearly not the same wrestler following the injury, HHH’s added upper-body mass, coupled with the loss of speed and movement due to the leg injury, made his form in 2000 look a light year away, even three months into the comeback. The backlash from the online fans was swift – HHH bashing was common in February – and the mark contingent were not much kinder, as HHH began to receive tepid reactions shortly after. By the time Wrestlemania rolled around, it was clear that Hunter was not top babyface material, no matter how much he was respected for his toughness during injury.
As HHH was not an effective babyface, and Steve Austin was a stale babyface, the other man who could have provided someone for the crowd to really get behind was slowly but surely de-pushed to the lower card. Rob Van Dam, the hottest thing in the whole of the WWF in 2001, was firstly programmed with the newly heel Undertaker in a feud over the Hardcore Title. Van Dam dropped the title to Taker at Vengeance in a fun match, and it was expected that he’d be pushed to better things in the coming year. After a great mini-feud with Jericho, when the Royal Rumble came around, Van Dam’s push was clearly waning. At the Royal Rumble, Van Dam entered the match at #29, going through about five men, before eating a Pedigree and being thrown out. Whether it was inadvertent, or some politics from HHH, the Pedigree seemed to be significant of what was going on. RVD was no longer the major babyface, HHH was, and the fans had to accept that. Van Dam ended up in midcard feuds with Goldust and William Regal, and never regained the steam that he had in late 2001.
While HHH was positioned strongly throughout early 2002, leading into his Wrestlemania title shot, his eventual opponent, Chris Jericho, did not receive such treatment. While I’ve talked about the pitfalls of Jericho’s actual booking, his position on the card is something I have yet to discuss. Jericho was champion, yes, and more often than not, he was main eventing the shows. But was he really pushed as #1 heel? In January, maybe, but as February rolled in, and Jericho’s next challenger was named as Steve Austin, things began to go even more pear-shaped. Vince McMahon and Ric Flair, the two on-screen ‘owners’ of the WWF, had never gotten along, and by the time we reached February, something had to give. That something was Vince’s on-screen (and off-screen) sanity, as he brought the nWo, consisting of the original line up of Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Hulk Hogan, back to the WWF. The angle behind this was that Vince couldn’t stand sharing his company with Ric Flair, so he would kill it using the same men that killed WCW. Of course, the reasons that the nWo ‘killed’ WCW were never really explained, giving little credence to the angle. And while the nWo had been a successful angle in the mid-90’s, it had not been a part of WCW television for quite some time. In fact, Hogan’s final WCW run had nothing to do with the nWo, and the same with Nash. Still, the WWF believed that the marquee names of the nWo would still draw, and they were immediately pushed as the #1 heels, ahead of the champion, Jericho.
At February’s No Way Out, the nWo made their return to WWF TV, firstly cutting a promo, and then causing Steve Austin to lose to Chris Jericho in the main event. Jericho was treated as an afterthought, while the nWo were shown to be the stars. If the nWo were anywhere near being effective heels, this wouldn’t have been as bad, but the WWF forgot two key things about the three men. Number one, all three were way past their primes in the ring, and were not capable of a half-decent match to save their lives. Number two, they were never booed by the fans, who saw them as returning heroes, and cheered them as loudly as any of the babyfaces. This especially applied to Hulk Hogan, who was given standing ovations by many of the crowds who were expected to boo him out of the building. Their credibility was soon made worse – firstly by their feud with Steve Austin, in which he basically squashed both Hall and Nash, killing off the ‘monster’ element of the stable, and finally by the face turn of Hogan at Wrestlemania. At Wrestlemania, HHH finally defeated Jericho for the title, sending him crashing back to the mid-card with a bump.
The weeks following Wrestlemania provided a stark contrast to the weeks following the Survivor Series, back in November. The hope that the events following that PPV had provided was nowhere to be seen. Instead, with HHH’s title reign taking a backseat to Hogan’s return to the red and yellow gimmick and Austin’s 1998 flashback feud with the authority figure (Ric Flair) and Undertaker, the nWo’s sorry de-push making them seem a pointless hiring in the first place, and Jericho, Van Dam, and others floundering in the midcard, the WWF in mid 2002 seemed almost like a weird hybrid of 1998 and 1988 WWF, with a bit of mid-90’s WCW mixed in. Could they get to a level any worse than the one they had reached? The answer, was sadly, yes. But….that’s a whole new column.
Coming soon….the fourth part of this series, in which I’ll be discussing the horrid nostalgia trip of 2002, as Hulkamania ran wild once again, the dire early days of the now accepted Brand Extension, and the monster push of a man who was simply not over.
Until then, if you want to send me some feedback, send it to the new address of OratoryMorningGlory@hotmail.com.
Thanks for reading…
Scott Newman
OratoryMorningGlory@hotmail.com
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