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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Sept 1, 2021 5:26:05 GMT -5
Got a little bored in lockdown, big whoop, wanna fight about it? Anyway, this should be remarkably interesting. 2005 was a massive year for WWE, as they put their stocks into two rising stars that would go on to be the faces of the company for the remainder of the decade (one of them well into the next). It'll be interesting to watch the John Cena backlash happen in real time. Along the way, there are some notable events, including the arrival and departure of one of the most controversial talents in the history of the company, an unprecedented spill-over of real life circumstances changing the directions of several careers, a fair few forgotten oddities, some absolute classic bouts and one of wrestling history's most tragic deaths. Anyway, we begin in January, and we have no World Heavyweight Champion on RAW, although that is quickly rectified by... putting it back on the guy who had it a month earlier. Yep, it's the death rattles of the Triple H "Reign Of Terror", but not all is well in Evolution. Randy Orton is long gone, and Batista's got his own ambitions, which are handily boosted by his first Royal Rumble win (the one where Vince destroys both quads trying to book the finish on the fly). Recent injuries have seen some shuffling of the deck in the other RAW title divisions, with Trish Stratus regaining the Women's Championship after Lita blew out her knee. She will return to TV soon enough, but she won't compete again this year. That said, this does end up being one of the most pivotal years in Lita's whole career, but more on that in a few posts.. La Resistance (the Quebec version) are keeping the World Tag Team Championship warm briefly after winning them from William Regal in the absence of his partner Eugene (who also blew out his knee, and won't be back in action until mid-year), while Shelton Benjamin ploughs a lonely furrow in his first reign as the Intercontinental Champion. And Kane is still somehow feuding with Gene Snitsky, but it's not his fault. I promise I'll only make that reference once. Meanwhile on SmackDown, it's a great day for America (  ) as John Bradshaw Layfield is your WWE Champion, having been as such for the previous six months already. At this point in time JBL is tangled in a whole web of schemes, those of him and his Cabinet, Kurt Angle and his heavies Mark Jindrak and noted peas enthusiast Luther Reigns, and Big Show, also involving a couple of anonymous women who literally only exist for like another month after this. The United States Championship is spinning in the hands of that angry young stud John Cena, who will go on to finish runner-up in the Rumble. The Basham Brothers are enjoying a fleeting WWE Tag Team Championship reign after winning the belts off of Rey Mysterio and an injured Rob Van Dam, who was the third wrestler to blow out a knee this month and will ALSO not return to action this year. Funaki is somehow Cruiserweight Champion, and actually stringing together some wins for the first time since Yamaguchi-san was talking about choppy choppy the pee-pee. And in correspondence with his brother from a destructive mother, The Undertaker is also still fending off a limited hoss in poet laureate Heidenreich. You all know how it works, so here are the rankings after January 2005: |
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Sept 3, 2021 11:01:44 GMT -5
Into February now, and most of this month was spent on Batista going back and forth between RAW and SmackDown trying to figure out which world title to challenge for, as was his right as the Royal Rumble winner. Eventually, he decided to go for Triple H's World Heavyweight Championship, emphatically sealing the deal with one of WWE's most memorable babyface turns. Honourable mention to the promo segment just before the contract signing, with Triple H explaining to Ric Flair his whole "Save Batista from being run over by JBL's limo" gambit to try and trick Batista to go to SmackDown, only to pull back the camera to show that Batista was listening in on the whole thing. Kevin Dunn did actually used to be good at this stuff.
As it stood, SmackDown needed a WrestleMania challenger, so conveniently a #1 contender tournament was held, won by John Cena after defeating Kurt Angle in the final at No Way Out. He'll be fighting JBL, who pulled off one of the flukiest title defenses of all time, winning a barbed wire steel cage match over Big Show, by escaping under the ring via the hole that was just made by Big Show chokeslamming him through it. WrestleMania is shaping up fairly nicely, as Angle is set to fight Shawn Michaels, Chris Jericho's got a crazy idea about some kind of ladder match, and Randy Orton is thinking about his past to decide his future.
In other things of note, both brands had new tag team champions, which were both actually one of the previous tag team champions just with new partners. William Regal regained the gold with old sparring partner Tajiri on a rare episode of RAW broadcast from Japan, while Rey Mysterio joined forces with his Latino brethren Eddie Guerrero to win the belts at No Way Out. And it wasn't the only gold won by a Guerrero that night, as Chavo Guerrero started another run as the Cruiserweight Champion. His year will get wild and wacky soon enough... Finally, we had the debut of Chris Masters, with The Masterpiece making a heavy first impression right in Steven Richards's face.
Here are the rankings after February 2005:
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Sept 7, 2021 8:01:25 GMT -5
Into March now, and everything is set for WrestleMania XXI. Can Batista prove to be the unstoppable wave of momentum that puts the Reign Of Terror to bed once and for all? Can John Cena end the longest WWE Championship reign of the last decade? What kind of chaos can be expected from the first ever Money In The Bank ladder match? Can Kurt Angle and Shawn Michaels pull off an all-time classic? Can Trish Stratus pull off something passable from Playboy cover girl Christy Hemme? How far up his crack will Big Show's sumo thong ride up in his sumo match with Akebono? All that and some other things as WrestleMania goes Hollywood... But that's next month.
In the meantime, in significant events of the month... Kurt Angle spent the month trying to emulate Shawn Michaels's career achievements within the space of four weeks. This included a great match against Michaels's former Rockers partner Marty Jannetty, one that was so good Jannetty was re-signed to the company... Only for him to remember that he was Marty Jannetty and he has the greatest self-destructive streak in wrestling history. Oh well. This angle also featured the first appearance of Sensational Sherri in WWE for some 12 years, as Angle put the Ankle Lock onto Michaels's former valet. Randy Orton turned back heel in preparation for his WrestleMania match against The Undertaker, finally putting to rest a babyface run that had been spluttering and stuttering since well before the start of the year. Continuing the trend of intergender violence, this was capped off by an RKO to Stacy Keibler, who was ostensibly Orton's girlfriend at this point in time on TV. In all seriousness, I'd never seen any segments of them together other than this one before I started watching this again for scoring.
Title change wise, we had two... Orlando Jordan winning the United States Championship off of John Cena after copious interference from JBL (they then proceeded to blow up Cena's spinner version of the US belt in a garbage bin), and Paul London winning the Cruiserweight Championship in a battle royal, capping off a long string of wins that sees him well up the rankings at this point in time.
Here are the rankings after March 2005:
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Sept 10, 2021 3:52:04 GMT -5
Now we land in April, and this year had one of the more significant WrestleManias in WWE history as both Batista and John Cena won their first world championships and got set up to be the franchise stars of the company for many years to come. As a matter of fact, both men will see out the remainder of this year without losing their belts. But in WWE, the movie doesn't stop when Rocky wins the heavyweight title, and things roll towards Backlash and Judgment Day, the former champions Triple H and JBL remaining a thorn in the sides of the conquering heroes. In other WrestleMania fallout, Edge is now the proud father of a bouncing baby briefcase, having won the first Money In The Bank ladder match. Kurt Angle got the better of Shawn Michaels in an all-time classic, and now finds himself on the wrong side of... Booker T, who has started bringing his wife Sharmell to shows. Oh, man... It's THIS angle, isn't it? Michaels, meanwhile, caught the ire of Muhammad Hassan and Khosrow Daivari, and has called in the orange reinforcements for Backlash in one Hulk Hogan, for his first match in WWE since 2003. The Undertaker put away Randy Orton and defended the streak in one of The Deadman's better WrestleMania matches, something that would bode well for him in the second half of the 2000s. Orton, meanwhile, is out for a while after surgery in his soon-to-be infamously troublesome shoulder. Trish Stratus easily disposed of Christy Hemme to retain her Women's Championship, but still felt like stirring the pot with Lita who, as it turned out, was doing a bit of extra-curricular pot-stirring. Yes, we're at the point in time now where the Edge/Lita affair was made public by an aggrieved Matt Hardy. WWE sought fit to dismiss Hardy over the matter, leading to one of the first "call to arms" moments in internet wrestling fandom that I can recall, to take out that injustice on Lita. Her wrestling career would never be the same after this, and given how much of a toll this would take on her mentally, one has to wonder if it was taken too far relative to her initial misdeeds. Anyway, as it pertains to on-screen matters, she's still technically married to Kane, and she's called him in to deal with the Stratus situation, which now also involves an increasingly horny Viscera. The traditional post-WM callups weren't quite as traditional yet, but there were still a few. MNM, the trio of Joey Mercury, Johnny Nitro and Melina, would instantly create waves by beating the increasingly fractured pairing of Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio for the WWE Tag Team Championship in their first match. Matt Morgan would make his return after a brief run over the winter of 2003/2004, and seemingly has picked up a speech impediment somehow. Who knew you could catch those? And on RAW, we have the hip-thrusting dynamos known as The Heart Throbs, Romeo and Antonio. Shout out to Shy Guy, who remains my earliest known instance of someone on here being a complete and utter stan for a lower card talent (or in this case, talents). In exchange, we lose Rhyno and Molly Holly to the future endeavour wilderness. Here are the rankings after April 2005: |
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Sept 13, 2021 11:33:02 GMT -5
It's gotta be May, and we have us a double helping of single-brand PPVs with RAW doing Backlash and SmackDown doing Judgment Day. At Backlash, Batista managed to put away Triple H for a second time in a handful of weeks to retain his World Heavyweight Championship, and it did look like briefly that things would end there for their rivalry as the Gold Rush #1 Contender Tournament was held, most famously known for the absolutely cracking match between Shawn Michaels and Shelton Benjamin, and THAT Sweet Chin Music spot. Edge would go on to win that after Lita betrayed Kane and made the assist for the Money In The Bank holder, marking a rare occasion that a Money In The Bank holder was also the official #1 Contender. Edge didn't get the chance to double-dip however, as after Batista retained the title in their match, Triple H promptly challenged him to a Hell In A Cell match for it at Vengeance in June. But that's not the only PPV coming up... After the incredible sales numbers of the Rise And Fall Of ECW documentary DVD, WWE put plans together to host an ECW reunion PPV card, named One Night Stand, and Eric Bischoff wasn't happy about it, putting ECW alums like Chris Benoit and Tajiri through the wringer for daring to have worked there. He'll be leading a ragtag group of heels from both brands to protest the PPV live in the Hammerstein Ballroom. If it weren't for the fact that they all worked there, it'd be much like many in today's WWE audience, paying their hard-earned to go to a show just complain about how much it sucks. And it looks like we're going to be without a Women's Champion for a while, as Trish Stratus was written out to recover from a herniated disc thanks to a big splash from Viscera at Backlash and they aren't in any real hurry to crown a new one. Not that anyone would really notice... You know there was only ONE (1) televised women's match in WWE for the entire month of May 2005? And that was a lingerie pillow fight. We still have a long way to go to make things right, but it's something like this that makes you realise how far we've actually gone already.
Meanwhile, on the SmackDown side of things, John Cena defended his WWE Championship in probably the bloodiest match of his entire career, an I Quit match against JBL, marking the second straight Judgment Day main event that ended in an absolute bloody mess. Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio have parted ways in brutal fashion, but this is the part of the feud where we haven't got the kid involved yet so its still your fairly standard grudge. And Kurt Angle, legitimate Olympic gold medallist, is into "guttersluts" and "bestiality sex" now, something that makes Karrion Kross wearing leather bondage straps and a silly helmet look like small potatoes. Anyway, Angle is set to fight Sharmell herself next week.
The only title change to occur this month was at Backlash, when The Hurricane and Rosey were the last team standing in a Turmoil match for the World Tag Team Championship and left with the gold. The superhero duo would be a trio by the end of the month, with Stacy Keibler returning after her RKO-related absence and coming aboard as "Super Stacy". And in future endeavour-related matters, Luther Reigns is out the door, leaving him plenty of time to eat all the peas he could handle. Next time anyone hears of him, its when his name ends up at the centre of a steroid-related whistleblowing in 2018, that only gained interest because it was being teased as though it was ROMAN Reigns being exposed.
Here are the rankings after May 2005:
By the way, when does this whole Christian thing actually happen? One of the things I was thinking about when I started this year was "Oh, this'll be when Christian gets really over to such an extent that the crowd starts turning on John Cena", and unless it happens in a really quick window, it only seems to be isolated to the episodes of RAW they've done in Canada. Where does this following come from? Or was it never anything to do with Christian that turned Cena? Was it the Jericho and Angle feuds after this?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2021 16:10:53 GMT -5
There was a smattering during the Christian stuff as he was on fire during this run. The Jericho stuff through tinder on the embers then the Angle feud turned it into an inferno.
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Post by Magic knows Black Lives Matter on Sept 13, 2021 16:53:34 GMT -5
Yeah, I think the Jericho and Angle feuds were the tipping points for Cena (Sucks!). HHH was just throwing seasoned salt in the wound during their feud the next year
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Sept 17, 2021 8:33:54 GMT -5
End of June and we're halfway home for 2005. The big story of the month was the Draft Lottery, which allowed for five RAW talents and five SmackDown talents to be sent to the other. Going to RAW would be WWE Champion John Cena, Kurt Angle, Carlito, Big Show and the still-recovering Rob Van Dam, while SmackDown got Chris Benoit, the also still-recovering Randy Orton, Muhammad Hassan (and Daivari), Christian and, finally, World Heavyweight Champion Batista. 11 other talents would end up going to the other show.
Cena's arrival to RAW meant that we finally got the long-awaited Cena v Christian feud, set up by a memorable interaction back at the Royal Rumble. However, Christian was a mere speed bump as Cena rolled towards a collision with a newly-heel Chris Jericho, having beaten both in a triple threat match at Vengeance. This will be fascinating to watch, as it's about here that Cena starts losing the crowd and begins a decade-long battle of being both the top face and, seemingly, the top heel. Angle finally left his deviant ways behind him as he lost a WrestleMania rematch with Shawn Michaels. Carlito, mirroring his initial debut the previous year where he won the United States Championship, ended Shelton Benjamin's long reign as the Intercontinental Champion. And Big Show ended up in the periphery of the Edge/Kane/Lita saga, now also guest starring Snitsky. And rejoice, lovers of women's wrestling content, we have another Diva Search about to begin! Oh joy.
On the SmackDown side of things, Benoit, Hassan and Christian all instantly found themselves fighting for the "SmackDown Championship" alongside established SmackDown mainstays The Undertaker, JBL and Booker T. JBL would win this match, but his prize was downgraded to #1 Contender status as it was revealed afterwards that Batista, fresh off of defeating Triple H for a third time inside the Hell In A Cell at Vengeance and retaining his gold, was joining the show. In this match, Undertaker and Hassan crossed paths for the first time, and I'm afraid to say that this is going to lead to exactly where you remember it leading to... But that's next month. Elsewhere on the show, Eddie Guerrero still can't beat Rey Mysterio but he's got a big secret in his pocket, Heidenreich's search for friendship has set him on the wrong side of MNM, and we had the debut of The Mexicools, proudly setting back Latino culture with their ride-on lawnmower gimmicks.
Earlier in the month though, we had the critically-acclaimed ECW One Night Stand show, featuring a sample platter of all the things people loved about ECW, as close as humanly possible to when they were still able to do those things rather well. I will say though, take a few minutes to watch The Sandman's entrance with the original audio if you can find it. I know you kinda get it every week now in AEW, but that ish is still absolute fire, even more fire than the table Tommy Dreamer went through at the end of their match.
Here are the rankings after June 2005:
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Sept 19, 2021 23:20:34 GMT -5
Now we're at the end of July, the draft lottery is complete and things are taking shape for the rest of the year. On the RAW side of the fence, WWE Champion John Cena has found himself afoul of GM Eric Bischoff, bringing to light what may be an underrated aspect of the backlash that is starting to come up against him, this open re-hash of the Steve Austin v Vince McMahon feud. Austin had only been retired two years at this point, so the memories were still very fresh, and I'm not sure that fans appreciated this re-casted feud between two talents that were nowhere near as dynamic as the redneck dynamo Austin and the bombastically blusterous McMahon. As things stand in the ring, Cena is still feuding with Chris Jericho, who is one foot out the door at this point. Two other main points of interest on RAW at this time... Firstly, we have a Shawn Michaels heel turn in our midst, as he ambushed Hulk Hogan with Sweet Chin Music to begin his only officially heel portion of this comeback run that started in 2002 and finished in 2010. I haven't gotten to the Larry King segment parody or his epic trolling of Montreal yet, but those should be fun. Secondly, Edge and Lita are finding themselves the targets of constant surprise ambushes by one Matt Hardy, as the art finally begins to replicate life. I believe Hardy was somehow contracted to both WWE and Ring Of Honor at this point, having been re-signed to the former without the latter knowing. Either way, the collision is coming. In other bits and bobs, Eugene has returned and is now retroactively the 1996 Olympic gold medallist for 100kg men's freestyle wrestling, the Diva Search is still lumbering on, and some of the lower card are going through some severe identity crises. Rene Dupree? Rob Conway? Chavo G... I mean, KERWIN WHITE? You legit look like cartoon characters.
SmackDown had the Great American Bash PPV, and barely anything of note happened on it other than Muhammad Hassan getting killed off of WWE, in the crescendo of one of WWE's most historically controversial angles. After defeating Daivari one week on SmackDown, Hassan summoned a cadre of men in balaclavas to choke out Undertaker with piano wire, leave him laying and carry off the fallen Daivari over their heads. Tasteless enough in isolation, it became a career-ender when, in the two days between the taping of that episode of SmackDown and the airing of it, a legitimate terrorist attack occurred in London, England. WWE, for whatever reason, kept the match and post-match angle in the show, and as a result, networks demanded that WWE drop the Muhammad Hassan character post-haste. And drop him they did, with a Last Ride through the stage at the Great American Bash. To this day, Muhammad Hassan never appeared on WWE TV again. In other angles, World Heavyweight Champion Batista finds himself paired off with JBL, Eddie Guerrero has revealed the big secret about Rey Mysterio and his son Dominick and I finally get to see how bonkers the week-to-week TV parts of this angle actually were as opposed to just watching the custody papers ladder match, and Heidenreich has found his friend, and some new accessories, as Road Warrior Animal joined him to beat MNM for the WWE Tag Team Championship.
Debut-wise, we have one of the great anomalies of WWE history as Frankie Kazarian, better known for his TNA and AEW runs, is three matches into a four-match undefeated WWE career, while Melina, the lippy valet of MNM, has had her first couple of matches. Speaking of MNM, Jillian Hall has made her first appearances as their image consultant, accompanied by a rice krispie square attached to her face that is ostensibly meant to be a mole. Once again... Karrion Kross and his silly helmet? Getting off EASY. However, we also had one of those famous WWE blood-lettings, as Charlie Haas and his wife Miss Jackie, Kenzo Suzuki and his valet Hiroko, Mark Jindrak, Matt Morgan, Maven, a pregnant Dawn Marie, Joy Giovanni, Akio, Billy Kidman, Shannon Moore and all three Dudley Boyz got the boot.
Here are the rankings after July 2005:
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Sept 23, 2021 6:35:26 GMT -5
Now we're up to the end of August, and that means only one thing in WWE. SummerSlam time. In the main event of the show, Hulk Hogan beat Shawn Michaels in one of the more unique wrestling matches of all time, down largely to Michaels's Flubber-infused bumping. Scuttlebutt had it that it was down to Michaels being frustrated that Hogan allegedly talked the company out of an extended feud that would've allowed Michaels a win before the inevitable tiebreaker. Regardless, the heel run ended almost as quickly as it started, and Michaels was back to babyface by the end of the first segment on RAW the next night. In other RAW stuff, John Cena would retain the WWE Championship over Chris Jericho, and again the next night to send him on his way to a two-year hiatus from wrestling, ending a six-year stint in WWE that had its fair share of ups and downs. Cena, meanwhile, would pivot over to Kurt Angle, who had won his gold medal back from Eugene at SummerSlam, as he continued his ongoing battles with Eric Bischoff. At this point, Cena still hadn't quite lost the live crowds yet, but I feel certain that the online sentiment was either starting to turn, or had already turned. And the first official blows in anger of the Edge/Matt Hardy rivalry ended in a bit of a wet, bloody fart as the match was called in favour of Edge via a referee stoppage.
Over on SmackDown, a hometown Washington, DC crowd carried Batista to a successful defense of the World Heavyweight Championship over JBL, and Randy Orton marked his first PPV appearance since WrestleMania with a tainted win over The Undertaker, but the one thing everybody remembers SummerSlam 2005 for was the infamous "Custody In The Bank" ladder match between Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero, which was a damn brutal match to watch. Stunned that Mysterio didn't blow out a knee at some point. In hindsight, they should've switched the briefcases so Mysterio ended up with a title shot and Edge ended up with a son, but that's just me. And Chris Benoit would win the United States Championship from Orlando Jordan in a faster time than it took for me to type out this part of the post.
The only other title change for the month may be one of the last ones to have ever occurred on a main roster B-show, as Nunzio defeated Paul London for the Cruiserweight Championship with the help of his new enforcer, Big Vito of latter-day WCW fame. Other new arrivals included Ken Kennedy, whose self-introduction schtick was one of the most over things on this board for a period of time and seemingly set him up to be one of the mainstays of the company for years to come (HA), Matt Striker, who was fired from his teaching job after skipping off to do the Kurt Angle Invitational back in January and brought back probably as a show of good faith, Paul Burchill, who has literally just shown up as the new protege of a newly-heel William Regal, and Diva Search winner Ashley, who immediately found herself on the wrong side of Torrie Wilson and Candice Michelle, who were traded from SmackDown to RAW in exchange for Christy Hemme and Stacy Keibler. I also forgot to mention last month that Johnny Parisi has started showing up on Heat, but he may easily have the most forgettable run in WWE history, so it was an easy mistake to make. Meanwhile, in addition to Jericho, Frankie Kazarian had exited the company almost as quickly as he entered it, his future clearly lying elsewhere.
Here are the rankings after August 2005:
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Sept 27, 2021 16:33:25 GMT -5
Into September now, and we're back to single brand PPVs as RAW put on Unforgiven. On this card was the first title match of the John Cena v Kurt Angle feud, one that ended in a DQ after an attempted Eric Bischoff screwjob gambit backfired. Maybe it's because I'm only scanning through these things for the finishes, but I still haven't really come across an explicitly anti-Cena crowd yet. Was there any chatter about them f***ing around with the audio at the time? I don't know. Either way, the angle with Angle is still going, and somehow Bischoff has got a title shot, set for the next RAW, which will be their return to the USA Network after five years at TNN/Spike. Also on Unforgiven, Matt Hardy finally got the upper hand in his rivalry with Edge, winning a steel cage match, and a tiebreaker ladder match is set for next week, with the winner getting the Money In The Bank and the loser being forced to leave RAW. Ric Flair is now the Intercontinental Champion, having beaten Carlito for it... He then proceeded to down a whole bottle of pills and have sex with five women in a limo for two hours. I only hope it was consensual. And Trish Stratus is back from injury, having remained Women's Champion the entire time of her hiatus, and is now a babyface alongside Ashley in her ongoing issues with Torrie Wilson, Candice Michelle and Victoria.
Over on SmackDown, which moved to Friday nights this month, Eddie Guerrero finally got his win over Rey Mysterio, also in a steel cage match, and subsequently found himself to be the #1 Contender for Batista's World Heavyweight Championship. This has kind of led to Eddie getting a bit of his cheeky charm back after months of being a sinister bastard, as he claims that he's a new man and has tried to strike up a friendship with Batista. But is it all a ruse? Find out at No Mercy. Mysterio meanwhile, has moved on to JBL, getting a win over him on SmackDown one week. Naturally, this has gotten JBL's dander up and this will also be settled at No Mercy. Elsewhere, The Undertaker is still having issues with those damn Ortons, and now caskets are getting involved, Chris Benoit has had three more successful defenses of the United States Championship against Orlando Jordan that all went under a minute, and Animal and Heidenreich are STILL feuding with MNM. There's an endless feud that doesn't get referenced enough.
In other things, we had a few more new arrivals... On RAW, Lance Cade made his return after a year's absence with a new tag team partner in Trevor Murdoch, and within a handful of matches beat The Hurricane and Rosey for the World Tag Team Championship. While on SmackDown, a young blue-chipper out of Colorado by the name of Bobby Lashley has debuted, putting Simon Dean to the sword with ease. Something tells me we'll be seeing a lot of this mighty competitor. Also, Brian Kendrick has returned after a year and a half out of the company, although his appearances have been limited to Velocity. Departure-wise, Muhammad Hassan was officially let go having not appeared since being written off at the Great American Bash, while Daniel Puder, the Tough Enough 4 winner, was also let go, having only made one appearance all year in the Royal Rumble, where if you remember he spent his entire time in the match being chopped silly by Hardcore Holly.
Here are the rankings after September 2005:
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Oct 2, 2021 13:27:24 GMT -5
We've reached the end of October now, and finally the grumbles of discontent with WWE Champion John Cena are starting to ripple across the audience, as he continues his endless battle with General Manager Eric Bischoff and Kurt Angle. A lot has been happening on RAW, with the start of the month featuring the three-hour Homecoming special, returning to the USA Network for the first time since 2000. This had the return of Triple H for the first time since June, brutally laying out Ric Flair and leading to one of Flair's most deranged promos ever, the end of the long-running Edge v Matt Hardy feud that saw the latter sent to SmackDown, and (I believe) the first attempt at a wholesale brand v brand feud that involved a lot of invasions and surprise attacks. That will blow off at Survivor Series, but first we have Taboo Tuesday which is literally November 1, just missing out on being counted already. Beyond that, we have the muck of the entire McMahon family being united as heels for the first time ever, firing Jim Ross to cover a real-life health problem that they promptly mocked on air, but Vince is the only one that really sticks around until the end of the year as a regular TV fixture. In other things, Kane has returned after a brief sabbatical of his own, leading to what is likely the official birth of "The Local Men", The Hurricane is no more, reverting to his civilian persona of Gregory Helms and abandoning Rosey, and Rob Conway has somehow ended up having matches with Greg Valentine and Koko B. Ware of all people.
Over on SmackDown, they had the PPV this month, that being No Mercy. For all intents and purposes, even though he lost his World Heavyweight Championship match with Batista, Eddie Guerrero has maintained his friendship with the champion as they fend off the Ortons, who defeated The Undertaker in a casket match and burned that thing to the ground. Somehow, Roddy Piper and Ken Kennedy end up involved as ancillary players. Sadly, as the calendar ticks over to November, the dread has hit because we are not far off the tragically premature conclusion of this Batista/Guerrero angle... As mentioned before, there is a brand feud going, and it's SmackDown who took up the initiative, feeling disrespected after their invitation match on RAW Homecoming was cut short just after the opening bell by Eric Bischoff. JBL of all people is on the frontlines here, doing the bulk of the promo work for this feud. And for some reason, we now have a Juniors Division, featuring wrestlers under five feet tall. You know Super Porky never worked a TV match in WWE?
Plenty of title changes occurred in October. Booker T is the new United States Champion, having beaten Chris Benoit with the outside help of Sharmell, who had been interfering in matches without Booker's knowledge. At this point, Booker is about to buy in and turn heel. MNM regained the WWE Tag Team Championship, ending the long-running undefeated run of Animal and Heidenreich. And Juventud has brought gold to The Mexicools, defeating Nunzio for the Cruiserweight Championship at No Mercy. And there were a lot of debuts too. On RAW, Mickie James has made her first appearances as a superfan of Trish Stratus and evening up the numbers in her endless battle against Torrie Wilson, Candice Michelle and Victoria, and a man by the name of Nick Nemeth is here to show the world how good he can be at carrying Kerwin White's golf clubs. While on SmackDown, The Boogeyman has been lurking about backstage, generally creeping people out like a weirdo, ECW and TNA alum Kid Kash has started making regular appearances on Velocity, and the new tag team of The Dicks have made their presence known, costing Animal and Heidenreich the tag titles in the result mentioned earlier.
Here are the rankings after October 2005:
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2021 9:18:15 GMT -5
Oh shit was that the Flair bleeding virgins promo?
Thanks for doing this. Even if I don't comment a lot I do really appreciate them. It's wild to see HHH barely above .500 but I guess putting over Batista a few times will do that to a guy. I'm assuming that's about to change as he feuds with Flair and Show where my main memory of it is him destroying them with a sledgehammer and then surviving both in the Rumble.
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Oct 5, 2021 13:50:46 GMT -5
Oh shit was that the Flair bleeding virgins promo? Thanks for doing this. Even if I don't comment a lot I do really appreciate them. It's wild to see HHH barely above .500 but I guess putting over Batista a few times will do that to a guy. I'm assuming that's about to change as he feuds with Flair and Show where my main memory of it is him destroying them with a sledgehammer and then surviving both in the Rumble. No, this was the one where he's so off his mind he opens up his stitches and gives himself the crimson mask. In a damn promo. And he's wiping the blood all over himself and it's really gross.  |
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Oct 8, 2021 17:36:01 GMT -5
November... On-screen events would pale into utter insignificance as the wrestling world mourned the untimely and tragic passing of Eddie Guerrero on November 13, at the age of 38 years old, while in Minneapolis, MN preparing for that week's television taping. Part of the legendary Guerrero wrestling family, Eddie was one of wrestling's greatest all-rounders, a technician that could get a good match out of literally everybody, with a rogueish charisma that translated itself to excellent character work in any situation without ever lacking in credibility or legitimacy. Guerrero was due to participate in the RAW v SmackDown Survivor Series match later that month, while rumoured plans in the years since ranged from another world title run to a dream match with Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XXII. To this day, this remains one of the most sincerely tragic moments in the history of professional wrestling.
As it were, the show went on. After a week was set aside for tribute shows, Survivor Series went ahead, with Randy Orton, Eddie Guerrero's replacement in Team SmackDown, becoming the sole survivor for a third straight year and getting the win for SmackDown over RAW. However, he still has to deal with The Undertaker, who is back and ever so pissed after being locked in a casket and set on fire at No Mercy. John Cena made two successful world title defenses on PPV this month, one at the RAW-only Taboo Tuesday over Kurt Angle and Shawn Michaels, and at Survivor Series over Angle again, but this time with his own crooked referee in the returning Daivari. This has left Eric Bischoff at his wit's end trying to get the WWE Championship off of Cena, with even a foolproof plan of putting Cena in a submission match with Angle and Chris Masters not working. Cena would tap out Masters to an STF, so yes, this was the match when it got introduced. In other things, Triple H and Ric Flair exchanged bloody, brutal victories, with Flair getting the win inside a steel cage at Taboo Tuesday, while Triple H got the KO win in a Last Man Standing match at Survivor Series, Shelton Benjamin is on a losing streak after such a great first half of 2005, and Kerwin White has returned to being Chavo Guerrero. Given the circumstances, they couldn't not do it.
In the various miscellanea for the month... The United States Championship was declared vacant after a double pin finish between Booker T and Chris Benoit, so now it will be settled in a Best Of Seven match series, which Booker currently leads 2-0. Big Show and Kane, the two (local) men not voted into the WWE Championship match at Taboo Tuesday, are the new World Tag Team Champions after running over Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch. And the Cruiserweight Championship changed hands twice, with Nunzio winning the belt on a house show in Italy, before losing it back to Juventud on the next SmackDown. Injury wise, Edge is on the shelf until the new year with a triceps problem, while Hardcore Holly is dealing with a serious staph infection in his elbow, which will keep him benched indefinitely. And, in future endeavours, Christian has left WWE after a seven-year run, looking to fulfil some of that unfulfilled potential after plummeting down the card in 2005. I believe he's already in TNA at this point.
Here are the rankings after November 2005:
One more month to go...
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Oct 12, 2021 0:55:48 GMT -5
And here we are at the end of December, and another year is in the books, meaning nearly 17 YEARS of WWE televised results have been catalogued for this project. As it was, it was a rather quiet month, as December tends to be in WWE. The last PPV of the year, Armageddon, was rather uneventful, headlined by the final blowoff of the long-running Undertaker v Randy Orton feud, inside the Hell In A Cell. RAW spent the month setting up for the Elimination Chamber match set to happen at New Year's Revolution, as Eric Bischoff was deposed from his post as General Manager after a three and a half year run in the role.
A couple of title changes occurred to finish off the year. The WWE Tag Team Championship changed hands twice, as Batista and Rey Mysterio beat MNM for them to carry them into a Champions v Champions match at Armageddon against World Tag Team Champions Big Show and Kane. As soon as that wrapped up, MNM won them right back, thanks to an assist from the returning Mark Henry, who had been absent from the main roster for nearly two years. And we have another title change in the Cruiserweight division, as Kid Kash got the gold at Armageddon from Juventud.
Arrivals and departures... Jamie Noble made his return late in the year after an absence of over a year, too late to actually be listed on the roster and earn a rank. Don't sweat it, though, if I ever go back and do 2004 (!!!), he'll get in under the Previously Listed Alumni rule. And The Boogeyman finally debuted in the ring and many soon wished that he hadn't. Leaving the WWE this month would be Tajiri, who went home to Japan to be a family man after a five-year run, and Christy Hemme, only a year after being crowned the first winner of the Diva Search. And while he wasn't officially released until the new year, Heidenreich had his last match in the company in literally the last match of the year, on the 12/31 episode of Velocity.
Here are the rankings at the end of 2005:
Now comes the tedious part of updating the master spreadsheet...
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Post by One-Armed Drummer of Defrebel on Oct 12, 2021 1:01:23 GMT -5
I literally grew up with this and I can't believe how many matches Heidenreich was having. That's not even counting the ones that included A Poem By Heidenreich.
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Oct 12, 2021 2:40:13 GMT -5
I literally grew up with this and I can't believe how many matches Heidenreich was having. That's not even counting the ones that included A Poem By Heidenreich. This is by far his most active year. Debuted very late in 2003 with a brief babyface run, is gone by February 2004, comes back in August with the new heel gimmick but only has like a handful of matches over the remainder of the year. I think it’s only like another 10-15 total matches in these preceding two years. A lot of these matches were jobber squashes with him and Animal. Seriously, they did like 10 of them in a row after they won the tag belts. They were actually undefeated as champions to the point that Heidenreich has one of the longest winning streaks of anyone in the project now. |
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Oct 19, 2021 1:46:13 GMT -5
For my next trick... For shits and giggles, I'm going to score a year that is entirely disconnected from the current scope of the project, and, unless I go even more insane, may never actually be connected to it at any point.
I'm going to the start of the New Generation. When such luminaries as Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Randy Savage, Razor Ramon, Diesel, Yokozuna and Owen Hart were plying their trade in a WWF (that's right, this'll be the first time I'm scoring a year when they still had the F in it) that was getting smaller and smaller by the month. I'm going back to the year that Tonya Harding and OJ Simpson made famous, a year when I myself actually visited the United States as part of the only international vacation I've ever had... 1994.
I don't know if I'll update this with month-by-month standings as before, because it'll be a bit of a patchwork quilt in terms of scoring these shows (scoring the win/loss streaks are out the window for now). The PPVs ("There was FIVE o' them!") and all of 1994 RAW are on the Network, as is about eight months worth of 1994 Superstars. As it turns out, all of 1994 Wrestling Challenge is on YouTube. It'll probably never be 100% complete, as I doubt I'll ever see a full year's worth of Mania or All-American Wrestling/Action Zone anywhere, plus this was still the era of Coliseum Video collections that had exclusive matches. But I think it'll be fascinating to see how this all ends up during an era of shows being made up of 90% enhancement matches.
I just need to know a couple of things:
1. What was the hierarchy of the weekly TV in terms of prestige? I've got it as RAW and Superstars being largely equal, then Wrestling Challenge on the tier below that, then Mania and All-American/Action Zone on the next tier, but I could always use a bit of further advice
2. Where would King Of The Ring rate on the PPV hierarchy? I've always had it as WrestleMania at the top, then SummerSlam, then Royal Rumble, then Survivor Series. My going theory is that it could be equal to Royal Rumble, as there is a prize of consequence at the end of the thing, but again, further advice is appreciated
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Oct 22, 2021 18:09:29 GMT -5
Bump
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) as John Bradshaw Layfield is your WWE Champion, having been as such for the previous six months already. At this point in time JBL is tangled in a whole web of schemes, those of him and his Cabinet, Kurt Angle and his heavies Mark Jindrak and noted peas enthusiast Luther Reigns, and Big Show, also involving a couple of anonymous women who literally only exist for like another month after this. The United States Championship is spinning in the hands of that angry young stud John Cena, who will go on to finish runner-up in the Rumble. The Basham Brothers are enjoying a fleeting WWE Tag Team Championship reign after winning the belts off of Rey Mysterio and an injured Rob Van Dam, who was the third wrestler to blow out a knee this month and will ALSO not return to action this year. Funaki is somehow Cruiserweight Champion, and actually stringing together some wins for the first time since Yamaguchi-san was talking about choppy choppy the pee-pee. And in correspondence with his brother from a destructive mother, The Undertaker is also still fending off a limited hoss in poet laureate Heidenreich.
