Wrestling in a Bottle: Armageddon, Kurt Angle, and Sugary Goodness
Submitted by Snapple on Friday, December 20, 2002 at 6:25 PM EST





Hello, and welcome to the post-Armageddon edition of Wrestling in a Bottle, the column that absorbs more liquid because it's quilted. I'm your host, Snapple. This week I have extremely limited internet access, because I'm staying at home with the elder folks for the holidays for the next couple of weeks. Since I have no regular computer access, this means I'm going to be making a couple of trips to my public library each week just to keep up on email and such. Still, this has not detered me from bring you a column this week. That being said, I'm actually a little eager to jump into my thoughts this week.

Armageddon Notes

Well, I ordered Armageddon this past Sunday. I was both pleased and displeased at the same time. The show opened with the 4-Way Tag Title Elimination match. Last week, I said this could very well be the best match on the card. Well, I suppose that's possible, depending on how you look at it. There was a lot of disorganized cluster fighting at the beginning, and then the Dudleys and Regal & Storm both got eliminated within probably a minute of each other. After that, it became a normal tag match, but it was a really hot one. I liked the match, and I especially liked the result. The right team won, and hopefully they'll go the distance and have a nice long reign as champs. Oh, and the best line of the night came from Bubba at the beginning of the match when he pointed to Lance Storm and screamed "Die, Canadian scum!"

Kane/Batista stunk. I can't believe the WWE is already going back to their old tricks of making Kane the upper midcard jobber. The stinky old crowd wasn't cheering Kane on much at all, which I guess means it'll be a long time before Kane recovers from the fallout of necrophilia. Batista is so GREEN, I don't know why more people don't see it. I think this guy is getting pushed too fast for a guy with the talent level that he has. Edge/Albert also stunk. Hey, at least Edge came out on top, even if it wasn't by pinfall. I mean, the rematch they had on Smackdown! was better, but there's still only so much Edge can do with that big hairball. Benoit/Guerrero was very good. I really wish the match had more build-up, given the long history between these two. I noticed that this time Benoit didn't even go for the cover after the headbutt. He just went straight for the crossface. I guess Chris got smart in that after Chavo was able to kick out of the headbutt, now everyone will.

The women's match had a lot of blown spots. Victoria's outfit that night was hideous, too. I was surprised that they actually put together a hype video for Victoria. They even used the patented WWE "Shaky Cam" to make Victoria seem all that more vicious. It did make me realize though that Victoria is exactly what the women's division needs. She is not as good a wrestler as Molly, Jazz, or maybe even Lita, but let's face it, women's wrestling will never be as spectacular as men's wrestling. However, Victoria is a great "sports entertainer". She's an interesting character, and she puts on a better feud than Trish saying Molly has a big butt. Oh, and I really like her new music.

The 2/3 falls match I thought was very good. I know not everybody thought so, but I liked it. I have low expectations of Triple-H normally, but I was expecting him to put on a good match here. I wasn't expecting a phenominal match, but I got pretty much what I thought I would. I got a sound match with bursts of excitement here and there to keep me interested throughout. A nice "Holy Shit" chant broke out for the flaming barbwire spot. I did not like the part where Triple-H and HBK sat on top of the cage punching each other for what seemed like five minutes. Things picked up after that, with some nice bumps all around. I knew Trips would win, so even though I don't want him to have the title, I wasn't too disappointed in the outcome.

As for the Big Show/Angle match... I'll save my thoughts for the next section.

What's Your Story? Kurt Angle Swerved!

The one match that really irked me on Sunday was the Angle-Show match. The match was all wrong, and I immediately knew it. Angle was fighting like a heel the whole time, and it just made me go, 'What the Hell?' During the match, the Big Show kicked out of a chairshot from Kurt. The Big Show kicked out of the Angle Slam! The Big Show reversed the Ankle Lock! Throughout all of this, Heyman was doing practically nothing. They were making it look like Angle couldn't beat Big Show straight up, which made me stop and say, 'Who's the face in this match?' Angle was supposed to be the face anyway. Angle then won the title by Brock's F5 to the Big Show. At the time, that enormously pissed me off. My initial reaction was 'Way to make Angle a strong face champion, by having to cheat his butt off to beat the Big Show.'

Sunday night, I thought long and hard about that match. For some reason, even after I turned the TV off, I couldn't get it out of my head. Even I don't always think this hard about wrestling, but the pieces just didn't fit together. Kurt Angle's whole face turn thing had been totally botched as far as I was concerned. Not only was his weak showing against Big Show a sign of that, but his character hadn't changed at all. I fondly remember Angle's face turn in 2001, because it made a lot of sense, and Angle went from being just a dork to being a cool, funny dork, and the pride of the WWF in its war against the alliance. This current 'face turn' that Angle was taking wasn't all that convincing like his first one. Basically he became the exact same person he was before, except for a couple of weeks he stopped insulting the audience. So then people cheered for him. That bothered me, because to me, he hadn't done anything to earn being treated like a face. Imagine my surprise then when they decided to up and make Angle the new WWE champion. It all seemed like crappy booking to me. Then I thought, 'Unless Angle pulls a swerve and is still a heel after all.'

After I dwelled on it though, the thought of Angle swerving made more sense to me. It explained why he wasn't playing to the crowd, despite being a face. It explained why he had to cheat his nuts off to beat the Big Show. It also explained how they could hold off on the Lesnar-Angle match. Angle promised his first title defense several times to Brock, but that seemed screwy. I knew that the writers wanted to hold off on the match and possibly save it for Wrestlemania. Which made me think that Angle might have tricked Brock in the first place. Monday morning, I would've loved to shamelessly gone squealing online to everyone I knew who liked wrestling that Angle was going to swerve, but alas, no internet access. Perhaps it's better this way, because when my ego starts to show, I get a little obnoxious. So rather, I'm going to discuss where this storyline could be going.

Well, obviously I like the storyline for several reasons. One of the most important things is that it affirms who exactly is the face, and who is the heel in the Brock-Angle matchup. Lately, Angle and Benoit have been treated like uppercard tweeners, and I don't like that. Hopefully, it will be established soon that Benoit will definitely be a face and Angle definitely a heel. You can stick two random guys in a ring and get a good match, but you get a better match if you have someone to root for. I relate my case to the current status of Triple-H, who is a heel character who somehow gets cheered as a face. Some people say that Triple-H should be made a face because people want to cheer for him. I say Triple-H gets cheers because he isn't doing his job right.

So, everyone has their roles. Brock is the face who wants revenge on Paul Heyman and Kurt Angle. Kurt is the champion who will do anything in his power to keep Brock from getting the title shot. This is actually something that hasn't been done for awhile. Instead of a champion welcoming the challenge of a competitor, they tease the crowd by denying a title match. For the first time in a while, the WWE is thinking ahead. I'm pretty sure the current plan is to hold off Angle-Lesnar until Wrestlemania. That's a full three months away, which is impressive. If it is going to be planned for Wrestlemania, then it would stand to reason that Brock Lesnar would win the Royal Rumble. That sounds a little predictable, but the winner of the Rumble is pretty predictable more often than not. Then again, we still don't know exactly how the Rumble is going to work this year with two world titles.

At any rate, when you consider that each PPV only has half as many shows to hype, it's easy to understand why the majority of PPVs this year have been half-assed. However, you can't half-ass a Wrestlemania feud. It just doesn't work that way. So, they're planning three months in advance. That's brilliant. Well, maybe not brilliant, but by WWE standards, it's definitely good planning.

I've taken up so much space this week talking about Brock-Angle that the only other storyline I want to talk about this week is the confrontation between Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho. Yes! Thank you! I love this stuff. Jericho is my favorite mic worker in the WWE, and he never seems to let me down in that department. On top of that, he and Shawn could have an excellent match if given the opportunity. I just hope this feud gets the proper airtime it deserves, if it indeed does develop into into a Royal Rumble match, which I think it will. I guess that's all I really want to say about that right now.

What Chris Nowinski Did This Week

Well, interestingly enough, at first Nowinski did not have a match scheduled for Armageddon, then a few days before the event, they decided to add Maven vs. Nowinski to the card. Then, when the event came around, obviously the match didn't happen. There were time constraints and it was the easiest match to remove from the event. Perhaps this was a good idea, because both Maven and Nowinski I think can put on better matches with more experienced wrestlers. They're both still rookies, but I guess they needed to hurry up with the Tough Enough feud before the novelty of their wrestling origins fades away. Chris did have his match on RAW, and I must say Maven didn't give him too much to work with. Still, for what it was, the Maven-Nowinski match on RAW wasn't bad. Let Nowinski feud with Tommy Dreamer again. That feud could've gone somewhere. Maybe Hurricane could feud with Nowinski. I don't know, but there are possibilities out there.

Flavor of the Week

This week's flavor was Booker T. This past week was very inconsistent with good matches, and I really wasn't digging a lot of it. The PPV seemed sub-par, but Booker T had two really good matches throughout all of this. Firstly, he and Goldust finally were able to get the tag titles that have eluded them for so long. Goldust has really stepped up his game in the past couple of months, but Booker T has put on some damn good matches. I just wish Jericho and Booker would have a singles match that would actually END, you know, like with a submission or pinfall. Still, good stuff from Booker.

Chump of the Week

This week's chump is, um, Maven. Whenever I can't think of anyone who truly deserves the award in a given week, I either hand the award to Rikishi, Maven, or John Cena. Cena actually hasn't been aggravating me as much lately, so I'll throw it to Maven. Oh, so I need a reason? Well, how about because he undersold Chris Nowinski's new finisher? There's a reason.

Pieces of Randomness

-As you may have noticed, Matt Hardy had a black eye this week. The Big Show has since apologized for trying to take a bite of Matt's head, and hopes they can work together in the future.
-Earlier today, the Undertaker was shot in the head three times by a masked assailant. Luckily, doctors say Mark will just have to stay overnight for tests before being released from the hospital tomorrow, citing that fortunately Undertaker didn't sell any of the bullets.
-New studies show that staring directly at Albert for too long will cause irreparable damage to your vision.
-When donating to charities this holiday season, please don't forget to send donations to GetWellRandy@WWE.com
-Also, for donations to the "Buy Snapple a hooker for Christmas" fund, email happydude5000@msn.com

Final Thought

I want to make a slight correction from last week. I said in my Pieces of Randomness that Dino Bravo was a good bet to win the Royal Rumble. I was really out of it when I was writing last week, as I had just finished my last final when I typed it up, plus I had also written my research paper in about two days. I got several emails from readers reminding me that Dino died some time ago. Thanks for jogging my memory, because I was having a major brain fart. That being said, I look forward to the coming weeks as we go into the Royal Rumble. I have a very positive mindset at the moment, and it looks like we're heading in the right direction as far as storylines go in the WWE. I hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday season, and stay tuned next week for another action-packed edition of Wrestling in a Bottle.

-Snapple

Send feedback to happydude5000@msn.com. It's good karma.








*NEW GALLERY* Amazing! The VERY RARE & Revealing Kelly Kelly BEACH PHOTOSHOOT!!!

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