Wrestling in a Bottle: Survivor Series Review and more
Submitted by Snapple on Sunday, November 23, 2003 at 2:34 PM EST



Hello and welcome to the returning edition of Wrestling in a Bottle. Hopefully... I should be back to typing up articles on a week-to-week basis soon instead of every other week. Next week is Thanksgiving, so I might not do one, but right now I am DONE with Friday chem labs. Of course, due to my eeeeeevil TA who gets her jollies from talking down to me and never cutting any slack, my grade isn't going to be so hot. At least after this semester I never have to take another chemistry class (I'm currently taking two). Thank GOODNESS!

About feedback from the last column, I got a TON of feedback on my Smackdown!: Here Comes the Pain review which can be found HERE. It seems for the most part people agreed while some people thought I was a little harsh on my gripes about repetitiveness and replay value. I stand by my review, but I'm glad people think for themselves. However, most of my email was telling me how to correctly steal an opponent's finisher, which I was confused with before. So thank you, all 2349870012 people who emailed me telling me how to do that. For those curious, you actually need *two* finisher S's lit up, be in the position your opponent would need to be to execute the move, hold down L2 and press L1. So there you have it.

This week I'm going to review Survivor Series. This week also marks the exciting return of 'Ask Triple-H'. So feel happy.

Survivor Series Review

Going in, I was... fairly hyped about this show, which is a lot more than I can say about most of the PPVs this past year. Some matches I was iffy on, but overall I felt good about ordering the show. As always, I ordered the webcast on wweshopzone.com, which I highly recommend to anyone with high-speed internet. The quality is pretty damn good considering it's HALF the cost it would be to order the show on PPV.

Team Angle vs. Team Lesnar
I was quite surprised this was the opener. I mean, this to me was Smackdown!'s half of the main event, but it did get me pretty charged for most of the show. Holly, Albert, and Bradshaw were eliminated in the first 90 seconds of the match. Ha! I love it! Although, I admit it's a damn shame for even a guy like A-Train to job to a clothesline so easily, especially when he was just a hair away from being Benoit just a month ago. After that, the match went very smoothly. Jones' and Morgan's roles were kept very limited but not without making their presences felt. Angle was clearly protected as he didn't bump very much, and one F5 somewhat anticlimactically eliminated him from the match. The ending with Benoit making Lesnar tap and then Cena pinning Show was GREAT. THAT is how you book a match, and now we have two feuds perfectly set up, with Benoit going after the world title and Cena going after the US Title, which is exactly how it should be. Benoit, Cena, Brock, and Show all worked really hard in this match and made it a very fun, very enjoyable opener. I marked out hard for Brock's elimination and the "You Tapped Out" chant. I can't help it, but it's an infectious chant.

Weird segment with Shane confronting Vince, who still thinks he's the Ch-Ch-Chosen One (Someone get Jarrett's lawyers). Vince sees the irony that a father and son are facing two brothers, Shane calls him an ass, and Vince then confronts Austin in a moment that made me laugh my ass off. It'd be pointless for me to try and describe it.

Lita vs. Molly
I'll be honest. I was distracted during most of this match. From what I did see though, it wasn't that bad. Lita's still a little sloppy, but hey, Molly's a good worker and together they put on something the fans could enjoy. I did like the ending though. Molly rolls out of the Litasault, Lita kicks out of the Molly-Go-Round, and Molly gets the surprise victory with the drop toe-hold into the exposed turnbuckle. I did not expect Molly to retain. I guess this means Lita vs. Molly again at Armageddon?

Shane vs. Kane
Booooo. That's all I have to say. There's no reason this match couldn't have been at least at the level of their Unforgiven match, but it was fairly worthless. They never even fought in the ring once. Shane hit his same old spots, they fought backstage for a while, then slammed each other into the ambulance a couple of times. Kane won the spotfest cleanly, but man did it stink. There's no way Shane should've gotten in all that offense either. The one thing I really liked about the Unforgiven match is that it played to Shane's shortcomings and made him a clear underdog. At Unforgiven, Kane had the upper hand most of the time and Shane only got in offense after a weapon shot or a low blow or something of that nature. In other words, the match told a story and made sense. At Survivor Series, Shane actually tried to out-wrestle Kane at points and it just looked clumsy and made Kane look bad. Read my lips: Shane should not be out-wrestling real wrestlers. This feud should've never gone on this long. The blow-off match stunk, and the whole feud was ridiculous. It had a lot of potential, but it just came across as all kinds of bad.

Los Guerreros vs. The Bashams
This was the other match on the card I missed most of besides the Lita-Molly match. I've heard other people's opinions on the match, and I can speculate, but that wouldn't be fair. All I can say is that Chavo is taking too damn long to turn heel. If it gets any longer, the turn will look weak. I honestly don't have much of a problem with Eddie feuding with Chavo, like a lot of people who see this as a depush for Eddie. Eddie just lost the US Title cleanly. That's not usually the time you jump to the main event... right now there isn't a place for Eddie anywhere on the card, so let him feud with Chavo for a while. They'll produce some dynamite matches for sure.

Next was some segment that replaced the Tajiri-Noble match. I missed the Tajiri-Noble match because I had to go to the lobby to pick up my pizza. When I got back to the room, the match was already over. Yeah, I can see the cruiserweights are really worth a damn anymore. What I saw instead was some segment where Randy Orton gave an RKO (which looks less like a Diamond Cutter now, thankfully) to the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Well, I suppose the Dallas crowd was into it, but did Orton really need MORE rub? Oh, we'd see in the next match, that's for sure.

Team Austin vs. Team Bischoff
This was probably the match on the entire card I was looking most forward to seeing. Was it a good match? ...mostly, yes. In fact, up until the last three minutes, I was enjoying it a lot. First were all the hijinx involved in pinning Mark Henry, then the odds became scarce when the heels outnumbered the faces, three to one. Shawn Michaels REALLY did a good job of rallying the crowd behind him by kicking some ass with a really nasty blade job on his face. Unfortunately, the match showed its poor booking after the match became Randy Orton & Chris Jericho vs. Shawn Michaels. Now, you would THINK that if anyone were to get the pin on Michaels, it would be Jericho, the man who has been trying to get Austin fired for MONTHS now. Orton was just thrown into the match because he didn't have anything else to do at this PPV. So OF COURSE Michaels pins Jericho and Orton ends up beating Michaels with Batista's help. I defy anyone to say Triple-H doesn't have backstage pull after Jericho's feud was squashed to give a worthless rub to Evolution. Batista had no business near that ring, and neither did Orton for that matter. Jericho got screwed big time, and I had a sick taste in my mouth after this match.

Undertaker vs. Vince McMahon
Well, there's not much I can say for this match, because it wasn't a match. It was ten minutes of Undertaker beatdown followed by a surprise ending and Vince winning. Vince did do a nasty blade job though. I'll say one thing for Vince. He's making a name for himself as one of the best bleeders in the business. Please reference Wrestlemania, Vengeance, and Survivor Series of this year for evidence. Anyway, Kane pulled the screwjob with an explosion. It was pretty badass, but my heart isn't in it completely, as I have this uneasy feeling that Kane will lose to Taker at Mania. If I were the booker, I'd make Kane the champion, have him beat Taker, and then let him hold it until Summerslam where he drops it to a babyface Chris Jericho... but that's just me.

Goldberg vs. Triple-H
Good video package for this feud. Have I mentioned that I love the WWE's video editing team? I do. Well, obviously this match wasn't a technical masterpiece, given those involved. However, it was a fun match, and Goldberg still won cleanly, despite Evolution's constant interference. Of course, Triple-H's psychology made NO sense at all. He worked over Goldberg's leg the entire match and nothing else, only to try to win with a Pedigree? That's Bad Psychology 101... if there were such a course. Not at my university unfortunately. Anyway, this match was much more exciting than the Unforgiven match and less anti-climactic. It felt like Triple-H was actually putting over Goldberg rather than simply laying down for him like in their previous match. So I approve in that sense.


Overall, an above average PPV with a few stinkers, like the end of the RAW elimination match and the entire Shane-Kane match. I'm glad I bought the PPV, but I still feel the WWE can be doing better.

No Chris Nowinski update this week.

Pieces of Randomness: Ask Triple-H

Hello peons, and welcome to the returning edition of 'Ask Triple-H.' The last two columns, you may have noticed my absence due to an extended honeymoon. Well, I know that hitrates have been plummeting during my absence, so I naturally decided to grant everyone a favor by returning. See, when the hitrates are low when I'm not around, that means that I truly am the top draw here at LOP. When hitrates are low when I AM around, that's just because the business is cyclical. Surely you understand this. So let's get to that first letter.

Trips-

How come you, the greatest wrestler...hell, the greatest human being...screw that, the greatest LIVING ENTITY in the entire universe agreed to job the world title to the lowly Goldberg? I mean, come on man! Why didn't you just get rid of the world title like you did the IC belt by saying it was beneath you? Clearly, if any other wrestler touches the belt, it is no longer worthy of your greatness, so why keep it around? Think about it- anyone who has that title while you're gone has a chance to elevate themselves both on TV and in the locker room. A crappy, small, no-talent, ratings-killing worker like RVD or Y2J could possibly get a chance to main event! Someone as smart as you should see the danger- after all, you're the cerebral assasin! And Goldberg? Come on! You should have at least dropped the belt to a conditioned, superior athlete like your buddy Nash! What were you thinking? Maybe you've been hitting too much Y2Stinger...

Honcho

You know, Honcho, you're absolutely right, on all accounts, especially the part about the YJStinger. You see, it was the second to last day of Steph's and my honeymoon, and we were discussing all the ways we could make Goldberg look worthless so that he would have to job the world title back to me. Steph said she could get Goldberg to lay down for me at Survivor Series, and I said nah, if I get a clean win over him the next night on RAW, the title will practically float back into my hands. It was at that moment that I got a call from Hank Neywood from Stacker 2. Well, you can imagine my surprise when they decided to go in a "new direction" with the YJStinger ads. Apparently, some douche over on Smackdown! named John Sienna was getting a push, and Vince said he wants to overadvertise him, so he's the new spokesperson for YJStinger.

Well, I was furious. "What about the bees, Hank? They're out of the job, too," I told Hank. "Those bees were just computer generated," he said. Yeah, like I'm going to believe that a computer can make an army of bees. We can barely clone a sheep. So I pulled out of Stephanie and told her we'd continue this talk another time, because I had some work to do. I marched right down to Stacker 2 headquarters and demanded to see the president. So I knocked on the door of their trailer. I told them I'd drink YJStinger all day to prove my loyalty. After all, nobody has paid their dues to the energy drink business like I have. Maybe after John Sienna jobs to Ultimate Warrior at Wrestlemania, THEN he can star in MY energy drink commercials.

Well, they weren't listening to me, so I pulled out a lawn chair and started drinking some YJStinger. My God, have you actually TASTED this stuff? What on Earth have I been peddling? To make the drink go down easier, I pulled out a flask of Bourbon. Now, APPARENTLY caffeine and alcohol make a very bad combination, and after my 30th can of Stinger, I started acting a little goofy. I can't remember what happened the rest of that day, but I didn't get my job back, and they put me in the hospital after finding me naked in an alley with a can of Stinger and a lawn gnome. The doctors tell me I have about 13 ulcers, but I learned my lesson. Never let it be said that The Game can't learn from his own mistakes.

That letter took it out of me. That's all I'm doing this week. Don't like it? Go watch Monday Night Football.

Final Thought

Well that's it for this week. Sorry for the lateness. Hopefully, there'll be lots to talk about after the holiday. GIVE KANE THE WORLD TITLE! That's all I have to say. Until next time, happy wrestling.

-Snapple

As Big Dust would say, send me email, eef you wheel. happydude5000@msn.com

Questions for Triple-H should include the phrase "Ask Triple-H" in the subject header.

Click to order the greatest book you don't own, Wrestlecrap: The Book!








*NEW GALLERY* MUST SEE! Very Rare Photos of KAREN ANGLE Over the Years!

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