10 Things We Learned From WWE Survivor Series 2000
The one where Stone Cold Steve Austin 'murdered' Triple H...
The year 2000 Survivor Series felt a bit like the 1996 show (albeit not as excellent) in the sense that the major feuds were confined to their own singles matches, while upper midcarders with less-pressing issues would comprise the body of the handful of elimination matches. The survivor matches were fine, but they were more or less just lip service paid to the classic format, out of a compulsion to keep the tenets of the event alive. The *real* action came in what was essentially a triple main event.
And what a triple main event it was. Any time you can combine snakeskin pants, evil twins that aren't actually twins, a man forcing his ass into his cousin's face, and attempted murder via a crane, you're watching wrestling gone berserk. But that was par for the course for WWE in 2000, perhaps the most fun year product-wise in company history. Survivor Series, admittedly, doesn't hold a candle to great events like SummerSlam, Backlash, Royal Rumble, and Judgment Day, but it was certainly eventful, at least.
Survivor Series 2000 failed to live up to the lofty standards WWE itself set throughout the year, but it's still a show that you can sink your teeth into. And if you like random mayhem, you probably won't be disappointed.
WWE
The first elimination match of the night pitted all four Radicalz against a modified version of D-Generation X, as Chyna, Billy Gunn, Road Dogg, and Dogg's new buddy K-Kwik (R-Truth) represented the green and black in the eyes of some. The match brought Gunn and Dogg together once more, The New Age Outlaws riding again after their surprising run to the top began three years earlier.
It also marked the last time Gunn and Dogg would team on a WWE pay-per-view for more than 13 years. The next night on Raw would see the two team with K-Kwik in six-man action, and that in itself would be their last WWE tag team appearance for the same length of time. Road Dogg would be released from the company in January 2001 to deal with personal issues, and he resurfaced in TNA about 18 months later as BG James.
WWE
K-Kwik had to be accelerated into the picture, only showing up shortly before Survivor Series as the rhyme-spitting running buddy of Road Dogg. It was a hasty move to put K-Kwik into a somewhat high-profile match, but WWE gave it a pretty good effort in that week before Survivor Series. And it had to be done, since the wrestler that Ron Killings replaced was injured.
It would have been an even clearer DX reunion had X-Pac been the one to team with Chyna and The Outlaws. However, X-Pac sustained a neck injury the previous month. The ailment would cause Sean Waltman to miss several months of action, not returning until after the Royal Rumble, around which time the seeds were planted for the arrival of X-Factor. Man, I miss that music...
WWE
When The Radicalz jumped to WWE from WCW in January 2000, it was a crushing blow to the image of their former employer, as four genuinely talented and valuable performers left for greener pastures while WCW dealt with continued tumult. Though the group would mostly pursue individual glories mere months after their WWE arrival, they did come back together briefly in the fall, for both this match, and as lackeys of Triple H.
The match would mark the last time that all four men would team together. Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn mostly split off as a midcard duo shortly after, and Malenko would be all but retired by the end of the summer of 2001. Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero would take different paths to the top of WWE, and would share a special moment at the end of WrestleMania XX, but The Radicalz were never really revisited otherwise.
WWE
Deeper in the midcard on the show, William Regal successfully defended his European title after defeating Hardcore Holly via disqualification. The match saw Regal work over Holly's recently-mended arm with laser-focus. And "recently-mended" is the best descriptor for it, as Bob Holly had only just recently returned to the road after a long injury layoff.
After breaking his arm against Kurt Angle in a SmackDown match at the end of June, Holly missed more than four months of action, and in fact had only just returned to the ring the weekend before Survivor Series. Holly lost to Regal at concurrent house shows in Ohio, before reappearing on the go-home episode of Raw. The PPV match was set up via an angle on Sunday Night Heat, demonstrating how rushed it had to be.
WWE
It's not often, even in the more-extreme Attitude Era, that you saw blood in women's matches, but Ivory's Women's title match with Lita would prove to be an exception. It wasn't a blade job, but rather a hearty potato on Ivory's part that opened up Lita near her eye, causing a flow that looked like flash flooding. It was truly a gruesome sight, one that nobody expected to see.
Incredibly, it was later revealed that Lita only needed two stitches to close the wound. Given the excess of the blood flow, it looked much more severe than it actually was, so two stitches is rather surprising. These days, the referee would have his rubber gloves out, and there'd be a temporary break for Lita to get her face towelled off.
WWE
As a personal memory, some of my high school buddies were insisting to me that The Undertaker was definitely going to defeat Kurt Angle and become the WWE Champion since Survivor Series coincided with the 10-year anniversary of 'Taker's debut. I wagered that Angle would win (too soon to change the belt), and ended up being right. For once in my life.
The win made Kurt Angle the first man in eight years to retain the WWE Championship after defending it at Survivor Series. Bret Hart did so in 1992, but lost in 1994 and 1997 - as did Diesel in 1995, Shawn Michaels in 1996, and Triple H in 1999. Angle managed to break that streak at Undertaker's expense.
WWE
Angle managed to pin Undertaker with a little bit of chicanery, getting an assist from near-lookalike brother Eric. It was one of those dreaded distraction finishes, but it had a clever twist, one that Brock Lesnar would succumb to a little more than two years later. Kurt Angle has a career full of firsts and achievements, and this would qualify in both categories.
This loss marked the first time that The Undertaker was pinned at Survivor Series, after competing at eight of the previous 10 shows (1997 and 1999 exempted). Undertaker didn't always win at Survivor Series, but he did sustain losses via countout (his elimination matches in 1990 and 1993) and DQ (his 1998 tournament match). So much for cashing in on the "Decade of Destruction".
WWE
The Steve Austin/Triple H main event was a raucous affair, highlighted by the fact that both men would eventually make their way through the backstage area and into the parking lot for a brutal final confrontation. Along the way, all four members of The Radicalz would interfere on Triple H's behalf, jumping Austin in an attempt to aid The Game.
A little more than seven years later, WWE released a DVD set titled The Legacy of Stone Cold Steve Austin, which includes the match, but not the Radicalz interference. The DVD was released eight months following the death of Chris Benoit and his family, and WWE was making sure to scrub all things Benoit out of their product. On the Austin DVD, the match cuts out the entire Radicalz involvement, making it seem as though only Austin and Triple H were involved.
WWE
It's not the first time that Steve Austin has demonstrated his smooth operational skills of large, powerful vehicles, but it did provide an impressive crunch to close out the 2000 Survivor Series on. Austin outsmarted Triple H in the parking lot, catching him unaware as he lay in wait to try and mow down Stone Cold inside a car. That's when Austin used a crane to lift Helmsley and the car high off the ground, before dropping him from a catastrophic height.
This particular part of the match was actually filmed the night before, and then inserted into the pay-per-view broadcast as the dramatic climax. It looked great, though it probably would've been better remembered had Triple H not showed up a couple of Raws later without so much as a flesh wound.
WWE
Despite the hype surrounding Austin's revenge match against evil mastermind Triple H, the 2000 Survivor Series would actually be the least bought Big Five pay-per-view of the year, good for 400,000 buys. Overall, that's still a satisfying number, tied with 1990 for third most-bought Survivor Series of all time (and behind only 1998 and 1999).
Still, it joined the 1993 and 1995 shows as the only Survivor Series' to receive less buys than the King of the Ring PPVs from the same year (the 2000 crowning did 475,000 buys, a record for *that* show). And it's not like the Survivor Series number was anything to panic over - WCW's Mayhem event from a week later only managed an estimated 55,000 buys (per Wrestling Observer statistician Chris Harrington), so WWE was still dishing out quite a beating.
And what a triple main event it was. Any time you can combine snakeskin pants, evil twins that aren't actually twins, a man forcing his ass into his cousin's face, and attempted murder via a crane, you're watching wrestling gone berserk. But that was par for the course for WWE in 2000, perhaps the most fun year product-wise in company history. Survivor Series, admittedly, doesn't hold a candle to great events like SummerSlam, Backlash, Royal Rumble, and Judgment Day, but it was certainly eventful, at least.
Survivor Series 2000 failed to live up to the lofty standards WWE itself set throughout the year, but it's still a show that you can sink your teeth into. And if you like random mayhem, you probably won't be disappointed.
10. End Of The Outlaws
WWEThe first elimination match of the night pitted all four Radicalz against a modified version of D-Generation X, as Chyna, Billy Gunn, Road Dogg, and Dogg's new buddy K-Kwik (R-Truth) represented the green and black in the eyes of some. The match brought Gunn and Dogg together once more, The New Age Outlaws riding again after their surprising run to the top began three years earlier.
It also marked the last time Gunn and Dogg would team on a WWE pay-per-view for more than 13 years. The next night on Raw would see the two team with K-Kwik in six-man action, and that in itself would be their last WWE tag team appearance for the same length of time. Road Dogg would be released from the company in January 2001 to deal with personal issues, and he resurfaced in TNA about 18 months later as BG James.
9. X'd Out
WWEK-Kwik had to be accelerated into the picture, only showing up shortly before Survivor Series as the rhyme-spitting running buddy of Road Dogg. It was a hasty move to put K-Kwik into a somewhat high-profile match, but WWE gave it a pretty good effort in that week before Survivor Series. And it had to be done, since the wrestler that Ron Killings replaced was injured.
It would have been an even clearer DX reunion had X-Pac been the one to team with Chyna and The Outlaws. However, X-Pac sustained a neck injury the previous month. The ailment would cause Sean Waltman to miss several months of action, not returning until after the Royal Rumble, around which time the seeds were planted for the arrival of X-Factor. Man, I miss that music...
8. Farewell Performance
WWEWhen The Radicalz jumped to WWE from WCW in January 2000, it was a crushing blow to the image of their former employer, as four genuinely talented and valuable performers left for greener pastures while WCW dealt with continued tumult. Though the group would mostly pursue individual glories mere months after their WWE arrival, they did come back together briefly in the fall, for both this match, and as lackeys of Triple H.
The match would mark the last time that all four men would team together. Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn mostly split off as a midcard duo shortly after, and Malenko would be all but retired by the end of the summer of 2001. Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero would take different paths to the top of WWE, and would share a special moment at the end of WrestleMania XX, but The Radicalz were never really revisited otherwise.
7. Hardcore Homecoming
WWEDeeper in the midcard on the show, William Regal successfully defended his European title after defeating Hardcore Holly via disqualification. The match saw Regal work over Holly's recently-mended arm with laser-focus. And "recently-mended" is the best descriptor for it, as Bob Holly had only just recently returned to the road after a long injury layoff.
After breaking his arm against Kurt Angle in a SmackDown match at the end of June, Holly missed more than four months of action, and in fact had only just returned to the ring the weekend before Survivor Series. Holly lost to Regal at concurrent house shows in Ohio, before reappearing on the go-home episode of Raw. The PPV match was set up via an angle on Sunday Night Heat, demonstrating how rushed it had to be.
6. Bloody Hell
WWEIt's not often, even in the more-extreme Attitude Era, that you saw blood in women's matches, but Ivory's Women's title match with Lita would prove to be an exception. It wasn't a blade job, but rather a hearty potato on Ivory's part that opened up Lita near her eye, causing a flow that looked like flash flooding. It was truly a gruesome sight, one that nobody expected to see.
Incredibly, it was later revealed that Lita only needed two stitches to close the wound. Given the excess of the blood flow, it looked much more severe than it actually was, so two stitches is rather surprising. These days, the referee would have his rubber gloves out, and there'd be a temporary break for Lita to get her face towelled off.
5. Rare Retention
WWEAs a personal memory, some of my high school buddies were insisting to me that The Undertaker was definitely going to defeat Kurt Angle and become the WWE Champion since Survivor Series coincided with the 10-year anniversary of 'Taker's debut. I wagered that Angle would win (too soon to change the belt), and ended up being right. For once in my life.
The win made Kurt Angle the first man in eight years to retain the WWE Championship after defending it at Survivor Series. Bret Hart did so in 1992, but lost in 1994 and 1997 - as did Diesel in 1995, Shawn Michaels in 1996, and Triple H in 1999. Angle managed to break that streak at Undertaker's expense.
4. Pinned.
WWEAngle managed to pin Undertaker with a little bit of chicanery, getting an assist from near-lookalike brother Eric. It was one of those dreaded distraction finishes, but it had a clever twist, one that Brock Lesnar would succumb to a little more than two years later. Kurt Angle has a career full of firsts and achievements, and this would qualify in both categories.
This loss marked the first time that The Undertaker was pinned at Survivor Series, after competing at eight of the previous 10 shows (1997 and 1999 exempted). Undertaker didn't always win at Survivor Series, but he did sustain losses via countout (his elimination matches in 1990 and 1993) and DQ (his 1998 tournament match). So much for cashing in on the "Decade of Destruction".
3. On The Cutting Room Floor
WWEThe Steve Austin/Triple H main event was a raucous affair, highlighted by the fact that both men would eventually make their way through the backstage area and into the parking lot for a brutal final confrontation. Along the way, all four members of The Radicalz would interfere on Triple H's behalf, jumping Austin in an attempt to aid The Game.
A little more than seven years later, WWE released a DVD set titled The Legacy of Stone Cold Steve Austin, which includes the match, but not the Radicalz interference. The DVD was released eight months following the death of Chris Benoit and his family, and WWE was making sure to scrub all things Benoit out of their product. On the Austin DVD, the match cuts out the entire Radicalz involvement, making it seem as though only Austin and Triple H were involved.
2. Killer Crane
WWEIt's not the first time that Steve Austin has demonstrated his smooth operational skills of large, powerful vehicles, but it did provide an impressive crunch to close out the 2000 Survivor Series on. Austin outsmarted Triple H in the parking lot, catching him unaware as he lay in wait to try and mow down Stone Cold inside a car. That's when Austin used a crane to lift Helmsley and the car high off the ground, before dropping him from a catastrophic height.
This particular part of the match was actually filmed the night before, and then inserted into the pay-per-view broadcast as the dramatic climax. It looked great, though it probably would've been better remembered had Triple H not showed up a couple of Raws later without so much as a flesh wound.
1. Runt Of The Litter
WWEDespite the hype surrounding Austin's revenge match against evil mastermind Triple H, the 2000 Survivor Series would actually be the least bought Big Five pay-per-view of the year, good for 400,000 buys. Overall, that's still a satisfying number, tied with 1990 for third most-bought Survivor Series of all time (and behind only 1998 and 1999).
Still, it joined the 1993 and 1995 shows as the only Survivor Series' to receive less buys than the King of the Ring PPVs from the same year (the 2000 crowning did 475,000 buys, a record for *that* show). And it's not like the Survivor Series number was anything to panic over - WCW's Mayhem event from a week later only managed an estimated 55,000 buys (per Wrestling Observer statistician Chris Harrington), so WWE was still dishing out quite a beating.
Written by Justin Henry
In addition to writing lists and commentaries for Cultaholic, Justin is also a features writer and interviewer for Fighting Spirit Magazine, and is co-author of the WWE-related book Titan Screwed: Lost Smiles, Stunners, and Screwjobs.
