February 2000

This is a result of Angle issuing an open challenge, which he calls an Olympic challenge. Rikishi is still selling the injured knee. I'm a sucker for injuries sold over multiple matches. Angle goes all over the place selling for the stinkface, to the point he bails and gets himself intentionally counted out pretty quickly. When he tries to bail, Jericho stops him and tosses him back in, where he eats a Rikishi Driver and is about to eat a Bansai Drop until the Radicalz hit the ring before 2 Cool makes the save. Fun post-match moment when Jericho and Chyna join Rikishi and 2 Cool in their dance. While the match wasn't much, everything outside the match is kinda everything …

The anti-highlight video HHH had production put together is priceless and gets huge heat at Madison Square Garden. I cracked up that Shane cut a promo that's pretty close thematically to the promo he cut when he returned last year. He's still waiting his turn to run the show nearly two decades later. HHH's asshole attitude toward Rock is off the charts, and he ends up setting up a match between Rock and Brooklyn Brawler for the night. Rock gets shown up by all the heels and is left at a loss for words in a way I have never quite seen. Rock comes out later in the show to make short work of the Brawler and immediately calls out HHH for a fight. HHH is ready to go until Shan…

Some more solid lucha action. I though Emilio got to show more fire here than what we have seen in most of the trios as he really goes after Scorpio and Violenca at different points. Fuerza still is someone that always captivates me when he is in a match even though I don’t know if he has ever had a MOTYC in any given year. Much like Juvy in that way. More groundwork for the 3/17 show with all of these guys seemingly going to be involved. ***

Sometimes, clipping is done in a way that you can still get a feel for the match, but I don't think that was the case here. I had a tough time getting a feel for what was going on, which is unfortunate since I was excited to see the first Negro Casas singles match of 2000, even if we only had 9 minutes of it. It doesn't look to have been anything special, but I do think it's just as possible the editing was bad. We didn't even see what led to Negro's La Magistral win in the third fall. It just happened.