Royal Rumble

WWF is the greatest wrestling federation out there, by far. The year 2000 Royal Rumble was not the best of the year, but it was very good. This PPV was important in many ways. It showed the premiere of Tazz, who ended Kurt Angle's long time winning streak. It had a very memorable first-ever Tag Team Table Match, in which the Hardy Boyz defeated the Dudley Boyz, who are the true masters of tables. Chris Jericho became the undisputed Intercontinental Champion after defeating Chyna and Hardcore Holly. Triple H defended his WWF Title in an excellent "street fight" match against "Cactus Jack" Mick Foley. The Royal Rumble itself, in which 30 wrestlers would compete to be the last one thrown out of the ring, was the best of the night. The Rock won and became the Number One Contendor for the WWF Title and would recieve a title shot at Wrestlemania. The whole PPV was very entertaining and cool. The only bad thing was when Mae Young won the "Miss Rumble" Contest. No one wants to see a near-80 year old woman's breast! *YUCK!* But aside from that, very good.

One of the best Royal Rumble's ever. However there were a few flaws.

Match one saw the debut of Tazz. His entrance was chilling. He beat Kurt Angle, ending 'The Olympic Hero's' winning streak.

Next up Chyna, Hardcore Holly and Chris Jericho do battle in a fine triple threat match for the vacant Intercontinental Championship.

Then The APA do battle with The New Age Outlaws in a passable match. APA win by DQ I think when X-Pac runs in.

Then Triple H faces off against Cactus Jack in a brutul match up. HHH wins by pedigreeing Jack through thumb tacks.

Then we didn't need this, a bikini contest featuring some lovely women like Terri, Jackie and Tori. 85 year old Mae Young comes down and takes her bra off in front of Jerry Lawler. She wins........

The the rumble takes place. D'Lo Brown is number one and Grandmaster Sexay is number 2. The Rock wins this by eliminating The Big Show.

Overall a solid PPV!

Analysing the Rumble match alone not the whole PPV which was saved by some earlier matches. This is pretty poor. From the very beginning Howard Finkel says after a certain designated time to be decided. Which leads you to the conclusion, but even at this late stage they weren't sure whether they're running every two minutes 90 seconds for every minute. It was very hard to work out how far into the event you were with no information coming from the commentary team e.g." Who is going to be number 19?" It was very evident the crowd wasn't being drawn into the action. Has they seem more interested in who is coming next? It's not to say it didn't have it. Rikishi run of eliminations and his dance spot with Scotty too hottie and grand Master sexy where some fun in the middle, of a dull rumble .

Usually in a Royal Rumble event, I'm mostly interested in the Rumble itself, as it is almost always an entertaining ruckus. In this 2000 edition, however, the 30-man extravaganza was mostly a dud, and the PPV was mostly saved by the matches around it.

Triple H vs. Cactus Jack (Mankind) is the big draw here, and they elevate it to all-time classic status. One feels equal amounts of respect and pity for Foley as he sacrifices his body for the "good of the show". Helmsley even does the same.

The Hardy Boyz vs. The Dudley Boyz is basically a precursor to the TLC matches that would proliferate in WWE in short order. These two teams really put on a great high-flying show and every second of their match deserves to be watched.

One could say the same about the New Age Outlaws in a different way (more with the mics/personality than with the actual wrestling). Here, they are paired with the un-exciting Acolytes but still manage to make it watchable. The Outlaws seem to take a lot of flak for being "all talk", but boy oh boy do arenas "pop" when they come out.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, the Rumble itself seems both short and slow at the same time. The winner seems rather telegraphed from the very beginning, and when an impromptu dance party is maybe the highlight of the match, you know there are problems.

Overall, though, I can still give this event a quality ranking due to the excitement of its "buildup" matches. For the first time in perhaps, well, ever, the Rumble is the letdown of the PPV.

This is a fantastic PPV and the sole reason why I bought it on video was because of the classic matches and memories the event has...well excluding Mae Young, I'm still trying to purge that from memory.

First thing the PPV has is the debut of Tazz, which to this day sends a chill down my spine, only if all debuts were like this. The matches themselves ranged from average to classic. The street fight between HHH & Cactus Jack without a shadow of a doubt is great stuff, both men worked damn hard in that match and it shows (the Pedigree onto the thumbtacks still makes me wince). The table match between the Hardy Boyz & the Dudley Boyz is also wonderful to watch, being one of the first table matches I would say this send the benchmark. As for the other matches they are quite good, nothing classic, but still not bad (of course, with a 60+ minute Royal Rumble things have to be chopped up a bit to make time, so the matches are a little short).

As for the Royal Rumble itself, there were better. This was a fairly predictable Rumble with Kane, Big Show or Rock being the serious contenders (hell, this was a storyline where these three were in a feud over who was going to win, this made for a weak Rumble).

A real waste of time in the show was the Swimsuit Contest, I never liked these because I figured why do something like this when you can have another match in it's place which holds some meaning to the storylines? Of course, the reason I'm so resentful about watching it we got to see Mae Young do a stripping act.ugh, thank God the censors put a giant electronic Censored sign on the screen.

8/10

Great PPV and worthy of a purchase, the Street Fight and the Table Match gives this PPV a high score. Just be warned that once the Swimsuit Contest starts, hit fast-forward.