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[2000-04-02-WWF-Wrestlemania 2000] Chris Jericho vs Chris Benoit vs Kurt Angle


soup23

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A really good match that needed a crowd to invest into the action more. I thought the spots they innovated here were well done and the cutoffs and pin saves were also effective. The storyline of Kurt losing both of his belts in one night is pretty humorous but kind of hokey in execution. Benoit winning the IC belt is a big step and perfect placement for him at this point. My favorite spot of the whole match was Kurt locking in the chicken wing and the pop that received from the otherwise dead Anaheim crowd. ***1/2

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From a booking point of view, I've always seen this match as the birth of WWE's favorite child. Even Steven was born when two wrestlers traded falls to each win a title from a wrestler who went into the match holding both titles but dropped each of them in exchange for not having to do any jobs. That aside, I thought this match was really good, and pretty progressive by three-way standards. There was a thread recently about how most of these matches suffer from always having an odd man out who has to sell for an unusually long period of time, but these guys went out of their way to make sure that didn't happen here, keeping the action moving, which is I guess sort of what you have to do in a match like this if you want to avoid that. The crowd wasn't reacting to much of anything outside of the chicken wing spot and a few big moments from Jericho, but this was still very good. ***1/2

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  • 1 month later...

I wasn't as high on this. There were a lot of moments where guys were seemingly trying to get into position for the next three-man spot. Also think that Angle still looks relatively green here. As mentioned above, the crowd did them no real favors.

 

The booking thing is an interesting point for sure. The victimizing of Angle here worked because it helped build his character so much so I didn't mind it. It was bizarre to see Benoit celebrating with the IC belt moments after being pinned by Jericho to end the match so there's that. I really liked Jericho's crazy bump off the top into the table too.

 

***

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  • 11 months later...

I like this match but not as much as I used to. The three-way spots were interesting and I felt like it flowed together naturally for the most part but the crowd was not into this at all. The story behind Angle losing both belts without getting pinned was great but overall it never felt like they were in the home stretch. I feel like many undercard Wrestlemania matches in this era suffered from a lack of crowd interest and short on time. There are a lot of matches from Wrestlemania 15 to 19 which look good on paper but the execution just didn't seem to be there.

 

***

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  • 2 months later...
  • GSR changed the title to [2000-04-02-WWF-Wrestlemania 2000] Chris Jericho vs Chris Benoit vs Kurt Angle
  • 7 months later...

On paper this seemed like a great match. Sure I’m not a big fan of Angle (one of my more controversial opinions lol - well maybe not on here though) but he was a good wrestler at this point, coming into his own and the other two are Benoit and Jericho. BUT this just didn’t do it for me. It all felt clunky, the offence and the structure. It just didn’t work. They all have much better singles matches against each other, and I'm sure if this match would've been one fall, it also would've been better than this. **1/2

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  • 1 year later...

Although they had the two falls nonsense and the tired crowd working against them, these three went at it with a lot of speed and intensity. They absolutely worked their arses off.  Everyone involved in this would all eventually have better matches with each other, but this was a fine showcase of probably the three best pure wrestlers in the company at the time. Angle would lose both falls, but he's about to go to much bigger things.
★★★

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