Armageddon 1999 - National Car Rental Centre, Sunrise Florida, December 12th, 1999

A low energy but emotional video package welcomes us to Armageddon! It is the end of the world and the stage is set for it - the WWF has started to get properly into these types of highly gimmicked and cool looking stages and at the top of the entrance ramp there's military jeeps, a tank and a helicopter next to some large steel scaffolding. 

Trivia note - this was the first WWF PPV that was aired on free TV in the UK. It was shown on Channel 4 which ended their long standing exclusive deal with Sky Sports. Sunday Night Heat and select PPVs were shown on Channel 4 “as live” for a couple of years before that deal ended and they moved all of the PPVs over to Sky Box Office (which was a pain as they were all just free on Sky Sports previously but Sky Box Office charged £14.99 per show!)

Second trivia note - this is the first PPV to not feature Stone Cold Steve Austin since October 1997’s Badd Blood which, ironically, he missed because of a neck injury - the same one that has been progressively getting worse ever since and caused his second much longer absence. 

Battle Royal for the number one contendership for the WWF Tag Team Championships at the Royal Rumble PPV

Edge and Christian vs. The Hardy Boyz (Matt and Jeff Hardy) vs. The Dudley Boyz (Bubba Ray Dudley and D-Von Dudley) vs. The Acolytes (Bradshaw and Faarooq) vs. The Godfather and Mark Henry vs. The Headbangers (Mosh and Thrasher) vs. Too Cool (Scotty 2 Hotty and Grandmaster Sexay) vs. The Mean Street Posse (Rodney and Pete Gas) 

The rules for this eight team battle royal are pretty simple - when one man is eliminated, so is his partner. The last team standing goes to the Royal Rumble PPV to challenge for the WWF Tag Team titles. The funny thing about them doing number one contenders matches in this era is that every title - including the tag titles and the WWF Championship itself - are regularly defended on Raw and Smackdown against teams and people who haven’t earned a shot. The Big Show defended the WWF title against Hardcore Holly for Christ’s sake. 

Bubba cuts a pre match promo making fun of the fact that Edge sprained his knee during their last match.

 That brings out Edge and Christian who clear the ring. The Headbangers debut a new look at this show wearing full, see through dresses and bras and panties under them. Wild. JR calls out Mosh’s “horrific gimmick” (he means Beaver Cleavage, or maybe the wife beating stuff? It was all dreadful). 

The crowd is red hot already - acts like Too Cool that are only just getting started and building momentum get a pretty big cheer when they enter! 

The Godfather has four hoes tonight, and there has been no explanation given for him and Mark Henry being a tag team again. Mark actually turned on Godfather the last time they teamed. I guess the power of the hoes brought them together. 

The tag team division is in great shape - this isn’t even EVERY team on the roster.

One of the Posse members gets eliminated quickly but Joey Abs slides in to take his place which the referees miss so the Posse continues. They do this trick a couple of times and get away with it before being caught.

The Headbangers are next out when Bradshaw dumps out Mosh. The Acolytes work together to get Mark Henry out which eliminates him and The Godfather.

Edge manages to push out both members of Too Cool while they double team Christian. 

The Dudleys use a little bit of cheating as D-Von goes out under the ropes and helps Bubba dump Edge out from the outside. 

The Dudleys hit a 3D on Jeff but celebrate for too long which lets Matt throw out D-Von to eliminate them which brings it down to The Hardyz and The Acolytes. Matt and Jeff have been a hair away from winning the tag team titles on more than one occasion recently so they seem like the obvious winners here. Bradshaw and Matt both tumble over the top rope but the referee doesn’t see who landed first so he lets the match continue. 

Jeff gets Faarooq out of the ring, seemingly winning this match but the referee didn’t see that either so he just gets back in! The Hardyz build some momentum with double team moves but after some real nice near calls with Bradshaw and Matt Hardy barely hanging on on the apron, Faarooq sends Jeff flying over the top in spectacular fashion to win the match.

Bradshaw and Faarooq have a date with the tag team champions in six weeks at the Royal Rumble. 

This was a fun battle royal but the fans were desperate to see Matt and Jeff win this. 

Lillian Garcia interviews Kurt Angle ahead of his match with Steve Blackman. He wants to reiterate that Steve Blackman lost their tag team match on Smackdown, not him. He is still undefeated. I agree with him. 

Kurt Angle vs. Steve Blackman

Kurt tries to talk about his Three Is (Integrity, Intensity and Intelligence) before the match but Blackman’s music interrupts him. 

Kurt tries the moonsault for the first time in his career but it misses, as it pretty much always would. It is a very nice looking moonsault though - beautiful arch.

The two trade offences back and forth and the fans chant “boring” which is unfair. It’s not. 

The commentators talk a lot about the fact that the people dare to boo an Olympic Hero, as the fans start chanting “Angle sucks’’. This match does at leave give Kurt the chance to show off some of his selling and get into more “deep water” as they say, than he has done in the matches he's had on TV in the past month. 

Kurt Angle wins out of the blue with a nice bridging German suplex and then as he celebrates, Blackman attacks him with nunchucks!

I’ll talk about it here because we’ll never see him again anyway but Kurt Angle’s first opponent - Shawn Staziak - was suspended just after this PPV as he was caught secretly recording a private conversation between Steve Blackman and The British Bulldog. He claimed he did it as a prank but everyone agreed that it was a weird thing to do and he was fired shortly after. Not a super important side note but a funny story? What a strange man.

Evening Gown Pool Match for the WWF Women’s Championship

Ivory © vs. Jacqueline vs. B.B. vs. Miss Kitty

Special guest referees: Fabulous Moolah and Mae Young

This match was promoted as being a four way evening gown match, and I’m not sure when the “in the pool” aspect was added. Or when Moolah and Mae Young were added as the referees.

The main build for this match (aside from women’s champion Ivory attacking non-wrestler BB who then suggested it) is that Miss Kitty says she doesn’t wear underwear. 

The rules here are even simpler than the Battle Royal earlier - the last woman to have her dress on is the WWF Women’s Champion.

There isn’t a lot of action for me to call here as they flail around in the (probably cold) water and pull at each other's dresses while the fans chant “show your puppies” and Jerry Lawler has a fit on commentary. 

Jacqueline is the first woman eliminated (and spills out of her bra a bit, as she often did in these situations - Jackie’s boobs being accidentally exposed is a very easy thing to Google).

BB is the next woman eliminated which gets a big cheer. Ivory isn’t satisfied and tries to get BB’s bra too but that just distracts her long enough for Miss Kitty to choke her with BB’s dress and then get her dress off.

Miss Kitty - the non-wrestler - is the new WWF Women’s Champion. Moolah and Mae Young celebrate with her after the match as the new champion asks for a microphone.

Miss Kitty says that “they” made her wear underwear. Stripper music plays and she removes her dress and then to everyone’s shock, her bra.

This was and I still believe is the only instance of intentional nudity in WWF history. It’s blurred on the WWE Network obviously, and her breasts were only on show for a second before Sgt. Slaughter appeared with the towel to cover her up. This made her the most popular woman in the company, because wrestling fans are gross. I was only 11 years old at the time and yes, my friends and I paused and rewound our VHS copy of this show many times. But I was an 11 year old boy, so what’s Jerry Lawler’s excuse?

Mae Young then tries to repeat it and strips to her own bra and panties as the fans laugh and cheer. Slaughter is thankfully there to cover her up too. 

Kevin Kelly interviews Rikishi Fatu who only debuted a couple of weeks ago (and is already buddies with Too Cool). This is his first promo on TV and it’s pretty rubbish. The Hollys targeted him and demanded this tag team match against two true super heavyweights. Rikishi tells Viscera that he better have his back - they haven’t interacted on TV in the build up. 

The Holly Cousins (Hardcore and Crash Holly) vs. Viscera and Rikishi Fatu

Between Smackdown, Raw and now tonight they don’t seem to have decided how to spell Riksih’s name yet - it keeps flipping between Fatu and Phatu. I spell it with an F because I’m pretty sure that's the version that sticks, but he is known as just Rikishi for the bulk of his career.

There is obvious distrust and dissension between the babyface Rikishi and the heel Viscera but it's not really enough to help the Hollys who are easily thrown around and dominated with splashes and the like. 

I don’t have a ton to say about this one - it’s not good. The finish comes from out of nowhere when Viscera tries to spin heel kick Hardcore but misses and catches Rikishi in the back of the head. Hardcore pins Rikishi and The Hollys win!

They leave quickly and then the two big men have words and fight after the match until split up by referees. 

Lillian Garcia interviews Val Venis about maybe becoming a champion tonight. After his failed main event heel push and endless feud with Mick Foley, he is back to being plain old babyface Val Venis cutting the same promo he’s cut for the past 20 months. He speaks Spanish to Lillian and she seems kind of into it.

WWF European Championship

The British Bulldog © vs. Val Venis vs. D’Lo Brown

D’Lo Brown hasn’t been on TV a lot lately and was added to this kind-of last minute. He has definitely suffered since Vince Russo left the company as head writer. Russo was always a big D’Lo fan and sure enough his consistent push ended when Russo’s WWF career did.

To be fair, I think that he and Val are both in similar spots here as with the influx of new midcard talent (Jericho, Angle, Rikishi and there are more to come in the next month or so) they are both kind of “old news”. The WWF midcard is about to become stacked with talent in a way it never had been before and subsequently this is the last significant PPV appearances for both these guys for quite a while. 

The Bulldog does have the Mean Street Posse with him as backup as usual but they’re escorted to the back by some referees to keep this fair.

D’Lo gets the first big spot of the match with an impressive dive over the top rope to the floor taking out both men. The action in the ring is solid between Val and D’Lo - they’ve clashed a few times in the past year or so.

The match goes back and forth with Val and D’Lo clearing Bulldog out of the ring. He kind of just stands there watching and doesn’t get back involved until breaking up D’Lo’s pin on Val after a great looking powerbomb. 

Bulldog hits his running powerslam finisher on Val but D’Lo breaks that up. The fans chat “D’Lo” at multiple points and pop big for his trademark moves. He hits a sloppy version of the Sky High (Bulldog was out of position) and then the Low Down frog splash but Val breaks that up with a Money Shot splash to D’Lo’s back to pin Bulldog and win the European Championship.

The fans really wanted D’Lo to win, but seemed happy for a new champion either way. That’s two title changes in two title matches.

The Bulldog hasn’t spoken on TV since before No Mercy and his loss to The Rock. They well and truly abandoned any ideas that this guy was going to be a worthy addition to the roster and this is his last proper PPV appearance, as being in the Rumble match at the next PPV doesn’t count. A combination of his physical condition, substance abuse issues and age was his downfall. He’s been around since the late 80s so even though he’s only in his 30s, he looks like a dinosaur compared to the rest of the WWF roster. Wrestling is a wonderful thing, but it chewed up and spat out its fair share of unfortunate souls. 

Michael Cole interviews X-Pac before his steel cage match with Kane. He explains that he’s made some changes to the rules. They’re listed below in the match title. I’m not sure what gives X-Pac the right to make those changes but it's cool. He ends on another joke about how Tori wants him and not Kane. 

Steel cage match

Kane (w/Tori) vs. X-Pac 

Kane can only win by pinfall or submission, X-Pac can also win by escaping the cage

Tori looks great tonight. She always does. Kane enters first and waits in the cage but when X-Pac gets in Tori’s face outside the ring Kane climbs up and over and attacks his former tag team championship partner.

X-Pac uses the ring bell as a weapon but Kane is unphased and chases him into the ring so the bell can ring and the match can start. 

Kane dominates and throws X-Pac around - 1998 Kane would have already killed him. He hasn’t even tried to set him on fire yet! 

Jerry Lawler runs through his entire small penis joke book talking about Kane - something X-Pac has claimed multiple times during the build up. 

I always said that I thought X-Pac was the least popular member of DX when they were good guys, but the people really hate him now as a bad guy. Me too - he makes me unreasonably angry in his stupid bucket hat and his endless, relentless dancing during his entrance. He has a very punchable smugness, but I did like him when he was Kane’s partner so does that just make Sean Waltman the best performer in WWF history?

X-Pac tries to fight back but Kane overwhelms him and seems to have the match easily won but The New Age Outlaws run to the ring and use bolt cutters to cut open the chain on the cage door.

Billy slams the cage door on Kane’s head and Roaddogg slides a chair into the ring for X-Pac to use. He does manage to hit the X-Factor on Kane right onto the chair and then he handcuffs Kane to the cage. He hits Kane with the chair multiple times and then starts to climb out but Tori gets in the ring to try and stop him. He gives her the X-Factor! 

The fans start to chant “X-Pac sucks” as he climbs out and Kane in a fury breaks the handcuffs! 

Kane goes out of the ring through the door and catches X-Pac on his shoulders and stops him from reaching the floor, throwing him back into the cage and then slamming the door on his head.

Kane climbs up the cage and gives X-Pac a flying clothesline from the top of the cage! 

He follows up with a tombstone piledriver and pins X-Pac to win and get some measure of revenge, but he’s more focused on checking on Tori than celebrating. 

I said it before but 1998 Kane would have given him a couple more tombstones and then tried to set him on fire too. It’s what the people want, but Kane wins and that’s what matters.

WWF Intercontinental Championship

Chyna © (w/WWF Women’s Champion Miss Kitty) vs. Chris Jericho

The video package for this one is more of a weird mashup of their titantron videos and cuts of their last match at Survivor Series. It’s not great, considering how heated this rivalry has been. 

Miss Kitty really is a little mini-Chyna now with her own title belt. 

Jericho works super aggressively and suplexes Chyna across the announce desk and swings a chair at her head in the early going! Miss Kitty grabs the chair so Y2J forces a kiss on her and shoves her down.

Back in the ring, he ties the champion up in the ropes and aims his attacks at her surgically repaired hand (that he smashed with a hammer) and dropkicks her in the thumb, which is unique. 

The fans are solidly behind Y2J and keep chanting “Go Jericho Go”. 

Jericho dominates the match but Chyna gets a nice near fall off countering a back suplex from the top rope into a cross body.

Chyna and Triple H are still a couple in real life at this point but not on screen. Chyna took a dislike to Y2J and so she and Triple H would bury him to management and try to kill his WWF career. Triple H has even taken a couple of cheap shots about how “Jericho can’t work” on TV in the past month.

Fortunately, Y2J’s growing popularity and skill both in the ring and on the mic kept him on management's good side and he wins this match with a Walls of Jericho, which finally gets Chyna to submit.

Chris Jericho captures his first Intercontinental Championship - three title changes in a row tonight - and is more popular than ever. 

This wasn’t as good as their match at Survivor Series but to be fair, it also wasn’t as long.

Michael Cole has an interview backstage with the new champion and Jericho talks about how the title now has a proper home with a great technical wrestler. Chyna approaches and says that she was the better wrestler last month and tonight it was him, and offers a handshake. Jericho seems taken aback and expects a fight but no, it’s just a show of respect. 

WWF Tag Team Championship

The New Age Outlaws © (Roaddogg and Mr. Ass) vs. The Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection (Mankind and The Rock)

Mankind enters first, followed by The Rock. I’m surprised that The Rock didn’t give us a pre match promo before this one honestly. The New Age Outlaws skip their opening spiel too. They must be short on time or something.

So now that we’re here, I can finally talk about what Mick Foley’s original creative plans were - he wanted the Rock n’ Sock storyline to lead to him turning heel and, as Cactus Jack, having a retirement match on this PPV with The Rock. He wanted The Rock to end his career on this show.

The plans fell apart as Vince McMahon and The Rock broke the news to Mick Foley that at this stage of his career? No one wants to boo him. He’s a babyface until the end now. Mick had been planning his retirement for a few months now as he was in a terrible shape, needing multiple surgeries and having issues with memory loss thanks to years of blows to the head which is terrifying. Vince talked him into a couple more months so he could have a proper farewell tour. I realise this is a little spoilery but that is very much the stage of Mankind’s career we’re at.

Mankind starts out with Mr. Ass and after some back and forth, he tags out to The Rock. The fans are rabid for him. In a great spot, Mr. Ass slowly removes his t-shirt so The Rock catches him with a series of right hands while he’s blind. Touchingly, Rock and Mankind work great as a team but the match breaks down into a four man brawl. I think this would have worked great as anything goes, tornado tag style match but with the main event being a gimmick match, you don’t want to overload the show with that stuff.

Billy uses a running cutter-type move and that’s become somewhat of a trope of his - using WCW wrestler’s finishes as normal moves. He uses the jackhammer and Stinger Splash a lot too. 

The Outlaws get The Rock out of the ring and get control of the match with some double teaming. 

Mankind gets the hot tag and after the referee goes down, Piledrives Roaddogg. With no referee to count, a bitter Al Snow runs down and hits him with Head! The Rock chases Snow and beats him up at the top of the ramp as The Outlaws use the ring bell but Mankind kicks out! 

The Rock resumes his place on the corner and Mankind kicks out again from a piledriver. He manages to subdue both Outlaws and crawls to The Rock for a red-hot tag. 

The Rock lays the smack down on both tag team champions and after a samoan drop on Mr. Ass and a spine buster on Roaddogg, Rock Bottom’s BIlly Gunn and has the match won! 

Al Snow breaks up the count right in front of the referee and sadly, this one ends via disqualification.

Mankind goes after Al Snow and they fight outside. The Rock plants Roaddogg with a Rock Bottom and then drills Snow with one too, followed by a People’s Elbow! The Rock and Mankind stand tall and won the match, but are not the tag team champions thanks to Al Snow. This wasn’t great and didn’t have the “big match feel” you’d expect from The Rock and Mankind. This entire show was definitely missing a classic Rock promo either before or after the match. 

WWF Championship

The Big Show © vs. WWF Hardcore Champion The Big Bossman (w/Prince Albert)

Tremendous video package for this one but honestly the bulk of the build was before Survivor Series. The two have mostly avoided each other since Big Show won the WWF title, and Bossman became the number one contender. This video package does let us see that The Big Show attended his father’s funeral wearing a black suit made entirely of leather. Classy.

The booking of this match, given the horrific personal things The Big Bossman has done to The Big Show for the past two months, should be Show just hammering Bossman and it ending via referee stoppage after five minutes.

Show does go right at the challenger, throwing him around hy his lapel to the point his shirt bursts open. Show hammers him and doesn’t even go for covers. Considering how long we’ve waited to see him get his hands on Bossman, the fans are really quiet for this. In truth, The Big Show’s title reign has been lacking - he’s the champion but has hardly been a focus of any of the Raws or Smackdowns since he won it. He hasn’t even done the old “in ring promo” segment. 

On the outside, Big Show grabs Prince Albert and chokeslams him through the Spanish announce table with ease. That lets Bossman hit him in the head with the ring steps, and then run the champion head first into the ring post.

I thought that Bossman exposing The Big Show’s “being a bastard” with his sobbing mother was dumb because honestly, who cares if he was born out of wedlock? But the implication seems to be that she does not in fact know who the Big Show’s real father is.

Bossman struggles to get a limp champion into the ring and covers but Show easily kicks out and very impressively kips-up and then plants Bossman with a chokeslam to easily retain the WWF title. 

This only went about three minutes but it felt flat, partly due to the quiet crowd and partly because Show really didn’t get anywhere near enough payback on Bossman. One chokeslam after all he did? Well as long as you’re happy, Paul.

No Holds Barred match

Triple H vs. Vince McMahon

An awesome video package for this one - this is so heated and is a good example of a storyline that sucked me in. This was 20+ years ago and I know how it all ends, but I still HATED Triple H and I still wanted to see Vince KILL him. This whole feud has been wonderful and did so much more for Triple H as the top heel than anything else he’d done.

Before the combatants enter, Stephanie McMahon comes out first and takes a seat at ringside right in the front row. Triple H gave her the ticket as a “wedding present” so she can see this all unfold in person.

When Triple H enters, it's with a sledgehammer in hand. His entrance looks incredible with My Time playing, and the strobe lights flashing as he walks through the literal warzone at the top of the ramp past a tank and helicopter. Great stuff. He bangs the hammer on various things on his way to the ring.

As Vince slowly climbs into the ring, Triple H rushes him with the sledgehammer but McMahon throws white powder into Triple H’s eyes (kinda, he actually misses but Triple H still sells it) and then lights up his son in law with punches and a low blow. Vince actually dominates Triple H for a couple of minutes! 

On the outside, Vince runs Triple H in to the ring steps and the announce table and then they fight out into the crowd. Vince is mauling Triple H who, to his credit, bumps and sells and begs for mercy from the 53 year old non-wrestler and makes him look like a million bucks.

At the back of the arena, Triple H gains control and fights Vince back towards the ring, pummelling him with punches and slamming him into the security rails and supports.

Back at ringside, Vince somehow fights back into it and as he kicks Triple H in the ribs on the floor, Mankind wheels a shopping trolley full of weapons down to the ring and gifts them to Vince!

McMahon uses a trash can lid in the head over and over, but Triple H has at least poured water in his eyes to regain his sight which was a nice touch. We get a bunch of reaction shots of Stephanie during the match and she happily cheers on Vince and boos Triple H, which King reacts to in disgust like they’re a genuine, married couple. I know he’s playing the heel but even in kayfabe he makes himself look unbelievably stupid.

Vince is absolutely dominating Triple H as he keeps going back to the trolley and getting weapons, hammering The Game with trash cans and a crutch! 

After a low blow with the crutch on Vince, Triple H gets some real offence for the first time and hammers Vince with a stop sign and then wraps a chain around his first to punch Vince in the head.

As Triple H and Vince beat each other up and down the ramp with weapons and trade control back and forth, JR mentions that Shane McMahon isn’t here tonight, which seems relevant.

Triple H uses a mounted gun which is set up as part of the warzone stage and spins it violently on its stand and it catches Vince brutally in the back of the head. That looked very painful and gets more of a groan from the crowd than anything.

Vince does fight back and his own version where he spins a plane’s rear flap down into Triple H’s head. That’s unique.

The two fight backstage and all the way out to the parking lot as Triple H throws Vince up onto the front of a truck and elbow drops him hard enough to dent the metal. Triple H heads outside and tries to goad Vince into following him. He does and outside the arena, Triple H tries to run Vince McMahon over, who just barely avoids it by jumping up onto a concrete railing! I mean if people didn’t think Triple H were behind Austin’s hit and run before, they sure do now! 

As the two fight around the parking lot, we get an indication of how red hot the WWF was at the time - there's a ton of fans hanging out outside the arena who couldn’t get a ticket, just in case they saw something like this! Triple H and Vince climb up onto the roof of a white limo and Triple H gives him a bodyslam and an elbow drop before dragging him back in the arena, running his head into parked cars and walls, all while taunting him about Stephanie. 

Back in the arena, Vince uses a steel pipe into Triple H’s ribs and then keeps swinging for his head as The Game climbs a scaffolding tower to escape. Vince follows and as he reaches about 20 - 30 feet in the air (legit), Triple H runs Vince’s head into the steel and sends him flying backwards to the arena floor disappearing into a bunker.

 The fans really didn’t react as big as the spot deserved and I think it’s because we didn’t see Vince land.

Triple H grabs a mic and goes to ringside to taunt Stephanie to her face and as he does, a bloody Vince McMahon climbs to his feet and staggers towards the ring to keep fighting. Triple H takes him down and after shoving the referee down, stands over the bleeding Vince with the sledgehammer preparing to murder Vince McMahon live on PPV until McMahon kicks him low! Vince grabs a pipe and hits Triple H a couple of times and now it’s him standing over Triple H with the sledgehammer as The Game begs for his life! 

I’m going to take a minute to pause here because this is a huge turning point for the WWF. Stephanie McMahon gets into the ring and it's at this point where she becomes a full time, on screen character. The WWF and later WWE would never be the same, both on screen and off once Stephanie McMahon got heavily involved in the business. 

Stephanie gets in the ring and takes the hammer from Vince, wanting to hit Triple H herself. She doesn’t have the heart to do it and The Game springs to life and grabs the hammer, hitting Vince in the gut and then the head and finally pinning McMahon with a foot on his chest, arms raised in celebration!

Stephanie looks distraught at first, but that turns to a smile and she embraces her husband - they kiss and hug and celebrate! Stephanie McMahon has turned on Vince and her own family and sided with Triple H and D-Generation X to end the PPV. Vince McMahon is out cold and he’s not even aware of the betrayal!