Unforgiven 2002 - Staples Centre, Los Angeles CA, September 22nd 2002

Loved the video package for this PPV too - really great stuff focusing on the pair of World title matches tonight. I found the melodrama cheesy at Vengeance but I think this voice over lady is way better. 

Incredibly this is the first PPV event to take place at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles. That’s noteworthy because it’s hosted many huge WWE events since including Wrestlemania 21 and is one of the company’s favourite arenas these days - you could argue it’s second only to Madison Square Garden as WWE’s spiritual home. 

Eight Man Tag Team match

The Un-Americans (Test, William Regal and WWE Tag Team Champions Lance Storm and Christian) vs. Kane, Goldust, Booker T and Bubba Ray Dudley

The Un-Americans gained their fourth member when William Regal joined two weeks ago. This match almost certainly would have featured Bradshaw in Bubba Ray Dudley’s spot but he tore his bicep on a house show a couple of weeks ago and fortunately, Bubba’s issues with Triple H didn’t have him tied up with anything for the PPV. He’s an easy person to slot in and has his own history as Christian and Storm injured little Spike Dudley on Raw. 

There’s a nice spot early as Goldust and Bubba perform stereo flip, flop and fly punch combos finishing with an Atomic elbow - that’s one of Dusty Rhodes’ moves, Goldust’s real life dad and one of Bubba’s heroes. 

No one gets the advantage as the Un-Americans do their best to isolate someone but Bubba, then Goldust, then Booker are all far too worked up and fight free to tag out each time. Bubba and Booker come together and give Regal a Wazzup headbutt much to the crowd’s delight.

“Booker! Get the tables!” and they do but its dropkicked back into Booker’s face by Lance Storm which finally allows the Tag Team Champions to isolate and dissect Booker for a bit with tags in and out.

Booker fights back with a spinebuster and makes a hot tag to Kane who turns wild on all four Un-Americans, planting Storm with a powerslam. Regal breaks up the pin and that brings everyone into the ring for a wild brawl. Test puts down Kane with a pumphandle slam but Booker returns the favour with a Scissors Kick and brings everyone to their feet with the Spinarooni.

A low blow by Christian and a superkick from Storm almost finishes off Kane but the big red machine kicks out. It’s a chaotic flurry of finishers so you know the end is nigh. 

Goldust crunches Christian with Shattered Dreams but walks into a Test Big Boot, who in turn walks into a Kane flying clothesline. 

A chokeslam on Storm gives Kane the vpin and leads Team America to victory in a fun eight man tag where there was always something happening.

Bubba retrieves an American flag from under the ring and waves it while he and his compatriots celebrate. Now isn’t that lovely?

This is the final PPV appearance of the Un-Americans. I don’t want to get too spoilery so you’ll get all the details in the next Preview but this gimmick and stable didn’t last long, and Regal only joined two weeks ago! This type of anti-American cheap heat has a limited shelf life and they’d accomplished about as much as they could by this point. Time to move on. I’ll miss their rants about how much America sucks and trying to burn the flag but I’ll mostly miss how angry they made JR on commentary.

Backstage, Stephanie gives Billy and Chuck a pep talk before their big interbrand tag team match later. Billy reminds us that if they lose, Stephanie has to french-kiss a lesbian later. They’re just as focused as her and promise that when they win, Eric Bischoff will have to literally kiss her ass.

WWE Intercontinental Championship

Chris Jericho © vs. Ric Flair

The story for this one is fairly straight forward as Jericho lost to Ric Flair last month at Summerslam but after winning the Intercontinental title and being on a high, and seeing Ric Flair losing multiple matches since and now on a low, Jericho is trying to kick Flair while he’s down and get his win back. 

This isn’t Flair’s first championship opportunity since returning to WWE in November last year but it is the first since he turned babyface and told everyone he has “one last run in him”

Flair outclasses Jericho in the early going, catching him coming off the top with a punch to the gut and lights him up with chops to the chest. 

Jericho knocks Ric off the apron with a springboard dropkick to gain control on the outside. These two are rushing through spots so I feel like this match won’t last long.

Jericho dominates and gets the first near fall with a missile dropkick before locking in an abdominal stretch.

Flair fights back with a hip toss counter and stings Jericho with more chops to the chest before turning his attention to the champion’s legs, softening him up for the Figure Four.

Jericho jams his leg when he lands on his feet after a Lionsault and he cowers and holds his leg in pain, seemingly dropping character as he explains something has popped in his knee. Ric wants to keep attacking but the referee holds him at bay. Is Jericho really hurt? Flair also seems to drop character and checks on Jericho with some sincerity but it turns out Jericho was faking and with Flair’s back turned, Jericho pounces and locks him in the Walls of Jericho, retaining the Intercontinental title by submission in a surprisingly short match, which wasn’t as good as their Summerslam match but served its purpose.

After the match, JR and King discuss how embarrassed “the dirtiest player in the game” must be to get outsmarted and out-cheated by someone, and Flair’s facial expression would seem to confirm it.

Much like Stephanie, Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff gives a pep talk to his men, Rosey and Jamal who are making their official in ring debut tonight. Eric says he’s going to give them all the help they need by putting Rico in their corner. He says he knows Billy and Chuck better than anyone and guarantees both victory and us seeing Stephanie McMahon perform “HLA” tonight. That’s “Hot Lesbian Action” for those of you who skipped my Preview. 

Eddie Guerrero vs. Edge

Michael Cole and Tazz take over commentary duties for the first time tonight for another Summerslam rematch. This match was built mostly around Rikishi giving someone a Stink Face which, amazingly, isn’t the last time I’ll say that tonight. Eddie is so funny and charismatic but he also plays an intense, angry psycho really well too. The man could do it all! 

Eddie keeps his distance from Edge, making him chase him around the ring and then jumping him with stomps when they re-enter the ring. The classics are classics for a reason. Eddie continues his onslaught with a gorgeous diving tornado DDT off the middle rope. Michael Cole mentions that Edge got a concussion from Latino Heat’s chair shot three days ago. I hope that’s not true but treatment of concussions in 2002 was woefully inadequate. These days a concussion would keep you off TV for weeks - part of the reason they banned chairshots to the head.

Eddie wears down Edge with a long front facelock and is clearly talking to him the whole time - I’m going to assume a pro like Eddie was taking care of his opponent and making sure he was doing ok with the concussion. 

He transitions it into a vicious looking hold on the neck and shuts Edge down with a nice back elbow when he tries a comeback.

Edge finally starts to fight back with a big, desperate right hand right on the jaw. Edge goes for a Spear but Eddie leapfrogs and Edge hits the turnbuckle, but he connects with the Edgecution. Eddie gets his foot on the ropes to break the pin and avoids Edge’s missile dropkick. There’s a small but loud group of Eddie fans who chant for him as he exposes one of the turnbuckles but it backwires when Edge reverses him into it and follows in with a Spear in the corner. He tries to give Eddie a superplex but Eddie counters it by bringing edge’s face down into the exposed buckle and then flipping up and over into a sunsetflip powerbomb which gives him the victory, making sure to grab the tights for good measure. I enjoyed this more than their Summerslam match and I was happy to see Eddie win this one.

Backstage, World Heavyweight Champion Triple H stops by the Raw locker room and sees his opponent, Rob Van Dam. Neither of them goes on the attack. Triple H can’t believe how calm RVD is before a World title match. He says that without the desire and burning intensity he’ll never win. He points past RVD to Ric Flair and says he USED to have the desire but now he’s a loser. Flair stands up but RVD stops him and says he’d rather associate with a “loser” like Flair than a “winner” like him. Triple H scoffs and leaves, and Flair gives RVD an odd, serious look.

Interbrand match

Billy and Chuck (Smackdown) vs. Rosey and Jamal (w/Rico) (Raw)

This one gets a video package. Kind of. It’s a short video package which is actually the same one they showed on Raw about Billy and Chuck’s ceremony, but I’ll include it here as they also show Stephanie’s actions on Raw last week to get revenge so you can enjoy seeing Eric Bischoff get beat up a little. 

Rosey and Jamal have their own theme song which starts with audio of Eric Bischoff’s voice saying three minutes. This group would later be known as 3 Minute Warning but they don’t have a name yet.

Billy and Chuck have dropped the matching headbands and dressing gowns since turning babyface, and Chuck is growing out his hair so you can see his roots. Sadly this team won’t be around for much longer through no fault of their own, but I’ll talk about that in the next Preview.

The big men isolate Chuck and it took me a minute to orientate myself to which one is Rosey and which one is Jamal. Easiest way to keep track is that Jamal is the one who became Umaga later in his career. Sadly, neither of these men are still with us, passing away in 2009 and 2017 respectively. 

The big Samoans tag in and out and keep Chuck isolated until Rosey misses a moonsault - an incredible move for a man his size - and Chuck gets the tag to Billy. 

Billy is on fire but makes the mistake of banging their heads together - being Samoan, wrestling lore means they have very hard heads so they both no-sell and floor him with a headbutt instead. 

After a Fameasser, Rico gets in the ring so Billy is forced to focus on beating him up and throwing him out of the ring. The distraction works and with a boost into a Samoan drop, Jamal pins Billy to give Smackdown the victory. 

Backstage, a gleeful Eric Bischoff has three beautiful young women assembled. One of them will perform HLA with Stephanie later. They ALL want to do it and Eric gets them to chant “HLA” which the crowd and yes, Jerry Lawler, joins in with. The idea of Stephanie being forced to kiss another woman might be exciting but it’s also kind of weird when you consider that her dad owns and decides what happens in this company.

World Heavyweight Championship

Triple H © vs. Rob Van Dam

The video package for this match does also thankfully give a lot of love and attention to the World Heavyweight Championship itself. I still don’t know why Triple H was just handed it rather than a tournament or something to crown the first champion but I guess they were in a rush? Or they thought it would make Triple H seem more like a heel? 

Also want to give a shoutout to the music used in this video package - pretty cool, and while they’ve been trying to move away from using the same handful of royalty free songs for these videos that they’d been using for years and the entire Attitude era, I do miss those ones too. 

During Triple H’s entrance, JR rattles off his long list of nicknames - The Game, the Cerebral Assassin, the Thinking Man's wrestler. He’ll get more. He talks in glowing terms about how he is the perfect combination of power and skill - a combination of Harley Race’s mean streak and Jack Brisco’s technical expertise. It might be worth mentioning that by this point in time, Triple H was effectively booking Raw (certainly all of his own segments and storylines) via his family connection to Stephanie McMahon in real life. Probably a coincidence.

The two circle each other and an over confident Triple H is put on the ropes by a slap from RVD and is outwrestled, taken down with a side head lock and having to go outside and catch a breather. 

JR and King argue at length about whether RVD lacks passion, or whether he’s just cool, calm, collected and that’s who he is as a person. JR is right as it happens - not everyone has to be all angry and intense to show that they care about wrestling.

RVD has some fun, mocking Triple H’s water spray and The Game is incensed and rushes in. RVD continues to outwrestle him with a side headlock but when he goes for a dive up and over the top rope, Triple H sidesteps and Van Dam splats on the mats at ringside and almost gets counted out. 

That gives Triple H firm control of the match and hammers Van Dam on the outside and gets a near fall with his classic high knee. He clamps RVD in the sleeper hold he used to beat Spike Dudley and Jeff Hardy but Rob fights out of it and finally gets rolling with a big spinning heel kick. He follows with Rolling Thunder but Triple H kicks out of both. He rolls to the outside but RVD follows with a dive which is successful this time, and then comes off the top rope with a diving kick for another near fall. 

Triple H charges but Van Dam leapfrogs it and it knocks out the referee. Van Dam connects flush on the jaw with a heel kick but there’s no referee to count the three. RVD is distracted calling for the referee to wake up and turns into a boot to the gut.

Triple H’s Pedigree is countered into a slingshot and Van Dam flies with a Five Star Frog Splash. RVD has the title won but there’s no referee to count, so he goes out to try and wake him up. 

Triple H hits a desperate low blow and goes looking for his sledgehammer under the ring, which he finds but doesn’t get the chance to use it before RVD catches him with another big jumping heel kick. With both men down and the sledgehammer in the ring, Ric Flair runs down.

He’s going to hit Triple H with it…but instead turns and hits RVD right in the gut! Ric Flair stands watching as Triple H plants Van Dam with a Pedigree and Flair goes to get the referee to make sure it's over. 

This was decent, and Ric Flair hands Triple H his World title belt, mouthing “you’re the man” and raising his arm in victory. 

Backstage, Raw’s D’Lo Brown and Smackdown’s Billy Kidman discuss the shocking things they’ve just seen. Some actor who is so softly I can’t hear a word he’s saying shows up. He’s apparently a daytime soap actor so we’re led to believe that D’Lo and Kidman are big fans of the Young and the Restless. This was utterly meaningless to me so I haven’t even bothered screenshoting it. 

WWE Women’s Championship

Molly Holly © vs. Trish Stratus

We’ve seen this match a lot. According to JR, these two women’s match on Raw was dropped because of Bischoff’s confrontation with the female protesters. Weirdly, both Molly’s storyline romance with Chris Nowinski AND all the jokes about Molly having a big ass seem to have been totally abandoned so while these two have been feuding since June, this feels oddly out of the blue.

They grapple with Trish getting the better with armdrags and a dropkick. Molly takes over and shows more of a mean streak, pulling Trish’s hair and throwing her to the outside and then into the ringsteps. 

Molly strangles and works on Trish’s neck and back in the ring. Sadly the fans aren’t really into this but then neither are JR and King who spend the match talking about the upcoming HLA featuring Stephanie McMahon. 

Trish comes back with a couple of roll ups and in a really nice move, counters a tilt-a-whirl into a Stratusfaction bulldog. Molly kicks out of that, and then kicks out of Trish’s big kick to the head which she’s started calling the Chick Kick. 

Molly blocks Trish’s attempt to go to the top rope and hangs her upside down, followed by a handspring elbow for a close near fall. This is very good (by the standards of a late 2002 women’s match) and the finish comes when Trish counters a German suplex attempt into a second Stratusfaction to win her third WWE Women’s Championship. I really enjoyed this and the fans did pop for the finish, as did JR and King. Good stuff. 

After the match, Coach interviews Trish Stratus who gets emotional and cries as she says how much she loves wrestling and how much she loves the title. Given how poorly and misogynistically the women have been treated on Raw lately, I’m sure the whole situation did have her rather emotional, fighting for women’s wrestling.

Backstage, Eric Bischoff rewards Rosey, Jamal and Rico for their hard work and victory earlier with lots of beautiful women. That includes the three “lesbians” from earlier who are apparently now very into men. He tells them to go and have fun in Hollywood, but stops two very pretty young ladies and asks them to stay back and help him out with his HLA.

Kurt Angle vs. Chris Benoit

These two have had lots of matches together by this point. Their series in early 2001 was great of course but this match and feud seems to come from the fact that neither had much to do at this point on Smackdown. This is technically a heel vs. heel match, but it should be good enough in the ring that no one really minds.

They start out with intense grappling, trying to get each other into a hold but both scrambling to the ropes before they get in touch. It’s a stalemate. 

Kurt gets Benoit into a hammerlock and holds on when Benoit rolls through, so he reverses it into one of his own and they trade shoulder blocks off the ropes next, once again coming up even.

They trade some rollups for 1 and 2 counts, bridging up and fighting over a backslide. Benoit takes Kurt down into a Crossface but he’s far too close to the ropes and gets out of the ring and the fans cheer for that flurry of counters.

When it turns to strikes, Angle gets the advantage and works on Benoit’s ribs with a knee and stomps, followed by shoulder tackles in the corner. 

Benoit battles back and the pace increases as he suplexes Angle but is caught going to the top rope and brought down with a suplex of his own. They move into throwing big bombs at each other with a string of slams and suplexes, with Benoit landing his Diving Headbutt on the second attempt. Angle kicks out so Benoit locks him in the Crossface. Angle grabs his ankle and rolls through into an ankle lock, then Benoit rolls it back to a Crossface, and then again into an ankle lock!

Benoit reaches the ropes to break the hold so Kurt pulls him back and locks Benoit in his own hold! 

The referee stops Angle from using the ropes as he pushes them away and out of Benoit’s grasp and the distraction allows Benoit to roll through it and into a cover. He uses the ropes for illegal leverage but the referee doesn’t see that and counts the three. Benoit wins a very entertaining wrestling match, cheating with the ropes which is fitting as that’s exactly how Angle won their first ever match at Wrestlemania X7.

Mark Lloyd interviews WWE Champion Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman. He asks if they regret making things so personal with The Undertaker. Heyman says it’s always been personal because trying to take his client’s championship is always personal to Brock Lesnar. 

It’s time. It’s time for HLA. Eric Bischoff comes down to the ring hilariously announced as being accompanied by “The Lesbains” by Howard Finkle. Depressingly, Jerry Lawler and JR are back on commentary for this segment which makes it their main event. King is, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, deeply insufferable during all of this. Bischoff says that the lesbians are called Peaches and Cream and tells them to give us a preview - they fondle each other a bit but he stops them from kissing and brings out Stephanie McMahon. JR says that he’s known her since she was a little girl and can’t imagine this. I guess he doesn’t know anyone who came out as gay later in life. I guess its more Bischoff making it a titillating, crass display rather than genuine sexuality. 

At Eric’s direction the women strip down to their bras and then start to fondle and caress the Smackdown General Manager. They’re about to kiss her but he stops them and decides he’s changed his mind. He dismisses Peaches and Cream but makes Stephanie stay. He wants this to be the most humiliating experience of her life so he went out and found the “ugliest, fattest most physically repulsive lesbo” he could find. King makes a joke about poor Rosie O’Donnell.

The heavy set, ugly lesbian in question “begged” Bischoff to be the one who does HLA with Stephanie and we all have to pretend we don’t recognise Rikishi in drag. Jerry Lawler laughs like an idiot as Bischoff introduces us to Hildegard. 

Stephanie dives into the kiss and slaps Hildegard’s ass until finally, “she” drops the act and superkicks Bischoff, removing the prosthetics and make up to reveal that gasp, it’s Rikishi. Of course Eric dismissed Rosey, Jamal and Rico earlier so there’s no one to save him from a Stink Face. I enjoyed being able to see Michael Cole, Tazz and Howard Finkle having a good laugh in the background. 

Bischoff takes off, disgraced as Stephanie and Rikishi dance together in the ring. It’s funny how much Steph has embraced being a babyface since coming back as General Manager - she is far more likeable in this role.

WWE Championship

Brock Lesnar © (w/Paul Heyman) vs. The Undertaker

This feud goes back further than the video package takes us but they’ve focused on the smart parts and make it seem very dramatic

Undertaker looks in great shape here and this match marks two debuts - Undertaker has changed his theme song to one with lyrics. It’ll divide opinion. I do like it, but not as much as his previous theme.

This is also the first time Tazz says “Here Comes The Pain” when Brock’s music hits, which became both his trademark and so closely associated with Lesnar they eventually named a video game after it when Brock was on the cover. 

The two lock up and Lesnar shoves Undertaker back twice. Cole and Tazz have called this a battle between a striker (Undertaker) and a grappler (Lesnar) many times in the build up and reinforce it here. It’s odd that it's starting out with a slow feeling out process given how intense the build got.

Undertaker shoves Lesnar all the way out of the ring and he is furious, rushing back in and going back to trying to wrestle. Undertaker again holds the ring and sends Lesnar packing with a clothesline and a pissed off champion kicks the ringsteps over. 

Heyman tries to talk sense into his client and tells him to stay in control and wrestle, stop trying to brawl. Good advice.

Undertaker hammers Lesnar back in the ring with body shots but when Heyman jumps up on the apron it distracts the American Badass and allows Lesnar to recover and take over with a suplex and then beat down Undertaker in the corner. Heyman was at least knocked off the apron for his troubles.

Lesnar works on Undertaker’s ribs with body blows, shoulders in the corner and wraps him around the ringpost from the outside. 

The onslaught continues with slams and a bearhug but remembering what happened to Hulk Hogan, Undertaker rolls through it to try and block. It doesn’t really work and he’s squeezed for a long time.

During this lull, I’ll mention that these two became very good friends in real life over their shared love of MMA and have had many matches - both good and bad - together in the years since. The most famous is when Brock Lesnar ended Undertaker’s Wrestlemania winning streak in 2014 which I still can’t quite believe happened even 10 years later. 

Enough time travel, back to 2002 - Undertaker finally breaks the bearhug by running Lesnar to the outside but it doesn’t buy him much time before the Next Big Thing is back on him. 

The fight spills to the outside and while referee Brian Hebner is busy arguing with Paul Heyman, Brock Lesnar grabs the WWE title belt and uses it as a weapon to maintain control of the match. Undertaker comes up bleeding and continues to slowly beat him down. 

Undertaker keeps trying to fight back but when he grabs Lesnar for a chokeslam he’s quickly elbowed out of it. He scores with a big boot and has a chance to build some momentum of his own. They go back and forth but Undertaker reverses a whip and the referee gets crushed in the corner. Undertaker scores with a chokeslam but there’s no ref to count. 

Matt Hardy runs down to try and help out his new buddies but is hammered with a giant Last Ride. He’s formed an unlikely bond with Lesnar but functions more as a parasite trying to ride the champion's coat tails. 

Undertaker walks into a Lesnar spinebuster just as the referee wakes up but Undertaker kicks out. 

Undertaker hits a big swinging DDT but when he goes for a Tombstone, Lesnar shoves off and into the referee, knocking him down again. Paul Heyman slides a chair to his client but can’t use it because of a big boot. Undertaker grabs the chair and hits Lesnar with an unbelievably stiff chairshot to the head. Lesnar drops to his knees but doesn’t leave his feet and a second one sends him flying out of the ring. The chair is badly buckled and the seat is dented and Lesnar comes up bleeding for the first time in his career.

Undertaker is going to make Heyman pay next and punches him up and over the security wall into the front row. 

The referee is back up and it looks like Undertaker is moments away from regaining the WWE title as he pummels the champion in the ring. 

A Last Ride attempt is countered into an F5 attempt which is countered out of. The two of them brawl in the corner and the referee does his best to split them up.

They’re just throwing punches and the referee has no choice but to throw the match out, ending it as a no contest. The fans loudly boo the decision but neither Lesnar nor Undertaker seem to have noticed and keep fighting as referees fill the ring to try and split them up.

With the match officially over, Undertaker plants Lesnar with a chokeslam. He rolls to the outside and a dishevelled Heyman tries to get his client out of the arena in one piece. He’s still the champion. Undertaker isn’t happy and follows and the two fight up the entrance ramp until, in a really cool spot, Undertaker launches Lesnar at the big Unforgiven sign at the top of the stage. Lesnar smashes through the wall and disappears and Undertaker is left, bloody and surrounded by referees at the end of the show.