Vengeance - San Diego Sports Arena, San Diego California, December 9th, 2001

Four men. Three matches. Two titles. One Undisputed Champion.

We’ll hear that a lot tonight! It’s Vengeance! I loved this video package, it felt epic! (and weird?) but is this the first time - including during the entire Invasion - that the WWF used archive WCW footage on TV? 

I’ll talk a lot more about the historical significance of the Championship Unification mini tournament that gives us three main events tonight later when we get to them.

Also, let's address the elephant in the room - the graphics for this PPV are a sledgehammer. The poster is a picture of Triple H who we haven’t seen since his torn quad injury in May slumped over said sledgehammer, which is his trademark weapon. We’re ALL thinking it - Will tonight give us the return of a former champion?

Taka Michinoku!

Sadly no, he’s not on this show and neither is The Game. But we don’t have to wait long for an update on him. Spoilers!

Big fan of the theme song for this event which satisfyingly hasn’t been edited off this version of the event. Sinner by Drowning Pool. 

The PPV opens with one of the co-owners of the WWF, Mr. Vince McMahon who comes to the ring and recaps the events of Smackdown where The Rock shoved his face deep into the ass of the returning Rikishi. But you’ve read my Preview so you don’t need me to recap that do you? He is finally interrupted by his co-owner and business partner, Nature Boy Ric Flair. I’ll discuss his emergence in the WWF the night after Survivor Series a little later in the show as, much like Ric said - lets hope this is the last we’ve seen of Vince tonight and lets get on with the show!

Ric brings out the participants in our first (unadvertised match) and Scotty and Albert come down to the ring and actually dance at Vince. The chairman stays at ringside and leaves after the entrances of Christian and Test. Vince ended his promo on “he who laughs last, laughs loudest” which is important as King would repeat it about 48 times throughout the rest of the show.

Scotty 2 Hotty and Albert vs. WWF European Champion Christian and Test

Scotty and Albert attack their long haired Canadian opponents on the outside to start the match. This has some history over the past three weeks as Test beat up Scotty at Survivor Series to steal his spot in the Immunity battle royal (which he won) and Scotty and his new buddy Albert repaid him with attacks on TV. Test and Christian - along with William Regal and The Dudley Boyz - have remained close since the death of the Alliance and have become henchmen for Mr. McMahon. They’re so pathetically grateful to have kept their jobs that they’re very obedient. 

Test and Christian isolate the smaller Scotty and tag in and out, double teaming him in their corner as King suggests lots of comedy hip-hop sounding names for this tag team on commentary. He is very 50 years old and very white.

Test’s storyline has become that, since he won the Immunity battle royal and can’t be fired, he’s throwing his weight around and even attacking referee Earl Hebner on Smackdown free of repercussions. He intimidates and bullies referee Teddy Long during this match too.

Scotty fights off Test with an enziguri kick to the head and tags to Albert who throws Test and Christian around, crushing them in the corner and getting a close near fall on the European Champion after his now trademark Giant Swing.

Test takes out Albert and Christian tries to perform a Worm of his own on Scotty 2 Hotty. It’s stopped by Albert but he’s knocked out again with a Big Boot from Test for a close near fall.

Scotty recovers and sets up the original and best Worm on Test - the fans still LOVE this move and are so loud for it. With Test out of the way, Albert flattens Christian with a Baldo-Bomb and that's enough to give the dancing babyfaces a PPV victory.

In the build to this show, it was promoted on TV that for the first time ever, you could pay the WWF directly for this event and stream it online via WWF.com…but only for the first 5000 people to sign up! Honestly, It’s amazing their servers and bandwidth in 2001 could handle that many. Unfortunately despite my best efforts I wasn’t able to find any information on how the stream went or whether 5000 people did take them up on this most generous offer. I think it's interesting that you can see these ideas in WWE years before they became commonplace. This stream is just an atom of what the WWE Network and streaming in general eventually became. They were pushing their website and online chats with the superstars as early as 1996, about a decade before Facebook revolutionised social media. They used to ask fans to SMS in during Raw to put along the bottom of the screen before Twitter made that common. Even gimmick PPVs like Taboo Tuesday in 2004 would have been far more popular and effective ten years later when social media and smartphones would have made the online push easier and bigger. 

Backstage, Jonathan Coachman interviews William Regal ahead of his Intercontinental title match and asks him about his recent questionable actions. He means the brass knuckles that Regal has used to win matches over the past three weeks. Regal is outraged as the distrustful Americans and calls his methods successful, not questionable. He guarantees victory in his title match and ends by calling Coach a silly pillock. He’s not wrong.

WWF Intercontinental Championship

Edge © vs. William Regal

Edge still has his divisive Rob Zombie theme song (which I like) but sadly Regal still has the lame version of his sinister solo theme music. I’ll let you know when he switches to the good version.

Regal kept his job after Survivor Series by, I’m sure you’ll remember, kissing Vince McMahon’s ass in the most literal sense which sparked three weeks of TV focused almost entirely on McMahon’s buttcheeks. So thanks for that. 

They are trying to counteract the laughing stock that angle made Regal by leaning into the more serious, nasty, physical in-ring style he’s adopted since October and this is probably my favourite version of Regal. 

He dominates Edge in the early going with strikes and throws him into the ring post at ringside drawing “Regal sucks” chants. 

Back in the ring he maintains the pressure with clotheslines, strikes and knees to the head and face grinding the champion down. 

He gets near falls off of uppercuts and a nice vertical suplex before Edge fights back with a swinging neckbreaker and his Edge-o-Matic (a backwards X-Factory) for a near fall of his own. 

A top rope hurricanrana and bridging Northern lights suplex get the challenger on the ropes and he’s sent to the outside but Edge’s attempt at a diving spear off the apron is sidestepped sending him crashing into the ring steps which looked pretty cool! 

As the referee checks on Edge, Regal goes around the ring and retrieves the brass knuckles he’d hidden under the ring apron and slips them into the front of his trunks. 

Back in the ring, Edge has to use a rope break to stop the count and stay in this match but does kick out of a beautiful looking double underhook powerbomb. 

Regal is frustrated and stacks up Edge with two more back to back but the champion kicks out again! That actually gets some boos from the fans who I guess found that kick out a little unbelievable. 

Regal hammers Edge with stomps and as the referee checks on Edge, he gets the brass knuckles out of his tights and puts them on his left hand! He turns around and walks right into a desperation Spear from Edge and that’s enough to give him the victory and he retains his Intercontinental title in a good match! 

I enjoyed this and Edge is reality growing as a singles performer. His popularity is increasing despite him not having had any promo time or personality stuff lately which is funny seeing as the strong personality stuff is what got him and Christian so over in the first place.

As Ric Flair is on the phone in his office apparently explaining to someone that tonight’s winner will indeed be the Undisputed Champion (I guess whoever it is doesn’t watch the show) he’s interrupted by Kurt Angle who angrily tells Flair that he’ll never have gold medals like him, and he’ll never be Undisputed champion! Angle continues to angrily rant and tell Ric what he’s going to do tonight. Flair just smiles and nods and agrees with Kurt which frustrates him as he clearly wanted an argument. Pretty amusing stuff

Ric Flair debuted the night after Survivor Series and as I hinted at at the time in my Preview, it seems very odd that they finally signed a deal with him to show up - one of the most WCW of all the WCW guys - the night after the brand was killed off with the Alliance. They had him standing right there while The Rock was carrying around the big gold belt - the one he arguably made famous - and stopped calling it the WCW title the same night. I’m sure there were real life money and contract issues that caused this and we will see more former WCW guys show up who would have made the Invasion so much better but this one feels especially damaging due to the timing. 

His treatment was odd too as the WWF has made no attempts to let us know who he is or why he is such a big deal. There is an assumption that we all know who this man is and that he is a 16 time former World Champion but as someone who was only a teenager in 2001, I had no idea and it took years for me to realise how big a deal he was at the time.

I’m sure I’ll get a chance to talk about who Ric Flair became later in life and what he’s best remembered for now but at the time he looked great, could still wrestle and deserved more fanfare than he got. 

Matt Hardy goes to check in on his girlfriend Lita ahead of her acting as special referee for his match with Jeff Hardy tonight. Matt says that tonight is just about settling scores and proving that he is the brains of The Hardy Boyz. Lita says that as his girlfriend she’s always on his side but she will be calling tonight’s match right down the middle fair and square. Matt says that's fine because he’s going to beat Jeff without any help anyway and then they can go out and celebrate.

Matt Hardy vs. Jeff Hardy

Special guest referee: Lita

This match gets a video package which is fitting as its potentially the end of one of the WWF’s top teams. The video rather sweetly features a ton of them complimenting each other, calling each other the better half of the team. How did things fall so far?

They started to tease a Matt heel turn months ago but mostly as a bad, cheating boyfriend which was an odd choice. He and Jeff’s fall out in the past three weeks is down to Matt thinking Jeff being a daredevil is selfish and costing them matches and Jeff thinking Matt tells him what to do too much and talks down to him. 

The entrances are quite weird as Lita enters first, but then Matt and Jeff enter to the same song which just plays continually for about four minutes. 

Will this bring closure to their issues and allow them to get it out of their system and move on, or will this be the end of their team and relationship?

The fans are so invested they chant for Lita, who does look lovely tonight.

They start with a lock up and a straight wrestling exchange. Matt wins the first one and condescendingly tells his brother to “think”. Jeff obviously did think as he won the next couple of exchanges. They’re very evenly matched so far.

The back and forth continues to be very even with Lita showing no favouritism with a solid, deliberate count whenever either man goes for a cover.

The first big advantage in either direction is when Matt blocks Jeff from diving off the top and stomps him as he hangs from the ropes but when Lita stops Matt from using the ropes in that way she gets boos from the crowd who don’t seem to be able to decide who is or isn’t the good guy.

Matt tries a sunset flip powerbomb from the apron to the floor but Jeff counters into a hurricanrana. He flips back into the ring and crumples having apparently hurt his knee or ankle and Lita checks on him but Matt follows up with uncharacteristic viciousness focusing his attack on his brother’s leg. 

Jeff Hardy is, if nothing else, resilient and battles through the pain with a baseball slide and a spinning heel kick but is too hurt to follow up with a dive to the outside.

Matt fights through and goes for a superplex but Jeff shoves him off and follows with a quick Swanton Bomb for the victory! 

Controversy as Matt got his leg onto the ropes but Jeff quickly pulled it back off. Lita didn’t see the leg on the ropes and counted the three so sadly it seems that their issues are not settled - Matt leaves, angry and hurt as a sad Lita follows trying to talk to her boyfriend. This is a situation where yeah, Matt is technically right but it’s not like Lita did it on purpose. He needs to calm down.

Backstage the WWF Women’s Champion Trish Stratus goes to see the World Champion The Rock. She thanks him for what he did to Vince and tells him how awesome it was and gives him a good luck kiss on the cheek. He stops her from leaving and says that tonight he is very focused on becoming the first Undisputed Champion but after that there will be plenty of time to smell what The Rock is cooking. I assume he means sex. It would take a few years but the WWF did eventually realise that romance storylines are absolute death for babyfaces. 

WWF Tag Team Championships

The Dudley Boyz (Bubba Ray and D-Von Dudley, w/Stacy Keibler) © vs. Kane and The Big Show

JR calls The Dudley Boyz the greatest tag team in WWF history. Certainly on paper he’s right. King is too busy screeching like a banshee about Stacy Keibler’s skirt. God I hate him.

Kane and The Big Show earned this match by defeating the mid-feud Hardy Boyz on Smackdown a couple of weeks ago. They make sense as a team given their size and how little they both have going on at the moment but it still feels thrown together. 

Kane starts for his team and has a really easy time dominating both tag team champions, throwing them in and out of the ring before isolating Bubba and tagging in Big Show. 

Bubba tries to tag but D-Von is reluctant to face the 500 lbs Big Show. He does eventually tag in and is also easily dominated. Show has some fun, dancing and wiggling his hips as he uses the weight of his ass as a weapon in the corner.

Kane and Show work well as a team, easily dominating The Dudleyz and Kane takes them both out with an impressive dive from the top rope to the outside on both of them. Stacy makes the mistake of getting in the ring so Show pulls down her skirt, puts her over his knee and spanks her which is a spot I’m sure won’t offend anyone in 2025. King ruins the spot by being King, of course.

The distraction allows The Dudleyz to finally get into this match and double team Show, who tags into Kane but is quickly subdued with a low blow. The champions isolate Kane in their corner and use quick tags and a double flapjack to build some momentum. Their 3D attempt is blocked by a big boot and clothesline and he gets a hot tag back to Big Show who motors through both men and sends D-Von flying with a huge backdrop. His momentum is slowed when Kane misses a flying clothesline on D-Von and hits his own partner. That leads to an argument between the two big men which the fans boo - we all see it coming now.

The huge size and strength advantage gets them back in it but now Show misses Bubba and knocks Kane off the apron. With him down, Bubba takes one of the turnbuckle pads off and the champions double flapjack Show dropping him directly onto the exposed metal bolt which is enough for them to retain the WWF Tag Team titles in a messy match. 

The tag team division is in a bad way in December of 2001. The Attitude era is remembered for the tag titles being red hot but what seems to have been lost to the years is that is because three teams - The Dudleyz, The Hardyz and Edge and Christian - wrestled each other on TV and PPV about 10,000 times in a two year period. 

Those three teams were/are great but what that leaves us with now is no one for The Dudleyz to work with, leading to this makeshift team.

There are tag teams on the roster (Billy and Chuck haven’t made it into any of my articles yet but they’re coming and have been teaming up on Heat for a couple of weeks by this point) but the ground is bare for the WWF Tag Team titles and that’s an issue that isn’t going anywhere. There will be peaks and troughs but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the tag team titles never quite reached the heights of their TLC golden era again. 

Backstage as Lita tries to explain her mistake as referee earlier to Matt, he furiously packs up his bags and leaves the arena alone.

WWF Hardcore Championship

Rob Van Dam © vs. The Undertaker

They were kind of vague about whether this match was for the Hardcore title during the build up but the main point either way is that this is The Undertaker’s big heel turn. The video package shows it and his quest for respect in all its nasty McMahon-assed glory.

Undertaker rolls to the ring on his motorbike and looks pretty badass with his shorter hair. He’s dyed it black too. There’s no mention of him forcing JR to join the Kiss my Ass club which I assume is because as I mentioned in my Preview, the angle was very poorly received so better to try and pretend it didn’t happen. 

He and King argue about whether he has received enough respect for his 11 year career or not. He obviously has but not in his deluded mind so it makes and much sense as any other heel or face turn.

RVD is crazy popular and sticks and moves early, backing Taker up with kicks and avoiding big swings. 

Van Dam gets his first near fall with an impressive diving front senton and shows no intimidation against the big man.

Taker dumps RVD crotch-first onto the top rope and sends him out of the ring with a big boot which looked cool. Undertaker hasn’t had a lot of great matches lately but RVD has had nothing but great matches especially with the hardcore stipulation.

Van Dam clotheslines Taker into the crowd and follows with a dive off the barrier which is blocked by a punch to the gut.

They continue to fight through the people with Undertaker choking RVD with a Puerto Rican flag, and RVD getting a near fall with a standing moonsault on the concrete. He even gets his head squashed by a barrier but keeps on fighting back.

They continue to brawl and after using a fire extinguisher, Van Dam dives from the stands about 10 feet landing on his challenger in a crossbody for a close near fall. That was cool.  

The fighting continues leading both men up onto the entrance ramp fighting on the steel and crashing through various scaffolding. 

Taker tries for a Last Ride on the metal but RVD grabs the scaffolding and pulls himself clear. Undertaker disappears behind a curtain and returns with a steel chair. He pays for it with Van Dam hitting a Rolling Thunder on the stage and surfboarding the chair into his face, both for near falls. RVD tries for one last big spin kick with the chair but misses and hurts his leg, kicking the titantron.

Undertaker follows up with a pair of brutal chairshots to the spine and then chokeslams him off the stage through two tables, crashing to concrete. He scrambles down and with a wide eyed, crazy expression on his face picks up the three count and becomes the new WWF Hardcore Champion.

This was a great match, easily Undertaker’s best in months and the end of an era as RVD had been Hardcore champion since August. Time for him to move up the card and show what he can do in non-hardcore matches (hopefully).

Chris Jericho goes to see Ric Flair and, much like Angle earlier, rants about how he’s going to win tonight and become Undisputed Champion and gets the same placid agreement from the co-owner. Jericho says that WHEN he wins, tomorrow night on Raw Ric Flair will walk down to the ring and present him with the title. This makes it sound like the winner will be receiving a new Championship belt. Ric does say that whoever wins, he will indeed crown them the Undisputed Champion tomorrow night on Raw.

WWF Women’s Championship

Trish Stratus © vs. Jacqueline

Trish has been women’s champion for four weeks since Survivor Series and this is her fourth defence which hilariously makes her one of the most fighting and successful women’s champions in WWF history at this point. 

These two women do their best to have a proper wrestling match and show off their growing skills and the work they’ve done but the crowd chants “we want puppies” and King squeals like a school boy every time Trish moves. 

Jackie does manage to get the crowd to react to what's actually happening with some nasty kicks and a leg sweep but looks like she’s getting legitimately frustrated as Trish botches a couple of moves in a row. She’s inexperienced and probably still quite nervous about her position but give her time.

Jackie blocks the attempted springboard bulldog and gets a near fall after a dropkick to the back of the head. 

Trish eventually wins a short but sloppy match with a backslide. Jaqueline does at least shake the champion’s hand after the match. It’s amazing in hindsight that as fans we got to see Trish go from sloppy and inexperienced to one of the greatest women’s performers of all time.

After the women’s match feels like a good time to talk about Jerry Lawler. He returned to replace Paul Heyman the night after Survivor Series. He originally walked out of the company in February in solidarity with his wife at the time (Stacey “the Kat” Carter) but that would prove to be a spectacularly misjudged move as not only did WCW close a month later - somewhere he assumed he’d easily get a job - but Stacey left him pretty soon afterwards too. He spent a few months in a deep and public depression posting poems about her on his website before finally snapping out of and coming back to the WWF. 

I have never liked King. I disliked him as a kid because he was a “bad guy” and I was supposed to but as I got older I hated him because of his terrible jokes and how little effort he put into his job, especially in the mid to late 2000s where he was phoning it in for a paycheck.

I try to keep my real life opinions out of these articles and there's a lot of people on the roster that, in 2025, I have a strong dislike for for reasons unrelated to their on screen performance but I struggle with King because his drooling pervert gimmick single handedly set back women’s wrestling 10 years. In his defence, he will have been encouraged to say the various racist and misogynistic things that I find so unlikeable about him by Vince McMahon so it was very much a 50/50 effort. 

I’ll do my best not to badmouth King for reasons other than his commentary going forward but I felt compelled, now that he’s back, to get on my soapbox and call him out as the lazy borderline sex criminal he is. 

After a recap of the end of the Kiss my Ass club on Smackdown, Rikishi is live at WWF New York. Given what happened at the end of 2000 it feels odd to see Rikishi so easily slotted back in as his old babyface persona laughing and joking with JR again but it is a better fit for him.

Ahead of tonight’s mini-tournament for the Undisputed Championship we get a video package about how we got to this point. 

The emphasis is put on the last three weeks of TV and the four men involved tonight. Personally I’d have gone into the history of the titles but really that was put aside when they stopped calling The Rock’s title the WCW title. 

Before we get into this four man tournament, let's talk about the titles themselves. It is interesting to me that they chose to treat the World Championship as the WCW Championship but not keep the name. I guess after the critical and commercial failure of the Invasion storyline Vince was keen to draw a line under WCW for good but if he had stuck it out for three more weeks they could have really leaned into what a legitimately huge deal unifying these two belts actually was.

The first recognised wrestling world title was established in 1905 with first champion George Hackenschmidt. Ever since then, every company claimed that their champion was THE champion. In 2001, WCW and WWF were the only two major titles left and the WCW title in particular had over the years absorbed multiple other smaller territories' histories and belts itself. This is all information that JR shares on commentary during the next couple of matches but it would have been nice if some of it had made it into video packages with appropriate clips and narration. 

The “more content, faster” attitude of the past four years did eventually go away but not yet and the consequences of that are that in December 2001 these two titles were unified with significantly less pomp, circumstance and build than they deserved. 

How would I have done it differently? Well that’s a story for another day (or at least, a stand alone article at some point right?)

WWF Championship

Stone Cold Steve Austin © vs. Kurt Angle

These two have had several heated and great PPV matches for the WWF title this year but this one starts out slow, locking up and wrestling. Austin gets the upper hand and lights Kurt up with chops to the chest which sends him to the outside to recover, which gets boos.

Back in the ring, Austin continues to dominate with punches and blocks an ankle lock, going to an arm wringer and focusing on his challenger’s right arm. I feel like Steve probably enjoyed working with Kurt because he got to actually wrestle and work a match like this opposed to his run as top babyface in the universe where, to be fair, all he did was punch and kick. He was GREAT at it though.

King and JR do thankfully talk about wrestling history in this match name dropping the NWA and AWA and how long wrestling has had multiple men claiming to be THE world champion which will all be settled tonight.

Austin’s wrestling does finally break down as he takes Kurt to the outside and focuses on his right arm continually, running his shoulder into the post and slamming him into the ringsteps. I’m not sure Kurt has had a moment in control of this match yet, but when they roll back inside he does finally catch Stone Cold with some kicks. He is almost immediately taken back down with an arm breaker and the attack goes back to his right side.

This is a technically competent match but given their history and the whole “mole in the Alliance” thing last month and the finish of Survivor Series its hard not to feel like this could have been more. I think having to focus on getting Austin as a good guy again caused that. 

Kurt rolls through and gets the ankle lock, wrenching and tearing at the champion who crawls and gets to the ropes to break the hold.

He backdrops Kurt up and over the top rope to the floor to get a breather after that before taking the brawl back to ringside. Kurt out manuvers the Rattlesnake and gets his legs around the ring post, focusing his assault on the lower half of the former Alliance leader and lighting him up with some stiff chops to the chest of his own. He even uses Bret Hart’s old figure four around the ringpost spot which always looks great. Kurt keeps up the pressure with a second ankle lock, stomps in the corner and a barrage of german suplexes but Stone Cold keeps kicking out. 

Kurt makes a huge miscalculation going for his moonsault but Austin rolls clear and comes back with a Lou Thez press, a spinebuster and then five german suplexes of his own, all for near falls.

Kurt hits a low blow which is undetected by the referee and follows with an Angle Slam but the Rattlesnake kicks out again! 

Kurt stomps, begging Austin to get back to his feet and tres a Stunner but its his undoing as Stone Cold shoves him off and hits one of his own out of nowhere! Kurt stands right back up before collapsing in one of my favourite Stunner sells of all time and with that, Stone Cold Steve Austin retains the WWF title and moves on to tonight’s main event and a chance to become the first ever Undisputed Champion.The big story here? How much did this match take out of Stone Cold who will have to wrestle either Chris Jericho or The Rock in just a few minutes.

Backstage as we fill a little time between these World title matches, Trish Stratus wearing only a towel appears to be putting makeup on? I’d question why there was a camera watching her but it’s wrestling. Test busts in and calls her the luckiest woman alive because he is going to kiss her. She calls him a creep and to get out of her locker room as he sarcastically asks if she’s “going to get him fired?” because he’s immune to see. I’m not sure what the point of this - lets call it what it was - attempted sexual assault was but I guess Trish has lots of suitors. 

World Championship

The Rock © vs. Chris Jericho

Back to serious business. Much like Austin and Angle, these two have had multiple heated matches with each other this year and they’ve all been very good. If anything, the tension of this one has increased as with Jericho now a full fledged heel he’s been able to attack The Rock verbally and physically without holding back.

This one starts off as a technical match too but it breaks down much quicker with Rock taking Jericho to the outside and bouncing him off the announce table a few times. Y2J returns fire sending Rock into the ring post and then comes off the top rope with a spinning back elbow which gets the first proper nearfall of the match.

Jericho follows up with a big suplex and shows off his new egomaniac character with a comedy foot-on-the-chest pin attempt,.

Jericho controls the match but the World Champion comes back with a samoan drop and his now trademark overhead belly to belly suplex for a near fall. These guys feel like they’re motoring through spots, condensing a 30 minute match into 15.

Jericho slows it down with a sleeper hold and comically shouts “ask him!” over and over, something he’d become well known for.

The crowd is split here - there's a few “Rocky sucks” and “Y2J” chants which is partly because Jericho was an internet favourite before the internet was a thing, and fatigue of The Rock having been on top for so long (but this era’s standards. One year in the Attitude era is like five years in wrestling nowadays). 

The Rock fights out of the sleeper but is shut down with Jericho’s diving bulldog and followed up with a Lionsault but “the Great one” kicks out. 

Jericho gets into a brief shoving match with Earl Hebner because I guess it’s the law he has to be involved in every match he officiates, stealing the spotlight. I’ll stop ragging on Earl one day but today is not that day.

The Rock catches Jericho on the top rope with some chops and tries to bring him down the hard way with a superplex. Jericho fights him off and comes down with a crossbody but Rocky rolls through and almost steals the pin but Y2J kicks out.

Jericho seems to just get angry from that nearfall and attacks with fury, taking Rock to the outside and catapulting him head first into the ring post before clearing off the announce table. He drags The Rock up onto the table and prepares to give him a Rock Bottom through it but The Rock elbows out of it and spikes him with a DDT through it instead! 

An exhausted Rock drags Jericho back into the ring, rocking him (pun intended) with big punches on the way. He also has to twice shove Earl Hebner out of the way as he continues to get in their faces and block the camera. 

In the ring, he stalks his challenger preparing for the match winning Rock Bottom but Jericho fights free and hits his by now already abandoned new finishing move, the Breakdown facebuster. He takes a moment to get himself together and tries to give The Rock a People’s Elbow! The Rock blocks it and turns it into a sharpshooter but Y2J rolls through that into one of his own. 

The Rock gets to the ropes to break the hold and as both exhausted men struggle to their feet, Jericho walks right into a Rock Bottom! The Rock struggles to cover and as he does, Vince McMahon runs to the ring, distracting the referee. 

The Rock abandons his pin to go and punch Vince off the apron and catches a charging Jericho with a spinebuster. He goes for a People’s Elbow and hits it, despite having to stop and punch Vince again first. With the referee distracted getting Vince out of the ring, Jericho gives Rocky a low blow and a Rock Bottom and, with his own move, pins him to win the World Championship! 

Chris Jericho gets no time to recover or celebrate and we get a great shot of the look on his face when the glass breaks and he realises he has to immediately fight Stone Cold Steve Austin! 

Undisputed WWF Championship - title unification match

Stone Cold Steve Austin © vs. Chris Jericho © 

The Rattlesnake with a heavy limp makes his way quickly down to the ring and attacks Jericho in the corner. The bell hasn’t rung to begin this match officially and it's just as well as sore loser Kurt Angle follows quickly behind, blasting Austin with a steel chair. He’s had a little more time to recover from his match than Jericho is getting but the damage to his leg and that chairshot certainly evens things up for the new World Champion.

Or perhaps I spoke too soon as The Rock, who is more justified in being upset at his loss, gets into the ring and plants Jericho with a Rock Bottom before taking off after Kurt Angle.

There’s a nifty graphic for this match featuring both title belts but I can’t really show it as a still image but here we go anyway.

The referee begins a standing 10 count. Imagine the hilarity if this ended immediately via a double count out? 

The fans break out into a “Triple H” chant which I addressed at the start of the show but I think it was fair enough to assume he was showing up here given the PPV poster and graphics.

Jericho is on his feet first and uses chops and a diving forearm, working quickly to stay on top of the WWF Champion. 

Austin fights back and runs Jericho’s head into the turnbuckle over and over and over but is denied a Stunner. He clobbers Jericho off the apron who dives but seems to have forgotten he and The Rock already destroyed the table and he has no where to land, so its a messy and painful looking ride to the mats at ringside.

The reason for Austin keeping his match with Angle in the ring becomes clear as he brawls Jericho around the ring and into the front row at ringside in classic Austin main event fashion. He drives him into the ring post shoulder first and exposes the concrete floor at ringside pulling the mats back. JR discusses how much leeway the referee is giving these men (and has in all three of these world title matches) because we must have a winner.

Jericho knocks Austin down on the concrete and then drags him onto the other announce table. He blocks a Stunner attempt and turns the WWF Champion into a Walls of Jericho on the table…but doesn’t quite manage it so Austin thrashes sending Jericho bouncing off the table to the concrete and then gives him a suplex on the concrete for good measure. That deserved more of a reaction from the crowd but I think they’re burnt out from these three big matches in a row, and are probably awaiting the arrival of Triple H (who isn’t coming).

Back in the ring, Austin continues hitting big clotheslines and punches going for a cover after each one but Jericho slows it down with an armbar and even uses the ropes for additional leverage while the referee isn’t looking.

The two go back and forth, exhausted (at least in kayfabe) but its Jericho gets the first finishing move, locking Stone Cold in the Walls of Jericho. He breaks the hold, getting to the ropes. 

Austin ducks Jericho’s diving forearm and that wipes out the referee. Jericho hits a low blow and a Stone Cold Stunner on Austin! That brings Vince McMahon down with his apparent new hire, former WCW referee Nick Patrick! He actually encourages Jericho to pin which brings out Ric Flair to deal with the crooked referee. He pulls Patrick out of the ring and punches him out. McMahon runs Ric Flair into the ring post, taking out his co-owner. Austin gets out of the ring and knocks out McMahon! It’s chaos at ringside. 

Stone Cold puts Chris Jericho in a Walls of Jericho and Y2J actually taps out! But there’s no referee to call for the bell. As Austin holds on, Booker T comes through the crowd and clubs Austin in the back of the head with the WWF title belt! 

He makes a quick escape and as Jericho crawls into a pin, Vince McMahon throws Earl Hebner into the ring to count. Three seconds later, Chris Jericho has done the unthinkable and with help from Mr. McMahon and Booker T, he is the first ever Undisputed Champion! 

Jericho is worn out, struggling to get out of the ring but with tears in his eyes, lifts both the WCW and WWF Championship belts above his head. Annoyingly he’s too busy selling to pose properly with them, missing out on a great photo opportunity. 

It’s hard to describe the fan reaction to this finish. I think people expected Stone Cold or The Rock to win this night and so there’s a shock factor but also it really seemed like people were let down that we didn't get the return of Triple H. Having a moment this big happen on a B PPV in December rather than say, at Wrestlemania did always seem odd to me too, even at the time.

Quality wise this is a good show! The Hardcore, WWF and World Championship matches were all very good and nothing on the show was bad at all. This is a show all about the “historical significance” of the main event and as I’ve discussed, it wasn’t as historically significant as it perhaps could have been. Two thumbs up for the show in general though. 

Also a little spoiler here but something I want to mention - this PPV marks the last time Stone Cold Steve Austin would be WWF Champion. It’s fitting that he managed to get in one last successful title defence, dropping a heated rival with a Stunner to keep the belt one final time before losing it to Chris Jericho. I’ve used “end of an era” to describe these moments before but given that Stone Cold is the main reason I started this website and wanted to revisit these shows it feels significant to me.