- 13 minutes ago
Hey, remember when Kurt Angle shot Big Show and The Rock bored everyone senseless?
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00:002004. Very odd year for WWE. They were happy to try new things, but never stuck with them.
00:05It was the old three weeks rule. Oh, you didn't become Steve Austin in less than a month.
00:09Now we're going to move on to what's next. The death of WCW definitely contributed because
00:13Vince McMahon felt like he had more room to breathe. And he also decided to push the envelope
00:18way too far. There are some terrible storylines that fall apart in front of your eyes. So as we
00:23are over 20 years removed, let's talk about the bottom of the barrel. I am Sam Miller. I have no
00:28hair. Let's go. Number 10, Tough Enough Goes Wrong. Now it's only fair to say Kurt Angle
00:32was an injured mess during this, but still, it's not the best idea to tangle with a trained
00:36MMA fighter in a wrestling ring. That's the beauty of sports entertainment. You can pre-plan
00:41stuff. I don't think the Tough Enough concept helped. This is when WWE would take hopefuls
00:45and make them do weird challenges on SmackDown. A lot of these felt like humiliation. Maybe
00:51that's why one Daniel Puder was ready for war. It was the 4th of November, 2004, though. And
00:55even before the show started, these rookies had been running to the ground. Had to go
00:59up and down the stairs, a whole wrestling training session. Again, I think WWE wanted
01:04them at their very worst. After the on-TV challenges, however, Angle invited one of the contestants
01:09to step in the ring with him for a real wrestle. And of course, Kurt was a gold medalist, so
01:13this
01:13should have been a whooping when Daniel put his hand up. Again, he'd been training since
01:18he was a kid. In the frat car, Puder was able to grab Angle's arm in a commura lock. And
01:22honestly, if Kurt hadn't pinned his shoulders so referee Jimmy Calderas could do a fast count,
01:27who knows how this would have ended? That's a dangerous hold. You can snap somebody's arm.
01:32I would imagine Daniel Puder was at least putting some pressure on it.
01:35It of course didn't do anything for Dan, who was now public enemy number one. Locker room
01:39was furious, even though he was just doing what he was told. Wrestling politics back then
01:44were weird. Angle lost it afterwards on the microphone to try and save face, I suppose.
01:48And then Puder got his ass kicked in the Royal Rumble as some sort of punishment. None of
01:53this was good, because what message did it send to new folk? You're screwed no matter
01:56what, unless the powers that be choose you. It essentially ended Daniel Puder's run in
02:01WWE. Although I do believe he's a producer now. I guess it worked out.
02:06Number nine, The Miz's debut. We can stick with Tough Enough as well, as season four saw
02:10The Miz pop up too. He irritated the hell out of everyone instantly because he was a natural
02:14heel. You know the deal at this stage.
02:16The horrible part of this story is that The Miz was also bullied backstage, and there's
02:20no need for that. But man, he deserved more respect.
02:23Do not forget what we said about Daniel Puder being a trained fighter, because he was stuck
02:27in the ring with The Miz at Armageddon in 2004, in a proper boxing scrap. For some reason
02:32we called it a Dixie Dogfight, and Mike Mizanen took some rough shots. It was essentially the
02:37brawl for all again. Nobody wanted to see this in wrestling, and it was kind of boring.
02:41I would guess they didn't actually want to knock each other out.
02:43It ended after three rounds of Puder winning on points, and I don't think Miz will be mentioning
02:48this when he gets inducted into the Hall of Fame. The whole Tough Enough idea felt spiteful,
02:53and just for the kicks off Vince McMahon and Friends, at no point did it ever feel like
02:57they were looking for the next big superstar.
02:59Number eight, Kurt Angle's dart gun.
03:01I didn't want to include this. Making that clear, I say more of it. It's so dumb, and therefore
03:06it's the best. Wrestling can and should always have more fun.
03:09On the 23rd of September Smackdown though, we got Kurt Angle versus The Big Show, and a ton of
03:14run-ins and shenanigans because it's WWE that's always been the answer. Given so much was going on
03:19however, Angle for some reason found a tranquilizer gun and shot it at The Big Show. Of course that
03:24meant that the big man passed out, and it's not the worst plan to take down a giant. It also
03:29meant
03:29Angle definitely should have been taken to jail. It got even more zany as Kurt and his heavy
03:34shaved The Big Show, so this was a bizarre plan. They had to have chatted about this backstage,
03:39and this is what they decided upon. I would say really though, the lowest part was the payoff.
03:44We just got to know Mercy when Luther Reigns and Mark Jindrak were banned from ringside
03:47under pain of losing their job, and show just won. Alright, I'm glad we did that.
03:53This probably would have worked had the match had some ridiculous stipulation attached,
03:57and this bonkers Vince McMahon of all people didn't greenlight it. It was his favourite thing.
04:01Maybe he got out of his creative juices with the knockout gun. I think the feud mostly just told
04:05the audience there wasn't going to be a lot of weight behind the new programs. We're just going
04:09to do them to do them. I, for one, still think the tranquilizer should return. It's so silly,
04:14it kind of does a full 180 in clicks. For me anyway. But I am an idiot. Number seven,
04:19The Divas Search. You can sum this up easily now. It would never happen in 2025. It was offensive
04:25and low-hanging fruit. Bad then, worse now. The lingerie pillow fight between Christy Hemi and
04:30Carmella at 2004's Taboo Tuesday was seen as one of the worst matches of the year,
04:34and it wasn't even their fault. They weren't trained properly, so even with a stupid stip it
04:38didn't work. You have to do something other than swing pillows. Two months before all that too,
04:43The Rock had returned to be involved in one of these segments, and instantly, what? It's The Rock?
04:48He should always be at the top of the card. Of course, he invited them to enter a pie-eating
04:52contest, and I'm just going to leave that there because kids are watching. Christy then dished out a bunch
04:56of stink faces. All right, yeah. It was so weird because La Resistance and the coach then got their
05:01asses whipped, and Rhyno and Tajiri were here too, and I don't know why. I mean, one of the main
05:06reasons
05:07we do have it here as an entry is because after this, Dwayne Johnson and WWE fell out essentially,
05:12and we didn't see him again until 2011. Seven years. So come on, man. When you have the people's
05:17champion, you've got to get the most out of him. This didn't help any of The Divas either because it
05:21was so ridiculous, and also, The Rock was out there. He was always going to get the headlines
05:26over anybody else. It, for some reason, went 20 minutes on a two-hour show, and once again,
05:31fans basically wanted wrestling at this time. Look at the SmackDown 6. WWE just fought that every
05:37step of the way. Number 6, Heiden Wright goes nuts. So this was terrible. I don't get why we did
05:42it,
05:42and why WWE would want a fan that was into this is actually horrific. It was the 16th of September,
05:482004 SmackDown, when Heiden Wright was walking backstage. Vince McMahon was trying to push him
05:53because he was a former athlete and big. That was the long and the short of it two decades ago
05:57in
05:58the box you needed to tick. When Heiden Wright saw commentator Michael Cole backstage, he then
06:02shoved him into a wall and started reciting poetry, and it went totally off the rails. Heiden Wright sort
06:08of insinuated that maybe he was going to do something sexual to Cole. So arrest this man, and no,
06:14I'm not kidding. To say it was unsettling was an understatement, and what did it achieve? There was
06:19no feud here. Cole wasn't going to wrestle, and Heiden Wright didn't feel like a monster. He felt like
06:23a criminal. If you stopped watching around here, damn right it was awful. It was just foul storytelling
06:29because WWE were desperate to get people talking. Who cares about taste? I just don't get how anybody
06:34thought this was going to be a success. In fact, it did the opposite, and it was so bad, fans
06:39tarred Heiden
06:40Wright with this brush, and that was that. Basically got let go two years after this. It was terrible.
06:45Number five, Paul Bearry in the crypt. So I still don't get this. It was a great American bash, and
06:51as we had the brand split, WWE was trying out separate Raw and SmackDown pay-per-views. It wasn't
06:56a great idea because one, there were too many shows to begin with, and two, it meant some headliners just
07:01weren't going to draw. The Undertaker versus the Dudley Boys, for example, had such a strange matchup.
07:07WWE knew this too because they added a stipulation. If Bubba Ray and D-Von won,
07:12they could pull a lever on a crypt, and Paul Bearry would be killed. Literally buried in sand.
07:17So the selling point here was death. Still no police. Just to make it even stranger,
07:22The Undertaker won this two-on-one attack, and then he went and killed Bearry anyway.
07:27Yep. Even though the stakes were all about trying to keep Paul alive,
07:30the dead man lived up to his name and unalived this guy. You saw Bearry struggling to not be
07:35murdered as well. Then poof, he was gone. Of course, WWE had filmed this before this show
07:40and spliced that in with the live feed, but think of the fans in the arena. Bet they were baffled.
07:45Very WCW. What's more wild is that JBL versus Eddie Guerrero for the title was on this show,
07:50and they absolutely should have main-evented, and yet creative backed themselves into a corner.
07:55Bearry would be back in a few years' time, and he re-teamed with the Phenom.
07:59Just don't worry about the crime. It also mugged off the Dudleys. They were one of WWE's best tag teams,
08:05and they got beaten by one man. Just don't get it. It made no sense.
08:09Two plus two equals potato. Number four, Brock versus Goldberg goes bad.
08:13This isn't so awful these days because they rectified it in 2016 with that Survivor Series
08:17match. Before that, though, sheesh. If you were at WrestleMania 20 and were part of that MSG crowd,
08:24my gosh, what a nightmare. In short, fans had figured out Goldberg's contract was up and learned
08:29that Brock Lesnar had quit WWE, so they booed the ship out of them. I suppose it was one of
08:34the early
08:35fans took over the show, and as such, it felt like the end of days. Thank goodness WWE had booked
08:40Steve Austin as the guest referee because New York loved him. We just made him the star of the show,
08:44and he cracks up during the whole thing. Nobody finds this funnier than Stone Cold.
08:49He clearly loves chaos. Lesnar was the opposite because he was furious, to the point Bill, who was
08:54also mad, had to calm himself down to try and get Brock to chill out. It's such a wonderful mess
08:59because the work is fine. Nobody falls over, but they have so much pausing as they try and digest
09:04what exactly is happening. You'll probably never get anything like this again. Vince McMahon also
09:09changed the finish because he was livid Brock was just walking away from the business, and Austin
09:13stunned everybody to end the rollercoaster. There is something fun to it all because it feels like a
09:17moment in time, but yeah, you wouldn't want to do this constantly. It was utterly bonkers.
09:23Number three, Muhammad Hassan. It is an old conversation, but you can't not include it. Just a reminder that
09:28wrestling treats sensitive issues with a sledgehammer. I'm sure you know the deal too. After 9-11 and the
09:33heightened tensions in America, WWE debuted Muhammad Hassan, and at first you could probably argue this
09:38was nuanced. He, alongside manager Javari, would talk about prejudice and how racial profiling doesn't
09:43help anyone. And yeah, grouping communities together is an awful thing to do. You can't judge one based
09:49on all. And within a few weeks, that was out the door, and Hassan was evil foreign heel guy. This
09:55was so
09:55bad. If you stop watching, I get it. Now, of course, a lot of this went down in 2005, including
10:00that
10:00awful Smackdown episode that featured a terrorist angle in July. But Muhammad debuted on the 13th
10:05of December 2004, and in hindsight, just don't. If you can't handle the sensitive nature of it, do
10:11anything else, but not Katie Vick. I suppose when you go back and watch it, it's just a sign of
10:15things
10:15to come, and Mick Foley, who was involved in this too, kind of underlines it. I just don't get what
10:20the
10:20long-term plan was. I do know it was not good. Number two, Kane and Lita. So here's a trigger
10:25warning. I know people get annoyed at that term, which is ironic, but we all know what it means.
10:29Skip this if you don't want to get into bottom-of-the-barrel content. I'll do my best to
10:33keep it as straightforward as possible, but that's also because I don't know how else to approach
10:37it. 21 years on, I still can't believe WWE did this, but on the 26th of July 2004, Lita got
10:44pregnant. Her boyfriend, Matt Hardy, was super happy when we learned that the father was Kane.
10:49It was then very heavily implied this happened after the big red machine forced himself onto
10:54Lita. Strike one. Of course, Kane and Hardy then feuded in a Death Do Us Part match at SummerSlam,
10:59as opposed to, you know, calling the cops. Kane won this too, which meant he was now allowed to
11:05marry Lita at strike two. She didn't get a say on this apparently, and then it got worse because,
11:10number one, WWE tried to make Kane the babyface. I mean, good grief. The whole debacle stretched
11:16due to September, though, and on the 13th of September Raw, Snitsky accidentally knocked
11:20Kane into Lita, and yep, she lost the child. This, of course, led to segments in the hospital,
11:26and Kane was beside himself, and Lita's bedside just crying his eyes out. So, yeah, WWE was actually
11:33using this to make Kane the babyface. Let me think of that. The only innocent person here is Lita,
11:39and she was made out to be a weak victim. I hate this storyline. It's one of the reasons I
11:43stopped
11:43watching. Not interested. It's meant to be entertaining. Only weeks before, Kane had been
11:47laughing like an insane person because he had his way with her, and this is how WWE tried to
11:52retcon it. Thankfully, the audience didn't bite and booed this man. Though, to be honest, most crowds
11:57are apathetic. Can't buy into this. It's trash. I mean, just do wrestler A once wrestler B's title
12:03when you get to this point. I will take boring over shit. Excuse my language. Wrestling is meant to be
12:09an escape, man. This one was not. Not many other wrestling storylines. It just didn't go the way
12:13people were planning. Make sure you let us know in the comments below before you like the video,
12:16share the video, and subscribe. Otherwise, my friends, I appreciate you.
12:20Have a terrific day, and I'll speak to you again soon.
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