History of the WWE Championship - Disc 3

In the immortal words of the Neptunes, "IT'S ALMOST OVER NOW! IT'S ALMOST OVER NOW!" Disc one was okay, disc two was kind of a drag, and if they're going to recycle as much footage on three as they did on two I'm really dreading watching this ESPECIALLY given more than any other disc this will be stuff I actually saw live when it happened instead of on tapes or DVD. Another "bodies have been bruised" warning and then we're back to action.

J.R. welcomes us to the third part by saying sports entertainment has now hit an all time high with Stone Cold beating Shawn Michaels for the title at the end of the last disc. Ross mentions that Show held the title for a month and a half, Vince McMahon for ten days, and Kane for just one day. Yes - Vince McMahon's title reign LASTED TEN TIMES LONGER THAN KANE'S. That should tell you something about how screwed up the WWE is or has been. We join the January 2000 Royal Rumble where Cactus Jack is facing Triple H in an attempt to win the WWF Championship. Wait a minute - Foley? Hunter? I'VE SEEN THIS BEFORE. Oy vey, it never stops with this DVD set. Well this is another match I've got on three or four tapes, and on at least a couple of them it's not got blurred and censored WWF Attitude logos. Let me just give you the gist of how this finishes so I'm not watching the whole damn thing all over again in a less satisfying format - Foley dumps out a gigantic pillowcase sized bag full of thumbtacks, goes after Hunter but Stephanie comes out and tries to stop Foley. Mick charges and gets a high back body toss into the tacks and then rolls around in them for emphasis. Hunter hits a pedigree after the tacks but Foley still kicks out after two. Foley goes after him but gets a second pedigree right into the tacks and this time it's for three. WINNER: HUNTER HEARST HEMSLEY.

Our next match on the DVD is a triple threat between Rock, Kurt Angle and Triple H at SummerSlam on August 27, 2000. You may recall I already did a VERY LENGTHY AND DETAILED review of this match in the "Five Years of SummerSlam" series so I'm not going to say much here. There's a few things that are interesting about this though - Kurt Angle with a full head of hair and Kurt Angle looking and sounding physically fit insted of the broken down wreck that he became before being fired in 2006. Long and short of it The Rock retains the title in a fun match. Ross informs us that Angle won the title shortly after this and became the first Olympic medalist to do so. Do they show us this match, from a non-major PPV, which has been much less overexposed and would have been much more interesting? NO, OF COURSE NOT! Instead we go immediately to Stone Cold challenging The Rock at WrestleMania 17. As luck would have it I own the original DVD of this match so I have yet another uncensored, unblurred out copy of this match. Have I mentioned lately how much I fucking hate panda bears? If you've never seen it before Austin wins thanks to collusion with Vince MaMahon and a heel turn, screwing The Rock.

Another example of how this DVD screws the pooch by picking only the "History" that they are interested in is evident in how Chris Jericho is recognized for unifying both the WCW and WWF championships and becoming the "first ever undisputed champion." We only get a brief clip of Jericho beating The Rock for the WCW title at Vengeance '01, instead we get the match that immediately follows it where Austin and Jericho fight to unify the titles. It's better than nothing, at least they're focusing on a non-major PPV and featuring somebody in a title match in Jericho who has been grossly underrecognized for his entire career, but if you've never seen this match the finish comes off Booker T walloping Austin with the title and Vince McMahon throwing Earl Hebner back in the ring so he can make the three count. WINNER AND FIRST UNDISPUTED CHAMPION: Chris Jericho... thanks to Vince fucking McMahon. The first of these two unification matches was definitely better.

Ironically in a company that tends to glorify every single thing Triple H does this is one of the few times that he doesn't get the spotlight, as we actually skip a WrestleMania title match for a change and THANK GOD because there was nothing good to me about watching Hunter beat Jericho for the title. Instead we skip ahead after a whacky period were the title seemed to change hands every month, with Hogan beating Triple H just a month after WrestleMania and Undertaker beating Hogan a month after that. We go to the triple threat match at Vengeance 2002 where Undertaker defended the title against both The Rock and Kurt Angle in a three-way match. Why do I have a feeling if they make a Kurt Angle DVD set paying tribute to his WWE career that I'll be seeing all of the exact same matches again? They sure know how to keep selling us the same shit over and over with different packaging. At least at this point they had changed the WWE logo with the whole "get the F out" campaign so there's no more censoring required, but it still deserves to be said that because this title match was on PPV and this is from the era where WWE now released EVERY PPV to DVD after it aired on TV that a lot of people are still going to have copies of this match. Having watched it live personally let me say a few things off the cuff - I was getting a little tired of the multiple title changes, all three people in the match were babyfaces in my mind so it was hard to pick any single person to root for, and there was yet ANOTHER title switch as The Rock pinned Angle to win the undisputed WWE championship - which also means technically Undertaker never lost. Ironically I think they DIDN'T include this match on the Undertaker's DVD set, which is probably because he was in his "Biker Taker" guise at this point and not working as the Dead Man. Speaking of multiple title changes in multiple months the very next match on this DVD is from the very next month's PPV - Rock v. Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam 2002. I reviewed THIS match extensively in five years of SummerSlam so suffice it to say Brock won his first WWE title in this contest.

As this DVD set is wont to do we skip over more historically important events including Brock Lesnar becoming exclusive to Smackdown which forced Raw to create their own world title and "award" it to Triple H (eww) or Lesnar losing his title to Big Show thanks to a screwjob on Paul Heyman's part at Survivor Series that year. The DVD also skips over Angle beating Show just a month later but does (SURPRISE SURPRISE) show us a match from one of the big four major PPV's - the 2003 Royal Rumble battle between Angle and Benoit. I can't even do this match justice with words - this was a five star battle in my eyes and the match which cemented Benoit as a favorite in my eyes for the rest of my life. The DVD takes a huge leap ahead again, skipping all of 2003 and going straight to a clip of Eddie Guerrero beating Brock Lesnar in February of 2004 to win the WWE title. J.R. points out he lost the title to JBL but thankfully doesn't make us watch the stupid four corners match where he did. Ross tells us Cena defeated JBL at WrestleMania 21, then gives us the final match of the comp where Cena defended against both Jericho and Christian at Vengeance 2005, which again I must reluctantly give WWE credit for including as it's one of my favorite title matches of the last five years. I also think this one was what started to undo Cena's title reign, because you can't really put him in a match with two people as charismatic or technically sound as Jericho + Cage and expect him to remain the fan favorite of the three.

Overall the first disc revealed the most unseen history, the third disc may have the most high quality title matches, and the second disc is probably the most worthless of the bunch. I give disc three *** + 1/2 despite the many repeat and already available matches, and I'll give the set ** 1/2 overall - probably not worth it to anybody who already buys most WWE releases every month anyway but probably worth picking up to someone who doesn't or a recent newcomer to WWE - do they get any new viewers any more though?