Smackdown Six Era

[Ryan Faulconer]

Not to make excuses for the guy but...does anyone sell injuries for more than a few minutes in today's "feed me more" (ha!) pro wrestling climate? I used to notice Benoit being one of the only guys who would sell while on offense.

 

I always cringe when DB does the headbutt or the tope suicida to nowhere. WWE guys need to stop doing the step collision spot. That probably doesn't help all these shoulder and arm injuries or tears that guys are getting.

 

Does anyone think the Bryan/Shield/Rhodeses/others will be looked back on with the same ambivilence that the "Smackdown Six" suffered from a few years after the fact? There are all these good/great/excellent television matches this year that are getting plenty of praise. Back in 2002 the quality was also there but nowadays fans seem to think of it as "just wrestling" or a failed Heyman project. They really have a lot more supporting players to keep things fresh(er) this time around. Outside of a divas' or Great Khali match there are really strong matches up and down the card on regular TV.

 

That's probably not good for PPV...but I don't watch the PPVs so fuck them!

[Matt D]

I think the smackdown six are remembered fairly favorably now. In fact, I'm not sure how that stuff would age considering Edge's limitations, Angle's limitations, and the general ickiness surrounding Chris Benoit matches. I find it extremely unlikely that it'd match up to the tags and six man matches we've gotten this year.

[Timbo Slice]

There are a couple tags involving Los Guerreros that were absolutely money. Also, the Rey/Edge tag matches were sensational thanks to Rey. I know people aren't favorable of Angle and He Who Shall Not Be Named, but I got no problem thinking fondly of those matches. I think there are better finishes to the matches we are seeing now, but there are some great FIP segments in the Rey/Edge matches from both guys, and a couple finishes that actually rank up there with some of the finishes we've seen lately.

[Exposer]

I watched a lot of the SD! 6 matches a few years ago and Rey was noticeably better than everyone else except maybe Eddie. Angle was terrible at times and Edge was average at best most of the time. I do think a few of those matches hold up pretty well though like Edge-Eddie No DQ.

[Jimmy Redman]

From my perspective the SD Six was probably Angle's peak. The Benoit tag team was a lot of fun, he was paired with guys like Eddie and Rey on a weekly basis, and working tag matches kind of neuters his worst instincts because he can go on a wild no-selling suplex rampage and call it a "hot tag", instead of "no selling".

 

I really like that period and for me the matches still hold up after multiple viewings.

[Exposer]

I actually think the SD! 6 era was the beginning of Angle turning into garbage. The Benoit match at the Rumble is a bad match in my opinion. Submission countering is prevalent today but in that match it was ridiculous. Plus, the German suplex was overdone by that point and they traded them. I hated it. However, Angle-Rey at Summerlsam is a great sub ten minute match and Angle is great in it as the over confident bully.

[NintendoLogic]

I actually think the SD! 6 era was the beginning of Angle turning into garbage. The Benoit match at the Rumble is a bad match in my opinion. Submission countering is prevalent today but in that match it was ridiculous. Plus, the German suplex was overdone by that point and they traded them. I hated it. However, Angle-Rey at Summerlsam is a great sub ten minute match and Angle is great in it as the over confident bully.

I agree with this. Angle was at his best in 2000-01. Working with Benoit turned him into what he is today.

[Jimmy Redman]

I actually think the SD! 6 era was the beginning of Angle turning into garbage. The Benoit match at the Rumble is a bad match in my opinion. Submission countering is prevalent today but in that match it was ridiculous. Plus, the German suplex was overdone by that point and they traded them. I hated it. However, Angle-Rey at Summerlsam is a great sub ten minute match and Angle is great in it as the over confident bully.

In the end I think you're right, in that that period was the beginning of the overkill style that ruined his matches forever from that point on. But to me, the SD Six period is when it was kind of still new and exciting, so it worked. It want sustainable, sure, and Angle's inability to move past it is his major flaw. But in the moment, it was fun.

 

I agree that the Rumble match is the tipping point. God I hate that match. And like I said I really enjoyed the Angle-Benoit tag team and storyline, so I really WANT to like it, but I can't, it's garbage.

[Guest TheGreatPuma]

I do not agree that the Angle vs Benoit match at the Rumble was garbage. It is an excellent match that stands out from the pack and has excellent psychology. Like or dislike the match according to one's current thoughts and feelings but the match itself is excellent psychology for Angle/Benoit/numerous fans/myself and stands out from the pack from about 99% of the matches out there in every department in what makes wrestling great. This is wrestling the way I love it.

 

Unforgiven was also genius. Wrestlemania was very smart too.

[Matt D]

I was in the crowd for Angle/Benoit. I have weird feelings about it and no desire to revisit it.

[WingedEagle]

I actually think the SD! 6 era was the beginning of Angle turning into garbage. The Benoit match at the Rumble is a bad match in my opinion. Submission countering is prevalent today but in that match it was ridiculous. Plus, the German suplex was overdone by that point and they traded them. I hated it.

Great point here about the RR match. I'm not sure any other out of this world match has fallen quite as much in my eyes. Part of it is Benoit, part of it is the over the top video game mashing style becoming so intolerable, but my thoughts on this now bear zero resemblance to what they were at that time.

[Slasher]

I loved Angle/Benoit at the Rumble, but I do agree that Angle wrestling Benoit ruined him. After the praise he got for the series (dude, you are wrestling Chris Benoit, the technically perfect cyborg, it would be hard to fuck that up), he got it in his head that he could be this technician who needed to do a go go go style. Not everyone has the ability to harness that into a good match with him. The guys that do were great workers themselves, but you're not going to be working with a great worker on a nightly basis forever. Angle never understood that, and that was put on display when he berated Eddie Guerrero for selling his suplexes too long and ruining HIS flow of the go go go match he wanted to have in his mind.

[Sidebottom]

Angle never understood that, and that was put on display when he berated Eddie Guerrero for selling his suplexes too long and ruining HIS flow of the go go go match he wanted to have in his mind.

The only account of this I know of was Eddie being in a lot of pain and being unable to have flow by any definition. Angle claims he got into it with Eddie after biting his tongue, as a result of what Eddie said to him backstage.

[Big Rob]

I actually think the SD! 6 era was the beginning of Angle turning into garbage. The Benoit match at the Rumble is a bad match in my opinion. Submission countering is prevalent today but in that match it was ridiculous. Plus, the German suplex was overdone by that point and they traded them. I hated it. However, Angle-Rey at Summerlsam is a great sub ten minute match and Angle is great in it as the over confident bully.

I agree with this. Angle was at his best in 2000-01. Working with Benoit turned him into what he is today.

 

Angle's at his best working shorter matches. Give him twenty minutes and it tends to fall to shit, with the clichéd trading of multiple German suplexes, Ankle Locks that last for an age, etc. The Angle who worked with Roderick Strong, Jay Lethal, a debuting John Cena that Summerslam match with Rey - that's the guy I dig. Super intense, throwing bombs and giving his opponent enough to look strong but not making himself look weak by having them kick out of a million Germans.

[bradhindsight]

When did Angle work wth Roderick Strong? I need to seek that out.

[Bix]

It's been forever since I watched Angle-Benoit but I would think it holds up better (even if it doesn't hold up especially well) than the other similar Angle matches because at least it looked like two evenly matched wrestlers countering each other (especially with Benoit being the one guy who could do the faux amateur spots with Angle) and not Angle letting people roll him up to put him in his own finisher. Plus the finish was actually kind of clever when Angle had never done the heel hook before. After that he expected "reversal reversal reversal this time Kurt puts the heel hook on he's not getting out" to be dramatic even though he did it in every match.

[Jimmy Redman]

I do not agree that the Angle vs Benoit match at the Rumble was garbage. It is an excellent match that stands out from the pack and has excellent psychology. Like or dislike the match according to one's current thoughts and feelings but the match itself is excellent psychology for Angle/Benoit/numerous fans/myself and stands out from the pack from about 99% of the matches out there in every department in what makes wrestling great. This is wrestling the way I love it.

 

Unforgiven was also genius. Wrestlemania was very smart too.

What was so great about the psychology of Angle-Benoit? I fact, what even was the psychology of Angle-Benoit? Apart from "two über workrate guys workrate the fuck out of each other."

 

My memory of the match is that the psychology is non-existent. They just take turns doing moves, lots of moves. There's no story involved in any of it, and even the moves themselves werent that novel or interesting. they just did stuff. Going into my most recent viewing of it, I figured the overkill finisher-fest would piss me off the most. In fact, that was the best part of the match because at least it was exciting. Everything up until that point was just...doing moves, and not in a very interesting way.

 

I get liking the match, and I especially get liking the match if you're into the Kurt Angle, go go go, let's do lots of MOVES style, and liking it for its athleticism. I do not get the claim that the match has excellent psychology.

[Loss]

I liked that the early matwork was actually paid off later in the match. Benoit was doing sharpshooter teases right off the bat, and when he finally locked in the move, it got a much bigger pop than it probably would have otherwise. That match has more substance than I think it's getting credit for. It is athletically impressive, but I also think it's a smartly worked wrestling match.

[Jimmy Redman]

God damn it...I'm going to have to watch it again, aren't I?

[Exposer]

I did like the apron DDT in the match. I'd have to go back to my reviews in word documents to see if there was anything else I liked.

 

EDIT: I found my review and seemed to like the first half of the match. There was body part work but it went nowhere and the last ten minutes were terrible. Angle did his pop-up turnbuckle suplex spot which I have always hated and then RIGHT AFTER that they went into submission trading.

[tim]

I watched it semi-recently, couple months ago I think, and I thought it was pretty not good. Maybe not bad, but not good. The thing is, I see why it was popular at the time. WWE and TV wrestling in general was coming out of a period where workrate was VERY de-emphasized. Even in like 2000 and 2001 where WWE was trying harder to put on great matches, they were usually "great" over-done gimmick matches, not workrate/athletic stuff. So two guys kicking out of finishers, cutting a fast pace and doing submission reversals got people going nuts.

 

But I mean, that's all it is. Like all wrestling fans, I dig a match with a fast paced, exciting counters, lots of big reversals and hot near falls, etc. But in this match they just weren't any good. It was just move, move, move without any of it being especially interesting or good. The submission reversals were pretty neat I'll give it that. That stuff eventually got ruined by overexposure but here it was cool. Relatively small part of the match though. And it had no build at all, totally boring, meandering stuff until they got around to hitting suplexes on each other over and over.

[Jimmy Redman]

This is what I said about it last time I watched it, which is much of what tim says above:

 

It drives me INSANE. Literally insane.

 

The thing is, which is weird for me because its Angle, but the thing is that I really, really WANT to love it. I am so into the Angle/Benoit tag team and feud through '02, and this match was the culmination of the entire thing. I've spent years desperately trying to love this match, and I just dont. It is nothing special.

 

And I've finally realised why too. See, I thought my problem would be with overkill and finisher kicking. But it turns out the stretch was the best part of the match. The problem, it turns out, is that the body of the match was a whole bunch o' nothing. It was just...bleh. There was no flow to it, no story being told, no logical progression. It was just stuff. I do some stuff to you, you do some stuff to me, and we eat up 15 minutes so we can go into finisher kickouts. There wasnt even an attempt at a "scientific mat wrestling" segment or, really, anything that was more than just doing moves to each other. Benoit made a babyface comeback at one point so I guess they were pretending Angle had been getting heat on him, but he wasnt, it was just Angle's turn to do some moves for a few minutes.

 

And then BAM, lets trade Germans and kick out of finishers. Being unimpressed with this match is made worse by Tazz marking out bro over it, because it makes it seem even more forced. You cant even use the argument that "it may seem passe now, but back then they'd never seen such overblown kicking before," because the entire preceding 6 months, the whole SD Six era was built upon that kind of OTT 'top this' finisher trading. This was their fourth singles match in the last 6 months alone. By this point if I never see another German suplex it will be too soon.

 

There is just nothing to the match. Last time I saw it I would have had no problem calling it a great match, but now I am not so sure. Its still not bad because the final minutes are exciting, if nothing else, but I'm really disappointed that after coming so close to figuring it out, I am now back to the drawing board.

[Exposer]

In my review I noted that there was no heat section. Angle started to work over Benoit's neck but completely abandoned it and they went into suplex, submission galore bullshit.

[Sean Liska]

You also have to consider that the other main feud WWE was pushing at the time was Steiner-HHH, so Benoit-Angle was seen as this symbol of all that was good, while Steiner-HHH was everything we were rejecting from Vince. It was fun at the time even if it doesn't hold up now, the crowd response was great, standing ovation for Benoit after the match, etc.

[Loss]

Dave never elaborated on this to my knowledge, but I remember him saying once that the standing ovation was worked/started by plants.