What was WWE's best year on PPV from 2000-2009?

[BigBadMick]

I've been going through the decade on and off since the middle of last year. Before starting to rewatch, I would have thought 00 and 01 were obvious choices, but 07 made a big impression lately. 08 and 09 have a lot of fond memories for me too, looking forward to rounding out the rewatch.

I think WWE had strong matches here and there in 03 and 04 but complete shows were weak. 05 was a better year, but I feel they faltered slightly in 06 (DX-McMahons, no thanks).

Oh, and 02 was a glorious mess, as the p2b boys are cataloguing.

Anyway, I'd be curious to hear everyone's opinion.

[Stiva]

I think a lot of 2002 depends on how welll you think the Smackdown Six matches have aged. I haven't rewatched them on the Network yet but I've seen a lot of talk on here about those, and specifically, Angle's matches and there's differing opinion. The more I think about it, I think 2009 might be the answer for this. It was right in the middle of the awful guest host era on Raw but Smackdown and ECW had excellent rosters and when it came to PPVs, Raw had the great Cena/Orton series, the Jerishow matches and that shockingly good DX vs Legacy HITC. Each PPV usually had a long Christian match in a time period where he was great. Punk's series with Jeff Hardy made for some good PPV main events and the undercards were usually filled with Rey Mysterio matches. I think 2010 might be better than that in-ring (though the booking was at a low ebb) but yeah, 2009 is a really strong shout.

[BigBadMick]

I'll make the case for 07.

Cena had his best year ever imo. Obviously Orton, Edge, Michaels and Umaga brought the goods, but he had shockingly strong matches with Khali and Lashley too.

 

The Benoit-MVP trilogy, the 4 Batista-Taker matches, 2 Orton-Michaels matches (really vicious limb work by HBK), Hardys-Cade Murdoch were all highlights too.

 

The No Way Out main was far better than I remembered it, and Edge-Batista series was really solid.

 

Oh, and that last section of the Royal Rumble - glorious!

 

The Orton-HHH last man standing was as good as anything I've seen those two put together.

 

And HHH-Umaga street fight was intense.

 

And a really solid Survivor series elimination match.

 

AND finishing out the year with HBK-Kennedy and HHH-Hardy

[Sidebottom]

Predictable answer for many, but I'll go with 2000. The last full year with head to head competition, the year brought some classic matches (Triangle Ladder at Mania 2000, Summerslam, Malenko / Scotty 2 Hotty Backlash, and Benoit / Jericho from the same event. Jericho vs HHH at Fully Loaded, the overbooked fun matches with Rock / HHH at Backlash and Judgement Day, Cactus vs HHH at Rumble and No Way Out, to name just a few from the top of my head on PPV alone, then you have the ten man tag leading up to No Way Out, fun matches like HHH vs TAKA on television etc)

 

An injection of new talent coming into their own that year on WWE television: Kurt Angle, Hardy'z, Edge and Christian, Benoit, Jericho, Rikishi... HHH and Rock reached a whole new level, Undertaker was repackaged, Foley was entertaining as the commissioner.

 

Things sagged towards the end of the year. When Austin came back, he wasn't a good fit with the new environment. Storyline got a little lazy all across the board post Summerslam.

 

All in all, a fantastic year though.

[BigBadMick]

Predictable answer for many, but I'll go with 2000. The last full year with head to head competition, the year brought some classic matches (Triangle Ladder at Mania 2000, Summerslam, Malenko / Scotty 2 Hotty Backlash, and Benoit / Jericho from the same event. Jericho vs HHH at Fully Loaded, the overbooked fun matches with Rock / HHH at Backlash and Judgement Day, Cactus vs HHH at Rumble and No Way Out, to name just a few from the top of my head on PPV alone, then you have the ten man tag leading up to No Way Out, fun matches like HHH vs TAKA on television etc)

 

An injection of new talent coming into their own that year on WWE television: Kurt Angle, Hardy'z, Edge and Christian, Benoit, Jericho, Rikishi... HHH and Rock reached a whole new level, Undertaker was repackaged, Foley was entertaining as the commissioner.

 

Things sagged towards the end of the year. When Austin came back, he wasn't a good fit with the new environment. Storyline got a little lazy all across the board post Summerslam.

 

All in all, a fantastic year though.

Cool, and well argued. A gentle reminder that this is a best PPV thread. Best tv is another kettle of fish for another thread.....

[scott6173]

I think 2005 was a very solid year. The emergence of a young (and not yet hated) John Cena, the well-written Undertaker/Randy Orton feud and then of course the great trilogy of matches between Triple H and Batista. Not Ric Flair/Steamboat awesome, but very good.

 

Then there was the Eddie Guerrero heel turn and subsequent matches with Rey Mysterio that were fabulous.

[JaymeFuture]

Not to mention the Angle/Michaels matches and the red-hot original One Night Stand event.

[BigBadMick]

2005 was very good, no question. I'm halfway through 2008 ppvs and it's another top contender already

[Bigelow34]

2007-2009 is much better than we treated it at the time for sure. I think 2006 was easily WWE's worst year of the decade, followed by 2003. 2002 has been really fun to relive for the podcasts, some really good shows in there with a very stacked roster.

[The Chief]

I dunno, 2006 is kind of fun for how bizarre and random the roster was, plus you had the awesome Finlay run. 2003 is the only year that almost made me give up completely, although a lot of the stuff is good in retrospect.

[Russellmania]

2006 had great TV matches. That's when you had Taker, Angle, Henry, Finlay, Rey and others on Smackdown having awesome matches every week. We also got that killer Angle/Taker match on PPV.

[DMJ]

I don't think 06' holds up match-for-match, but I will say this about it - I think the stretch from WM21 through SummerSlam 06' (roughly 16 months) was one of the funnest times to ever be a fan and that what hurts 06' most is that things really petered out after that PPV. Prior to SummerSlam, though, I absolutely loved ONS II and was really excited by the potential of the return of ECW (for example, the debut of CM Punk). In that same time frame you had the debut of Umaga, Extreme Big Show, Edge's rise to the main event, the return of Jeff Hardy, the Foley/Flair feud, and Michaels/McMahon feud. I personally disliked the DX reunion, but will admit to liking the DX vs. McMahons & Big Show cage match from this time.

 

Again, match-for-match, I don't think 2006 should rate very highly and I do think part of my enjoyment of 06' was based on my interest picking up considerably due to Hogan/Michaels at SS05' and Eddie's death that fall, but when the WWE ran a campaign about how the "Power" was back "On," I think they were right. There was so much crazy stuff going on in that 05'-06' stretch that it made being a fan almost as cool as it was during the Attitude Era, even if the in-ring stuff was comparatively lame.

[Bigelow34]

2006 had great TV matches. That's when you had Taker, Angle, Henry, Finlay, Rey and others on Smackdown having awesome matches every week. We also got that killer Angle/Taker match on PPV.

 

Definitely solid TV, but I was going by the thread being about PPVs. I thought that was their worst top to bottom PPV year.

[BigBadMick]

 

2006 had great TV matches. That's when you had Taker, Angle, Henry, Finlay, Rey and others on Smackdown having awesome matches every week. We also got that killer Angle/Taker match on PPV.

 

Definitely solid TV, but I was going by the thread being about PPVs. I thought that was their worst top to bottom PPV year.

 

 

 

2006 had great TV matches. That's when you had Taker, Angle, Henry, Finlay, Rey and others on Smackdown having awesome matches every week. We also got that killer Angle/Taker match on PPV.

 

Definitely solid TV, but I was going by the thread being about PPVs. I thought that was their worst top to bottom PPV year.

 

I thought several PPVs in 06 were solid to strong - Royal Rumble, No Way Out, WrestleMania, Judgment Day, One Night Stand, Unforgiven and No Mercy.

 

2003 was probably the worst year imo. And it wasn't completely atrocious - Lesnar, Angle, Guerrero, Tajiri, Benoit, Jericho and Michaels were all delivering, and that's just off the top of my head. Look forward to Scott's apologies for HHH's debacle after debacle after debacle on P2B....

[BigBadMick]

Actually, 2004 is probably just slightly stronger, PPV-wise, than 2003. Losing Lesnar and gaining JBL was a MASSIVE kick in the balls for Smackdown, and while HHH improved his output drastically over the previous year, there was still than horrendously overblown Hell in a Cell with HBK to answer for.

[iamthedoctor]

I would probably say 2004. I really enjoyed Benoit's run as World Champion & when he feuded with Hunter they put on some pretty good matches.

[BigBadMick]

Finished up 2008 this week - wow!

 

Hardy v Orton from Rumble was very good and the two Elimination Chambers were really strong (particularly the Raw one).

WrestleMania was solid. Liked it a lot better when it happened, but I think Taker-Edge, Flair-Michaels and Orton-Cena-HHH still look good. To save repeating myself, I'll say here that all the Edge-Taker matches were very good, except Hell in the Cell. More on that later.

 

MVP-Hardy, Batista-HBK delivered at Backlash, but I think HHH fell back on old 'epic' tendencies with the main event going far too long. It's a shame, because for the most part his PPV work was really good all year, and he seemed reinvigorated.

 

The much loved Jericho-Michaels matches were interesting. The crowd was white hot even the first one at Judgment Day (actually, that's something that's worthy of a mention - fans seemed really into the product all year, I don't know if I'd seen such consistently hot crowds and massive audience goodwill since 2000), the Bash match was high drama at it's highest and most dramatic (not everyone's cup of tea, but I liked it), the Unforgiven one was a bit of a step backward - too long and overly milked/similar to the Bash one, I thought. The Ladder match at No Mercy was a return to form - brutal, dramatic and, crucially, tighter.

 

Back to Judgment Day - really liked Punk's work with Kane v Miz and Morrison, and the cage main event was solid enough - HHH curbed the excesses from Backlash.

 

Hardy-Umaga opened One Night Stand very nicely, and Batista-Michaels had blistering heat. There's a two match series that deserves more attention in Batista's career.

 

Matt Hardy v Benjamin (it's been Jeff matches I've written about so far) was great for undercard of Bash, and Punk-Batista had massive heat and was a really good showing from both guys. I know Punk's not fond of his 08 title run, but this and his JBL match at SummerSlam both hold up well (to a lesser extent the SS one though). Edge-HHH was ok, I was waiting for Vickie and some shenanigans towards the end, but yeah - solid main event.

 

The last three matches at SummerSlam were interesting - HHH decides to walk on water and drag something decent out of Khali . He does succeed, to be fair. Cena-Batista is carried by GYNORMOUS heat, and is pretty decent. HiaC is a stunt show, and for me the only wrong footing in the taker-Edge feud. It's interesting that the made a TLC work at One Night Stand but HiaC just seemed too..... much? I dunno, I didn't like it anyway.

 

Scramble matches at Unforgiven - ECW's was fine, HHH and Jeff Hardy had to sacrifice Kendrick and MVP to work the SD one (I can see why this gimmick wasn't reused) and the Raw one was ok. One of the weaker PPVs of the year (which in itself bellows of the high quality year going on).

 

More later........

[BigBadMick]

Ok, I'm back.

 

I think NO Mercy is really solid. Matt Hardy and Henry work a nice, basic ECW title match to open, Kane and Mysterio are great (they follow up with another great one at Cyber Sunday), and Undertaker-Show is a shockingly good big man scrap (also followed up with a better match at Cyber Sunday. After HBK-Jericho concludes, the commentators note that the final two matches were one of the best semi- and main combinations in a long time and I'm inclined to agree with them. HHH and Jeff was very good - I got the impression HHH loved this feud, and worked hard with Hardy. Also, Hardy showed a massive improvement over the course of the year. Again, I thought their Cyber Sunday rematch was better.

 

I've already covered most of Cyber Sunday, just to add that Bourne-Matt Hardy was well-received (both Hardy's worked hard this year) and Jericho-Batista was very good. The guest referee nonsense towards the end actually worked ok, I thought. Usually I hate that.

 

Survivor Series was weaker than Unforgiven, thinking about it now. HBK's survivor match was good, Batista's less so. Don't know how Taker-Show had such a underwhelming casket match after the previous two PPVs.

 

Punk v Mysterio was sensational at Armageddon. You could just imagine people saying 'yeah, we'll pair these two up again, and again, and again....'. Don't know how or why but Batista-Orton just didn't gel at all. Main event was a lovely close to the Hardy-HHH feud, and with Edge thrown in for good measure. They really worked the 'will he,won't he' aspect for Hardy.

 

 

It's official, I'm going with 2008 as WWE's best PPV year of the decade.