[2000-08-10-WWF-Smackdown] Chris Jericho & Eddy Guerrero vs Chris Benoit & Val Venis

[soup23]

The setup to this tag was weird as Chyna looks pretty catty picking a fight with Trish backstage over how many wrinkles she has. I liked the tag match a good bit as the issue with Benoit and Jericho feels personal which A. helps improve on their feud earlier in the year and B. doesn’t make it seem like Benoit or Jericho have been demoted from their Fully Loaded feuds. Eddy also looked good and active here hitting a rana out of a unique position. Finish worked with Jericho/Eddy thinking they had the match won but Benoit is able to hit the top rope headbutt for the win. After the match Jericho is pissed but he gets locked in a crossface. **3/4

[GSR]

Benoit and Jericho don’t bother to wait for the bell, while Val and Eddy duke it out at ringside.  Eddy drops him throat first across the barricade as Y2J nails ‘the Crippler’ with a flying forearm.  Jericho looks for the Lionsaul, but Shane McMahon continues where he left off Monday, clocking him as he goes to springboard off the ropes.  Val with a running lariat in the corner that he follows with a ‘Blue Thunder Driver’.  A bit of ‘ground & pound’ and he tags Benoit back in who lays in a couple of those stiff knife edge chops that you come to expect whenever he and Y2J square off.  Enziguiri and Jericho is able to tag his partner.  Eddy hammers away on Benoit and when Val steps in there, he lets him have it too.  Real good intense aggression from Eddy here.  Jericho charges at ‘the Crippler’ and they fall through the ropes to the outside, although Benoit reverses the whip on the floor sending Y2J crashing into the ring steps.  Eddy with a huracanrana on Val, he hits the frog splash but the official refuses to count, saying that Venis isn’t the legal man.  Like whenever does that matter?  As Eddy wonders why the official isn’t doing his job, Benoit catches him with a diving headbutt off the top.  These two are apparently the legal men and when ‘the Crippler’ makes the cover, the referee counts Eddy’s shoulders to the mat for the three.  The action doesn’t end there as Y2J puts ‘the Walls’ on Benoit and when Val goes to help him out he’s cut off by Eddy and Chyna.  Shane saves ‘the Crippler’ only to end up in ‘the Walls’ himself, when out trots, of all people, Albert.  Pescado by Eddy but Albert catches him and rams him into the ring post.  Meanwhile Benoit return the favour saving Shane and then trapping Y2J in the crossface, really wrenching back as the officials try to prise him off.

An angry Chris Jericho barges into Mick Foley’s ‘office’, overturns the table and tells him that he wants Chris Benoit tonight.  The Commissioner knows that he wants to tear him limb from limb, but a match like that has to be saved for Summerslam which seems to appease Y2J.

Although both worked well, especially Eddy, he and Val came across as an afterthought here.  They did try to set things up between them and add a bit of needle with a pre-match angle that saw Chyna insulting Trish (over her looks of all things!), however to me it was clear they were playing second fiddle to the real issue, the one between Jericho and Benoit.