[2000-10-02-WCW-Nitro] Booker T vs Jeff Jarrett (San Franciso 49'ers Match)

[soup23]

What a weird match. Jarrett's gold tights with the black look really smooth. The actual in ring of this match is worked well but yet you have so much nonsense. The comedy of the boxes with the Hall picture and blow up doll are so odd and then you have Beetlejuice from Howard Stern fame cost Jarrett the match and the title. I couldn't tell whether the match wanted to be comedic or serious and this didn't have the pacing or chops to play it all off like others in wrestling history. Booker is the champion again but it feels like he was bailed out by Beetlejuice of all people which does no one any favors. Steiner attacks after the match and we honestly get a wrestling show going off the air with Tony screaming in horror "Look at Bettlejuice." WCW Everybody. **

[Bix]

You forgot the alleged "coal miner's glove."

[AstroBoy]

The box gimmick was dumb and immediately failed on a practical level which was funny. This did totally take a left turn after the third box was opened, because it slowed WAAAAY down to the point where it lost any kind of fun that it had going early on. There was just way too much downtime and lying around, especially after the introduction of the terrible looking coal miner's glove. Booker has a leaping sidekick during his comeback that came nowhere close to hitting as Jarrett takes a bump like he just got shot. This was such a lame and inconsequential way to crown a champion.

 

*1/2

[GSR]

The name of the match is totally misleading as it has nothing at all to do with American football in the slightest.  There is a pole in each corner of the ring and attached to the pole is a wooden box.  In one of those boxes is the WCW title belt and the first person to find it is will become the new Heavyweight champion, while in each of the other boxes is a weapon that they are free to use on their opponent.  Mark Madden seems to think that there will be a hand grenade in one of the boxes which is ludicrous even by his standards.  Jarrett jumps Booker as he’s handing his T-shirt to a fan in the front row as this one gets going on the outside.  After jabbing a chair into Booker’s ribs ‘the Chosen One’ throws him into the ring.  Whip to the corner is reversed and the impact causes one of the boxes to fall from the post!  Luckily for them it’s not the box with the World title it, no this one contains a blow up doll.  So much for those ‘weapons’!  Booker with a side slam and he retrieves box two.  Still no title belt, only a framed picture of Scott Hall.  He cracks the picture over Jarrett’s head and then kicks him under the bottom rope to the floor.  Booker had enough time that he could easily have opened the two remaining boxes, but plays to the crowd and doesn’t even manage to open one of them, ‘Double J’ cutting him off.  They’re back fighting at ringside where Jarrett wallops ‘the Book’ with the remnants of one of those boxes.  Booker blocks the attempted piledriver on the announcer’s table and responds with one of his own.  This time he does collect box three as an optimistic Tony Schiavone says “if it’s in there it’s over”.  Does he not realise how these matches work?  Whatever you are after it always in box four, them the rules!  Box three contains a ‘Coal Miner’s Glove’, a ‘Coal Miner’s Glove’ that bears a striking resemblance to an over mitten!  With Jarrett still struggling on the outside after that piledriver, INSTEAD OF GOING FOR THE FINAL BOX WHERE HE KNOWS THE WORLD TITLE BELT IS, BOOKER PUTS ON THE GLOVE AND GOES BACK AFTER ‘DOUBLE J’.  Jarrett posts ‘the Book’ and wrestles the glove off him before KO’ing him with it.  Now he’s at it; rather than climb the poll to collect the belt, he climbs to the top turnbuckle of an adjacent corner, waits for Booker to get to his feet and then breaks what’s left of one of the earlier boxes over him.  Jeez.   Sleeper hold and even though you can only win this by retrieving the belt, referee Mark Johnson checks Booker’s arm which drops twice, though not the third time.  Madden, to his credit, points this out and wonders what Johnson is playing at as a quick thinking Scott Hudson says how if it drops a third time everyone will know that Booker is out,  Booker escapes the sleeper, slaps on one of his own and Jarrett with a back suplex.  ‘Double J’ climbs to that same top turnbuckle, yet again making you wonder why he just didn’t collect that final box, however this time as he leaps off Booker catches and plants him with ‘the Book End’.  Axe kick followed by a Harlem side kick which missed by a country mile but is sold anyway.  A Jarrett low blow stops Booker as he’s moments away from grabbing the gold, and then he tries to collect something from under the ring.  He gives up on it as he is struggling to do so and goes for the box himself, when out from under the ring comes Beetlejuice (some midget) who punches him in the balls.  Booker retrieves the final box and is once again the World Heavyweight champion.  As he’s celebrating the win he is jumped by a lead pipe carrying Scott Steiner, although said ‘lead pipe’ bounces off the mat when Steiner drops it showing that just like Vinnie Ru’s baseball bat it’s made of rubber!  Jarrett throws Beetlejuice into the ring and the show goes off the air with Steiner putting him in ‘the recliner’

There was so much wrong with this for me, not least the lack of urgency shown by both men when it came to trying to grab that final box.  While the going to the adjacent top turnbuckle ON MORE THAN ONE OCCASION was just plain dumb.  I also wished that the first three boxes had nothing in them rather than the comedy items that they contained.  The most prestigious belt in the company and it’s being played for laughs with a blow up doll, a frame picture of Scott Hall and a fucking oven mitt.  If that’s not bad enough Booker can only beat Jarrett due to the interference of a midget dressed in a superman outfit!  Way to make your new champion look strong WCW!  To top it all off the cliff hanger isn’t that Scott Steiner has left the World champion laying, no it’s the midget being put in the ‘Steiner recliner’!  This company never ceases to amaze me.