Royal Rumble 2000
“THAT DAMN GOOD”
Part One: Triple H v Cactus Jack – Street Fight for the WWF Title – Royal Rumble 2000 (23/1/00)
Having recently regained the WWF Title from The Big Show on the first Raw of 2000, Triple H was starting to get on a roll. His “Game” persona had been established for several months, and his position of dominance as the centrepiece of the McMahon-Helmsley Era was in no doubt. However, there were still many doubts in the minds of fans as to whether Triple H really could be considered as a legitimate Main Eventer. He had headlined No Mercy ‘99 against the proven draw of Steve Austin, and that year’s Survivor Series with the added star power of both Rock and Austin (although Austin took admittedly took no part in the match). His Title run had been aborted twice in the space of a couple of months as the WWF flip-flopped their opinion as to whether Hunter could cut it. His first title reign was ended by the indignity of putting over Vince McMahon for the title, and his second reign was cut short by the mid-card Big Show at the Survivor Series. Basically put, Triple H was a three time WWF Champion with next to no credibility. With Austin out due to injury and The Rock being needed to provide some star power in a rather bland Rumble match, Triple H was forced to build a program with someone else, and this time… if he failed, he’d have no one to blame but himself. The program with Mick Foley had been brewing on the back burner for a while, and was finally kicked into high gear with the metamorphosis of fun-loving Mankind into the sadistic Cactus Jack in one of the most memorable angles ever filmed on WWF TV. All roads led to Madison Square Garden on January 23rd for the moment of truth in a brutal street fight for the WWF Title.
As Triple H enters, he gets a quick kiss from Stephanie, and she leaves. That was a very smart booking move. Since this match was supposed to put over Triple H’s legitimacy, the last thing he needed was to have his ‘wife’ interfering or taking the spotlight away from him.
The match started, as many classics do, with a stare down, before Cactus starts off fast by laying in the right hands in the corner. There was a real air of ‘event’ in the arena for this match. You have to remember that since Triple H wasn’t being taken seriously at this point in time by either the casual or hardcore fans, a title change was more than possible. Add to that the definite air of tension between the ex ‘Rock & Sock Connection’ partners over Rock’s apparent trashing of Foley’s first book, and a Cactus Jack v The Rock match was a definite possibility to headline WrestleMania.
Meanwhile, the action soon finds its way onto the floor as Triple H’s head gets rammed into the ring bell on the timekeeper’s table. Triple H’s response? He lifts the bell, rears back and whacks Cactus square across the head with it. Triple H grabs a chair and literally cracks it across Foley’s cranium. On commentary, Jim Ross ominously makes mention of the previous year’s WWF Title match when Foley took a number of unprotected head shots with a steel chair…
Cactus gets the chair from Triple H and ends up legdropping it across the face of “The Game” before they go to the outside, brawl through the fans and end up in the alleyway that makes up the Rumble entrance set. In the first truly memorable moment of the match, Cactus suplexes ‘The Game’ onto a stack of two wooden pallets. It wasn’t so much memorable for the move, per se, but rather for the unintended effect. A shard of wood punctured Triple H’s calf, just between his boot and kneepad, resulting in severe blood loss for the Champion. There was worse to come…
The mauling of Triple H continues as Jack brings out a barbed wire 2x4 which (as expected) gets used on him rather than his opponent. When Cactus makes his comeback via the Double Arm DDT, he retrieves his weapon from under the Spanish Announcer’s table… looking more than a little different to when it went in there. If course, it was at this point that the switch was made from the real barbed wire that was just used by Triple H on Cactus Jack to the rubber barbed wire that Cactus would now use on Triple H. Now, with all due respect to Cactus Jack’s hardcore heritage, why did he bother to even have a real barbed wire 2x4 in the match at all? I mean, if there’s a legitimate need for the barbed wire to be rubberised (for the upcoming face shots), then why not just use that all the way through? Making a switch was far more noticeable than just working with the rubber stuff all the way through. Anyway… Cactus goes to work with the ‘barbed wire’ and Triple H soon hits a gusher which, given a couple of minutes to spread, has got to rank high on the Muta scale. The fans totally buy a near fall when Cactus rams Tripper’s face into the barbed wire.
Going to the outside again and following an attempt at a Cactus Jack piledriver on the announce table, Triple H turns the momentum by hiptossing and then whipping Cactus into the steel steps, each time targeting the knee. Then, the match really kicks into high gear as Triple H finds a pair of handcuffs at ringside. The fans (and the announcers) react, remembering the events of the aforementioned Royal Rumble 99 match with The Rock. Desperately, Cactus fights back at this point to stop the handcuffs being applied, but it is all for naught. Cactus, hands bound behind his back, still manages to fight back, drop toeholding Triple H into the steps and biting at his ear. But, it seems that a no-armed man is about as much use as a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest and Triple H prepares to unleash a Rock-esque beating with the steel chair. Cactus lures Triple H back up the alleyway set, and (of all people) The Rock makes a brief run-in with his own chair to the head of the champion.
Cactus is let out of the handcuffs by a policeman, and the crowd are truly ready to see Cactus righteously kick Triple H’s ass and take his title, and Mrs Foley’s baby boy responds to that by successfully delivering the Foleydriver (my own preferred term for Foley’s version of the Piledriver where Mick pulls on his opponent’s waistband rather than actually lifting him up with a waistlock) on the table, which doesn’t break. Ow. Moving back into the ring, Cactus brings out a huge bag of thumbtacks which he scatters over one corner of the ring. Triple H teases falling into the tacks, but backdrops Cactus right into the middle of them before delivering a Pedigree for a TWO count! Stephanie (who has returned to ringside) and Triple H cannot believe it as the fans break into a loud chant of “Foley, Foley” but they cannot help their man who takes a second, brutal, climactic pedigree right into the tacks for the three, as Jim Ross sums up the match perfectly: “I haven’t witnessed a championship match, anywhere, at any time, in 25 years like we have just witnessed here tonight”
I love this match as it not only delivered extreme violence, drama and near falls… but it also proved that psychology isn’t just about working on an arm for 20 minutes in order to set up an armbar finisher. This was brutal psychology, working in moments from Foley’s previous dramatic and dangerous matches from King of the Ring ‘98 and Royal Rumble ‘99. Once again in a WWF Title match at the Royal Rumble PPV, Mick Foley found himself handcuffed and at the mercy of a vicious heel with a steel chair. Unlike the ‘99 match, however, Foley was not helpless this time… first fighting back by himself, and then ironically even having some backup in the form of his ‘99 arch-nemesis The Rock. Although he escaped the handcuffs spot that finished him in the ‘99 match, he once again fell foul of the Thumbtacks which eventually killed him off in the ‘98 Hell in the Cell match.
This is also a rare example of a MEGA hyped WWF match actually living up to all expectations… delivering everything that the preceding weeks’ angles and promos had been promising… and a hell of a lot more too. Everything went right in the match. Foley was able to conjure up the old ‘Hardcore Legend’ again, after months of sub par performances and bad comedy skits. Triple H was able to establish himself as a legitimate superstar with (by far) his greatest performance to that date. He was able to take everything the “King of the Death Matches” could throw at him, and not only survive… but finish strongly. Even on commentary, Jim Ross’ early mention of the previous year’s WWF Title match perfectly set the scene in preparing the viewers for something similar this year.
The match couldn’t have been any better. The psychology was flawless. The result of the match was right, but both men came out of the match looking a million dollars. Cactus Jack was the man who was finally able to take ‘The Game’ to school, as it were, following the McMahon-Helmsley Regime’s weeks and weeks of dominance on Raw. The fact that Cactus was allowed to kick out of the previously invincible Pedigree finisher on the first attempt says a lot about the respect Triple H had for him.
This is as close to perfection as the WWF have ever come in the ‘brawling main event’ style that is so often employed in the federation (and so often criticised by fans as cheap and/or boring). Only the drama and emotion of Austin v Hart at WrestleMania 13 comes close for sheer visceral thrills and excitement. I can (and have) watched this match time and time again, and been able to appreciate something different about it every time. Execution, selling, build, psychology, drama… it’s all here. Triple H himself commented on the match as part of the “Mick Foley: Hard Knocks and Cheap Pops” DVD, explaining: “It wasn’t just thumbtacks for the sake of thumbtacks, or barbed wire for the sake of barbed wire. We still told you a story, we still took you on an incredible ride… but we did it in the most violent possible way; and y’know, that is one of my proudest moments in this business”
I prefer not to actually rate matches in the old “Star Ratings” system, but this is one of those cases where there wouldn’t even be a question. 5 out of 5. The match started the WWF’s year with a bang, and started off a series of (in my opinion) absolutely stellar performances for Triple H. Next up for him would be Mick Foley once again, with the stakes even higher… inside the confines of the Hell In The Cell. But that’s a story for next time…