by Rick Scaia
OnlineOnslaught.com

And yet for all the high hopes, 2003 limped in with a whimper and not a bang.

Bret wouldn't be a SERIOUS topic of conversation for WWE fans all year.  Nash and Goldberg wouldn't show up until a quarter of the way through the year.  Rock fizzled in a RAW-X appearance (as did the whole RAW-X show, for that matter), and only gain momentum when he showed up as a heel in February.  And Scott Steiner?  Well, he was the dictionary definition of over-pushed as the year kicked off.

Booked immediately into a world title feud against Triple H, Steiner was exposed in his first WWE match at the Royal Rumble.  Though they had crafted a compelling intra-match story for the two, Steiner looked so uncompelling and sloppy that the vast majority of the live crowd turned against him.  

Steiner wasn't even sound in the pre-PPV house show matches he and HHH did.  He lost crowd with such witty repartee as "HHH get yer ass back in here... before somebody from... umm.... uhhh... THIS COMMUNITY kicks your ass!"  I'm not making that up.  I think it was a house show in El Paso, TX, where Steiner forgot where he was.

Not helping matters was the fact that HHH came into the New Year nursing one of his ubiquitous deep thigh bruises, and couldn't do anything physical to build up the feud.  That left the two to do an endless series of lame (and often, vaguely homo-erotic) skits based on posedowns, arm wrestling, weight lifting, and just about anything besides actually wrestling.  This certainly didn't put that live Rumble crowd in the best frame of mind prior to Steiner's lacking performance.  Anyway, HHH and Steiner eventually limped to a marginally better PPV rematch, but immediately afterwards, Steiner, the Great Free Agent Hope of the New year, was relegated to mid-card duty (and didn't even rate a spot on the WM19 card). 

Similarly bad was how WWE fumbled the RAW-X Tenth Anniversary show.  Rumored for months to be a big ass bash featuring tons of old stars from RAW's past (as recently as the Confidential before the show, WWE was hyping Bobby Heenan and other special guest), the event turned out to feature absolutely no one from outside of the current WWE roster.  The Rock was the biggest surprise on the show (doing a weak pre-taped piece, not even live), and Steve Austin didn't even show up to accept his award for "Superstar of the Decade."

In subsequent interviews, WWE personnel have revealed that when old talents started holding out for more pay and travel perks, the cost of staging the event as originally envisioned became prohibitive, so Vince just said "Fuck them" and did the show with his own crew.  True or not, WWE could have shelled out for at least a couple of neat surprises.  You can see reading this recap of the show that, as it was, RAW's tenth anniversary was a rather underwhelming experience.

In fact, you might have more fun playing around with stuff like this Special Feature covering the win/loss records of every superstar who competed during RAW's first ten years.  Or the even cooler Excel spreadsheet with the same data that you can play with and sort however you like.  Hey, did you know IRS, Bam Bam Bigelow, and Adam Bomb are three of the five winningest RAW veterans in history?  Well you do now!
 

IN OTHER NEWS

• WWE.com sacked the weekly "Ross Report." Some claimed it was part of a clamping down on "exposing the business," and others theorized that what made it into the Ross Report became a distracting and politicized backstage matter, and JR just didn't want to deal with the headaches he was inadvertantly causing. In either case, the Dumbing Down of the Fed's internet presence continued unabated...
• Randy Orton returned to WWE TV following a three-month lay-off due to a shoulder injury. Playing off the moderate success of the "RNN" injury updates that aired in his absence, he emerged as a mid-card heel (he'd been a curtain-jerking babyface at the time of his injury) and saw his stock start to rise... although Orton was still about a month away from being cleared to compete in the ring, it was only a week later that Orton joined Batista in aiding Triple H and Ric Flair in an altercation with Scott Steiner, setting into motion the events that would lead to the establishment of "Evolution"...
• Vince McMahon and Bill Goldberg had their first meetings in January. The early hope was that Goldberg would agree to terms in time to set up a Rock/Goldberg match at WM19, though negotiations didn't pan out that way. When it became apparent Goldberg wouldn't be on board in time, WWE began considering Rock vs. Austin as a WM19 feature bout...
• In radio interviews and on his website, Bret Hart admitted to a face-to-face meeting with Vince McMahon in December 2002 (meetings reported here at OO amidst outright denials from the key players and met with skepticism on other websites). In the meetings, Hart won access to WWF photos and footage for his own archives/website, and the two men also cleared the air regarding thier tumultuous past. Bret said, for the first time ever, that he'd consider making a special appearance on a WWE show...
• WM19 tickets went on sale to the public, and sold out within a day. In fact, it seemed as though as much as one-third of Safeco Field's seats had been sold before the official "on sale" day, via a supposedly limited internet pre-sale...
• In storylines, Vince McMahon returned to TV to castigate Eric Bischoff for not shaking up RAW in his role as GM. Bischoff was given 30 days to spice things up, or else, so Bischoff made the bold move of inviting Steve Austin to return at the February PPV...
• To counter Bischoff's bold booking move, Stephanie McMahon (in storylines) surprised SD! audiences with the return of Hulk Hogan; Vince also showed up, and put into the motion the storyline that would lead to a Hogan/McMahon showdown at WM19...
• Ed Farhat, who wrestled as "The Shiek" in five different decades, passed away at the age of 78. Often billed as "The Original Shiek" because many other adopted his villianous middle eastern gimmick after he popularized it, Farhat was a remarkable character and an even more remarkable brawler (his viciousness resulted in a tongue-in-cheek "Stop the Sheik" campaign that was featured in the movie "I Like to Hurt People"). His legacy lives on in proteges like Rob Van Dam and Sabu....
• An episode of Tough Enough III airs with Bob Holly working stiff against a trainee/contestant. Later investigation reveals that episode was taped right after Holly learned about the severity of his neck injury in late 2002 (but before he had the surgery that immobilized him for months). Also: that contestant (Matt) was one of the winners of the show, and has spent the last year training in OVW in hopes of cracking the main roster in 2004.
• Both Raven and Justin Credible were released by WWE. Credible release was not much of a surprise, as he'd been lost in the shuffle since the end of the inVasion angle. Raven, however, had recently changed his look and was seemingly poised to a launch a new layer to his gimmick/character when he contract was terminated. It took neither man long to land on NWA-TNA broadcasts, with Raven showing up less than a week later and eventually becoming a main player for TNA throughout the rest of 2003...
• Jesse Ventura's term as Governor of Minnesota ended in January, and although he hinted to the media that he'd consider a job with WWE if "Vince puts the decimal point in the right place," he quickly inked a deal with MSNBC for a weekly talk show...
• Torrie Wilson agreed to appear nude in a Playboy pictorial that would be released around the time of WM19...
• The Rock finalized a deal to star in a remake of 1973's "Walking Tall." Filming would begin over the summer...
• Bull Buchanan was cut by WWE. He had been repackaged as "B Squared," John Cena's thuggish partner in crime, and seemed to have a good thing going. However, the Fed opted to call Rodney "Redd Dogg" Mack up from the minors to take the place as Cena's partner, and let Bull go....
• Joining Redd Dogg in debuting from the minors in January was Brian "Spanky" Kendrick, who debuted on SmackDown! after a few outings as a masked wrestler on Velocity...
• Atlanta-area newspapers picked up the story of Cody Runnels (son of Dusty Rhodes, half-brother to Dustin), who went undefeated as a heavyweight wrestler in his junior year of high school, and who was quoted as saying he has dreams of joining his brother in WWE some day...
• Returning from neck surgery, Rhyno was scheduled to return to the RAW brand, possibly as an additional member of Triple H's still-unnamed heel faction (he was to join Batista in a heel tag team on those booking sheets)....

   

NOTABLE quOOtables

RATINGS TRENDS
(Note: RAW's cable ratings are converted to broadcast numbers
for our monthly comparisons)

 
PAY-PER-VIEW RESULTS

TITLE CHANGES

Lance Storm/William Regal beat Booker T/Goldust to win the World Tag Team Titles on 1/06... America's Most Wanted beat Brian Lee/Slash to win NWA Tag Team Titles on 1/08... the Dudley Boyz beat Lance Storm/William Regal to win the World Tag Team Titles on 1/19... Lance Storm and William Regal beat the Dudley Boyz to win the World Tag Team Titles on 1/20... Triple X (Low-Ki and Elix Skipper) beat America's Most Wanted to win NWA Tag Team Titles on 1/22...

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