by Rick Scaia
OnlineOnslaught.com

Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle, locked in a feud since basically the very start of the year, were still going strong.  If anything, the feud was hotter than ever.  After starting out with Angle the heel and Brock the face, the two flopped roles over the summer, with great results.

Brock Lesnar's heel turn was predicated on Vince McMahon unleashing "The Real" Brock Lesnar, and saw Lesnar join forces with Vince against Angle after Angle had befriended Lesnar over the previous 2 months.  Lesnar became an even stronger heel with the addition of some mic skills (which were sorely lacking in his first heel run, and which didn't seem apparent with him working as a babyface).  When Angle defeated him at SummerSlam via submission, Lesnar's tap-out gave fans something to chant at him (and the "You Tapped Out" chant continues to follow Lesnar around to this very day).

Angle, a strong babyface if for no other reason than fans respected his return from serious neck surgery, was also exactly the right guy to bring it in the ring against Lesnar.  And with two previous matches split evenly between them, they were asked to do something remarkable in September: deliver a 60 minute IronMan match on free TV.

And deliver they did.  Your Truly thought it was the Match of the Year.  It's a testament to how well the two work together that others didn't even think it was the best match these two worked against each other in the year.  You can get the full report from the show right here.  Hell, the show also featured an outstanding Los Guerreros/World's Greatest Tag Team Match, and was such an amazing two hours that CRZ came out of retirement to do his own recap of it!

Making the IronMan match that much more important is that it marked the start of Brock Lesnar's current WWE Title reign, and in many ways was the match that made him the heel and the champ he is today.  By virtue of that memorable contest, Lesnar was instantly legitimized.  

Even more impressive is that these two men put in the efforts they did given what they'd been through in the days prior: earlier in the weekend, Brock Lesnar's troublesome knee locked up in a house show match. Though he knew he'd need arthroscopic surgery at some point, he didn't let it slow him down in the IronMan Match.  And Angle wrestled the astounding contest less than 24 hours after the sudden death of his older sister due to a heart attack.

Really amazing. 
 

IN OTHER NEWS

• A movie to star Roddy Piper and Erik Estrada -- and to be directed by William Shatner -- went into development as a direct-to-video project. Titled "Code Black," the movie was supposed to be ready for release by mid 2004. Piper also completed work on another D-T-V project called "Cyber Meltdown" with Mr. Sulu and other luminaries..
• In more mainstream movie news, promotion for the September 26 release of "The Rundown" starring the Rock went into high gear at the start of the month. After making the usual rounds, Rock also made one via-satellite appearance on RAW, but that was about it. "The Rundown" opened with a big $20 million take in its first weekend, and was the nation's #1 movie. Despite very positive reviews (including from Yours Truly), it dropped quickly, however, in later weeks, and wound up only making about $50 million domestically (a minor disappointment to the producers, who sank about $70 million into the film)...
• Fan in Long Island, NY, were witness to an odd moment. After the crowd bailed out on a Haas/Benjamin vs. APA match, Rhyno and Tajiri were only a few minutes into a similarly-tepidly-received match when Vince McMahon interrupted in an apparent shoot and told the two to leave the ring. Vince, instead, introduced a bikini contest to perk up the crowd. To this day, there are some who believe Vince really did pull an shoot on Rhyno and Tajiri, and others who thought it was a planned part of the show...
• With its home arena taken over by the Tennessee State Fair, TNA went on a brief hiatus from live telecasts... on one Wednesday when they couldn't produce a new show, TNA presented a One Cent Show. Featuring highlights from TNA's year to date, and essentially free for any viewer who had two hours to spare, the show came at a time when TNA was building huge momentum with big summer feuds and was gearing up for pay-offs in the fall. Unfortunately, the One Cent Show was kind of clumsily assembled in a non-linear way, and TNA came out of its hiatus with a few subpar efforts. The momentum and exposure won with the bold One Cent Show were pretty much evaporated by the end of the month...
• In his return to TV, Zach Gowen was again assaulted by Brock Lesnar. This time, Lesnar -- who "broke Zach's one good leg" -- tossed a wheel-chair-ridden Zach down a flight of stairs. This explained another month-long hiatus for Zach, and again gave him a chance to keep his act fresh instead of showing up on TV every week...
• To make room for the debut of "The Mullets," SD! was pared down to 90 minutes on September 11. The hope was that the SD! audience would stick around for the low-brow comedy that featured a major guest role by the Dudley Boyz. It didn't turn out that way at all. The Thursday debut of the show lost over a third of SD!'s audience, and "The Mullets" (even with another guest spot by Roddy Piper later in the season) performed so badly that it was axed after about six weeks...
• Chavo Guerrero returned from his four-month injury hiatus to help Uncle Eddie win a parking lot brawl against John Cena. Reformed, Los Guerreros won the WWE Tag Titles in their first match back as a team (in a great match against the World's Greatest Tag Team on the same edition of SD! as the outstanding IronMan Match)...
• Spike Dudley took an absolutely sick, brutal bump at the hands of La Resistance's Rene Dupree. In an attempt to powerbomb Spike from the ring through a table on the floor, Spike was under-elevated, and wound up crashing to the concrete with only the back of his head whacking against the edge of the table. Spike, happily, was not dead, but would take the rest of 2003 off to let the minor head/neck (and other lingering, non-related) injuries heal up...
• Triple H's bachelor party in North Carolina -- attended by over 50 workers plus additional staff and production crew -- was a surprisingly well-behaved affair. Nobody got hurt, nobody ended up in jail, and everybody who stuck around for the happening (RAW guys had to stay on the road an extra day, as it took place following the conclusion of SD! tapings) had a great time...
• Speaking of the soon-to-be-McMahon-in-law, the internet got its collective panties (a conservative white cotton affair is what we're favoring these days, I hear) in a bunch over the way the McMahons began pushing themselves in September. "Special appearances" by Vince and Steph at house shows and Shane's participation in house show matches against Kane were often pushed as the headline items on those shows (foreshadowing the way the Vince/Steph feud would be over-pushed on SD! a month later). This disgusted smarks, who thought it unfair that the everyday workers were not pushed as the major drawing cards. OO, of course, secretly thought everybody was making WAY too big a deal out of nothing....
• Mick Foley enjoyed an entire week-long run as Jimmy Kimmel's co-host for "Jimmy Kimmel Live." He was did an outstanding job, not only telling wrestling stories when appropriate but just being all around entertaining. He was given a chance to really shine on one of the shows, when Steve Austin was there as a guest promoting the RAW-only Unforgiven PPV...
• At a point in time when he seemed teetering on the brink of turning face (in a three-way IC Title feud against Christian and Rob Van Dam), Chris Jericho re-asserted his essential heelishness by spearheading the campaign to removed Steve Austin as GM of RAW. The storyline which started this month would reach its climax in the Team Austin vs. Team Bischoff match at November's Survivor Series...
• Barely a month after revealing his true nature as an Orgy Enthusiast, Billy Gunn went down with a shoulder injury for the third time in two years. Surgery was necessary, and a hiatus of at least four months was prescribed....
• To celebrate her 80th Birthday (and to promote her new book), the Fabulous Moolah made one of her rare RAW appearances... and was forced into action by Eric Bischoff against the able-bodied Victoria. Squash, right? Well, yeah, but not what you'd think. Thanks to a distraction from Mae Young, Moolah actually pinned Victoria in about 9 seconds. The celebration was cut short, however, as Randy Orton added Moolah to the list of Legends he had Killed...
• Lita returned to RAW. Bischoff tried to assert that she was fired by him four months previous and shouldn't be back, but Steve Austin made it clear he had hired Lita back, allowing her to get back in the Women's Title mix...
• Triple H accepted a small role in "Blade 3," a role that would take up some of his time in the coming months. Between his injury, his impending weeding, and his new Hollywood responsibilities, HHH would spend precious little time on the road with WWE over the last 5 months of 2003...
• Shelton Benjamin needed about 5 weeks off following minor arthroscopic knee surgery to clean up his knee...
• Roddy Piper made one of his sporadic TNA appearances, again reviving his issues with Vince Russo and making very little in the way of sense in the process...
• In preparation for the release of a full-length rap album, Randy Savage attempted to conduct a live show in Florida. But things went horribly awry, and the sound equipment went on the fritz after the third song. This was especially problematic because Savage was blatantly lip-synching the entire performance, which became embarrassingly obvious once the CD started skipping and cutting out. The crowd let Savage hear it, and he left in disgust after barely 20 minutes on stage...
• Goldberg put an end to HHH's 10 month run as World Champ at the Unforgiven PPV. It was something of a foregone conclusion given HHH's injury and other obligations, with the injury rendering the match in which the title changed hands a bit anti-climactic. After winning the title, Goldberg was placed on an increased number of house shows (about one per week)...
• Tickets for WrestleMania 20 at MSG went on sale on September 27 and sold out in minutes... as was the case for WM19 tickets, a substantial numbers of seats were sucked up by fans taking advantage of a supposedly "limited" internet presale (with sites like OO handing out the password to tens of thousands of fans). In this case, because MSG is about one-third the size of WM19's venue and because NYC fans are much more enthusiastic, there were a number of fans who decided to camp out in line at MSG in the days leading up to the on-sale date who went home empty-handed...
• Chris Jericho and his wife Jessica became first time parents. Jericho missed a grand total of 1 bachelor party and one weekend of house shows to be with his wife as she got ready and gave birth to their son....
• RAW closed out September with what SHOULD have been its Free TV Match of the Year (but stay tuned till the very last Monday of the year to see how it turns out, kids!), as Rob Van Dam took the IC Title from Christian in a killer Ladder Match...
• Sylvain Grenier of La Resistance faded quietly into the background. The tag champs worked as a three man unit for several weeks, with Rob Conway absorbing many of Grenier's duties due to Grenier's bad neck. He would be taken off of TV shortly after La Resistance's tag title loss, leaving Rene Dupree and Conway to carry on the team name...
• Anthony Durant, who worked as Pitbull #2 in ECW during its 1996-7 boom phase, was found dead in his home of an apparent drug overdose. He was 36. His girlfriend was also found dead at the same time, though the couple's two children (2 years old and 8 months old) were OK and turned over to relatives shortly after....
• Another one of the handful of columns that OO was actually proud of in 2003 was published in September. Titled "Saving Glen Jacobs," it makes the case for the now-unmasked Kane as WWE's most under-appreciated and most loyal performers of the last half-decade... 
   

NOTABLE quOOtables

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

PAY-PER-VIEW RESULTS

TITLE CHANGES

Brock Lesnar beat Kurt Angle in a 60-minute IronMan match to win the WWE World Title on 9/16... Los Guerreros beat Charlie Haas/Shelton Benjamin for the WWE Tag Team Titles on 9/16... Bill Goldberg beat Triple H for the World Heavyweight Title on 9/21... the Dudley Boyz beat La Resistance (Grenier/Dupree/Conway) in a handicap match to win the World Tag Team Titles on 9/21... Tajiri beat Rey Mysterio to win the WWE Cruiserweight Title on 9/23... Rob Van Dam beat Christian in a ladder match to win the InterContinental Title on 9/29...
 

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