This Day In Wrestling History - July 5

Date: July 5, 2003 (10 years ago)

Event: WWE Smackdown house show with John Cena losing to Billy Gunn on the undercard and Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas vs. Chris Benoit & Rhino in the main event.

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WWE Smackdown house show report
July 5, 2003
Frederick, Md. at Harry Grove Stadium

This Smackdown event was hosted by the Frederick Keys, the Single A Carolina League affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles. Watching the live event is quite different in an outside venue. The stadium was not nearly full to capacity. Attendance couldn't have been much more that 1,500.

(1) Sable beat Nidia and Dawn Marie in a WWE Diva bikini contest. John Cena was the special guest ring announcer and judge. Cena came up with some great one-liners like "Dawn Marie has a better ass than a donkey farm." Nidia went first and did her lame Macarena dance number. Dawn Marie was second and looked rather ravishing in her leopard skin thong bikini (wow). Sable, of course, was the winner per Cena and the crowd. After the contest Nidia stuck around in the ring throwing a temper tantrum until she was joined by Jamie Noble who took a mike and lambasted the Frederick fans which led to:

(2) Ultimo Dragon over Jamie Noble (w/Nidia). This was a good back and forth contest with Dragon pinning Noble with a neat counter to Nobles neckbreaker. The Dragon looked good in the match but walked to and from the ring like an 85-year-old man. Looks like the full-time schedule is a little hard on him.

(3) The Basham Brothers (w/Shaniqua) beat Funaki & Spanky. The crowd was solidly behind Spanky while he was in the ring. The Basham brothers are trying like crazy to get over but are had trouble getting any reaction from the crowd at all. Shaniqua looked very masculine in her leather dominatrix outfit. (Is the the best that they can give her to do?) The match ended when Danny pinned Funaki.

(4) Matt Hardy beat Shannon Moore. This was identical to the Smackdown match from last Thursday. Hardy started off by calling Moore out. He said "I already got rid of Crash." He left Moore a chance to win his respect. Moore pulled a couple of high flying moves from his arsenal to impress both Hardy and the crowd, but Hardy put him away in just under five minutes.

(5) A-Train beat Orlando Jordan (w/The Frederick Keys's GM). Jordan tried, but Albert didn't really sell any of Jordan's offense. Albert tried for a power bomb but the heat and mugginess at the outside event made Jordan a little slippery and A-Train dropped him to the mat. They improvised an ending with Jordan taking a huge bump on a powerslam. Is that all that the Frederick Keys Gm got to do was stand at ringside with the one guy that nobody in the whole stadium though could win? I hope he made some coin on the concession sales to take the sting out of that.

(6) Billy Gunn beat John Cena. Cena came out with a great rap picking on the futility of the Baltimore Orioles with Cena saying that he only wore the Frederick Keys hat so he could "Wipe his ass with it." He is pretty clever. Billy Gunn came out to a big pop. Does anyone else think that Billy works harder on his ring entrance than he does with his ring work? This was a sloppy match with Billy pinning Cena with the Fame-asser. Cena put his Keys hat back on to do a hilarious Earl Weaver bit with the referee who eventually "tossed" Cena from the game.

(7) The APA (w/Zach Gowen) beat The FBI (w/Nunzio). The APA introduced Gowen who received a huge ovation as he was not on the scheduled card. The match was all APA as the FBI got tossed around like rag dolls. No one took a close line from hell but Palumbo took a cane-shot from Zach Gowen leading to the roll up by Ron Simmons for the win. The APA and Gowen spent some time in the ring after the match doing the Hulk Hogan bit (flexing, hand to the ear, etc, etc).

Eddie Guerrero was introduced to insult the fans of Frederick. "None of you Mamacitas are woman enough to take my Latino Heat," and "Who are you flipping off, hepher?" were two of the more audible cut downs. He then started on Tajiri, who of course came sprinting to the ring to lay his own smackdown on Eddie. He caught Eddie in the tarantula before Sean O'Haire hit the ring to make the save. O'Haire got a face full of green mist for his efforts but did distract Tajiri long enough for Eddie to lay out a pretty solid chair shot. Was this O'Haire's payday for the evening. I swear he was there for about 30 seconds. He ran to the ring, got spit on and rolled out of the ring and ran away. I want that job!

(8) Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas beat Rhyno & Chris Benoit. This was the best match of the evening. We knew that there would be no title change but it was still pretty exciting. Haas and Benjamin really do work hard to sell their opponents moves. I see Haas becoming the next Shawn Michaels of his day. The end came when Rhyno was going for the gore but got a belt shot from Haas instead. After the match Rhyno and Benoit cleared the ring and each got their finisher on the champions. After the faces had left and the fans started leaving, Benjamin hopped on the house mics and demanded that the fans return to their seats to pay respect to the tag team champions. They are getting pretty good on the mic.

For the size of the venue and the absence of the top Smackdown stars, it was still a pretty good night of action. All of the wrestlers and divas worked hard to put on a good show.

Biggest Pops:

(1) Zach Gowen
(2) Billy Gunn
(3) APA
(4 )Sable

Most Heat:

(1) John Cena
(2) Benjamin & Haas
(3) Jamie Noble
(4) Eddie Guerrero (although he had quite a few fans, too)

[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

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