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The following was published on PWTorch.com 15 years ago this week…
WWE Sunday Night Heat review
March 2, 2003
Aired on MTV
Report by Tony Marshall, Torch Team Contributor
“I’m still standing!” proclaimed Eric Bischoff, as Heat opened with clips of his entrance on last Monday’s Raw, interspersed with shots of him getting his head handed to him by Stone Cold Steve Austin at No Way Out. He could have added, “barely,” since he looked worse than Brando at the end of On The Waterfront. Bischoff also stated that he had banned Austin from Raw that night — the better to shine the spotlight on The Rock — but that he would have a “welcoming committee” ready for The Rattlesnake when next he showed up on Raw.
Lita and Jonathan Coachman began the night’s festivities musing over Bischoff’s “welcoming committee” and salivating at a potential Rock-Austin confrontation. Look up the word “insipid” in the dictionary. Right after “lacking in qualities that interest, stimulate, or challenge” you’ll find pictures of Lita and Coach.
(1) Maven pinned Rico in 5:12. Good opener, and a nice little match. Our dynamic duo announce team could have commented on the very different paths these two competitors took to get to WWE; you know, make up a little backstory; try to make it a little more interesting, but of course they didn’t. Heavy sigh. Anyway, Maven got in some early offense, then Rico took over and broke out the rough stuff, dominating Maven for a couple of minutes to the tune of some loud “Rico sucks” chants. Rico displayed his usual repertoire of kicks, along with some nasty-looking European-style uppercuts to the back of Maven’s head. About four minutes in, Maven began his comeback. At 4:52, he nailed Rico with a slapjack, then went to the top turnbuckle, flattened him with a missile dropkick, and got the duke.
A commercial for Raw aired hyping Austin’s return Monday Night at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum. Now that I’m thinking about it, the last wrestling show I saw at the Nassau Coliseum featured a Battle Royal won by Blackjack Mulligan. I remember Lanny Poffo showed up wearing a suit of armor, but was promptly eliminated anyway. When the Hell was that?
(2) Al Snow pinned Bobby Roode in 2:53. AL SNOW WINS! AL SNOW WINS! The Giants win the pennant! Havlicek stole the ball! Do you believe in miracles? Okay, who’s Bobby Roode? Judge Jesse? Anybody? This one was over too quickly to really gauge Roode’s performance, although he didn’t screw anything up and he played the heel role pretty well. Lita, prescient as always, remarked that Roode didn’t look confident before the match began. She should take Coach back to Vegas and hit casinos. Snow did his trademark baseball slide into the corner, his headbutts to the shoulder, and won the match following a Snowplow.
Jerry “The King” Lawler’s book is still available. I’d buy it, but I just bought First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America, by Jack Cashill & James Sanders. There goes my book budget for this month. Sorry, Jerry. Maybe next month.
Highlights of The Rock’s return to Raw were shown. What a performance. The quintessential heel cuts a textbook promo on the Toronto fans. It doesn’t get any better.
Lugz (and Funk Master Flex…oh boy) Boot of the Week: Chris Jericho stretches Stacy Keibler — ouch — and Shawn Michaels makes the save.
(3) Victoria (w/Steven Richards) pinned Molly Holly in 3:57. Hey, Molly’s got a new look! Well, a new outfit anyway; the Rosa Klebb hair is still the same. Molly showed some impressive offense early on, then, at 1:33 in, Richards interfered, pulling Molly off the ring apron to the floor. Victoria did a baseball slide/dropkick that slammed her into the announce table. At 3:34, Molly missed a flying body press from the top turnbuckle and Victoria hit her with Widow’s Peak for the victory. Decent action. Molly looked fine and she made Victoria look very good. After the match, Steven Richards went down on Victoria. Well…almost.
Extra! Extra! Read The Rock’s interview in this month’s Raw Magazine! Rocky reveals all! Read all about The Great One! This month in Raw Magazine!
Another commercial for Raw aired. This one highlighted the brewing Rock vs. Austin feud, with clips from Rocky’s “Get The ‘F’ Out” promo played.
WrestleMania XIX — March 30, 2003 — Michael Cole, I hope you were watching and jotted the date down.
More highlights of The Rock’s return to Raw: Battle Royal time, and The Rock joins The King and J.R. at the announce table (a brilliant display of “strategery”), then returns to the ring in time to eliminate Kane and Christian, but gets eliminated himself by Booker T. Nice, but I would have liked to see a replay of the Rock vs. Hurricane bit, too.
The same commercial for Raw playing up Rock vs. Austin was shown. That’s it boys, lay it on thick.
WWE (Burger King) Slam of the Week: Kane mistakenly chokeslams Rob Van Dam during their title match against Regal & Storm at No Way Out. Bad Big Red Machine! Bad! “Dude, what are you, blind?”
(4) Rob Van Dam pinned Steven Richards (w/o Victoria) in 5:46. RVD on Heat? Oh, how the mighty have fallen! I guess he’s “Mr. Sunday Night” now. Well, he made the most of his appearance, anyway, and so did Richards. They put on a very good match.
After some early flash-and-dash by RVD, Richards bailed to the outside and pulled Van Dam out with him. RVD turned the tables on him by dropping him gut-first onto the barricade, then hitting him with his patented legdrop from the ring apron. Back in the ring, Richards countered an RVD headlock by nailing him with a vicious back suplex. It looked like Van Dam landed on his head, but he was okay. Richards scored with a neckbreaker, then locked Van Dam in The Rat Trap (his version of the Camel Clutch). Van Dam was able to power out, and went to work on Richards, hitting him with a monkey flip, flying leg kick, and a suplex and bridge that got him a nearfall.
At 5:03, Richards went for a Stevie-T, but Van Dam was able to counter it and nail Richards with the Rolling Thunder. This was soon followed by Van Dam’s Five-Star Frogsplash and that was all she wrote. Heat ended with a video package that promoted the Rock-Austin showdown on Raw.
From a wrestling standpoint, it was a pretty good edition of Heat. Nothing spectacular, but nothing bad either. Very watchable — even without Johnny Stamboli. From a marketing/promotional standpoint, WWE went out of their way to promote Raw, which, as I’ve said many times, is what they should do on Heat. For a while, they weren’t doing it at all, but lately there seems to be a concerted effort to use Heat as a promotional vehicle for Raw. Good for WWE.
Now, the bad news. Yes, I’m beating a dead horse, but Coach and Lita were particularly awful tonight. From Coach’s mock umbrage at Lita’s use of the phrase “dark horse” to describe Booker T’s Battle Royal win, to his likening of himself to a rash (in that he can’t help but rub off on people), to their nonstop babbling while two wrestlers are trying to work which smacks of complete disrespect, they are an increasingly intolerable duo. Almost anyone would be an improvement over these two. And that’s the name of that tune.
NOW CHECK OUT THE PREVIOUS 15 YRS AGO FLASHBACK: 15 YRS AGO – WWE in Rochester, N.Y.: Triple H vs. Booker headlines, plus Steiner vs. Lance Storm, Molly vs. Jackie, Rico vs. Cappotelli, RVD vs. Christian, Hardy, D-Von, Jericho
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