WWE Unforgiven 2002 Review

Hello folks, I’m back with my usual review about the latest WWE Video/DVD releases. In this review I’ll be looking at WWE Unforgiven 2002, The night when RVD challenged Triple H, Brock Lesnar defended his newly won WWE Championship against Undertaker, as well as a whole lot of other action from the WWE superstars of Raw and Smackdown!

Cert: 15

Length: (VHS) 157 mins (DVD) 176 mins

Take a look at the rest of the matches on the PPV:

Matches

• WWE Championship Match: Brock Lesnar vs. Undertaker
• Kurt Angle vs. Chris Benoit
• WWE Women’s Championship Match: Trish Stratus vs. Molly Holly
• World Heavyweight Championship: Triple H vs. Rob Van Dam
• Interpromotional Tag Team Match: Billy & Chuck vs. Rosie & Jamal
• Eddie Guerrero vs. Edge
• Intercontinental Championship Match: Chris Jericho vs. Ric Flair
• Eight-Man Tag Team Match: Kane, Booker T, Goldust & Bubba Ray Dudley vs. The Un-Americans

So the main event of the night would be Undertaker vs. Brock Lesnar for the WWE Undisputed Championship. Now that doesn’t seem to be that much of a bad match, the build up to the match had been mediocre, not a great deal of history between the two men, but surely that would not matter, with Undertaker’s years of experience and with Brock’s wrestling ability surely this match could be decent enough to headline a PPV, and maybe if we’re lucky, this match could actually be enjoyable.

So that’s the Smackdown main event sorted, now we head over to Bischoff’s Raw, in which Triple H, current World Champion would defend the gold against Rob Van Dam. A few weeks prior to this PPV, in an attempt to get back at Stephanie McMahon and Brock Lesnar, Eric Bischoff launched his own World Championship belt and surprisingly enough he awarded the belt to none other than Triple H. Well RVD was mighty furious with this and he and Triple H went to war with each other. This match could be really good to watch, as long as the WWE creative team book it correctly, it could be a really good way to continue a good rivalry, although RVD might not be the greatest on the mic, he is a decent enough talent and being in the main event spot might just help him get over that little bit more, here’s hoping this match is gonna be good.

On the card there was one match that almost certainly be better than any other match on the PPV. Chris Benoit vs. Kurt Angle, these two guys are two of the greatest, put their names together on a PPV and you know the card will have at least one decent match. I was looking forward to this match very much and it surely would be match of the night, find out if it was.

Highs and Lows

Just having a quick look at the matches on the PPV some of them looked to be really entertaining, like Benoit vs. Angle and Eddie Guerrero vs. Edge, but then they were some matches that I would gladly hit the fast forward button to miss.

The PPV kicked off with an eight man tag match featuring Raw’s finest mid card superstars. The match was actually very entertaining and I enjoyed it totally. The action was fast paced and it had a little bit of everything for everybody. The Un-Americans’s were very impressive and they worked well as a team, both Storm and Christian are the stars of the team though. Like in all American vs. Un-American type matches the crowd was hot, and it certainly helped the momentum of the match. The ending of the match came after all the face guys hit their signature moves on the Un-Americans, Lance Storm went to hit Kane with a kick and Kane caught him with a chokeslam and got the pin. Overall I enjoyed this match and it was a good match to open the PPV with.

Moving on to the next match I was not so optimistic, both Ric Flair and Chris Jericho had fought each other at Summerslam and that match was pretty bad, so a rematch would certainly not be much better than the last attempt. The match started with both men brawling with each other a few chops and slaps and Flair goes for a figure four but gets knocked out of the ring. Jericho dominates the tempo of the match for the duration. The match goes to the outside of the ring and both men brawl and Flair throws Jericho into the steel steps. As the action goes back into the ring Flair goes to the middle turnbuckle and hits a knee onto Jericho. Flair hits an atomic drop from the turnbuckle and continues to go for a figure four, Jericho reverses the move into an inside cradle for the two count. Jericho goes for the Lion Sault and he lands “ suspiciously” on his knee. As Jericho crawls into the corner, Flair stalls as Jericho pleads for him to not to continue with the match, the ref calls for a trainer and as Flair’s back is turned and Jericho hits the Walls of Jericho onto Flair for the victory. So Ric Flair “The dirtiest player in the game” falls for a trick which he has probably used more times than Jericho has had a main event victory in the WWE, that makes real sense, well I suppose we are talking about the WWE here. The match was slightly better than I thought it would be, but it still was pretty bad.

Another rematch from Summerslam, but this time I think everyone knew these two guys could do considerably better than Ric Flair and Chris Jericho. The action started off with both men battling each other, Eddie rolls up Edge for a one count and the match continues. Eddie goes to work on Edge’s neck and he hits a vertical suplex onto Edge and manages to get a two count. Eddie locks Edge into a full nelson submission move but Edge manages to escape the hold. Eddie hits a suplex and puts Edge into a front face lock. Edge escapes once again but Eddie hits an elbow and stops the momentum of Edge. Eddie continues the assaults of Edge until Edge hits a shot onto Eddie and both men lay on the mat. The referee starts the 10 count and Edge gets up first, however Eddie still dominates the match. As Eddie works on Edge he goes for a brain buster, but Edge reverses the move into the Edge O’ Matic. The match continues until Eddie rams Edge’s head on an exposed turnbuckle from the top turnbuckle and then he hits a powerbomb from the top and rolls Edge up with a handful of tights for the victory. This match had everything that the Summerslam match lacked; in fact this match had double the dose. The wrestling was great, the entertainment was great and the whole match was simply great. Overall, another great match from the superstars of Smackdown.

Billy & Chuck vs. Rosey and Jamal is a match that probably had the most build up, but the crappiest storyline. The match was ok; it was pretty much a brawl with a few wrestling moves threw in and a bit of interference from Rico. The ending come when Billy hit the Fameasser on Jamal, but he chases Rico and gets doubled teamed by the Samoans and gets pinned. Can’t say I’m a fan of either team and didn’t really like this match at all.

RVD vs. Triple H for the World’s Championship now, and the outcome may have been pretty predictable but the match hopefully could be pretty good to watch. The match wasn’t really bad and not really good, it just seemed neither Triple H nor RVD put any effort into the match. Looking at this match I finally realised that Triple H is nowhere as good as he was back in 2000, he is a good talent but that extra few pounds certainly seem to be taking a toll on his in ring efforts. As for RVD, maybe he is just not cut out for being in main event matches, or maybe its just the politics in the WWE, I don’t know, all I know is that he didn’t perform all that great in this match. The finish to this match came when Ric Flair made a run in as the referee was down, he picked up the sledgehammer that Trips brought into the ring and he nailed RVD with it after stalling for a while. Triple H then nailed RVD with a pedigree and pinned him to retain his World Championship. The ending to the match was pretty good, it was nice to see Flair turn heel, but I hope it last longer than two weeks this time. Overall this match was very predictable and pretty disappointing.

Trish takes on Molly Holly in a very typical WWE Women’s Championship match now. To be fair the match was not as bad as some Women’s matches but it still was incredibly boring and offered nearly no decent wrestling at all. The ending came when Trish hit the bulldog for the victory. Why this match was on a PPV astounds me, I really find it hard to understand why anyone would put this on a PPV when you have stars like Tommy Dreamer and D’Lo Brown twiddling their thumbs in the locker room.

If any two WWE Superstars could save a PPV it’s these two guys, Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle, shove these guys names together on a PPV card and almost certainly you are guaranteed a match of the year contender. Did we see a possible contender for WWE match of the year? No! We saw a clear winner for WWE match of the year. This match was simply superb; it’s as simple as that. Both Angle and Benoit performed to the highest standard possible and their efforts were truly top-notch entertainment. I really enjoyed this match; it was better than anything on the PPV. The match was filled with mat wrestling, submission wrestling and basically it was filled with proper wrestling performed by two proper wrestlers.

Talk about wasting time and depriving talent of PPV time, I can now offer a prime example of this pointless pastime of the WWE. First, we see a match between Billy & Chuck and 3 Minute Warning earlier on in the PPV, in which Bischoff guys won, meaning Stephanie would have to perform some HLA. Well, Bischoff brings his ladies to the ring and Stephanie gets ready to perform some HLA with them, then Eric decides that he wants a fat ugly lesbian to perform with Stephanie, so by magic we see a rather large and ugly woman making her way to the ring, who looks surprisingly like a certain dancing WWE Superstar. Then shockingly the “woman” turns on the Bisch and the “woman” is revealed as, (you won’t believe it) Rikishi! Who then proceeds to give a stink face to Bischoff? Well what a bloody what a waste of time! How low can the WWE get any lower? (No Mercy is coming up soon) So some lesbians, a man in drag and gay marriage get about 30 minuets of PPV coverage, it seems to resemble the problem pages of a tabloid newspaper rather than a WWE PPV. Sometimes all you can do is wonder.

Anyway, moving on to something that I had actually looked forward to, Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker for the WWE Undisputed Championship. The actual match was ok, it was nothing great, but its what I pretty much expected from Brock and Taker. The match featured brawling and big power moves mainly, it was decent enough, but then it all fell apart. The ending of the match was diabolical, both men ending up getting disqualified, and that is the ending of a WWE Undisputed Championship, that’s really pretty bad, if someone thought this would help the angle between Taker and Brock they were very wrong, however I think most of you know that the finish was probably more due to politics rather than thinking about the quality of a match and storyline. And to think I had actually looked forward to this match. Once again, very disappointing.

Overall

A very conflicting PPV, on one had you have two great matches i.e. Eddie vs. Edge and Angle vs. Benoit. Then on the other hand you have the whole HLA angle, Brock vs. Taker and other bad matches which makes me think is this PPV worth getting just because of the good matches? Well, Yes, the PPV is worth getting for Angle vs. Benoit and Edge vs. Eddie. And looking at it overall it’s not totally terrible, just disappointing.

DVD Extras:

• 5 bonus interviews
• Rey Mysterio vs. Chavo Guerrero
• Undertaker Desire video
• Rob Van Dam & Chris Benoit promos

Some little extras including the Rey vs. Chavo match, its not that much to make you want to buy the DVD especially for the extras, however its better than nothing. As always the DVD promises to have better sound and picture quality and it worth paying that little extra. I would recommend anyone to buy this simply because of Benoit and Angle. Just nip down to any good VHS/DVD stockists, or visit Silvervision.co.uk, or even take alook around the TWO shop, splash some cash and gets some top notch wrestling from Benoit, Angle, Edge and Eddie.

Points: 7/10

Buy it:

UK: £14.99 (VHS) / £14.99 (DVD)

USA: VHS / DVD