After some backstage nonsense, Judgment Day 2000 kicks off with Kurt Angle, Edge, and Christian taking on Rikishi and Too Cool. We get some top notch Angle/Edge/Christian comedy before the match, the kind of stuff that I really liked when I was 16. 22 years later, I didn't find it nearly as funny or clever, but hey, context matters and the live crowd not only eats it all up but pop huge for Rikishi and Too Cool coming in and running roughshod to start things off. This match isn't one that I would necessarily revisit or call "must watch," but it absolutely sets the right tone of the show and the live crowd is into it from beginning to end. There's not necessarily great wrestling on display, but the pace is brisk, the comedy spots work, and there's some really nice transitions. The ending is a bit clunky and some have theorized that it was botched, but I'm not so sure about that. Regardless, a really good 10-minute opener. (3/5)
Backstage, Shawn Michaels, who will be the guest referee for tonight's main event is interviewed. Shawn Michaels being Triple H's buddy and having "heat" with The Rock is brought up a bunch on this show. Another running storyline throughout the evening is Gerald Brisco being the Hardcore Champion, which was basically the same thing as the 24/7 Championship by this time.
Back to the ring we go for Eddie Guerrero vs. Perry Saturn vs. Dean Malenko in a triple threat match for the WWE European Championship. On paper this should've been a banger, but I think the issue here is that Saturn and Malenko always felt a little "off" in WWE while Eddie was still getting comfortable in a much bigger, more "sports entertainment" role than he had ever had to fill in WCW. The action is good - how could it not be? - but the crowd never really got into it and the involvement of Chyna didn't add anything. Maybe they were working a bit too fast? Maybe Guerrero being a babyface but teamed with Chyna, who was also a babyface but not necessarily likeable, was the issue? This was a disappointment in that the ingredients were there for a great match (even if they were only given 10 minutes), but the end result was just average. (2.5/5)
Gerald Brisco goes into hiding in the bathroom trying to protect his Hardcore Championship. Sure.
Shane McMahon took on Big Show next in a Falls Count Anywhere match. Shane McMahon had performed some crazy stunts in his previous matches, so there was a high expectation for him to get chokeslammed off of something or to do some crazy table spot...and nothing like that happens. Instead, Shane has all sorts of henchmen come out to save him from a beating and eventually defeats Big Show with a ridiculous concrete block to the head. This was the kind of goofy nonsense that WWE thought was entertaining, but ultimately seemed to undermine Big Show's value as a credible, serious top guy. (1/5)
After another backstage segment with Gerald Brisco, its time for Chris Jericho vs. Chris Benoit in a Submission Match. This is a stiff contest and I like that they are clearly targeting limbs, shoulders, and lower backs to weaken their opponent into tapping out. For a 13-minute match, it feels like a real war...but I've never particularly liked Benoit as a heel and Jericho I prefer as a heel. At the time, this was considered a great match, but I think it falls just slightly short of that territory. I didn't particularly like the finish either as we'd seen the "babyface passes out but doesn't tap" ending a bunch of times by 2000 and we've seen it a bunch of times since then. I like that Benoit's cheap shot with the knee brace played into the finish as it showed he wasn't above cutting corners to get the W (though, because the match was basically no DQ, it didn't really count as cheating). Again, that part of his arsenal was rarely explored when he was a heel - which is why I found his character to always work better as a face - while Jericho was never above doing something sneaky to win a match or make his opponents look foolish (heel or face). (3.5/5)
A Tables match between The Dudley Boyz and DegenerationX (X-Pac and Road Dogg) follows. The Tables match that the Dudleys had with the Hardys at the Royal Rumble is a bit of a hidden gem, a really excellent action-packed spotfest that is often overshadowed by the TLC matches with Edge and Christian. This is not that. If one was curious where the idea of "X-Pac heat" might've come from, this would be a clear example of DX coming across as behind the times and unable to mesh well with the new brand of tag teams and their more hardcore, weapons-heavy approach to tag wrestling. And so what we get here is the Dudleys trying to work a traditional tag match with the added bonus of tables...and it just doesn't work. To top it all off, there's an overbooked finish to give DX the win. (2/5)
Main event time - Triple H challenging The Rock for the WWE Championship in a 60-Minute Ironman Match with Shawn Michaels as the special guest referee. After just watching the Michaels/Hart Ironman Match from WrestleMania XII and reading more than a few reviews asserting that this was a much, much better version, I was half-excited and half-skeptical (mostly because I've never been a huge Triple H fan). This lived up to the hype, though, and in slightly unexpected ways. For starters, one would think that this match would've been all about Triple H punishing The Rock and trying to keep the pace slow, but its The Rock who controls much of the first 10 minutes, eventually scoring the first pinfall with a Rock Bottom. From there, The Rock goes after Triple H's knee and while Triple H sells the damage well at this point in the match, I do wish it had played more into the pins later on - which it doesn't. Regardless, after attempting to force the Game to tap with a figure four, Triple H hits a pedigree out of nowhere and ties things up 1-1. (Again, its a small flaw, but wouldn't the Pedigree also hurt Triple H as he's basically doing double knee drops to the mat to execute the move?) Anyway, if Triple H's selling of knee damage is imperfect, The Rock's selling of the Pedigree more than made up for it as he sells the move like it straight-up concussed him and Triple H capitalizes by going up 2-1 almost immediately after with an inside cradle. This is when the match shifts and goes into an extended brawl through the crowd and up the entrance way. This would have been out-of-place at WrestleMania XII, but by 2000, this makes total sense as a way to fill up time in an Ironman Match. In fact, in most WWE main events around this time, we would've got this sort of thing much, much earlier in the match. Back in the ring, Triple H goes up 3-1 with a piledriver, a move he didn't bust out often (kudos to The Rock for also delivering some moves that we normally didn't see out him, which is, again, something that didn't really stand out in Hart/Michaels). The Rock eventually rallies enough to hit a tornado DDT for 3 and it feels earned to me. We then get another element that we didn't see at WrestleMania XII and that's a bit of...err...gamesmanship out of Triple H as he attacks The Rock with a chair just so he can push the score up 4-3 (after ceding a DQ loss to Rock). This match just refuses to be boring, which is the biggest knock against Hart/Michaels. With the match entering its final stretch, Triple H goes up 5-3 with a sleeper, a move that is treated with the respect it deserves in an Ironman match. At his point, The Rock's fatigue has made him vulnerable to it so I'm glad its effective. From here, things get a bit wonky as Triple H needlessly goes to the top rope to do god knows what. At least when Ric Flair did it, one could always point to his first World Championship win but Triple H has literally never done a top rope move. This allows The Rock to come back and dish out more punishment, the match spilling to the outside where The Rock hits a nasty pedigree on Triple H on a table (that should've but doesn't break). This gives The Rock a count-out victory with roughly 10 minutes to go and changes the score to 5-4. The McMahons show up at this point, but The Rock slays them all (Vince takes a pretty horrific bump on the outside) and its time for the People's Elbow. Kudos to The Rock and Triple H for making it 57 minutes into a match without having to go to even a People's Elbow tease. The Rock hits it and we've got a tied game with barely any time on the clock! DX show up and the McMahons are still around causing chaos and then we hear some ominous children singing and...and...and...its The Undertaker in biker form! This was the first appearance of BikerTaker as he became known as and the crowd is going wild for him. He clears the ring for The Rock but also goes after Triple H, hitting him with a chokeslam and a Tombstone as the clock expires. Due to his interference, Michaels rewards a post-match DQ win to Triple H and we've got a new WWE Champion. If this isn't the best Ironman Match in WWE history, I'm not sure what tops it. At the very least, this is one of the most bell-to-bell exciting ones as it has everything one could possibly want or expect out of a Triple H/Rock match (even if that means some psychology and long-term selling are jettisoned in favor of "pyrotechnics" and shenanigans). (4.5/5)
Though its Kwang Score of 2.75-out-of-5 may seem a touch low, Judgment Day 2000 is a solid show featuring an excellent main event, a strong Benoit/Jericho match, and a fun opener. The DX/Dudleys tag match is a miss and the Shane McMahon/Big Show match is not nearly as wild as it could've and should've been, but the rest of the show holds up well (something that can't always be said about WWE pay-per-views from the early 00s).
FINAL RATING - Watch It...With Remote In Hand
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