Gimmick Some (Wrestlemania) Lovin': Double Pneumonia, Double Titles

Rookie-Mania

The sheer amount of talent added to the WWF roster between August of 1999 and August of 2000 is still staggering in retrospect.

Angle's two opponents in the match were also very recent entries into the World Wrestling Federation, but men who had taken a very different path to get there.

We've covered Jericho's debut, as well as his up-and-down first year after leaving World Championship Wrestling for greener (and far more likely to remain open) pastures. Around the 2000 Royal Rumble, Jericho began showing the value McMahon and company hoped for when they invested in the Ayatollah of Rock and Rollah with a high-profile feud with Chyna over the Intercontinental Championship.

Jericho's speed, agility, and blend of styles between North American technical wrestling, Mexican Lucha Libre, and Japanese strong style was a welcome change of pace from WWF's offerings up and down the card. His first full year as a WWF competitor would be defined by his repeated clashes with another WCW defector with a similar resume and history as a world traveller and mosaic of wrestling styles, Chris Benoit.

No jokes here; the eventual fates of 3/5 of the men in this picture are absolute tragedies.

Benoit, like Jericho, arrived to a massive babyface pop, which the company managed to quickly turn into genuine heel heat that same night; also like Jericho, Benoit's first year on the roster was marked by inconsistency in his booking and presentation, finding himself all over the card and suffering from inconsistent amounts of front office faith.

Benoit made his pay-per-view debut on the same No Way Out card where Jericho dropped the Intercontinental Title to Angle, losing alongside Radicalz partners Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn to Rikishi, Grandmaster Sexay, and Scotty 2 Hotty, also known as Too Cool. Wrestlemania would be his first match on premium television as a singles competitor.