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

My Rating

When these are two of your ingredients in a triple threat match, and the third is future Hall of Famer Kurt Angle, you'd be right to expect more than we got here.

It's impossible to look at this match as anything but a disappointment. There are great moments, yes, and all three competitors did well with what they were given, but thanks to the format and the presentation, this one was snakebit from the start (to borrow a Prichardism).

Bell-to-bell, the match gets just over 13 minutes. Thirteen minutes for the secondary and tertiary singles titles, contested between three of the hottest mid-card acts in the company, who all three would challenge for the WWF Championship by year's end, which two (well, one and a half; Jericho's Monday Night RAW Dusty Finish doesn't fully count) would win.

The two falls format, and the dual championships at stake, should have afforded this one some more time, but the match just feels rushed and incomplete. Like their SummerSlam contest later that year, Jericho and Benoit were in the process of telling a fantastic story (with Angle's help, of course), but couldn't do that story justice (and, just like SummerSlam, Terri Runnels and The Kat got ample time to put on little more than an interactive striptease).

Even in the WWF's raunch-heavy Attitude Era, it's impossible to justify television time going to this which could have gone to the triple threat match.

This does not feel like a match worthy of Wrestlemania, and it barely feels like a match worthy of pay-per-view; with the exception of the title changes, this feels like it could have simply been the close of the first hour of RAW, a pair of title changes to pop a rating.

The company does right to keep Angle out of the falls, leaving his controversial win streak intact (controversial because he argued that Tazz's Tazzmission was an illegal hold, ergo Angle's Royal Rumble loss was invalid); Benoit and Jericho would be able to continue heating up the mid-card while Angle, unshackled by minor belts, could ascend even closer to the main event.

The third "I", intelligence, lets you escape from a match where you lose two titles in better shape than you entered it.

The best way to describe this match is what would happen if one were to mix Count Chocula and Lucky Charms cereals: both are immense crowd-pleasers on their own, and on paper, a union between the two would be divine, but when mixed together, the flavors of one would drown out the flavors of the other, and leave you with something that is somehow less than the sum of its parts.

Jericho-Angle, Jericho-Benoit, and Angle-Benoit are all million-dollar feuds and, left with enough time, instant classics on any night. Mixed together, and clipped to a paltry quarter hour, the match becomes a mishmash of fun, but ultimately meaningless, spots, with a finish that just doesn't feel like a finish.

I'd go 5/10, not bad enough to regret watching, but not good enough to recommend with any enthusiasm.

Meltzer Says

Meltzer felt equally blase about this contest, giving it **3/4 in his Wrestlemania 2000 review.

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