Minus-Star Match Reviews: THAT Jackie Gayda Match

Some people just aren’t cut out for the wrestling business and Jackie Gayda is one of them.

The fact that when wrestling fans see or hear her name they think of this infamous match is proof positive that Tough Enough was a very bad idea and produced only two long-term success stories. Taking people from the reality TV world and dropping them in a wrestling ring was a doomed venture, but WWE was desperate to get into the reality TV game when it was still hot, no matter the price.

Well they sure paid a steep price in 2002. That was supposed to be a year of rebuilding but it ended up being one filled with sudden changes, panic decisions and a serious lack of critical thinking. Having all of that at once can lead to a serious drop in product quality, which is what happened when someone with less than six months’ experience was thrown to the wolves. But was the match really that bad? Read on to find out.

The Story

There wasn’t much to this other than the fact that the brand split had left WWE desperate for new stars. With WWE’s split in half and wrestlers now limited to only one show, RAW’s midcard became gutted of up-and-coming talent. It turns out that making wide-reaching business decisions on a lark and without careful planning isn’t wise, but that’s wrestling for you.

Desperate to fill this void, WWE began pushing whoever was around, including some people who weren’t ready, hence this match. On one side were two experienced wrestlers in Trish and Bradshaw. Bradshaw was solid as a midcarder and usually compensated for any shortcomings with his sick and compilation-worthy Clothesline from Hell while Trish was basically the centerpiece of the women’s division at the time and was basically forced to wrestle every woman in the company since the division was so small.

On the other side were two Tough Enough contestants in Nowinski and Gayda. Both of them had come to WWE through ‘non-traditional’ routes and were still ‘green’, a term Jim Ross went out of his way to note to the audience before the match started. Sadly that was a harbinger of things to come yet no one thought to take his concerns seriously.

The match

This took place on July 7, 2002. I couldn’t find any actual star rating for this match but Meltzer mentioned how historically bad this was in at least two editions of the WON and it won the Observer Award for Worst Match of the Year by a huge margin. So it’s fair to say that this would’ve gotten negative stars from at least Dave had it gone longer.

Nowinski teases Bradshaw to do a football start but then he tags Gayda and bails to ringside. Trish tags in and hits some kind of takedown followed by as dropkick and some forearms. Gayda reverses an Irish whip but Trish lands a clothesline for a two-count. Trish goes to the ropes for…something…and Gayda does nothing. That blown spot leads to loud booing and some on-the-spot improv that causes both women to fall down in an awkward heap. Gayda does some lazy choking as the crowd turns on this match and starts booing loudly. Gayda tags Nowinski and he goes for an elbow drop on Trish but she rolls away and tags Bradshaw who drops Nowinski with a shoulderblock. Bradshaw follows with a big boot and a fallaway slam and then tags Gayda back in. Why would you do that after seeing what just happened?

Gayda jumps onto Bradshaw for a choke spot but he throws her off (read: gently bends forward and puts her on the mat like a dad putting his kids to bed) and tags Trish. Bradshaw chases Nowinski around the ring as Trish struggles to land a snapmare. Trish lands some corner chops but then Gayda counters a corner whip and lands a clothesline. Gayda does a corner foot choke as Jim Ross on commentary tries salvaging this by being as diplomatic as possible (“she’s a very impressive young athlete; she just needs experience”). Trish blocks a superplex and goes for a diving bulldog/facebuster which Gayda delays selling by two seconds. That missed spot gets Trish the three-count and causes Jim Ross to about-face and say both “mercifully it’s over” and to bust out the “bowling shoe” line, which should be as clear an indication as any that this was terrible.

Winners after 3:15: Bradshaw & Trish Stratus

Review

“I’ve seen better catfights” – Jerry Lawler. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

This match became infamous and would go on to become the standard-bearer for bad matches in general (but especially bad women’s matches) before being dethroned by something far worse in TNA. But looking back at it, it’s not as dreadful as most of us might remember. People dunked on this match at the time because it was so much worse in comparison to what was around it at the time. But with over twenty years of hindsight this match isn’t as awful or hilarious. It’s like one of those old sayings where someone else comes along whose worse at something and the people involved here move up the ladder as a result.

If we look at each performer individually we can see that the guys really didn’t do anything wrong (unless you want to be extra snarky about Nowinski tagging Gayda back in instead of having the wherewithal to see that she was green and call an audible to stay in himself, but who would know how to make that call only a year into their career?).

While Gayda brought this match down and Trish fought with everything she had to salvage it, Trish deserves some blame as well. She was leading the match (for obvious reasons) and she should’ve known better than to expect such a greenhorn to be able to take and be in position for relatively complex moves like a springboard attack and a diving bulldog. Knowing what she was getting into, she should’ve kept things extremely simple and then moved on to more complicated moves only after knowing for sure that Gayda could be trusted to handle the bigger stuff.

But because she went ahead with those few ‘complicated’ moves and Gayda wasn’t ready for them, both women ended up paying the price. That first blown spot turned this into a trainwreck and the second one doomed it. Gayda lacked the fundamental skill needed to make this look like an athletic endeavor and constantly had this deer-in-the-headlights look about her. It’s no wonder Trish looked like she was fuming as the segment ended and, if Lance Storm was to be believed, she believed that both women and the agent that put it together were afraid of being fired. If you’ve ever wondered why Gayda spent the rest of her career wither as a valet or doing everything else besides wrestle, now you know.

Final Rating: -*

This is still a bad match but the fact that it only went three minutes makes it less of a genuine disaster. And even within those three minutes the bits with Bradshaw and Nowinski were passable and not really noteworthy for being bad in any way. Really, the only wrestler to blame for this is Gayda who was rightfully shifted to a managerial role afterwards.

But the company also deserves some flak for putting this together. Prior to this Gayda had a handful of matches and was thrust onto live RAW with little to no preparation expecting her to adapt on the spot. Whether you call it panic decision-making or creative laziness is a matter of opinion. But Gayda was thrown deep into the ocean without knowing now to dog paddle so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that she took everyone else down with her.

And while it probably isn’t my place to suggest what this company should do with its training program, they could’ve copied what New Japan did for decades, which is restrict the wrestlers from doing anything and everything except for three moves: the scoop slam, the dropkick, and the Boston crab. By forcing rookies to build matches around only being able to hit those three moves and nothing else they will master basic techniques and learn how to do more with less.

Who knows: if WWE had applied that principle in Tough Enough instead of just making it a generic reality show without any long-term value, then maybe there wouldn’t have been such a long period of inexperienced wrestlers failing to have good careers because they were called up too soon.