Live Feed Mania – WWF Smackdown 01/09/01
By Maffew Gregg on 11 June 2025
WWF @ Oakland, CA – Arena – January 9, 2001 (14,325; sell out)
We’re on the road to the Rumble, let’s hack into the satellite feed and see if there’s anything on!
Tony Chimel reminds us to not record this show or you will be subject to persecution. Welp, nice knowing you Richard Land.
Dark Match!
The Prototype vs. Aaron Aguilera
Hey it’s all-natural rookie John Cena! Picture posted without comment!
The Rob Liefeld drawing come to life bounces around for Aaron and his lucha-ish offence. Protoype is already fitting the mould for a WWF Superstar with his clotheslines and up-and-overs. Aaron lands an elbow from the top by running up the turnbuckle like a cooler Bull Buchanan. Protoype lands a flying shoulder tackle which he’d like so much he’d keep doing for the next few decades. Protoype shows off his strength with a delayed sidewalk slam with a flex. Stungun into the turnbuckles leads to a Blue Thunder Bomb win for Cena. Hey this was very decent and the crowd dug it. These two would later wrestle at Armageddon 2004, I think just so a guy named “Jesus” could lose at an event named after the end times.
Dark Match!
Rodney vs. WWF Hardcore Champion Raven
Rodney has a cowboy hat and proper wrestling tights on but is still announced as being part of MSP. If you say so. Crowd loves Raven, even after Rodney complete fucks up a headscissors. Raven aggressively comes back with corner clotheslines and a running bulldog as he didn’t appear to like that. Rodney’s offence is all spinning kicks and crossbodies but he’s built like he’s about to do drywalling so he looks spent. Top rope Frankensteiner gets little love, with Raven ignoring it to Superplex Rodney before finishing quick with an Evenflow DDT. Raven yells at Rodney afterwards and did not seem to enjoy wrestling him at all here.
Luckily for Raven, this was Rodney’s last WWF match before being sent to Memphis and released in July.
Dark Match!
The Big Boss Man vs. Tex Slazenger
Tex Slazenger aka PIG aka Mideon aka Undi’s Mate makes his entrance to Dusty Rhodes’ WWF theme. He’s got horrible blond hair and shakes everyone’s hands as he tells the crowd he’s here to be himself and have fun. Also he’s going to kick Boss Man’s ass like the Raiders are going to beat the Ravens! Boss Man helps new face Tex by saying these people are like him, inbred and horrible. Tex batters Boss Man to the outside as the crowd are at least responding positively to some of the biggest sucking up you’re ever going to see. Tex gets a cheeky kiss on Boss Man before kissing the ref. Eeeh, what’s he like? Boss Man gets a chinlock as crowd are quickly losing interest here because Tex is still incapable of anything other than elbows and punches. And then he runs into a Boss Man Slam to end a weird experiment that didn’t work. Post-match Tex prevents Boss Man from using his stick before some more pantomime sees him crotching Boss Man and leaving to awkward silence before they start playing his theme. Tex does a “ah forget it” hand gesture as he leaves to the back.
Tex would wrestle his last WWF match a week later and The Ravens would win 16-3.
Dark Match!
Essa Rios vs. Joey Abs
Four dark matches? Jeremy that’s insane. Abs is wearing a wrestling singlet and is specifically not a MSP member but he’s still using the name. Rios backflips to start before busting out a proper spinning headscissors because he’s a real luchador. Abs catches Rios on an up-and-over to deliver a meaty sit-out face first slam that oooos the crowd. Abs lands a Pump Splash before the crowd get bored, leading to Essa land a spinning kick and a moonsault to a stood-up Abs to win.
Abs would soon join his friend Rodney in Memphis/unemployment.
Coachman and Michael Hayes get set up for commentary and mock a family we can’t see.
Lo Down (D’Lo Brown & Chaz) (w/ Tiger Ali Singh) vs. The APA (Faarooq & Bradshaw)
They were called Lo Down because that’s where they were on the card HOW BOUT IT.
Tiger doesn’t appreciate the boos and reminds the crowd they’re not taxi drivers or Slurpee salespeople, they’re great athletes. Crowd is like “you’re so bad at wrestling that we’re going to be racist towards you.” The APA join in and wonder if Lo Down can help them get a taxi out of the arena because the traffic is hell. So they encourage the crowd to chant “TAXI” as Bradshaw explains “we don’t care where you’re from or what you believe or what camel you ride, we’re equal opportunity ass kickers.” Hari Kondabolu did nothing wrong.
Lo Down get batters as the crowd is super into APA. Brown comes back with a Sky High on Faarooq so they can get something resembling offence and so the crowd can chant “we want Slurpees.” Lo Down switch out when the ref is distracted and then the ref doesn’t do anything when he turns around. That didn’t make any sense, unless they were seriously contemplating doing a switcheroo gimmick with two guys wearing different coloured gear who don’t look similar. Farooq spinebusts Chaz through the ring and then Bradshaw hot tags in to lariat D’Lo’s head off.
The anti-Eastern stuff was too distracting for me to even enjoy a beefy lariat. There’s casual racism and then there’s smoking-jacket-drinking-a-whiskey casual racism.
Ivory heads out to the ring for a promo. I take it back, bring back the taxi jokes. Ivory shows us the exciting sit-down interview Chyna gave about wanting to return to wrestle despite her bad neck. Ivory says Chyna just wants to continue selling her body to Playboy so fans can jerk off to her. Crowd cheers in approval.
Too Cool (Grand Master Sexay & Scotty Too Hotty) vs. Kai En Tai (Taka Michinoku & Sho Funaki)
Hotty jumps over Funaki to drop him with a back suplex because it’s not often he’s the bigger guy in the ring. Funaki cheap-shots Hotty to start the camel clutch/basement dropkick combo. Crowd don’t hate Kai En Tai as much as other foreigners but the crowd loves Too Cool so they pop for Sexay’s big tag. Hotty lands the W-O-R-M so TAKA grabs the mic to tell everyone they don’t want to fight anymore and demand a dance contest instead. So the match is thrown out as everyone has a little dance with the corner pyro going off for good measure. And then Kai En Tai sneak attack Too Cool afterwards so they can deliver the Michinoku Driver and have TAKA yell “you fools, we’re not to be trusted! We are EVIL!” OK I thought this was a waste of time before that got me. C’mon Too Cool, they have EVIL written on their shirts.
Crash Holly (w/ Molly Holly) vs. Albert
At least Kai En Tai got shirts, I don’t think Crash got one during his whole run. Crowd cheers for T & A’s music then boos when there’s no Trish. Albert slams Crash around until Crash uses his speed to apply a sleeper hold. Albert wipes him off by banging into the turnbuckles. Crash scales them so he can bounce Albert’s expansion pack of a head off the pads to set up a dive off the top into waiting arms of a Baldo Bomb for the pin. Well that was nothing.
Albert slingshots poor Elroy’s face into the ring ropes which causes Hardcore Holly to run in and save his cousin. Best Dropkick In The Business sends Albert away. “Get back here ya fat piece of crap!”
Lilian sings the anthem, Cole gets set up and we hear the Kai En Tai segment being pre-recorded backstage. A few attempts are heard, complete with TAKA’s voiceover (Shane McMahon) yelling “and this is entirely too fucking long!”
Last time on SmackDown, special guest Ref Mr. McMahon counted Steve Austin’s pin on The Undertaker. On Raw, Vince explained his new year resolution is to be fair and equal. Austin doesn’t believe him but he’s ready for his title shot against Kurt Angle. Oh I remember that match being sweet. After a series of counters, Austin stunners Kurt…but HHH returns pulls the ref out for the DQ. A mad Austin goes after HHH so the Cerebral Assassin twats him with a stick. Hot opening package helped by J.R. melting in anger. Even if HHH took more time off because of the HIAC match at Armageddon then the upside down car drop at Survivor Series.
We’re here in Oakland for a strangely short episode of Smackdown. On the Network this an hour five minutes long.
Let’s start with Vince again. He is as shocked as everyone else that HHH would do something like that but it had nothing to do with Vince. Crowd loudly boos him anyway. Vince recaps the drama between these two (Austin got hit with a car, was about nine months. HHH was dropped upside from a car, didn’t miss a week). Vince says in the interest of fairness, he’s giving both men the night off so they don’t try and kill one another before the Rumble. Vince gives HHH a title shot for the Rumble, and not because he’s his son-in-law. It’s because he’s That Damn Good.
Here’s HHH and Steph live via video to apologise for ruining a great match. Oh wait, no he’s not sorry cos he’s back and badder than ever. HHH says this feud will be over when HHH says so. Cos he’s the booker! Austin will be sat on his bed, unable to drink his beer because he won’t be able to bend his neck in his halo, watching HHH as the champ. Steph says Austin deserved it cos he dumped booze on her and removed her clothes, so fuck ‘im. HHH says “been” like “Ben” which is distracting. “My attention has Ben diverted. Kurt Angle has Ben the champion for two months.” This goes on for a bit (seventeen minutes) but set the scene for the rest of the night and to reassure us that Austin will not be appearing tonight, oh no, no way.
E & C go cheer up Kurt after hearing the HHH news. But he’s not in his room? Also: we know it’s Kurt’s locker room because of the huge American flag on the side that he presumably brings to every arena.
Billy Gunn, Matt & Jeff Hardy (w/ Lita) vs. Right To Censor (The Goodfather, Bull Buchanan & Val Venis) (w/ Steven Richards & WWF Women’s Champion Ivory)
Dean Malenko is still feuding with Lita. Sorry for reminding you. On Raw, Dean dumped mustard over her so she needed a shower…causing severely miscast Dean to perv on her. Then The Hardyz attacked him to apparently write him off the show while he got his knee looked at, which at least caused this storyline to get quietly cancelled. So we get The Hardys assisting The One with his feud with RTC.
Jeff uses his quickness to leave the ring and then re-enter to throw off the bigger Bull. Matt tags in to take some plodding strikes from Goodfather. The Hardys come together to land Poetry In Motion but Jeff’s swanton is halted by Bull shoving him to the floor. Lawler sells the action by talking about Lita in the shower. Jerry wants to add “Lo” to the start of her name. Hot tag Billy who press slams Venis and clotheslines everyone else. The One & Only connects on Venis to allow Matt to land the leg drop. Ivory distracts the ref to allow a Steven Kick on Matt to end it at 3:38. This was like when you’re in a fighting game and a low kick ends it. Decent action for a throwaway match with crap commentary.
Lilian interviews Undi about winning the main event and becoming #30. Bad Ass Undi spits chewing tobacco and continues to act like a 9 year old’s idea of what a cool guy is.
Also the Oakland Raiders are here. I don’t care, I’m not a NFL guy. Apart from the Atlanta Falcons somehow hiring a guy from my crappy arse home town. (Edit: Alex Gray.)
Test vs. K-Kwik
God bless K-Kwik for doing his best with his rap intro but the crowd are particularly non-respective for him. He yells “Make some noise!” but no-one does. Also Cole informs us that Lawler and Ross will be commentating the XFL game next week. Oh man. Lawler one-ups that by saying Gary & Mike rang him earlier and that this episode is shorter than usual because they have a special episode after Smackdown. It’s not been cancelled by UPN yet which makes it special. Oh that explains the four squash matches for the live crowd then.
Wait they used SmackDown to pre-empt them and they didn’t use the episode with Chyna guest-starring?
You deserved to not get renewed.
Kwik attempts a Frankensteiner but Test turns it into a Powerbomb. Test is face her apparently. Kwik tries a crossbody but Test catches him and Pump Handle Slams him. Kwik attempts to add some dancing to his offence but Test sticks with an Uncle Slam. Kwik is getting pounded here. He comes back with a Frankensteiner for real this time before messing up an up-and-over. The ref yells “do it again, do it again!” so Kwik sends Test into the other corner to fuck it up some more. Kwik sends Test into the corner for a third time to attempt it and does so, with the crowd ironically cheering for him as he does it. Oh man. Test then brutally Big Boots him to smother this at 2:24. A match that existed so Cole could plug things and make us all feel embarrassed for Kwik.
As Test is heading to the back, Regal smashes Test with his European Title before waving and smiling. Oh I get it, Regal is face.
Kai En Tai bump into the XFL cheerleaders who are impressed with their ability to talk with voiceovers. “Ancient Chinese secret! Even though we are not Chinese!” See this is the good casual racism I was talking about earlier.
Kai En Tai meet the XFL CheerleadersJanuary 11th 2001 Smackdown Live Satellite Feed
— forever botchamania (@maffewgregg.bsky.social)2025-05-12T23:50:37.829Z
Kurt talks to Coachman who says he thinks HHH saved Angle from Austin. Kurt strongly disagrees and doesn’t appreciate HHH removing the respect he was about to earn. “HHH in the Olympic games of life, you don’t even qualify!” Kurt knows the McMahons have a habit of getting everything they want so he has Trish Stratus in his corner to even the odds. Kurt Angle: one part Rimmer from Red Dwarf and one part Father Dougal from Father Ted.
XFL Commercial emphasizing that the players get paid to win. If they’re lucky.
We hear the audio of Kurt’s interview being played back as they possibly re-did it. I’ll have to check. (edit: couldn’t tell).
WWF Slam Of The Week: E & C have some old people dress up as The Dudley Boyz. Then the young ones show up and murder them, which is the basic plot of Looper. E & C already did that segment with The Hardy Boyz and it sucked then too.
Chris Jericho & The Dudley Boyz (Bubba Ray & D-Von) vs. WWF IC Champion Chris Benoit, WWF Tag Team Champions Edge & Christian
E & C head out in Raiders gears and suck up to the crowd…before removing their jerseys to reveal Ravens gear and correctly pointing out that the Ravens would defeat the Raiders. Also Greyhound Buses will give you a XFL shirt if you use them. That has to be the rarest WWF shirt of all time right? The combination of Greyhound and XFL is like the white trash equivalent of Shang Tsung and Quan-Chi hooking up. I couldn’t find any on Ebay, let me know.
On Raw, Benoit was pinned by Jericho as their feud is back on because WWF has nothing for the Crippler in the main event scene right now. Jericho says he’s been IC Champ twice already but seeing Benoit makes him want it again. Benoit says he’s pinned him all over the world multiple times so go for it. Benoit very clumsily says that Jericho is not going to use him to climb to the top so Jericho goes “well I WILL climb…in a Ladder Match!” The match would end up ruling so why am I bitching about Jericho feeding clumsy lines to his opponents.
Jericho locks in the Walls quickly so everyone comes into the ring to break it up…and then Austin’s music plays as the match ends at 0:49 with Steve throwing some vicious chair shots at the tag teams. Jericho and Benoit brawl to the back because yeah, I didn’t even want to watch that match anyway. And they’d get their revenge in July anyway.
Austin demands Vince head out and quick. He does so and is assured he’ll split his skull open if Vince does anything other than stand there and listen. Austin demands to be in the Rumble, which Vince agrees to. Austin orders him to turn around and tell the other twenty nine superstars to watch out. Even Drew Carrey? Also it’s easy to talk tough when you’re 2,000 miles away HHH so I’ll see you when I see you. Yeah that was short and concise unlike the never-ending Angle vs. HHH match on the PPV.
We hear Chimel assure the fans that we still have a main event so sit down and don’t leave please.
The commentators re-record the sponsor billboards because Lawler didn’t say it right. Lawler blames Chimel’s hand-writing.
Vince goes backstage to vent to Trish about managing Kurt. She’s very apologetic and admits she’s been so bad that she deserves a spanking. Crowd go crazy at the idea so…Trish shuts the door on the cameraman’s face as we get an extraordinary cut to Kane’s pyro in a presumably unintended visual. If it was intended then Kane’s Titantron would have had footage of trains driving through tunnels.
Rumble Replay: Mick Foley enters three times. J.R.’s “Foley can be colder than a Mother-In-Law’s kiss” is a blinder.
Winner Gets #30 At The Rumble
Rikishi vs. Kane vs. The Undertaker vs. The Rock
While Undi parks his push-bike, Kane and Rikishi go at it in the ring. Then of course The Rock takes a few seconds to head in because you’ve got to slow cook that delicious pop. Rock punches away on Kane but can’t get anything so he DDTs him instead. Kane boots Rock to send him out the ring and allowing Undi & Rikishi to wander in. Undi’s flying clothesline sets up Old School to a big pop. Rock saves Undi from a belly-to-belly but gets sent into a Kane clothesline. Kane lets Kishi take over on Rock as we see that Undi has been sliced open near his eye. The Brothers brawl outside so Rikishi can set up his Stinkface which I don’t understand why he’d still do when he was a heel. Rock ain’t taking that move though, are you crazy? Rock spinebusters Rikishi to escape as this has been all-action so far and I approve. Kishi delivers a back suplex to Kane on the ramp. Undi’s crappy DDT where he lands on his own arm as he comes down is enough to slow us down finally. Kishi uses the ring bell on Kane because the back suplex wasn’t enough. Kishi attempts stinkface on Undi but changes his mind to throw The Ass at Rock. Kane chair shots Kishi who somehow feels it despite that Samoan head of his. Undi chokeslams Kane but Rock breaks up the pin as we’re getting closer and closer to the finish now. Rock Bottom to Kane but that damn Undi pulls Rock off. But Undi like a dumb ass pulls Rock outside and completely takes his (bloody) eye off the prize, which allows Kane to butt drop Kane to win at 8:14. Fun main event and the easy highlight of the show.
Sore loser Undi clotheslines Rikishi before The Rock tries to attack him, saved by Kane who chokeslams everyone and then leaves angry because it’s 2001 and Kane was fucking. Also I have no idea what move caused Undi’s face to get split open like that but I can say with confidence it wasn’t intentional.
After Show Stuff
Rock says he doesn’t feel like leaving Oakland yet so Rikishi walks back out so Rock can deliver the People’s Elbow and send the fans home happy (until the Raven game).
Overall: A fairly sub-par episode that probably didn’t stick out that much as being mediocre because the company was about to have an amazing trilogy of PPVs. But it’s easy to forget just how much XFL & WWF New York & Gary & Fuckin’ Mike they were filling the show up with during this time. Main event was a lot of action for the time it got though.
ANYWHERE BUT HOME
THAT’S WHERE WE’RE DRIVING
ANYWHERE BUT HOME
THAT’S WHERE WE’RE DRIVING
I’ve been Maffew.