Fully Loaded 2000: Triple H and Chris Jericho Steal a Night Built to Test WWF's Next Main-Event Class

Fully Loaded opens with exactly the kind of match a top-heavy card needs: movement, personality and a crowd that is ready to participate. Matt and Jeff Hardy supply the familiar bursts of speed, Test and Albert give them larger bodies to bounce off, and the real center of gravity is Lita against Trish Stratus. Their exchanges are still early-career work, but the audience treats every tag and escape as important. Lita's closing run, including the superplex and moonsault, gives the opener a clear payoff instead of merely filling time. The bout is not mechanically pristine, yet it understands its job and leaves the arena louder than it found it.

Tazz and Al Snow are given barely more than five minutes, and the match never develops enough momentum to overcome the audience's indifference. Snow supplies a few athletic bursts, including offense from the top rope, but the building is noticeably quiet and even turns to a boredom chant before the finish. Tazz's leg attack and suplexes at least create a simple route to the Tazzmission, so the result serves the immediate purpose of rebuilding him as a threat. As a pay-per-view match, though, it feels like television connective tissue between more important programs. The short runtime prevents it from becoming a drag, but it also keeps it from becoming anything substantial.

Eddie Guerrero and Perry Saturn wrestle a compact championship match that is better than its position on the card suggests without ever reaching the level their talent makes possible. Guerrero provides most of the pace and polish, flying into hurricanranas, a tornado DDT and a brainbuster while making Saturn's heavier counters look dangerous. Chyna and Terri remain active around the edges, which keeps the Radicalz-era story present but also contributes to a finish built around distraction and a low blow. Saturn's title win has a reason to happen and the work is consistently competent. The limiting factor is time: eight minutes produces a brisk exchange rather than the layered singles match these two could have delivered with room to breathe.

Edge and Christian versus the APA has plenty of personality before the bell and almost no opportunity to become a complete title match after it. Bradshaw's Dallas-area promo and the champions' cheap-heat routine give the segment energy, while Faarooq and Bradshaw attack with exactly the blunt force their characters promise. The five-and-a-half-minute structure, however, rushes from opening brawl to hot tag to disqualification before any sustained championship drama can form. Edge using the title belt protects the challengers and lets the champions escape, but the finish feels designed around future plans rather than this audience's payoff. It works as story maintenance. It is weak as a standalone pay-per-view title defense.

Rikishi and Val Venis turn a straightforward Intercontinental Championship feud into one of the night's most memorable visual matches. The cage gives Rikishi's size an immediate purpose, and the bout builds patiently toward his dive from the top, a spectacular image that remains the obvious memory from the contest. Venis contributes a solid control stretch and credible near falls, while Trish Stratus and Lita extend their earlier rivalry without overwhelming the championship story. Tazz's late interference is the major blemish because the match has already created enough drama to stand on its own. Even with that complication, the cage stipulation is used as more than decoration, and the crowd receives a genuine midcard spectacle before the heavily promoted closing stretch.

The Undertaker and Kurt Angle are the clearest failure of Fully Loaded's three-match youth-versus-establishment sales pitch. Angle spends the buildup poking at Undertaker, even attacking his leg before the match, but the actual contest mostly presents the Olympic gold medalist as somebody who has wandered into the wrong weight class. Undertaker controls the early fight, survives Angle's brief work on the leg and wins decisively with a chokeslam and Last Ride in well under ten minutes. The result did not derail Angle's rise, and later booking quickly repaired the damage, but that hindsight does not improve this particular match. On a show built around younger challengers proving they belong, this is the one matchup that refuses to honor the premise.

Triple H and Chris Jericho deliver the match that transforms Fully Loaded from a good card into a show worth remembering. The stipulation is not an excuse for random weapon shots; it is built around Jericho's damaged ribs, Triple H's determination to punish them and the increasingly desperate ten-counts that turn every major blow into a survival test. Blood, ringside brawling, the Walls of Jericho on Stephanie McMahon and the final crash through the announce table all arrive as escalations rather than disconnected stunts. The finish is especially sharp: Triple H beats the count by essentially one second and collapses again, allowing Jericho to lose without feeling lesser. It is violent, dramatic, disciplined and fully worthy of the match's featured position.

The Rock and Chris Benoit follow an exhausting Last Man Standing match by producing a championship main event with a completely different rhythm. Benoit spends long stretches cutting down the champion with suplexes, submissions and focused aggression, while Shane McMahon's interference keeps the disqualification stipulation alive as a constant threat. The false title change is risky but effective in the building: referee Earl Hebner mistakenly disqualifies Rock, Benoit briefly appears to have won the championship, and Mick Foley restarts the match after identifying the deception. From there, Benoit's German suplexes and Crossface create one final surge before Rock ends it with the Rock Bottom. The structure makes Benoit feel dangerous without taking the title away from the company's biggest star.