Mayhem 2000: WCW Found Its Next Champion Inside Three Hours of Noise

Kwee Wee starts with useful aggression and Mike Sanders is capable of organizing a basic cruiserweight title match around it. For less than a minute, the bout looks like it might become a straightforward opener.

Then the Natural Born Thrillers arrive, Meng becomes involved, Paisley moves between the ring and backstage, Ric Flair appears and security joins the scene. The wrestling becomes background noise to an angle that could have happened after the bell.

Once the crowd has been trained to watch the floor instead of the ring, Sanders and Kwee Wee never recover the match. Sanders eventually retains, but the result feels secondary.

The score reflects competent execution buried by production choices. Neither wrestler is the primary problem. The match is a textbook example of WCW refusing to trust its cruiserweight division to wrestle without a surrounding traffic jam.

This is the match Mayhem needed more of. Shane Helms, Shannon Moore, Evan Karagias, Jamie Knoble, Kaz Hayashi and Yun Yang move at a pace the rest of the card cannot match and largely avoid authority figures, celebrity distractions or convoluted stipulations.

The structure is loose, and there are moments where the match becomes a sequence exhibition rather than a traditional tag contest. That is acceptable because the athleticism is the attraction. Knoble looks especially sharp, while Helms continues to suggest that WCW has a future singles star sitting in the division.

3 Count eventually takes the victory after enough dives and counters to wake the Milwaukee crowd. The match is not a classic, but it is clearly good.

Its larger value is contrast. Give talented wrestlers ten minutes and a reason to compete, and late WCW can still produce something worth watching.

There is no useful wrestling argument for this being on pay-per-view. Mancow is a radio personality and Jimmy Hart is a manager in his late fifties. The segment exists because WCW had a promotional relationship and decided that relationship deserved ring time.

The match is short, clumsy and built around outside personalities rather than athletic competition. Hart's experience helps him understand where to be, but that cannot create a meaningful contest from the material.

Mancow wins, the angle ends and the event moves on. The greatest positive is that the segment does not last long.

Celebrity wrestling can work when the celebrity is prepared, the story is hot or the involvement creates a memorable spectacle. None of those conditions exist here. This is filler on a show that already has too much content.

Crowbar, Big Vito and Reno have enough willingness to create a lively hardcore match, but the action is less organized than committed. Weapons appear, bodies move backstage and the match repeatedly shifts location without building a clear escalation.

The personal story involving Reno and Vito should provide emotional structure. Instead, it complicates an already messy environment. Marie's involvement becomes part of the finish, Crowbar takes advantage of the confusion and retains the championship.

There are individual bumps that look impressive and Crowbar remains one of the division's most committed performers. The problem is that commitment becomes a substitute for construction.

Late-WCW hardcore matches can be fun when the chaos has a clear destination. This one feels like several unrelated ideas happening in the same segment. It is not a total failure, but it never becomes more than noisy midcard violence.

The participants are better than the premise. Rey Mysterio Jr. and Billy Kidman can create speed, Alex Wright can keep pace, and KroniK provide a useful size contrast. The hired-help story instead makes the match about how long Brian Adams and Bryan Clark are contractually willing to participate.

That time-limit concept produces confusion rather than suspense. The crowd has to remember the employment arrangement while also following a handicap match whose teams already feel artificially assembled.

Mysterio and Kidman create the best sequences whenever the larger storyline fades into the background. The finish gives the Filthy Animals a win, but the match does not make anyone feel more important.

The score recognizes that the performers are capable of watchable wrestling. The booking keeps interrupting the natural athletic contrast that should have been the entire point.

Ernest Miller has charisma and Shane Douglas has enough experience to guide a basic singles match. That is the ceiling. The feud does not have the urgency required to make eight minutes of ordinary offense feel important.

Torrie Wilson and Ms. Jones provide ringside story elements, but those elements contribute more to presentation than match quality. Miller's kicks create the most recognizable offense, while Douglas works through a conventional heel-control segment.

The Cat wins and the crowd accepts the result without reacting as though anything substantial has changed. There is no major technical disaster and no catastrophic finish. The match is simply dull.

On a smaller television show, this would be tolerable filler. On a twelve-match pay-per-view already struggling with pacing, it becomes another reason the event feels overlong.

Bam Bam Bigelow is capable of much better, but this match gives him almost nothing to work with. Sgt. A.W.O.L. is presented as a large opponent, and the contest becomes a sequence of basic heavyweight exchanges without meaningful escalation.

The audience is quiet and appears more interested in the possibility of a table spot than the actual feud. That table payoff never becomes the defining moment the crowd expects.

Bigelow wins, which is the logical result, but the victory does not advance him into anything important. The match functions as five minutes of card maintenance.

A heavyweight sprint can be useful when it is intense. This one is merely short. The score falls below the D- line because there is no compelling story, no strong finishing stretch and almost no reason to revisit it.

Lance Storm remains one of the safest structural bets on the roster. He gives General Rection clear control segments, keeps the match moving and creates enough openings for the babyface comeback to feel organized.

The problem is exhaustion with the feud. Their program had already reached logical stopping points, and Mayhem asks the audience to invest again while adding another interference wrinkle before the bell. Once the match settles down, the work is acceptable.

Rection wins the United States Championship with the moonsault, providing a clean enough title change and one of the night's few direct payoffs. The crowd responds more to the result than the preceding wrestling.

The title change and Storm's reliability lift the score. The match itself never becomes special, and the feud's overextension keeps the emotional ceiling low.

Jeff Jarrett and Buff Bagwell are experienced enough to produce a professional midcard singles match without much guidance. They trade familiar offense, Jarrett controls the pace and Bagwell's charisma gives the crowd occasional reasons to react.

The surrounding story is more elaborate than the wrestling. Jarrett's guitars have been destroyed backstage, suspicion becomes part of the setup and the bout carries another layer of late-WCW angle management.

The match itself is not terrible. It is simply ordinary for eleven minutes on a show that already has too many ordinary matches. Jarrett eventually gets the win and moves forward without the contest creating a memorable sequence.

Both wrestlers know what they are doing. Neither has enough creative momentum to make the matchup feel important. That leaves it exactly on the D+ border: competent, mildly watchable and disposable.

Diamond Dallas Page and Kevin Nash finally give the audience recognizable star power, and the match immediately feels larger than most of the card. Chuck Palumbo and Shawn Stasiak work hard to keep pace and benefit from sharing the ring with veterans who understand how to build crowd anticipation.

Natural Born Thrillers politics still hover around the match. Mike Sanders uses managerial loopholes and Ric Flair becomes involved in clearing people from ringside. The clutter is frustrating because the wrestling itself is good enough without it.

Page sells long enough to establish the young champions, Nash receives the expected hot tag and the veterans eventually secure the tag titles. The title change gets one of the strongest reactions of the show.

The match is not technically special, but it is well paced and emotionally readable. On Mayhem 2000, that qualifies as a significant success.

Goldberg is still over enough that the crowd responds the moment he appears. The match's problem is credibility. Lex Luger is a major name, but the artificial streak storyline makes it difficult to believe this is the opponent who will actually remove Goldberg from WCW.

The bout is short and built around Luger's attempts to survive the initial explosion. Goldberg's power offense remains the attraction, while Luger works mostly as a temporary obstacle.

There is little suspense and almost no technical depth. Goldberg wins, keeps the streak alive and moves on toward another match in the same storyline.

A five-minute Goldberg showcase can be entertaining when the opponent or finish creates urgency. This one feels like a checkpoint in an angle rather than a pay-per-view match. The crowd reaction prevents an F; the content does not justify much more.

Booker T and Scott Steiner finally give Mayhem a match with genuine stakes and physical intensity. Steiner works like a challenger determined to take the company over, while Booker carries himself like a champion who understands he has to survive a stronger opponent.

The cage helps the atmosphere. The straitjacket does not. Booker gains opportunities to pin Steiner and instead spends valuable time trying to use the jacket, which slows the urgency and makes the champion look less decisive.

Once the gimmick fades, the match improves. Steiner's offense becomes increasingly violent, Booker keeps fighting back and the crowd senses that a major title change is possible. Steiner eventually applies the Recliner and Booker is ruled unconscious, giving Steiner his first WCW World Heavyweight Championship.

The title change matters enough to make the match the second-best thing on the show. Cleaner stipulation design could have pushed it higher.