| Company | WWF/WWE |
| Event | Fully Loaded 2000 |
| Series | Fully Loaded |
| Edition | 3 |
| Format | Pay-Per-View |
| Date | Sunday July 23 2000 |
| Venue | Reunion Arena |
| Location | Dallas, Texas, USA |
| Attendance | 16,504 |
WWF Fully Loaded 2000
WWF Fully Loaded 2000 is remembered as a vintage Attitude Era card, and with good reason. Its triple main event all featured rising stars, and though one ended up being a near-squash, the other two bouts were a big success. Throw in an underrated under-card with one particularly memorable spot, and you have a spectacular PPV event. (By the way, this was meant to feature Stone Cold Steve Austin’s big return from his neck injury, hence him being used for the advertising, but ultimately he had to wait a little longer to make his much-anticipated comeback as he wasn’t quite fully healed just yet.)
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE PREVIOUS TV SHOWS? READ OUR PRE-PPV REVIEWS OF RAW & SMACKDOWN!
Mixed Six-Person Tag Team Match
The Hardy Boyz & Lita vs. T&A & Trish Stratus
This was one of the first instances of a rivalry involving both men and women where the saga involving the females was drawing greater fanfare than that of the males. Trish and Lita had really started to get at each other’s throats, which included Stratus shoving Lita off a ladder through a table in a pretty groundbreaking spot for that time period. The upshot was this intergender clash, and it was a very exciting bout indeed. Perfectly serving the purpose of an opener, all six were on form and managed to get the Dallas, Texas crowd fully invested into the PPV from the get-go. The teamwork (which at one point saw all three members of Team Extreme hit a simultaneous group suplex) was clever, the psychology was spot-on, and the finish rounded things off nicely, as Lita hit Trish with her top rope moonsault to score the pin. A post-match attack by Test, Albert and Trish kept the rivalry going beyond Fully Loaded, and in the cash of Trish and Lita, their feud would continue on and off for the rest of their WWF/WWE tenures.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE PREVIOUS EDITION? READ OUR WWF FULLY LOADED 1999 REVIEW!
Tazz vs. Al Snow
It’s often written that Tazz didn’t have a particularly good time in the WWF, but there were definitely moments when the company tried to push the former ECW Champion. At this point, he had recently turned heel, and this was a chance for him to score a fairly credible win to further push him up the card. That he did by submitting Snow to the Tazzmission in a decent little match, which incidentally marked the last time that Tazz wrestled on a PPV in his signature singlet, as he soon switched to what some at the time described as a “bin-man” outfit. More on Tazz shortly.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE PREVIOUS PPV? READ OUR WWF KING OF THE RING 2000 REVIEW!
WWF European Championship Match
Eddie Guerrero (C) vs. Perry Saturn
Although Latino Heat wasn’t as popular as he would be come 2003-2004, he was still really getting over with the fans at this point, and he and Chyna had now become one of the acts most likely to elicit a strong crowd reaction during an era where so many talents were super-over. In contrast, Perry Saturn (accompanied by Terri, with whom he had formed an alliance almost entirely due to their names rhyming) was already on the wane, though he hadn’t yet fallen off a cliff marked Moppy (that would be almost a year away). The battle of The Radicalz was a bit of a damp squib as it felt like a mess, not least when Saturn seemed to accidentally drive Chyna through an announcer’s table. Back in the ring, interference from Terri allowed Perry to capitalise with an elbow off the top rope to score the European Title in what was a minor upset.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FIRST EDITION? READ OUR WWF FULLY LOADED 1998 REVIEW!
WWF World Tag Team Championship Match
Edge & Christian (C) vs. The APA
Earlier in the night, Edge had tried to convince the recently-appointed Commissioner, Mick Foley, that Christian was sick and therefore he could not compete. But Foley caught Christian feigning the act of vomiting, which led him to say that “you guys are so totally busted!” Therefore, their match with Faarooq and Bradshaw was still on, and they were made to pay the price as The APA beat the crap out of them. It didn’t mean a title change, though, as Edge used one of the belts to whack Faarooq with, causing a DQ title retention for the cocky Canadians. The APA continued to destroy them afterwards in and around the ring, but the belts would stay around the waists of Edge and Christian. It would be almost a year before The APA captured what would be their third and final Tag Team Titles as a combo.
WWF Intercontinental Championship Steel Cage Match
Val Venis (C) vs. Rikishi
On paper, this had some intrigue beforehand, but barely anybody thought that it would be in any way memorable. However, we were in for a surprise as Venis (who some had typecast as a failed experiment by this stage, despite him being in the midst of his second IC Title reign) and Rikishi (whose appeal stemmed largely from his Stinkface move and his post-match dancing) surpassed themselves to deliver an awesome scrap. In particular, we had a jaw-dropping moment, as Rikishi (who weighed in the 400-pound region, remember) scaled the Cage and then leapt off to hit a huge splash onto a bloody Venis. Fans popped; Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler reacted as if Val had been literally crushed, which wasn’t far off. It takes balls to take that sort of spot, no question. Maybe that’s why Venis was rewarded with the victory, as Tazz returned to ringside to enter the Cage (somehow, given the rules) and nail Keish with a TV camera, giving Val the chance to claim the pin and retain the belt. As it turned out, Rikishi would beat Tazz on television within a fortnight, and by the next PPV, SummerSlam, Tazz had moved onto a feud with Ross and Lawler. Hmm, maybe that’s why people think Tazz had it bad in the WWF.
Before we got to our triple main event, Shane McMahon (an associate of Chris Benoit) came out to taunt The Rock ahead of the WWF Title match. This brought The Great One out (unusually, since the World Champion traditionally doesn’t appear in front of the crowd until it was bell time to ensure the loudest crowd pop possible), but it proved to be a set-up of sorts, as this distraction allowed Benoit to enter Rock’s dressing room and tear up his highly expensive clothes, stoking the fire further ahead of the evening’s top bout.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE LATEST PPV? READ OUR WWE THE HORROR SHOW AT EXTREME RULES 2020 REVIEW!
The Undertaker vs. Kurt Angle
The first of our three headline bouts (all of which pitted established stars against rising names which was cool to see, even if all three main event newbies ultimately lost) saw The Undertaker battle Kurt Angle. Several years later, this on-off rivalry would produce several classic matches, but Angle hadn’t reached his peak yet (he was early into his career, after all), and Taker – despite being as popular as ever following his transformation into the American Bad Ass – didn’t have many awesome singles bouts during this period due to wear and tear. Therefore, while this was entertaining, it couldn’t hold a candle to what they would produce later on. In fact, it was close to a squash: Angle had tried to gain an edge by damaging one of Taker’s motorcycles and trying to steal another, but he was well and truly put in his place by Taker here. The Last Ride finished off Kurt, thus making Undertaker look highly superior to his opponent, and at the time, that was true (was true).
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FOLLOWING PPV? READ OUR WWF SUMMERSLAM 2000 REVIEW!
Last Man Standing Match
Triple H vs. Chris Jericho
This bout had been building for a few months, dating back to Jericho seemingly becoming WWF Champion on Raw in April at H’s expense, and following further run-ins and all sorts of insults from Y2J towards Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley, they finally met here on PPV in what may be the best Last Man Standing match of all-time. This followed the same formula as HHH vs. Shawn Michaels at SummerSlam 2002: The Game dominated the first half by targeting a physical weakness (in this case, Jericho’s injured ribs), but once Chris turned it around (via a brutal chairshot that busted HHH open to a heavy degree, a trait of H’s matches during 2000), he looked every inch a main eventer on the level of his adversary. Fans reacted very positively when HHH was caught in the Walls Of Jericho, but they popped even louder when Chris found a way to trap Stephanie in the Walls. The match was decided at ringside in a slightly anticlimactic fashion, when HHH hit a back suplex that put both him and Chris through an announcer’s table, and HHH made it to his feet at nine before collapsing again after he had reached ten. HHH had won, but the lay-out of the match and the performances of both men had gotten Jericho over big-time, as well as being a further reason why 2000 was such an awesome year for Trips. Incidentally, Channel 4 showed this match totally uncensored, which was refreshing to see after the way that they handled their presentation of Backlash three months earlier.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE LATEST PPV? READ OUR WWE THE HORROR SHOW AT EXTREME RULES 2020 REVIEW!
WWF Championship Match – If The Rock Is Disqualified, He Loses The Title
The Rock (C) vs. Chris Benoit
To round off this epic show, we had Rock and Benoit settling their short-lived feud with a very exciting World Title match. Benoit had been established as a real threat to Rock’s reign as WWF Champion thanks to his Crippler Crossface submission finisher, and to further tip the odds in the challenger’s favour, a stipulation was added (the first such usage in the WWF, I believe) whereby, if the defending champion – Rock – was disqualified, Benoit would win the title. After some great near-falls and the associated drama with those false finishes, a ref bump was caused when Shane clocked Earl Hebner with a chair. Therefore, Earl was down momentarily, but was somehow not stunned enough to not notice Rock trapping Benoit in his own Crossface and submitting him.
But that wasn’t necessarily the ending. No, Earl actually disregarded Benoit tapping out and instead focused on the fact that when he first turned over after the blow to the back, he had seen Rock holding the chair, meaning that he believed Rock was the one who whacked him. Why Rock would do that under the circumstances is anybody’s guess, but either way, Earl disqualified Rock and Benoit was named the winner and the new WWF Champion. Fans (and JR) were stunned, and Benoit nailing Rock with a chairshot to bust him open added to the surreal nature of the scene. It felt wrong, and only one man could rescue us all: Commissioner Mick Foley, who came out and acknowledged what had really happened (2000’s answer to VAR) before restarting the match. As fans popped big-time, a crimson-masked Rock taunted Benoit by saying “Just Bring It!” Benoit did almost claim the WWF Title for keeps after catching Rock in the Crossface, but The Great One managed to escape the move and nailed Chris with the match-winning Rock Bottom. This was spectacular, and a strong end to a sensational night.
So, yeah, WWF Fully Loaded 2000 was awesome! A great headline bout, a fantastic Last Man Standing contest, a surprisingly exciting Steel Cage match and a fun opener, along with colourful characters across the rest of the show, make this one of the best WWF events of the entire Attitude Era, and so it’s an easy recommendation from me to check this out if you’ve never seen it before.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FOLLOWING TV SHOWS? READ OUR POST-PPV REVIEWS OF RAW & SMACKDOWN!
WANT TO RELIVE WWF FULLY LOADED 2000? WATCH IT RIGHT NOW ON WWE NETWORK!
