Bradshaw vs Scott Hall (WWF, 4-21-2002)

WWF Backlash, Kansas City, MO

Here we in the early stages of another attempted Bradshaw push. He now has long black hair and a tough man’s goatee. The APA have disbanded via brand split — not violently, as they are still friends and meet up before this match — and Bradshaw is being pushed up the card, even teaming on TV with Stone Cold Steve Austin to battle the recently-arrived nWo.

The whole 2002 nWo thing was laughable. It was laughable in its presentation — Vince’s horrendously over the top spinning chair I’M GONNA KILL IT promo from Smackdown, them hitting The Rock with a semi truck — and everyone who knew their ass from a hole in the ground knew it was going to fail, as Hogan and Nash in particular had been instrumental in the downfall of WCW, and Scott Hall, well, there’s no nice to way to put this, was a wayward drunk who couldn’t be counted on anymore.

But that didn’t stop at least some people who were #online on message boards back then from acting like maybe it would work. WWF TV had largely sucked ass since the 2001 WCW (later plus ECW) invasion started, as it was simply too much for a victorious and gleeful and ego-driven Vince McMahon to properly process and actually do correctly, so when the invasion petered out in late ’01, it was on to the next.

What to do now? We’ve killed off even the storyline versions of WCW and ECW. HEY! The nWo! The original trio! YEAH! Three old guys with various physical or mental issues, not to mention they’re seen as world class dickheads and shit stirrers! WHY NOT?!

And at least some people bought into it. “This could be good,” they would post. “OK Raw/Smackdown wasn’t great this week but I saw some glimmers of hope,” they would post. When presented with the thought that this was the same shit people said about WCW TV for the last two years of its existence, they dismissed that. Never could the GREAT WWF suck so much ass! Impossible! Vince McMahon: GENIUS!

So long story short the nWo fucking sucked ass. Hogan got over in Toronto at WrestleMania X8 against The Rock in a legitimately iconic happening, so they split him off to be a good guy solo act again, going absolutely out of their fucking minds and putting the WWF title on him on this show, a month after HHH’s big heroic return to the throne in a wet fart of a title win over Chris Jericho at Mania, which died trying to follow Hogan-Rock. Then they realized, holy shit, that was REALLY dumb, so they threw the belt on Undertaker. Luckily Brock Lesnar stormed into the WWF in the spring just as The Rock was effectively on his way out, not long after Steve Austin had told the WWF to kiss his ass, and by SummerSlam they had someone useful to put the belt on.

BUT here is Bradshaw in April of 2002. He chums it up with Faarooq backstage before the match. Faarooq is still wearing his APA shirt because he is thinking of old times. The nWo had recently wrecked the APA offices.

Hall is out first, with X-Pac in his corner. X-Pac is wearing Kane’s mask. He was added to the nWo after Hogan was removed. Eventually they’d add Big Show, Booker T, and Shawn Michaels, until Nash tore his quad and Vince publicly threw in the towel on the experiment on live television, essentially confirming that, yes, the nWo fucking sucked and we wouldn’t be talking about them again.

Bradshaw still has the APA music and Hall is smiling as the big Texan comes to the ring. I admit I did have some quiet hopes that Scott Hall, one of my favorite wrestlers of the 90s, would turn it around in a return to the WWF and do some good stuff. But when he and Austin went through the motions in a 10-minute Mania match, I knew that wasn’t happening. And it didn’t.

Hall and X-Pac look to double team Bradshaw, circling around him, until the APA music hits again and Faarooq makes his way to ringside to even the odds. Hall is pissed at ringside and X-Pac argues with the referee. Decent “APA” chant from the crowd, revealing that perhaps the WWF made a mistake splitting these two midcarders up and trying to do anything else with them when they were perfectly fine as they were.

Hall tosses the toothpick in Bradshaw’s face and laughs, so Bradshaw punches him in the face a bunch and Hall bumps twice, bless him. Hall telegraphs a backdrop and Bradshaw hammers him over the back, then hits a DDT for two.

Hall bails out of the ring but backs into Faarooq. Hall makes a scared face and slowly turns around into right hands from Faarooq. X-Pac comes over so Faarooq puts him on his ass with a clothesline.

Back in and Bradshaw shoulders Hall down. Elbowdrop gets two. Bradshaw with kicks to the gut, shot to the back, chop, right hand to the face. Vertical suplex from Bradshaw for two. X-Pac tries to rally the crowd but it is 2002 and the crowd is a couple years into legitimately hating his presence, which means he gets booed as he should, but perhaps not the way he wants.

Bradshaw continues to slowly decimate Hall with right hands and shit. Hall throws his rights — god I loved a Scott Hall right hand, that three-quarters slapping right hand. I know they likely wouldn’t qualify for Great Punches by Southern wrestling standards but I liked the stylishness of it.

Bradshaw back with right hands, but Hall cracks him again and drops him to his knees. Bradshaw sent to the corner, Hall follows in with a clothesline. Hall with more right hands and boots to the chest. I don’t mind a punch-kick guy at all but ’02 Hall (and Hall past that) just feels so dated and limp.

Bradshaw with another shoulderblock, knocking Hall down again. Bradshaw, as much as I may like him, is not the guy to carry ’02 Hall to something good. Bradshaw with more right hands and Hall does a spit sell and of course the commentators wonder if it was a tooth flying.

Back elbow from Bradshaw. This sucks so JR breaks out the “bowling shoe” reference to let us know that he knows. Bradshaw with a hard clothesline in the corner. Hall reverses a whip to the other corner, but misses his, erm, “charge,” then lightly bounces off the turnbuckles and turns around into the Clothesline from Hell.

With Hall dead, X-Pac puts his friend’s foot on the bottom rope, then takes a cheap shot at Bradshaw. Faarooq chases X-Pac, who does various crotch chops and whatnot, scampering around the ring. He gets on the apron and Bradshaw clubs him down into Faarooq’s arms, at which point Faarooq runs X-Pac into the post.

Meanwhile, Hall low blows Bradshaw and rolls him up for the win.

Rating: 1.5/5. BOY this was not good. It had a cool lariat and Faarooq was fun as the neutralizer at ringside. But my God Hall was shot to bits. It was sadly no surprise when he got himself let go a couple weeks after this, reportedly after getting fucked up on the infamous “plane ride from hell.” He’d be with TNA in June in time for their first show. I don’t mean to make light of Hall’s issues, by the way — I’ve had my own troubles with the bottle and have seen plenty who’ve had it worse than me. We’ve all got our problems. But by 2002 he was just done — all of five years earlier he was still a vital part of WCW kicking the shit out of the WWF. But five years is a long time in wrestling, or at least it can be.