Wrestling
The Global Warning Tour 2002 – Melbourne, Australia: On-Site Report!
By Matt Irvine
Aug 11, 2002, 14:25

The Global Warning Tour 2002 – Melbourne, Australia: On-Site Report!


Hi, my name’s Matt, but I’m sure many of you know me better as The Vanilla Midget from the Smartmarks boards. For months now, August 10th had stood out on my calendar as a day to look forward to. August 10th was the day that the WWE/F would finally come back to Australia, some 18 years after their last sojourn Down Under and I was far too young to see the “superstars” last time they were here, so when the announcement was made that the WWE was going to be having a show at Colonial Stadium in Melbourne, my hometown, it was a major markout moment for me. Around six months later, and with my gold-area ticket in hand, it was with major excitement that some mates and I met at the train station, to finally see the WWE live after years of watching on my TV and discussing and critiquing it on the Internet.

For me, my love of wrestling had mostly been a closet obsession, which I kept to myself and a small group of like-minded friends. I thought I was one of only a very small minority of people who even watched the wrestling, let alone talked about it on the Internet, etc. However, the past week has permanently changed my perspective on that. From full-colour lift-outs in the newspapers to appearances on popular TV shows, the WWE was everywhere, even some mark at work was telling me how Scott Steiner was gonna make a secret debut at the show (it really took restraint not to go all smarky on him). Despite all this, the night itself blew me away in terms of the sheer number of people in attendance, and also the level of dedication, etc. On an aside note, the WWE has copped some major heat here for Hulk Hogan’s withdrawal, as he was prominently billed, and many people claimed to have bought their tickets solely for the purpose of seeing him.

As we arrived at the station, there were kids everywhere with their bandanas and “Hulkamaniac” t-shirts, and also an unhealthy number sporting the new (and incredibly homosexually undertoned) Rock t-shirt. My eyes were well and truly opened, though this was nothing compared with the sights that would greet us once we finally arrived 45 minutes later in the city. It seemed like every other person had a WWE shirt on, while my mates and me didn’t (we were going to buy them at the venue). On the way to the stadium, the amount of people was insane, evidenced by biblical queues for merchandising and stadium entrance. Later figures showed that 56,700+ people attended the show, placing it as easily the second most attended show put on by the WWE this year. It also led me to realize that nothing brings out the armpit of society like a wrasslin’ event. We Aussies enjoy giving it to the Yanks about their stereotypical trailer-park trash, but looking around as I waited in line at the merchandise stand, I realized that we are really no better at all, and that we possess an equally significant proportion of what we would describe as bogans.

With my newfound appreciation of the social structure of society firmly in hand, I made my way to the front of the throng of people surrounding the merchandise stand. Now, if I had one problem with the entire night, the merchandise was it. With near 57,000 people there, they stood to (and did) make a killing from the merchandise sales. However the range was quite positively shithouse; Global Warning shirts (fair enough), Fozzy shirts, and leftover “Get the F out” and NWO t-shirts. Needless to say, I didn’t buy a shirt, and I’m sure they would have increased sales by at least 25% or so if they had some of the wrestler-specific merchandise on sale. But since that is my only major gripe with the show, it really indicates what a cool night it really was.

So after forking out A$25 for a program, we made our way to our seats, and simply marveled at the sheer number of people in the place. Colonial Stadium is huge, but the arena was already half-full and was filling very rapidly. The set itself was nothing special, and actually looked like something stolen from a WCW broadcast, but hey, it was a house show. A quick piss and thumb through our over-priced program later, the generic American announcer told us that it was time for the “Global Warning Tour”. An aside point, you would think in actually coming to the city, somebody would ask how to correctly pronounce the town’s name… its pronounced Mel-born, not Mel-bawrne. Anyway, after an uninspiring pyro, the show finally kicks off, and one of the things I told myself that I needed to do at some stage in my life was eventuating, I was finally witnessing a WWE event live.

Now, you would think that with a crowd of 57,000 and the fact that the WWE hasn’t come here in 18 years that the crowd would pop for the Brooklyn freakin Brawler, but oh-no! Stephanie McMahon comes out and positively sucks the heat from the building. My mates and I were positively laughing at the fact that she got literally no pop… it was awesome. Anyway, she cuts a meaningless promo about something irrelevant (though there was an amusing sign in my section “Stephanie Swallows- Fair Dinkum,” highlighting the fact the sign police were given the night off), and she gets some very mild “slut” chants towards the end of the interview. Anyway, she introduces Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman, who also come out to the sound of silence. They deliver some pointless grunting which is passed off as an interview, and Brock attempts to gain heat by claiming responsibility for Hogan’s non-attendance. He copped some mild heat for this, in the form of a “You are a wanker” chant, but ultimately nobody cared, and this segment totally killed the crowd. The only thing I have to add really is that Steph, “Daddy’s Little Girl” just isn’t over…

After that nonsense is out of the way, we move onto some in-ring nonsense, in the form of a…
“Kiss My Ass” match between Rikishi and Rico. Rikishi comes down to a very mild face pop, as the crowd does not seemingly know what to do (more on that later). Rico comes down to very little reaction whatsoever, and ding-ding-ding, Global Warning 2002 is on for real. The match itself was very short, and was essentially a squash, with Rico getting no real meaningful offence in. The crowd was totally dead, as Blind Freddy could see that Rico was jobbing, and to the surprise of nobody, he does following a Samoan Drop. After the match, Rikishi proceeds to do his usual Buttcharge/Stinkface spots, etc, again drawing very little from the crowd. After all that was over, Rikishi gets two kids from the crowd and dances with them in the ring. One of the kids gets the pop of the night so far for his attempt at a spinaroonie, which says a lot about the quality of what we witnessed for the first half-hour or so. Also, mad props to the guy in the row in front of me who decided to do sound effects for this match… it was amusing for about 30 seconds, but thankfully once people started looking at you, you shut the hell up.

Anyways, back to the crowd. The vast majority of the crowd didn’t know how to behave at a wrestling event. They didn’t know when to pop for moves, or entrances, etc, and seemed to really miss the commentary to guide them. All they really did was chant, “You are a wanker” at the heels, and count along with the ref for countouts, etc which was fairly idiotic, but hey, whatever. This was the case for the first four matches up until the Angle-Test match, where both men cut pre-match promos, which got the crowd involved, and into their match. What a surprise that it took Angle to get the crowd fired up.

Back to the show however, as up next we had the match that everyone came to see: Mark Henry and Randy Orton vs. Reverend D-Von and Batista in a “can anybody get the crowd to care?” match. All four guys come out to no pop whatsoever, and Mark Henry really is the fattest man alive… seeing him in person merely confirmed everything that I had heard online. Anyways, this was a dreadfully bad match, again the crowd’s only involvement was to call D-Von a wanker, and Henry mercifully ends it with a powerslam. I don’t know what they see in that guy… sure he won some strongman competition, but he just plain fat. Make him lose some weight, actually teach him how to wrestle and get him a non-80’s gimmick, then see if you can get him over. At this point, the crowd was absolutely dead, and I was questioning whether the match order was chosen by a team of chimpanzees pulling names out of a hat… on second thought, not even chimpanzees would be so fucking stupid as to put this match following a Rikishi match. Putting a positive spin on things however, that is our entire quota of fat, talentless hacks out of the way after the first two matches. Anyway, at this rate the WWE was on track to fuck up an event that could not possibly be fucked up.

Coming out to save us from the debacle that was the first 50 minutes is the match that should have been on first…
Jamie Knoble w/ Nidia vs. Hurricane Helms (Cruiserweight title match). Jamie got a fairly small reaction, but that was expected since he hasn’t really done anything lately. Hurricane came out to the pop of the night so far, which finally woke the crowd up. This was a fun match, which did excite the crowd and get them involved. Nidia played the heel valet brilliantly, kissing Hurricane, etc, drawing chants of “Slut” from the crowd. The match itself was everything the first two weren’t, starting out fairly slowly on the ground, but gaining momentum, ending with some nice spots. Hurricane hit a Buff Blockbuster and the Eye of the Hurricane, as well as the chokeslam (to a mad pop). Despite this, Knoble got the pin following a rollup with his feet on the ropes. This drew a heap of heat from the crowd, and after the match, Jamie inadvertently hit Nidia, (though I cannot completely remember how). During the match, Helms attempted the Vertebreaker, which got a huge pop, but Knoble reversed it. The crowd was now hot, and had seemingly recovered from the earlier setbacks… now again you may think that they could not possibly go backwards from here…

But if you thought that, then you obviously haven’t been watching the WWE lately, as who better to kill a crowd than Billy Gunn?
Hardcore Holly and Chavo Guerrero w/ Maven vs. Billy and Chuck w/ Rico (In a “Tough Enough Challenge” match). It would be physically impossible for Billy and Chuck to kill this crowd more than they did, as when they came out, they pulled their normal house show routine of getting stuck in the ropes, teasing walking away, etc… except you DON’T PULL THAT SHIT IN AUSTRALIA~! As the crowd totally turns on the match, the boring chant begins before the match even starts. The match itself finally begins, and to absolutely nobody’s surprise is an absolute crock of shit. Chuck and Billy pull the usual ambiguously gay stuff, which got a few laughs from the crowd, but that was only funny for about five seconds. This match was up there with the Mark Henry match for worst of the night honours, and it simply dragged on and on and on… After the longest 15 or so minutes of my life (no way this match should have gotten more than 10), Chavo wins via a roll-up after Billy and Chuck miss a Doomsday Device. The match was just all kinds of bad, with missed spots, interference; the whole nine yards. The crowd didn’t care for the face victory, and Billy and Chuck got some mild heel heat as they left the arena.

After that debacle, the crowd is dead again and are left wondering what the fuck they spent all their money on. At this point I am becoming embarrassed to be a WWE fan, and my general apathy is not exactly helped by Test’s music suddenly blaring through the sound system. On another aside, the WWE’s production was shithouse in that they only used their own sound system, rather than hooking into the stadium sound… this created audio difficulties for some sections of the crowd at some stages of the night. Anyway, I, like everybody else am glad to see the arse-end of that previous match (no pun intended), and everybody pops like a mofo for Test. At this point, I’m like “WTF?!? Oh well WOOOOOO!” as I actually find myself doing something I never thought I would do… cheering for Test. “Medal” then hits, and the stadium absolutely EXPLODES!!! Kurt Angle was at least as over as Rock here tonight, quite possibly more, and that was before he even cut his promo. In spite of the colossal face pop, the rubes still chant “you suck” during his theme music. Now that there is some seriously twisted logic. Anyways, Test gets on the mic and proceeds to answer one of the major questions going into the show, being would the anti-americans be faces or heels? Test quickly answers this question by ripping into Australia and comparing us to America (a way to get some MAJOR heel heat down under), although I cannot remember the exact specifics. In response, Angle says that by insulting Australia you are in a way insulting him, which gets a mad pop. With this somebody attacks the other (details are hazy) and the match is underway.

Kurt Angle (face) vs. Test (heel). This was a very good match, as Angle showed he is the Ric Flair of the new millennium, carrying Test to both a watchable and actually exciting match. The match was very back and forth, with both guys hitting all their signature spots. There were huge “Angle” chants throughout the entire match, and crowd gave the triple German suplex spot a nice pop. The finish of the match was the best of the night, with both men attempting to hit their finishers. Test hit the pumphandle on his second attempt, which got two, and I also believe Test kicked out of the first Angle Slam at two. Kurt got an anklelock, but Test made the ropes, and eventually hit the big boot for two. Some other stuff then followed and Test then hit the flying elbow, in a cool piece of psychology in my opinion, as Test cycled through all his past finishers but could still find no way to beat Angle. The crowd was into the match in a huge way, and were actually convinced a couple of times that Angle would go down for the three. Eventually, the straps came down for Angle, and he hits another Angle Slam (about the 4th he attempted through the match) for the 1-2-3. He gets a huge pop, and this was an excellent match, especially considering Test was involved. There was also one blown spot, where Angle went for his running superplex, but he didn’t stop in time and ended up knocking Test off the top turnbuckle. This could have been really vicious, but they covered it well, and the marks all thought it was part of the match. This match kicked all kinds of ass.

The intermission then followed, and the crowd was absolutely buzzing following Angle’s performance. The man really is a god among men in the WWE. Anyhow, at the end of the intermission, Cole announces that this is an attendance record for the stadium (to a chorus of abuse from myself I might add… just a pity we were about 100m away, hehe), and we are on for the second half of the show, which features most of the big stars.

Picking right up where we left off before the intermission, is the match that I was personally looking forward to the most:
Lance Storm and Christian vs. Rey Mysterio (no Jr.) and Billy Kidman. The champs got some decent heat on their way to the ring, while the place went nuts for Mysterio. His music really suits his character, and totally got the crowd into the right tempo for this match. The action was a mile a minute here, with the champs working on Mysterio very heavily for much of the start of the match. Plenty of mild “Christian Sucks” chants around, and even a couple of “Lance Storm Sucks” as well. Anyway, Rey eventually gets a hot tag to Kidman who comes in and clears house. A really exciting finish followed, with plenty of highspots including Kidman reversing a superplex into what appeared to be an X-factor from where we were. He also hit the SSP to a great pop, and Rey hit his 6-1-9 (?) kick to an enormous “holy-shit” sorta reaction from those who hadn’t seen it. Then he went pulled the spot of the night: Storm was standing on the top turnbuckle (I think, may have been second), but anyway, Rey runs, and then Kidman grabs him and launches him into the air, at which point he does an awesome ‘rana on Storm. This spot was probably the single best move seen all night, and really deserved the finish. Of course though, this was a house show, so Storm and Christian win following a beltshot behind the ref’s back. This match was fast, fun and exciting, and left the crowd feeling cheated that they didn’t get to see more. Storm and Christian left to some decent heel heat, while Rey left to his music and a huge pop. (I really gotta stop saying that, I’m running out of hyperbole)

Chris Jericho vs. Edge. The crowd was now positively electric, following two kickass matches, and as soon as Jericho’s music hit, I knew the streak would remain alive. Jericho got face pops to the ring, while Edge got probably the second biggest face pop to this point (after Angle) when he came out sporting a video camera and taping the crowd. Jericho then cut an INCREDIBLE pre-match promo, which got him the most heel heat on the night by far. When the man is on, he is absolutely incredible, and this was a textbook whiny heel promo, with Jericho labeling himself the “King of the World,” and in reference to being called a wanker, questioned what a wanker actually was, as well as insulting Australia as a whole. The “King of the World” moniker is really not so outlandish when he performs like this. For the benefit of anybody who actually doesn’t know, its Aussie/British slang for somebody who masturbates. I cant remember whether Edge spoke or not, and cannot remember the actual specifics of the match. Nevertheless, the match was very good, and the end result was Edge getting the win… somehow. After the match, Jericho threw a tantrum, brutalizing some ringside equipment and throwing a portable chair into the ring, which Edge promptly sat on to a nice pop. Following this, Jericho tore up some kid’s sign to huge heat, and Edge climbed some scaffolding. A good match, and though I don’t feel comfortable with declaring a match of the night, the last three all deserve the honour, and all for differing reasons. This match deserves more attention than I gave it here, though I didn’t take any notes on the night (I wanted to enjoy myself after all), and my memory is a little fuzzy due to sleep deprivation.

What WWE house show of the past year would be complete without the obligatory…
Bra and Panties match! Stacy Keibler vs. Torrie Wilson. “Your special guest ring announcer” is Val Venis who proceeds to make lecherous jokes and blindingly obvious puns on the “Down Under” phrase. Totally garbage match, with Torrie winning in spite of interference from Nidia… Torrie is the HHH of the women’s division, it takes half the roster to get her down, and then she still no-sells them and wins anyway… what’s the deal? I didn’t realise Kidman had that much stroke backstage. Anyway, following the match, Val makes some more innuendo and he and Torrie walk off arm in arm.

At this point, (if anybody is still reading), I would just like to make a statement regarding “Smart Marks” at live events. There was one such person in the row behind us, and he thought he was very cool and underground by adding “sucks” every time the “Rocky” chant went up, and walking out on the women’s match calling it “shit wrestling.” NO FUCKING SHIT its bad wrestling you tool, the idea of the match is to give everybody a break before the main… they aren’t trying to pass it off as Flair/Steamboat, so don’t act as if they are. Your insistence on keeping your “Smark façade” probably caused you to not enjoy the show. Really mate, you may never get a chance to see the WWE again, and you will probably regret being so “underground” later when you realised you didn’t enjoy yourself at all. I am a Smart Mark. I am not impressed that you can add sucks to a Rocky chant. I enjoyed myself. You probably didn’t.

With that aside, we move on to our main event for the Undisputed Title…
Rock vs. HHH vs. Brock Lesnar w/ Paul Heyman under Triple Threat rules. Rock and Trips both come out to fairly large face pops, though surprisingly, I would say Angle’s was larger. Again, Brock comes out to no heat… to the surprise of absolutely nobody. I didn’t really follow the match too closely, but it wasn’t better in any facet than any of the previous matches. There were some decent “Rocky” chants through the match, and Rock won the match following the Rock Bottom on HHH. The finish was shit, as everybody hit their finisher at least twice, which sorta bored the crowd as they wanted to see a real finish, and that sort of thing only has its place in certain situations… needless to say this wasn’t one of them. In spite of this I was very happy to see Brock kick out of the Pedigree clean… After the match Rock and Trips (who was playing a face) brutalised Brock for a bit, then isolated Heyman. In an amusing segment, they all sorta played around a bit (it was cool live), with Heyman refusing to shake their hand for fear of being hit. Anyway, eventually Trips pedigrees him, and then both Rock and HHH give Heyman versions of the People’s Elbow. Throughout the entire segment, Rock was teasing turning on Trips, and following this, Rock did his usual promo spiel. One question though… how can the Rock finally come “back” to Mel-bawrne when he has never been here before? Oh well…

Overall, this was a great show to attend for the Australian public, as 99% of the audience had never attended a live event before and as such this was just one continual mark-out moment for me. Would this show last though? I think not, since once you take away the emotion and atmosphere that you only get at the show, this card would probably be exposed for its lack of depth and lacklustre main event. This is a similar sort of thing to Rock/Hogan at Wrestlemania X-8. However if it ever were to come out on DVD, I know I personally would buy it and recommend it, simply for the personal nostalgia and the “I was there” factor. So for me, this show gets a huge “thumbs-up,” but if I were watching it on TV/PPV, it would probably be a thumbs in the middle at best, although that could vary wildly, as it is very difficult to assess the quality of live matches from distance.

But this was a great experience, and I personally cannot wait for the next time the WWE comes back Down Under…

Thanks for reading this (if you lasted this far), and feel free to contact me on ICQ/AIM. I’m always online and happy to chat.

-Matt Irvine
AIM: TVM18AU
ICQ: 51342565




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