100 Worst WWE Matches Ever - 13 - Al Snow vs. Big Boss Man

Hardcore Championship - Kennel from Hell - Unforgiven 1999

Apr 16, 2024

When people discuss the over-the-top car crash nature of the Attitude Era, invariably they will discuss the story of Al Snow, Big Boss Man, and an ill-fated chihuahua named Pepper. It is one of the great examples of Wrestlecrap in the history of WWE. In the summer of 1999, Al Snow and Big Boss Man had a long rivalry which escalated to the point where Big Boss Man would kidnap, cook, and ultimately feed his dog Pepper to Al Snow. According to Al Snow, it was originally suggested that it was Head that was due to be killed off, but Vince Russo’s pitch was shot down because Head was too popular with the crowds. If Boss Man’s antics sound unhinged, then you are correct, but that is very much in character for him in 1999. He may have one of the most deranged years of any wrestler ever. After being hung by the Undertaker at Wrestlemania following one of the worst Hell in a Cell matches ever, the rest of his year featured the following:

Kidnapping and murdering Pepper.
Feeding said dog to Al Snow.
Literally pissing on Pepper’s grave.
Interrupting the ten bell salute for Big Show’s dead father with one of the most legendary and hilarious poems of all time.
Stealing the coffin of Big Show’s dad at the funeral.

Now if this all sounds awful, you’re correct … to an extent. However, this all falls nicely into the “so bad it’s good” category. In the hands of most wrestlers, these segments would have been painful and worthless, but Ray Traylor’s heel performances were fantastic and he gave it his all. His comedic timing and the sheer absurdity of his over-the-top cartoonishly villainous antics made these some of the more memorable moments of the entire year. If you don’t laugh at his poem to Big Show’s dad, then I’m afraid to say you don’t have a soul.

If only the matches could have lived up to the moments.

The Kennel from Hell is an old school blue style cage surrounding the ring and on the outside of that is the Hell in a Cell structure. And between them at ringside will be a pack of Rottweilers that were (in theory) there to attack any competitor that approached. The only way to win is to escape both structures. The Hell in a Cell felt special after 1998, but 1999 could have ruined the stipulation forever were it not for a mammoth effort by Triple H and Cactus Jack in February 2000.

In a rather needlessly graphic description, JR mentions (twice) that Al Snow’s chihuahua Pepper was taken, butchered, skinned, cooked, and fed to Al Snow. King, who could not have taken this story less seriously, takes the time to laugh at Pepper’s demise.

Al Snow enters first, and doesn’t let Boss Man through the inner cage door. Meanwhile the handlers escort the Rottweilers to the ring.

Let’s take a second to understand just how ridiculous of a situation this was. WCW in mid-1999, while rapidly approaching creative bankruptcy and putting out one of the most putrid wrestling products of all time, decided to bring in some Doberman to attack Sting at Great American Bash. It was an angle that was universally panned, and rightfully so. And yet, even WCW still had enough about them to get trained dogs for the stunt. A company so negligent that it nearly caused its biggest star to lose an arm breaking real glass on a car window, still managed to have the common fucking sense to use a trained dog in a stunt.

WWE, just three months after the Great American Bash, decided to also run a match that involved supposed attack dogs. And WWE, somehow, took a terrible decision by WCW and made it even worse by not paying for appropriately trained animals. This was despite Al Snow constantly pleading with Vince Russo to make sure they were.

As a result, we get a pack of undisciplined, yet unthreatening, placid canines. The tone is set when the first dog enters the cell and immediately has a piss right there on the floor right on camera. They have no interest in the wrestlers whatsoever, and their handlers move them to the corner of the cell off screen for the majority of the match. The only time any of the dogs look remotely threatening are when two in particular are barking at each other, nowhere near where the wrestlers were fighting.

Al Snow manages to get out the 1st cage to the floor. Instead of running to the door of the Hell in a Cell, he starts climbing the cell … from the inside. He then decides that the prospect of these polite dogs is so terrifying that he’d rather climb back into the blue cage. It’s at this point we can probably mention how silly it is to have this blood feud (I know it’s comedic, but he fed the man his dog for god’s sake!) where the way to win is by running away out of 2 cages.

There’s a lot of waiting around as they meekly brawl atop the blue cage. At this point the dogs are completely calm and don’t even have the energy to bark at one another. They are far more interested in allegedly shitting and trying to fuck around ringside. The fan reaction dies once they realise how passive the dogs are, clearly also unamused by how silly the wrestlers are for pretending to be scared by them. By the time the dogs are docile, Lawler has lost the plot on commentary and is just going wild laughing at them.

Big Boss Man starts trying to cut his way out the ceiling of the Cell. JR describes this as taking the easy way out, which seems a bit of an unfair criticism to Boss Man, if we’re being honest.

Every time we get a cut to the dogs at ringside, the surrounding area is just littered with piss. It is all over the place.

It’s bad enough watching these grown men act scared of dogs that are nowhere near them, and are otherwise utterly unthreatening. It’s also a really boring heatless match. That said, I don’t put much blame on the wrestlers. The two seem confused about how they should approach the escape attempts, which leads to multiple moments where there’s a massive lag in the action. But the stipulation was so bad and embarrassing that it feels like an impossible task. They do bring some weapons into the ring, and both end up blading which is way more commitment to the hate than necessary. There’s a moment when Boss Man hits Al Snow with a shovel so weakly that the fans start booing again, and JR openly calls it soft. This is one of those matches where JR uses every euphemism to describe how awful this is. Meanwhile, Lawler spends the entire match just laughing on commentary at how stupid this all is. Boss Man then way-overcompensates with a nasty looking shovel hit to the back of Al’s head.

To top it all off, the finish is bizarre and poorly worked. It starts when Boss Man handcuffs Al Snow to the turnbuckle. He does the typical “heel taunts a handcuffed babyface” spot before he goes back to climb out the hole in the ceiling. Al Snow manages to break the handcuffs simply by diving, snapping the chain of the turnbuckle. About a minute later, he manages to climb out the blue cage, and kicks down the Hell in a Cell door to win the match while Boss Man is still on top of the cell.

Jerry Lawler openly comments on how useless the Rottweilers were in the match, while JR apologises to the fans for putting us through that.

I’ve heard this described as the worst WWE match ever, which is not something I’d agree with. Obviously being the number 13 match on the countdown suggests I think it is terrible, embarrassing, bad, and any other negative adjectives you can think of will probably fit the description. It’s a complete disaster on a conceptual level and somehow even worse in practice. But I wouldn’t even call it the worst Hardcore Championship match ever. There’s several matches to come that are either offensive, failures on a much larger scale, or even more embarrassing than this.

Anyway, in just over a week’s time, Vince Russo was out of WWE for good. Disagreements with working hours, plus a hefty pay increase from WCW saw Russo leave the company forever, making this his likely final, tragic gift to the Attitude Era. For better or worse, this is one of the most renowned matches of the Attitude Era.

In a poetic summary of this mess, one of the dog handlers falls on his face as he chases Big Boss Man to the back.