100 Worst WWE Matches Ever - 59 - Eric Bischoff vs. Teddy Long
Survivor Series 2005
Mercifully for you, and for me, and for anyone else that may watch this match or read this review. This will be short. The match that is. The review, we’ll see.
The 2005 Survivor Series was the first time WWE committed to a Raw vs SmackDown theme for a pay-per-view. If you’ve followed WWE for the last 20 years, you know that the company has been quite lax with their own rules of the brand split to the point where it became a joke. Over time, the split became so watered down at various points in large parts thanks to trades, an overabundance of drafts, and people turning up on either show as and when they pleased.
This wasn’t always the case, though. In 2005, the brand split had been faithfully adhered to for 3 years. The snippets of inter-promotional matches and teases felt like special exciting affairs you’d only see on a cross-branded pay-per-view. When WWE announced plans for a Raw vs SmackDown pay-per-view, it was met with much anticipation as the first of its kind. What sort of matches would we get? Batista vs Kurt Angle? Randy Orton vs John Cena? Shawn Michaels vs. Rey Mysterio?
How about Eric Bischoff vs Teddy Long?
Maybe there is a place for a non-wrestler vs non-wrestler match on a PPV. After all, Wrestlemania 17 is one of the most fondly remembered PPVs in history, and that featured Vince McMahon vs Shane McMahon. Hell, possibly my favourite PPV ever featured a shockingly fun tuxedo match between Paul E Dangerously and Jim Cornette. So it’s not always a death sentence for your card. These feel very much like the exception to the rule.
If Teddy Long vs Eric Bischoff sounds like a bad enough match to you, you may be mistaken for thinking that the action in the ring is the worst part of this tragedy. I can live with a bad 5 minute match - even one as lame, unfunny and thoroughly unentertaining as this. What I can’t live with is the molestation of my eardrums at the hands of the Raw and SmackDown commentary team. You will struggle to find a worse PPV commentary than this particular show. History should remember this along with King of the Ring 1994 and Wrestlemania 27 as one of the all time worst announced shows in WWE history. Blessing our ears for this one is Michael Cole - who at this point still needs a strong partner to get the best out of him - and one of my least favourite commentators of all time, Jonathan Coachman. Coach in particular seemed to make it his mission to make 2005 Raw as audibly repulsive as humanly possible.
From the start of the entrances right to the end of this match, all we get is useless bickering between the two. I think they were going for funny banter, but instead it was distracting and irritating. Not only are they arguing, but they raise their own voices to be heard over the other. This is like a preview to what would eventually become heel Michael Cole. Someone, somewhere heard this and thought “this would be a cool idea to run for 2 years”.
Anyway, Teddy Long comes out accompanied by the short-lived Palmer Cannon, the network executive who ultimately did very little in WWE outside of being a bad actor and an inside joke for Vince McMahon. Despite the fact that Bischoff is trained in karate and this has been established in storylines before, he has to pretend to be unable to catch a visibly feeble and slow Teddy Long, who dodges. Then he danced. And then they repeated this three or four more times.. It’s not long before the crowd turns on the match with boring chants. To further the stupidity, Palmer Cannon distracts both referees and Teddy Long, which allows Bischoff to finally catch and choke Teddy. They can’t even make the interference make sense because Cannon and his stupid over the top goofy acting costs the guy that he’s trying to help. The rest of the match is basically just Bischoff choking Long until the finish.
Just to annoy me even more, the Boogeyman’s music hits. Boogeyman, who is one of my least favourite gimmicks of all time, just further plunges this match down into the abyss of my soul. He was introduced by Cannon a few weeks earlier in what may be the only significant thing the character ever did (note - “significant”, not “good”). While already an all time stupid gimmick, it mercifully hasn’t hit the grossness that would come a few weeks later when he’d start eating worms. Boogeyman hits Bischoff with a pumphandle slam, allowing Teddy Long to pick up the win in what would be Eric Bischoff’s final WWE match. He would be out of WWE a little over a week later following this show.
It’s one of those matches that I just have no idea why it exists outside of being something that Vince McMahon finds funny. The match isn’t humorous, the crowd hates it, it’s been universally shit on since it happened. I don’t understand why this exists. And I don’t understand why I’ve written more about it and you’ve taken longer to read about it than the match actually takes to watch. Another one of those matches that is only (relatively) low on the list because it is kept short, which might be the only sensible decision about this whole ordeal.
A more sensible decision, would have been to not do the match at all.
Up Next - one of my more anticipated reviews. For one night only, 2003 Triple H is back.
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