by 2001 The Two Manpower Trip is Formed the Night After WrestleMania X7
Since the fall of 1997, Stone Cold Steve Austin spent every moment he could, terrorizing Vince McMahon. Despite Vince not being an active member of the in-ring roster, the two formed what is seen as the greatest Pro Wrestling rivalry if all time. They personified the word hatred. There was God vs Satan, Pepsi vs Coke, McDonalds vs Burger King, and McMahon vs Austin. They were different as Black and White.
That is why the conclusion of the main event of The Rock vs Austin 28-minute mat classic had the most shocking moment in pro wrestling history. No one, and I mean not a soul on planet Earth could have foreseen Mr. McMahon joining forces with Stone Cold Steve Austin to help defeat The Rock. Austin had teamed up with his mortal enemy, to defeat his greatest rival on the biggest stage.
The crowd of 67,000 plus of Austins fellow Texans couldn’t believe their eyes in the Astrodome as Austin turned heel. Neither could the millions upon millions watching from home. All of this coming after 25 plus minutes of incredible action that saw both men bloodied and beaten.
Both men survived countless Rock Bottoms, Stone Cold Stunners, Sharpshooters and every other finishing move they could apply. In the end, the greatest show of all time ended with the biggest shock of all time as Austin used McMahon to take the title from The Rock.
Since the summer of 1999, a feud between HHH and Stone-Cold Steve Austin was brewing. It began over the WWF World Title and escalated to the point, that HHH took Austin out of action with injury several times. HHH was the person who gained the most with Austin out of the picture as he went on to have 4 WWF Title reigns from August of 99 through WrestleMania X7.
It became clear that with Austin out of the WWF, that HHH would dominate. He stood with the most to gain and that is why it didn’t come as a shock that HHH was the man who hired Rikishi to run Austin over with his car at Survivor Series 1999.
With all of this being the case, it was of no shock that Austin focused his venom on HHH upon his return from injury in late 2000 and early 2001. The feud headlined several Pay Per Views and replaced McMahon vs Austin as the companies largest rivalry. That’s also why it left the Monday Night Raw after WrestleMania X7 in such deep suspense as fans wondered how HHH would take to his father-in-law Mr. McMahon partnering with Austin.
HHH, like everyone else was shocked by this, and let Mr. McMahon know about it quickly on Raw. Not only was HHH pissed and teased to turn babyface, but Austin never said he was joining McMahon for anything more than one night. Was it all a ruse? What was actually going on? Well, all those questions would be answered as the show would close out with both men teaming up to beat up The Rock, and christen their new name as, “The Two Man Power Trip” at the conclusion of The Rock vs Austin cage rematch.
The pairing was very successful as you would imagine it would be. In fact, they beat Kane and The Undertaker in a main event match at the Backlash PPV in April to become WWF Tag Team Champions. HHH took the intercontinental title from Jericho during this same stretch, as the two men held a combination of three different championships together.
Who only knows how long this union would have lasted and how many titles they would have racked up in the process. Sadly, we’ll never know as HHH was hurt badly in a tag match later that spring against Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit. He tore his quad and was out close to 8 months before making an incredible comeback. All of this would end up leading to the greatest run of his career.
Austin went on to hold onto the WWF Championship until the following December. He dropped shortly to Kurt Angle in honor of 9/11, only to retrieve two weeks later. A lot of this angle was messed up because of the both botches WCW/ECW Invasion angle, and his act as a heel never quite taking off.
Elsewhere on the card, Test recruited the APA to help him in his feud with The Radicals. Eddie Guerrero took the European Championship from Test the night before at WrestleMania, but the former Motley Crew bodyguard got the best out of the Radicals, on this evening. Test would practically kick Saturn’s head off to gain the win.
Stephanie McMahon, still upset about what Trish Stratus did to her father the night before, challenged her to a strap match, to the delight of single and horny men everywhere. A few moves were even mixed in, including a DDT from Stephanie. But, for the most part, the match centered around both women whipping each other with a strap.
In the end, William Regal interfered to help Stephanie before Chris Jericho ran down and the match was thrown out. Jericho would then be punished for helping Trish later in the night as he was placed in a handicap match against Regal and Kurt Angle. Chris Benoit came down to help his Canadian brother, with some foreshadowing of their team to come.
Rhyno destroyed Crash Holly in under two minutes and the proceeded to spear Molly Holly into next week right after. Rhyno, went on to underachieve greatly during several runs with the WWE to follow. They tried to match him up with smaller opponents to cover up for his size, but it was clear that he was nothing more than an ECW creation. You can almost call him, Taz 2.0 in that aspect.
In the semi-main event that evening, two former DX stablemates XPAC and Badass Billy Gunn faced off. Not much to say here other than Billy Gunn was barely seen after this latest beatdown. XPAC would go on to join the WCW Invasion later in the summer while Billy found Chuck, but we won’t touch on that here.
As for the night in general, there were zero turns, zero returns, and zero debuts. But, when you look at how good the night before was at WrestleMania X7, it really didn’t need any of that.
