by 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 ended up leading to the greatest run of his career.
Austin would go 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.
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 would come 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, would go 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 would face 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. Sadly, the WCW/ECW Invasion would fail badly shortly after all of this, but for this 24 hour period, the possibilities seemed endless.
Billy and Chuck were so sexay tho!!