2000-era hhh/steph/kurt storyline

[Guest DeputyHawk]

2000 was somewhat of a golden era for the wwf, but by the end of the year the malaise had set in and the product took a downward turn which arguably has continued ever since. the hhh/steph/angle love triangle storyline, soap opera-ish as it was, was absolutley compulsive viewing and one of the best angles over the course of a brilliant year. it was given a fantastic build over serveral months, detailed below ...

 

1--steph & kurt started innocently 'flirting' with each other backstage as early as may or june.

 

2--steph helped angle beat jericho to advance in the KOTR tourney quarter finals

 

3--hhh & steph started bickering backstage when she thought there was something going on between hunter & trish stratus, amplified by rock & lita leaving hhh & trish in the '69' position following a mixed tag match on raw in july.

 

4--that same week on smackdown, hhh, Kurt & Stephanie beat the dudley boyz & lita in the main event. kurt & steph hugged after the bell as hunter looked on in jealous anger.

 

5--hhh & kurt refused to speak to each other as august began, commissioner foley made them both no.1 contender to rock's world title going into summerslam

 

6--vince and shane both got involved, telling them their aggression towards each other was upsetting poor little steph, and for a couple weeks they stood united against rocky.

 

7--it all kicked off the smackdown before summerslam. commissioner foley made stephanie choose a partner to face rock & lita in the main event. she couldn't decide so flipped a coin. kurt won the toss much to hhh's anger. steph got knocked out during the match and after the bell, kurt kissed her backstage.

 

8--during the three-way main event at summerslam, rock beat hunter and kurt to retain the belt. steph again took a bump so angle carried her prone body to the back as the show went off the air.

 

9--the next night on raw, no one knew where kurt and steph went after the show. a furious trips demanded answers but angle had a concussion and couldn't remember anything other than being in a hotel room with her!

 

10-the following smackdown, steph showed up and said she had been by the bedside of her injured brother shane since summerslam. kurt showed her a video tape of hhh supportively hugging his former flame chyna. steph promptly slapped hunter in the face. trips went batshit and threw furniture about the locker room. the police arrived and arrested him for suspected domestic violence.

 

11-the first signs of the golden angle becoming tarnished showed up the following raw. hhh & steph demanded to know who called the cops over their domestic. commissioner foley suggested angle, chyna or eddie guerrero (chyna's then beau), but no - it was test who did it in revenge for steph dumping him for hunter months earlier. okay, that didn't make much sense in the context of the current angle, and then test helped angle beat up hhh.

 

12-the storyline foundered for a week or two. the next raw hhh & kurt brawled, injuring steph in the process, and they seemed to make up again. steph asked foley to cancel the hhh vs. kurt match scheduled for unforgiven. kurt said he just wanted to be steph's friend, hunter amusingly accused him of playing for the other team, kurt accused hhh of domestic abuse, and the match was on again. hhh started getting pretty big face pops during all this.

 

13-the story got great again the smackdown before unforgiven - shane returned and accidentally blew steph's cover about being by his bedside after summerslam. in the main event, rock, undertaker & a face hhh beat kane, benoit & angle. after the bell, kurt gave steph a good snogging.

 

14-the big blowoff to it all came at the unforgiven ppv. triple-h simply won it after making steph chose between him & angle. she chose hunter and booted angle in the nuts. hhh give her a really rough, blood-soaked kiss after the bell and was all 'i am alpha male'. AND THAT WAS IT! months of build-up for THAT? it was ridiculous. their primary storyline over the summer was given a masterful build and no payoff whatsoever. it made no sense. the hotel room was never explained, steph's whereabouts the night of summerslam never revealed, and the whole hhh face turn was just abandoned the following month when it was revealed he was the mastermind behind the rikishi - rock - austin vehicular manslaughter debacle. the product took a noticeable dip in quality following the unforgiven ppv that year, and the fantastic momentum which had been generating all year was lost in one fell swoop.

 

WHY??? did the writers changing around this time have something to do with this? did hhh pull a power-play? were steph & angle supposed to become an item? why was the plug pulled on hhh's slow-burn face turn? if anyone has any ideas or info, post them here because the more i think about it, the more this scenario seems to be the definitive turning point in the booking fortunes of the promotion. so why did it all go wrong here? answers on a postcard.

[Guest bps "The Truth" 21]

The angle ended because Steph was supposed to end up with Angle...

 

and HHH vetoed it.

[Guest DeputyHawk]

is that definitely known? if that is definitely the case, i can see where the hhhating on this board is justified. that period of the wwf was pure gold, and hunter killed it outright with one power play. and he says he loves the business?

 

EDIT: why would he go along with it for months and then baulk at the final hurdle, insulting all the fans who had been following the storyline with at least some degree of expectation?

[Guest kane3212321]

The first sign of the angle stuffin up was the rushed kiss before summerslam to knock up the buyrate. Then they screwed up the Test thing by not having Angle interfere to give Test the win, instead HHH was superman against him. Then the Unforgiven match just finalised the whole angle is being bad.

[Guest DeputyHawk]

it's so frustrating. this kind of crap is pretty commonplace now, and had been back in the shawn days too, but the phase between russo leaving and unforgiven the booking had for the most part been as close to perfect as possible. does anyone know if the writing team that handled this period leaving the fed have anything to do with hunter having the payoff changed and steph taking over? what's the deal with those writers, i forget their names?

[Guest Last Warrior]

Heres an interesting thought.

 

What state would the WWE be in now if they had decided to go with the original angle and let steph choose Kurt.

 

It's interesting to think about everything that could have been different.

 

What do you think?

[Guest NoCalMike]

Funny this gets posted because me and and some other guys from the board were discussing this EXACT BOTCHED angle, at work today. It was pretty unanimous that it made no sense for her to pick Triple H and it just ruined all the buildup for the most lame blowoff possible.

[Guest Cavi]

does anyone know if the writing team that handled this period leaving the fed have anything to do with hunter having the payoff changed and steph taking over?  what's the deal with those writers, i forget their names?

I know that Chris Kreski was the writer (or one of them, if there were more) who left in the fall of that year because of being overworked, stressed out, whatever.

[Guest bcu1979]

does anyone know if the writing team that handled this period leaving the fed have anything to do with hunter having the payoff changed and steph taking over? what's the deal with those writers, i forget their names?

I doubt the old writers had much of anything to do with it. Kurt Angle said in his book that the reason the affair was scrapped was because Triple H felt it would hurt the credibility of his character to ever take Stephanie back after she cheated on him. Remember, this is around the time that Stephanie was promoted to head writer and the Triple H/Stephanie relationship allegedly began.

 

This also happens to be around the time that Triple H managed to go over Angle, Jericho and Benoit in the matter of a couple months when everyone was saying they would be the next tier of WWE main eventers.

[Guest wwefan4ever_brethartrulz_18]

The angle didn't have an ending. At Unforgiven Stephanie chose Hunter. But then she was Kurt's manager at No Mercy. And then Triple H turned heel on Austin and it was all forgotten.

 

That's why I'll defend the WWE with the Kane-HHH angle. Yes, the skit on RAW sucked. But it's called "continuinity", it was missing from WCW and from late 2000 in WWE. I don't think there should be a new storyilne every 2 months. (Invasion, Flair-McMahon, nWo, roster split).

 

and I still think it's a plan by HHH & Kane (maybe Kane will turn on RVD), and they will reveal nothing really happend 10 years ago.

[Guest buffybeast]

I thought the angle ended because the fans did not respond to Rikishi as the driver who ran over SCSA. The company freaked, and decided to pull in HHH to save the angle, thus killing the Angle/HHH/Steph storyline.

 

That's what I figured.

[Guest Kahran Ramsus]

It ended because HHH was only the number 3 face (behind Austin & Rock), but figured out he could be the number 1 heel.

[Guest snowfan]

It ended because HHH was only the number 3 face (behind Austin & Rock), but figured out he could be the number 1 heel.

Bingo!

 

 

Nice shooting KR.

[Guest mach7]

I dunno, 2000 was amazing, but I kinda liked the early part of 2002. Just before Triple H injured his quad. The "Two Man Power Trip" was one of my favourite storylines from 2001, besides the initial ECW-return.

[Guest RenegadeX28]

That was one of the best angles the year 2000 had for the WWF. It kept me hooked. That angle worked. Every Monday and Thursday, I would tune in, anxious to find out what was next. Then, it faded away into history..

[Guest Zero_Cool]

The good thing about the angle is that all of the major players got into the action, even if for just little segments. I think the angle helped a lot of people get over with the crowd, because they all showed their true characters.

 

Too bad this angle will never be fully resolved. Hell, why can't Angle start coming onto Steph in order to get better positioning on the card. It would kind of be like art immitating life.

 

Edit: ACK! I'm on RAW now! Oh well, I know how to fix this.

[Guest DeputyHawk]

while i'm on the vague subject of stephanie's bizarre go-nowhere storyline attractions, does anyone know if there were ever any serious plans for her & chris jericho to get it together?

 

there was a prolongued mocking/flirting routine going on from roughly mid-2000 until mid-2001, begun at kotr 2000 when jericho kissed her and said she tasted of roadkill, thus drawing the ire of boyfriend trips and resulting in y2j being "soundly defeated yet elevated" at fully loaded in the way that only hunter can do.

 

the jericho-steph issue was put aside during the hhh/angle feud, and lay dormant until steph bought ecw the following year, and then (with hunter out nursing his quad) the playful banter kicked off again, with chris cheekily calling her a slut repeatedly and in one moment of inspired comic genius throwing a cream pie in her face while hyping the 'planet of the apes' movie with someone in a gorilla costume. errr, anyway ... steph was determined to have rhyno beat jericho at summerslam, but instead chris won that match and snogged steph again in the process.

 

steph's hatred of jericho continued to bubble away, she helped rvd beat him at unforgiven, but then 'fucked up' (or did she?) and inadvertently helped chris finally win the big one and go over rock for the wcw world title at no mercy. it seemed almost a certainty at the time that jericho was on the verge of turning heel and hooking up with steph.

 

as it transpired, chris finally did turn at survivor series, but as a result of that angle steph was GONE FROM TV FOREVER (less than 2 months). she eventually did become his 'manager' going into wrestlemania against a returned hhh, but by that point no one gave a rat's ass anymore, and all he did was look for her hand lotion, walk her dog, and lose all his heat.

 

now, obviously the steph/jericho relationship wasn't nearly as tightly plotted as steph/angle, and may never have been intended to be anything more than a mutual dislike, but they seemed to harp on it just a little too much for it to be going nowhere, and around late 2001 i was convinced they would just jump on each other during one of their backstage insult exchanges, but much like the angle, uh, angle, it just never payed off.

 

who can bring the wisdom on this particular little destinationless venture please?