BRM Reviews WWE Global Warning Tour: Melbourne (disappointing)

[Big Red Machine]

WWE Global Warning Tour: Melbourne (8/10/2002)- Melbourne, Australia


Hello and welcome to BRM’s Monthly “This Day in Wrestling History” Review Series! After venturing away from it last month, this month be returning to my Shameful Shelf of Unwatched DVDs for a rather interesting selection. A house show. And not one of those ECW Fan-Cams, either. This is a commercially released DVD of a WWE House Show. It’s also one that takes place rather early in my fandom… and also WWE’s first show in Australia in sixteen years. Everyone hop into your time machines and go back to the last time that The Rock was a full-time member of the roster. The year is 2002, the continent is Australia, and the show is WWE Global Warning Tour: Melbourne.

Remember when they would put previews at the beginning of DVDs instead of it loading right into the menu, and it wouldn’t let you skip them? Well, I didn’t. So that was a nasty surprise. The previews were for Hulk Still Rules and then for Divas Undressed. Thankfully, no one else walked into the room.

Holy crap, there is commentary on this house show. I haven’t heard Michael Cole and Tazz together in forever.

STEPHANIE MCMAHON WELCOMES US TO THE SHOW- She is the general manager of Smackdown, and this is a Smackdown show… which makes me wonder why Triple H is in the main event.

KISS MY ASS MATCH: Rikishi vs. Rico- 3.5/10
Jimmy Korderas distracted himself looking at absolutely nothing so that Rico could cut Rikishi off with a low blow. This was so bad that Michael Cole just went right ahead and called it out. Other than that one spot, this was fun, basic stuff. Rikishi won a short match cleanly.
After the match, Rico tried to attack Rikishi to avoid kissing his ass, but Rikishi dodged the attack, beat Rico up, and gave him a Stinkface.
After that, Rikishi invited some children into the ring to dance with him. The children then attacked Rikishi, turning heel. Just kidding.

JAMIE NOBLE AND NIDIA LEARN HOW TO SURF- horrendous
This was long, boring, and shot in a very annoying manner. This went a lot longer than the opening match did. We also got some gratuitous beach and ocean shots while Noble and Nidia talked about how fun and beautiful Australia was.

WWE CRUISERWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Jamie Noble(c) (w/Nidia) vs. The Hurricane- 6.75/10
Nidia forced herself on The Hurricane during this match. Cole decided to ignore this title match to talk about Australian Rules Football.
Hurricane worked the neck, but lost due to a distraction from Nidia and Noble using illegal leverage. They did some stuff after the match to still have the babyface standing tall at the end.

LANCE STORM, CHRISTIAN AND KURT ANGLE GO TO THE ZOO- very disappointing. This was nowhere near as funny as you would think. It was also intercut with Kurt being a talking head, and he said the words “babyface” and “heel.”

WWE WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: the Un-Americans (Lance Storm & Christian) (c) vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. & Billy Kidman- 6.75/10
The Un-American had defected to Raw by this point. You’d think the announcers would have pushed that this was a chance for Smackdown to get the tag titles back, but apparently not. This was more solid stuff, but nothing to write home about. The Un-Americans cheated to win.
Holy sh*t, Taz made fun of his own height!

BILLY KIDMAN, TORRIE WILSON, & EDGE DO TOURISTY STUFF- boring
This was also shot in an annoying manner.

CHRIS JERICHO vs. EDGE- 7.5/10
Oh yeah. Jericho had jumped to Raw by this point also. The obvious answer for why he, Triple H, and the Un-Americans are allowed to be here is that they had all recently been on Smackdown and thus were “already booked” for this tour, and WWE especially didn’t want to disappoint the Australian fans by advertising people for their first tour in sixteen years and then having them not show up, and thus Vince gave special dispensation to bend the rules for this tour… so can we please have someone say that?
Cole randomly brought up the cleanliness of the taxi cabs in Melbourne, so Taz felt honor-bound to defend New York City taxis, which he did as only he can: “I had one taxi that had pigeons and rats on the floor. It’s good. You can play with them while you’re riding.” I nearly died of laughter.
Edge won cleanly in what has been by far the best thing on this show up to this point.


BRA & PANTIES MATCH WITH VAL VENIS AS SPECIAL GUEST RING ANNOUNCER: Torrie Wilson vs. Stacy Keibler- 1/10
It was what it was. At least it was short. Nidia interfered for some reason or another. Torrie overcame the interference and one. Also, she attacked Stacy after the match. That wasn’t good. Babyfaces shouldn’t do that for no reason.

WWE UNDISPUTED WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: The Rock(c) vs. Triple H vs. Brock Lesnar (w/Paul Heyman)- 7.75/10
We started off with the two babyfaces pinballing monster heel Brock Lesnar between them. There is no way this would happen if this wasn’t a house show.
Lots of good stuff here. Brock didn’t look out of place at all. Rock pinned Hunter clean to retain, but the more notable thing to me was that they had Brock kick out of both The People’s Elbow and the Pedigree.

This was a house show, with a lot of short matches. In hindsight, I feel kind of foolish for expecting anything more. Throw in the fact that the additional features were really bad, and this is a show that I am really regretting buying. Hopefully I won’t have that same feeling next month when we return for the conclusion of something we started earlier this year.


BONUS MATCHES FROM 3/6/1986 IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA:
Your commentary team for these matches is Lord Alfred Hayes and Gorilla Monsoon.

THE ROUGEAUS vs. THE MOONDOGS- 6.5/10
The very Australian ring announcer pronounced Rougeau as “Ragu.” This was the Rougeau’s debut. This was effective, but nothing to write home about.

DON MURACO & MR. FUJI vs. S.D. JONES & KING TONGA- 5.5/10
The crowd was very into King Tonga.

ANDRE THE GIANT vs. BIG JOHN STUDD- 4.75/10
This match had no commentary. They did some stuff, but there was a lot of gaga, too. Andre won cleanly. Studd attacked him after the match, but Andre fought him off.