Eddie Guerrero v Chris Jericho v Chris Benoit v X-Pac (No Way Out, 2/25/01) - EPIC
I had no recollection of this being anything at all. Must've been about 18 years since I last watched it. The four-way dance is not a match type I have much interest in so I'm not sure what compelled me to give this another go. But I'm glad I did because I thought it nailed the good stuff and kept the stupid shit that comes with the gimmick to a minimum, and might even be the best four-way in WWF history (your mileage will vary on how high that bar sits). In a match like this you want them to limit how much time one or more person is left standing around waiting for the others to do their thing. This had very little of that and any it did have at least felt earned, minus one spell where Eddie and X-Pac were on the floor so we could have an extended Benoit/Jericho segment. Those two felt like the key pairing of the match though, so it sort of had to happen and what they actually did together was a good use of the time. Everyone cycled through their stuff and it felt organic and it's hard to ask for much more.
Eddie and Benoit are a unit heading in and I did not know the Radicalz were a thing again in 2001, but JR refers to them as such. Did they just...put them back together after a year? Eddie had the Chyna angle that was pretty fun for a wee while before it was used as a vehicle to push Chyna and not strap the proverbial rocket to Guerrero. Benoit was in main event programmes throughout 2000 with the Rock. Did they run out of ideas and tell them to go bring Saturn and Malenko out of storage until they came up with something else? Their partnership works fine initially, but you know it'll deteriorate with the sweet nectar of VICTORY in the air. As expected they go from double teams and working as a unit to leathering each other. The Intercontinental title will do that to a man. The cracks started to appear first with Eddie going up top to put the exclamation on a double team, noticing upon climbing the turnbuckles that Benoit had put the Crossface on X-Pac. To be fair to Benoit (although you absolutely do not gotta be fair to him), he only put it on as retaliation when X-Pac started firing back, something X-Pac had the time to do in the first place because Eddie was busy shit-talking someone in the crowd. The second instance of friction, the straw that ultimately broke the camel's back, was when Benoit hit a perfect - I mean PERFECT - German on Jericho and Eddie casually kicked one of his bridging legs from beneath him. After that it was every man for himself.
Waltman was in a weird space in 2001. He'd been in a weird space since about 1999, really. The X-Pac character already feels like a relic of a bygone era here, like when Tommy Rich showed up in ECW as a blowjob babyface despite looking like a melted candle, doing all of his 1983 babyface shtick like he was in the Omni wrestling in front of Wholesome American Families and not the ECW arena full of drunken maniacs who want to see people get thrown off balconies. At least Tommy reinvented himself as a grotesque bastard working for the Italian mob. X-Pac, on the other hand, just started hanging around with bald Aldo Montoya. Anyhow this was a fun X-Pac performance and probably the last great WWF match he was involved in.
I'm not really someone who's bothered about perfect execution on wrestling moves, but I'll say one thing, basically every move in this was executed amazingly. It had the impact that'd make you buy it actually hurting, all of it was done with real snap, no daylight anywhere. Benoit was shredding people with chops, clubbing them about the ears and even his shoulder blocks looked mean, how he'd just completely mow folk down by running into them full force. I feel kind of icky talking about the guy but he certainly nailed the feeling of intense. He wasn't the only one though; Eddie's rana and sliding neckbreaker were gorgeous, X-Pac's kicks were great - honest to god he about took Benoit's whole melon off with a wheel kick - and I don't remember Jericho doing anything hilariously sloppy even one time. No contrived setups, no sequences that obviously bled into the next, all of it feeling as off the cuff as you could realistically expect. Plus we got a nice finish that felt like someone capitalised on a moment and I bought everyone else being too hurt to do anything about it. What an awesomely pleasant surprise.
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