As the calendar switched from 19-something to 20-something, pro wrestling was in a pretty interesting place. The WWF had never been hotter, and drew huge crowds & ratings all year with a very entertaining product. WCW was headed towards the end of its long road to ruin, with every single warning sign run over along the way. The signs were there for ECW as well, as their attempt to compete led to financial problems that not even Paul Heyman could wiggle his way out of.

My Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration continues with a year that had been two thousand years in the making. Did it live up to the hype? Can’t say, I was on vicodin most of the year! But that’s another story I’ll save for when I can afford a therapist…

5. My year started with a Chris Jericho promo

Wrestling was so hot in the late stages of 1999 & early 2000 that USA & TNT used it as holiday programming. USA had a WWF special on New Year’s Eve that lasted until just a couple of minutes past midnight. It was the perfect time for Y2J, Chris Jericho, to come out and address the audience about the new millennium and how things would never, ever, be the same again.

I wasn’t able to find any footage of this, and I doubt WWE is in a hurry to post it, but Chris Jericho being the first wrestler to appear in 2000 made perfect sense to me. Jericho had his ups & downs early in his WWF tenure, but he had enough big moments to ensure that people wanted to see more. Apparently they still do, if the demos are any indication.

4. TLC revolutionizes the tag team scene

The Dudley Boyz loved putting people (especially women during this time period) through tables. The Hardy Boyz liked to fly off of ladders. Edge & Christian favored chairs as their tool of destruction. It made perfect sense to put them all together in one match, and a wrestling tradition was born. These three teams had some of the craziest matches that mainstream wrestling fans have ever seen. I was rooting for the Dudleyz at the time, as I had seen them move up the ranks in ECW. All three teams were hot though. I remember so many kids at school wearing purple Hardyz t-shirts. Edge & Christian were hilarious and became great personalities during this time frame. They all made each other great.

WWE hasn’t had a hotter tag team division since, and it’s hard to believe that they ever will.

3. The Night The World Changed

WCW had taken a turn for the worse during 1999, no doubt. The arrival of Vince Russo was supposed to make WCW competitive with the WWF, instead it sent the company into a state of decline that it wouldn’t recover from. Russo’s half-baked ideas needed editors, and WCW didn’t have any. Until they decided to combine Russo with Eric Bischoff.

Then things went completely banana. It’s tough to narrow it down to one moment. David Arquette winning the WCW Championship? That’s a good one, but I’m going to list the first night of this experiment since I had to watch it twice in recent years for podcasts. It gets worse every time. Is the highlight when Bischoff asks Sid if he’s got any scissors, gets no reaction, assumes nobody heard it and says it again? Or Mike Awesome attacking Kevin Nash? Maybe it’s Shane Douglas attacking Ric Flair! There are just way too many items to choose from here.

2. The Radicalz Make The Move

I started digging into the Internet Wrestling Community in 1999. It turned out that I had a lot of catching up to do. So many things to learn about wrestling history, and so many wrestlers to learn to appreciate. Fortunately, I already liked a lot of the wrestlers the Internet got behind, especially guys like Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero & Perry Saturn. I had an idea how WCW was misusing their talents, but I didn’t know just how bad it was. So when they arrived in the WWF, I was pretty excited about it.

Would I have predicted the way things went from there? Absolutely not. I wasn’t surprised that Benoit & Guerrero ended up being the breakout stars of the group. Nor was I shocked that Dean Malenko still flew under the radar. I expected Saturn to have a better run though. And certainly I didn’t expect two of them to be dead within seven years.

Life takes some weird turns.

1. Foley’s First Retirement

I loved most of the top stars of the 1990s, but Mick Foley was always the one I most identified with. Its not hard to explain why. I found it hard to relate to somebody as cool as The Rock. Steve Austin was a bit too much of a badass to identify with. And who could relate with Undertaker’s life story?

Foley always seemed relatable for some reason. He didn’t have the good looks or chiseled physique. He was a great talker but was never the coolest guy in the room. The way he sacrificed his body on a nightly basis, you had to feel for the guy. I followed his career from WCW to ECW to the WWF, and it was one heck of a ride. I was sad to see it end after a tremendous feud that made Triple H a star.

Until he came back a couple of weeks later and took most of the luster off what ended up being the end of his full-time in-ring career. Believe it or not, I actually took things like wrestler retirements seriously. What a mark, right? I was actually disappointed that after Foley spent years denigrating wrestlers that retired & came back two months later, he came back two weeks later. This was before I realized that wrestlers really aren’t retired as long as they can physically step into a ring.

I got over it pretty quickly because Commissioner Foley was very entertaining. I still wish Foley got a longer in-ring run though.