Benoit, Jericho and KOTR 2001
By Scott Keith on February 13, 2014
Hey, Scott! I have something to bring before the BOD crowd. I was reviewing some Raws and Smackdowns from June 2001 for my website (kingsrecaps.wordpress.com, BTW) and was wondering how frustrating it was to watch Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho during the build to King of the Ring '01. Benoit and Jerihco get the big tag title win over Austin and Triple H, making you think they were finally getting thier chance, but in the weeks they repeatedly jobbed to Austin in title matches, Jericho lost in a handicap match to a pair of midcarders (Big Show and Rhyno), Benoit lost the famed cage match to Angle that he should have won, and only got one other big win along the way, and that was the six man tag on the raw before KOTR. Plus if you watch the last three shows before the pay-per-view, you'll notice Benoit and Jericho were hardly featured, while Austin was allowed to run wild with all his wacky segments and skits. Was it worth seeing Benoit and Jericho win
the tag titles and get to be in the KOTR main event if it meant they would get buried along the way? Just wanted to get some thoughts.
This was actually well documented in the Observer at the time, and basically it was a case of Vince pulling the trigger with the tag title switch and then changing his mind when it became obvious that Benoit and Jericho weren't going to do business on top. And then Benoit needed the neck surgery, so they basically decided to pull the plug on the whole thing and let Austin regain some heat and then rebuild Jericho later. That's why King of the Ring ended up structured how it was. And given Benoit's injury, they were kind of right to change it anyway.
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