10 Most Extreme Rules In WWE History
6. The Good Housekeeping Match
The circumstances of Jeff Jarrett’s second and final departure from the WWF for WCW in October 1999 and his subsequent erasure from WWF/E history has taken up much of the narrative concerning that departure in the sixteen years since then.
His opponent Chyna has flat out stated that Jarrett held his former employers up for hundreds of thousands of dollars to work the match and drop the title outside of a contract. .Jarrett himself has been magnanimous in victory ever since, insisting that he was only ever paid what he was owed (which is a very vague way of saying almost nothing), while the WWE have never publically discussed the matter.
The match that cost so much money, however, has mostly remained lost in the shuffle. The feud itself had been a lot of fun, with babyface Chyna the victim of Jarrett’s outrageous misogyny, leading to the world’s first - and only - Good Housekeeping match for the title and the blow-off.
The idea of the gimmick was over-blown but at least it was well thought through. Chyna’s limitations in the ring would be completely obscured by the vaudevillian action on display, while Jarrett’s personal credibility was of little interest to anyone: and it fitted perfectly with the theme of their feud to date. It was the execution that was off, and off by some considerable margin.
The ring was surrounded by household appliances, utensils and groceries, all of which were used to comic effect, including a ‘hit him with everything but the kitchen sink’ gag by the Ross/Lawler announce team that was telegraphed a mile off.
Ridiculously, Jarrett would have his pinfall victory nullified in an almost Russoesque bit of booking when it was decided that the title belt shot to Chyna’s head that scored the pinfall wasn’t allowed by the rules, as the Intercontinental Championship belt wasn’t a household item. Despite the fact that this logic meant that Jarrett should have been disqualified, the pinfall was disallowed and the match resumed.
Chyna would then hit Jarrett with his own gimmicked guitar for the pinfall and the title, despite a guitar clearly being a household item in exactly the same way that a title belt would be. Even the announcers called bullsh*t on that one.