Brock Lesnar vs. Kurt Angle | Tales From Backstage

In 2002 WWE, chaos reigned.

2002 was the year that saw former company icon Hulk Hogan brought back into the fold, heel WCW 'Hollywood' persona and all, against the wishes of the locker room, babyfaced in light of the nostalgic warmth towards him from the crowd, re-strapped as WWE Champion for a box office-tanking month and a half, and binned back off again by the end of the summer.

The New World Order itself followed a near-identical trajectory, save for the turn of course. Neither over babyfaces nor cool heels, the idea that transformed the North American wrestling landscape in the 90s lasted less than 5 months in the brutal 2002 WWE machine.

Meanwhile, 2002 was the also year that the other biggest stars in company history - Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock - almost simultaneously signalled the beginning of the end of their real full-time runs, albeit in enormously different fashion. 'The Great One' would have fallen victim to Hogan's aforementioned hot-dogging had he not been as electrifying as he claimed at WrestleMania X8, but outside of a brief WWE Championship run in July and August, he was finally done as a regular after SummerSlam.

'The Rattlesnake' infamously went sooner than that; one fallout too far with his unravelling creative by June resulted in Austin going from the penthouse to the doghouse in ruthlessly aggressive fashion, creating a rift that took the fat end of a year to heal and saw him off as a full-timer once and for all. Their post-split treatment of the character was the only real act of ruthless aggression, even though the phrase inexplicably stuck around to define the post-Attitude Era hangover the entire organisation was trapped in.

And about that. In 2002, with some of the biggest WWE and WCW names past and present strolling in and out of the Stamford revolving doors, the organisation did about as well at creating new stars as it did holding on to its last initial. Panicked pushes and demotions resulted in the out-of-form Triple H and The Undertaker being relied on to do far more than they were capable of as top guys, with a slew of drab matches and/or partially damaged careers left as legacies.

The never-say-never moments piled up enough to make your head spin - WWE brings in Eric Bischoff?! Shawn Michaels returns?! Triple H does a clean job?! - but none of them reversed an inexorable course towards a commercial and creative bust that had effectively started the night after WrestleMania X-Seven. 'The Game' dressed as Kane mimicking sexual intercourse with a mock corpse dressed as a cheerleader was probably the most fitting a visual of the decline - he was scraping the side of a coffin when he reached for the spaghetti bolognaise-like mulch to throw at the camera as he "screwed her brains out", but it may as well have been the proverbial barrel.

This was 2002. Rudderless and seemingly lawless, with few saving graces to speak of. Appropriate then, that 2002 was the year, that, with all of the above going on, two of those saving graces battled each other in a real backstage fight.

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