Make no mistake 2000 was Triple H's year

A victory over Mtagw could be all it takes to set up a World Featherweight Unification showdown with the winner of Lopez / Luevano. SpeculationWhere Where else Madison Square Garden! When Probably, June 12th on the eve of the Puerto Rican Day Parade. Lopez / Gamboa! A nice co-feature could be Kermit “Killer” Cintron versus the “King” of New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade himself Miguel Cotto. Another decade, another crop of matches that don't get their share.For every Hogan/Andre bout that drew X billions of dollars (depending on who's telling the story), there's always a better Steamboat/Savage match lurking in the undercard. With that in mind, it's time to go through the top "hidden gems" from the past decade, with hopes of exposing fans to matches they'd never seen, and giving me the excuse to watch all these bad boys again.While many of the matches on this list aren't superior to the matches that took home "Match of the Year" honors, they are nonetheless as exciting as their more famous counterparts.Before we begin, a word on the criteria.I picked out a single match for every year of the decade (2000-2009), so as to give every year its fair share. Of course, that doesn't mean that one year couldn't have had two or three matches on this list (I'm looking at you, 2004) On with the list. Make no mistake: 2000 was Triple H's year. After 58 minutes, with the pinfalls tied at 5 apiece, the "sports entertainment" beast reared its ugly head in the form of run-ins galore.

Triple H scored the fluke victory over The Rock, 6-5, after a returning Undertaker earned HHH the DQ decision at the bell. Minor blemishes aside, this is the match that both solidified HHH as a main event player, and gave The Rock the instant credibility he'd been lacking from the dwindling "wrestling purist" base.Nine years later, this match is still lacking the love from a DVD release. Apologies to: Rock/HHH/Angle (Summerslam); TLC (Summerslam); Malenko/Scotty 2 Hotty (Backlash). With the death of any major competition in North America, 2001 was a lean year for wrestling fans.Leave it to the Canadian Chris Connection, then, to step up their game and give the WWF a lesson in wrestling superiority."Too small" to make it in WCW, the two locked up at the Royal Rumble, competing in a grueling, 19 minute match for the Intercontinental Title. The match saw the best in both young grapplers, including a headfirst dive to the floor stopped cold with a chairshot to the head, and a Lion Tamer (I'm NOT calling it the Walls) on top of a ladder. Considering what all that damage eventually did to both wrestlers, it's hard to go back and appreciate this match for all it had to offer.But during the vacuous months of 2001, no two wrestlers did it better than Jericho and Benoit, and nowhere did they do it better than at the Royal Rumble.Apologies to: HHH/Austin (No Way Out); HHH/Austin v Benoit/Jericho (Raw is War); TLC II (Wrestlemania). 2002 saw the rise of several independent promotions trying to cash in on the slew of unemployed wrestlers left in the wake of WCW and ECW's closure.But where Major League Wrestling, Main Event Championship Wrestling, and the World Wrestling All-Stars failed, an upstart promotion out of Philadelphia named Ring of Honor flourished.Stripped of any pretensions of entertainment, ROH gave the wrestling crowd all it could handle of pure, Japanese-inspired athletic action.

At Glory by Honor, the ROH fans were introduced to the beast known as Samoa Joe.Remember how I said ROH was stripped of any pretenses So was this match. Fought under "fight without honor" rules (or lack thereof), this match saw two guys pummel the crap out of each other for 16 minutes until one of them drops No bells No whistles Just a whole lot of stiff kicks, punches, and welts. Joe would go on to dominate the latter part of the decade in both ROH and TNA, but it was Low Ki who walked away victorious in this affair. Apologies to: Anything the "Smackdown Six" produced; Rock/Jericho (Royal Rumble); Ikuto Hidaka v Amazing Red (same ROH show). In 2003, Vince McMahon attempted to create some competition amongst his brands by assigning them all their own PPVs. On SmackDown!'s inaugural show, they not only brought the goods, they brought down the roof as well.Highlighting the event was a seemingly innocuous tag-team match between The World's Greatest Tag Team and Rey Mysterio and his mystery partner...Billy Kidman.For those of you too young to remember, Kidman was a hot commodity in WCW before dying a slow death in WWE for not having the charisma or size or ability to work "WWF Style." Seeing his opportunity, Kidman and Mysterio put on a spot fest with the World's Greatest Tag Team for 16 minutes as the four wrestlers did everything they could to one-up each other. Kidman and Mysterio lost that match, but for one night it seemed as though the WWE had finally tapped into Kidman's worth.

He then spent the rest of 2003 on the sidelines as his girlfriend's father was pitted in a love affair angle with Dawn Marie.When you're playing fourth fiddle to Dawn Marie and Torrie and Al Wilson, it sucks to be Billy Kidman.Apologies to: Every other match on that card; HBK/HHH (Raw is War); Michael Shane/Frankie Kazarian/Chris Sabin (Ultimate X). Someone backstage at Turning Point '04 must've stuck Triple X and AMW in a room with a copy of Blanchard/Magnum TA for hours before the show, because the two teams put on a bloodbath worthy of comparison to the Starrcade classic.Forced into a "Win or Disband Forever" stipulation, America's Most Wanted had chased Triple X for the better part of the year before finally meeting them head-on in the first ever Six Sides of Steel.To say that the ring was covered in blood after this match would be an understatement. Remember this guy After debuting in ROH in 2002, Joe went on to dominate the non-WWE wrestling scene for the next three years, culminating in an 18-month reign as ROH champion, and another 18-month unbeaten streak in TNA.Just a month removed from competing in what was arguably the match of the decade with AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels, Joe came back to ROH to take on Pro Wrestling NOAH legend Kenta Kobashi in what was hyped as a "Once in a Lifetime" event.Given the hype the match had, it didn't disappoint.Like Joe v. Few times this decade has a wrestler or tag team resonated so strongly with the fan base as the Latin American Xchange did in 2006. Taking a page out of the nWo's marketing handbook, this team exploded onto TNA with its guerrilla style videos and militant attitude.Equally loved and reviled, the team exploited a very real divide in TNA's fanbase, and benefited from the growing divide between Latinos and the rest of America.