On Thanksgiving night, November 22, 2001, WWE broadcasted a pretaped episode of SmackDown. The show featured a star-studded main event with The Rock teaming up with Rob Van Dam against Chris Jericho and The Dudley Boyz, not to mention a Kurt Angle vs. The Undertaker match and Edge vs. Christian for the Intercontinental Championship in the undercard.
The most memorable part of the card, however, was a Gravy Bowl Match pitting Trish Stratus against Stacy Keibler.
Trish Stratus Vs. Stacy Keibler Wasn’t The First Gravy Bowl Match
The Gravy Bowl Match was little more complicated than it sounded—a match pitting two women in a pit full of what was ostensibly gravy, for what looked an awful lot like a mud wrestling match. The popularity and sex appeal of Trish Stratus and Stacy Keibler made their Gravy Bowl Match instantly the most iconic iteration of the match. They weren’t the originators, though.
The dubious honor of kicking off the Gravy Bowl Match gimmick goes to Jacqueline and Ivory. Though Trish Stratus would grow into being a highly skilled in-ring performer, she was only starting to get there in late 2001. By contrast, Jacqueline and Ivory were about as legit as it got in the women’s ranks, both tough, highly skilled veteran performers who were more clearly above this gimmick in 1999. Nonetheless, they worked a one-minute match, with Jacqueline getting better of it.
A Food Fight Preceded The Match
When Trish Stratus and Stacy Keibler clashed for their Gravy Bowl Match, they were less than a week removed from Survivor Series 2001, where WWE conclusively won its war against The Alliance. Stratus vs. Keibler felt like a bit of a coda. Though the action of the Invasion angle had clearly focused on the male performers, Stratus was a clear cut WWE talent whereas Keibler was one of the more consistently featured talents to come over from WCW and remain locked into her heel role with them for those first months under WWE contract.
The action got started with a food fight. Keibler made her entrance first and seated herself at a banquet table of Thanksgiving foods beside the Gravy Bowl. Stratus made her entrance second, wearing the Women’s Championship she’d picked up at the PPV. They both wore dresses and seemed set to eat before Keibler got things started, throwing a handful of mashed potatoes at Stratus and laughing at her. Sttratus got up close and personal, dumping gravy on Keibler’s head before a back and forth exchange covered them both in food, culminating in Stratus sling-shotting Keibler into the gravy to get the match properly started.
Trish Stratus Picked Up The Submission Victory
The action of The Gravy Bowl Match wasn’t all that technically impressive as the two struggled against each other with little rhyme or reason, alternately throwing the other down or dunking her head beneath the surface of the gravy as the momentum switched back and forth. Finally, Stratus hit something like and Alabama Slam, en route to applying a hold somewhere between a chin lock and camel clutch to make Keibler tap out.
In the aftermath, Keibler played the sore loser, kicking gravy up out of the bowl, before climbing out, complaining to the ref, and shoving him into the gravy. Meanwhile, Stratus celebrated on the entrance ramp, raising her title overhead.
There’s little doubt that the Gravy Bowl Match between Stacy Keibler and Trish Stratus was designed to make the most of each woman’s sex appeal with a provocative match that left both women sopping wet, with the justification that the bout celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday spirit. Stratus commented on the match explicitly years later in a visit to Lillian Garcia’s podcast, and how it felt like a non-sequitur after the women’s division and Stratus personally had gained significant momentum at the time. She complained about it to trainer Fit Finlay at the time.
Nonetheless, with the benefit of hindsight, Stratus reflected on it as little more than a speed bump. She would go on to assemble a more than Hall of Fame-worthy career, earning the respect of wrestling fans around the world in a boom period for women’s division over a decade before the so-called Women’s Revolution.
