Monday Night Raw
Date: November 23, 2009
Location: Giant Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania
Commentators: Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler
Guest Host: Jesse Ventura

This is another request and it looks like a show with a lot of wrestling on it. Maybe this is a three hour show? Oh ok this is the show with the Breakthrough battle royal, as in the battle royal where the people in it haven’t been world champion in awhile or something like that. Orton is in it so that kind of throws things out the window. Let’s get to it.

I didn’t realize they were using Burn It To The Ground this early.

Yeah it’s a three hour show.

Ventura is introduced but we get Orton instead. This is the night after Survivor Series where Orton’s team lost to Kofi’s team. Orton talks about how Jesse is a radical and someone not afraid to break the rules. He’s not supposed to face Cena for the title anymore but since the guest host can do whatever he wants, Jesse can lift Orton’s ban so he can have his title shot. He requests Jesse’s presence and here’s the Body.

Tonight Jesse’s a wrestler and not the governor. He’s the boss tonight so what he says goes. Orton reminds Jesse of himself when he was younger. Jesse is the revolution, not a part of one party or another. Therefore he’s bringing something new to the WWE tonight. Orton isn’t getting a shot, because it’s the same people getting a shot time after time.

Orton runs through a bunch of the main event guys who he thinks are getting the shot but Jesse says no to each. Tonight there will be a series of matches and they’ll be between people who have never been world champion. The winners will be in a battle royal and the winner is the new #1 contender. Also tonight, we’re getting some firsts, like John Cena vs. CM Punk, as well as DX vs. Hart Dynasty.

Breakthrough Battle Royal Qualifying Match: Kofi Kingston vs. Dolph Ziggler

Before the match we get a clip of Kofi saving Piper from being punted and hitting the big dive in MSG. Ziggler is more or less just a comedy character at this point. Kofi knocks him into the corner to start but his jump at Ziggler misses and Dolph takes over. Elbow gets two. He has a lot of the show off character in him already and it’s working for him. There’s a chinlock but Kofi pops up and hits the Boom Drop and Trouble in Paradise to qualify for the battle royal later.

Rating: C-. Too short to mean anything but these two have solid chemistry together. Kofi was a bigger star here though so the ending wasn’t really ever in doubt, especially with Kofi being in the middle of his big feud with Orton. He was probably the favorite in the battle royal going into it.

Miz, the US Champion, is thankful for nothing because he expects greatness. The people should be thankful that they get to watch him.

Breakthrough Battle Royal Qualifying Match: Sheamus vs. Finlay

Sheamus eliminated Finlay from the Survivor Series match last night so there’s a backstory here. Finlay takes it to the floor quickly and knocks him over the table. Sheamus takes over back inside and sends Finlay into the post shoulder first. High Cross ends this quick.

Sheamus destroys Finlay post match.

Teddy Long is thankful for….something but Vickie cuts him off. She’s the consultant and brags about it a lot. Eric Escobar is here to waste some time. Teddy tries to hit Vickie in the face with the mashed potatoes but Escobar intercepts them.

Promo for Jesse’s new show Conspiracy Theories.

Orton comes in to talk to Jesse and says he wants in the battle royal and there’s a conspiracy against him. Jesse thinks there might be something to that because of the boss of the company.

Here’s Punk to talk before his match with Cena. Punk is heel now and will be starting the Straight Edge Society pretty soon after this. Punk says he’s thankful for being straightedge. He wouldn’t want to be any of these people and explains what straightedge means. Punk condemns everyone that commits gluttony on Thanksgiving and talks about how they’re all going to use a crutch afterwards. Through his sober eyes, he can see John Cena.

CM Punk vs. John Cena

Feeling out process to start, resulting in Cena ramming into Punk which hurts Punk’s shoulder. Cena takes over by ramming Punk into buckles but the STF can’t be hooked yet. We take a break and come back with Punk holding a headscissors on the mat. Apparently Punk hit a springboard clothesline to take over during the break. Cena stands up into an electric chair as Punk panics.

Cena can’t really get anything going after that though. Punk whips him into the corner and Cena is in trouble. Neckbreaker gets two. Cena comes back with the shoulders and ProtoBomb. Shuffle looks to set up the FU but Punk flips over the top. Punk tries the GTS but Cena lands on his feet and leg drags Punk into the STF. Punk makes the rope though and things slow down.

High kick puts Cena down for a very long two. This is starting to get good which means that it’s probably over. There’s the running knee in the corner but John counters the bulldog. Top rope Fameasser hits for two. Another AA attempt is countered by a dropkick for two. Punk tries another running knee in the corner but Cena ducks and hits a middle rope AA for the pin.

Rating: B. It’s not quite MITB 2011 but once the commercial was over this got a lot better in a hurry. These two have chemistry together and every time you see them in the ring together you’re going to get a treat. The kickouts at the end were getting very good very quickly and it’s cool to see Cena have to do something bigger than his usual finishers, which is what made this work so well.

Vince comes up to see Jesse in the back and says he won’t accept a challenge for a match. Jesse says that’s not why he’s here. He wants Vince to be hurt mentally. Jesse gets in a great line as he talks about how the state of Minnesota’s budget was over 30 billion dollars a year, so this company is tiny by comparison. Tonight, Vince is going to be an announcer like when he first started. Jesse hands him a tuxedo and says go get ready. We even get the return of the bowtie!

Breakthrough Battle Royal Qualifying Match: Chavo Guerrero/Jack Swagger/Chris Masters vs. Mark Henry/MVP/R-Truth

All three winners advance. Swagger vs. MVP to get us going. MVP takes over quickly and knocks Swagger down with a right hand for two. We get a weird sequence as Chavo tries to come in off the top onto MVP but MVP kind of catches him in a suplex. It looked really awkward. Off to Masters and MVP is in trouble. Truth comes in for some bad punches and it’s off to Henry to clean house. Lie Detector by Truth pins Masters. This was nothing again.

DX is in the back and HHH wants to know why Shawn kicked him last night in the triple threat. Shawn says it was for the championship and he thought HHH would Pedigree him first. HHH says Shawn kicked him three times. Shawn says he was aiming for Cena….and they’re interrupted by a midget lawyer who serves them with papers. Oh dear.

Breakthrough Battle Royal Qualifying Match: Evan Bourne vs. Primo

And never mind as Orton jumps Primo during his entrance and throws him off the stage.

Orton comes to the ring and says he’s taking Primo’s spot. Jesse pops up on the Tron and says he likes Orton’s style so he gets the qualifying spot instead of Primo. He says he always broke rules so it’s ok here. That somehow makes sense.

Breakthrough Battle Royal Qualifying Match: Evan Bourne vs. Randy Orton

Orton sends Bourne into the post for two almost immediately. Bourne comes back with some high flying stuff and the double knees from the top get two. RKO hits about a second later for the pin.

We get some clips of Vince and Jesse on commentary.

Trailer for The Marine 2.

Kelly Kelly/Mickie James/Melina vs. Michelle McCool/Layla/Jillian

It’s Pilgrims vs. Indians with the bad girls being the Pilgrims. Cole and Jerry crack up during the entrances. There’s a special guest timekeeper: The Gobbledy Gooker. I’ve got NOTHING. The Indians come out to Tatanka’s music. Melina vs. Jillian starts us off. Jillian takes over to start and the fans are silent. Laycool walks out and Melina pins Jillian. So freaking stupid but Kelly’s legs looked great.

Jerry goes in to talk to the winners post match and the Gooker jumps Melina. It’s the returning Maryse. Maryse takes forever to get out of the costume. Well she certainly looks great.

D-Generation X vs. Hart Dynasty

Shawn vs. Kidd to start us off. I’d love to see them have a 4 minute match or so. Shawn knocks him down and nips up but it’s off to Smith. The Harts take over on Shawn via the power of Smith. Back to Kidd who hooks a chinlock. Smith loads up a powerslam but Shawn slips off his back and they ram heads. There’s the double tag and HHH comes in to face Kidd. Spinebusters all around but Smith breaks up the Pedigree. Shawn breaks up something from Smith with Chin Music and the Pedigree takes out Kidd for the pin.

Rating: C. Quick match but nothing to see here. It’s nice to see guys like the Harts get to rub elbows with DX and there’s no point to seeing them win here. The idea here was that DX needed to prove they were still together and a cohesive unit, especially given what’s happening after the match.

Post match Jericho comes out and says that DX gets the title shot against Jeri-Show for the titles at TLC. HHH makes fat jokes about Big Show and Shawn says that it’ll be a TLC match. Jericho cuts off the catchphrase and goes on a rant about how DX may be great but they’ve never been tag team champions. You know, because those are so valuable.

Here’s Batista to Rey’s music. Last night Batista turned heel and destroyed Rey. Batista talks about how Rey had a chance to be a tough guy but last night he had to explain things to Rey. He talks about destroying Rey last night with three Batista Bombs and here’s Kane. He wants to know what Batista is going to do about Kane interrupting him. Kane asks Dave to make an example out of him. Batista drops the mic and walks out.

Breakthrough Battle Royal Qualifying Match: Cryme Tyme vs. Legacy

Both winners advance. Cody and JTG get us going but Cody makes a blind tag to give Legacy the advantage. Cody hits a release suplex and a dropkick gets two. Off to Shad who does a bit better with the power stuff. Monty Brown’s Alpha Bomb gets two on Ted. Everything breaks down and Dream Street pins Shad. Too short to grade but it was your run of the mill tag team squash.

Kane vs. Batista on Friday.

The Divas have a pie fight, resulting in Santino taking one in the face. He takes more and more as he keeps bashing women but winds up knocking one into Vickie’s face.

Breakthrough Battle Royal

Cody Rhodes, Ted DiBiase, MVP, Mark Henry, R-Truth, Kofi Kingston, Sheamus, Randy Orton

Vince and Jesse are on commentary for this one. Vince comes out to the theme from SNME which is just awesome. It’s great to hear Vince on commentary as he clearly loves what his product is and is a promoter at heart. Legacy stays in one corner and immediately go after Kofi. It’s a big brawl but Sheamus stays in a corner to himself. Orton is on the floor but he went through the ropes.

Things slow down before they ever got going. I don’t think Sheamus has had any contact with anyone yet. He was biding his time though and picks off R-Truth, throwing him out after a clothesline. Legacy works over Kofi in the corner and Orton is back in. Sheamus Brogue Kicks MVP and tosses him to get us down to six. Henry goes after Sheamus but Legacy makes the save for some reason. Sheamus is on the apron but gets back in.

Henry double clotheslines Legacy to the floor but Sheamus drills him in the back and dumps Henry. We’re down to Orton, Kofi and Sheamus. Orton and Kofi hammer away on each other and Sheamus gets knocked down. Jesse goes on a small anti-Chaney rant as Kofi is sent to the floor. He skins the cat though and headscissors Randy out. Sheamus takes Kofi’s head off with a double ax, knocking him to the floor to become #1 contender.

Rating: D. Very boring match but it was a great thing to see them really trying to push someone else as a main event guy. That was something that was badly missing at this point and pushing Sheamus was as good a move as they could have made. It gave them some fresh blood in the main event and if 2009 taught us anything, it was that Raw was dying for fresh main event blood.

Verne Troyer is hosting next week. Oh geez.

We’re having the contract signing for Cena vs. Sheamus right now to close the show. Jesse demands that Cena get out here right now and here’s the champ to his traditional mixed reaction. They sit down and Sheamus says he’s the #1 contender. Cena says that usually, the guy saying that is a future Hall of Famer. Cena wants to know why he should take Sheamus seriously after all he’s done is beat up Lawler and Noble. John says he’s been here for 8 years and gone against the best and is champion today because he’s earned it.

Cena goes into serious mode and says this is all he’s got. He’s gone up against everyone and every single one of them has been taken down. When Sheamus signs that contract, he better be ready to go to war. Both guys sign and Ventura thinks there’s a conspiracy to keep Cena champion. Cena is the perfect looking champion that everyone wants. Jesse didn’t get a title shot because he was a rebel. Cena gets in Jesse’s face, allowing Sheamus to kick his head off. Sheamus rams him into the post and then powerslams him through the table. Jesse says it’s a table match for the title. Sheamus holds up the title to end the show.

Overall Rating: C-. It’s not a terrible showbut the three hours weren’t needed. Pushing someone new to the main event is a fine idea but getting there was a problem. Some of these matches could have been clipped and the show would have been fine. It’s not bad but it takes so long to get to the good ending that you’re not going to care once you get there. Jesse is always worth seeing though.

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Monday Night Raw
Date: January 19, 2009
Location: Allstate Arena, Chicago, Illinois
Attendance: 11,600
Commentators: Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler

This was another requested show for reasons that I’m not entirely clear on. Looking at the card, there’s nothing interesting or big here from a wrestling standpoint so I’d assume it’s a storyline based show. This is from an era that feels like so long ago but it was only three years. I’m not sure what to make of that. This is the go home show for the Rumble. Let’s get to it.

Vince returns tonight.

Battle Royal

Randy Orton, Kane, Santino Marella, Kofi Kingston, Ted DiBiase, Cody Rhodes

Nothing to win here as far as the Rumble so this is just kind of a preview match. Everyone goes after Kane but DiBiase puts Marella out quickly. Legacy takes Kofi out but Kane gets up and tosses Cody. Dibiase is sent to the apron and Kane goes after Orton. He gets him to the apron but DiBiase dives on Kane and they both go out, giving Orton the win. This lasted about 2 minutes.

Beth Phoenix vs. Kelly Kelly

Beth is Women’s Champion but this is non-title. This was before Kelly got good. Let that sink in for a minute. Kelly is in a Blackhawks jersey and tries to speed things up, only to get run over. Glam Slam and we’re done in about a minute.

Randy tells Ted that he should do the same thing on Sunday. Ted is cool with it when Cody comes in. He says Manu and Sim Snuka were in Stephanie’s office earlier and there’s a rumor that Randy gets fired tonight.

Glamarella is in the back and Santino gives her Rosa Mendes as a present. She had been banned from events as a fan for some reason so she’s officially Beth’s intern. Santino: “PLEASE? Can we keep her?” Beth says she’ll think about it.

Stephanie is in her office when Orton comes in. Steph says she isn’t firing him so quit sucking up. Randy yells at her and says it’s her that should be worried about being fired because Vince is back tonight. He says Stephanie would be a no one if her last name wasn’t McMahon, which earns him a slap.

Intercontinental Title: William Regal vs. CM Punk

Regal is champion and has been cheating to keep the title from Punk recently. This is a No DQ match and Punk will be in the Rumble Sunday. Regal has Layla with him. Punk fires off kicks to start which get him two. Regal goes to the floor but he can’t suplex Punk. Back in and Punk snap suplexes him for two. Punk works the arm into a Fujiwara Armbar but Regal gets the rope as we take a break.

Back with Punk holding the Anaconda Vice on the ropes but Punk can’t get disqualified. Layla has to cheat to get him out and Regal knocks Punk to the floor. Regal puts Punk’s head to the post and kicks it into the steel, which only gets two. He hooks a full nelson but Punk escapes and hits a spinning backfist and high kick for two. The running knee hits but the bulldog is countered into a half nelson suplex. Regal loads up a superplex but Punk knocks him off. He misses his cross body but hits a GTS for the pin and the title almost out of nowhere.

Rating: C+. This was a pretty hard hitting match and for a nice moment on Raw, this was fine. Regal is good for stuff like this: midcard feuds when you need a basic heel that ca put on good matches. Punk would only hold the title about a month and a half, but he would win the world title in June so I think it’s a pretty fair tradeoff.

We recap Shawn having to work for JBL and last week’s match where Shawn had a great match with Cena and actually beat him clean with the superkick.

Lawler is in the ring to moderate the contract signing for Cena vs. JBL at the Rumble. One thing I’ve never quite gotten: why in the world would you wait for six days before the show to sign one of the biggest matches on that show? Cena comes out to mostly cheers. He signs first and JBL signs quickly after. He says that it means the title will be his soon. Cena says he wants to talk to Shawn but JBL cuts him off.

He says that Shawn will only be at the PPV in his corner and nothing else. Cena says that he wasn’t looking into the eyes of a servant last week but with the main event and the showstopper. Shawn is still great and can do whatever he wants in the ring and can make an honest living doing it. That’s what I never got about this storyline. Shawn may be broke, but he’s a high level wrestler in the biggest company in the wrestling world. It might not be eight figures a year, but he’s probably not going to be broke doing it.

JBL says HBK works for him like everyone else does and that it’ll be Shawn making sure that JBL gets the title. He says it’s business and Shawn snaps. He hates that he has to do what he does but he’ll keep doing it because he has to. Shawn talks to Cena and says that he has obligations that Cena doesn’t have.

Shawn has squandered his and his family’s money and has to be there for them. He’ll do what it takes and if that means costing Cena the title, then so be it. Cena says be HBK and not this. One day there’s going to be a moment where Shawn has to choose. Cena knows he won’t make JBL the next champion. Shawn hits him with the mic and tries to superkick him before leaving, but Cena ducks. JBL hits a big boot and the Clothesline before leaving.

Rey Mysterio vs. Mike Knox

In the back, Knox says he doesn’t really have a reason for attacking Rey and doesn’t have any reason for doing it. I love that. Rey speeds things up to start and sends Knox to the floor. A dropkick to the knee puts Knox down but he clotheslines Rey to take over. A big boot gets two on Rey. Knox uses his power stuff but Rey catches him with a springboard rana into the 619 but Knox catches him. Knox pounds him down in the corner and won’t stop until it’s a DQ. This was short, like every non-Punk/Regal match tonight.

Stephanie is on the phone in her office and when she turns around, Jericho (fired last week) is in her chair. He talked to Vince and will get a chance to plead his case.

Smackdown ReBound. When’s the last time we saw one of those? It’s about Jeff Hardy having accidents.

Cryme Tyme vs. John Morrison/The Miz

Miz and Morrison are tag champions. I’m assuming they’re the Raw ones. They want to face Jim Duggan but Cryme Tyme comes out to talk about Obama being inaugurated the next day. If Cryme Tyme wins, they get a title shot in the future. Morrison vs. Shad to start us off with the big man kicking his head off. A flapjack puts JoMo down and JTG trips him. An STO from Shad ends this in just over a minute.

Cody is talking to Mickie James and doesn’t think her career advice means anything. He turns around and runs into Goldust. Goldust gives him the Starrcade DVD, saying he can learn more from this than anything Orton can teach him. Cody shrugs it off and says he’s surpass his father.

Melina vs. Jillian Hall

Last week Beth terrorized Melina before a tag match where Jillian would have been Beth’s partner, so this is revenge somehow. Beth, Santino and Rosa all come out to watch. Melina is distracted so Jillian hits a side slam for two. Melina gets a sunset bomb out of the corner for the quick pin.

Rosa charges at Melina post match which allows Beth to come in and beat on Melina. The title would change on Sunday.

Ziggler, still brand new at this point, hits on some chick who isn’t interested. He’s still doing the introduction thing at this point. Dolph turns around and runs into Vince, who introduces himself in a funny bit.

Here’s Vince for the big final segment of the show. He thanks the fans for the applause but says this is about business. Vince brings out Jericho to air his grievance. Jericho says that it was unfair that he was fired and that he should be reinstated for the Rumble. Vince says let’s bring out Stephanie who is GM of Raw. Jericho wants to be reinstated but Vince isn’t going to do that. Instead, the McMahons will run Raw together. She says Jericho can apologize if he wants and surprisingly enough, Jericho does it.

Steph says that’s not good enough so Jericho says it again and says it in more detail but still doesn’t sound sincere at all. That’s not good enough so he should apologize to the people. The fans chant on your knees which Jericho finally does. He explains that he’s great and while he may seem arrogant, he can’t help it. Stephanie makes him leave and Vince is pleased. Cue Orton and the pleasing is over. She slapped Orton earlier tonight and Randy wants an apology because he’s more valuable than she is. People pay to see him, not the McMahons.

Ever since Stephanie made Vince a grandfather, she’s become worthless. Stephanie leaves and Vince isn’t happy. Vince wants to know who Randy thinks he is. Without Vince, Orton’s dad wouldn’t have had a job and Randy would be a gym teacher in St. Louis. Randy has to apologize or be fired. Orton says Vince shouldn’t do that but Vince starts to fire him. Orton pops him in the mouth then kicks him down. A fast punt leaves Vince unconscious and the announcers freak. Randy seems to be shocked at what he just did. Vince is taken out to end the show.

Overall Rating: D+. Do these people know that we’re six days away from the Rumble? This was a different kind of build for the show as it was about the people who will be in the Rumble (namely Orton) rather than the match itself. That’s the same kind of build they did in 2012 and I’m not sure I like it. It’s not bad, but there’s really not much going on with this show and it didn’t make me want to see the PPV at all.

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Royal Rumble 2009
Date: January 25, 2009
Location: Joe Louis Arena, Detroit, Michigan
Attendance: 16,685
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler, Michael Cole, Tazz, Matt Striker, Todd Grisham

There are really no differences at all between this and what you see today other than a few face and heel changes. Everyone is here for the most part other than Christian I think. Yeah there’s just not much that’s changed since then other than DX reuniting. We have five matches tonight, one of which is the new Smackdown Champion Jeff Hardy in his first title defense against Edge, although someone has been trying to get him lately.

Also we have Cena defending against JBL in the token title match of the year. Other than that it’s just the Rumble which more or less was the most predictable match in history as all of one person was mentioned at all in the buildup to it. That being said, let’s get to it.

The opening video is the standard thing of all the Rumble winners and all of the logos but it’s cut off by Orton’s music and clips of him being a bastard to the insanely hot Stephanie. Vince gets kicked in the head to stun the crowd. Yeah, they’re not making it obvious at all who was going to win here.

The slow motion replay of the kick shows that it’s INSANE. There’s no pyro for the opening as it’s all serious and stuff. In other words, the fans get cheated to a special part of the show for Vince. Oh never mind there’s the pyro. Still kind of stupid though.

ECW Title: Matt Hardy vs. Jack Swagger

Jack was the undefeated rookie here, having won the title two and a half weeks ago. This is the mostly pointless rematch. Matt gets a great pop and I wonder why he’s never been pushed harder than he has been yet. It’s a shame that Swagger is being depushed, but to be fair tonight for the Little People Court Raw he had a good match with Cena so maybe the push is back. He has no pyro yet so that sucks. We even get the big match intros here.

Since it’s 2009, Swagger is a cowardly heel at the beginning. Hardy brawls for the most part as Striker points out that he can’t out wrestle him so why try? That’s a great point at least. We get a replay of a great right hand from Matt. That was sweet. Hardy is doing really well so you know how it’s going to end in case it wasn’t clear yet. Swagger works on the arm which is the one he uses for the Twist of Fate. I know because Striker told me.

See why he’s the best in the world today? Swagger is working the shoulder really hard here and uses some unique stuff, including a boot to the shoulder. That’s something I’ve seen a few times but rarely enough that it’s effective. I’m not sure if I like or dislike the big 2 signs in the front row for counts. They always disappear after the first match so I’m guessing someone takes it from them or they get tired of it.

Striker goes way too insane by saying who the last North Carolinian to win a world title in Detroit (Steamboat in 87). That’s saying a lot. This is a good match with a lot of close calls. They’re getting some time too so that helps a lot. Hardy goes into the post as it was already hurt. Swagger hits the powerbomb for the pin to retain and let us hear his awesome music. Hardy sits on the steps with his head in his hands. Remember that for later.

Rating: B. I really liked this. It was a decent length of about ten minutes and had a ton of close calls and near falls. The arm stuff was good and it played into the ending to give it some psychology. That gives it most of what makes a great match so this is easily solid for an opener.

Orton is here and no one is talking to him. They’re making this seem like the big deal that it’s supposed to be.

Raw Women’s Title: Melina vs. Beth Phoenix

Melina is gyrating like there’s no tomorrow and it’s working very well. Beth is with Santino here but it’s getting close to the end. Santina would be debuting soon enough to suck the life out of everything again. Beth is just freaking gorgeous. I love that backflip she does to get into the ring. Santino gets a massive chant, proving that no one cares about the women and care about comedy.

Thank you Vince for crippling wrestling and making the comedy more important. Beth very clearly calls a spot to Melina and then whips her in. Beth shows off her power by lifting Melina up with one arm. That’s just freaking scary. Beth’s thong is sticking out which is of course awesome. She gets a leg lock on Melina that’s in so deep that her foot is touching her head. That can’t feel good. Beth actually pulls the leg back to ram it into her head. FREAKING OW MAN!

They botch the heck out of something as Melina is trying to come back. Melina hits an INSANE move where she spins around Beth’s side to get the rollup for the title. That was awesome looking.

Rating: C-. There were far too many botches in there but the submission thing and the ending were both cool. It was your standard Diva match so that’s not saying a lot. Melina’s selling of her back was great here though and it helped the match a lot. Not bad, but still far from great due to the sloppiness. They had a submission match soon after this.

We recap the JBL vs. Cena feud, which is mainly about the JBL and HBK feud over the money or whatever. It was stupid and one of those “real” angles that never work for me. It’s like saying Shawn makes no money from wrestling or anything like that which is just ridiculous. Being conservative, let’s say Shawn makes a quarter million a year. That’s FAR more than enough to live a decent life, but he needs to be sold to JBL to make ends meet?

Shawn more or less lays down for JBL to get the pin. The problem that plagued this at the end was that it ended way too fast. It should have been at Mania instead of No Way Out. To be fair though, that wound up being the wrong choice as Shawn and JBL did what they should have done at Mania.

We see JBL and Shawn in the back and JBL says that if he wins tonight, Shawn is a free man and paid in full and can be in the Rumble. JBL leaves and Shawn looks in a mirror for awhile and then turns around to have Taker staring down at him. He says that sometimes you have to go through pain to get to Heaven. Yeah they did the right thing.

Ad for Mania.

Raw World Title: JBL vs. John Cena

Cena was kind of casually mentioned in the package. Until the Taker cameo, I would have believed a title change here. The crowd is split on Cena as always. I would have actually believed them going with JBL vs. Shawn, but Taker switched me to reality. The idea here is that Cena is off his game because he has to keep his eye on Shawn. For instance, they’re on the floor and Cena ducks a clothesline but Shawn is in front of him and Cena gets ready to duck the superkick and JBL gets a shot in.

Never mind that the kick would have cost JBL the match but whatever. JBL had lost a bunch of weight at this point and actually looked like he was in very good shape. He lost probably 40 or 50 pounds and actually had a stomach. Shawn is more or less stoic on the floor. There’s a Ram Jam sign in the crowd, which is the finisher of the main character in The Wrestler.

We cut to a shot of Shawn about once every 30 seconds as Cena is more or less a pawn in this, which is ok I guess as this was just another title match for him. Cena has the STFU but due to Shawn standing there he gets nervous and JBL can get out. The Clothesline From JBL hits but it just gets two. There goes the referee and we have a bad looking double clothesline spot. Oddly enough we can see the ECW announce table over Shawn’s shoulder and there’s no Todd Grisham. That’s most odd.

Shawn gets in the ring and starts tuning up the band. He kicks Cena and JBL begins his second world title reign. Yeah I don’t buy that either. Oh of course he kicks JBL. Ok he kicks Cena too. He lays JBL on top of Cena as Cole says he doesn’t get it. That might be because Cole is freaking stupid. Yeah it must be. Shawn leaves and shakes his head as Cole tries to figure out the complexity of this.

Have fun Mikey boy as it doesn’t exist. Another referee comes out and we get two. Both guys are out as Cena kicks out so it looks like he’s spooning JBL. DANG that first referee has been out for a long time. He got ran into not freaking shot. Cena gets an easy FU for the pin. Oddly enough it has no name here and was called his move by Lawler in the replay.

Rating: C. Usual stuff from these two with the focus on JBL and Shawn like it should have been. That’s ok here though as it set up the big blowoff with them next month. Like I said Cena was more or less a pawn here and that’s all he should have been. This got JBL and Shawn much further along and it worked well. The match wasn’t that good but it rarely was with these two so what are you going to do.

Buy Legends of Wrestlemania and screw up history.

We recap Edge vs. Hardy which was the result of the Stairwell “Atrocity”. Basically, it seemed like someone wanted to hurt Jeff. There was that, plus him and his girlfriend being run off the road, and him having his face burned by pyro. I went to a house show a few weeks after that and he didn’t appear because of it. I’ve never seen so many kids look so sad. Anyway, Edge denied everything as he was the obvious most likely suspect. This is Jeff’s first title defense.

Smackdown World Title: Edge vs. Jeff Hardy

Wow. Back in 2000 or 2001 who would have thought that would be realistic? Jeff is WAY over. The celebration for him winning the title was absolutely perfect. My goodness I want to freaking shoot Vickie. Oh she’s Edge’s wife at the moment. It’s no DQ now also. Edge is flanked by Chavo. Edge gets speared as the bell rings, which is stupid as he didn’t need to since there’s no DQ. The WE WANT CHRISTIAN chant starts in about 10 seconds.

Christian would debut again in 16 days and he was already done with TNA and had made it known that he was coming back to WWE. You know the more I watch these shows, the more spots I see called by guys. I wonder if that’s just because I’ve seen a lot or if it’s because it’s becoming more of an issue with these young guys. After Jeff dominates for a bit, Chavo’s interference gives Edge the advantage.

Now we get some stupid hockey jokes after Edge slams his head into the table three times. Geez there’s another called spot. And now it’s weapons time as Edge brings in a chair which doesn’t work. While both are on the apron, Jeff hits a Twist of Fate which pretty much sucked. And there’s the ladder because Jeff is the Sabu of the WWE. Chavo makes a save but gets thrown off and jumped on. Jeff jumps off onto Edge.

I use the term jump loosely as he more or less falls and the splash turns into a headbutt. It looked ok but sloppy. Passable at least. This is the referee with the hitch in his count which is annoying . Edge counters the Twist of Fate into a DDT which impresses JR. Why? It’s not like that move has never been countered before. That’s why it never worked as a big time move. Think of the leg drop or the Sharpshooter or the Stunner in the earlier days of it or the tombstone.

When one of those connected, it was OVER. Jeff and Edge never had one of those, which is what makes them look weak. Vickie comes out and breaks up the pin off the Swanton. Here’s Matt with a chair and you can feel it coming. The crowd just goes silent over the chair shot and the look from Matt is GREAT.

This was an awesome moment with Edge looking back and forth with an awesome what the heck just happened look on his face. The complete lack of commentary here helps a lot. Matt walks away stoically. This would lead to their two match series that sucked because they didn’t go anywhere near as insane as they could have.

Rating: B-. Not bad but not great here. They had their standard good match that went about 20 minutes. That’s all you need really at the end of the day. The real story here was of course Matt vs. Jeff which is fine as it was a great story that the matches couldn’t live up to. They went fine though here and that’s fine.

Ad for No Way Out, which is now just called Elimination Chamber.

Orton says he’s not worried about Vince. This was the start of the STUPID mental disorder or whatever it was. That could have worked if he never said he didn’t have it or whatever but the whole thing was just stupid. Jericho shows up and says good job on kicking Vince in the head.

We get a recap of all of the Rumbles which never gets old. This is the really cool one with the following stats, accurate as of coming into the 09 Rumble:

22 winners (in 21 matches, but remember Luger and Hart were co-winners)

598 competitors (this is odd as there was one match with only 20 entrants and I don’t think there are enough to knock out twelve people over the years, unless they’re counting all the times where a guy gets beaten up on the way to the ring)

36 people that Austin eliminated, a record that Kane will likely break someday.

11 people that Kane threw out in 2001 which is insane

11 consecutive Rumbles for Kane, which is awesome

1 woman ever for Chyna

62 minutes 12 seconds which is the official record I guess, even though if you listen to the commentary for the 92 Rumble Flair was in for about 70 or so, which was false.

2 seconds that the Warlord lasted.

3 times that Austin won, which is also a record

1, the number with the same amount of winners as number 30, which is insane when you think about it. Note that in the video for this they only show Shawn when talking about the number one spot.

27, which has had 4 winners (Studd, Yoko, Hart, Austin in 2001)

70 which is the percent that since 1993 that the winner has won the world title at Mania.

This was an AWESOME package that got me completely in the mood for a great Rumble.

Royal Rumble

90 second intervals this year. Rey has number one and Morrison number two. If they had any idea what kind of a classic they would have in the fall they would be amazed. Rey’s mask makes him looking like a member of the Klan. Ross and Lawler are doing the commentary which just makes this feel right. One thing I like that they’ve got going here is they have a big Mania 25 logo in the corner of the arena and everyone keeps pointing to it.

Miz and Morrison are of course tag champions here. Rey does an awesome spinning move around John to get to an arm drag. Number three is Carlito. He’s a face here as he’s part of the Smackdown tag champions which would be unified at Mania. Oh no wait it was before Mania because we had to have a Kid Rock medley. MVP, just having turned face is 4th. Khali is 5th as not a lot is happening. He of course dominates the whole thing and chops the heck out of them all.

I hated the match he had with Rey when Rey was world champion. It completely killed Rey’s credibility for months. Kozlov, still undefeated and with a decent amount of heat is 6th. He drops Khali in about 5 seconds. MVP and Carlito are both out now so it’s Rey, Morrison who has been hiding and Vlady. It’s HHH at number 7 to a roar. After a facebuster, HHH throws him out with ease. Orton is 8th and it’s on.

The clock came up very fast for him as I’m assuming HHH was afraid of being in there with two good workers like Morrison and Rey. Morrison gets a 619 and Cryme Tyme come out and flip a coin to decide who gets in and it’s JTG. The clock is going WAY too fast here as DiBiase is 10th. Morrison and JTG both go over but hang on and kick at each other in a cool looking spot and then DiBiase and Rey do it and then HHH and Orton do it. That’s either cool or stupid.

Jericho is 11th. Well no one can say that they’re sticking with small stars in the opening. Despite the star power, not a lot of interesting anything is going on, mainly because it’s so clear Orton will win. Mike Knox and the beard of awesome is 12th. Knox would somehow manage to get into the Elimination Chamber next month which blew my mind and sucked at the same time. Miz is 13th.

He was about to start making fun of Cena and becoming the awesome character that he still is to this day. Morrison takes a sweet RKO and then so does Miz and JTG. He gets stopped by a Pedigree as HHH throws out Morrison and Miz while Finlay is 14th.

In a SWEET spot, Rey goes over the top to the floor but walks on Miz and Morrison to stay alive. That was awesome. How in the world are we almost halfway done with this? Rhodes is number 15. Rey gets a springboard and Orton takes him down with an RKO. The lights go out and Taker is sixteenth. Taker is on one side of the ring and everyone else is on the other. He beats them all up and throws out JTG with ease of course.

The crowd is way into him. That’s why he’s still getting pushed. Gold freaking Dust is 17th. WHY does he still have a job? He has no gimmick and is slipping in the ring. He and Cody have a showdown and Goldie beats him up. This is being written on December 23rd. My wish for Cody: that he makes 1/10 of the impact Goldust made. He’s got a long way to go. Rhodes puts out Rhodes and Orton is very proud. Punk gets number 18.

That pop doesn’t exist according to Vince as he deserves to be jobbed to Cena in less than two minutes. He won the IC Title about two weeks prior to this and the Triple Crown in less than a year. That’s amazing. Vince disagrees apparently. Yeah I’m a Punk mark, get over it. He hits GTS on HHH which surprises me. Henry, still a heel and not yet the Kool Aid Man is 19th.

The ring is WAY too full here with twelve or thirteen people in there. Shelton, the US Champion, is 20th. Punk and Jericho are on the top for some reason and Shelton does a running double Downward Spiral to them, which is called a reverse DDT by JR because he’s an idiot. Regal is 21st and he’s the guy that Punk beat for the IC Title.

Mysterio puts Henry out which is of course perfectly fine. Kofi, still not a big deal at all but getting very popular very fast, is 22nd. Taker is bleeding which I’d assume is hardway and he throws out Shelton. Kane is 23rd. Rey is upside down and hanging on in a weird looking position. Lawler counts 12 or 13 people in there. Kane and Taker hook up for awhile for a double chokeslam on DiBiase. Punk puts Regal out. R-Truth is 24th.

There are WAY too many people in there and even more just laying around and doing absolutely nothing at the moment. That’s the problem with having people last a long time in there. They’re used to ten to twenty minute matches at most so this is the equivalent of a rest hold. Rob freaking Van Dam is 25th to an EPIC pop. The whole match stops to watch.

Something that would crack me up is if they didn’t know he was coming. He does his top rope kick to Kane who just watches it happen. I know there’s no point in having him in there as there’s no way he’ll win, but he’s a WRESTLER and a former world champion. There’s his validation. Kendrick is 26th. He manages to put Kofi out and then be thrown out in 15 seconds. Van Dam is just so ridiculously over it’s scary.

Dolph Ziggler, still meaning nothing, is 27th. He runs into Kane resulting in a quick elimination. There are at least 14 people in there and most of them are doing nothing with maybe 4 really working in there. Ross actually says they’re trying to keep up with the action. Santino is 28 and breaks Warlord’s record by being clotheslined out in 1 second by Kane who was right there. Hogan got a running start to put out Warlord which explains the time lapse.

HHH and Taker go at it which is always awesome. Jim Freaking Duggan is 29th. REALLY? This is what ticks people off about the modern WWE. Shad can’t get in there? Primo can’t? Instead we put a 50 year old jobber in there instead. Yes he’s won before but we don’t wheel Luger out to be in there also.

Big Show is number 30, so here’s your final group. You may need a pillow as this might last into the night. The group is Rey, HHH, DiBiase, Jericho, Knox, Finlay, Rhodes, Taker, Punk, Kane, R-Truth, RVD, Duggan and Show. That’s 14 people. DO YOU THINK THAT’S ENOUGH? Well since they’re all in here let’s get rid of them. Everyone stops except Duggan who keeps punching someone while everyone else stops to watch which looks really stupid.

He and Taker have their requited showdown and Kane does the required run in to stop it. Show puts out Duggan. Jericho jumps on Show which is amusing now. Truth gets thrown out by Show after a beating. Show throws Punk over three times and then knocks him the heck out with a right hand. Punk’s selling is masterful. You know, the selling he demonstrated when he tapped to Cena in 2 minutes at the Slammies because that made SO much sense right?

Show puts out Knox and Rey as Horny comes in for no apparent reason and then Kane eliminates Finlay. Van Dam nods at a referee which I’d assume means something. Show and Taker go at it of course because that has to happen at least once every six months. Yeah Van Dam goes out soon after so I’m assuming a referee signaled that he was next out or something. I’ve always wondered how they knew when to do that.

Taker puts out Jericho and we’re down to seven. We’ve got Legacy, the big trio and HHH. There goes Kane, shocking no one as he jobs first. Legacy goes after Taker which is surprising. Taker counters with a double clothesline and a chokeslam for Orton. He doesn’t throw him over because he has to win though. Taker and Show have a boxing match or something resembling one. Taker has somehow shrunk from 7’0 to 6’11 to 6’10 to now 6’9 over the years.

Orton tries and RKO but just gets shoved off which never gets old. Taker and Show fight on the apron and Orton puts Show out who then pulls Taker out. Priceless being caught in a double choke by Taker made me imagine them in the locker room and Taker saying boys I’ve got cups older than you so sit down. That leaves us with Legacy and HHH as it’s all about him again.

This is a step down from HHH, Batista, Cena and Kane from last year. You ever notice how HHH is ALWAYS around near the end of these things? He was close in 98, won in 2002, 3rd in 2006, 2nd in 2008 and 2nd in 2009. That’s most interesting isn’t it? He of course throws out Legacy and then Orton dumps him for the completely inevitable win. Massive posing takes us out.

Rating: D. This just wasn’t that good. WAY too many people and WAY too much laying around just drained the life out of it. Van Dam coming in was great but Orton was so clearly the winner here that it sucked the life out of it. That’s something I burned Sly on once as he said that this was one of the best Rumbles ever and then slipped and said that the way you determine a good Rumble is by saying anyone could win.

I asked who else could have won in 09. I’m waiting on a reply to that and it’s been nearly a year boss. Anyway, this wasn’t interesting to me back then or now as it was just about HHH vs. the world and that’s simply not interesting. Of course, they would feud for the majority of the year and kill Raw in the process, but Vince is in love with Orton despite what ratings say so there we go.

Overall Rating: B+. Rumble aside, this is a great show. You have four solid matches with drama and title changes and storyline advancement. What more could you ask for out of this thing? I really liked it and it came out very well. The Rumble itself was pretty bad but then again so was Raw as a whole this year. As for the show, watch it but stop the DVD before the Rumble but after the Rumble package.

So that’s the Royal Rumble up til now. Since this is December 23rd, I have no idea what the 2010 card is going to look like so I have no predictions. Overall, the Rumble is the epitome of hit or miss in the company as some like 92 and 04 are classics and great matches while some like 95 or 99 make you long for a 2000 WCW PPV. It’s been able to make stars like Benoit and Shawn while at the same time some have won it and then done nothing like Duggan, Studd and that Austin guy.

It’s the most unique battle royal in wrestling and it’s the real start to Mania which is what it should be. That first three months or even four months of the year is predicated on this one match and other than one year it’s always been at least a 40 minute match so you’re in for a long one. This is definitely something special, and to think it all started so Vince could screw Crockett. Anyway, tomorrow is the Rumble and I’ll likely be pumped.

Sheamus is currently world champion and I still can’t get over that. Anyway, thanks for reading this and I hope you liked it. That wraps up the big four but I’ll be around with random reviews and some stuff from other companies so keep reading or start if you haven’t read this. Wait what?

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The Bash 2009
Date: June 28, 2009
Location: ARCO Arena, Sacramento, California
Attendance: 11,000
Commentators: Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler, Todd Grisham, Jim Ross, Matt Striker, Josh Matthews

Not a lot to say on this one. The main event is HHH vs. Randy Orton in a 3 Stages of Hell match for the title. This got a lot of ranting because it was more of the same two guys for like the 5th PPV in a row. We also have Punk vs. Hardy for the title and something I’m most interested in as Cena fights Miz. Miz had come to Raw in the draft and started imitating Cena in some hilarious stuff. Cena ignored him but is finally accepting the challenge here tonight. Let’s get to it.

The opening video talks about the main matches including Jericho vs. Mysterio in a mask vs. title match which I forgot to mention. Of course the most is about HHH vs. Orton but that’s expected I guess.

ECW Title: Christian vs. Tommy Dreamer vs. Jack Swagger vs. Mark Henry vs. Finlay

This is a Scramble match which is more or less a gauntlet. Every three minutes someone else comes in and whoever gets the final pin is champion but you have to pin the champion for the pin to count. Uh…sure. Christian and Swagger start us off. Wow it’s weird to see Swagger as champion before Christian. I miss the pushups.

Ok so if Swagger pins Christian he’s IT more or less? I guess that makes sense. I’m assuming that there will be a clock once everyone comes in. Striker implies a heel turn for Christian but nothing ever came for that. The clock begins far before three minutes is up and it’s Finlay. Striker talks about Irishmen from centuries ago as no one cares at all. Swagger pokes Finlay in the eye and rolls him up to become IT.

Christian and Swagger do a nice little sequence that gets two for the Canadian. He beats Christian down as Dreamer is number four. Dreamer beats up everyone with incredibly basic stuff but throws out a Sky High. Ok apparently it’s not Swagger that has to lose the title as it’s just the last pin. Uh…that kind of makes sense I suppose.

They blow a spot where Christian is on the mat and Dreamer gets thrown onto him. It just looked really awkward. Finlay finally comes back to life and hits the Celtic Cross on Swagger to become IT. Finlay and Dreamer don’t work well together to put it mildly. And here’s Henry to suck the life out of the match. Ok so now we have five minutes left and whoever gets the last fall is champion. Got it.

Dreamer takes the World’s Worst Finisher with 4:15 to make Henry IT. Everyone not named Dreamer beats Henry up and the people start booing for some reason. Finlay hits a freaking suicide dive onto Swagger. Have to love old men flying all over the place. Henry teases a top rope dive but for the sake of the gravitational pull, Swagger saves him and gets the pin to become it with about 2:20 to go.

I like knowing how much longer to go at times and this is one of them. Christian hits the Killswitch on Swagger but Dreamer DDTs him at 1:20 to become IT. It becomes a big mess now which makes sense at least. On instinct Dreamer goes for a cover which they don’t point out the stupidity of. Everyone goes for covers but the clock runs out and Dreamer retains. He screams “I WON???” in a funny moment.

Rating: C+. These matches are hard to call but I liked it. Thankfully they haven’t killed them by having them every two weeks or something like that. This still feels fresh though and it comes off as a good way to be different. Also it makes Dreamer look like a competent champion and not a jobber which I can’t complain about. This worked but was still a little bit weird.

Cena/Vince razor commercial. Be careful: cutting hair off your face could be un-PG.

Edge comes to see Teddy Long and complains about not being on the card. Somehow this takes like two minutes.

Intercontinental Title: Chris Jericho vs. Rey Mysterio

And if Rey loses he has to unmask forever….again. Does anyone else think some of Rey’s masks look like Klansmen hoods? This feud more or less brought the title back to life as it was the wrestler’s title again instead of just a stupid prop for guys like Santino. We’re told Rey has never wrestled a match without his mask and then are told he had to earn it after he started wrestling. I love continuity issues in WWE.

Jericho goes straight for the mask which is a very nice touch as instead of just trying to beat him he’s being pure evil and trying to humiliate and end Rey. I love that. Jericho does that slingshot into the bottom rope which is a nice move. All Jericho so far. He hooks a crossface chickenwing of all things which is a nice throwback.

You can tell these two have a lot of chemistry as they’re flowing very well. It’s odd hearing Ross clearly getting ticked off so easily as it’s clear he’s not liking having to more or less mentor Grisham when he thinks he should be the top guy. Jericho shouts at the referee to ASK HIM. Nicely done. Aww that’s so cute: they still think Rey won the Rumble and the world title. It never ceases to amaze me how they can’t tell him apart from Eddie. They look nothing alike.

Rey hits a seated senton to the floor but might have hurt his knee. He’s finally on offense though as he’d been dominated for about 6 minutes or so. Jericho catches a springboard into a powerslam. It’s always cool when wrestlers use something different than their usual stuff. You’re allowed to mix it up at times and it makes things better when you do so. Allegedly Rey has always been the smaller guy in every match he’s ever had. That’s not surprisingly actually.

Jericho gets the Walls, more or less guaranteeing a lack of a submission. When’s the last time he won a match with that? And shockingly enough Rey gets to the ropes. That move has less heat than Vickie’s vagina. 619 misses and Jericho takes his head off with a clothesline. He then blocks a rana into a powerbomb.

Rey has gotten blocked every single time here and it’s been great. Lionsault misses and I mean actually misses instead of him landing on his feet. Codebreaker gets two as the crowd is WAY into this and for good reason. Jericho and Rey go up top and Jericho just kind of falls backwards. Uh, ok? 619 hits but the West Coast Pop is countered into the Walls again. And of course they don’t work as we get a pinfall reversal sequence.

In a GREAT ending that throws back to the Extreme Rules match, Jericho rips the mask off again but Rey has ANOTHER mask on underneath so while Jericho is expecting him to stop dead he keeps going to hit the 619 and springboard splash for the IC Title. THAT is what I mean when I say great storytelling and psychology.

Rating: A+. This was a VERY well booked match that I’d bet a large sum of money on Jericho and Rey planning the majority of. The ending there was downright inspired and showed Rey outsmarting Jericho and capitalizing on it. The match being awesome helped a lot too as these two just can go out there and nail it every time with this being no exception. Screw it this is an A+.

We recap Trump buying Raw and having the commercial free Raw and tricking Vince into paying into giving him back his original money back doubled. That’s a great deal. This also started the guest host concept.

HHH is getting ready.

Jericho wants his rematch RIGHT NOW. Long says in a month it’ll be five years as GM. That’s insane when you think about how many GMs Raw has had and how Bischoff is the longest reigning one.

We recap Dolph Ziggler vs. Great Khali, which more or less is Ziggler trying to get noticed and continuously hurting Khali with a chair or winning by countout or something like that.

Great Khali vs. Dolph Ziggler

This is a street fight for all intents and purposes. I love Runjin Singh. His sideburns have powers I think. Ziggler’s music is perfect. Actually make that perfection. Also he’s apparently moved from Hollywood, Florida to Hollywood, California. His look is great until his hair gets all puffy and then he looks like Curt Hennig which is a compliment.

Of course Ziggler gets beaten down early, including taking the chop that pinned Cena back in 07 or so but since Khali is a jobber to the stars now it’s just a regular move. Khali is just scary huge. I’ve seen him live and he’s absolutely massive. And then he chops the post to get himself in trouble. Dolph grabs a chair which is fine here and he wisely goes for the knee. At least he’s thinking.

We get the bowling shoe analogy about Khali and I roll my eyes. He’s 7’4 and 450lbs. What the heck are you expecting him to do? And here comes Kane for no adequately explained reason. Ziggler beats the heck out of Khali’s knee as Kane is coming and then Kane goes semi-Austin at Mania 17 on Khali. And then Ziggler gets the pin. This went nowhere.

Rating: D+. It’s your standard David vs. Goliath here and that’s all it was supposed to be. The key thing here is that Ziggler has a huge win by pinfall that in this match is perfectly legal. He’s never really gotten a big push, but he started feuding with Rey just after this so that’s something I guess.

Vince comes in to talk to Teddy and says he’s done nothing as GM. Apparently even Adamle was a better GM. The thing about Long is that he’s the only GM other than maybe Bischoff that seems like an actual bureaucrat which is what a GM is supposed to be. He’s an authority figure, not a fighter. I like him but that’s just me.

12 Rounds is coming to DVD.

Unified Tag Titles: Colons vs. Legacy

There’s something VERY sexy about the way Lillian says Carlito. The Colons are faces here and we’re on Legacy’s 9th theme song this month I believe, although they would wind up keeping this one permanently I believe. And here’s Teddy Long. He makes it a triple threat match, adding in the new team of Chris Jericho and Edge.

Unified Tag Titles: Edge/Chris Jericho vs. Colons vs. Legacy

The original two teams won’t let Jericho and Edge in to start which is a nice bit of thinking. Carlito and Ted start and Carlito does a gorgeous moonsault off the top. The team that speaks Spanish has the belts here. They’re trying to keep Edge and Jericho out of the ring, I’m assuming betting they’ll win if they get in, which is kind of odd for faces to be all scared like that. I think the fans are chanting for Christian of all people.

This is similar to the Horsemen/Dungeon of Doom match from Bash at the Beach 96 where Benoit and Anderson knew the Giant would destroy them if he came in so they wouldn’t let him in. It made sense and this does as well. Primo gets a nice rollup on Rhodes for two. It’s so strange hearing Orton talked about as being so hated a mere year ago and 9 months before he was the hottest thing in the world. Cody hooks an inverted Gory Special that looks awesome.

The fans love Edge here which is rather odd indeed. Jericho takes Primo out with a Codebreaker and we have Edge vs. fired guy. Carlito misses it though and Rhodes gets a backstabber. A spear gives the Canadians the belts after being in the match all of 20 seconds combined. As I type that, Lawler says it. At least I wasn’t imagining it.

Rating: B. While the wrestling wasn’t anything spectacular, the thought process here was perfect. They planned this one out very well and it made perfect sense which is a great thing in my eyes. They knew they couldn’t stop Edge or Jericho so they kept them out as long as they could. That’s smart booking and it worked just fine.

Ad for Night of Champions, which we’ve already done.

Orton yells at Legacy for losing the title match but says the important thing is keeping the WWE Title. DiBiase gets on Orton for not caring about them.

Smackdown Women’s Title: Melina vs. Michelle McCool

Melina was just freaking stunning at this point once she dyed her hair black. Michelle was getting there too and she has Alicia with her here for reasons that I’m sure don’t mean anything. For some reason I like Michelle’s music. Melina comes out hot. And she’s being intense too. Michelle can actually work pretty well.

She hooks a hold where Melina’s foot is touching Melina’s head from behind. DANG that girl is flexible. Ok five minutes have passed but I’m back now. Melina’s knee is hurt of course as it always is. Michelle kicks her head off for two. That sounded very painful indeed. Styles Clash gives Michelle the title.

Rating: C-. It did its job. This was just supposed to be an appetizer to the remainder of the show and that’s what it did. And I think that’s enough padding to say that the girls looked great here and that was the whole point to this.

Do not try this at home. Try it at the Supermarket.

We recap Punk vs. Hardy, which I did like 3 days ago so go find the Extreme Rules review so I don’t have to type it again. Punk used MITB to steal the belt. There you go you freaking SLACKERS. Punk’s reasoning really was great: I did this before and you cheered. Now you boo. I love that.

Smackdown World Title: Jeff Hardy vs. CM Punk

Jeff is paintless. Well sweet goodness. Punk starts by doing one of the worst spot calls I’ve ever seen. He has a headlock on and leans over to Hardy’s head and can be heard whispering. Wow. Well at least you couldn’t hear him, unlike at the 99 Rumble where HHH was heard shouting IF I THROW YOU OVER CAN YOU HOLD ON?

Jeff has to start his own chant. That’s rather funny but it dies before I laugh. Oh great: poker analogies. That’s exactly what I want to hear. GTS is reversed as you would expect it to. Punk is dominating here and puts on a figure four headlock. That’s not one you see every day. Or night which is the time most wrestling shows occur. The Whisper in the Wind is freaking pretty. It truly is.

This turns into a striking match which of course Punk dominates but the “Twist of Fate” ends that. Swanton misses though as Punk sits up. Why he doesn’t just lay on him is anyone’s guess. I’ve never liked that hitch in this guy’s count. It’s very annoying. Jeff sets for the Swanton, which is clear because he shouts SWANTON, and it gets the pin. Shame Punk’s foot was under the rope so they have to wave it off.

Punk goes for GTS and Hardy elbows out of it, but Punk takes one in the eye. And the referee checks it, so Punk kicks the referee to get the DQ. Hardy’s look is great as he just looks completely crushed and looks as if he’s thinking are you freaking kidding me? Or maybe he’s wondering where his crack pipe is. It’s hard to tell with him. Post match Hardy yells at Punk that he did it on purpose and here they go again.

Rating: B. Good match here but it was all to set up the angle at the end which began his heel turn which made him into what he is today. This was a good match though as these two had solid chemistry together and they made things work well for the ending. I liked it, but then again I’m a huge Punk fan.

The Colons are ticked at Teddy over the title thing, which of course makes sense. This is pointless.

Orton is on the phone and is trying to get hold of Cody.

We get clips of Rev Theory doing a concert for the fans today. That’s kind of cool.

We recap Miz vs. Cena, which was a great setup for a feud with Miz constantly claiming he was winning matches when Cena didn’t show up to answer his challenges. The key thing here was Miz never once came off as cowardly here. He called out the top dog and never once looked back. That’s all you can ask for and people actually wanted to see this match. I certainly did.

The Miz vs. John Cena

This is Miz’s first major singles feud as he and Morrison had just recently split so he really did start at the top. The fans are rather split here which is a nice sign. Cena is just doing very basic stuff here and it’s working quite well. Cena goes for a backdrop and gets kicked in the face. He snaps up and shakes his head. Sure why not.

Miz works on the neck which is still hurt from Batista apparently. Miz gets some control in actually which is the best thing he can do. And the Cena fights back and the usual stuff ends it. It was short and not terribly painful.

Rating: D. That’s just for the wrestling mind you as it was more or less a Raw match and nothing more. Now when this first happened, I hated it. However since then I’ve cooled down on it a good bit. This wasn’t what I wanted, but it was fine. Remember that this was Miz’s coming out party so he needed to look good. This wasn’t as bad as it came off as back then, but that could be because Miz has done very well since then. Bad match, but Miz came off pretty well as far as credible goes.

We recap HHH vs. Orton. They hate each other and it’s about the McMahons. Yeah that’s all there is to it more or less. It was such a boring feud as no one cared for the most part as they were looking for these epic matches but they never came off as such. That and three Last Man Standing matches are about as much overkill as you could possibly have. Ok we’re at three minutes for this stupid video package now. WE GET IT! We also get Vince announcing the match for the fourth time.

Raw World Title: Randy Orton vs. HHH

Orton is champion. First fall is regular, second is falls count anywhere, third is a stretcher match which is stupid but whatever. Cole thinks this is more or less a 2/3 falls match. WHAT ANALYSIS! They tried forever to get this feud to work and it just never really worked. They of course start all physical and such because they HATE EACH OTHER. Yeah even I can’t take this match seriously at all.

Stephanie is going to be out of a job soon with how hard the announcers are sucking HHH”s balls. The first fall here really does mean nothing because it’s not going to end the match. That’s the problem with 2/3 falls matches in general: rarely do they not go three falls so you don’t have to pay attention to the opening part. It’s the same thing with an iron man match. And HHH cracks Orton in the head with a chair for the DQ then hammers him with it like Austin on Rock.

Pay no attention to the fact that it’s falls count anywhere and not a street fight so that should be another DQ but the timing doesn’t fit that. Cole is JUST figuring out HHH’s strategy which is about as obvious as birds like to fly. A Pedigree on the floor ties us up as HHH gets praised for brilliance. Dude Scott Steiner did that before. How smart can it be?

So now it’s a stretcher match for the title. Just end it now as you can smell Legacy from here. So since this is about a stretcher we’re fighting in the crowd since it’s barely 10:30 and we’re in the final fall. They break apart the barrier and just keep fighting at ringside. They’ve been doing this for almost 5 minutes now but there’s no drama obviously and no one seems to care.

Hey let’s go in the ring now to kill some more time. They use the steps a lot and nothing of note is happening at all. Why is it not of note? Because they haven’t been trying for the stretcher. They finally do something and of course it doesn’t work. I’m just wanting this to end at this point. Orton does the elevated DDT off the stretcher to the floor. That would look good if I cared about this match. The punt misses and apparently Orton kicked the stretcher.

HHH gets the advantage on top of the stage and has him inches away and here’s Cody. HHH beats him up. Here’s DiBiase who he was mad at earlier, beating HHH up for no apparent reason and throwing away the earlier thing. Shawn is on hiatus here so HHH is all alone. He had a sledgehammer hidden….somewhere on the stage and blasts Legacy with it.

Orton just takes part of the stage and blasts HHH with it for the win. AWFUL main event. Orton poses, HHH hits him with the sledgehammer, guaranteeing us ANOTHER PPV match from these two.

Rating: F+. So the stretcher match part was just them beating each other up for about 15 minutes so that Legacy could run in. Again, these two just cannot have a good match. Period. They simply can’t do it, and yet they kept being shoved down our throats time after time and the people were SICK of it. This was just awful as the stretcher thing was idiotic. This isn’t Memphis. A feud doesn’t need to go on this long.

Overall Rating: C+. That grade took awhile to arrive at. The problem is that the main event and the last nearly 30 minutes just suck the freaking life out of this thing. HHH vs. Orton was one of the worst feuds you could ever imagine as it was just so painfully boring.

The matches weren’t always awful, but they were just not interesting in the slightest. Other than that though, the show is rather good. Rey vs. Jericho is must see and there are other good matches throughout. Check this show out, but don’t watch the main event. It will haunt you.

 

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Survivor Series 2009
Date: November 22, 2009
Location; Verizon Center, Washington D.C.
Attendance: 12,500
Commentators: Jerry Lawler, Matt Striker, Michael Cole

Well here we are. After a month of build up, we’re at the Survivor Series. Since most of you have been watching the buildup, I’ll spare you the details of it. The card looks pretty good if nothing else. I’m not wild on the treatment the two triple threats are getting as they seem like the belts are being made silly which simply never works for me. I will say this though: the team matches have been booked and built very well.

That’s the key to these shows I think as you can advance feuds, like Orton vs. Kofi without actually having them fight. That’s invaluable as in today’s market you have so many PPVs dominating the market that saving some of the matches is the best thing possible. Let’s do it as I’m doing this one live so it’s going to be a bit less wordy.

The opening video talks about the history of the show. I’ve been doing that for a month so whatever.

Team Miz vs. Team Morrison

Miz, Drew McIntyre, Sheamus, Ziggler, Swagger
Morrison, Matt Hardy, Evan Bourne, Shelton Benjamin, Finlay

NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE IT! This is what the Series should be about: promoting the midcard. The most important thing about the midcard here: it exists. For so many years there just hasn’t been one as everyone is just sent to the main event or is a jobber. Here are ten guys that are firmly in the midcard. The heels are quite a team actually and there’s at least four great theme songs in there. Sheamus is a very good monster heel.

I’d bet on Lawler trying to cause Sheamus his match. The description of Miz is perfect: you might like him but you just won’t admit it. How true is that? Apparently Sheamus’ day may come tonight. There’s nothing like that great Lawler analysis. We start with Swagger and Bourne, which is a rather odd but interesting pairing. I guess that’s the point here. Allegedly Miz was at the first Survivor Series. So is he like a poor man’s Foley or something?

The stream isn’t being very nice so this could be a bit spotty here. As for reasons as to why these guys are here, more or less most of these feuds aren’t happening anymore but they were recently enough so I guess that counts for something. Ok the live idea didn’t work as I couldn’t find a good enough stream so this is being written very early Tuesday morning now. DAng it’s weird writing one of these since I haven’t done one in months now.

Seeing Sheamus after the ending of Raw is just a bit odd. Swagger is just made of awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a small package blocked before. Ziggler beats the heck out of Bourne which makes me wonder if he’ll, meaning Ziggler, will ever get a push like so many people want him to. Evan Bourne is freaking scary in the air man. We get the first tag for the faces as Hardy comes in. Less than 20 seconds later he tags Bourne back in and the Shooting Star puts out Ziggler.

In about 10 seconds Bourne is out to a double arm DDT. Did Striker just say Finlay vs. McIntyre has been lighting up Friday nights? That’s very stupid but I like Striker just for his references alone so there we are. Finlay and Sheamus stare each other down and Sheamus just jumps up with a bicycle kick. I LOVE THAT! He was just like screw this standing around nonsense and kicked the tar out of him to pin him.

We’re at 4-3 now if you were a bit confused. We keep hearing about Lawler and Sheamus and no one really cares as Jerry has come off like a jerk during this whole thing. Miz calls spots to Hardy which Striker uses the Billy Graham method of saying Miz is trash talking him to cover it up, which is a good idea if nothing else. Hardy is taking a beating here which is a tradition of Survivor Series. Even on the apron Morrison has such a great presence. You can’t teach something like that.

Does Matt have a single move that doesn’t work on the neck at all? Morrison got a POP. Something in me wants to see Swagger vs. Morrison in a long feud. That would just be awesome in my mind. Yeah I’m a Morrison mark now. The guy is just freaking awesome. The referee went down which apparently is a legit injury. Starship Pain, which is a sweet name if there ever has been one, ties us up. It’s Miz, Sheamus and McIntyre vs. Shelton, Hardy and Morrison.

Miz and Morrison could main event a small PPV someday. Shelton is freaking insane in the ring. Now if only they could get him a personality. Miz pins Shelton with the Breakdown which takes less time to type than the regular name. That right there is what Miz needs more than anything else: pins over more established stars. He’s viewed as a guy with limited credibility and the more wins he gets the faster that goes away and the faster he becomes a more complete wrestler.

Like it or not, he’s the real deal and he’s going to be around for awhile. I’m still undecided on McIntyre. He’s not bad, but I don’t see him as being as great as everyone says he is. If nothing else he uses a DDT so I can’t complain. He gets us down to 3-1 and I’m marking for Morrison here, despite knowing the ending.

Morrison of course gets his head handed to him as we get even more Rockers comparisons, which doesn’t work as both guys have potential to be somewhat big deals. Eventually the Razor’s Edge from Sheamus puts out Morrison, giving us three sole survivors as WWE makes my head shake more and more.

Rating: B. This was easily the best choice for the opener. The midcard gets a very solid push here which is what these matches can do better than anything else. The ending was very good also as it would have been unrealistic for Morrison o fight off all three at once. He should have gone down here and having it 3-1 keeps him credible. This was a solid match as the heels winning is just fine. This was very good and an excellent opener.

The black push continues as Christian is the only white guy on his team. Only this comes to mind:

The segment is funny if nothing else. Kofi without the accent has upped his credibility about 1000%. I still don’t buy everything that is said about Christian. I think that’s his biggest issue: his name. Christian. It just does nothing for me at all. I’d say that’s the main problem.

We recap Rey vs. Batista, which has to be the best heel turn in a good while. The angle sucks badly as they weren’t really best friends or anything or even close so the whole thing didn’t work. Anyway, let’s get to this as the package goes on way too long.

Rey Mysterio vs. Batista

This match has a no harm clause meaning that if Batista hurts him he can’t be sued, which more or less gives away the result. As I said in the LD, only WWE would have Batista’s first major heel match in his hometown where he’s going to get a massive pop. Ok, I’m sick of any and all references to Eddie. He passed away four years ago. Yes it was tragic. Yes he’s missed. STOP FREAKING MAKING ANGLES ABOUT HIM!!!

If you want to remember him fondly, stop using him as a prop. That’s absurd. Ok, so usually I write the reviews as the match goes, but based on what I read in the LD, this was a minute long squash. I have no idea where the whole part about not being able to respect Rey again came from. The way you guys were talking about it, Rey got less offense in than he did against Khali when he was world champion. This was perfectly fine.

In wrestling, you have to have a high level of suspension of disbelief. Rey as a credible main event guy is something that certainly falls under that category. There’s no reason to believe that he should have a chance against someone of Batista’s size. The thing is in this match, he got a TON of offense in. More or less Batista had to get his hands on Rey one time and the rest would be history. Rey got out of a ton of stuff and had Batista in trouble.

I seriously do not get where the squash thing is coming from. Batista is supposed to be an animal and he mauled Rey after he hit the first big move. Was Rey supposed to kick out of the Batista Bomb? He got a beatdown after a big power move. This was perfectly fine and there was nothing wrong with it. Rey has been beaten up before by people like Chavo Guerrero of all people and he came back fine from it. He’ll come back, likely at TLC and cost Batista the title. What was wrong here?

Rating: C+. The match itself was fine. It was short but it did its job very well. Honestly, what do you want from this match? It did everything it was supposed to do which mainly was getting Rey off of TV for awhile. It did that and allowed Batista to get a big boost as a monster heel. What more do you want here?

We jump to the back with Team Orton who might as well be called team losers here given the endings to the first two matches.

Promo for the Raw that aired last night which was quite good.

Team Orton vs. Team Kingston

Orton, Rhodes, DiBiase, Regal, Punk
Kingston, Christian, R-Truth, MVP, Mark Henry

The feuds are about as basic as you could think of here but that works fine here. We’re starting out with Henry vs. Orton. Please, make it quick. Henry is named the Chef of Hell’s Kitchen by Striker. I don’t get it. Striker goes on to point out that Orton is a Royal Rumble winner which could play into strategy here. Cole points out he’s a six time world champion as well. Ok, the Rumble thing makes a little sense I guess as both matches are about survival.

The world champion thing tells me one thing: titles change hands too often. No one mentions that Orton has been the sole survivor three times because that clearly has no effect on anything at all. Either way, an RKO takes Henry out in about a minute so at least he didn’t fill up the screen for too long. On paper this more or less should be Christian and Kofi again Punk and Orton.

Everyone else on those teams are more or less jobbers or midcard guys that aren’t going to do anything here. Thank goodness they didn’t call that move where Punk jumped and did a front flip over MVP a belly to belly suplex. At least they got that right. My boy hits a GTS to put Truth out, but does a very smart thing before doing it: he pulls Truth to his corner before going for the cover.

It’s little things like that which can make a wrestler be a step ahead of everyone else. It’s smart from a kayfabe perspective which so few people do yet. They’re really talking Kofi up here which is the best thing they could do. After a Killswitch misses, a pretty nice spinning sunset flip from the middle rope puts out DiBiase to make it 4-3.

Kofi comes in to a solid pop. If you haven’t seen it, take a look at the MSG fight between Kofi and Orton. It made Kofi’s career. Rhodes is called the Triforce of the Blue Eyed Bandit. I’m not sure if I like that or not. After a blind tag MVP hits what is actually a Mafia Kick on Regal for the pin to tie us up at 3. Striker is just on a higher level than Cole and King behind the mic.

There’s such a flow to him out there and he sounds completely comfortable. Ballin might be the most absurd move in wrestling since the People’s Elbow. IT’S A FREAKING ELBOW DROP!!! Thankfully Rhodes hits Cross Roads to put him out. That’s a major step for Legacy as having their own individual finishers sets them up for an eventual singles push. Think about all of the great teams that have split and all of them had singles moves to end matches with.

A Killswitch puts out Rhodes, and amazingly enough we’re down to a two on two match with the four biggest stars in this thing. Who would have seen that coming? From out of almost nowhere, Christian hits a Killswitch on Orton but Punk makes a save. Orton is up in about 15 seconds and Christian walks into an RKO to make it 2-1 with Punk and Orton against Kofi.

Punk gets him up for the GTS but because he kicks him feet he gets out. That’s all anyone has to do to get out of a move like that. The magical feet kicking knows no bounds. Orton hasn’t been in at all since it’s been one on one. Orton has an awesome silhouette. He just looks awesome standing there. If nothing else we’re getting a good Kofi vs. Punk match. I love what they’ve been doing with Kofi.

Instead of the way they built up Hardy who kept getting closer and closer but didn’t actually win, they’re having Kofi just rise up and start beating everyone he faces. I like that as it’s a different style to the push and it’s working very well. He catches Punk in a rollup and gets him. Orton walks in and almost immediately the Trouble In Paradise ends this. Kofi’s skyrocket push continues.

Rating: B+. Again, this was a very well done match. They knew what they were doing and it showed. They got rid of the six guys that meant nothing and got it down to what mattered. This match was designed to make Kofi look great again and they did just that. He pinned two men that within the last two months had been world champions completely clean. That’s a huge boost to Kofi and puts even more heat on Kofi vs. Orton. I loved this and it came off very well.

Don’t try this at home.

Smackdown World Title: Undertaker vs. Big Show vs. Chris Jericho

I’m really not big at all on the idea of having more or less the same match on both brands for the title, especially triple threats. Granted I don’t like triple threats anyway as it’s all about a gimmick that’s been done so many freaking times that it has lost any and all kinds of credibility it once may have had but again that’s neither here nor there.

Not to mention everything in this match turns into yet another formula match, which is one guy goes down and we have a one on one match, then repeat that with a different order of people. Naturally I could have written double this in the time Taker’s entrance takes. Yeah he’s still coming. I had a nice bowl of soup during his entrance.

It ticked me off that I was out of soup and had to get dressed and go to the store and get some soup and then come home and make it but at least I didn’t miss any of the match since Taker was 90% done with his entrance when I got back. Naturally, the match goes the formula direction for the majority of it. I’m not sold at all on splitting Show and Jericho already. They more or less are the tag division at this point, but granted last night on Raw they were announced to be fighting DX at TLC for the belts.

Again, I don’t like this as it’s two guys that won’t be together in 3 months because THEY ARE NOT A TAG TEAM. They’re singles guys with nothing else to do so let’s just throw them together again. They’re just kind of going through the motions here with near falls being broken up by the third guy every time.

That’s fine as it builds some drama, but at the same time it really doesn’t do much at all. It’s repetitive, which is never a good thing in a match. It’s not a bad match, but it’s not that interesting at all. Finally Jericho takes a shot to the head and Show goes into Hell’s Gate for the tap. Not wild on the ending but whatever.

Rating: C+. This was your run of the mill triple threat. Granted that might be because Show was in it and he just can’t do anything most of the time. What the heck happened to him? In WCW he was the MAN. Anyway, this wasn’t bad, but dang it went as by the book as you could ask for. I don’t think anyone believed Taker was dropping the belt here, but geez could they have been any less boring about it?

Josh Matthews, who should be thankful for having a job given that he’s completely worthless, is with the survivors of Team Miz who say they’re all great.

Face Divas vs. Heel Divas

McCool, Jillian, Beth Phoenix, Alicia Fox, Layla
Mickie James, Gail Kim, Kelly, Eve, Melina

How sad is it that I have no clue what show most of these girls are on? So Melina is champion yet Mickie is the captain. I hate these matches as all of four people care and it’s a T&A match. Yeah the girls look good, but that’s all there is to it. The matches are the same every year and next to nothing ever changes. Why are these girls feuding? No reason, other than some are faces and some are heels.

I am bored out of my mind with this match. Why am I supposed to care about any of these women? Kelly eliminates Layla to absolutely no reaction. McCool apparently disrespects AJ Styles by using his finishing move, despite AJ being known for all his other stuff more than that. That was so overblown it was ridiculous. Eve is just worthless in the ring and it’s pitiful. The thing is, she looks good in shorts and a tight top so she’s told she can wrestle.

She puts out Jillian as still no one really cares. Beth puts Eve out in a few seconds to get us down to 3-3. Kelly goes out despite her face never hitting the mat. Mickie and Beth botch a crucifix but it gets three anyway. We have Mickie and Melina vs. Alicia and McCool.

Alicia goes out due to a high level of suck so we’re down to 2-1 as McCool tries so hard to get people to care about her or accept her as anything but the vagina Taker gets off in. That’s an image I didn’t want. Finally after far too long of a match Melina beats McCool to end this mess.

Rating: D. This was, as usual, a waste of time. The wrestling is ok, but geez what is it going to take to get it through the heads of the writers that NO ONE CARES??? Seriously, when was the last time you saw the crowd into a Divas match for a reason other than what the girls looked like? The division is a joke and always will be a joke because there are no characters, there are no stories, and the champions are flavors of the month, except for a few here and there.

Mickie, the most talented one, is criticized for not being a stick but having some meat on her which makes her more realistic. That’s evil apparently, and again shows everything that’s wrong with the women in wrestling. Scratch that. Everything wrong with the division is better.

We recap Batista vs. Rey, despite the match already happening. It sets up Batista saying he’s not sorry.

Raw World Title: Shawn Michaels vs. HHH vs. John Cena

DX has gotten some heat for coming out together, and I can understand that. It makes it look like they don’t care about being champion, which is the point of the stupid match and being a wrestler in the first place but whatever. In a great moment, Shawn kicks HHH a few seconds into the match. I love that. He just made up for coming out with HHH as he says screw this guy, I want the title. That’s awesome.

This however creates a good thing and a bad thing, as we have the usual greatness that is Cena vs. Shawn, but it also sends us straight into another formula of a match, which is the last thing we need here after what we had earlier. Anyway we hit the floor after some good stuff, and as Cena is going to FU Shawn through a table, HHH is back for the save. He makes up for earlier and hits a spinebuster through the table with Shawn.

And yep, it’s formula time as it’s HHH vs. Cena in the ring while Shawn recovers. And after more good stuff there, we get the DX somewhat decent combustion. It of course ends with Cena and the STF, but Shawn gets a crossface instead. This is another ok match that is just pure formula stuff. It’s just take two guys, have them fight for three minutes then replace one guy.

Shawn kicks both guys, but HHH falls on Cena while Shawn falls outside for no apparent reason. We do get the always fun let’s go Cena, Cena sucks chants. I love those. FU to HHH as we’re in pure finishers/counters only. The problem with having double main events like these is that it keeps one from being the real main event.

It makes this match seem like less of something because we did it just 25 minutes ago. Just to further emphasize my point of only finishers at the end, Shawn kicks HHH for the third time and Cena hits an FU on Shawn to slam him into HHH for the pin.

Rating: C+. This was your run of the mill triple threat. This wasn’t bad, but dang it went as by the book as you could ask for. I don’t think anyone believed Cena was dropping the belt here, but geez could they have been any less boring about it? In case that looks familiar to you, it’s because it’s word for word the same as I put about the Smackdown title match but with Cena instead of Taker and the Big Show part edited out.

That’s because more or less it was the same thing but with different people in it. That’s the problem with these matches and booking like this: it’s repetitive, which makes it very boring, at least to me. The wrestling was fine given who you had in there, but MAN was it predictable.

Overall Rating: B-. This was a good show and that’s primarily because of one thing: the booking MADE SENSE. There is not one thing here where you have to scratch your head and wonder what they heck they were thinking. Everything went as it should have and it worked out well. Feuds were advanced, the right guys went over, no big names lost credibility, and some feuds were ended. What more could you ask for?

The one thing that you could ask for was a more creative way to have the title matches. I hate matches where it’s just the same thing that it’s always been but with different people which is what the world title matches were here. It’s a good show, but it won’t blow you away by any means.

 

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Night of Champions 2009
Date: July 26, 2009
Location: Wachovia Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Attendance: 17,774
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler, Michael Cole, Todd Grisham, Matt Striker, Josh Matthews

So what we have here is Night of Champions where everything on the roster is for a title. Literally, every match is a title match. I think I like that actually. Sure it’s a gimmick show, but at the same time that’s all you need at times. We’ve got a Mania 24 rematch and Punk vs. Hardy for the respective titles. This has been recently dubbed the 5th big one of the year, so let’s get to it.

The opening video is about as basic as you could imagine as almost everything is about being a champion. Why mess with something that simple? It focuses on the two main matches as you would also expect. Norcal was at this show so expect a few lines about him here and there.

Unified Tag Titles: Legacy vs. Chris Jericho/???

So Edge snapped his ankle and has no partner, meaning anyone that’s paid attention for the past few months knows who this is going to be. We get the video of Edge’s injury saying he’ll come back and take care of Jericho. That’s going to be an awesome feud. And it’s the Big Show. No one got this and the rumor was they picked him seconds before with the video being shown to buy them some more time.

There are cool banners with pictures of the belts hanging from them. It looks sweet. Rhodes and Show start us off. Show just beats the heck out of both guys as you would expect. You could bet on Jerishow retaining here even from the perspective of watching it live. In a nice move, Legacy hits a tandem chop block and clothesline. Not bad at all. Rhodes whispers something into the ear of Jericho but he does it just subtly enough that unless you knew to look for it you wouldn’t notice it. Well done.

Rhodes busts out a nice moonsault to Jericho. He’s underrated in the ring as his offense keeps changing up. The problem with this match becomes apparent quickly: Jericho and Show are the default faces even though they’re supposed to be the heels. We hit insane mode and Show puts down both guys and after a Codebreaker, the Colossal Clutch ends it.

Rating: C+. It was fine. That’s the only thing I can think of to say for this one. It was designed to be a pure squash for the new champions to get them over and that’s exactly what it did. Rather boring match but it served its purpose very well.

We go to the back to CM Punk, and it’s promo time. This is the promo that made CM Punk to a lot of people and I remember wanting to jump up and cheer at it. He talks about how the parents letting their children support Jeff Hardy and his drug addicted lifestyle and how eventually they start doing as Jeff does: smoking, drinking, drugs etc., and it all started because the parents wouldn’t take responsibility for their kids. The fans cheering for everything that he lists off is great as this was the perfect crowd to do this in front of.

ECW Title: Tommy Dreamer vs. Christian

Dreamer in ECW wearing the ECW Title is perfect to say the least. And WWE can’t have that, so they have him come out second and have the king of the smarks Christian come out second so that he gets a much bigger pop than Dreamer who has earned 30 seconds of glory. As you know, Christian wins here, which is also ridiculous as it wouldn’t have killed them to do this at TV.

Seriously, let Dreamer have his moment in ECW in Philly. Striker points out that the ECW Title has changed hands a lot in Philly. Thanks for that. I never would have guessed on that one. I love that running rolling flip that Dreamer does. You can see there’s a fairly big lack of psychology here as they’re just kind of walking through spots with little flow to it at all. We hit a sleeper already which isn’t a good sign.

More or less Dreamer is using nothing but jobber offense and signature spots. To be fair though you could argue that those are one in the same. Dreamer hooks a Texas Cloverleaf of all things. We hit an always fun pinfall reversal sequence. They trade finishing holds that are countered until Christian hits the Killswitch for the pin and the championship.

Rating: D+. While I hate Dreamer losing the belt in Philly, he got about two months with it so I can’t argue much on that. Christian has held the belt since this match. That being said, this just wasn’t that good. Dreamer simply isn’t that good in the ring but if nothing else this was just a nostalgic reign for Dreamer so that’s all well and good.

Ad for Summerslam.

Jerishow say they’re going to dominate. Cookie cutter promo if there has ever been one.

US Title: Kofi Kingston vs. Jack Swagger vs. Carlito vs. The Miz vs. Primo vs. MVP

Swagger does a little dance on the way to the ring. More or less it was a given that someone was going to take the title from Kofi here. I think Carlito’s mustache has its own population. Miz gets a NICE pop. Primo is replacing Big Show who was supposed to be in here. And there are no tags here. That rarely makes things any better or easier to call at all. Hey, did you know Kofi doesn’t have to be pinned to lose his title?

I didn’t know if it was made clear that Kofi doesn’t have to be pinned to lose his title. I want to make it clear that Kofi doesn’t have to be pinned to lose his title. It’s just a massive mess as everyone is trying to get a spot in there where they can. Also there are a lot of guys randomly staying on the floor for long periods of time. They mess up a save spot as Swagger hits Primo for the save about 5 seconds after Miz kicked out.

The Puerto Ricans are exploding here as they don’t like each other even though no one cares at all. Swagger and MVP are having the same angle that MVP and Miz are having now. No one is in the ring at the moment. Kofi’s movement is amazing to say the least and there’s the incredibly named Boom Drop. They do a Tower of Doom spot with Miz taking the most damage.

The crowd is dead here in case you were wondering. Miz is unceremoniously dumped to the floor. Is there a ceremonious way to do that? Everyone gets a quick rollup or pin and it gets some applause if nothing else. In a cool and actual believable spot, Miz hits the Skull Crushing Finale at the same time on MVP as he hits the Playmaker on Swagger. Kofi hits Trouble In Paradise on Carlito for the pin and the very surprising retain.

Rating: C-. I hate matches like these, I truly do. They’re just disasters to have one guy get a fluke pin and overcome a bunch of odds when in reality all it does is disguise the fact that there is no story or effort being put in here and it’s just a massive mess. Kofi winning was a nice surprise though.

Randy Orton says he’ll prove himself tonight. He reminds me of Lex Luthor from Smallville.

Smackdown Women’s Title: Michelle McCool vs. Melina

This is a rematch from The Bash which was brought on by some bad acting. Michelle’s bra is sticking WAY out here. Melina gyrates like no one I’ve ever seen. Michelle is the first person to use her freaking brain and kicks Melina on her splits intro. And there’s your first botch as they mess up an arm drag. We get some kicks that don’t actually connect as I have a bad feeling about this match.

We hit the floor and are told that a slam of the face into the barricade is a DDT. Riiiiiiiight. Melina is laying on the apron and in a coole counter she pulls up onto the bottom rope to avoid a baseball slide. They’re hitting hard but at the same time, they’re botching the heck out of so many things. Michelle reverses a rollup into a rollup for the pin. At least it was short.

Rating: D. They were trying but this was just a mess and a half. They were botching stuff left and right with there being little flow or psychology at all. Michelle has gotten better which to be fair she couldn’t have gotten much worse. This was really bad.

What in the heck is the point of McCool’s song? You’re not enough for me? That makes no sense.

Cena is here.

There was a tournament where the winner got Orton at NOC. More or less it was a way to have HHH vs. Cena on free TV and I won’t even go into how stupid that is. Legacy ran in for the double DQ so they made it a triple threat, which had been done before but no one cared. The video was as simple as you could ask for.

Raw World Title: John Cena vs. HHH vs. Randy Orton

Cena of course gets a mixed reaction. HHH gets a very face reaction and of course Orton gets a very heel reaction. Vince must already be coming over just the entrances. We’re at 5 minutes for intros and Orton hasn’t come out yet. This could be an all night thing. And now we sit and wait on Orton. I guess Vince wanted a show. They say this was a great Wrestlemania main event.

Not only was it not a main event, but it was far from great. Orton doesn’t have to be pinned or tap out to lose the title. The ridiculousness of triple threats is never lost on me. Big match intros mean that it’s been 13 and a half minutes since the last match ended and the beginning of this. Good to see they’re keeping this thing moving. The faces double up on Orton to keep things moving quickly I guess.

Orton of course winds up in trouble as you would expect. The other thing I hate about these are how formula based they are. Why does one guy always wind up down on the floor only to show up just in time to make a save? I don’t get it at all. Cena does that top rope leg drop to both guys and it more or less completely misses. Philly really doesn’t like Cena at all.

Orton gets put to the floor with another completely ridiculous spot and it’s HHH and Cena again. Hmm I believe I called this coming no? It’s boo/yay time as they oversell punches to no end. Why would anyone duck their head against HHH? How stupid do you really have to be? Cena takes the Pedigree and in a STUNNING, yes STUNNING I say, turn of events, Orton makes the last second save. We’re in the crowd now. Oh never mind only Orton is.

The STFU is on HHH on the table, making it completely pointless. Cena gets the STFU on HHH again but in the ring this time. There’s zero drama at all here as it’s clear the match won’t end here. Cena dodges the punt (even though the kicking motion is more like a place kick) and rolls up Orton for two. That could have been a believable ending actually. Somehow Orton makes the Garvin Stomp more boring. How in the world is that possible?

And now the fans are chanting for Orton. It’s a very interesting sign that Orton is so hated that the fans would rather have Cena as champion again. HHH hooks a Sharpshooter because he’s HHH and can do whatever he wants to I guess. Cena adds a Crossface at the same time and Orton taps.

Let the nonsense begin. Legacy runs in for the beatdown as I wonder why Rhodes can’t wear sleeves. And Orton hits the RKO on Cena for the pin to retain. Yep, after tapping like that he keeps the belt. That’s not stupid at all.

Rating: D+. I hated this. Even Cole has disgust in his voice and I can’t blame him. No one wanted to watch Orton other than Vince so he can stare at his glistening body. Even Philly was cheering for Cena. What does that tell you? This was idiotic to say the least and the match sucked on top of that. Actually let me revise that. The match was ok, but the formula was idiotic. Cena and Orton began their ridiculous feud the next month at Summerslam.

Maryse is stretching for obvious reasons. That and her mustache must equal talent right? Miz hits on her and it fails.

Shaq is guest host tomorrow.

Chilli from TLC is here. No one cares.

Raw Women’s Title: Mickie James vs. Maryse

Make it quick please. Yeah as looks go, Mickie is way ahead of Maryse. The fans want puppies. And people wonder why this division is never taken seriously. The match is your standard slapfest of course. Maryse tries to use her perfume or whatever but gets stopped.

We’re in our second rest hold six minutes into the match. This just isn’t interesting at all. Cole almost says the name of the wrong title. There is simply no need to have two belts. If you had just one it could potentially work. Mickie hits her jumping DDT to get the title to next to no reaction.

Rating: D. People don’t care about women’s wrestling and that’s really all there is to it. It’s not nice but it’s true. This just wasn’t interesting at all. The buildup was Mickie has beaten the jobbers this month so she gets the title shot because she’s on a roll. That’s it. I’m looking forward to Michelle vs. Mickie as there’s an actual story to it. This didn’t and it was painfully obvious.

Legacy says they’re cementing their legacy.

We recap Mysterio vs. Ziggler which more or less is Ziggler has been winning a lot but doesn’t get the belt. This is his chance.

Intercontinental Title: Rey Mysterio vs. Dolph Ziggler

People kept talking about the potential that Dolph had but I’ve just never seen it. These fans seem to think that everything is boring and it’s getting on my nerves very quickly. This is seemingly going to be a rather long match with Ziggler getting to show off. That’s a good sign if nothing else. He’s showing some solid offense and he looks completely calm doing it. Also getting in some little plays to the crowd which is always a nice perk.

This was what the title needed: big names defending it and guys having longer solid matches for it. For years it was the wrestlers’ title and that’s what they tried to make it again which I would say was a success. As expected, Dolph dominates for most of the match but makes one minor mistake, in this case going for one too many moves and here comes the masked man. And then of course the 619 and the springboard splash ends it.

Rating: B. This was very fine indeed. They got to beat on each other for awhile and it did a few things. First of all it let Ziggler look good. He got to show off against a huge star in Mysterio. Second they had a great match that made the belt look good. Both guys came out of this looking great and that’s all you can ask for.

Ad for the tag team DVD which I’m about halfway though and need to finish up.

We recap Punk vs. Hardy, which started at Extreme Rules where Punk used the MITB case to get the belt then slowly turned heel. That led us here.

Smackdown World Title: CM Punk vs. Jeff Hardy

They really push the whole lifestyle thing here which is the smartest thing that they can do. They’re starting with a fast paced match that’s working rather well. These two had some great matches over the year and this was certainly one of them. Punk is so perfect as a heel and it’s working like a charm here. They’re going with high spots here which is something that Punk can do very well.

This wasn’t going to get a lot of time as it started at about 10:40, so the max was about 20 minutes. Oy it’s that referee with the hitch in his counts. This match felt like it didn’t have a beginning and we’re already at the end which isn’t good really, although the match is fine. We get a Dragon Sleeper of all things. Punk goes into that striking sequence he uses and Hardy ducks before hitting an RKO which is called a Twist of Fate here. Yeah that was dumb.

GTS hits and if the referee wasn’t incompetent, Punk would have won. Punk tries to leave and our hero doesn’t like that. In a rather anti-climactic moment he hits his usual finishing pair of moves and he gets his third world title. The celebration ends the show.

Rating: B-. I do not agree with the booking here at all. I was skeptical about the grade here but Ross saying let the Hardy Party begin sealed it. I don’t get Punk losing at all after the promo from earlier, but that’s life I guess as we can’t send kids home sad or they might only get three t-shirts this year instead of four. Either way this was pretty good although like I said it felt rushed which is because the show was running a bit low on time. I get why they cut it short. Still good though.

Overall Rating: B-. This was a pretty good show but not great. I really didn’t like the triple threat but I’d chalk that one up to a personal bias more than anything else. Other than that, the non-Diva matches were more or less all good which is all you can ask for. There’s nothing that jumps off the page as awesome, but at times you don’t need there to be. This was good enough for a watch but it’s not something you’ll want to see again. Check it out if you’re bored.

Summerslam 2009
Date: August 23, 2009
Location: Staples Center, Los Angeles, California
Attendance: 17,129
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler, Michael Cole, Todd Grisham, Matt Striker, Josh Matthews

With another year under our belts since the previous Summerslam, our main feuds are Cena and Orton and Punk (woo!) and Hardy. As many of you may likely know, this very well could be Hardy’s last match with the company. Our other big deal is the return (again) of DX, this time facing Legacy.

While a lot of people have criticized this, the segment that they had on Raw was excellent in my eyes. Shawn is a guy that can just come from nowhere and have a great match. The card actually looks pretty freaking sweet tonight. That doesn’t mean it’ll be good, but let’s get to this.

I liked the Summerslam logo this year. It looked a bit old school. The intro is hijacked by DX doing shadow puppets, but they freeze it on Legacy. Apparently this was the kiss cam and Cody loves Ted. Ted says ditto. So he loves himself I guess?

Anyway, they have some shenanigans going on which are kind of funny. I like the DX comedy sometimes. It’s not going to be the 90s version, so why compare it to that? It was fairly funny, involving DX breaking the feed of the intro and Shawn trying to fix it. It’s better than it sounds.

JR does the opening alone. That’s just odd. I like Aerosmith though so I’m not complaining about the music. As has become the custom, no buildup for the first match.

Intercontinental Title: Rey Mysterio vs. Dolph Ziggler

I’m quite surprised this is opening. This is a rematch from NOC as well, which allegedly was brought on by Rey simply whining about not having a long enough reign yet. Based on that, I think the title change is coming here but odder things have happened before. They had a great match last month so I’m assuming this will be good too. Ziggler is growing on me, but I have a hard time getting on Kerwin White.

Rey comes out first. Why? He’s the champion. Now we get Grisham to talk so that’s an improvement I guess. I like the purple and gold on him. It’s almost reminiscent of his WCW days but not quite. I miss the big semi-circle video screen that they used to have for Summerslam. Ross forgot Ziggler’s first name. How dare he forget the real name of Ivan Drago? Ziggler’s music is awesome. How did Kerwin White actually keep a job this long?

Just goes to show you that you can’t make fun of wrestlers when they have horrible gimmicks. Other than Santino of course. He will always suck. The graphic of the belt looks very cool for some reason. Wow the IC belt is actually opening the show. That’s an odd thing to think of. Ziggler is freaking ripped. I’m getting close, dangerously close actually, to liking this guy.

Love that quick powerslam that’s done coming off of the ropes. It just looks awesome. Ok, that moonsault was SWEET. Rey doesn’t do his old style often, but when he does it’s freaking amazing. Ziggler has leopard print gloves. That’s either really stupid or really awesome. That was a pretty weak corner powerbomb. I guess Rey’s size makes up for it. This has been pretty hard hitting so far. What more can you ask for?

Apparently Rey makes a habit out of getting people in the corner and drop toe holding them. Yeah I’ve never seen him do that in the corner either. Thank you JR. Dolph just kills him with a clothesline afterwards. That looked awesome. He used a Stinger Splash. He has to be cool. Sick looking head bump on the post from it too. Rey goes for a springboard reverse crossbody but Dolph hits a perfect dropkick to the ribs. That was sweet.

This is a very good match. And there it is. We have our stupid way to get into position for the 619. My only criticism of Dolph is his offense is a bit basic. If he upgrades that he’ll be very good. He’s rocking the bad Mr. Perfect haircut though, so I’m not wild about that either. I kind of like the white ropes, but I’m not sure.

Ziggler finally avoids the springboard splash in the most basic way of all: he sits up. Why is that so complicated for some people? The fans are chanting for Ziggler here, which is surprising but also good I guess. Rey gets a hurricanrana from the top to win and keep the title in a very good match.

Rating: A-. This was a GREAT opener. It was fast paced, it was solid, and the face won. I’m hyped for the rest of the show and it’s 330 in the morning. That’s exactly what an opening match is supposed to be. See how effective the IC belt can be when it’s not being used in bad comedy angles? Ziggler looks awesome here which is all you can ask for. See what they do on Smackdown? They have the veterans make the young guys look good. That’s how you keep the future going people.

Josh is in the back with Swagger and MVP who say that tonight there’s a culture clash. Both are solid on the mic here, but Swagger impresses me a lot more. He’s got the heel character down to a T and the cockiness is perfect. MVP is good, but not as good. Also, he talks about how Swagger has this great background and was a rich kid. Ok, that’s fine, but he still won with athleticism in the NCAA. Swagger won this promo war with ease and he’s making the DDP two time two time thing better.

King and Lawler say nothing of importance.

Jack Swagger vs. MVP

My goodness…could it be? I mean, it’s impossible isn’t it? This couldn’t be…a regular non-title midcard match? I…I think it is! Now, can you find anyone that actually thinks MVP has a chance? His face turn has been a complete disaster as he’s just cut out to be the cocky heel. Go back to it already. After those promos, I’m looking forward to this. The opening 25 minutes to this has been pretty sweet so far.

MVP goes for the Ballin Elbow about 19 seconds into this, but because it takes longer than that to set it up, it doesn’t work. I don’t get why these two are having this match anyway, since Swagger pinned him clean already on Raw. This is a very slow paced match and the fans aren’t liking it that much. They’re way behind the face though as he’s in the Monsoon Special, which I’m sure Gorilla would find something wrong with.

Looking at it, it is pretty sloppy. Sick clothesline stops MVP’s comeback though. Into a half camel clutch which wouldn’t actually hurt but now it’s full. At least Swagger knows how to hurt people. Ok, Swagger gets knocked down and MVP sets up for the Ballin Elbow. I timed him on this: SIXTEEN SECONDS from the time that he got in position to the time it connected. That’s over 5 pins. Seriously, could you not just cover the guy in that amount of time?

They fight a bit more…and MVP wins clean with the playmaker? What the heck? MVP actually won this thing and he did it clean. How in the world did that happen? I’m genuinely surprised by that, and I don’t think it’s in a good way. AGAIN they mention the chick from The View. WE GET IT!

Rating: C. This was fine, but short and surprising. It certainly wasn’t bad, but at just 6 and a half minutes they didn’t have the time to get anything going. There were some bad spots in there too where it was just flat out boring, but luckily they were quick. Again, not bad, but it’s really nothing special. It felt like a Raw match.

Don’t try this at home. Good advice actually.

Luke Perry is here. I don’t care.

We get a recap of the guest hosting thing, which I think has gone well. ZZ Top was awful but other than that, I think it’s gone well. I still want to murder Dr. Ken though. It’s worked for one simple reason in my eyes: for the most part, they’ve gotten people that either have a ton of charisma or seem like legit WWE fans. That’s all you can ask for really.

Nancy O’Dell reads off a script about her charity. Yeah that’s fine. It’s for ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease. She talks to people like Freddie Prinze Jr…and that’s it. She’s apparently going to host Raw in the future. I’ll be reading something that night. She’s very annoying.

Tag Titles: Big Show/Jericho vs. Cryme Tyme

Speaking of annoying, I don’t like the champion’s new music. This has actually been built up pretty well I’d think, with Show being the partner to replace Edge when he got hurt. It seemed to me that was a last second decision, but whatever. Cryme Tyme is one of the oddest teams I can ever remember. They’ve never actually done anything, so maybe they will here. I’m not holding my breath though.

Actually, this match has gotten the third most build, which isn’t what I expected. However, I’m certainly glad to see a tag title match getting this kind of TV time. It’s what the belts really need. Again the champions come out first. Jericho runs down celebrities in general. Isn’t he a celebrity as well? Oh apparently he’s a superstar, which isn’t a celebrity. That…doesn’t make a lot of sense.

For the second time in 2 minutes we hear that they have over 40 titles between them. Show looks like he’s losing a bit of weight. That’s a good thing. Cryme Tyme interrupts Show’s promo. Remember what I said about the show being good so far? They just ruined it. They’re just freaking annoying to say the least. What have they ever actually accomplished? Oh yeah they got fired for being annoying.

JR makes another reference that no one gets. There’s no way that the faces are winning here, due to reasons of suck, but maybe at least we can get a decent match out of it. Yeah that’s not going to happen I don’t think. Jericho goes for the walls but instead goes for a slingshot. JTG just kind of jumps on him, which looks sloppy and stupid as usual. Grisham says that they’re trying to turn Hollywood into Holly-hood. Take me now.

JTG has to stay in there longer than he should simply because Shad sucks. He’s a beast as far as his look goes though, and he’s able to stand up to Show in the size department. Yeah he’s a lot better on defense. Show is freaking scary to say the least. Jericho whispers a spot to Shad which looks really bad. It’s never good when it’s on a major PPV and a veteran has to carry a team that’s been around as long as Cryme Tyme has been.

I think that’s my real issue with them: they’ve been around for a good few years and they just never get any better. The full nelson is applied, and of course we have the eternal question: WHO WAS NELSON? Maybe Babyface Nelson? Anybody? Anybody? I’ll be here all night. Jericho puts another hold on him, which makes sense because it’s really all Shad can do: get put in holds and sit there. It’s a scary thing when JTG is the bright spot of the team. Yeah this team is awful.

Jericho gets him in the Walls, and amazingly, he doesn’t tap. Seriously, can they bury this move any more than they already have? It’s just stupid how it doesn’t work on anyone at all anymore. When’s the last time someone tapped to it? Anyway, Show hits the punch for the knockout and Jericho gets the glory.

I’m really starting to like this team dynamic as Jericho does all the talking but Show wins the matches for them. At the very end of the segment, Ross mentions Big Show is undefeated at Summerslam. See, that is an interesting stat, and it would have been a lot more interesting at the beginning of the match.

Rating: D+. Yeah this was boring. Shad is just flat out awful, and JTG is just ok. The only reason they get over is their gimmick and nothing more. That’s just flat out boring in all aspects and nothing good comes of it. I can’t stand them and there was just nothing they could do here to make this interesting at all.

Ad for Breaking Point. Interesting concept, but I’m not sold on it. The main events only thing makes me feel better though.

Josh is with Punk who says a movie script he found called the Jeff Hardy story. He runs down LA and the lifestyle there and elsewhere, which yet again, rings amazingly true on so many levels. Every single thing that Punk has said in his promos has been true, and it’s amazing to say the least.

Kane vs. Great Khali

Again, no transition at all. I like Kane’s music here. Once Kane is in the ring, we actually get a long recap, which could have gone…I don’t know, before his entrance so it’s not him just standing there in the ring? This is an intriguing match to me as they’ve had a fairly long build with no official match. That’s a nice plus for a change as it gives this a bit more of a build. Now, if they manage to have a passable match, then we have proof that HBK/God vs. the McMahons was indeed a tag team match.

The reveal of Singh as Khali’s brother was pretty boring but it gives it a bit of a reason for being around Khali so much. Hopefully, this will be short and painless, but I’m not betting on that. JR mentions that Kane is on a four match winning streak at Summerslam. See? That’s another interesting stat and it makes you wonder if he can extend it here tonight. It’s small, but it adds a tiny bit more to the match and might get people more interested in it.

That’s what a commentator is supposed to do: offer insight. When you watch a DVD and listen to a special commentary, you’re listening for insights, maybe some numbers or stories that you wouldn’t know otherwise. That’s what wrestling commentators are supposed to do, but it so rarely happens which is a shame. JR says it’s a bowling shoe match, meaning we’re sorry that this is going to suck so badly.

A lot of this is just Khali showing off how strong he is, which is fine I guess, but I’d like more action. Khali misses a bad looking legdrop and then just sits there. He doesn’t sell anything or anything like that, but just sits there for the low dropkick. Kane apparently sees evil and likes it. I guess that’s why See No Evil sucked: Kane just wasn’t motivated. They fight over their respective chokeslams but that goes nowhere. Oh this is bad. It’s just so freaking sloppy.

To be fair though, what do you expect from two monsters like these? Khali with a sick sounding chop. The top rope clothesline puts Khali down and gets two. He doesn’t really kick out but it’s implied his shoulder was up. JR brings up an interesting point: if Khali quit in his language, would the referee understand it? Amazingly, the Khali chop isn’t enough for a pin. Geez Khali’s hands are freaking massive.

Kane hits a running dropkick to the knee and a running DDT for the win. That finish was kind of awesome actually. I love that Kane didn’t use a bad chokeslam to win it. That’s what I want to see more of in the WWE today: wrestlers winning with moves other than their finishers. It’s not really that hard to do and it works very well I think. Do it more often.

Rating: D+. Oy this was bad indeed. It was very sloppy, but the ending made it a lot better. Also, it was less than 6 minutes. See, that’s intelligent booking. You know these two aren’t going to have a great match, so keep it short. That makes a lot of sense and it made things a lot better than they could have been.

Some hot woman from a talk show is here. Slash is here too, so it’s closer to making me care. Robert Patrick is here.

We hit the recap button on DX vs. Legacy. This one is pretty short. HHH kept getting his head kicked in by them so he said he’d make one phone call. It wound up being about three but he eventually found Shawn as a cook in a diner in San Antonio, in what I thought was a very funny segment. This was followed up by Legacy actually beating them down in a run in on Raw a few days prior to this which at least made this look possible.

Oddly, the stuff about him being a cook is completely omitted from the recap video. What we do get though is a bunch of clips from some of their old exploits which have absolutely nothing to do with this feud or match. For some reason people were hoping that X-Pac or someone like that would return. People, the old DX is dead. All you’re going to get is these two buffoons, so be happy with it and let go of the past already.

Also, this really isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. They’re going to have decent matches and it’s going to help Legacy look legit if they win a single match, which is a good thing. DX can do whatever they like out there and they’re going to get cheered. What else can you ask for out of them really? It’s HHH against someone not named Orton. Be happy.

DX vs. Legacy

Now this is for some reason considered one of the main events. Why? What makes this one of the big matches? Yes, Shawn is back, but when HHH returned against Booker in 2007 it was a midcard match and that was fine. I get that it’s the third biggest match by default, but that doesn’t mean it should be. I’d put the tag titles above this as they’ve had far more build, but whatever. Anyway, let’s get to this.

Ok, I’ve heard great things about the DX intro, and I’ll admit, it was awesome. Basically, it’s an army theme with a bunch of troops coming out in a jeep and firing off guns. Then the stage splits apart and DX comes out on a tank, launching of a bunch of fireworks. The fans are WAY into it and it’s cool. Everything is loud and big here and the crowd is screaming. That’s what you’re looking for here. The fans are the most important thing at the end of the day and they’re loving this.

Screw the people that think the return of DX was stupid. It’s cool and it’s working. The glow sticks are a cool idea too and I’m surprised it took this long for them to be invented. It takes about 5 minutes, but so what? The reaction was awesome, so rock on. Legacy is the evil opponent here, but they have some sweet music. It’s not as great as their 39th song, but it’s better than theme 341B. The announcers point out that this is a huge chance for Legacy and they’re absolutely right.

DX is a team of two hall of fame members, and Legacy are young guys. This is their chance, so hopefully they don’t get crushed. Naturally, HHH starts going strong which makes sense as he’s the face, so why wouldn’t he be in control at first? Oh apparently the right knee of HHH is his vintage knee. That’s good to know. Shawn gets tagged in to a big pop. Apparently the fans think something of this guy.

He does a cool spot where he fakes Cody out when Cody goes for a leapfrog but Shawn gets slapped. That was stupid don’t you think? There’s the return slap that you knew was coming. Legacy is controlling the match. That’s a lot more than I expected them to do actually. HHH is in now and not dominating. This is being worked slowly towards a big ending. That’s a truly lost art in tag team wrestling today.

I’m liking this: DX gets momentum and Legacy keeps stopping them. See, this is how you build a tag team: you let them look good. That’s what veterans are supposed to do: make young guys look good. DiBiase uses a chin lock. Good to see those Orton lessons paying off. It amuses me that as a tag team, Legacy is light years more successful than DX has been. Legacy is I think 3 time tag champions?

DX has definitely never won a tag title. What does that tell you? Lawler says this isn’t what DX had in mind. Yeah they were looking for some Chinese Checkers. Legacy is doing a great job here of keeping HHH in the ring. That’s very old school and it’s working quite well here. We get the boo yay punching sequence which I always kind of hate. Shawn gets the tag in. Cody goes for the Shawn elbow, which apparently is him stealing the move.

I love how they make no issue of Shawn stealing it from Savage who was winning world titles with it before Shawn debuted in the WWF. DX is actually in trouble here and the announcers are putting them over huge, which is all you can ask for. The crowd starts wooing as Shawn puts on a figure four. Cody hits Crossroads on Shawn, which is actually a pretty good name for his finishing move I guess. Rhodes takes a Pedigree as Shawn takes Dream Street.

Dang I actually couldn’t tell Legacy apart there. That’s not a good sign at all. In one of the fastest endings I’ve ever seen, Shawn hits Sweet at least 4 inches from Cody’s Chin Music for the pin. Yeah that wasn’t even close. Literally they were both just standing up and leaning on each other then Shawn took a step back and kicked. Yeah he missed but maybe the air knocked Cody down?

Rating: A. This was a great tag team match for many reasons, but the big one was that Legacy was made to look legit. This wasn’t like when DX dismantled the Spirit Squad week in and week out. Legacy had me believing that the upset was indeed possible. DX made them look good here in a very good 20 minute match. DX should have won, but they won the right way here. That was by far Legacy’s biggest and best match ever, and they brought their best. I’m impressed with both teams.

Ad for the WM 25 special on Saturday which is going to bomb.

ECW Title: Christian vs. William Regal

Not a ton of backstory here. One night on the Abraham Washington Show, a talk show segment on ECW, Regal was simply announced as the #1 contender. 5 days prior to this, he hooked up with Kozlov and Ezekiel Jackson to form a trio with the only real thing in common being that they’re heels. This should be ok I guess. I still have no clue what the massive appeal of Christian is, although he’s had some decent matches lately.

I feel so sorry for the ECW announcers. Literally, we haven’t heard their voices until now, an hour and 40 minutes into the show. Also, yet again the champion comes out first. That’s just odd. Regal comes out with his two big henchmen.

Jackson’s heel turn was just odd as he was a face for all of two weeks and he was never an actual face at that. All that being said, it’s a 10 second match. Regal gets hit with the Killswitch and is out. Jackson and Kozlov are you beaters tonight. I prefer the Weasleys, but that’s just me. They half kill him here as the name Regal’s Roundtable is used. I like that…kind of.

Rating: N/A. Regal doesn’t belong on a major show like this, so I have no issues here at all. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about how this was a disgrace and what not like that. Bull, this was great. Number one, the exact same thing happened last year as the ECW Title match got 33 seconds. Number two, this got the people’s attention and it made them believe that a match could end at any time.

That’s one of the major evils in WWE right now: there’s no point to watch the first 10-15 minutes of a world title match as it’s always going to go longer than that. Here you have a match where if you turn around to pet your cat the match is over. That’s brilliant. Number three, there was no build at all here. This gives you something to further the angle so you can have a rematch next month. Number four, people are talking about this now.

Isn’t that the point of any match? Number five, EVERYONE knew Christian was retaining here. How awesome does this make him look as champion? He beat an established veteran that fast with one move. This was a stroke of genius, not a disgrace.

They air some video about some F list celebrities and a charity event the roster was at. I won’t make fun of charity events, ever.

Let’s thank Aerosmith for our pointless theme song.

We get something resembling a recap of last Monday where they were tag partners. Cole says that Orton showed his true colors by attacking Orton after the match. EXCUSE ME? HE IS A FREAKING HEEL! HE NEVER WANTED TO BE IN THE TEAM IN THE FIRST PLACE! How is he showing his true colors by doing what he’s done the whole time? My goodness Cole does it cost you money to think or something?

Raw World Title: John Cena vs. Randy Orton

Well, at least it’s not HHH again. Basically, it’s pretty simple. Cena won the beat the clock thing to get here, and no one is surprised at all. In a rematch from two years ago, let’s do this. Cena runs to the ring which is kind of odd indeed. He gives his hat to his Marine co-star. Great way to get over with the kids there Johnny Boy. Orton comes out to a chorus of mostly boos. Why does the title graphic spin when the belt itself doesn’t?

My goodness I love the big fight introductions. They just work on all levels. After those, we get our recaps. Yeah that’s actually a bit better. It doesn’t waste as much time. They start off on the mat which actually goes pretty well. That’s something you rarely see from these two and while they’re hardly Kurt Angle, that was pretty good. Orton puts Cena down for awhile and when Cena is trying to get back up, it really looks like he’s trying to give Orton head through the tights.

I know that’s said a lot, but this is the closest it’s ever gotten. Orton takes FOREVER to drop a knee which looks like he’s going for a splash. It’s a new move, so of course it’s vintage. I have no problem when it’s actually a vintage move: HBK’s forearm, the facebuster by HHH, Old School etc. However, a move by Orton that he’s bene using for a few months at most? Give me a break. It’s a misuse of the word and insulting to my intelligence.

Cena hits You Can’t See Me, even though I can see him the entire time. This match is FLYING by. It feels like there was no intro or build and we’re already in the middle of it. That’s not good. FU doesn’t go and Orton hits a powerslam, called a scoop slam by Cole, to get back in control. They flat out say the WWE Title is the more valuable title. At least they admit it. Orton goes for the same knee and this time Cena gets out of the way. At least he’s intelligent.

I really don’t like this referee. He has that hitch in his count and it’s just aggravating. Orton hits that elevated DDT which I love as it’s a move that the ropes actually make better. Orton’s eyes really are great when he’s setting for the RKO. Facial expressions can make or break a match. Edge, Orton and Punk are some of the best there are at it. Punt misses and Cena hits the throwback. He hits the top rope legdrop about as well as he ever has, which is to say he actually connected with it.

Apparently Cena throwing his hands up and jumping up and down means FU now. It’s double clothesline time to make this a bit boring. Why is it only on a double clothesline that they’re devastating moves and not something that the guy pops up from? The fans seem confused as to who to cheer for. Orton shoves the referee, rolls to the floor and grabs his belt and leaves.

I say that as Lillian is on screen making me think I should rephrase that, but at the same time maybe I shouldn’t. Within seconds, she’s received word from Vince…but she trails off. She then announces Orton as the new champion, when she was supposed to say still champion. That’s a major mistake and I think it’s because they blew the spot and tried to do too much at once.

Cole tries to cover as fast as he can, and NOW we get the orders right as Vince has said that if Orton gets disqualified Cena wins the belt. More on that later. So the match is restarted and Cena is dominating. Orton goes to the floor and asks for the belt, which is dropped at first, and then he walks to the back saying that he’s done.

Ok, now we’re restarting it AGAIN, and now if he gets counted out we have a new champion. Ok, how in the HECK did she get word that fast? Both finishers are teased but Orton gets a roll up with his feet on the ropes to steal it.

OR DOES HE?

Another referee comes out and says that Orton has his feet on the ropes, so the original referee says this doesn’t count. Ok wait, back up. What about all the times when it’s said that the referee’s decision is final? If that’s the case, then one of two things should happen. #1, no match can end until the referee has had a chance to go back and rewatch the match, or #2, no decision is ever final since if the referee’s decision is final, then he could in theory go back and reverse it at anytime.

In other words, if the referee can reverse his own final decision, then couldn’t a referee go back and reverse something from years ago? If he has final say I don’t see why not. Guess what? It’s another restart. Best sign of the year: This is Why I Watch Smackdown. Preach it brother. STFU is put on and we get the rapidly becoming infamous moment as a “fan” (it’s Ted DiBiase’s brother Brett but that’s not revealed until tomorrow night) jumps into the ring.

Ok, reasons why this is clearly fake. #1, everything stops. In a real situation like this they just keep going. #2, they put the camera on the guy. That makes it fake as whenever this happens, the cameras go off and you can see the fans all watching the guy. #3, they talk about it. That NEVER happens.

#4, and most important of all, given the fact that the match has been restarted 3 times now, do you really expect this to be real? That was my biggest reason. It’s too unrealistic (and that’s saying a lot given this match) for it to have not been planned. Orton hits a quick RKO for the pin.

Rating: B-. For this rating, I’m factoring out all the insanity and I’ll explain why in just a second. Without all that stuff, this was a bad match. It was boring, it was very rushed, and it just wasn’t entertaining. However, I blame a lot of that on the booking, which is what killed this for me. The rating is fairly up there because a lot of the rhythm was taken away by stupid booking. Lillian messed up her lines, and that’s fine.

She had three freaking sets of them. This match suffered horribly from being overbooked. Why do you need the three restarts if you’re going to do the fan thing? Do one or the other, not four things. It’s too confusing, it takes too long, and it’s just stupid by the end. The fan run in thing would have been fine and actually pretty creative if not for the other three restarts.

Why do you need to have so much stuff in the world title match? It makes things look silly to me and it just makes thing far more complicated than they need to be. The match was bad, but the grade will be high because I think a lot of what was bad was based on the booking of the match and not what the wrestlers were doing. In essence, they had to remember four finishes. That’s asking too much of any wrestler and I think it had a lot to do with them not being that on here.

We recap the Punk/Hardy feud, which has been AWESOME.

Smackdown World Title: CM Punk vs. Jeff Hardy

This has been one of the best feuds in recent memory for a few reasons. One, it’s Punk at his best. Two, the clash is so natural that it’s great. Three, the matches have been great. It’s possible Hardy is done after this, so I’d expect a new champion. Punk lost the title to Hardy at Night of Champions in what I would call an odd choice after Punk delivered one of the best promos I’ve ever heard that had me cheering in my room.

Anyway, this is a TLC match, which actually plays into the two time MITB winner’s hands I’d think. Thankfully this has gone on last. Other than some lines from Ross about how Hardy is addicted to adrenaline, it’s a standard hard hitting spotfest that you’ve grown to know and accept in these places. Hardy has some mixed reactions here as I think it’s gotten out that he’s gone. Do announcers not pay attention?

Why are all ladders the biggest they’ve ever seen? Did you know Jeff is like smoke being poured through a keyhole? I’m not sure if you caught it the first 10,000 times Ross has said it. Yep and there it is the major spot, as Hardy, for about the fourth time in his career, goes to the huge ladder and hits the super swanton. Yeah it looks cool, but dang we’ve seen it way too many times. Why didn’t Punk move either?

He wasn’t tied down and it took Hardy longer than it takes him to smoke a bowl to get up there. More commentary problems as this is going on too. Hey, in case you didn’t see it, here’s 15 replays. Hardy is being taken out on a stretcher. I guess that’s how they’re ending him? Yeah that’s…different I guess. While this is happening, Punk starts climbing. Hardy pops up to go after him though.

I love the powers of recuperation that wrestlers have. Punk is hopping up the ladder and it’s just hysterical looking. He looks like a rabbit. Hardy takes a straight fall down off the ladder as Punk takes the belt to end the show. Sweetness indeed. The announcers of course try to make this out to be completely epic. JR sounds like he’s ordering dinner. Way to show emotion there buddy. No wonder you’re in the Hall of Fame.

Before we go though, the gong rings. Taker pops up from under the ring and chokeslams Punk, who is somehow STILL not being respected as champion. Yeah I don’t like this. Match was good though. Post match, a gong strikes. Taker pops up from under the ring and chokeslams the new champion to end the show.

Rating: A. This was a great match and a great way to end the show. It wasn’t complicated like the last show and to me shows why Smackdown is way ahead of Raw right now. This wasn’t all drama and over the top stuff. Sure it was a gimmick match, but it was about the match and not some big screwjob.

At the end of the day, the best way to get over and have a good match/feud is to have good action, not good stories. The last two matches are a classic example of that, and Smackdown did it right while Raw failed.

Overall Rating: A-. This was a VERY good show. It’s not great, but it’s close. The worst match of the night is Kane/Khali, but it’s at least watchable. They kept it short which was smart. The tag title wasn’t much but they kept JTG in there for the majority of the time which is certainly the right thing to do.

Other than that and the STUPID booking for the Raw title match, I really liked this show for one reason: it was about the in ring stuff. That’s the solution to any wrestling company’s problem. At the end of the day, have good matches and the fans will be happy. The matches were good and I’m very pleased with this show and it gets a big recommendation.