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Archive for March 31st, 2008

After last year’s disappointing and far-too-average WrestleMania 23, I was almost afraid to watch this year’s biggest PPV event of the year, in case I would be disappointed yet again. Yet despite even the seemingly ridiculous Big Show-Floyd Mayweather match, WrestleMania 24 turned out to be one of the best editions of the annual PPV event in quite some years.

The matches that were not expected to amount to much were played appropriately for comedy, and the matches that were expected to be huge and meaningful were given plenty of time to play out. For a show that lives mostly out of travel trailers, this year’s WrestleMania delivered the goods in a way that it hasn’t for several years.

Signs that we were in store for a solid WrestleMania began early as the Money In the Bank match was given an unexpected twist ending, with underdog C.M. Punk getting the rub and the win over favorites like Chris Jericho, Mr. Kennedy, MVP and John Morrison. That match was given almost 14 minutes to play out and featured some of the best spots of the night.

I cheered when the Batista-Umaga match was kept mercifully short. Batista winning was just another example of WWE trying to convince a completely unconvinced fan base that SmackDown is just as good, if not better than, Raw. No way. All it convinced me of is that the company isn’t spending enough time establishing Umaga’s credibility as unstoppable, and also that they remain committed to overhyping Batista, who’s simply far too overrated for a man with such borderline mic skills and mat skills.

Kane defeating Chavo Guerrero in about 10 seconds to win the ECW title was an unforgivable crush and only continues to demonstrate how little the company cares about the credibility of the ECW brand.

But the Ric Flair-Shawn Michaels match was given a solid, heart-pounding 20 minutes plus to develop, allowing these veteran showmen to prove why they’ve had such lasting careers in sports entertainment. It was everything one could ask for in a retirement match for a man of Flair’s standing in pro wrestling history.

Hopefully, he’ll never tarnish the memory of this match by coming out of retirement for “one more run” endlessly, like Terry Funk sadly chose to do. The Flair-HBK match was my personal favorite of the night and, all by itself, made WrestleMania 24 one of the best in recent memory.

The next indicator that we had a legendary WrestleMania on our hands was when the company swerved everyone on the WWE Title match and, instead of putting the belt back on John Cena, or – heaven forbid! – giving Triple H another title run, the victory was given to Randy Orton, extending his run as a true heel champion and making him anything but an “interim champion.” While the triple-threat match played out nicely, receiving over 14 minutes of air time, it would have been even better had it been given another five minutes or so. Still, the match was hot from start to finish and the surprise ending of keeping the belt on Orton was a refreshing change of pace.

Then, WWE completely shocked me by giving the Big Show-Mayweather match nearly 12 minutes to play out, and managing to make such length seem legitimate despiet the David vs. Goliath matchup. Somehow, they allowed Mayweather to survive the onslaught of the Big Show in a credible fashion that didn’t rob Show of his overwhelming physical threat status. And even though Mayweather earned the improbable win, he did so in classic WWE style by delivering a brass knuckle punch to Big Show’s jaw for the win. All in all, what could have been a crush or a joke match turned out to be a whole heck of a lot more entertaining than last year’s Hair-vs.-Hair match between Vince and Donald Trump, as well as their in-ring seconds, Batista vs. Bobby Lashley. This year’s Show-Mayweather bout turned out to be a far better way to draw mainstream headlines, and deliver an entertaining match at the same time.

The showstopper was the 24 minutes given to Edge and the Undertaker to decide the fate of the World Heavyweight Title. Apparently, the company’s obsession with selling SmackDown as the superior brand over Raw continues, as this match initially held little interest for me. Yet Edge is a legit heel and Taker is a solid worker, even if he is a bit long in the tooth these days.

Given the storyline of Taker’s “undefeated at WrestleMania” streak, the match held a fair amount of suspense, since the question was weather the company was finally ready to pass the torch and allow Edge to be the superstar to end Taker’s WrestleMania streak, or if they were still committed to pushing Taker as a legit title holder/contender.

Given ‘Taker’s win, the fans went home happy at the end and time will tell whether Taker will hold the belt until at least SummerSlam, or if he’s just being used as an interim champ while WWE reshuffles the SmackDown deck to reinvigorate that show after it has been festering for ages.

Personally, I think MVP is the future of SmackDown; but not this time out. Overall, several matches were terrific or even legendary, and the show finally lived up to being the top PPV in the WWE calendar year, after seeming a bit too average – recently and especially last year. Well done, at last, WWE.

Could the biggest heel wrestler of the last year or more, Umaga, be moving off WWE Raw to the SmackDown brand? That’s the word on the street; the move is expected to take place sometime within the next month or two, now that WrestleMania is over.

This is a time of year when WWE typically likes to shuffle the deck and freshen up all its brands. With SmackDown apparently set to move from The CW to MyNetworkTV in the fall, a changeup to make the SmackDown brand stronger is long past due.

The makeover started at WrestleMania, with Undertaker winning the World Heavyweight title from Edge. With a new champion, new opponents will be needed and the Umaga character, a primitive, force-of-nature style of heel, would make an ideal foe if ‘Taker’s run is to be an extended one.

Although often portrayed as a beastial, monstrous heel, Umaga has lost most of his meaningful matches in the past year for storyline purposes and has become overused and less of a threat on RAW; by moving the Branson golf-loving heel to SmackDown, the company has a chance to rebuild Umaga’s character from the ground up.

Time will tell if this rumor is accurate, but Umaga’s WrestleMania match against SmackDown’s Batista for brand supremacy, which Umaga lost, would seem to set the stage for a brand-switch move.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson reappeared at the WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony, his first appearance on a WWE broadcast in possibly a year, and if early indications are accurate, it may be his last appearance for quite some time.

The Rock, now a big-time movie star, owes his current fame and success largely to the exposure of his early WWE career. However, at the event intended to honor his father and grandfather for the time they spent in WWE, The Rock apparently presented himself, both on-stage and backstage, as above everyone else he used to work with.

His Hall of Fame induction speech ran exceptionally long, and was primarily a comedy routine making fun of and belittling current WWE stars, none of whom he warned ahead of time about the jokes he had planned. His comments on his father and grandfather were, by comparison, brief and lacking in much detail or heart.

The Rock did not attend WrestleMania, showed up just in time for his speech, and left immediately after it was over, blowing off nearly all the WWE personalities with whom he used to be close, including pal Stone Cold Steve Austin.

The Rock’s bad behavior drew much ire from the current roster of WWE personalities, and is a good indicator that the next time the WWE and The Rock cross paths, it may be a couple decades down the line, when it is The Rock himself who is being inducted. Fans offering up everything from their life’s savings to their bathroom faucets in trade for Dwayne Johnson to make a return to the WWE ring may be placing their hopes in an extreme unlikelihood.