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Archive for January, 2009

The appeal of the 30-man, one winner match is still a winner after all these years, and this year’s edition played out quite well. With Randy Orton facing a firing by the McMahon Family, he had his bags packed and seemed resigned to his career ending.

To have Orton be the eighth entrant and the last man standing at the end made storyline sense and set him up well to make his WrestleMania main event more meaningful to him than any match he’s ever wrestled. That will mark him as ultra-motivated going into a match against John Cena wherein the outcome might otherwise seem a no-brainer.

Cena-Orton has long been thought to be the headlining main event of the future; well wake up, Bubba, it’s 2009 and the future is now. Better take those Canon cameras to WrestleMania with you, because this clash between these two at the biggest of all PPVs could become the first of many over the next few years.

Everyone was expecting Christian Cage to return to WWE tonight, and this was the match most folks expected it to occur in. So imagine the surprise when not only did Christian not return during this match, but the backstab a former tag partner move came from an unexpected source. It was a storyline so unexpected that it might require a Chicago accident attorney to clean up the mess.

So, what happened? Well, the match between Hardy and Edge was top-notch, but at the critical point in the match, Matt Hardy, fresh off his defeat at the hands of Jack Swagger, showed up and at first it appeared he would be helping his brother Jeff.

Then? The chairshot heard across the WWE as Matt attacked his own brother to turn heel and give Edge the win. Talk about defying expectations? A Matt-Jeff feud could be a huge draw for several PPVs to come!

When a ring vet like JBL is in against a hot headliner like John Cena, the outcome is usually predictable, which is why the secondary story thread of Shawn Michaels being under the employ of JBL was so critical to getting this match over with the audience.

The storyline advanced as Michaels was able to fulfill the technical terms of the contract, super-kicking Cena and putting JBL on top of Cena for the pin, but by superkicking JBL as well, some long-brewing emotional payback was brought to a boil like a bottle of Leptovox in a hot pot, and everyone knows this won’t be the end of it.

One can sense a JBL-Michaels feud match on the slate for WrestleMania, and so the real question mark here is how tonight’s match served to set the table for Cena’s WrestleMania match. Looks like they’ll have to allow a Raw superstar to win the Rumble.

As an opening match to a major pay-per-view, I’ve seen worse than this. A lot worse. While Matt Hardy has always been the more workmanlike of the two Hardy Boyz, he put on a solid show with a promising young talent in reigning ECW champion Jack Swagger tonight.

Swagger, looking like a fellow in need of some Dwarf Little Gem Magnolia trees rather than a head scissors, he makes a credible heel and Hardy’s ring experience helped carry Swagger through in the areas where he lacks.

When Swagger wanted to slow down and mat-wrestle, Hardy would up his tempo and lead the young Swagger through the pacing of the thing. Given that they were only allowed 10 minutes to tell their in-ring story, that was needed.

Swagger retained the title and looked like he achieved something along the way.

I understand the WWE even hits town now and again in Branson, MO, but the main reason I have been thinking about the great variety of packages offered to Branson recently at Branson Getaway’s Web site is that my wife and I now have my father living with us, and their Great American package, with its visit to the Veterans Memorial Museum included in the package, would be ideal for Dad.

You see, my father served in France and Germany during World War II. He started out as a regular infantryman, and before too long, he was promoted to the transportation pool, driving around the Army officers. He served from 1942 to 1944, and although he thankfully didn’t see much combat, he still served in one of the greatest wars in American history.

This has come to mean more and more to my wife and I, and its one of the many reasons we’re taking care of him in his old age, now that his wife of 55 years passed on last August. Dad is 86 years old, has failing eyesight and while we’d love to think he has several years left, we also know his time is not as long as it might have been a few years ago.

So we’re looking for ways to keep him happy in his final years, and a trip to Branson, with a chance to visit the Veterans’ Memorial Museum, would be just the trick to show him how much we appreciate him. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance this summer.

Chris Jericho dropped the bombshell on Daddy’s Little Girl last week on Raw: none other than Vinnie Mac himself is returning to Raw tonight, and with the run-up to WrestleMania in full swing, the timing is just right.

How successful McMahon’s run will be depends largely upon how it’s handled. In recent years, Vinnie Mac on Raw means his presence covers over undercard wrestler appearances like a set of area rugs. They overkill his presence and refocus the entire broadcast around him.

That’s not healthy for a promotion that should be about getting the in-ring talent over. So here’s my list of suggestions for making Vinnie Mac’s return a welcome visit.

1) No more fake deaths/murders.

2) Keep his appearances brief, intense, and rare.

3) Write him back out of the storylines after WrestleMania and keep him gone after that until he’s really, actually needed again.

Following in the footsteps of Randy Orton, it seems like second- and third-generation talent is popping up on WWE like new coffee franchises in a mega-mall. And to be honest, I love the trend.

Last Monday’s RAW gave me my first live (as opposed to watching it on TIVO-delayed recording) performance by Sim Snuka, who has joined the ranks of Cody Rhodes, Manu and Ted DiBiase Jr. as the latest sons of former superstars to make their WWE debut.

Add ECW’s Ricky Ortiz to the list, by the way.

While these young talents will need to prove themselves just as their fathers (and grandfathers, in some cases) did, these prodigies have been quite bankable for WWE over the years; folks such as The Rock and Randy Orton are proof that sometimes, pro wrestling runs in the blood.

Shane McMahon is the exception, by the way, that proves the rule.