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Archive for August, 2009

I love TLC matches; especially when anyone named Hardy is involved.

Jeff Hardy helped define what makes a good Tables, Ladders and Chairs match during his tag team days, so it’s only apropos that this kind of match is what sends Hardy onto a hiatus from in-ring action. The action was fast, furious, dramatic and edge-of-your-seat solid.

While giving Punk the win was nice, if a bit predictable because of Hardy’s hiatus, the cherry on top was the appearance of Undertaker at the end to begin a fresh storyline. Taker-Punk, anyone? Time to send out the Christmas invitations now!

Exciting, but way overbooked. That’s how the match felt as John Cena met a rejuvenated Randy Orton and persevered through three false finishes – including apparent interference by a fan (who may have been a WWE plant) – to win and retain the WWE title.

This major PPV win should put Orton on the map as a legit title-holder since he’s often been pegged with the “transitional champ” label – unfairly so. Orton has evolved into one of the top heel champs in recent WWE history, probably the best since Triple H’s title runs of the late 90s and early 2000s. (Some folks will rely on their online backup to remember that far back, I’ll bet.)

Anyway, it was a great match if a bit overplayed.

William Regal has always struck me as a person who could use the help of the best weight loss pills, but even he didn’t deserve the seven seconds match treatment dished out to him by WWE at SummerSlam tonight. Christian’s a better wrestler, capable of sustaining long and entertaining matches, and while Regal’s a lifelong midcarder at best, this ECW title match simply wasn’t worth the announcements one had to go through to get to it.

Seven seconds and it’s over? Show the ECW title more respect, please.

It took until the fifth match to find one that really really made me care, but this one did the trick. I really look forward to the future of Legacy, since Ted DiBiase Jr. and Cody Rhodes both come from great traditions and seem to be younger versions of Randy Orton.

That’s not to say that DX is exactly in need of new life insurance rates, but they’re simply far more long-in-the-tooth than Legacy. So this match was a risk, pitting ring vets against ring newbies.

And yet it worked. DiBiase and Rhodes looked tremendous, but you could tell it was Michaels and Triple-H who were leading them through it all the way. Whether this remains my favorite match of the night remains to be seen. But it’s off to a good start.

WWE Superstar John Cena will appear in a prominent role one the third-season premiere of PSYCH, the USA original series, this Friday following the Smackdown broadcast on MyNetworkTV. This news brings together two of my favorite things: a WWE superstar who can act, and my current favorite USA suspense-comedy.

PSYCH features James Roday as a faux psychic detective who’s just a really good observer of the world around him. The show’s a laugh riot, especially with the off-screen chemistry between Roday and co-star Maggie Lawson spilling over onto the small screen. Makes a person want to tell their moving companies Los Angeles is the place to be!

As part of a press conference going over their quarterly results, it came to light that while the WWE doesn’t expect the recent litigation between videogame maker THQ and toy maker Jakks Pacific to affect WWE much one way or the other, CEO Vince McMahon indicated a clear direction for the company as it relates to Jakks Pacific.

“Jakks are obviously not our friends,” McMahon said. “We’ve been going after them aggressively.”

The WWE is currently tied to Jakks Pacific through the rest of the year, but in January 2010 will be hooking up with Mattel as their toy partner. How this will affect THQ’s deal in unclear at this time, since Jakks has been involved with THQ’s game development for the past several years. Makes a person wonder if this means they’ll be able to get a John Cena figurine at Circuit City anytime soon.

Probably not.