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For the second PPV in a row, WWE is ending things with a SmackDown World Heavyweight title match involving Batista and Undertaker. I enjoy ‘Taker, but the only way anyone could ever get me to admit that Batista’s a good champion is if the ONLY alternative was to make Finlay champ. Yes, that would be worse, so no thanks, my friend.

I guess what salvages the choice to put it at the end is that it IS a Hell In A Cell match; too bad Mick Foley isn’t involved. But I guess he’s better off hawking diet pills than trying to maintain an in-ring career at this point.

Taker dominated early and I’m kind of pleased to say that it wasn’t a “lazy big-man” match like last month. Something about the Hell In a Cell match seems to bring out the best in whoever is involved, and this one gets pretty brutal and pretty amazing at the same time. The action seems faster and more brutal.

Taker seemed on his way to the win when the all-too-publicized return of Edge screw-jobbed him out of it. Edge was hiding under the ring and gets up inside and breaks up the count. He then hits Taker with a variety of objects, including a chairshot of the sort that I thought he vowed would be banned in WWE, in the wake of both the Chris Benoit Family Tragedy and the drug-steroid scandals that followed. But then, Edge is one of those rumored to have suffered a ‘roid-related suspension, so maybe he wasn’t exactly setting at home watching when the word came down from VKM.

Anyway, Edge knocks Taker senseless, drapes Batista over Taker and allows The Beast to get a cheap win. So I guess he figures Batista is more of a clear-cut good guy for him to feud against in his quest to regain the World Title. Maybe that’ll help business on Smackdown pick up. Time will tell.

WINNER: Batista (with some help from Edge)
RATING: 8.6

OK, here’s where the night takes a bad turn.

We all get the David vs. Goliath allusion, but it’s a gimmick that’s been done to death, and definitely the wrong direction for a monster like the Great Khali. Khali has the potential to get more over with the fans than Andre the Giant, because Khali is younger, bigger, and in much better physical shape than Andre ever was. But to do it right, they can’t jerk him into meaningless storylines like this; that’s how they wasted the wrestling career of The Big Show.

The pre-match pep talk from Vinnie Mac to Hornswaggle was good fun, but the match itself just didn’t come off well. Next to the Great Khali, Hornswaggle looked even tinier, like a midget on hoodia. The match itself was mostly ring intros, some crowd interaction when the “We want Shaq” chant filled the arena; and that was a fun tease, because Shaq is one of the few folks who has the height and weight to maybe put together a good “wrestler vs. athlete” match, but if they do something like that, it’ll be a WrestleMania, not Survivor Series.

The match itself was too predictable, with Hornswaggle unable to even make Khali blink, but striking the Midge down effortlessly when Hornswaggle started getting a bit of action in against Khali’s manager. Then, even more predictably, the save comes in the form of a Finlay run-in, which sets up a feud between Khali and Finlay, which is what this was all about to begin with. And since Finlay is the most boring wrestler on earth, that is ALSO a program that holds no interest for me.

Now, a Khali-Undertaker program… THAT would be something.

WINNER: The Great Khali (via DQ)
RATING: 2.2 (out of 10)

Finally, what is for me probably going to be the highlight of this PPV! A real, traditional, five-on-five Survivor Series elimination match. Only trouble is, a real-life injury to Matt Hardy means it’s not even five-on-five, but four-on-five. Geez, can’t they at least pull off a surprise here and insert someone?

I mean, with all that footage of Edge with his chainsaw, it’s not like it would require some highly technical plasma cutting to write someone new into the match. Oh well.

This match had the best in-ring psychology of the night, even if it ran a bit predictably. OK, so Matt’s out and the odds seem against Triple H’s team of babyfaces? No problem. Let’s get the boring ones out of there right away. So DOWN goes Kane. Then DOWN goes Rey-Rey. Now it’s five on two and we have some classic ring psychology to work on here.

I will say, it was nice to see Mr. Kennedy and MVP in the same ring again; they have good in-ring chemistry and although Kennedy is on Raw and MVP’s on SmackDown at present, I predict big things for these two; they will be tearing it up against each other sometime in the next five years, at some major PPVs, and doing it for a championship strap. Both are great “talents of the future.”

After that, the other team began to thin out. First down goes MVP. Then Kennedy. Then Big Daddy V. Then Finlay.

By the time it’s down to Triple H and Jeff Hardy vs. Umaga, I half-expected Hardy to get eliminated. But not this time. Triple-H and Jeff show some good teamwork in a crowd-pleasing, feel-good, Thanksgiving PPV finish that has both men celebrating a babyface win. And the match was appropriately long! Over 20 minutes of ring time and with interviews and entrances, almost twice that!

OK, I’m a happy man as far as this PPV goes with, after THIS match.

WINNER: Triple H’s team
RATING: 8.7

I’ll admit this right up front: I’m not a huge fan of Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch.

Sure, they became more entertaining after their “Gee, we’ve reformed, we wanna be good guys” routine they played out in their program against The Hardys, but really all that did is make me long for an extended reunion of Matt and Jeff as tag champs, rather than the short program to puff Cade and Murdoch. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Hardcore Holly does nothing for me, though, and he certainly does nothing for the young and promising Cody Rhodes. While he’s enjoying an extended babyface run, though, I think long-term, Cody needs to follow the Randy Orton path to truly become successful.

By which I mean, when he’s starting to become decently popular and over with the crowd, give him a shocking betrayal to play out and become absolutely HATED! But in the good, “I’m a bad guy and you’d just love to see me defeated but it ain’t happening” sort of way. The Triple H way, basically.

As for the match, even home theater chairs wouldn’t have made it a comfortable experience. A few years ago, the Hardys were doing TLC matches to defend their tag titles against Edge and Christian. This is a noticeable step down. Really noticeable.

WINNER: Cade and Murdoch to retain the tag titles
RATING: 5.5 (out of 10; just a very average tag match - nothing special.)

Well, here’s something I haven’t seen in … forever. A five-on-five, traditional Survivor Series-style diva match!

But, oh crap, it’s not an elimination match. Which makes the whole thing just a glorified tag match. Which stinks. This is NOT what Survivor Series is supposed to be about.

Still, 10 divas? I was hoping maybe it could work, be fun, even be a decent showcase for the improving ring skills of some of these women.

No such luck. Vinny Mac’s organization may not have WGA writers working for it, making it immune to the writer’s strike, but there’s a clear need for some corporate performance management reviews in terms of how the company is managing some of its talent assets.

With 10 divas active, they have a since women’s title, but split the divas between three shows so that only about four of them on Raw are in the title picture at any one time, and usually are involved in “girlie” matches like the traditional Thanksgiving “gravy” match on SmackDown, or some crap like that.

Even this match wasn’t much of a success; not even all the divas saw action and it was over in only five minutes. Booo-riing!

WINNER: The team led by Mickie James
RATING: 4.5 (The women tried hard, but need more time to build an in-ring story.)

Welcome back, all!

These are my reactions to what used to be one of the WWE’s more enjoyable gimmick PPV’s. I’m speaking, of course, about Survivor Series. I love the old-style Survivor Series matches, but as time has gone on the company has drifted away from traditional five vs. five elimination matches and turned it increasingly into a generic PPV. I think there was at least one year where they had no traditional five-on-five match at all.

Well, we’ll see how tonight goes soon enough.

I’m doing this PPV a bit differently than I handled last month’s PPV, Cyber Sunday. Instead of trying to blog about each match as I watch it, I’m just doing this all after the fact. So it’s not so much live thoughts as reflections. Ready? OK.

Match 1: C.M. Punk vs. John Morrison vs. The Miz for the ECW Title

Well, ECW gets the first match of the night. That’s not as bad as being buried in the first hour, I guess. Nice to see Miz involved in the title picture; he gave good match last month with some moves that surprised me at his ring ability, when given his shot at Cyber Sunday.

The whole “Miz and Morrison team up against Punk” concept is such a retread, but they broke with it somewhat early by having Miz play the opportunist card against Morrison. Of course, the real reason he was in the match was to have someone for Punk to pin while building up the feud between Punk and Morrison for that big, ultimate showdown at WrestleMania next April.

Punk pinning Miz keeps Morrison looking like a bigger threat, though that’s kind of like watching a fire from behind fire glass: there’s not a lot of danger to it.

Again, I was impressed by Miz’s work ethic in-ring. He hit some nice high-flying moves that frankly I never thought he was capable of until recently. Seems like the kid’s really trying to make the most of his opportunity.

WINNER: C.M. Punk retains the ECW title
RATING: 7.6 (out of 10)

Publish!