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At least the second match of the night, though it ran only twelve minutes, was an enjoyable one, even though a titles wasn’t involved. CM Punk proved a great opponent and style match for the over-exposed Rey Mysterio and the two men provided some nice, solid action and decent ring psychology, minus the disposable diapers, to the table during their time on stage.

I half-expected Rey-Rey to get the win, but apparently the WWE wants to keep Punk’s momentum up; I must say, Punk’s handling his post-title-run stint near the top of the mid-card like a seasoned vet; like Chris Jericho, he’s simply wrestling his heart out every time he’s in the ring.

Remember when John Cena used to do that?

The first RAW with Chris Jericho as champion went very well; the last time Jericho held singles gold in WWE was at WrestleMania 18, when he dropped the strap to Triple-H. That’s a long drought, although he did take a couple years off for his music career before returning earlier this year.

Last time he held championship gold, Jericho was the first and so far remains the only WWE undisputed champion. Whether Jericho is positioned as a transitional champion, or whether WWE is prepared to line up a host of promotional pens and other products promoting Jericho as the WWE standard-bearer, only time will tell, but he’s certainly a deserving worker.

This is even more true in the wake of his long feud with Shawn Michaels; over the past several PPV events, Michaels and Jericho have consistently put on the match of the night, and Unforgiven was no exception to that rule; they hit a highlight that will almost certainly number among both men’s top five matches of their careers.

While it remains to be seen exactly which way WWE is going to be going with Jericho as champion, the thing that does remain clear is that he certainly is wearing the title well so far. Next week’s cage match against CM Punk will be a sight to behold.

As new proof of the roster remix making both Raw and Smackdown must-see TV again, one need look no further than last week’s Smackdown and this week’s Raw. With both world titles around the waist of Smackdown wrestlers after the WWE Draft, it came as a pleasant surprise when C.M. Punk showed up on Smackdown to win out of nowhere and take the World Heavyweight Championship off of Edge and bring it over to Raw, while Triple H stays on Smackdown with the WWE Title.

It’s especially poetic because, both times Edge won the strap as a Money In the Bank winner, he won it in ambush fashion, just as Punk did to him. And to prove it was no trick of indoor lighting, Punk showed up on Raw with the world title around his waist and ready to take on all comers.

The result is that sometthing really important and can’t-miss happened last week on Smackdown, which makes the show essential viewing once again; and the other result is that Raw has a new title, a new champ, and a whole new set of rivalries and fueds to work with.

What could be better, for ratings, in the long term? I mean, what more could they do, give away a million dollars per episode? That’d never happen! Ha!

The six-person diva tag match proved ECW is more in need of cat supplies than it is in need of Mike Adamle’s incompetent announcing services, but the real mystery surrounding ECW last night was why The Miz is suddenly getting such a strong push from the Fed.

C.M. Punk, the golden boy of the ECW promotion since its WWE-powered relaunch, and since WrestleMania, the new Mr. Money In the Bank, punked out to The Miz in an almost meaningless, six-minute match to open, rather than close, the broadcast.

The former Real World reality star, Miz’s star has been on the rise a lot lately… but at Punk’s expense? That rooster just don’t crow!

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.

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!

ECW’s C.M. Punk would be a great choice if you’re looking for a payoff out of left field. Punk’s image is the exact opposite of the McMahon Family’s, and his revelation as a “bastard” son of Vinnie-Mac could drive storylines forward for years to come.

Trouble is, simply because C.M. Punk is so young, it would be a huge risk to bestow such a title on the kid. After all, what if, like previous highly-promoted wunderkinds like Kurt Angle, he had a falling out over a contract dispute, and switched to another promotion like NWA-TNA? One can only imagine the cannon fodder that would give Vince’s storyline son in real-life, behind-the-scenes negotiations, or that such a wrestler could carry with him when switching to a rival promotion.

No, something like that would be like entrusting your Orlando real estate to Eugene. For that reason, I just can’t imagine a younger superstar like C.M. Punk being awarded this kind of storyline honor.

C.M. Punk, therefore, is unlikely to be Vince’s fictional “bastard child.” Still, the chemistry when they teased this storyline on ECW was fun. Trouble is, I really see this all resolving RAW rather than ECW or SmackDown.

Even though WWE is doing everything right in terms of promoting their new ECW champion, Bobby Lashley, it has to be said: Lashley as champion is about as exciting as butter on toast.

It’s not Lashley’s fault, per se. He’s just not that electrifying a personality. At least not yet. At the moment, he’s just a generic champion with nothing that makes him stand out. Which makes his championship reign pretty unappetizing. So unappetizing you’d think someone has slipped a dose of Tenuate into your evening meal.

Now, Lashley can wrestle a solid match and his victory at December to Dismember was the capper to a great elimination chamber match. And his ring work has been solid since taking the title. But without a more electrifying personality, he’ll go down in history as one of the less interesting ECW champions ever.

Personally, I think the belt would be far more intriguing wrapped around the waist of C.M. Punk or Elijah Burke. Lashley needs more of an on-screen character to really get over, and having the belt taken out of his hands via nefarious means and having him feud with the new title holder would be a step in the right direction.