The PPV Formerly Known as The Great American Bash has a mixed tradition - starting out as of the prestige names of the WCW brand, it has featured great matches from the likes of Sting, Vader, Flair and Funk - but since being taken under the WWE wing it has failed to live up to this legacy, instead offering such delights as the murders of Paul Bearer (in a concrete crypt) and Mohamed Hassan (w/terrorists) in consecutive years at the hands of the Undertaker.
Signs were not good leading into Sunday night, as priorities seemed to be shifted towards promoting recent RAW shows, instead of actually announcing any matches for this event.
This year's show started off with a scramble match for the ECW title, featuring the champ Tommy Dreamer against Christian, Jack Swagger, Mark Henry and Finlay. Unlike last year's scramble matches that gave us the surreal sight of Brian Kendrick as the interim world champion, gauntlet rules were added to the mix. This change probably helped the match as it cut down the time Dreamer and Henry had to spend in action, keeping their spots short but effective - shame they couldn't find a spot for Evan Bourne in here somehow, but you can't have everything. Dreamer retained and was surprisingly over for the second PPV in a row, but I doubt a long title reign is in order.
Up next was match number three in the Jericho/Mysterio trilogy, which even by their high standards was the best of the lot. Mysterio was the most impressive he has been in years, busting out some variations in his high-flying offence and working a fast-paced match which behind Undertaker/Michaels will arguably be seen as the WWE match of the year so far. Mysterio would go on to wing back his IC title, but more importantly keep his mask, thanks to the resourceful double mask ending here.
Dolph Ziggler was given the unenviable task of following the IC title match, a fact made worse for the former Spirit Squad member by going up against the Great Khali. Dolph has been pretty impressive since switching to Smackdown, drawing comparisons to Mr Perfect. The WWE writing team seem to have picked up on this, giving Ziggler a new 'I am Perfection' entrance and Ziggler seems to have been ordered to add Hennig-style uberselling to all his matches. WWE need to tread carefully here to ensure they don't over egg the pudding with Ziggler, as laying on the perfection gimmick too much draws comparisons with Shawn Staziak, not the late, great Curt Hennig.
Anyway Ziggler picked up the win quickly thanks to the returning Kane, and we can all look forward to the future classics those matches will bring. Urgh.
Building up to the tag title match all evening were a series of horrible backstage segments, summing up the pathetic WWE creative mindset. As the story goes, Smackdown GM Teddy Long is under pressure to liven up the show as it is so boring, because we all know great wrestling and logical storylines are really terrible, what we need are more evil GMs and cheap celeb publicity stunts like on RAW. Double Urgh.
As a result of this Teddy Long added Edge and Jericho to the tag match to make it a triple threat and unsurprisingly they went on the win the unified belts. In the end this may not be the worse thing that could've happened, as it will either raise the profile of the tag straps or at least serve the purpose of allowing Edge and Jericho to switches shows at will to strengthen a stale RAW main event roster.
Women's title match was up next and featured some decent wrestling, but suffered from the usual crowd apathy that Divas get unless its dodgy softcore nonsense. Michelle McCool won the match and the title with a here version of the Styles Clash that is either performed to perfection, looking brutal - or just a matter of time before it messes up the Divas surgically enhanced features.
The first of the two World Title matches saw CM Punk defend the World Heavyweight Title against Jeff Hardy and Punk would continue his slow heel turn retaining his title in cheap fashion, firstly after restarting the match thanks to the little-used foot under the rope rule and then secondly getting DQ'd after inadvertently (or was it?) kicking the ref in the head after his vision was obscured. Match was decent, but not great - but the storyline is really bringing the best out of CM Punk, who excels as the heel who believes he is right, and with the crowd totally pro-Hardy it is also the prefect opponent for him to do it against.
Cena vs The Miz was the final nail in the coffin for a story that started out with so much potential. Cena basically just kicked the crap out of Miz for 5 mins and just laughed whenever The Miz tried to land a move on him. WWE could've made a new star or at the very least made some people pay to watch The Miz get his comeuppance, but this just continued the trend of recent weeks and made him look like a total joke and left him right back where he started after his draft to RAW. A total waste.
Main Event time was a Three Stages of Hell Match between Orton and Triple H. Coincidently I actually find most of their matches three stages of hell - 1) Orton's ten minute snail walk to the ring 2) Triple H ten minute water-spitting pose-a-thon 3) the actual match.
Before the match dissension was hinted at in Legacy, with Ted DiBiase Jr planting the seeds for his future failed face turn to promote his upcoming straight-to-dvd movie. What would follow was a Triple H special.
In a best of three falls match he successfully manager to "lose" without ever once having Orton beat him. First up he was DQ'd for beating the crap out of Orton, before pinning Orton easily to make it level, then in the third fall it was made clear that had it not been for Priceless's help that Orton would have no chance again the great Hunter, being pushed all of 5 inches on a stretcher over the line.
Then, just to make it crystal clear, the final shot we saw was of Triple H stood over all three of Legacy as any memories of Orton as the killer threat that got him over trickled away.
On the whole this PPV delivered in the ring once gain, but the most of the stuff that goes on outside in terms of booking and the general direction, just leaves me baffled.
