WWE Summerslam 2009

Whilst never on the level of Wrestlemania, Summerslam has always been seen as WWE's second biggest pay-per-view of the year. However, over recent years the event has lost a little of its lustre, something which the WWE tried to address this time around, with a rather swish marketing campaign, a weekend of Axxess events and bringing out the big guns for the event itself.

...and when I talk about big guns, I mean big guns. Big, loud guns that take up about 20 minutes of the show and last longer than several matches. But more about the DX entrance later.

The show kicked off with a Dolph Ziggler challenging Rey Mysterio for the Intercontinental Championship in a rematch from Night of Champions. Working a faster pace than last time out against a motivated Mysterio in his home state allowed Dolph to step and take his chance to shine. Although Mysterio retained this was one of those ocassions where a superstar's stock rose in defeat, with the Curt Hennig comparisons justified with Ziggler's selling and ability to stay the pace with the lightening-fast Luchadore.

A nice pre-match promo helped carry momentum into the match between MVP and Jack Swagger. They worked a basic match, but it was good for what it was. The decision to put over MVP was surprising though, as for the majority of the feud, and the match itself - Swagger was booked as the superior athlete. MVP has had a lot of the wind taken out of his sails since the early promise shown since his draft from Smackdown and really should've been built up steadily as a new challenger for Orton over the past couple of months. Hopefully a couple of months working with Jericho can rebuild him from here.

Speaking of which, the tag team title match was next. I don't think anyone ever really expected Cryme Tyme to win, but the rub from working with two established stars in Jericho and Big Show means that WWE now has an established mid-card face team to work shows in the future, so hopefully we'll see more stuff like this in the future.

Khali versus Kane was a terrible as it potentially could've been - at least with Khali as face the heel can work most off the match on offence before Khali hits a move or two on comeback. That's what they did here and it worked for the most part, Kane picked up the win with a nice looked DDT, and Khali will stay around not doing much whilst WWE try to build the Indian market.

Next up was the return everyone was waiting for (well, everyone if you ignore the fact the DX that everyone actually liked had Road Dog, X-Pac and Chyna in it - not Shawn) where the returning De-Generation X took on the team of Legacy. At the start of the show we had a promo video where Trips and Shawn suggested Rhodes and Dibiase might be a bit gay - which is a bit rich for a couple of dudes who spend all their time talking about cocks whenever they are back together as DX.

Next was an entrance that was up there with the over the top Wrestlemania entrances they used to do a couple of years back. Sadly, Triple wasn't dressed as Conan this time out - but instead we got a load of Soldiers come out to fire weapons for 10 minutes for no apparent reason before DX entered the arena atop a tank to plug their new t-shirt and glowsticks available at all good retailers now.

Thankfully the match wasn't an abomination like the previous Spirit Squad effort (though I do think the trampoline was a wasted opportunity) and Legacy put up a another strong showing after finally being given the chance to show their skills in the last month or so after ages of simply being Orton's whipping boys. DX picked up the win and hopefully Raw can maintain this direction in the booking over the coming weeks.

The ECW title match was always going to have a tough time following the excitement of the DX return, but not to bother in the slightest is taking things a bit far. It was over in 8 seconds and no doubt they'll have a really good match on ECW, which seems backwards logic for booking.

Next came the first of the two title match main events as John Cena challenged Randy Orton for the WWE Championship. The match was the usual stuff, but at least its better fare than Orton/Triple H. The multiple endings were a bizarre choice, as well as the decision to make a clearly phoning it in Lillian Garcia the mouthpiece for Vince McMahon - as usual protocol for reversing a decision has a official whispering in the announcers ear, this just looked wrong as it came off like Lillian was having a breakdown restarting the match apparently possessed by the spirit of Vince McMahon (I suppose he was the Higher Power though...)

There was only one way to close the show and that was the World Title under TLC rules between Jeff Hardy against CM Punk. For a match with a seemingly obvious ending it delivered in spades full of great in ring action between the inevitable Hardy suicide spots - the biggest of which was Hardy's swanton off a super-huge ladder through the ECW announce table, a spot sadly missing the presence of Hugo Savinovich. After that, the dastardly Punk snuck into to regain the title, pushing a valiant Jeff off another ladder in the process.

The post-match celebrations saw the shock return of the Undertaker, a smart move that not took the spotlight off the upcoming absence of departing Hardy, but also gave the show that long-lasting 'moment' that can make or break a show. This, alongside almost all the matches delivering in the ring makes Summerslam 2009 a solid night of entertaining Wrestling.