WWE Survivor Series 2009

This didn't have the usual Big 4 feel of the Survivor Series, mainly because Raw seems to spend more time plugging guest hosts than actual matches coming up. This makes this year traditional Thanksgiving event even more surprising as they dropped all that for a series of matches that were all pretty good and actually gave some of the younger stars a chance to shine.

Team Miz vs Team Morrison

The opening match looked a little one-sided on paper and that's how it played out here. Only Morrison needed protecting on his team as the rest of his team-mates have spent most of the year jobbing to the rest of the roster. What stood out to me was just how far Ziggler's star has fallen in recent months when he found himself pinned by Evan Bourne, which I supposed made a change from John Morrison for Dolph. Morrison was quickly left as the sole survivor against McIntyre (who looks like Jason Mewes if he choose steroids not heroin), Miz and Sheamus - after a brief flurry of offence he was taken out by the trio. This was a simple match that achieved what it set out to do putting over the 3 survivors strongly, giving them all the eliminations for the team and a bit of mic time at the end.

Batista vs Rey Mysterio

Washington DC probably wasn't the best place to cement the Big Dave heel turn as the hometown hero was cheered wildly as he beat Rey to a pulp for 6 minutes. Mind you after the awful mimicking of Eddie Guerrero whilst on the top rope I'm in half a mind to suggest Mysterio deserved what he got. The match was ended via ref stoppage after several powerbombs - something I'd like to see continued to help the Batista heel turn with him going a run of destruction - and would be better bet at adding drama to a big match than his recent attempts to bust out the ankle lock

Team Kingston vs Team Orton

In recent weeks, WWE stumbled upon something with Kofi Kingston, who originally looked like cannon fodder to build up Orton, surprised everyone with the strength of the crowd reaction to his fightbacks. Going into this match there was a lingering feeling that they might just fuck this up and have him job to Orton, killing all the momentum he'd built up. Thankfully, this wasn't the case after a slowish start with the highlights Striker's usual Morrissey references (but the November Spawned a Monster one was awful!) this match really got into gear when it came down to Kingston & Christian against Orton & Punk. The brief exchanges we got between Christian and Orton were great and when Christian hot the Killswitch on Orton the crowd went wild, thinking after unbelievably the Canadian had took out both members of Legacy he just might complete the set next - that didn't happen as an RKO quickly followed, but left me wanting a Christian/Orton feud somewhere down the line.

Once it was down to 2 on 1, Orton hopped off the apron and prowled the ringside area whilst Kofi took on Punk for about 5 minutes - Orton was great here as he managed to combine the look of being a predator waiting for his moment with suggesting a hint of fear of going one on one with Kofi. After Kingston rolled up Punk for the 3 count Orton seized his moment only to be caught by Kingston with his spin kick to pick up the win in a finish that perfectly took the feud a step further - it was great stuff and the match of the night for me.

Undertaker vs Big Show vs Chris Jericho

I really wanted Big Show to win this as the thought of him having to defend the belt in a TLC match was too good to be true. Sadly this wasn't the case as Undertaker won with his annoying submission move where he pins himself but no one ever seems to notice, but the match was as good as it was going to get with 2 of its competitors even more knackered than usual - but its annoying how they've thrown away Jericho/Undertaker in what could've been a great match to save for Wrestlemania.

Team Mickie vs Team McCool

This match exceeded expectations - in the sense that instead of 5 minutes it got 10, but those extra minutes were baffling stuff. The world's most dangerous anorexic Michelle McCool, the one who we are supposed to boo, spent the majority of the time bravely fighting against Mickie James and Melina whilst Michael Cole continually pointed out she was a future Hall of Fame wrestler and the only Divas and Women's Champion. Then on top of that she loses to Melina, who is on a different brand. On a night where most of the booking decisions were right, this stood out like a sore thumb.

Cena vs HHH vs Shawn Michaels

In a perverse way, the awful build up to this match involving all the Hornswoggle business made this match better, as because they has seemingly forgotten there was a title at stake in the build up - so you never really had a clue who was going to win, making it quite the exciting spectacle.

Aside from Shawn superkicking Hunter at the start, and a spinebuster through the table in revenge, they never really did any DX fighting parts during the match, suggesting that may be on the back-burner till Wrestlemania perhaps. Cena retained pinning Triple H, a sound move as it keeps Michaels strong going into the next PPV where they may need him to step into Jeff Hardy's shoes to do a big jump off a ladder when required.