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ECW: 06/10/08 RRC: 06/09/08 OTC: Smackdown Grades - 06/06/2008 BTL: In Defence of...JBL ECW: 06/03/08
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World Wrestling Entertainment: One Night Stand '08 Review
by: Chris Gow on: 6/14/2008 6:55 am est  01/06/2008 San Diego Sports Arena, San Diego, California Phew! It’s been a long journey, but we’ve finally come to the last show before some sanity returns to WWE’s PPV schedule. Four PPVs in the space of two months (in addition to this we had Wrestlemania, Backlash and Judgment Day) is far too many by anyone’s standards, and I can only hope that this show did a horrible buy rate and that WWE see fit to cancel it next year. The overwhelming feeling leading up to this PPV was apathy. We’d all seen the matches many times before in the recent past, in a variety of forms. Every-match-has-a-gimmick isn’t a bad selling point for a PPV, provided it’s only done once a year. Unfortunately we see all of these stipulations on WWE’s weekly television shows on a pretty regular basis, so these probably held no added attraction for most fans. Stavros is sitting this PPV out, but will return for Night of Champions I have been promised. Fall Count Anywhere Match – Jeff Hardy defeated Umaga via pinfall – 9:18 These guys had an outstanding match at the Great American Bash last year, so I was really looking forward to this encounter. Unfortunately the falls count anywhere stipulation required them to go brawling all over the arena together, instead of staying in the ring and actually wrestling each other. It was pretty clear from the outset that this wasn’t going to be your typical Hardy/Umaga match when both guys busted out the Whisper in the Wind and the spinning Black Hole Slam respectively in the opening minute. There were a few highlights when the action spilled outside the ring and into the parking lot outside the arena. Umaga no-selling a traffic cone shot to the head and immediately booting Hardy square in the face was quite hilarious, as was the sight of Hardy sliding down and off a handrail into a crossbody as Umaga made his way up a staircase. But otherwise this was a bog standard WWE ‘hardcore’ match. The finish looked particularly fake, as Umaga plummeted to his DOOM from the side of a truck, landing supposedly on concrete, falling out of view of the camera behind a big pile of boxes. Hardy then delivered a Swanton Bomb from the top of the truck for the pinfall, the camera slowly panning around the pile of boxes to reveal Hardy on top of Umaga as the ref counted. The idea that both men took 15-20 ft dives off the top of a truck onto concrete is preposterous. If they had gone all out to make this match as goofy as possible, then the finish might not have seemed so ridiculous. But as it was it just came across as really lame. The fact that a giant crash pad was clearly visible in the background didn’t exactly lend the finish an added sense of verisimilitude either. It was the equivalent of the boom mic dipping into the camera frame in any number of badly made Hollywood movies. *3/4 Singapore Cane Match – Big Show defeated Tommy Dreamer, C M Punk, John Morrison and Chavo Guerrero via pinfall (over Dreamer) – 8:35 Thank God Big Show broke his nose in this match! I mean, it’s always unfortunate to see someone get injured, but it saved this match from utter mediocrity. Watching Show go on the warpath in the last three minutes of the match and completely decimate everyone, his face covered in blood, was hugely enjoyable, and an indication of how great Show could be if WWE would only book him more competently, as an unstoppable monster. Before the awesome finish, the match was pretty humdrum. Highlights included everyone ganging up on Show at the start of the match and beating him down with canes. Guerrero also accidentally nailed an American football player by the name of Shawn Merriman who was sitting in the front row, and was soundly thrashed by Merriman in return for his stupidity, with a little assistance from Punk. And say what you want about how rubbish Dreamer is – I have on many occasions – but at least the guy knows how to apply a real Texas Cloverleaf. I wish everyone sat that far on their submission moves when they applied them. (Yes Chris Jericho, I’m looking squarely at you and your puny Boston Crab that used to be the Walls of Jericho.) Otherwise the best part of the match was Taz and Mike Adamle’s commentary. According to Adamle Morrison has the “body of Adonis” and the “will of a Spartan”. Meanwhile, Taz noticeably ummed and erred when trying to think of something interesting to say about Bam Neely. Don’t worry Taz, I would have struggled to come up with something interesting too. **1/2 Vince McMahon pimped the million dollar giveaway on Raw the following night, despite it being quite possibly the single stupidest idea of his entire career. Seriously, did you Monday’s edition of Raw? What a disaster. First Blood Match – John Cena defeated JBL – 14:19 It’s unfortunate for JBL and Cena that the previous match featured blood, even if it didn’t really detract from the drama of this match. I use the word ‘drama’ very loosely however. The pace of the match wasn’t quite so leisurely as their encounter at Judgment Day, but it wasn’t really any more exciting for it. The ‘psychology’ of trying to bust your opponent open and draw first blood didn’t add anything to the match either. All we got were numerous shots of Cena and JBL writhing on the ground in agony after being driven head-first into exposed turnbuckles, stairs, barricades, etc. It’s not that the action was ‘bad’ as such. It’s just that there’s no reason to really care about who wins or loses. JBL yelling at Cena mid-match that he wants his “torch” back (after Cena defeated him for the WWE Championship in 2005) rings very hollow, because nobody believes that JBL really held the proverbial torch in the first place, on the B-show that is Smackdown. Cena’s selling was as usual very good and kept the match from being a complete bore. But despite the use of chains and whips this was too familiar for its own good. It was also a mistake to show so many close-ups of JBL and Cena’s faces as they clutched at the them in supposed agony. They always moved their hands away to remove perfectly smooth foreheads. Funny that. ** Batista and Orton teased a reunion of sorts backstage when Orton confronted Batista and suggested that they should team up to dominate Raw in the event of Batista being drafted there in the coming weeks. Batista didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no either. I don’t see happening myself, though it might be quite cool if it did. I Quit Match – Beth Phoenix defeated Melina – 9:06 Colour me surprised. Where in the bloody hell did this match come from? Both girls went for nearly ten minutes (which is very long for a divas match), wrestled an almost purely technical submission style (unsurprising I guess given that it was an ‘I Quit’ match, but impressive all the same) and the fans didn’t shit all over it. There was what appeared to be a botched reverse-Tree-of-Woe spot in the corner, but everything else came off pretty much without a hitch, and the finish was suitably painful-looking, as Phoenix bent Melina’s body backwards into the shape of a perfect O to force the submission. A very pleasant surprise and completely unexpected given Melina’s inexperience in the ring. **3/4 Backstage, Mike Adamle interrupted a steamy conversation between Cena and Mickie James. Adamle is growing on me. A willingness to take the piss out of oneself always wins me over in the end. After he made his exit, Cena and James went back to discussing how they would fuck later in the evening. Seriously, they did. Stretcher Match – Batista defeated Shawn Michaels – 16:54 In addition to the best Hell in a Cell match in WWE history, and arguably the best ladder match in WWE history, you can now undoubtedly add the best stretcher match in WWE history to Shawn Michael’s long list of accomplishments. Usually stretcher matches come across as contrived, and the repeated attempts by one guy to push the other over the finishing line as very repetitive. But all of the stretcher spots in this match were very inventive, and there was some real psychology to both guy’s efforts to lay the other out for a long enough period of time. Michaels’ selling was typically awesome. He gave Batista so much offense in the closing minutes of the match and put Batista over very strongly. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Batista put over this strongly, and that includes his previous victories over the likes of HHH and Taker. The match was far from a complete squash however, as the fifteens minutes or so of action that preceded Batista’s complete decimation of Michaels was very competitive. My only complaint would be that Jericho’s interventions looked very awkward, as he would emerge from out of nowhere and proceed to give Michaels a pep talk as he was being stretchered up the aisle towards the finish line. Batista would have to pause and visibly stall for time to allow the camera to capture the visual of Jericho attempting to urge Michaels to his feet, when there was really nothing to stop Batista from pushing Michaels over the finish line and winning the match. I also cannot conclude my review of this match without once again voicing my dissatisfaction at how this feud has progressed overall. I mean, as awesome as this match was, I really don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about the finish. On the one hand, Batista got his revenge against the guy who faked a knee injury at Backlash in order to score a cheap victory over him. On the other hand, the twat that expected HBK to take the fall in his match with Flair at Wrestlemania (thereby completely failing to understand that HBK giving Flair his all at Wrestlemania, as Flair asked – nay, BEGGED – him to do, was in fact the ultimate sign of respect); this twat got the last laugh. So the moral of the story is? ***3/4 WWE Championship Last Man Standing Match – HHH defeated Randy Orton – 13:16 As you probably know by now, Orton broke his collarbone in this match, when he went to deliver the RKO and was unceremoniously dumped over the top rope to the floor by HHH. I presume this spot was planned, but you wouldn’t think it looking at how Orton attempted to break his fall. Looking at how he landed, shoulder-first on the mats outside the ring, I wonder what his intentions were at the time. Was he hoping to land on his back instead? That might have resulted in an even worse injury. Anyway, both guys in future would be well advised to leave spots such as these to guys that weigh…ooh, I dunno…less than 245 lbs for a start. The action that preceded the impromptu finish was pretty standard stuff for an Orton/HHH match, but good. I have no doubt that it would have built up to an exciting climax, because despite this feud being very stale, these guys having wrestled each other on the last four PPVs in a row, I have faith in their ability to put on a great match. At it was however, the match was only really beginning to build up some momentum when Orton suffered his injury, at which point they quickly went to the finish. I thought it would have been much more dramatic to have the ref call an immediate stop to the match and have Orton stretchered out, than for HHH to nail Orton with a very half-hearted sledgehammer shot, but it’s not like these two are renowned for their improvisational skills. Major kudos to Orton for staying in character by the way, and verbally berating the fans as they attempted to cheer for him as he made his way to the back. **1/2 World Heavyweight Championship TLC Match – Edge defeated The Undertaker – 23:28 Technically speaking, this was a fine TLC match. The action was suitably brutal, there were lots of good spots, and it all built up to a big climax when Taker went crashing from the top of a ladder through four tables that were stacked on top of each other outside the ring. HOWEVER, it all looked so fake and so contrived at so many points. The way in which both guys took time out from beating the crap out of each other to set up the four tables outside the ring; the way in which Edge set up two ladders in opposite corners of the ring so he and Taker could both go crashing into them face-first as they fell from a third ladder moments later; and the way in which both guys would visibly move the ladder AWAY FROM THE TITLE BELT that was hanging above the ring before they ascended it time and time again, simply so they would be in position for a pre-planned spot; it all looked so completely and utterly predetermined, making it impossible for me to suspend my disbelief. When you have more than two guys in this kind of match, like in the famous TLC matches featuring the Hardys, E & C and the Dudleys, then a third man can set up the necessary tables and ladders around the ring while all the fans and the cameras are distracted and focusing on the action inside the ring. Not so here alas. As I mentioned, both guys had to take time out from beating on each other at several points to set up the spots for later, and it hurt the flow of the match considerably. And it was tremendously depressing to see Taker take so many unprotected chair shots to the head, thereby demonstrating that he, and WWE as a whole, have learned absolutely nothing from the Benoit tragedy. Taker may be one of the all-time greats, but he’s a complete moron for unnecessarily risking his future well-being like this. *** then, but I can’t help but feel that its in spite of the tables, ladders and chairs than because of them. As for Taker leaving WWE ‘forever’, give me a break. Most fans don’t buy it, and those who do are only going to be pissed off that he left on such a downer. This was completely self-defeating, though he will get a huge pop when he returns no doubt. Three stars of the night: 3 – Beth Phoenix/Melina – had a much better with each other than I think anyone could have possibly expected. 2 – Big Show – looked like a complete monster by the end of his match. Don’t worry, he’ll just look like a regular Joe once again when he’s done feuding with Mark Henry. 1 – Shawn Michaels – despite my issues with the HBK/Batista/Jericho saga itself, I can’t deny the brilliance of Michaels’ PPV performances throughout this angle thus far. Final thoughts: As expected, everything was too familiar to be noteworthy, The only standout match was HBK/Batista, which in truth is worth watching the entire PPV for. Hopefully the draft mixes things up a little and we get some fresh feuds and new rivalries going on, because the WWE product is unbelievably stale at this point in time. A 6 from me. ________________________________________________________________________________ Like what you read? Hated it? 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