CM Punk vs. Jeff Hardy, WWE Smackdown (8/28/2009)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from frequent Ko-fi contributor Ri Ri. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication or other processes, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi.

This was a Loser Leaves WWE Steel Cage Match for Punk’s World Heavyweight Title.

At the end of one of the great WWE feuds ever (fifteen years later, I believe that can be said without controversy) comes to an end that, for the most part, feels right for it. Not that any of their matches together in this time were bad — and the TLC at SummerSlam 2009 is shockingly underrated, I think — but something about this one feels correct. To end such an old style feud, something very very old returns, not simply a cage match of consequence, but one with a stipulation like this. No matter what everyone knows at this point about Jeff’s future, not every single person in the building knows it, and so not only does some drama still exist, but it allows them to have something that feels like, with respect to 2009 WWE being what it is, the best match that CM Punk and a departing Jeff Hardy could have in this promotion, being who they are, at this point in time.

What matters the most I think — and this is a strength of each man at their best — is that this is not a Great Match.

CM Punk is a coward, jumps Jeff Hardy on his way to the ring given that each are still hurt following the previously mentioned TLC match five days earlier, and the match is all good and evil in a way that eventually becomes genuinely crushing in a beautiful kind of real ass old time pro wrestling ass pro wrestling type of way.

It’s not simple to the point that it hurts anything (although yes, this is the WWE in the PG era, of course they could do more than they did and likely have an all-time great match too), but when handled by masters like these two, works in a way that enhances it all. In a classic kind of CM Punk way, seen in cage matches both before and after this, he has a gift for blending a lot of movement and a modern feeling with an older style offensive scarcity and simplicity, which works unbelievably well (as it has all summer) with a Jeff Hardy offense that function much in the same way, impressive without being wasteful, and always seeming harmful to the opposition in a way that makes his tendencies make sense in a way that those of many others would not.

The match itself is wonderfully simple, and one that through virtue of good booking, removes many of the worst aspects of matches like these at the time.

Absent the ability for a genuinely gruesome bloodletting, if not an outright double gusher, this is about as great as a cage match in PG era WWE, let alone many other eras, can be.

With careers on the line, thing like the protagonist in Jeff Hardy opting to go for escape victories now and then make far far far more sense than usual. Likewise, when looked at in a larger sense, the injuries of both Punk and Hardy — both sold incredibly well even before the match ever rings, showing that two beat up wrestlers are having this match — make a lot of WWE cage match tropes make so much more sense than usual.

That’s also, I think, what gives this such a weight, both in a literal physical sense and an emotional one.

Every single thing in this match has consequence. Beyond just that these are two greats who know how a cage match ought to work (let us not forget that Jeff’s first great cage match came while Punk was still working in Charlestown, IN), and who milk everything from every moment through every different type of selling, they are also phenomenal at translating into what they work with now. Things like Punk being slightly elevated on a toughness level, as he was at SummerSlam, work because of the selling and desperation of both, and it’s the ultimate testament to each — just like four years prior, with Punk on the other end (Bryan gets credit for being on opposite ends of Bryan/HHH and Bryan/Orton/Batista and Bryan/Kofi, and Punk ought to get credit for Punk/Rave and this too) — that this never once feels as though that is the goal.

Best of all is the finish.

Coming at the end of a feud that really got moving with an errant eye poke that CM Punk claimed was accidental, with Jeff Hardy holding him back from escaping and winning forever, CM Punk completely and irrevocably removes the artifice. Punk rears back and gets Jeff Hardy in the eye before shoving him back and dropping out of the cage to win.

It’s not just a beautiful full circle finish — something like the 2000s version of how the 1986 Flair/Morton cage match that began based around manhood ended with Flair using a low blow — but also the meanest possible one. Technically legal, coming at the end of another match to prove both his toughness and craftiness while establishing a new top heel (not that it would last more than a month, great company here), but also such an emotional gut punch. Little feels worse than feeling like someone got lucky or should not have won, but being unable to properly say an ything was stolen or what have you, and Punk and Hardy freely offer up that feeling better than most.

Historically speaking, one may want more, and I won’t argue with that. As always though, when looking at something simply as it is, it is so hard for me not to love. Great wrestlers having an important match with real stakes, inflated by the feeling, and aided by all that came before it, resulting in a match that, as it happens, is not only something remarkable, but that after the fact, feels like a genuine heartbreaker.

Forget the incompetence to follow, totally blowing all that this match and story built, because after all, this is the WWE. While in 2009, it had not not entirely earned that reputation that one ought to never trust in long term approaches and ideas, the germs are here. Something truly wonderful happens, and although very little comes of it and within two to three months, it maybe ought to just have never happened, we still lived it.

Sometimes, that’s enough.

Buy the ticket and take the ride.

CM Punk and Jeff Hardy, for the last time, make such a beautiful one.

***3/4

Triple H vs. Randy Orton vs. Batista vs. Chris Benoit vs. Edge vs. Chris Jericho, WWE New Year’s Revolution 2005 (1/9/2005)

Commissions return again, this one coming from Stuart. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

This was an Elimination Chamber match for the vacant World Heavyweight Title, with Shawn Michaels as a special guest referee.

I have gone on record, not only when talking about it originally but in year and decade wrap-up lists, saying that the 2014 Elimination Chamber (Cena vs. Bryan vs. Orton vs. Cesaro vs. Sheamus vs. Christian) is the best of its kind, but it is not the only really great one. I’m also a really big fan of the 2003 (the one where Goldberg nukes everyone) and 2009 (the one with the big Edge swerve, but also the insane Rey Mysterio performance) as all-time level Chambers.

Below that level, there’s the level this match is on, along with something like the 2011 (Punk/Cena final, a few months before that would have been huge), 2017 (the Bray Wyatt one), or the 2019 (Bryan/Kofi final) ones. Not the greatest, certainly ones that suffer from less than perfect line-ups despite the talent and strength of the booking, but that I simply cannot deny. Like those matches, while I have some issues with it, it just kind of works for me, one of those classic WWE productions that makes me go, “yes, this is how the system is supposed to work”.

(Less so in that it ought to be Triple H winning, but in terms of all it advances, what it does for Batista, the use it puts a still all-world Benoit to, etc.)

In short, the correct amount of bullshit.

Benoit and Jericho begin the match before Triple H is third (doesn’t fit in anywhere else here, but great political maneuvering to have HHH last longer than actual babyface challenger Orton and survive more, while also having Benoit and Jericho before him to mask it a little bit), and to the credit of both men, they are once again has never been on behavior as good as he is on when Chris Benoit is in a match. As early WAR or WCW Benoit/Jericho stuff showed, that was never exactly a guarantee, but at this point, it at least guarantees a half-decent effort. Like Triple H often did against Benoit, as also seen in this match, or later like Hunter and Orton against Bryan, there is an implicit pressure that comes from being an established Great Wrestler in the WWE, and again, Jericho is on best behavior, being more aggressive and harder hitting than usual.

After that, as everyone pours in, it is the ideal mix of things.

There is only one GREAT wrestler here, but everyone else is on their very best behavior.

Batista is obviously very good as your psuedo-hot tag power babyface, but Randy Orton in this is much better than I remembered as a mechanical babyface. The microphone work still might not be him at his most comfortable, but in terms of throwing hands and showing some energy, he is genuinely really really good in this, already being the second smoothest/most natural feeling wrestler in the match behind Benoit. Edge, Jericho, and Hunter are all limited, but primarily do things they’re best at. For Edge, that means basically nothing until the special referee gets him out first. For Jericho, it mean mostly being beaten into greater effort than usual. For Hunter, it means power moves against great bumpers and benefitting from the bells and whistles of a more violent environment, just like in his prime. Nobody is asked to do more than they can, at least not obviously so, and as a result, the match benefits in the way big gimmick matches with limited wrestlers ought to, both because of the visual bells and whistles, but also because of a larger vision that brings it all together into a larger package.

Really, what stands out the most about this match, so many years later, is how much it benefits from some blood spilled.

Everyone but Edge (coward, not in this too long) and Batista (correct call not to bleed, time isn’t right yet as a character) gets to run the blade at least a little here, and the two real pros at it in Benoit and Hunter get some real beautiful color. The match benefits from this in all of the ways wrestling often does. With blood on on the canvas, and the wounds of war on nearly everyone in the ring for large chunks of this thing, the match gains a certain feeling. We’re not talking Joe and Necro here, it is probably not a top 25 bloodletting of 2005, but on top of the selling and the certain auditory quality of almost everyone banging off the steel floor, the simple visuals make this feel like a genuine ordeal, and so later attempts at exhaustion selling and announce hyperbole from JR (another great performance in this, walking every imaginable tightrope with zero wavering) feel less like bullshit, a little more warranted, and the entire production goes down so much smoother when you have these clear visible signals that this has been a fight with actual consequences.

The other benefit is the layout and the effective narrative work.

Just about everyone reading this knows that this is all build to Hunter vs. Batista at WrestleMania, and it is incredibly effective at that. Benoit, Jericho, and Orton all absolutely die for Big Dave, with him getting rid of those first two on his own, and theoretical babyface Orton also having to cheat to get rid of him. Triple H, despite the maneuvering of suffering more and lasting longer than Orton, comes out feeling more lucky than like any kind of real winner, being beaten up by everyone but Batista, avoiding saving him from elimination, and then taking advantage of all he does.

Something feels a little strange to me about really liking a match that is, essentially, a great larger product ass WWE production than a display of any one great performance or thing to really point to, but when it comes together right, it comes together right. The match is the beneficiary of a few really good smaller performances, and although not as much of a rarity at the time as I think Ruthless Aggression WWE still had something of the magic touch when they really wanted it, also the beneficiary of exactly the right amount of larger picture work and narrative movement.

Great pro wrestling nonsense.

It doesn’t seem all that exceptional, but truly, a stellar of just how easy this all really can be when kept simple, and when given the best crutch a wrestling match can have (two-thirds of the match bleeding a lot).

***1/2

 

John Cena vs. Damien Sadnow, WWE Raw (10/28/2013)

This was for Cena’s World Heavyweight Title, with Sandow cashing in his chocolate MITB briefcase on Cena following an attack on his injured arm.

I was never into Damien Sandow. A deeply boring wrestler with a mostly boring character. Cookie cutter angles, cookie cutter matches. He could be anybody. To call him simply a warm body occupying space so the machine could continue to pump out #content is probably more than he deserves, because with a warm body, you at least know they’re alive, and he never really showed that amount of life. Nothing to him whatsoever. The same sort of developmental mediocrity that got shoved onto TV for years and years and years that falsely got propped up because well, hell, at least he’s new. I kept waiting and waiting for something — anything — to justify the way I would see him talked about on message boards and in group chats, and it never came.

He debuted a new finish — a Full Nelson Slam, absolute dogshit finish, but par for the course — the day before this, and with that obvious precursor to something and the way this was setup, I was fearful that once again one of these absolute nothings would stumble their way to something resembling success, if only out of some sort of application of a sunk cost fallacy.

Luckily, John Cena kicked out of his shitty new finish like it was nothing (it was nothing), and then hit the FU and won.

Absolutely beautiful, one of the funniest matches of the era.

A total career nuking, one that was completely deserved and put a sub-replacement level talent back down where sub-replacement level talents belong. A joy to witness, being in a group chat at the time with a big Damien Sandow fan.

One of those wonderful positive affirmations of all of your deeply held feelings that professional wrestling can give you every so often. Usually it comes from some massive victory from someone you’ve loved for a long time, but sometimes it can feel even better to see your enemies destroyed than to see your heroes succeed.

John Cena is the best.

a thousand stars, MOTY

 

Alberto Del Rio vs. Christian, WWE SummerSlam (8/18/2013)

This was for Del Rio’s World Heavyweight Title, following up a pair of non-title television matches in which Christian upset Del Rio with different cradles.

The Thursday or Friday before this show, my computer died. It had been bad for a few months, ever since I tried to illegally stream the Game of Thrones season opener in April, but it finally died then. Not a big deal, I was still making tutor money because the community college I went to hadn’t caught on, for some reason, to the fact that I had transferred to a four year institution the previous year and still let me take tutoring appointments over the summer (the highlight of which was a student responding to me saying that bad war planning was the second worst thing the Nazis did by asking what the first was, as if they had never heard of the Holocaust before, and it somehow became my duty to break it to them.) and my dad was nice enough to still give me textbook money as I was in college. I got a refurbished version of the wonderful Toshiba that I already had for around $300. It’s amazing the sort of fondness you can have for a specific make of computer just because it was with you during a certain period.

Anyways, I was without a computer for something like a week or a week and a half here.

En lieu of easy illegal streaming access, I actually genuinely paid the $50 for this pay per view, and watched the entire thing on my phone. As I write this in 2021, 2013 is literally a different decade, but holy shit, 2013 was a different decade. Not just the idea of paying $50 for a WWE pay per view to watch it on my phone, but also the IDEA of having to watch it on my phone and not Roku or something else and also the idea of paying $50 for a WWE PPV.

And yet, they earned that buck.

I have a whole lot of monetary regrets when it comes to wrestling, but this is not one of them.

Beyond the double main that made it the rare genuine must-see WWE show this decade, the entire card was full of interesting and/or reliable match ups. It’s the sort of card where nothing is able to get in the way of the upper half of it, which is like…how wrestling should be? Again, it’s a total mirage what the WWE did in 2013 and the first half of 2014. They couldn’t replicate it if they tried. But it happened and I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.

For the first time ever (going to Buffalo Wild Wings and/or making your dad buy a pay per view is not the same thing as using your own hard-earned money to buy something. it isn’t. sorry.), I genuinely and actually directly paid the WWE to watch one of their pay per views.

Anyways, this was once again a great match. It’s a Christian arm work match. Del Rio is whatever, but he brings that realistic sort of affluenza riddled cokehead energy to this. One spectacular Jerry Bump outside. Great crisp work on the arm. Et cetera. Christian is the best. This is no television match, but functionally here in the middle of the card, it’s the same sort of fifteen minute thing. Big bumps. Perfect selling. The works. They don’t get to do nearly enough, but it all still works perfectly. Del Rio continues to be built up for someone else and gets to look stronger than ever in his three years here. Christian gives up to the Cross Armbreaker.

One more spectacular Christian performance for the books to recognize.

***1/4

Dolph Ziggler vs. Alberto Del Rio, WWE Payback (6/16/2013)

This was for Ziggler’s World Heavyweight Title.

Sadly, Ziggler’s gigantic moment was almost immediately upended when that fucking klutz Swagger concussed him and put him on the shelf for a month. Del Rio has continued to die a horrific death as a WWE Ethnic Babyface, and in this match, they finally make a shift and do the double turn that feels like it already sort of happened two and a half months ago. Unfortunately, it happens with the swift ejection of Ziggler from the main event (“main event”) picture to which he won’t ever really return. Because he’s injury prone, or some other bullshit that gets told as a reason to keep someone where they want them to be.

All that aside though, this is tremendous stuff, some of the best work in Ziggler’s career, and definitely the best work of Del Rio’s.

An all time “what could have been” match in WWE history.

The real shame of this isn’t that it happened, but why it happened. The insistence on keeping Del Rio as this top act when he’s spent the last two years bombing on top in each role and position, instead of running with the thing there in Team Rocket. Because what happened in this, from bell to bell, is perfect for what they’re going for. 

It’s a very unique sort of thing, especially for the WWE. It’s almost entirely a squash, but it’s done in such an evocative way and stretched out long enough that it doesn’t really ever feel that way. It is, absolutely, but it feels so much bigger and more emotional ad more significant that the word never quite feels correct. Ziggler comes in confident, and while there’s nothing overtly heelish, nothing is all that different. He’s tentative after the injury, but in a way that makes sense as like a normal human reaction. Del Rio lands a wild elbow though and the match CHANGES. Ziggler never strings more than two moves together after that, and puts on the selling performance of a career. A concussion is unlike a hand or knee injury, I can’t point out certain hyperrealistic things that someone will do to communicate that this is a “real” injury. But it FEELS like Ziggler nails it, and he’s totally fucked up.

The match shifts, and Del Rio’s weird nice guy act finally fades away to a pure ruthless sort of aggression. Everything goes after the head, and he’s also increasingly more and more of a fucking shit about it. He starts a fight with Big E to get him ejected, which is a great sort of transitionary thing. Big E hasn’t interfered yet and is being protective, but it makes sense too from the perspective of someone who’s ostensibly still barely a good guy. Once he’s gone, that changes more and more though. Ziggler doesn’t sell in this showy pinball sort of way, it’s maybe the one time ever when he got the chance to do something more, and he was incredible. A career performance in this sort of a way. He’s sympathtic, he’s energetic in these brief flashes, he’s crisp as hell, he even manages to be slightly off on a few things in a way that might be on accident but one that reads as because of the concussion. I couldn’t ask for anything more from him in this match, in terms of what he’s scripted to do. Genuine top babyface material. It’s the sort of match you’d point to years later and go “ah, yes. there.” I mean like, fucking Shawn Michaels doesn’t have a match like this. A lot of people that they’ve decided were going to succeed no matter what don’t have performances this good on their way up the card. But that was never in the cards, The Plan Is The Plan, all of that horse shit.

Things get even better at the end. This incredible scene of the annoying girlfriend character in AJ Lee now reduced to this panicked screaming at Ziggler being all but dead. Progression is always noticeable. Change from the usual and familiar is always going to innately draw attention to itself. Doing this perfect heel & valet act for six months and suddenly changing it to this ultra emotional scene is going to grab my attention in a major way, and the people react the same way. Ziggler’s 1000% there now as a babyface, really only behind Cena, Punk, and Bryan in terms of reactions on this show, and being in Chicago, maybe even a little more than Cena and Bryan. He manages a Zig Zag out of nowhere after all that, and it’s ninety percent as big as the title win MITB cash iin reaction, if not even closer.

Ziggler can’t do it though, that was it. He crawls up and Del Rio hits The Kick That Will Beat John Cena for the win.

A classic story, told as well as ever. This part of it anyways. Pride comes before the fall. The crowd finally accepts this arrogant goof after showing genuine actual heart for the first time, and a lesson is learned. Ziggler goes on to rely less and less on trickery and more on heart and spirit and the obvious skill he’s always had. The next step is a return match or two, with Our New Hero, who it’s finally okay to cheer after a few years of kind of wanting to, with the full coronation as your secondary title top babyface.

Unfortunately, someone somewhere will decide that actually, no, this was never about him so much as it was about making Alberto Del Rio hot again. As if people were mad at HIM and not mad about this happening to a guy they’d somehow some to care about. Instead, the payoff of getting to beat Del Rio in this run winds up going to someone who ABSOLUTELY never needed it and coming once all the heat here had worn off. Well, how’d that happen? I repeat, BECAUSE THE HEAT WAS NEVER ABOUT DEL RIO. Instead, Dolph Ziggler does next to nothing for the next year plus. I couldn’t begin to tell you why. There’s no deterioration in his skill level. Any chance he gets on television or another big event, he does really well. The effort doesn’t really drop off until the middle of 2015. But for some reason, it’s just…it’s over? It’s done. Build a guy up slowly for five years, he gets one concussion, and you’re just done with it. What’s the point? On top of that, the incredible Team Rocket act is blown up within a month of this, after looking like this real and genuine group you’d want to cheer for.

Everything that worked about this winds up going absolutely nowhere. Not because anything happened, but because they simply decided not to go anywhere with it.

It is the WWE though, and once again, you have to stop expecting things. Enjoy what happens while it happens. Expecting things is the road to emotional ruin, I preach this all the time. You have to pay the fiddler, buy the ticket and take the ride, etc., all of that. I usually mean that for things that accidentally work out, or bad things that were inevitable. It always feels a little different for a thing like this, where they go out of their way to DO SOMETHING, then it absolutely whips ass, and then abandon it. Resigning yourself to something bad and accepting it when it happens is a lot different than being caught off guard by something genuinely interesting, only for them to say, “well actually, no.” and cut it off before the natural conclusion that they already set up.

You absolutely shouldn’t care.

Sometimes though, it’s exceedingly hard not to when they stumble upon something this interesting, this well performed, and this great overall.

***1/2

Sheamus vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE Extreme Rules 2012 (4/29/2012)

This was a Best Two of Three Falls match for Sheamus’ World Heavyweight Title.

Following the notorious 18 Seconds debacle and in response to the crowd’s embrace by and large of Daniel Bryan and the “YES” chant, the WWE has chosen to go along with it as intelligently as usual, given Sheamus a 18 SECONDS t-shirt to try and mock the whole thing. The result is that everyone hates him more in comparison to Bryan, resulting in the first of two Cena successors that Bryan has murdered in the cradle without ever even trying to. As you might expect, no lesson was learned.

This is great though.

Not THAT great, it’s quite an overrated match, but it’s great.

It’s a great match almost entirely because of Daniel Bryan. The greatest professional wrestler of all time puts on a wonderful wonderful show. He chops the tree down early on, before spending the match focusing on the arm. It takes Sheamus like three-quarters of the match to catch up to that and to bother actually selling any kind of arm damage, but Bryan can’t just make one of these WWE project guys suddenly get it on that level. You do what you can, and all of that. His work is very good. For the sorts of fans who only watch WWE or mainstream wrestling (I don’t understand you), this is one of the first times they’ve gotten a chance to see the version of Daniel Bryan that became a consensus kind of Best In The World guy six years ago, and I imagine it left quite the impression had someone not seen dozens and dozens of better versions of this against so many better opponents. Like so many of those matches, this is much moreso a great Bryan performance than it is a stellar match on the whole. Bryan’s SO good though. Sheamus powers through, but Bryan always drags him back down. Sheamus is dull as hell as a superman babyface, but if nothing else, it makes Bryan look that much tougher and cooler for every time he’s able to clubber at the big fella and drag him back down into whatever he decides to do to his arm.

Bryan is disqualified for kicking at the arm too much in the corner, then shortly thereafter, makes Sheamus pass out in the YES Lock. Sheamus then kind of cottons onto the idea that this matters and his arm should be sore if this is to be realistic at all. Unfortunately, the match doesn’t last too much longer. Sheamus comes back in spite of the now hurt arm, and very abruptly hits the Brogue Kick to win, as if someone somewhere was worried that he didn’t look strong enough on his own simply by winning. There was much more to be done with these two than they did in this match, but it’s another victim of Sheamus’ incredibly bad 2012 booking. Nothing like the Del Rio feud, but since I won’t be writing about any of that, it’s worth mentioning how bad and miscalculated this entire run was.

A great match, but I think I’m the low man on it. Sheamus did next to nothing for me here. I like Sheamus. He has a lot of great matches and is definitely one of the 100 best wrestlers of the decade. But he was not much more than decent here. He could have been almost anyone else, within reason. Bryan was incredible, but that’s a given and no longer impresses me beyond a certain point.

Not even the best Bryan vs. WWE Superman match this decade, let alone this year.

Not even sure it’s the best Bryan/Sheamus match in 2012.

***1/4

Mark Henry vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE Super Smackdown (11/29/2011)

This was a steel cage match for Henry’s World Heavyweight Title.

A delightfully simple match. There’s weird aspects to it, like the match doing more to babyface Henry than to help Daniel, but given the way this all turns out, that was probably the intention. If nothing else, the intention is to have Bryan get his big underdog shot and fail, so as to make him into a heel eventually. It’s a WWE ass decision, a real fucking CHOICE, and the sort of bullshit they cannot help themselves but to do. But, the match did rule.

It’s a weird feeling to be in this place again though, where Daniel Bryan is a huge underdog babyface but without the feeling that he can actually do this. It feels completely foreign. It’s not just unfamiliar, but it feels deeply incorrect, clashing with the presentation of this sort of story every other time Bryan’s been involved with the telling of it. Every other time he’s been in that role, be it against Joe or Morishima or The Authority or Kane or whomever, there’s never been this “he can’t POSSIBLY do it!” element to the thing, like he would ever need to be lucky. He’s Daniel Bryan. He’s the best wrestler in the world, the GOAT, all of that. He will find a way. But in this 2010-2011 initial run in WWE, it’s the one time he’s ever really slotted as a 100% underneath guy, and it’s all very strange. The text is that he needs to escape to win and that he has no hope against this behemoth, and must resort to less heroic means. The match is less about him having to find a way, and more about the challenge he presents to the real star, Mark Henry, and then in retrospect about what he’ll need to do to win Big Gold.

That’s not bad!

Mark’s great in this. Bryan’s great in this. It’s a fun and unique match telling a classic story in a newer way, but it’s also undeniably strange to such an extent that I don’t blame anyone for not liking it as much as I do.

In a recurring theme, Daniel Bryan is great enough even to take the most backwards ideas and make them work.

Mark Henry comes in with a taped up ankle, and it slows him. It makes him a little meaner, maybe. It’s something Bryan eventually works on and it’s all very well done. Daniel Bryan targets a part of the body, it’s great. Mark Henry isn’t someone who’s often been asked to do things like this, but he does a tremendous job of selling the ankle. Because of that, and the general way that this feels like a WWE Standard — not dissimilar to a thousand matches a WWE big guy would have against someone like Bryan before and after this — the result is that we come away impressed with Mark Henry’s heart and toughness. Daniel Bryan is tough too, he survives a big beating, but he’s the one who victimizes the more injured man, and he’s the one caught at the end. The ankle work fails and because it’s WWE Bryan, we’re supposed to not know he’s the best ever and can do a million more things, so he tries to leave instead. Mark catches him on the top, and hits a gnarly World’s Strongest Slam off the ropes, destroying him for the win.

It’s a very weird approach to something that should have been an easy success, but it’s still a total success. Beyond being great in all these other ways, it’s a the rare post-blood WWE cage match where the cage has some kind of value. It’s also a remarkably lean match on top of everything else.

It’s nothing new, but it’s always fascinating and impressive to see the new ways in which Daniel Bryan can show up and give somebody an arguable career match.

***1/2

 

Christian vs. Randy Orton, WWE SummerSlam 2011 (8/14/2011)

This was a No Holds Barred match for Christian’s World Heavyweight Title.

These two don’t ever quite top Over The Limit, but this isn’t so far off. It’s a WWE gimmick match and there are a lot of drawbacks to that sometimes, but this is one of the better ones of the last decade or so. There are a lot of props and setpieces, but they are more of a feature of the match instead of the central focus. It’s not a themed pay per view, this is the climax of a feud that’s slowly earned a match like this through the escalation of Christian’s manic desperation and Orton’s anger problems, and the match never forgets that. It feel strange to describe something like this as an ideal, but the way it’s set up is the rare case in the WWE where a match earns the gimmick instead of a match being created for the gimmick.

While it’s true that I like their face/face encounters more than the ones after Christian turns heel, this is also the best of them because Christian is the most deplorable in it. At a point, he tries to flee and almost makes it out of the building. He’s a coward, he’s a little disgusting, but along the way he manages to put Orton through enough hell that when he does come back, it feels something closer to revenge than usual. They also manage to perfectly straddle the line between Christian’s inability to control Randy Orton and the way stories should go. There’s less drama immediately available in constant back and forth, but it fits the story well enough that it isn’t the worst thing in the world. Christian isn’t quite a genius level worker, but he’s smart enough that he always finds the perfect moment to let go of control while still preserving some sort of narrative structure to this. It never quite becomes the shapeless mess that it very easily could have become. That isn’t just because of how good the layout is or how great these two are together, but how they sell the cumulative damage as the match goes on.

It’s also quite an austere thing for a WWE gimmick match. You get a few table things by the end, and the famous finish of the Flying Nothing attempt right in perfect place for an RKO on steel steps, but it all develops very slowly. Methodical usually means dull or boring, but this was the rare time when it felt like the appropriate word. There was a plan here, and it worked. Beginning with the purely physical establishes the themes (Christian is a coward, Orton is a hothead, Christian’s opening is through exploitation of the latter), before the weapons added color once the match was already interesting. Even then, they use the weapons in these smaller and much more unique, deliberate, and painful ways before then turning them around for the big setpieces. Orton’s superplex onto a folded up table on the mat wasn’t as eye popping as a move later on through it set up in the corner, but it came off as much more painful because it wasn’t the usual thing you see with a table in a big WWE gimmick match. The selling is, of course, wonderful. A myriad of great little sells from both men, in addition to tremendous cumulative selling from both in the final third or so. It’s always felt like a struggle for Christian, but this is the first time it’s felt like anything close to a struggle for Randy Orton too.

The ending run is also a huge success. Christian stole the title by exploiting Orton’s well known anger issues, and it’s only fitting that this blowoff match sees the same approach fail. When Christian tries the same thing, in the hopes of dragging Randy into some kind of a mistake, but Randy channels himself in a more productive way. Christian goes through a table, and Orton runs through his signatures in the ring, with weapons to help. Total revenge would be satisfying, to whatever extent a WWE Superman beating up a recently-turned-because-he’s-not-Chosen People’s Champion type can ever be, but they go a step further with it. Christian ever so briefly comes back into the match, teasing out that this might have actually been a mistake by Orton after all, only to then do the dumbest thing in the world and lose the title.

That’s the worst thing about the match and really the only issue with it. It’s one of the dumbest looking things anyone’s ever tried and looks stupider and stupider the more you look at it. I don’t believe a finish alone can ruin a match, especially not one this good, but god damn is it a goofy ass finish. I totally get it. Combine it with the obvious result and the very valid reasons people have to be annoyed with this feud on principle alone, and I completely understand why people either dismiss or forget about this match. It’s a shame, because it’s a great one and a great example of how to still get something creative out of a match like this.

If you have to watch one Christian vs. Randy Orton match, it’s obviously Over the Limit.

If you have to watch a second Christian vs. Randy Orton match for some reason though, make it this one.

***1/4

 

Randy Orton vs. Christian, WWE Money in the Bank 2011 (7/17/2011)

This was for Orton’s World Heavyweight Title, with the added stipulation that Orton can lose the title on a disqualification.

It’s not Over The Limit. It won’t ever be Over The Limit. It’s better than Capitol Punishment though, which was a retread not worth writing about. This is at least something halfway interesting, and the rare match that has a stipulation like that and still bothers to do something with it.

It helps that the match is great too, even if I don’t believe that these two can have anything less than that together, given the proper time. They have terrific natural chemistry with each other, not to go too into that again, but it’s always really cool to see guys get together and have them work together like hand in glove, sharing 100% of the same vision of wrestling. Christian is holding Randy’s hand through it, of course, as Randy has never had a strong opinion in his life, but he’s a guy who fits better with Christian’s mindset, philosophy, and style than maybe anyone Christian ever fought as a near-top singles wrestler.

The theme of the match is that Randy is big mad at Christian because Christian is a dirtbag, and they never deviate from it. Randy is too mad to let Christian even wind up controlling the match for long, and it works in this environment, with a Chicago crowd being fairly sympathetic towards Christian, even while loving some Randy Orton. Christian’s talented enough to find his openings, but they make the smart call to go right into the back and forth second half. It doesn’t make too much of a difference, although it’s always nice to see a WWE match that bothers with any sort of deviation from the norm. If these guys get to do a big nearfall trading run, they’re creative enough to constantly do new things, even here in their fourth title match in two and a half months. It’s not what it was before. It’s not what it’ll be in the future. But it’s just enough for me to still call this a great match. The work is good enough that the creative booking can do the rest of the heavy lifting.

Famously, Christian wins the title on a disqualification when Randy Orton gets too mad to stop himself and kicks him real hard in the tube.

It’s a wonderful finish and a really inspired bit of booking in the last place you’d expect. Matches with a stipulation like that always become about the gallant babyface holstering it for long enough to win cleanly and spoiling the coward’s easiest route to victory. It’s good as hell that for once, it didn’t happen. For a stipulation like that to have any real bite, it has to actually pay off at some point, otherwise it becomes like Abyss and the thumbtacks. If Christian’s going to be forced to work heel again because a seventy year old doesn’t like his face, he’s as good a choice as any to be the one to do it. It’s also absolutely the best way for him to regain the title. Beating Randy cleanly is never going to happen, and regular cheating feels very boring. This, though? Beautiful stuff. Try not to smile at “the first man to win a World Title by being kicked in the dick”.

My feeling’s always been that if you’re going to do some bullshit like this, you might as well go all the way with it. Put your back into it or don’t bother.

For once, they went all the way with it.

***

Randy Orton vs. Christian, WWE Over The Limit 2011 (5/22/2011)

This was for Orton’s World Heavyweight Title.

Their best match together, and probably the best major match that Christian was ever allowed to have as a near-top guy in the WWE. I don’t know if it makes a top ten overall, I don’t know if it makes a top ten for Randy Orton overall, and they have some great matches years later when Randy Orton is in his proper position as the golden boy heel and Christian gets to work from an entirely sympathetic point of view instead of also having to get Orton face pops on top of his own work. All that said, It’s a seriously great match that I think maybe gets slept on because the beginning of the rivalry casts such a pall over everything that followed.

We’ve covered how good these two are together before. That’s not interesting, writing the same thing over and over, when they have three or four more title matches after this one. I’ll say simply that this was their best match because this is their sole pay per view match without any Booking that had to happen to get them somewhere, or without any gimmick thrown onto it. It was such a rare thing in the WWE, a world title match that was allowed to simply be a normal ass wrestling match. Everything great about the May 6th match was even better here. Everything great about their other matches in 2011 was even better here.

The big thing that stood out here was the character work that Christian put in. Booker T, Michael Cole, and Jerry Lawler either weren’t good enough here or didn’t care enough here to really pick up on it, but there was such an insecurity to his whole performance that really blew me away. This is a guy who made his name as a cocky heel before reinventing himself in this second run as something of a working class hero babyface, excelling at both, so it doesn’t seem so far fetched to say that any minor detail he’s throwing out is probably a conscious choice. He’s twitchy, desperate, even coming off nervous at some points. He expands his offensive arsenal a ton here, but in a way that comes off as originating from a place of panic instead of having these things in his back pocket. In contrast, Randy Orton is not worried about anything ever. As a character, he is an athletic prodigy who is one of the special Anointed Ones. He has never experienced doubt. Nothing has ever gone poorly for him, aside from one unfortunate thumbs down. He is better than all of us. As a human being, Randy Orton may actually not understand the concept of worry. It’s an annoying thing to think about, but it’s a terrific contrast to Christian’s performance here.

In the end, the lack of confidence matters. Because Randy doesn’t understand what doubt is, he cannot experience it. Christian is the king of these big counter runs, but Randy has his head in the game and is ready for it more than ever, actually showing some kind of improvement for once instead of coasting along. In comparison, Christian went in with self doubt and he repeats things, tries things he’s not totally sure of, and isn’t ready in the same way that Orton is. Randy tries for the leapfrog counter to the Killswitch again and Christian is ready like he was last time. This time, Orton has a new counter right there and ready to go. Christian backflips out of an attempt at a back suplex, right into the RKO for the win.

The band aid’s off with this one, so there’s no real bad feelings here. What’s happened already happened. Christian winning the title back here wouldn’t change the way mustard tastes, and it’d be dishonest on top of that. Live with your mistakes, and what not. Most things in WWE suck anyways, at least with these two, they can occasionally have matches this good to make up for them.

***1/2