For Your Consideration…(Another) One Night of (lower) Stand(ards)

Welcome to week 60.

Obama. 08. Be a part of something great.

And that’s all I got to say about that.

Well I’ve been getting my ass kicked at my summer associate job for the past week or so and I will again reemphasize my plea to you readers to avoid law school like the plague. Unless, of course, you enjoy long hours and no sleep. In that case, sign up. Since I’m pressed for time, let’s get right down to it:

For Your Consideration…(Another) One Night of (lower) Stand(ards)

Well, One Night Stand 2008 was this past Sunday and I think everyone’s in agreement that the program landed with a dull thud…much like Randy Orton. Fair criticism or not, One Night Stand did not deliver the PPV that it was capable of. Not even close. I haven’t seen this much squandered effort since the last time I watched TNA.

To be fair, the show wasn’t abysmal. It was a solid, if unspectacular outing from a company that was finally starting to churn out shows that were reaching far beyond the normal drab monotony of years past. Yes, Wrestlemania failed to deliver a 5-star kind of match-up, but it was a hell of a lot of fun for the most part. Backlash gave us the matches we hoped we would have gotten in Orlando and everyone was pretty happy to just get them at all. Judgment Day was far better than it had a right to be. Maybe the expectations were too high and maybe we should just be content with what we got.

One Night Stand was, in 2005, the most highly anticipated pay-per-view event of the year. It was the triumphant return of ECW, a brand that meant the world to millions of wrestling fans. Okay, so millions might be overselling it just a little, but there sure were a hell of a lot of buys. Fans were hungry for something different, and by some miracle, Paul Heyman and Vince McMahon pulled off a nearly flawless nostalgia show, complete with shoot promos, surprise guests and even a few entertaining matches.

One Night Stand 2006 was supposed to be the crowning achievement of Paul Heyman (at least storyline wise). He was going to see his beloved wrestling promotion reborn as a branch of the WWE. It was going to be a new and different vision for the WWE, a chance to have a show focused on in-ring talent as well as outlandish characters. We were promised a new, smoky set that was going to recreate the ECW Arena in any building in the country. We were promised Extreme Rules matches with our favorite misfit superstars. That, however, became less and less realistic when we were given the card for One Night Stand. John Cena headlining an ECW pay-per-view? John “bane of existence for all supposed smart marks who have yearned for the return of Extreme Championship Wrestling” Cena was going to enter the Hammerstein Ballroom and main event the living embodiment of Heyman’s wet dream? There’s no way this is a good sign. To the surprise of everyone, the Cena gambit paid off huge dividends. The rest of the card was stacked with superstars who produced some great little matches. Kurt Angle began his dissent into madness by taking on Randy Orton. Tajiri gave his curtain call in there with the FBI. Mick Foley and Edge let Tommy Dreamer and Terry Funk experience relevance for the last time. Rey Mysterio gave Sabu his last real taste of the main event. And then there was the main event. Rob Van Dam versus John Cena for the WWE and ECW Championships. I’m convinced half of the people who bought that pay-per-view didn’t give a damn about ECW and were only tuning in to hear the crowd’s reaction to Cena. Oh man, was that worth the price of admission. The fans were merciless and could be summed up by one sign, “If Cena Wins, We Riot!” In hindsight, imagine if Vince had the balls to put John over here. How amazing would it have been to see the crowd pelt the ring with garbage? The only thing close to the emotional response that the ECW crowd would elicit would be Hogan’s heel turn at the Bash. Alas, in the end the good guy won (thanks to Edge) and everyone believed it when Joey Styles screamed “ECW lives!!!” ECW lives, alright, thanks mainly to Vince’s desire to produce a version of Velocity that draws ratings.

One Night Stand 2007 was, in my opinion, a bit of a disaster. I wrote a column last year where I pretty much let the vitriol fly. Cena/Khali? Lashley/Vince? Kane/Henry? Really? We went from one of the hottest crowds at one of the hottest shows of the year to seeing lackluster matches from Batista, Edge and the Hardys. One Night Stand 2007 was supposed to be memorable for two reasons; Cena vanquishing Khali and Lashley finally besting Vince McMahon for good. Instead, it was memorable for being the last pay-per-view appearance of Chris Benoit (as a lumberjack) and for being the next-to-next-to-last pay-per-view of Bobby Lashley. One Night Stand 2007 was built around the idea that Lashley would finally ascend to the top of the wrestling world by pinning a 60-year-old man for a belt that was so devalued over the course of the year that it wasn’t contested at Wrestlemania. Of course, the next night on RAW, everything done at ONS2007 was undone by the 2007 WWE Draft. That draft made some calculated and ultimately foolish moves by the WWE. First, the WWE moved Lashley from ECW to RAW, effectively stripping him of his title and leaving the promotion rudderless. It also moved King Booker to RAW where he would ultimately be jobbed out of the company. The draft shuttled Mister Kennedy…Kennedy to RAW in the hopes of him becoming a breakout star, but injury, suspensions and a crowded upper card have thus far prevented him from breaking out. Lastly, the draft moved Chris Benoit to ECW, the final tease that the promotion was going to become something memorable. Oh, what could have been…

One Night Stand 2008 was, for a PPV rushed out in a short time period, a well crafted show. As I said last week, every match was crafted from an established storyline and every match actually served a purpose. Unfortunately, even the best booked card can turn out to be lackluster.

The opening match of Jeff Hardy versus Umaga was designed to pop the crowd. It was the curtain jerker that Vince hoped it would be, because the sight of Jeff Hardy led most of Whale’s Vagina to have a heart attack. The booking of the match was, as astutely pointed out by Scott Keith, very 1999. While this didn’t reach the heights of Al Snow/Bob Holly, it did have some “memorable” (read: manufactured to be memorable) moments. The slide down the banister was relatively badass, though a little too “Home Alone” for my liking. The dive off of the truck was over gimmicked and I’m kind of surprised the WWE didn’t just film this earlier in the day and make it look more polished. The one advantage to being in San Diego is that it is light out at 8 pm so no one would bat an eye when they see the sun. Why not take advantage of it? I guess seeing Jeff Hardy kill himself looks relatively cool but it’s hard to get too pumped considering we’ve seen it a lot before. In the end, Jeff won, but his outside the arena victory robs the TV audience of hearing the “monster pop” his win was supposed to produce. Now, with Umaga beaten once and for all, Jeff can move on…I guess. But with Night of Champions being nothing but title matches, where does that leave Hardy? Surely he can’t get thrown into the Jericho/Batista/HBK debacle, right? That thing can’t get any more convoluted at this point. Maybe the WWE realized that he had nothing to do and that’s why they threw him into the mix with Cena and Hunter, but now that he’s lost clean, where else can he go?

Next up was the ECW Singapore Cane match. The Singapore Cane…on a pole match. Those of you who read me know that I love “____” on a pole matches because they are without a doubt the most awful things ever to watch. Yes, the culmination was Judy Bagwell on a pole and nothing will ever surpass that, but imagine if Vince ever tried. The match was an inevitable conclusion, so it’s hard to get too pumped about it. The match was a solid “eh” as there really was no truly memorable spot outside of Merriman taking the cane-shot like a champ and then delivering a stiff looking return swing to Chavo. Yeah, you can bitch about Big Show winning, but with a motivated Kane as his opponent, maybe Show can string together a slightly entertaining match. Slightly being the key word. Oh, and poor Tommy having to take the pin here. Who the hell were they saving by making Dreamer take the fall in his one PPV match of the year? Sure, Punk can’t lose (though awesome job by Adamle on pointing out how colossal a failure Punk has been since winning MITB…you could practically hear Vince screaming at him to shut the fcuk up) because it would only continue to dent his credibility. Morrison’s been too entertaining to take the pin. That leaves Chavo and Dreamer, and it might have added a little more credibility to Merriman’s interference if it ultimately led to Guerrerro getting beaten.

Cena/JBL was incredibly painful to watch, and I’m not talking about the “realness” of the physicality. I’ve never seen two less motivated guys try to fake intensity and enthusiasm in a match since the days of WCW Saturday Night. I thought for sure that JBL was going to go over Cena in this one, because the first blood stip allows for cheap wins and frankly, if Bradshaw is to maintain any credibility in the eyes of the fans, he needs to win one of these damn matches. I know I normally don’t advocate any actions to advance JBL, but I’ll make a special exception because if we’re going to be subjected to him each and every week as a supposed main event level heel, he has to be somewhat believable. But, now that Cena’s moving on to face Trips at NOC based on this win, I guess it makes sense. Some sense. A modicum of sense. Bleh.

Speaking of bleh, the women’s match was nothing with nothing for the most part. The EliteXC match from the night before with the hotter girl messing up the ugly girl was a hell of a lot more entertaining. I don’t care about Melina and I think that Beth Phoenix would have been better served going at it again with Mickie James. On the other hand, I will say that the final submission hold looked really impressive. (Oh, and welcome to the women’s division Katie Lea…damn)

Batista versus Shawn Michaels continued the trend of unimpressive with a surprisingly listless Stretcher Match. Considering the WWE went to all that trouble to have Foley record an instructional video for the match, the least Shawn and Dave could have done was give us a crazy show. Instead, we got some impressive spots interspersed with the slow, plodding and repetitive spot of one guy lethargically dragging his opponent up the ramp. It’s almost as bad as slow ladder climbs because you know that if this were real, one guy would be racing his ass off to get the other one across the finish line. As a side note, how strange is it for a wrestling match to declare a winner by crossing a finish line in the first place? One positive that came out of this was my prediction about the Jericho-ference and how this is going to evolve into a situation where if Chris can’t beat Shawn then no one can. Now Jericho’s constantly on the verge of snapping, Shawn got beaten to near death and Batista’s probably got a one-way ticket to the World Title picture. The consensus on the Net has been a collective “What the hell is going on?” ever since this thing started, but I’m going to give the WWE the benefit of the doubt and see if this goes anywhere. We’ve been dragged down dumb storyline alley before, let’s see if we don’t get mugged and raped.

Triple H versus Randy Orton for the WWE Championship. Everyone knew Hunter was going to win. Everyone knew that Orton was leaving for a period of time after this match. Everyone knew the feud ended at One Night Stand. What everyone didn’t know was that Randy Orton was going to forget how to take a bump and pop his clavicle like he was a junior high kid engaged in his first slow dance. Last Man Standing matches, by design, have that slow series of segments with drawn out counts. In a ten minute match, having more than 2 pulls down the pace, but obviously this was scheduled to go on much longer. At least I hope it was. So now Hunter looks stronger than ever by crushing Orton with the sledgehammer…though there’s something unsettling about the fact that he was so willing to crush a clearly injured opponent with a weapon. It would have made him a killer heel but he’s not that…yet. With Hunter/Cena set for Night of Champions, you gotta figure shenanigans are going to have to occur. Will the WWE react to the kneejerk ratings and turn Hunter heel or will we get a face/face match at NOC? I think a one-time Cena/Hunter match with both guys working as faces will be interesting to watch from a fan’s perspective because the audience reactions should be unique. You gotta figure that Hunter wants to do it because he’s guaranteed a strong crowd response in his favor. In the end, the injury to Orton was a blessing storyline-wise because it means that Hunter has finally vanquished his foe and everyone can move on with their lives.

And then there were two. Edge and the Undertaker in a TLC match that featured very little in the way of truly memorable moments. The biggest spot of the night was Taker hurtling through 4 tables after being pushed off the ladder, but he missed most of the wood and just kind of skipped across them like a pebble. The “memorable” moment was supposed to be Taker leaving for good, but we all know its complete BS. He walked away like David Banner at the end of an episode of “The Incredible Hulk” and we’re supposed to buy that this is the end of the Undertaker? I was legitimately pissed about this ending; not because I thought that Taker should have been champion (Edge is not only a better guy to hold the strap but a far more interesting character from a storyline perspective) but because of the fact that the WWE is going to renege on the stipulation. Yeah, the WWE always reneges on stipulations, but the Flair match at Mania almost reinstituted some credibility to that threat. The “lose and you’re gone” matches rarely stick, but Flair’s loss at Mania should last for a good little while and that preserves the integrity of the stipulation. Edge made such a big deal about Undertaker being gone that there’s just no way that anyone could buy it as legit. I know Taker will enjoy his summer off and all but don’t shove this down the fans’ throats the way you know they will. “He’s gone from all the shows and never ever ever ever coming back!” is about as juvenile as it gets in terms of storyline because no one buys it. Thankfully Taker’s out of the title picture and Edge can move on to messing with Batista. Again.

Since the WWE is doing Edge/Batista and Cena/Hunter at NOC, it makes me think that the WWE is moving one of them in the Draft. If they move anyone at this point it should be Edge. He’s built up his Familia on Smackdown, but by dropping the title to Batista and moving to RAW, he can work a feud with Triple H and serve as a nice replacement for Orton (who is nowhere near as good as Edge). This means we could get Hunter/Edge and Cena/Edge to headline Summerslam and Survivor Series. Having Batista carry Smackdown over the summer should be no sweat considering there’s no Khali or Henry to bog down the main event. Maybe even move Jericho to Smackdown and let the two of them have free reign. Alright, enough Draft hypothesizing, there’s plenty of time for that in the coming weeks.

This has been for your consideration.