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Before I get started today, I’d like to apologize to everybody who tried accessing my MySpace page at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider and couldn’t get in, turns out even though I created the page I forgot to actually set up the URL, and it took me looking at the page views count sitting at 0 for an entire week while I plugged it in every one of the 12 or so columns I’ve turned in over the last week before I figured out the problem and set up the URL. So with that in mind, if you’d like to check me out on Myspace, you can catch me at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider!
So with that in mind, we have now hit the end of the road of this massive Survivor Series retrospective with Survivor Series 2007 in Miami, Florida. Interestingly, this show was originally booked to be in Montreal before it was moved to Miami, so one would think that this show was intended to somehow play into the Montreal Incident (as if it hadn’t been referenced a thousand times in the decade since) but the plan ended up getting changed.
The Undercard
The show opened with ECW Champion CM Punk defending the title against WWE Tag Team Champions John Morrison and the Miz in a triple threat match. Morrison and Miz had recently won the title together even though they didn’t like each other and were basically always trying to one up each other in their quest to win the ECW Title, while Punk initially got the title because Morrison, champion at the time, had earned himself a Wellness suspension and needed to drop the title, and even though some worried that Punk would drop the title back to Morrison as soon as he was back, he ended up holding on to it for quite a while. This match was great, ton of action between three guys who were busting their asses to try and impress. This had a really indy feel to it, in that you saw these guys pulling out moves you wouldn’t normally see in WWE, and I recognized a lot of them as having been directly lifted directly from ROH guys. I have to be honest, even though I’m a huge Punk fan, Morrison impressed me the most out of these three, he has a really good sense of where he is in the ring in relation to everyone else, and has great control over his body. Miz ended up accidentally bumping Morrison off the apron and turned right around into CM Punk, who gave him Go To Sleep for the win.
The second match was a 5-on-5, non-elimination women’s match pitting Mickie James, Michelle McCool, Kelly Kelly, Maria, and Torrie Wilson taking on Women’s Champion Beth Phoenix, Melina, Jillian Hall, Victoria, and Layla. I don’t mean to sound too harsh by saying this, but a lot of times when I watch women’s matches in WWE I feel like I’m watching Amateur Hour between a bunch of people who just learned how to work. This is probably because a lot of these women really did just recently learn how to work and really aren’t in a position to do much more than armgdrags and rollups. Obviously this doesn’t apply to all of them, because you do have women like Beth, Mickie, and Victoria who actually wanted to make careers out of wrestling instead of just seeing it as fitness modeling plus a little bit of light fake fighting and they’re fine, but I really have a hard time appreciating the rest of them. Nothing match that ended when Mickie caught Melina with a stiff kick to the head for the win.
Next up, we got World Tag Team Champions Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch defending against Hardcore Holly and Cody Rhodes. Frankly, I’m surprised this made it onto the PPV, I would have assumed they’d have used the extra time for video packages promoting WWE Films projects or even dead air between the live showing and the replay, but somehow this made the cut. Holly and Rhodes won a match on Heat that I’m sure everybody saw to earn this title match by beating the Highlanders back before they got their season tickets to TNA Impact tapings. Pretty pedestrian match, but Trevor totally popped my by pulling out the Code Red of all moves to put Cody away for the win.
The next match was a traditional tag team elimination bout pitting Triple H, Kane, Intercontinental Champion Jeff Hardy, and Rey Mysterio against Ken Kennedy, US Champion MVP, Umaga, Big Daddy V, and Finlay. Matt Hardy was supposed to be on Triple H’s team, but MVP (his love/hate tag team partner) turned on him right before the show and took him out of action. I don’t recall exactly, but I believe there was some sort of injury that meant Matt was going to need to disappear for a while. There was a funny moment in a prematch interview where Kane brings up that the team has to get along even though Triple H once accused him of killing his girlfriend and then had sex with a mannequin dressed up as her. Then Hardy mentioned Triple H once putting him in the hospital. Gotta love how as bad as it can be sometimes, WWE occasionally does make fun of its own past silliness. Getting to the match, Rey Mysterio showed up Trevor Murdoch almost immediately by hitting a Code Red in the first minute or so on Kennedy, but it only got two, which then tells me that Murdoch has a better Code Red than Mysterio does. Take that, you oversized midget. Anyway, things got really ugly for Triple H’s team who, already a man down at the beginning, got chopped even further down when Big Daddy V eliminated Kane with a belly-to-belly suplex, and then Umaga just destroyed Rey Mysterio and put him away with a sick version of the Catatonic and the Samoan Spike, leaving Triple H and Jeff Hardy by themselves against five guys. This being Triple H and Jeff Hardy, they naturally had no problem prevailing under such circumstances, as first Jeff put MVP away with the Twist Of Fate to get a measure of revenge for his brother, then Big Daddy V accidentally dropped a big elbow on Kennedy, allowing Triple H to pin him, then Hardy and HHH hit a double DDT on BDV to put him away, Hunter slipped out of a Celtic Cross attempt and hit the Pedigree to put him away. Now by himself, Umaga fought valiantly, but the combined might of Triple H and pretty much anyone was too much for Umaga to overcome, though it still took a Pedigree and Swanton to put him away. This was a pretty fun match that put together a good story where Hunter’s team was overmatched by these asskicking monsters, but were able to fight the odds to win through in the end.
But I guess we needed something to cool the crowd off, because up next we got the Great Khali against Hornswoggle. To briefly recap, this was in the midst of the “Hornswoggle is Vince McMahon’s son” angle, which replaced the “who killed Vince McMahon” angle that was completely abandoned when Sherri Martel and, more infamously, Chris Benoit both died within a week or so of Vince’s “death” on Monday Night Raw. Since they had to come up with some other Vince mystery, they did the illegitimate child angle instead, and originally the role was planned for Ken Kennedy, but then he got hit with a Wellness violation, which pretty much took him out of consideration and left them scrambling for a replacement. They picked Hornswoggle, which actually turned out to be good for some comedic moments. This match was booked basically because Vince didn’t love Hornswoggle. As you might imagine, this was more of a storyline segment than a match per se, as Hornswoggle tried all kinds of things to hurt Khali including chops and shots from the shillelagh, but nothing worked until Finlay came in, beat the crap out of Khali (which drew a DQ, for anyone who cares), and then left with Hornswoggle, who it would turn out is actually his son, and this threw Finlay into the spotlight a bit as Vince turned his wrath on him and spent some months trying to destroy Finlay.
The Main Events
The show closed with the two World Title matches, the first of which was Randy Orton defending the WWE Title against Shawn Michaels. Thanks to an unwieldy series of circumstances following a shoulder injury to former champion John Cena, Randy Orton had wound up with the WWE Title and Shawn Michaels had been positioned as his top challenger. Michaels was about to beat him when they wrestled at Cyber Sunday, but as he went for the superkick, Randy Orton dropped down and gave him a low blow to get himself intentionally disqualified rather than lose the title. Shawn was granted a rematch here, and if Orton intentionally got himself disqualified he’d lose the title, but if Michaels used the superkick, he would get disqualified and would not get another titleshot as long as Orton was champion. This was a really fun match to watch because you’re used to pretty much every Shawn Michaels match building to the superkick, so in this one you saw Shawn completely change up his style and pull out all kinds of stuff you don’t usually see out of him, and as Jim Ross pointed out on commentary, you see both men having to wrestle in this one. They did a great spot where Shawn made like he was going for the superkick, but when Orton ducked his head Michaels stopped short and caught him in a small package for two, then did a crucifix into a sunset flip that I haven’t seen him do since his Rockers days, and then he started pulling out the finishing submission holds of every major star you can think of that wasn’t in WWE anymore. First he put him in the Sharpshooter, obviously a nod to the events of ten years earlier, then he caught him in the Crippler Crossface, which caused a little bit of controversy at the time since it had only been about five months since the Benoit Incident. After that, it was the ankle lock complete with the grapevine, but Orton got out every time. They did a great finish where Orton went for the RKO and Shawn pushed him off and went for the superkick, but remembered he couldn’t use it and stopped, and Orton used the moment of hesitation to hit the RKO for the win. This was a fabulous match that told a great story and showed that even though his instinct ended up costing him the match, Shawn has a lot more in his arsenal that can finish people than just the superkick. They even did a great spot after the match where Orton dragged Shawn to his feet and propped him up in the corner, yelling “Say it! Say it! I beat you and I’m the best! I’m the future!” and then stepped back long enough for Shawn to hit the superkick and knock him out cold, with Orton laying on the mat with his eyes open, but even though the lights were on, nobody was home. Awesome, awesome stuff.
Before we got to the final match of the evening, we got another SAVE-US video clip which eventually led to the return of Chris Jericho. People at WWE really got pissed off over how this all played out, as they were planning Jericho’s return to be a huge surprise, but of course in the Internet Age, surprises don’t stay secret for long, and the news was out months before Jericho finally made his return. This really isn’t news to anybody, but I thought it worth pointing out to illustrate how WWE has a hard time dealing with situation where they’re not in Stalinesque total control of information, and their complete inability to adapt to the realities of today where news travels almost faster than it happens.
In any event, we close the show with a Hell In A Cell match for the World Title as Batista defends against the Undertaker. This was the fifth meeting between these two in 2007, as Batista had dropped the World Title to the Undertaker at Wrestlemania 23, but had gotten his win back at Cyber Sunday, with two non-finishes along the way, and this match was set up to settle the issue between these two. This was only Batista’s second Hell In A Cell match, but the Undertaker had had several and was a veteran. Undertaker brutalized Batista early on, taking him to the outside and working him over with a chair, but then when they got back in the ringthey did a cool spot where Undertaker went for Old School, but Batista countered into a spinebuster. From then, the two men took turns working one another over with stiff clotheslines, power moves, and chairshots. The match spilled back out to the floor where Batista hit the Undertaker with the ring steps, busting Undertaker open. He followed that up with a Demon Bomb through a table, but that only got two. Batista then brought the steps into the ring and went for a Demon Bomb on the steps, but Undertaker backdropped him onto the steps and hit the Tombstone, but that only got two. Undertaker then gave Batista a Tombstone on the steps which knocked Batista out cold, but when he went for the cover, Edge crawled out from under the ring, dragging the referee out to break the count, then went to work on Undertaker with a chair, giving him a Conchairto between the chair and the ringsteps, and then dragging Batista’s completely unconscious form on top of Undertaker to literally hand the win to Batista, and then after the match gave Undertaker one more stiff chairshot in the face for good measure.
Final Analysis
This was a really good show, because other than the women’s match, Hornswoggle-Khali, and the World Tag Team Title Match, all of which were mercifully kept short, there was a ton of great wrestling on this show. Shawn Michaels showed that he still rules all by managing to do successfully work a completely different style in the best match of the night (and probably one of the best in Survivor Series history), but the Hell In A Cell was also very good and very brutal, and protected both men by a)giving Batista the win while b)making it look like Undertaker had the match wrapped up before Edge got involved. Great show, and hopefully tonight’s show will be as good.
So there you have it, this Survivor Series retrospective was a huge project, but we got through it and got to relive a lot of great stuff along the way, so to those of you who stuck with me through the whole thing, thanks and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. As always, all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com, and you can find me on Myspace at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider. Take care, and I’ll see you soon with the latest edition of the pROHfile.
