THE DECEMBER TO DISMEMBER IS A REGRET I'LL NEVER FORGET
By Sean Gerber on 12/6/2006 12:20 PM
I know that a feedback section already exists for reviewing wrestling television, but I just feel that such a section cannot contain the sense of anger and confusion I was left with after the ECW December to Dismember PPV.
First off, with all due respect to the Hardy's and MNM (who delivered a great match), this was billed as a one match PPV. I was okay with that because I enjoy the Elimination Chamber and have been a CM Punk mark since the Joe trilogy in ROH. I don't feel ripped off because the rest of the card sucked, because that's not what I gave up $40 for. It seems silly to me to be upset over matches that the WWE never promised me, or anyone else in the first place. The WWE billed this as a one match PPV, and I laid down my hard-earned cash with full knowledge of that. That being said, I still got ripped off.
I didn't get the match I paid for. I was promised RVD, CM Punk, Big Show, Bobby Lashley, Test, and Sabu. As everyone now knows, Sabu was "taken out" before the match. Sabu, the only man who could've possibly enabled the Elimination Chamber live up to its Extreme billing, was not going to be in the match. It's been reported that Sabu has had more than his share of troubles backstage, but that's the WWE's problem, not the fans. Don't advertise him on the PPV when you have no intention of putting him in the match.
What could Sabu possibly have done in order to warrant removal from an advertised PPV appearance? In the Ultimate Warrior DVD, Vince McMahon mentioned that he had to give into Warrior's demand for more money before a SummerSlam show because he wouldn't dare cheat his audience by pulling an advertised performer from a PPV. McMahon fired Warrior after the PPV and after he had filled his obligation as a promoter to his audience. I highly doubt that whatever Sabu has done was as bad as the extortion Warrior committed and thus would not warrant his removal from an advertised appearance. The assessment given by the live audience was absolutely correct.
Sabu's out and Bob Holly is the replacement. Now, I'm upset, but the WWECW can still redeem itself with an outstanding performance from the other five main eventers they promised me. Did those men deliver? Of course not and the worst part is that they weren't even allowed to. On a one match PPV where it takes 20 minutes just to get every wrestler into the match, there was no excuse for that match to be less than 30 minutes. To be honest, it should have gone at least 40 minutes especially when there are six men in the match and one of which, CM Punk, can go 60 minutes on demand. The match I laid down $40 for got me 25 minutes from bell to bell, barely. If that wasn't bad enough, the booking of the match made absolutely no sense from the WWE's perspective as a business.
CM Punk, the man whose name was chanted instead of industry icons DX and the Hardy Boys one week prior at Survivor Series in Philadelphia, was jobbed first. The fans spoke loud and clear. They told the WWE that he was there choice as the future of ECW and eventually, the future of the WWE as a whole. He shared biggest pop and loudest chant of the night honors with RVD. Does the WWE capitalize on this? Nope. Did Punk piss somebody off backstage? Probably not. Then how does this make sense?
To any rational mind, this doesn't make sense, but I can tell you what the WWE was thinking. For the past month (dating back to a couple weeks before Lashley even debuted in ECW), WWE creative has planned on putting the ECW World Title on Bobby Lashley. The problem has been that the fans reaction to Lashley's push has been zero. Not positive, not negative, but the worst reaction in wrestling, which is no reaction. The fans chose CM Punk and instead of calling a necessary audible, the WWE decided to bury him in the match in order to shift all of the focus onto Lashley. It's as if Vince McMahon was telling us, "I know you like CM Punk, but we didn't plan for that, so damn it, you're gonna love Bobby Lashley because that's our plan and that's what we're telling you to. Lashley is your hero and you fans are dumb if you can't see that after he used a table to escape from his locked chamber pod."
Now I am not saying that Punk should have won the match, or even that Lashley should not be the ECW Champion today. The plan was not nearly as flawed as the execution. Five days before the PPV, Test and Punk brawled into the crowd for a double count out. Was this mentioned? Nope. Did they play up Punk's undefeated streak? Not really. The easy way to do this would be to have Punk eliminate Test and Test retaliate leading to Punk's elimination and the end of his undefeated record. This sets up a program that keeps Punk busy for a little while until the 'E' feels comfortable putting the belt on the only new star created by the failing brand. It's simple and it makes sense, which is exactly why WWE creative didn't think of it. Instead, they wasted Punk's first loss with a quick, clean, uneventful pin from RVD.
To compound the mistake of Punk jobbing first, they have RVD job third. Half of the participants (including the 2 most over performers in the entire match) are gone before the 15-minute mark! Are they joking? Nope this is real and I paid $40 for it. Why eliminate Punk and RVD who were the two biggest reasons most people (myself included) bought this PPV? The answer is really quite simple. The focus had to be about Bobby Lashley. They did everything they possibly could to force Lashley down are throats as the new top guy of the brand. They couldn't risk RVD and Punk being around to steal Lashley's thunder. They had to be taken out so the odds could be stacked against Lashley and therefore he could become a mega star. Again, the WWE was not going to let us choose who we wanted to be the star. They were going to make that decision and come up with an idiotic plan to enforce it. They chose Lashley for us. They chose the same man who just two months ago they told us wasn't good enough to headline a Smackdown PPV with King Booker unless Batista and Finlay were added to the fray.
The crowd, being fully aware of what the WWE was trying to do, crapped all over the final 10 minutes of the main event. Chants of "TNA" and "Boring" could be heard throughout what the WWE intended to be the climax with Lashley dethroning the Big Show. I won't even complain about the "unbeatable" Big Show looking at the lights after only five minutes of actually being in the match. I won't even complain about the barbed wire bat, which was supposed to be the factor that made this Elimination Chamber "Extreme," never making contact with human flesh. I won't complain about those things because I stopped caring 15 minutes into the 25-minute match that I wasted $40 on.
I won't complain about a crappy PPV because I didn't order a PPV. I ordered a match. It may be unreasonable to expect a single match to deliver $40 worth of action, but his match wasn't even worth half of that. The WWE took all of those fans who were loyal enough to pay $40 for a single match and slapped them in the face with 25-minute snore that squashed the wrestlers they loved in the name of forcing another star upon them rather than deal with the inconvienience of changing a flawed and obviously failing plan.
