I’ve yet to watch this year’s Royal Rumble, but a friend had promised he’d send me a copy of the show this week. He did, however, send me last month’s TLC PPV, so there’s that. So I decided to share some musings with this PPV that most of you have probably already seen. This isn’t an up-and-up report or anything; just random observations and musings on the show, similar to how I approach the RAW Bytes, so to speak.
* Interestingly enough, John Cena was not ever featured on the card. Strange that they wouldn’t try to shoehorn him into a title picture or at least inconsequential bonus match or anything like that, but sure enough, the crowd was spared (?) from sitting through a Cena match. I certainly didn’t shed a tear over a lack of Cena, but I was pleasantly surprised.
* So Zack Ryder finally beats Dolph Ziggler to win his first United States championship. Not a bad match to start up and it was cool to see this feud built mostly on YouTube finally pay off in a nice way. I also thought it was cool to see Zack’s dad finally cheer for his son instead of that spot monkey with shades who was recently future endeavored. What sort of dulls me on this match is knowing that this reign wouldn’t last long and that WWE’s handling of Ryder would teeter on the edge of “god-fucking-awful.” On its own, however, it was a nice little moment to witness.
* Never got into the tag title match between Air Boom and Primo/Epico. It was okay, I guess, but I wasn’t really feeling it. Air Boom would retain the titles here, but lose them to Primo/Epico on the house show circuit. Amazingly, they’re still champions as of this writing. That’s cool, I guess.
* Orton/Barrett was okayish, don’t care about the Divas match, and I don’t care about the clusterfuck HHH/Nash ladder match that damn near put me to sleep even on fast-forward. How is that even possible? To be fair, both HHH and Nash tried, but both men are older and aren’t as ripe as they used to be. It should have been short and sweet, but it was twenty minutes too long and it put me to fucking sleep. It was twenty minutes too long when they had a match in 2003 and both were younger and only tore one quad a piece… oh wait. But hey, as long as this bullshit feud is over and done with, I’m mildly content.
* Jack Swagger succumbing to Sheamus’ Brogue Kick of Death. Quick and painless; suitable for TV, not so much for PPV. I’m guessing this was added at the last minute to accomodate some stuff. I had thought that with all the Cody Rhodes/Booker T stuff going on, this was supposed to be a replacement for that match-up… but that match did happen (Cody won, by the way.) Sooooo…. what’s the deal?
* The World Title match between Mark Henry and Big Show was rather short and sweet… probably due to Henry’s injury. Big Show winning the title was a bit of a shock. Certainly can’t say that he didn’t deserve it, but seeing Daniel Bryan cash in his contract and practically “steal” the title was a pleasant surprise when I heard about it and watching it now, it certainly pleases me that he would finally get the World Title… even if it was through less-than-desirable means. Still, his little victory celebration was fun to watch, especially with his shoutout to those who followed him on the indy trail.
* Tremendous TLC for the WWE Championship, with Punk retaining the title. Rather nasty (but good) table splash that Ricardo did at one point, lots of nice stuff going on here, solid main event match, no real complaints. It was great.
On a whole, this was another B-level gimmick show that I was ready to write off as worthless and they managed to produce something watchable. There were some matches I couldn’t get into or didn’t care for, but the title matches were truly the highlights of the night, with new champions that internet wrestling smarks would be pleased with. On a whole, I thought this was a pretty good show and it was pretty entertaining stuff for the most part. I probably would not have payed full-price for the PPV, but maybe this was worth getting the DVD. Good stuff, all around.
dtm666 