The alleged “Night of the Champions” … please tell me that something good, like Bischoff revealing himself to be the one behind the McMahon combustion, will come out of this.
1) Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch vs. The Hardys – 5
2) Jimmy Wang Yang vs. Chavo Guerrero – 5
3) C.M. Punk vs. Johnny Nitro – 4
4) Santino Marella vs. Umaga – 1
5) Ric Flair vs. M.V.P. – 4
6) Sgt. Slaughter & Jimmy Snuka vs. Deuce & Domino – 1
7) Edge vs. Batista – 5
8) Candice Michelle vs. Melina – 3
9) John Cena vs. King Booker vs. Mick Foley vs. Randy Orton vs. Bobby Lashley – No DQ Five Man Sudden Death Match – 6
The Good
- The Main Event: A ten-minute wild clusterfuck of a spot-fest that saw the ECW announce table get broken and Lashley taking a sick chair shot. Foley looks like a worn-down specter of what he used to be. Booker was wearing some roadkill-skirt-cape combination on his way to the ring that looked utterly ridiculous. Foley did the big J-O-B and now Cena can move on to work with the King and royalty can reign supreme on Raw.
- Batista’s own stupidity costing him future shots at Edge’s world title. Batista had originally won by DQ but Teddy “Peanuthead” Long (how many of you remember that from early WCW?) came out to restart the match under the stip that if Edge got DQ’ed, he’d lose the belt. That’s all fine and good for Botch-tista until his own stupidity cost him the match. Edge retained his belt and Batista can go back to stiffing hookers in his hotel room.
- The Introductions of Former Champions: It was cool to see the legends like Rotundo, Windham, Steamboat, Magnum T.A., Race, Garea, and Martel introduced before the certain title matches. Dean Malenko got a brief cameo in the back before the cruiserweight title match and JBL had the ring announcer read a prepared statement. The sad thing is that more fans will recognize JBL than they will Tony Garea, Rick Martel, or Barry Windham, and that’s truly a shame.
The Mediocre
- Cade & Murdoch vs. The Hardys: These two teams had fantastic matches at both Backlash and Judgment Day. This however, was a major letdown, just like the third movie in the Major League series. The opener is supposed to set the tone for the night, and since the tone for the night was short matches with mostly no point, then I suppose you could say that they succeeded.
- Chavo and Yang had a typical WWE style cruiserweight match. That’s not saying it was bad because Yang certainly gave Chavo a run for his money. However, the cruiserweight title becomes even more devalued than it was going in. A fresh face in Yang winning the belt might have helped breathe new life into the long forgotten divison. Alas, we get Chavo retaining because he really has nothing better to do.
- Flair vs. MVP: A test for the youngster Montel going up against a true legend in Flair. MVP really impressed me during his series with Benoit but has failed to live up to the lofty standard since winning the U.S. Title. I thought Flair was really going to win the U.S. Title but since it’s apparently good business for heels to go 5-1 in retaining their belts, Flair came up short. The only highlight for me was Flair wearing out MVP with his patented knife-edge chops.
The Bad
- Johnny Nitro winning the ECW Title: I have one question for the “E”, where exactly does Johnny Nitro fit in to the ECW World Title picture? He’s had zero momentum since WrestleMania and hasn’t been on TV much since early April. So, yeah, he’s naturally a logical choice to replace Benoit, who couldn’t make the show due to personal reasons, in the ECW Title match. Someone that Punk has a history with, like Burke or Corvon, would’ve made a better replacement. This also furthers two points: 1) the fact that they have no faith in Punk to carry the ECW brand and 2) they totally fucked up their chance to start anew with ECW by giving the title to someone who’s less over than Lashley.
- Slaughter & Snuka: These guys should’ve retired five years ago. It seems to me that every time they need to get a heel over, they break out the legends and job them out. Snuka looked really bad and screwed up even a simple leapfrog move with Domino. Slaughter still does the camel clutch and the same stuff he does every time they cart him out. This was really sad to watch. Afterward, D & D started beating down Slaughter and Snuka and in came Tony Garea and Rick Martel, who looked way better in their 15-second run-in than Slaughter and Snuka did the whole six-minute match.
- Santino Marella: Beating Umaga by DQ in less than three minutes did not help his cause one bit. I honestly have no idea why they put the IC title on him when it’s blatantly obvious that the office has no faith in him at all. Umaga did the post-match beatdown and the fans turned on Marella chanting “one more time, one more time” at Umaga after he gave Marella the dreaded Thumb of Doom.
- Candice winning the Women’s Title: If any heel needed to go over, then it should’ve been Melina because Candice is not ready to carry the entire women’s division, or what’s left of it, on her back. Granted, Candice has improved drastically over the past few months but now’s not the time for a title change. Why not give the belt to Mickie James? Now, that’s something I could talk positive about.
- McMahon-a-Mania: I never thought that Vince could get more TV time “dead” than he could “alive”. The WWE has taken what could’ve been the single hottest angle in recent memory and totally fucked it up in less than two weeks. We all know Vince isn’t dead. If you really thought he was dead, then you should really get out more because that makes you the single biggest moron on the face of the planet. The time they used to recap the explosion and the investigation should’ve been used to add to the matches because most of them could’ve used it. I’m already tired of this angle and I want stupid shit like this to end … NOW!
Final Thoughts
- This should’ve been a night to start fresh. New titleholders in the Cruiserweight, Intercontinental, and U.S. Title division should’ve been crowned. Instead, we get Johnny Nitro winning the vacant ECW World Title, Candice Michelle winning the Women’s Title, Slaughter and Snuka embarrasing themselves, and the crowd turing on Santino Marella. Throw all of that on top of all the crap from Vince’s spontaneous combustion and that sure sounds like a fabulous show to me! It’s times like this I want to suck on a tailpipe. Thumbs way down for Vengeance.
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