Quick PPV Thoughts: Cyber Sunday 10.23.2008

To be honest, I’ve never been entirely in to the Cyber Sunday idea. Basically, I always figured they’d just skew the voting they way they wanted. I know, crazy to think that a wrestling company wouldn’t be fully on the up-and-up about something. This year, though, I guess once you start charging to vote as publicly traded company that you at least have to try to be honest. A voter fraud scandal probably wouldn’t be good for the ol’ share price. Also, nice placement of this PPV to make a push about voting one week before Election Day. Appreciate the effort in getting people to get out and vote.

Quick thoughts as noted when I got home following the show and fleshed out a bit as the day wore on.

No Holds Barred - Kane vs. Rey Mysterio: I’m kind of over this feud considering the whole storyline really went nowhere. We got that Kane tortured and broke Mysterio — then Mysterio returns showing no ill-effects. The torture thing is never really mentioned again. Then we jump right to the mask-match — which really should have been the match we built toward instead of the match right at the beginning — and now we get a pretty bad NHB match. This whole thing has been booked oddly from the beginning. Unsurprisingly, Mysterio won again and this feud continues to go nowhere.

ECW Championship - Evan Bourne vs. Matt Hardy(c): I’m a huge fan of Bourne’s so far. He seems like a great wrestler and I’m glad that enough fans are in to him enough to give him the shot at Matt Hardy. Oddly, the fact that this was a fan-voted match, I thought they’d shoot the title on to Bourne in a crazy “anything can happen at Cyber Sunday” thing. Not to be, though. I liked this match a lot.

Cryme Tyme vs. Miz & Morrison: How this wasn’t the free-for-all match and they instead inexplicably used Truth/Shelton is beyond me. Look, if you guys aren’t going to take tag-teams seriously, why are you expecting me to? Also, as voter fraud goes, I’m going to go ahead and assume voting for this was free and Miz & Morrison “hacked” the voting, because if you’re selling me that more people wanted to see this than Punk/Kofi vs. Priceless in an Inexplicably Buried-off then I’ll be telling you that you’re wrong.

WWE Intercontinental Title - Santino Marella (c) vs. The Honky Tonk Man: Fun skit. The Honky Tonk man won by the slimmest of margins and all three guys made an appearance in a quick DQ match. Oddly, HTM’s relatively good shape was only the 2nd most surprising thing of the evening.

Last Man Standing - The Undertaker vs. The Big Show: Someday, someone will have to explain to me the difference between a Last Man Standing Match and a Knockout Match. Anyway, this is exactly what you would picture an Undertaker and Big Show match to be. I’ll leave it up to the individual to decide if that’s a good or bad thing.

WWE Title - HHH (c) vs. Jeff Hardy: Why did they even put Kozlov in any form in this voting. Look, guys, I know you think you have this ability to get guys over in no time flat, but usually the guy needs a modicum of charisma to get any fan support. Jeff won in the obvious landslide but HHH effectively killed this feud dead at No Mercy. There’s no point for this match to happen again if Jeff’s consecutive finishers can’t win. Not only could they not win, but Jeff did it again and tried to counter with a second Swanton and even THAT wasn’t enough. Is anyone in the crowd assuming that, after crushing him dead at No Mercy, that HHH is handing the title over to him at Cyber Friggin’ Sunday? Right. Big Show, Undertaker, and Edge are the only people remaining for HHH to crush on Smackdown. At this point, the only reason to be interested in the World Title is to see how he’s going to humiliate guys.

World Title - Jericho(c) vs. Batista: The amusing part of this was that there were people who thought the vote between Austin and Michaels would be close. Listen, I realize that Michaels has done quite a bit of work in the last five years to throw the company on his shattered back and carry it through — but he’s not Austin. Five years of hard work crushed by 40%… this is where you stand, Shawn. Unsurprisingly the finish of the match was booked to involve all three referees — and would have involved a mid-match glass-break had Austin lost — so it was a bit over-booked for my taste. My second issue with this match — Austin takes a ref-bump? Really? Lazy, lazy crap. I realize that Austin hasn’t been in the ring for quite some time but we’re talking about a guy who wrestled a match one day after being paralyzed. You can’t turn around and have a shoulderblock put him “out” as a ref-bump. Codebreaker or RKO? Sure. Secondly, the Austin that exists in the WWE world SHOULD have recovered from the shoulderblock and delivered a Stunner to Batista. Austin’s character would not have cared that it was inadvertent. If Batista is going to bump Austin, the finish of this match is Stunner, Jericho pins, Stunner to Jericho, Miller time. Besides the fact that I think it was WAY too soon to take the title off of Jericho (and Batista? Really?) this whole finish didn’t fit the 10 years of Austin’s character that we’ve had. Also, was anyone else put off by Michael Cole calling an Austin appearance? I felt dirty afterward.

I thought this PPV was terrible. Nothing worth anything except Bourne/Hardy and the main event ruined the show for me.


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