WWE SummerSlam 2008

WWE SummerSlam 2008

Indianapolis, IN - August 2008

CHAMPIONSHIP RUNDOWN: Coming into this show, CM Punk was the WWE Champion, Triple H was the World Heavyweight Champion, and Mark Henry was the ECW Champion. The Intercontinental Champion was Kofi Kingston, the United States Champion was Shelton Benjamin, and the Women's Champion was Mickie James. There was also a Divas Champion (Michelle McCool), World Tag Team Championships held by Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase, and WWE Tag Team Championships held by Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder.

After a video recap highlighting some of tonight's big matches, we kick things off with MVP vs. Jeff Hardy. I was surprised by how much innovative and hard-hitting MVP gets in here as he just unloads on Hardy with throws and stiff boots. Hardy gets great sympathy from the live crowd, who are fully into this match, maybe moreso than most MVP matches that I've seen. The finish came when Shelton Benjamin, the US Champion, distracted Jeff Hardy, who hit him with a splash to the outside. By the time Hardy got back to the ring, MVP was playing possum and ended up hitting the Drive-By for the win. I don't recall where this storyline went but I'm always a bit iffy when champions attack challengers as there really was no reason for Benjamin to get involved here. Not a bad opener at all. (3/5)

Next up - Beth Phoenix and Santino Marella vs. Mickie James and Kofi Kingston in a mixed gender match for James' Women's Championship and Kingston's Intercontinental Championship. Phoenix and Marella had been paired together for a little while and were getting quite a push on Raw so it was clear they'd be getting the win before the bell even rang. This is one of those matches that goes under 6 minutes but feels longer just because its so pedestrian and choreographed and feels too safe to be a double-title match. Perfectly fine filler match, but not something I'd seek out. (2/5)

Shawn Michaels comes out with his wife and cuts a retirement speech with his wife by his side. This leads to the arrival of Chris Jericho, who demands that Shawn admit that it was Y2J who has run him out of the WWE. Michaels says he's willing to admit it to it as long as Jericho admits that he will never be Shawn Michaels. When Michaels turns to leave, Jericho tries to clock him, but Shawn ducks and Jericho's  punch hits Michaels' wife square in the jaw. This gets a huge reaction, though Shawn's overdramatic "selling" is ridiculous. Jericho's facial expression as he leaves is brilliant, though, as instead of milking it as an ultimate act of heelishness, he looks genuinely surprised at what he's done and not necessarily happy with himself. I don't love this segment enough to give it a +1, but as the spark for what would end up being the company's best feud that year, it is very effective. 

With the crowd basically still reeling from such a huge and controversial angle, Mark Henry vs. Matt Hardy squared off in an ECW Championship Match. I'm not sure if this match was designed to go less than a minute, but it does. Did Shawn and Jericho go long or was the plan always for Hardy to basically with a near-immediate Twist of Fate and Mark Henry's manager, Tony Atlas, breaking up the pin at 2.9 (it might've even been a full 3 count) and getting his man disqualified? After the match, Jeff Hardy shows up to even the sides but it isn't even clear why he'd need to do that as Hardy had just effectively won the match and Tony Atlas was a bumbling oaf and Henry couldn't catch Matt Hardy in a footrace if Hardy was carrying a refrigerator. I guess seeing the Hardys hit a double-suplex on Mark Henry on the floor is something, but even as a tease for the Hardys' reunion (Had they ever really split apart?), this was really lackluster. (0.5/5)

Fortunately, the next match makes up for the not-so-great action we've seen on this thus far - JBL challenging CM Punk for the WWE Champion. This was a full 3 years before Punk would really assert himself as one of the company's true top guys, but he's over enough with the live crowd here to make sense holding the WWE Championship and did feel like a fresh change after years of the title revolving around John Cena, Triple H, and Randy Orton. Speaking of Cena, he'd end up back on the injured list by the end of the summer, another reason why promoting CM Punk at this point was a smart move (even if his time at the top was rather short-lived). Anyway...I like Punk's energy at the start of the match and even some (not all) of JBL's offense, which, while not necessarily exciting, is still hard-hitting and does effectively tell the story of JBL looking to grind a win out against a smaller opponent, trying to wear down the champion with his weight advantage and straight-up boots and clotheslines. Punk gets in some good hope spots and when he does rally, the crowd is very much behind him. We get some unexpected and unplanned blood, which is downplayed on commentary as, by 2008, the company was very much steering towards a cleaner PG product. The match goes 11 minutes but feels like much more of a war than that. A better match than I expected from these two. (3/5)

The World Heavyweight Championship is on the line next as Triple H defends the title against The Great Khali. Triple H was on SmackDown at this point, which was a needed change in setting for him but not necessarily one that drew my eyeballs to that show. The Great Khali had already been somewhat exposed after losing feuds to Cena and Batista (sorta) by this point, so there was little reason to believe Triple H was going to do even a messy job to Khali here. I tend to enjoy Triple H matches against bigger opponents as he is forced to do the pinballing and bumping that was once his bread and butter - but Khali's offense is so slow and plodding that Triple H basically just crumbles to the mat when he gets hit with it rather than being driven over the post or to the outside (though Triple H does go the extra mile and tosses himself out of the ring at least a couple times). The finish comes when Triple H eventually manages to get the pedigree applied in a little under 10 minutes. Not a good match, but I've seen worse. (2.5/5)

John Cena vs. Batista is up next. What surprises me about this match is that people love to bring up some of the matches Cena had with Orton over the years but I've never found any of them - especially the ones without huge gimmicks - to be particularly great. Meanwhile, Cena and Batista absolutely killed it in this match, putting on a match that was not only "as good as it could be," but exceeded my expectations. There's almost an element of an updated version of Warrior/Hogan here as you knew going into it you weren't going to necessarily get a great technical match but it wasn't exactly clear going in what you would get instead. What Cena and The Animal deliver is a relatively even match that somehow doesn't stink of "Your Turn/My Turn" garbage because the transitions are nicely executed, they don't rush anything, and the counters made sense. Both guys hit their primary or secondary finishers but couldn't get the win at first - for Batista it was a huge spear for 2 and a devastating spinebuster, for Cena it was the STFU and then eventually an FU that he couldn't capitalize on in time. As the match wore on, it really was hard to know who was going to get the victory. Cena went for the leg drop off the rope, but Batista caught him with the sitout powerbomb, which could've been the finish but only led to a nearfall. Batista managed to wrangle Cena up and into a legit Batista Bomb for the win, which felt completely deserved. A really, really strong match and easily the best match on the show up to this point. (4/5)

Main event time - The Undertaker vs. Edge in a Hell in a Cell. While this isn't the last great Hell in a Cell match (there's been quite a few since), it's one of the last (if not the last) to occur before the creation of the Hell in the Cell PPV event in October 2009, which turned this once-in-a-blue-moon match stipulation into something we'd not only see annually by default, but sometimes even more than that (with the PPV itself featuring multiple cell matches). At the time, though, the Cell concept was only a little bit overdone and still felt special. Anyway...this match might not be in the top 5 Hell in a Cells ever, but I'd likely put it in my top 8 or 10. I love Edge's body language when the match begins. It reminds me of how one pysches themselves up for jumping out of a plane or diving into an ice cold pool: you know its going to hurt, but you also know that this is your moment and there's no turning back so you might as well go crazy. And that's kinda what Edge does, busting out absolutely everything he can to try to overwhelm the Deadman, who is also performing in a role I really like. While Edge and Taker had lots of personal history, really this feud - as the video package before the match highlights - is about how much of a megalomaniac Edge has become, forcing his ex-wife Vickie Guerrero to summon the WWE's version of the Grim Reaper to finally bring him to justice. Now, we still get lots of callbacks to their lengthy, lengthy feud, but unlike Taker's Hell in a Cell matches against Foley or Triple H or even Lesnar, we are getting the mythical Undertaker here, not the human one who might - at certain times - actually be beatable, who respects his opponent, or, in the case of the Foley match, even seems to show remorse from what he has done. There's no remorse in the Undertaker's eyes. No nods to a mutual respect. This is Undertaker seeing pure vengeance and Edge trying to somehow not only survive but shock the world by busting out all the weaponry he can, by basically turning the Undertaker's signature match into his own using tables, ladders, and chairs. To me, it works. Edge is not someone I find particularly great in non-gimmick matches, but, aside from obviously Foley and maybe Shane McMahon, is there a better "garbage" worker than Edge? The tag team TLC matches, the TLC match with Cena, the matches with and against Foley in 2006, and this bout too...all top-notch, ultra-violent matches as good or better than anyone's else hardcore work in the company over that same course of time. This is the context that you want to see Edge working in and he doesn't disappoint. The post-match bit is too corny for me, but there are so many other great spots in the match that I'd still consider it must-see if you're a fan of big spectacle matches. (4/5)

With a Kwang Score of 2.71-out-of-5, one would assume that SummerSlam 2008 is not too great of a show, and after a decent opener, things do fall apart a bit with the mixed tag and the lame non-match for the ECW Title (though the Michaels/Jericho segment is perfectly fine), but pick up significantly once we get to Punk/JBL and eventually to the last two matches, both among the best matches I've watched this summer. 

FINAL RATING - Watch It...With Remote in Hand