Unforgiven Pay Per View Review

It's that time of month again... another pay per view..

MATCH #1: ECW World Championship: CM Punk v. Elijah Burke

Here's another Punk ppv match that is mostly good throughout and suffers from a strange ending. There's not a lot here to talk about. It's basically Burke proving his worthiness by outclassing Punk through most of the match. Punk builds his comeback spots well enough but again, the ending kind of kills the build, as it comes out of nowhere. In fact, the Punk seemed a little weirded out by it. With Burke in control, Punk hits a roll up out of nowhere and, uh, that's it. Again, the slow build was good, but that doesn't work when you've only got like 10 minutes for a match. *3/4

MATCH #2: WWE Tag Team Championships: Matt Hardy & MVP v. Deuce & Domino

This is a solid, but unspectacular match. This is obviously all about Hardy and MVP's disfunctionality and they play to that quite obviously through the match. We get dueling "ballin" elbows, screaming axe handles, etc. MVP gets sour puss and feins leaving but of course comes back to attempt to steal the glory. Hardy catches him this time though, and ejects MVP from the ring and steals a victory for himself.

While I like this, it's a little too angle heavy to be a good match. Deuce and Domino are REALLY afterthoughts in this and while that's not entirely a bad thing as they suck big time, it monopolizes the entire match and thus it comes off more like an exhibition of Hardy and MVP's obvious dislike for eachother than anything else. *3/4

MATCH #3: No DQ for Carlito: Triple H v. Carlito

This was a good deal better than I thought it would be, but it still wasn't much. Carlito embrassing his inner stooge is a good thing, but it's done to a degree here where it becomes obvious that he's not even remotely a threat to Triple H.

He goes for mostly stoogie weapons spots with the garbage cans and otherwise laughable objects. While it plays to his character's strength well, it takes away from the credibility he has competition for Triple H and kills pretty much any chance one would have of taking the match seriously. Carlito's good here, but honestly his schtick doesn't fit what they might have been going for here.

Triple H is Triple H here, and mauls people. That is all. *3/4

MATCH #4: Women's Championship: Candice Michelle v. Beth Phoenix

This is way awesome ladies scuffling. This played out A TON like Umaga-Cena I from January where Beth basically murders Candice for 10 minutes and then gets caught on a flash pin.

What makes this match is Candice's top notch selling. She legitimately looked like she was being buried out there and Beth's 'it' factor of being 'the woman' helps make it look all the better. The military press, the one handed slam, all of it looks super devastating and the only saving grace for Candice is her willingness to not get murdered and survive the BIG shots.

Candice, despite improving tons, can still be wicked inconsistent, but they stuck with a good formula for this match and it worked well. Beth looked strong and it left the door open for a rematch. Can't ask for more than that. Solid women's stuff. **3/4

MATCH #5: World Heavyweight Championship: The Great Khali v. Batista v. Rey Mysterio

This was a lot of fun. Khali ain't much, but for whatever reason, the guy is one ofthe best in the WWE in triple threat matches. The build for the vice grip is played up well here and it plays a central role in the match throughout. Mysterio of course is a huge under dog, and struggles to gain any sense of control in the match, but that's not really bad, considering that's more or less where he should be in a match like this. Batista seems all about proving himself to be better than Khali.

Again, the Vice Grip being lights out being the central theme works well here. Khali is able to grab it twice. Had this been a one on one match, he'd have walked away from this relatively easily, but he struggles to manage the numbers, thus stressing the whole point of the champion being at a disadvantage in this kind of match. The finish is really excellent with Mysterio hitting his home run shot, but being unable to capitalize as Batista says 'fuck friends' and powerbombs his dwarfy ass onto Khali, double-fucking the champion and totally destroying teeny Rey.

A spine buster wouldn't work for most, but after eating three finishers, it comes off as believable and smart that Khali could be put down with that kind of firepower. It took three BIG finishers, but it does the job. Even better, no one comes off looking weak here. Well worked Triple Threat match. ***

MATCH #6: World Tag Team Championship: Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch v. London & Kendrick

This was a good match that got dragged down by a dead crowd. And that's not dragged down because stupid people couldn't see goodness, but in the sense that London and Kendrick got too tied up in trying to drag them in with big spots that just didn't fit in the context of what they were trying to do.

This is that classic brawlers v. high flyers stuff and that works well through the body of the match. London and Kendrick try to make the pace hectic, Cade & Murdoch try to keep it plodding and more based in ground n pound. What bothered me though was the constant death spots from the babyfaces in every transition of the match. That made things flow weird and while the spots popped the crowd, they lacked the proper placement and they weren't able to follow up on them to the degree that the crowd STAYED with what they were doing.

Again this is a fun match, but the green-ness of these guys showed through too much to make it LEGITMATELY good. **1/4

MATCH #7: WWE Championship: John Cena v. Randy Orton

This match played out like a Dusty Rhodes match circa the late 80s where there was a lot of build for something that was really a glorified angle. Cena brings a lot of fun hate here, and Orton's sneaky and coniving, but the placement on the card gave away what was going to be a screwey finish and Cena's father being there cemented it and killed it before the bell rang.

Now the execution of the angle was near perfect. Cena gets revenge and it's entirely necessary in the context of things if they're goingto have a big gimmick match blow off to this. Orton afterall, should have some sort of reason for wanting a blood bath match. So the Kick heard round the world part II worked from a storyline perspective, but as a pay per view main event, it was a huge let down.

It's short, tight, and well executed, but they just didn't give it enough time to go anywhere as a match, but it's obvious they weren't looking for that. **1/2

MATCH #8: The Undertaker v. Mark Henry

I'll probably have to give this another look, but the crowd was so gassed from the title change and the Cena-Orton match that they just didn't have anything left over for this. A slow, plodding big man match isn't a bad thing, but being placed on the card where it was, hurt it.

The themes are played out well enough though and make this watchable and even good. Taker is relentless in his pursuit of revenge while Henry is a one man wrecking crew bent on taking Taker out. Henry isn't sublte here and he just goes with the bombs away approach, knowing that it's the only way he's going to win. The repeated splashes, bear huge and stiff lariats work well for him here. Taker, however, is totally willing to oblige in a bomb fest, but finds out that it's going to take more than normal to put Henry down, who kicks out of a choke slam, but is finally put down with a monsterous power bomb out of the corner.

This is a good big man match. These sorts of matches shouldn't be about building anything, it should be bombs galore, and both provide plenty of dynamite here. This is a good big man match that suffered because of where it fell on the card. **1/2


OVERALL: This show was booked really poorly. Booking the hottest angle in years and a world title change before a return match we've seen 6 million times ain't smart and it killed the crowd dead. Had it been me, i'd have probably done the triple threat last. Everyone on the card seemed to struggle with the crowd except the two world title matches and did so to a degree that it made it obvious that match placement was the issue. This isn't awful or anything, but it's pretty obvious this is a transitional set up pay per view for what's looking like a big No Mercy pay per view. However, that being said, it doesn't stack up to other shows that have monopolized a pretty great year for the WWE. C-