Vengeance: Blight of Champions

1.00am
Hi all, its Vengeance time. As I type this, the opening montage is on, running through the card, and I’ve just read on a news site that Benoit may miss the show tonight. I jinxed the England Under-21s this week by saying it would be a Serbia-England final on Football365, I’m praying that me saying that Benoit/Punk is the match I am looking forward to more than any I can remember of late, isn’t going to scupper it.

1.04am
Mike Rotundo and Barry Windham, former Tag Team champions, are shown in the audience, and a flashback of them competing in 1985 is shown.

Funnily enough, no sign of them wrestling as Captain if a ship, IRS, The new Blackjacks or The Stalker. How strange.

1.06am
So it’ll be The Hardys and Cade & Murdoch to open. I like Cade and Murdoch, I think Cade especially could have a bright future, but damn, they aren’t over at the moment. In fact, their logo comes from a branding iron, and they should carry one to the ring – it’s the only way they’ll get any heat. Boom. And indeed, boom.

1.16am
Wow. 0 for 1 for me, as Cade & Murdoch get it done against the Hardys. Reasonably clean as well. One would think that Londrick will be next up for C&M, and that the Hardys will go back their respective brand and prepare for government – I mean, prepare for singles pushes.

1.19am
A Summerslam advert, and basically confirmation that the Jackass crew will indeed be part of the August PPV. So, a TV show where ordinary people hurt themselves in very, very stupid ways.

Oh, don’t try this at home, by the way…………

1.22am
A strange juxtaposition, as a clip of the late Eddie Guererro winning the World title from Brock Lesnar at No Way Out 2004. Nice memories.

So out comes Chavo, Eddie’s nephew, as a heel. Hmm.

1.23am
Jimmy Wang Yang (even less reaction than Cade & Murdoch) is now battling Chavo, and JBL is going through the legendary Guerrero family. Gory Guererro, grandfather of Chavo, is mentioned. His dad, Chavo Classic, a former Cruiserweight champion and a man who tagged in Houston with Mil Mascaras.

No mention of Hector Guererro, who portrayed the Goobledy Gooker. Funny that.

During this match, we’ve so far has references to Mascaras, the man of a thousand masks. Also Dean Malenko, the man of a thousand holds. I’m waiting for a reference to Vince McMahon. Man in a thousand pieces.

Christ, its like Tenpole Tudor have turned up. (kids, I’d google that one if I were you, I can’t be bother to explain it. The match is decent, by the way, so far.)

1.33am
Chavo wins.

Now you won’t get many overtones about this being a 5-star classic, or indeed anyone remembering it in more than about 3 months time. However, I’d like to point out how well this match was booked and performed, because for much of it Yang had no reaction to anything, but by dropping in highspots like a flying bodypress (nearfall) and moonsault (missed) the crowd got into it, and when Jimmy reversed the Gorybomb in a sunset flip, the nearfall elicited a big gasp from the audience. Good matches tell a good story, and manipulate audience reaction. Good job here.

1.39am
6 minutes of Vince related filler, and actually some good stuff, studying the last movements of the chairman, and even teasing a ‘major breathrough’ tomorrow night on Raw.

1.41am
Damn it. Damn it, damn it. I wish I knew someone called Janet and I’d say it to her.

Benoit didn’t make it. There’s a massive “We want Benoit” chant in the arena, as CM Punk is taking on Nitro. No-one’s fault, I sincerely hope Chris and his family are ok, and that whatever the situation forcing him to miss this show, it not too serious in the longrun.

The trouble is, I don’t think either of these guys are ready for the title yet. Lets just hope for a decent match.

1.50am
Johnny Nitro, former winner of Tough Enough, wins the ECW title. A clean win over CM Punk, no less, is how he got there.

If Benoit is back by Tuesday, he will kill him. They will want Benoit to carry this belt for a while, and him taking it off Punk on an ECW show is pointless. He’ll take it from Nitro, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Nitro, Benoit, Punk triple threat on PPV.

1.55am
Here comes Ricky Steamboat, and JR & King talk about his match with Savage at Wrestlemania 3, and his series of encounters with Ric Flair.

Not when they dressed him up in orange wings and pretended he could actually breath fire.

1.57am
Its Santino v Umaga, and as I ponder where Estrada is these days, it strikes me that it perpetuates the “Umaga is a lunatic” idea. I smell a DQ.

2.01am
I swear I wrote the above paragraph before the match.

But come on. That was a really, really pissweak DQ finish. It was a few right hands in the corner, something you see in virtually every match and which is allowed to happen. Utter crap

The funniest thing was that Umaga was cheered as a face after the event. He was cheered when he attacked Santino post-bell, and when he looked as his thumb to symbolize the spike, I think it was as big a pop as I’d heard all night. The people then chanted “One more time”, and I think were expecting Maria, who had rushed to Santino’s aide, to get it too.

Remember the “kill the clown” chants directed at Doink? That was Santino’s equivalent.

2.08am
Magnum T.A. is announced to the crowd. Wow, that’s some mustache he has on him. Magnum was a good show, but he was crap in Three Men and a Baby. What do you mean, “wrong guy”?

2.10am
Flair v MVP now. This show is dying. We need these two, both very strong hands, to come through. This is the middle match on the show, and apart from the two main title matches, we have the Womens title and a tag team ‘challenge’ where is=f the rumours about the participants I hear are true, it’ll be a challenge for the match to anything but stink and for the challengers to be able to run and jump at all.

2.20am
MVP wins, and as I suspected, he played dirty to do so. Fair enough. I have no problems with this match at all. It was tight, it didn’t expose either man, it had a logical conclusion.

So far we’ve had four out of five heel wins, and the babyface victory was Santino, who didn’t really look like a champion. Also, apart from the ECW title, which was vacant, we’ve had no title changes thus far.

2.25am
They show Rick Martel and Tony Garea in the crowd. My God, what will happen if a backstage fight breaks out. That’s Garea job to sort it out!

The showed them winning the tag gold from The Wild Samoans. They didn’t show Rick Martel spraying Jake Roberts in the eye with perfume, and have a match with sacks on their head.

2.29am
Yep, at a combined age of 112, its Sarge and the Superfly, with the only interesting story being that Deuce is in fact the adopted son of Jimmy Snuka.

I thought it was going to be two Majors, and instead I got a Sergeant.

I’d have had The Iron Sheik on commentary for this one, that’d been priceless.

2.37am
Garea and Martel shockingly (!) get involved after Deuce and Domino win then beat down the legends. The combined age of the people in the ring now goes past 200. At least there is something on the show older than my jokes.

2.47am
Long period of build up and intro, including Harley Race at ringside. They have shown former champions of every belt thus far, and it’s the Women’s title next. It will be probably be Moolah, but I’m begging for it to be Harvey Wippleman!

Edge and Batista III then which, if it’s a feud blow-off and there is nothing to suggest otherwise, you’d feel would benefit from a stipulation. Maybe 2 out of 3 falls or something. After all, their last match was in a cage. Maybe Adam Copeland thought “Edge inside Cage” sounded like a gay slur about him and his best friend, the former TNA champion.

3.05am
Hooray! A good match. Finally. Great action, back and forth, and the more I watch Edge the more impressed I become. I was very hasty in predicting Batista to win this, because I’d say Edge is THE best all round performer in the company at the moment. He deserves that belt more than anyone.

People will slate the end of the match, but I liked it. The fake DQ and restart has been done loads of times, but I thought the count-out finish was creative, it didn’t bury Edge or make Batista look week. Maybe, if they are struggling for a route to go down, they could have Batista assist whomever Edge faces, with the idea being that Batista rids the rated R superstar of the belt, then is a allowed a title shot.

3.10am
Damn, it was Moolah they reviewed. She doesn’t seem to be there. Presumably she and Mae Young are in quarantine after the dog barking routine on Raw the other week.

Two matches to go then – still no title changes, still no face wins.

3.14am
We’re a couple of minutes into Melina and Candice, and the two divas are being very vocal. Lots of grunting and groaning. I bet I won’t hear noises like that on TV until……….well tomorrow, when Wimbledon starts.

Excuse me, I need a Sharapova moment…………….

3.16am
Good lord, that was the last title change and face win I expected. And what a pretty face too. To Candice’s credit, she has improved a great deal of late, and we should remember that Trish was hopeless when she first started, and turned into as good a Women’s champion as there has ever been.

3.30am
For the second time in the space of a week, I’m watching a Pay Per View main event with 5 people vying for a World Title. Lets see how they compare.

3.41am
Hmm. I try and make a joke about the goings on in these PPVs, and I hope you find it at least vaguely entertaining. However, after that short, uneventful, uninspiring, very disappointing main event, which fittingly caps a distinctly poor Pay Per View.

The WWE is in trouble, big time. TNA got its biggest ever rating last week. Admittedly we are talking 1.2 to around about 4.0, but Slammiversary was vastly superior to Vengeance, and if Jeff and Dixie can successfully lobby for 2 hours, I’m begging that people give TNA a try as a genuine alternative, and hopefully it will inspire the WWE creative team to get out of this worrying slump.

I’ll try to get back within a few days to elaborate on my thoughts. Also, keep an eye on www.thesun.co.uk/wrestling, which has had a makeover and will likely feature some of my current thoughts.

Good night, all. I think I probably should have gone to sleep 3 hours ago.