WWE Royal Rumble 2008 Review
Career Threatening Match
Ric Flair def. Montel Vontavious Porter(7:48)
Thoughts: This was a great choice to open the show. There was no risk that
Flair and MVP might overshadow any subsequent match and steal the show,
but the crowd was guaranteed to get hot quick and become legitimately
emotionally invested in the match. And that’s pretty much exactly what
you want out of the opening match of a show. The match itself was
fairly close to all that you could expect of it, but I do have two minor
quibbles. The first is that the match was given less than eight
minutes. Excluding the Royal Rumble there were only four matches on the
card and as far as I’m concerned each match should have gotten at
least ten minutes (and more than that for the championship matches). I
understand that there may have been some concerns about Flair’s
conditioning, but I don’t think it would have been unrealistic for these
guys to go another two minutes. And that leads me to my second small
complaint. I marked as much as anyone when Flair won the match with the
Figure Four, but I don’t think Flair worked on MVP’s leg enough prior
to that to justify MVP’s quick tap. Flair’s greatest matches have seen
him focus on his opponent’s leg throughout the match in order to
properly build to the Figure Four and it would have been nice to see
that again and with another couple of minutes, Flair might
have been able to do just that. But in the end, this match was really
about Ric Flair saying good-bye to the World’s Most Famous Arena and
that standing ovation after the match more than made up for any trivial
faults of the eight preceding minutes.
Rating: **1/2
John Bradshaw Layfield def. Chris Jericho via DQ(9:23)
Thoughts: I'm not sure if I made this clear, but I hate DQs on PPVs, but this match proves that rules really are made to be broken. This was
one of the few cases in which a DQ on PPV was
not only acceptable but actually satisfying. The feud between Jericho
and JBL was a brutal, personal war and that was the dynamic that
Jericho and JBL carried throughout the match. Jericho got busted wide
open with a blade job that would have made Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels
and Eddie Guerrero proud and after almost ten minutes the fans were
ready to see Jericho cut loose and let fly with a steel chair. And not
only was the subsequent disqualification emotionally satisfying, but it
also made perfect sense from a booking point of view. It would have
been disastrous for Jericho to get pinned in both the first and second PPVs after his return, but it would have been almost as
damaging for JBL to eat the pin. But the DQ allowed JBL to technically win the match while giving Jericho the chance to stand tall at the end.
Rating: ***1/4
Edge(c) def. Rey Mysterio(12:34)
Thoughts: Dude, MSG is still in New York City, right? They didn’t move it to Toronto without telling me, did they? Because that crowd was creaming themselves for Edge in a way that I previously thought only Canadians could. Somebody is probably going to say that the arena was full of snarky ECW/ROH fans who love to cheer for heels, but I’m going to place the blame solely with WWE. The simple fact of the matter is that the build to this match was far from compelling. We we're given a reason to cheer for Jeff Hardy in the next match, but not so much with Rey Mysterio here. Hell, the only reason that Mysterio was even in this match was because Batista and Taker pulled his ass out of the fire during the Beat the Clock Challenge. So yeah, I’m never going to blame a crowd for cheering the champion when no one has given them a reason to cheer the challenger. Anyway, I wasn’t really feeling this match for the first few minutes, but things definitely started to turn around when Mysterio hit that BRUTAL Warrior’s Way. The sliding DDT out of the ring may not have been executed to perfection, but you have to respect Mysterio for continually looking for new and innovative ways to mount his offense. And then we get to dear, sweet Vickie Guerrero. I’m usually opposed to interference… during a championship match…on PPV, but much like in the Jericho/JBL match, it worked just fine in this case. I loved the fact that about three years before this Vickie jumped into the ring, helped Rey Mysterio and cost the man she loved the match and here, we saw the exact opposite. And hey, you gotta love a woman who’ll take a 619 for her man. Also, Edge spearing Mysterio in mid-air was just awesome!
Rating: ***1/2
Randy Orton(c) def. Jeff Hardy(14:03)
Thoughts: The build for this one was phenomenal and Jeff Hardy had damn near literally caught fire in the weeks leading up to the Rumble. So yeah, I expected something EPIC out of the match. I thought we might see one of those rare, career-defining matches from both Hardy and Orton. And while the match was certainly not bad, it was…I dunno…somehow underwhelming. A good part of the problem was the clash of styles between Hardy and Orton. Orton seemed uncomfortable with the timing required for most of Hardy’s high spots and as a result, Hardy was frequently left to stand around waiting while Orton got into position. And the last thing you want from a spot monkey like Hardy(and yes, I do mean the term “spot monkey” to be a compliment)is for him to stand around idly waiting for his opponent to get his shit together. But in the end, the real problem is that WWE built to a better match than they were prepared to deliver. Oh, and you have to love how they tried to have Hardy get the 2003 Benoit standing ovation. Yeah, the crowd gave him some love, but I have to wonder if that had more to do with the insanity of Raw the weeks prior than the actual action in this match. But what the crowd’s reaction did prove is that Jeff Hardy was a more credible title challenger now than he had ever been at any other point in his career and that lead to his WWE and World Heavyweight Championship reigns in 2008 and 2009, so you can say this was the start of Jeff's path towards the World Titles.
Rating: ***1/4
Main Event: Royal Rumble Match
John Cena def. 29 other competitors; last eliminating Triple H
Thoughts: There may have been better Rumbles, but this Rumble almost certainly contained
more pants-wetting mark-out moments than any in history. Seriously, I'm sure WWE paid for a ton of repairs to Madison Square Garden,
because John Cena literally tore the roof off the place. Just for the record, this was my mark-out
moment of 2008. The great thing about this Rumble was all of the
special little touches. There were a plethora of stories and feuds that
ran through the match including Michaels/Taker, Noble/Palumbo, Punk/Guerrero, SNUKA/PIPER and even an eight-year anniversary of Triple
H/Foley. This was just sheer mark-out fun from beginning to end and
hey, isn’t that really what professional wrestling is all about?
Rating: ****1/2
Final Rating:
3.40 out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment