SUMMERSLAM POLL RESULTS
Thumbs Up: 144 Votes (38.7%)
Thumbs in the Middle: 86 Votes (23.1%)
Thumbs Down: 142 Votes (38.2%
BEST MATCH POLL
Chris Benoit vs. Randy Orton: 268 Votes
Eddie Guerrero vs. Kurt Angle: 56 Votes
WORST MATCH POLL
Diva Dodgeball: 110 Votes
Booker T vs. John Cena: 95 Votes
John Bradshaw Layfield vs. Undertaker: 69 Votes
Kane vs. Matt Hardy: 43 Votes
Eugene vs. Triple H: 19 Votes
Edge vs. Chris Jericho vs. Batista: 12 Votes
Based on phone calls, fax messages, and e-mails to the Observer as of Tuesday, 8/17.
The story of the 8/15 SummerSlam show at the Air Canada Center in Toronto was supposed to be Randy Orton winning the World title from Chris Benoit.
Instead, the story was the crowd reactions on a show that sold out with an announced crowd of 17,640, sold out weeks in advance, and an approximate $1.3 million ($1.0 million U.S.) live gate. WWE hasn't had a crowd like that for a show since WrestleMania. But when it was over, it seemed like the company didn't want the crowd it got.
The problems are best explained in a letter from someone there live (see reader’s pages). The crowd cheered HHH and Orton probably more than anyone on the show. Chris Benoit was also cheered, as was Kurt Angle. They crapped all over the JBL vs. Undertaker WWE title match, doing a long wave, openly not paying attention to the match, clearly were reacting to things not in the ring, chanting "Spanish table," apparently wanting someone to go through the table (HHH's fault on that, because by clearing out the monitors, everyone expected a table spot, and kept chanting for the spot that never came for the rest of the show; I'm sure his mentality is doing it was to show clearing out the monitors doesn't equal breaking the table so that it won't be so "expected" the next night someone cleans out the monitors), "boring," and by the end, the entire upper deck was said to be chanting, "end this match."
Undertaker's face while this was going on seemed to indicate he was furious about this. Most of the response indicated it was a condemnation of both JBL as champion, and the slow build of the match. But there was even a "Benoit sucks" chant, that nobody could explain, even though live reports said Benoit and Guerrero weren't booed so much as their opponents and then were all cheered. Edge was booed out of the building even though he was announced from Toronto, but that seemed more because the crowd was so pro-Chris Jericho, who they probably saw as more deserving of the push.
Orton, born April 1, 1980, became the youngest world champion in company history with a clean pinfall on Benoit after the RKO. At 24 years and 4 months, he would trail only Lou Thesz, Kerry Von Erich, and perhaps Danno O'Mahoney (who is believed to have been 22 when he won the title in 1935) as the youngest major world champion in history. Orton shook hands with Benoit after the match, and broke down, clearly turning himself face, and even did a few Rock mannerisms since the company has decided to use him to try and replicate The Rock. There were a ton of pro-Orton signs, which, of course, is because in 2004, people are going to get behind the people who are successful, no matter what the means, and that means Evolution. HHH always comes out on top (he may have lost to Benoit, but who is the biggest star on TV?). Orton has been pushed as winning all his matches and as the next superstar. Ric Flair is a face just because of who he is, no matter what he does. Even though those in the company even acknowledged that HHH was the most popular wrestler on the show, he wanted to stay heel for what looked to be the inevitable Mania feud, although at this point it may be main-eventing in some form by the 9/12 Unforgiven PPV in Portland. The turn by the rest of Evolution on Orton at the end of Raw the next night, was not a long-term planned out event. The original idea was to go with Benoit vs. Orton, William Regal & Eugene vs. HHH & Flair, Shawn Michaels vs. Kane, and La Resistance vs. Rhyno & Tajiri as the top matches for Unforgiven. After the bad rating for the 8/9 show, combined with the reaction to Eugene at SummerSlam, the plans were changed. The 8/16 Raw show was designed to give Benoit his rematch and do the turn as fast as possible. There was no mention in the commentary of Regal & Eugene, and HHH's programs are never ignored, so it's clear he got himself out of that. Even as late as a week or two ago, while HHH vs. Orton had been earmarked for WrestleMania for some time (all of these things are more ideas than definites because plans change weekly), it was not clear which one would be the babyface. They were entertaining ideas in both directions.
On this show, heels won every match except John Cena over Booker T, and the three-way (where Edge won, but the babyface in the match to the fans was Jericho). Even stranger is they were clean wins, in that the heel didn't do anything but deserve the win. Apparently Kurt Angle convinced Eddie Guerrero that losing would be better for Guerrero. I was shocked at that one, because Guerrero is fading fast, hasn't scored a major win since WrestleMania while losing heat, and a potential talked about program with Luther Reigns (who Angle has been pushing for), will just make him another guy. Judging from television, they are at least for now, still keeping the program with Guerrero vs. Angle short-term. Instead of a show that figured to have an abundance of outside interference endings, since heels were going to win, they had no interference, but the heels still won.
It wasn't a bad show, since the main event delivered, and Angle vs. Guerrero was very good, and aside from John Cena vs. Booker T, there wasn't really a bad match on the show. But it looked better on paper and was a disappointment for the traditional No. 3 show of the year. Most of the under-card matches were shorter than they needed to be, and there was a major disconnect between what the promotion thinks the business is and what the ticket buying public, at least the base in Toronto and those willing to travel for one of the biggest shows of the year, wanted it to be.
The biggest things pushed on TV have been the Divas Search, Eugene, and the Lita wedding. The former two flopped, and worse, everyone knew the first would, and I knew the second would on this show because, like with Zach Gowen last year, they took what was a great babyface character who people got behind, and then decided to build television around them, not realizing they were great mid-card level characters. It's also something to note that in both cases, it was the family who used the hot characters to get themselves over as heels, and in doing so, had to beat the gimmick babyfaces far too early in their run. It should also be noted that weddings have traditionally done great numbers on Raw.
Gowen (who the Toronto crowd turned on to the point they had to re-edit the crowd noise at a Smackdown taping), due to his own immaturity, and the fact his handicap was going to lead to injuries if he wrestled any kind of a schedule, plus would be resented going over on any "real wrestler," wasn't going to make it in the long run. Eugene's long-term is still undecided. But it isn't as if this is the first crowd that booed him due to the nature of the writing and overexposure of the character. But there are two sides to the strange Toronto crowd, because it was also Toronto that started the ball rolling on Eddie Guerrero as a babyface, and he got very hot very fast as a regional television draw, enough that he was eventually groomed for a long-term (which turned into a short-term) title run.
The company has gone to a more serious style, with longer title reigns, slower paced and more psychologically oriented matches, and generally speaking, winners and losers. Then, you do something implausible like Lita agreeing to marry the winner of a match, and nobody is about to believe it, even in their "wanting to believe" mode.
There were a few interesting things teased on the show. There was a confrontation between Eric Bischoff and Teddy Long, which seems to lead to another angle between the two at Survivor Series. John Cena and Orton had a confrontation as well (this wasn't good for Cena, because he looked like a mid-card gimmick guy from a weak show standing next to a superstar), although most figure Mania at this point to be HHH vs. Orton and Undertaker vs. Kurt Angle as the top match from each side. On the former, I was surprised they shot the angle the next night in London with no build-up, figuring a long build-up of tension (think Rock and Faarooq in the Nation of Domination split which ended up with Rock becoming a major superstar) before shooting the angle would hook people and make them want to see the match before it was delivered. With so much talk regarding the split in recent weeks, I knew it was coming sooner, but it felt rushed. Angle and Undertaker have an understanding they are going to work with each other, largely because each sees the other as the top guy on the Smackdown side, which also makes them major political allies right now. They apparently want to keep themselves apart, and avoid doing jobs as much as possible to build to a match with two guys who have been winning. Originally, when JBL vs. Undertaker was booked for no DQ matches at house shows, JBL was going over, almost surely due to interference. Those were changed to DQ finishes and the no DQ stipulations were dropped. JBL was at first set to go over, possibly with interference from Orlando Jordan and Jon Heidenreich. The Heidenreich push for Undertaker had already started. Interestingly, ever since Undertaker vowed revenge on Paul Heyman, almost killing his best friend and saying imagine if I'd do that to the one person I care about, what would I do to you, it was then dropped like a hot potato, and even in the Heidenreich build-up and videos, Undertaker's name hasn't been mentioned. Now it appears JBL vs. Undertaker is being brought back to headline No Mercy on 10/3 in East Rutherford, NJ. Undertaker's character has gone downhill ever since he was back established as a face, as he would have been far more effective with a heel run, since the company is so weak on the Smackdown heel side. With both Angle and Undertaker as heels, they could have been easily kept apart, and even aligned, to set up a Mania program, perhaps with Heyman as the catalyst. With Heyman's lack of exposure on a show in need of strong heels, it appears he's out of favor, and also we've heard nothing about him having booking input of late. In fact, he wasn't even in Toronto for the show and hasn't been in Heidenreich's corner at most of the recent house shows.
Really, JBL and Undertaker didn't have that bad of a match. The problem is, and Undertaker should know this better than anyone, is that the submission holds, even if they are realistic, mean nothing unless people have been educated that they are finishes by seeing them work on television. This is not Japanese wrestling where all the fans see Pride and wrestling as the same thing and a "real" finish is instantly recognized by the crowd. This is the U.S., and UFC may as well be underground as far as its influence on the vast majority of wrestling fans. Once the crowd turned on them, they had an uphill battle.
There were time management issues. The Diva Dodgeball ended up embarrassing because you had a shoot competition, pre-taped, and the company's women under contract looked bad in every way possible. First, the WWE women were dressed up as athletes while the non-contract performers were wearing very skimpy outfits, thus looking far sexier. Second, no doubt the idea was the non-contract workers would be embarrassed by looking totally unathletic, as compared to the actual athletic looking WWE women. Well, they did look unathletic, except for Michelle, who was then dumped the next day, playing the role of this year's Bart Gunn, and still whipped the contracted women to where five of them were left while all the WWE women were eliminated. All I could think of when this was over was thank God they didn't try and have them play volleyball.
But that was a minor issue. The big issue is, the idea was dumb to begin with, and worse, it took several minutes away that could have helped every under-card match. In particular, Angle vs. Guerrero could have used five more minutes, although perhaps they were given less time due to Guerrero's hamstring problem. Kane vs. Hardy was short, and anti-climactic, but Hardy was risking enough just trying to do a short match on totally destroyed ACL. However, the Dudleys match and most of all, the IC title three-way, were rushed, and both of those matches would have likely been better as just TV bouts, where Edge and Jericho, for example, got more than twice as much time on Raw for a set-up match than they got for their big match. If the Diva thing wasn't already a proven loser, I could see the idea of getting them on the show as filler. But since it has become one of the great flops in company history, taking time away from good matches made zero sense. I think that was the frustrating part of the show. Everything that ended up being a problem was something that people paying attention should have seen, except the JBL-Taker reaction. And thus, why were the mistakes still made?
Based on our response, it appears SummerSlam will be down in buy rate from last year. Our response was down 20% from last year, when SummerSlam, headlined by an elimination chamber match for the World title (Triple H vs. Goldberg vs. Chris Jericho vs. Kevin Nash vs. Shawn Michaels vs. Randy Orton), did 465,000 buys.
A. Rob Van Dam (Robert Szatkowski) pinned Rene Dupree in 9:35 with a frog splash in the Heat match. Van Dam has two speeds, reckless or slow and careful and he looks bad. This was the latter. Dupree shoved RVD off the top and he crashed into the barricades. Tazz started singing when Dupree did the French tickler deal, which is amusing. Michael Cole was so bad (not necessarily here, but throughout the show) that Tazz was really on him, although when Cole would screw it up, Tazz played it off like he was being a heel in making fun of him. RVD's frog splash was two-thirds of the way across the ring. *3/4
1. Dudleys (Mark LeMonica and Devon Hughes) & Spike Dudley (Matt Hyson) beat Rey Mysterio (Oscar Guiterrez) & Billy Kidman (Peter Gruner) & Paul London in 8:06. The dynamic here was good, but they were rushed. Spike is playing the leader of the Dudley clan in a Napoleon role as "The Little General." It's effective because the Dudleys are great bullies and Spike plays the schoolyard punk who has the big friends backing him very well. Kidman & London need personality, Kidman in particular, but Mysterio has that, and they all can work. London did a lot of nice moves, particularly jumping off Kidman's back with a dive outside the ring. Finish was 3-D on Kidman, with Spike getting the pin. **3/4
2. Kane (Glen Jacobs) pinned Matt Hardy to get a wedding with Lita in 6:08. Hardy even did a plancha on his bad knee and a twist of fate on the floor. Kane just beat the 10 count back in. Lita gave Hardy the ring bell and he hit Kane with it, but Kane got his foot on the ropes. Hardy even came off the top rope, landing on his feet, which had to be a killer on his bad knee. When Hardy climbed the ropes a second time, Kane caught him and choke slammed him off the ropes for the pin. For such a strong angle, the people didn't seem to care much about it. Ending seemed "too fast" and it didn't build enough drama considering the amount of TV time and stakes. Hardy had posted on his web site that he needed knee surgery and that this would be his last match, which caused internal unhappiness because of the feeling it gave away the result. Any thoughts of Shawn Michaels getting involved here were dropped because his wife hadn't given birth yet, and was actually overdue by show time. *1/4
3. John Cena pinned Booker T (Booker Huffman) in the first of their best-of-five series for the U.S. title in 6:25. Cena looked bad on offense, even in a short match. You can really see the difference in quality of a worker that Booker is compared with Benoit or Angle, who got great matches out of Cena. Most of this match was watching Cole miscall kicks and Tazz correcting him, particularly when Cole called a jumping side kick, or leg lariat, a spin kick, when Booker never spun. Lots of timing issues at the end, and Cena used the FU out of nowhere. 3/4*
4. Edge (Adam Copeland) retained the IC title over Chris Jericho (Chris Irvine) and Batista (David Bautista) in 8:26. Because they had two faces and one heel, they mostly did spots where one guy would be hurt and the other two would fight. They set up to were Batista finally got hurt, so Edge and Jericho could fight. Crowd severely turned on Edge. He made heel facials as this was happening. It would build to one getting his finisher, and then the third guy who was playing injured would recover to make the save. Nothing wrong with it, but it was far too short. **l/4
5. Kurt Angle beat Eddie Guerrero in 13:38. Great early wrestling sequences. Fans were cheering Angle and chanting for him. Guerrero used an ankle lock early. Angle came back with the Angle slam and ankle lock. Guerrero was bleeding from the bridge of his nose. Guerrero finally made the ropes. Guerrero used the Angle slam as well. Angle did his arm whip superplex like move. He tried an Angle slam again, but Guerrero turned it into a DDT. Guerrero missed a frog splash and Angle did the Angle slam again. Angle took off Guerrero's boot, playing off the fact the boot cost him the Mania match. I can't say that was explained well. After a ref bump, Guerrero hit Angle and Luther Reigns (who interfered once) with a boot shot, then hit a frog splash on Angle. By the time the ref counted, Angle kicked out. Angle used an ankle lock on the leg without a boot. They sold it like it was an unprotected leg, and after a while, with Angle pulling him to the center and turning it into a heel hook, Guerrero submitted. In reality, ankle locks was far less effective when opponents don't have boots on because the boot limits the ankle's flexibility, but since 99.9% of the audience wouldn't know that, it doesn't matter. ***3/4
6. HHH (Paul LeVesque) pinned Eugene (Nick Dinsmore) in 14:06. It was funny, in that perverse way, when I figured these two would get more time than the previous match, particularly since they haven't realized Eugene is best in small doses. Crowd booed Eugene, which is happening more and more. He's becoming this summer's Zach Gowen, and I remembered what happened when Gowen went to Toronto. They had to redo the crowd noise it was so embarrassing to the company. HHH did the fake knee injury spot. Eugene did a rock bottom at one point. HHH used a spine buster. Eugene got a cut near his shoulder when he was whipped into the steps. Eugene flipped HHH off and gave him a stunner for the biggest pop of the show. Unfortunately, that reminded people of Steve Austin. HHH rolled out of the ring, and got up without selling it. Ric Flair came out. Eugene Hulked up and hit a leg drop. Eugene even hit a pedigree, and Flair put HHH's foot on the ropes. Flair tripped Eugene. The ref threw Flair out of the match, and as he was leaving, William Regal KO'd Flair with the power of the punch. Eugene was distracted and smiling, and then turned around, and HHH hit the pedigree for the pin. **1/2
7. JBL (John Layfield) beat Undertaker (Mark Calloway), via DQ in 17:37, so JBL kept the WWE title. JBL came off the top with a shoulder block. He then started working on Taker's knee after a chair to the knee. Crowd was paying no attention to the match. Undertaker used a lariat and a choke slam for near falls. Fans booed the ref bump since it was so telegraphed. Both hit high kicks and were knocked out. Orlando Jordan, who was managing JBL as his Chief of Staff, threw him the belt. JBL used the belt but no ref. Jordan grabbed ref Nick Patrick and picked up his hand and began counting but Taker kicked out. Taker threw Jordan out of the ring, but JBL used a clothesline on him. Undertaker used the last ride power bomb but again no ref. Undertaker then grabbed the title belt and hit JBL, but Patrick got up and saw that for the DQ. Fans booed the hell out of that finish. The post-match saved it in a sense, as Taker beat him over to the car. JBL was bleeding pretty well. The big move was a choke slam through the gimmicked limo roof. Crowd did the "holy shit" chants at that. The worst thing was the replay showed the roof was gimmicked. JBL ended up being taken out on a stretcher, although Jordan was as concerned that the belt came with him as of he getting medical care. There was noticeable second guessing of that one, with the idea that Undertaker could have lost due to Heidenreich's interference, and still done the post match where he would be the one left standing at the end. **
8. Randy Orton pinned Chris Benoit in 20:08 to win the World title. Orton got a sharpshooter in the middle early. Orton threw Benoit's shoulder into the ring post. Earl Hebner was the ref, so tons of "You screwed Bret" chants. Not like that wasn't predictable. They should have limited Earl to reffing the taped dodge ball game. Fans wanted someone to take a bump through the Spanish table. Benoit dirt a DDT on the apron: Benoit went to the top but Orton moved and Benoit cracked his head into the barricade. In the ring, Orton got Benoit up in the old Bruno Sammartino backbreaker, and then dropped Benoit from that position for a near fall. Benoit got a near fall with a Northern lights suplex. Orton got a near fall with a crossbody. Benoit came back with a German suplex and a sharpshooter. Orton made the ropes. Benoit hit five German suplexes and went up for a diving head-BUTT. Orton got his foot up and Benoit crashed into it. It looked great. Orton's mouth was busted by this point. Benoit went for a crossface, but Orton escaped, and hit the RKO out of nowhere, and got the pin. Lots of fans were rooting for Orton, apparently wanting to see a title change, and there was a big pop for the three. Benoit left, but then turned around, got back in the ring and told Orton to "Be a man" and shake his hand. Orton shook his hand, and did a total face reaction, crying as he held the belt. ****1/4
