wrestling / Video Reviews
Dark Pegasus Video Review: Vengeance 2004
August 26, 2008 | Posted by
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| Vengeance 2004 by J.D. Dunn So Chris Benoit was champ, but Triple H claimed to be the real champ who only lost because he got distracted with Shawn Michaels. That very nicely set up this show’s main event. Tajiri misted Coachman after a #1 contender game of musical chairs (Eugene was General Manager for the night). Coach demanded a tag match and selected Garrison Cade as his partner. Tajiri reveals Rhyno as his choice. Cade whines about tight-pulling and slaps Rhyno in the face. WRONG FUCKING MOVE, STEVE ROGERS! Rhyno smacks him around, but Tajiri gets kneed from the outside by Coach. The heels work Tajiri’s back – Coach even looks competent in the ring, even if his offense is rudimentary. Tajiri kicks his way back and tags in Rhyno. Rhyno cleans house, but Tajiri blind tags himself in and hits a double handspring elbow. Cade takes the Green Mist and the Gore. Coach is relieved but turns right into the roundhouse kick from Tajiri at 7:30. Standard tag match. Coach didn’t drag this down at all. *3/4 Batista cost Jericho the Intercontinental Title and knocked him out with a clothesline, so Jericho’s on the warpath. Batista overpowers Jericho and mauls him in the corner. Jericho tricks him into charging and sends him to the floor. That sets up the springboard dropkick, but that pisses Batista off. Back in, Jericho slips out of a Full Nelson and goes after Batista’s quad muscle. Batista catches Jericho with a sideslam. That leads to a lot of uninteresting Batista offense. At least he focuses on the back. Jericho hits the flying forearm, but Batista baits him into charging and spinebusters him for two. Jericho reverses the Demonbomb to a sunset flip for two. The Lionsault finds Batista’s knees and messes up Jericho’s knee. He hits an enzuigiri anyway and gets two. Batista hulks up and hits the Demonbomb at 12:13. Jericho’s foot was on the ropes, but the ref didn’t catch it. Batista had a good power game, and he showed flashes here. Once he started finding ways to set up his power game and make it more interesting, he took a huge step up. **1/2 The joke here is that Ric Flair would rather lose than be Eugene’s partner. If you watch closely, though, you can see Flair cracking a smile every time Eugene one of his mannerisms. Eugene dominates Rob Conway with a series of Flairisms. Sylvan tags in and wants a piece of Woogene. Eugene begs off and then goes to the eyes, drawing a huge pop. He works in the Flair flop and the figure-four attempt, but Sylvan shoves him into the post. Flair tags in and shows him how it’s really done. Flair gets caught in the wrong corner, though, and doubleteamed. He tries to squirm to the corner, but Conway drags Eugene off the apron. That sets up Au Revoir, but Eugene is pissed off now. He pummels La Res and shoves the ref down for the DQ at 12:30. La Res attack again but take a Stunner and Rock Bottom. Eugene apologizes to Flair after the match, but he seems to have won Naitch over for saving him. This was a lot of fun, and Flair seemed energized for whatever reason. The Eugene gimmick was fun for a while, but there were only so many directions they could take it, and after a while it got stale. The fans loved his Flair mannerisms, though. **3/4 Matt quickly take things over to the announce table, but Kane tosses him off into the crowd barrier. Kane takes over on offense, and things get sluggish. You know, for a psychopath, he’s awfully slow. Ross and Lawler debate the morality of bartering for sex and whether or not Kane & Lita’s baby would be ugly. Ross reminds us that he was set on fire by Kane. Ah, who can forget that Emmy Award winning segment? Kane berates Matt for not fighting back, which is the same thing I’ve been doing for five minutes. Matt grabs a chair, but Kane boots him and takes it from him. To the ring, Matt slips out of the Tombstone and hits the Twist of Fate for two. Kane catches him with a chokeslam and tosses the steps in the ring. Lita runs in and begs Kane not to kill Matt. Kane tells her to watch what he’s about to do. Unfortunately for Kane, that entails grabbing the steps and turning around into a chairshot. The steps collapse on Kane, and Matt is able to get the win at 10:35. Ten minutes of sluggish Kane offense and a lucky shot from Matt do not make for a good match. *1/2 Orton was starting to receive a lot of vocal support from the fans, which would explain his ill-fated face turn. Headlockery to starts, but it’s the good kind where they actually work off the headlock into other sequences like the criss-cross. Orton gets steamrolled but controls the match with clubs to the chest. Edge comes back with a flying forearm, so Orton bails and grabs his title. Edge hits a sliding dropkick, though. Back in, Edge hits a missile dropkick for two as the fans start to get behind Randy. Edge sets up for the spear, but Randy punts him in the face to counter. That sets up a neck vise, and the fans start to go back and forth. Randy tells them he doesn’t need their help. He slaps on the chinlock, although people were just starting to notice his reliance on it, so it was not yet the ORTONLOCK~! Edge elbows out and dropkicks Orton out of the sky. They tease a double KO and then slug it out from their knees. The Edge-o-matic gets two. Orton sets up for a superplex, but Edge shoves him off. Orton lands awkwardly on the ropes. Randy unties one of the buckles, distracting the ref so he doesn’t see Edge roll Randy up for two. The Impaler gets two, and now the fans are starting to root for Edge again. Orton drops Edge on the exposed buckle and puts his feet on the ropes for two. That sets up an RKO attempt, but Edge shoves him to the corner. Randy leapfrogs a spear attempt, sending Edge into the middle turnbuckle. That sets up an RKO attempt, but Edge backslides him, tosses him into the exposed buckle, and finishes with the spear at 26:37. This was heralded as a classic at the time, but there are too many dead spots early on. It really finishes strong, though, and that’s what people remember. Randy’s IC Title streak, which was approaching Honky Tonk Man levels, was finally over. The idea was to set up Edge as a babyface avenger, working his way through Evolution until a big showdown with Triple H, but they made him so edgy (no pun intended) that the fans actually turned him heel before that could happen. Edge had to get to the main even through other means. ***1/4 Victoria was the peppy babyface at this point, and Molly was still working the Buddy Roberts bald gimmick. The match is not bad, but it’s heatless for the most part. Victoria hits a pescado and nearly brains herself. Back in, Molly works the arm for the rest of the match. Victoria can’t get the Widow’s Peak as a result, but she is able to finish with a superkick at 6:20. Good psychology and finish. Not memorable or anything, though. ** So, we’ve been hearing for weeks about HHH’s “master plan” to get *his* title back. The feeling-out process leads to Benoit going for the Crossface early. Hunter bails and knees Benoit to the floor. He rams Benoit’s back into the apron, but that pisses Benoit off good and proper, so he comes back with chops. Hunter misses a swing and takes ROLLING GERMANS! Hunter blocks but gets clotheslined over the top. Benoit follows him out and tosses Hunter into the steps. Back in, Benoit misses the Swandive Headbutt. Hunter reverses a corner whip, and Benoit takes a Bret Bump. And again. Hunter wisely works the chest with a front suplex. And again. He stretches Benoit’s chest with a surfboard – the one instance where it’s psychologically applicable. Benoit hiptosses out of an abdominal stretch. They trade sleepers, and Hunter blocks the Sharpshooter. Benoit counters the Pedigree to a Sharpshooter for real, though. Hunter makes the ropes, but Benoit stays on him with ROLLING GERMANS! Hunter rolls out of the way to avoid the Swandive Headbutt, so Benoit follows him out with the suicida. Back in, Hunter misses a clothesline and takes out the referee. He DDTs Benoit and calls for Eugene. Benoit rides Triple H down into the Crippler Crossface, and now Eugene doesn’t know what to do. Benoit yells for him to get the ref, but Eugene freezes on the apron. Benoit gets up and knocks Eugene off the apron, drawing boos, but he has to be on the safe side. Hunter recovers and Pedigrees Benoit, but the ref is too slow to recover. ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! Eugene hands Hunter a chair but doesn’t want him to use it. Hunter shoves him off the apron, but Benoit knocks the chair in his face. Benoit grabs the chair and takes out Ric Flair and Batista. Hunter goes low on Benoit and grabs the chair, so Benoit goes low on Hunter, and they both lie there holding their crotches like that scene in Bad Santa where they teach Thurman Merman how to box. Eugene grabs the chair and teases smashing Benoit then HHH. In the end, he decides on neither, but Benoit recovers and tries to grab it from him. They fight over the chair, and Eugene accidentally pastes a recovering HHH. That allows Benoit to get the schoolboy rollup for the win at 29:09. Ugh. This one fell apart right at the ref bump. I appreciate pushing new talent and all, but using the main event of the PPV to set up a midcard match between HHH and Eugene is probably not the best use of PPV time. The first 20 minutes or so were great, but it was a missed opportunity at a classic. They tried one more time on TV with the Raw Ironman Match, but that didn’t quite measure up to expectations. ***1/2 |
The 411: This was Benoit's last hurrah as champion, and to say his reign was creatively lackluster is an understatement. The WWE never really played to his strengths or any of his previous feuds. We never got to see Chris Jericho vs. Chris Benoit for the title as we did at every other step of their careers. They eventually played up his relationship with the Harts and the friction with Shawn Michaels therein, but they missed out on an opportunity to play up the Four Horsemen relationship with Flair. Instead, Benoit was just some guy who took Triple H's title and was holding it for a while (and actually had a slight bump in ratings, despite what the Anti-IWC kids will tell you). The title match is pretty good, though, as is the IC Title match, and that match made it pretty easy for Orton to slide into that main event slot. Thumbs up. |
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| Final Score: 7.0 [ Good ] legend |
