wrestling / TV Reports
The Cyber Sunday 2007 Breakdown
November 11, 2007 | Posted by
| Cyber Sunday 2007 by J.D. Dunn Finlay seems to like that stipulation. He mauls Mysterio early and tosses him out on the stretcher. Rey rolls off and kicks it into Finlay to survive. Finlay knocks him around again and tries to push him across the line. Rey slips off again. Into the ring, Finlay clubs him around a bit more, but Rey comes back with a headscissors. Cole and JBL argue over whether a headscissors can, in fact, also be a huracanrana. Finlay goes for the shillelagh that was placed there in case the fans voted for the shillelagh on a pole. Rey knocks him down and goes for it. Finlay catches him but takes a sunset bomb. Rey grabs the shillelagh to a big pop. See, it doesn’t matter what match you voted for; they were going to work in the shillelagh on a pole anyway. Finlay knocks him down, though, before it can come into play. He tries to ram Rey with the stretcher, but Rey ducks out of the way and rams it into Finlay’s shillelagh of flesh. Rey 619’s Finlay onto the stretcher and hits the somersault plancha. Unfortunately, the stretcher catches on the TV cord. Finlay improvises and swings his shillelagh at Rey. Rey backdrops him on the stretcher and shoves Finlay across the finish line at 9:47. Finlay and Mysterio have surprisingly good chemistry. **1/2 This was one of those, “Whaaaaaaa?” moments because Big Daddy V and John Morrison were the other choices. So either fans just wanted an easy opponent for Punk, or Miz is more over than anyone ever anticipated. Boring match, for the most part. Punk works in a slingshot suplex. He tries a superplex, but Miz shoves him off and kills the match with a cravat. The crowd gets on him with a “You can’t wrestle” chant. Horribly sloppy moment as Punk goes for a crossbody, but Miz is busy selling a shot to the mouth and doesn’t see him coming. Crowd chants, “Y2J.” Miz comes back with a snap clothesline and a snap suplex. He goes up, but Punk hops up and hip tosses him off. Punk hits a flying clothesline for two. Miz reverses the GTS to a rollup, but Punk rolls through for two. The GTS finishes for real at 8:52. Sloppy and amateurish at points. Approaching decent at others. The fans seem to be willing to cheer for Punk, but neither he nor the WWE have really given them a reason to, which leads me to believe he could be a big star if there was a decent storyline behind him. * These guys were the losers of the main-event voting, so they get to face off. Not that the fans would have voted any other way anyway, but let’s just look at the storylines here. Randy Orton feuds with DX for nearly a year, kicks Shawn in the head and puts him out for months. Randy…was sometimes in the same arena as Jeff and Mr. Kennedy. Was there ever *really* a choice? Now, you see the problem with the Cyber Sunday concept. Unless you’re building three different feuds equally, there’s really only one satisfactory choice. Kennedy grounds the match with a headlock, which is not a good idea after the previous match’s snoozefest. Hardy fires back and counters to – a headlock. Finally, things pick up with Hardy diving off the top with a crossbody. Kennedy waits for Hardy to start back in the ring and kicks him in the head. He drops Jeff on his head with a DDT. Jeff catches him going up and ranas him off. He goes for the Twist of Fate. Kennedy shoves him off, but Jeff goes right into the Whisper in the Wind. That gets two. Jeff goes for his slingshot gun packet in the corner, but Kennedy avoids and covers for the win at 9:06. Huh? Not that it didn’t make sense in the context of the match, but why not hit your finisher for the win? ** Kane wins handily over Henry and Khali. No surprise there, other than the fact that I thought people might just try to screw with the WWE by voting for Khali. MVP takes Kane down into an abdominal stretch, but Kane fights back and starts kicking him in the ribs. Kane just starts working over the ribs, leaving MVP on the outside. MVP…gets counted out? Well, that sucks. (6:41). Kane didn’t even really try to win the title here, which is a total ripoff. I understand that they weren’t going to derail their long-term booking here, but this just sucked a dick. 1/2* Orton starts out clubbering Shawn around but runs into a knee to the gut. Shawn goes to work on Orton’s arm and shoulder. He slaps on a short-arm scissors. Orton finally squirms out and fires off a few punches. Shawn follows him but gets suplexed on the barrier. Back in, Orton dominates and slows things down with the ORTONLOCK! Shawn counters a backdrop to a crossbody for two. They go up and fight over a superplex. Shawn knocks him back into the ring. The Picture-Perfect Elbow misses, but Shawn gets two off a surprise backslide. Orton takes the flying forearm straight on. Ooof! Shawn unloads the usual and sets up for Sweet Chin Music. Orton recovers enough to punch Shawn right in the cock! Automatic DQ at 15:51. Well, that sucks. Orton sets up to kick Shawn in the head again, but Shawn pops up and superkicks him in the face. Orton has yet to win a meaningful match as champion. The match was okay, but it was cookie-cutter Shawn stuff. I’m not even sure Orton needed to be there for the match. *** They brawl all the way up to the entrance ramp where Hunter spears Umaga through the set. They brawl back to the ring, and Hunter nails him with the trashcan shot for two. Umaga comes back with the Samoan Drop. Umaga continues to maul him like a badger on a canary. It happens! A bearhug kills some time, and Umaga switches it up into a belly-to-belly suplex. BUTTALANCHE! It only gets two. Hunter goes low and DDTs Umaga on the chair. ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! To the floor now, Umaga misses a chairshot and gets speared over the Smackdown table. They fight over to the Raw table where Umaga runs across the tables and splashes Hunter THROUGH the table. Back in, Umaga tries another splash but misses. Hunter grabs his sledgehammer, but Umaga intercepts him. The Samoan Spike misses, and Hunter nails him with the sledgehammer. That sets up the Pedigree at 17:23. Good enough thanks to Hunter’s ability to sell like a champ. The only problem was that no one in the arena gave Umaga even a snowball’s chance in hell of winning so his nearfalls didn’t have much heat on them. ***1/4 Batista charges, but Taker sidesteps him. Good psychology there because the whole storyline has been about Batista’s inability to beat the Undertaker, so why wouldn’t he be aggressive? Plus, it plays off Smackdown. Taker sticks and moves and waits for Batista to make another mistake. When he does, Taker grounds him with chokes and works the rips. He hits a flying clothesline for two. Finally, Batista breaks up the Old School Ropewalk Forearm. Taker shoves him down but misses a charge to the corner and crotches himself. Taker resumes control on the outside, though, and hits the guillotine legdrop. Back in, Taker tries the Old School Ropewalk Forearm again, but Batista spinebusters him in mid-air. Cool. Taker is tough, though, so when he lands, he just holds on and turns it into a Triangle Choke. Batista powers up and blocks a chokeslam. He misses a swing and takes the chokeslam anyway. ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! Batista hulks up and hits the SPEAR! ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! Batista mounts him for punches, but Undertaker counters to the LAST RIDE! ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! Batista hulks up again and hits the SPINEBUSTER! ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! Batista can’t believe it. DEMONBOMB! ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! No one can believe it. Batista is beside himself. Undertaker staggers into a SECOND DEMONBOMB! ONE, TWO, THREE! Batista finally picks up a win over the Undertaker at 17:26. For those who loved the overrated WrestleMania match, *this* is what they are capable of, and more like what I expected from that match. Great story, great work. This felt much more like a war. ***3/4 The 411: The concept of the show still has the same problems as it has every year, but this year, everyone at the top delivered. The booking on some of the endings was atrocious, but it shouldn’t totally discount 15-20 minutes of action. A marked improvement over years past. Thumbs up |
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