Silver Vision’s exclusive ‘Live in The…’ series of DVDs is a rather strange concept, as the releases basically feature a week’s worth of WWE television generally encompassing whichever European tour WWE has most recently been on.

Essentially then, WWE is re-releasing footage that has previously been made available on free television. While this may sound pretty pointless for those of us who religiously record and collect each WWE TV show, for those who only casually watch and may have even attended the shows featured here, the DVD may provide a handy memento of their live wrestling experience.

That being said, I generally buy wrestling DVDs based on the quality of the matches, and so here goes with my thoughts on the matches featured on RAW April 14, ECW April 15 and Smackdown April 18 respectively.

After one of the first promos in the superlative and recently concluded Chris Jericho/Shawn Michaels rivalry, we are treated to a match between Paul London and Brian Kendrick and the team of Santino Marella and Carlito.

Both teams, especially the former, were under-utilised, with London and Kendrick never really doing anything meaningful since moving to RAW and Marella and Carlito having a high level of comedic potential that was never really tapped. Anyway, the match itself was a quick standard RAW sprint, with Marella and Carlito winning via the Backstabber on London. London looked by far the most impressive in the ring, including a decent offensive flurry with an awesome snap- frankensteiner.

It should also be noted that while Marella is by far the most entertaining comedic heel to grace WWE for a long time, his ring work is pretty below par here for a WWE midcard performer; still his out of the ring schtick more than makes up for it, as evidenced by his post match promo.

Next up we have a decent little WWE-style women’s match between Mickie James and reigning Champion Beth Phoenix. Apart from being a good match that tells the classic underdog challenger story, this match is notable for being one of the few times that a WWE Title has changed hands in the UK. For trivia fans the other times that I can recall off the top of my head were; the British Bulldog losing the European Title to Shawn Michaels at One Night Only in 1997, William Regal losing the European Title to Crash Holly and Spike Dudley at Rebellion 2000 and Insurextion 2002 respectively, Juventud Guerrera winning the Cruiserweight Title from Nunzio at a UK Smackdown in November 2005, and Edge and Randy Orton beating Ric Flair and an injured Roddy Piper on a UK RAW in November 2006. I hope that’s all but anyway, I disgress.

James wins with a roll-up and Phoenix looks strong in defeat- definitely one of the better WWE women’s matches of 2008 (although that’s not really saying much!).

Moving onwards we’ve got JTG going over Trevor Murdoch via a reversed high crossbody. This match was totally non-descript and the only things I noticed here were the ill advised promo by supposed faces Crime Time harping on about the Euro, and also observing how much weight Trevor Murdoch had lost since the last time I saw him live (against Ric Flair at Smackdown in November 2006).

The highlight of this edition of RAW, and indeed the whole DVD is shown in the next match, that of William Regal vs. reigning Heavyweight Champion Randy Orton. Regal is always over to a huge degree with the English fans (I recall a similarly Austin-like reception at the first ever UK Smackdown which featured a nasty Dusty finish with Regal and Eugene against La Resistance), and this match is no exception.

As those of you who have read my latest column will know, I am a huge Regal fan, and this match is the highlight of his limited in-ring showing from this year. Regal brings the stiff striking and realistic mat work, and Orton is no slouch in keeping up with him and really leaning into Regal’s offence. The highlight of the match is Regal’s natty display of suplexes, including an awesome REGALPLEX (!!) which I’d only seen Brian Danielson use until this point. The finish saw Regal go down to the RKO in a way which really put Orton (and the move) over as a killer if he’s given the chance. A definite highlight for Regal fans here, and his MOTY to this point.

Following on is a rematch from Jericho’s WWE re-debut in December 2007, against Umaga. Unfortunately the former match saw Jericho once again fall victim to the ‘Jericho Curse’, (read his book), and featured Umaga no selling all of Jericho’s stuff and generally causing the returning Y2J to stumble from the off in his new run.

This match is a lot better than that, with Jericho being a lot more comfortable in the ring and Umaga being his usual dependable self in the monster heel role. The right person went over, as we really didn’t need to see the former Jamal with the IC belt again, and the quasi heel tactics used by Jericho here with the pin with the feet on the ropes foreshadow his impending heel turn against Michaels nicely.

I mist note that there was also a squash match with Paul Burchill against Jim Duggan with Duggan losing to the curb stomp. I’ve got nothing to say here, other than Duggan is the wrong guy for Burchill to be squashing in order to get over as a threat. Ideally the squasher needs to be made to look good, and at this stage of his career Duggan just can’t do this. Apparently this was only included for time filling reasons, but I’d rather they added five minutes to the Regal match and kept this as a dark affair in order to at least give Burchill an appearance in front of his home town crowd.

The pre-main event slot saw HHH give another of those wonderful insider referencing promos, you know, the one where he totally shills his merchandise while burying his opponent (wink). The showcase match itself, the first ever one-on-one meeting between Hunter and JBL, is nothing special with JBL looking to be suffering from his bad back, and the end coming with a Randy Orton run-in for the DQ. More interesting is the post match brawl between three of the participants of the Backlash main event, notable for the wonderful English crowd ignoring the action and chanting for Regal!

Anyway, this was perfectly good episode of RAW, notably missing the huge selling point of a major match such as the (previously released on an earlier Live In The UK… DVD) marathon match between Michaels and Cena. Indeed the show was hurt by the absence of these two big parts of the Monday night roster, even with Michaels’ segment, but what we did get were a couple of decent matches and a showcase appearance from William Regal. This part of the DVD gets a recommendation from me – unless you haven’t already seen it and recorded it of course!

Next up is the ECW show from the next night. I don’t recall seeing this show when it originally aired so this will be a fresh viewing for me. I can’t say the line-up inspires me though.

The first match actually looks, on paper, to be one of the better ones on the DVD. Unfortunately CM Punk, Jimmy Yang, Shannon Moore, & Kofi Kingston vs. Elijah Burke, Deuce, Domino & Shelton Benjamin suffers from one too many chinlocks in the middle section and Deuce and Domino’s involvement. Seriously though, have D&D ever been in a more than mediocre match excluding their initial series with London and Kendrick? Punk, Kingston and Yang provide the highlights of this match, although from his performance here, you’d never have thought that Punk would be the World Heavyweight Champion of RAW just weeks later.

Less said about the Diva dance off the better so that’s all I’m going to say…

Colin Delaney vs. Mike Knox was the expected squash, in much the same manner as the rest of Delaney’s WWE run. Although I’ve never seen any of his CHIKARA stuff, Delaney would have to be something really special there, as I never saw anything in him throughout his stint other than having some ability a cash test dummy for whatever monster heel WWE through his way. Knox’s new Bruiser Brody lite character was just surfacing here, and while his performance was nothing special (especially the botched ‘roll the dice’ finisher, his new look was at least better than the bland OVW identikit one that he’d had in his previous ECW run.

The ECW main event, Undertaker and Kane against The Miz and Morrison, had some potential but ended as one of the most senseless Brothers of Destruction squashes since their silly hammering of DDP and Kanyon at Summerslam 2001. While I am a fan of all four men, this sort of squash has its place and its not having the two veterans destroy two of the more talented up and comers WWE has seen in a while.

Here’s an idea, put Morrison and Miz in the opening match and have Taker and Kane squash Deuce and Domino, that would make more sense.

Morrison provides the highlights in this match, cheekily stopping ‘Taker from going through his usual TV routine, before eating the tombstone for the finish. As I said, a pointless match and result, but they carried it out well, and at least the crowd loved it.

I would give the ECW portion of this show a thumbs down, based on the line up. I remember now why I didn’t watch it first time round, and after watching it I feel this was the right decision, certainly not one to pay for. Special mention also goes to Mike Adamle on commentary who was bad without being comically bad, he definitely further dragged the show down a notch; oh well they couldn’t do much more wrong with him… oh wait….

The final portion of the DVD is the Smackdown portion of the tour. At the time I was annoyed that I wasn’t attending this one, as I am a big fan of the Undertaker-Batista series, which continued in this show’s main event. The rest of the show also contained some intriguing looking match ups that certainly seemed to have some potential to entertain…

The show opened with another Jericho segment, this time with Batista being interviewed in a Highlight Reel spot. This was another strong showing from Jericho, and Batista held his own on the mic; a man who I’ve always felt is underrated as a promo guy – he plays to the strengths of his character well and always comes across as a classy guy who could nonetheless could kick your ass – as he does with Jericho here – anytime he wants to.

The first match of the night is MVP vs. Tommy Dreamer. I expected a styles clash going into this one, but instead we got a pleasantly entertaining battle, with Dreamer for once not being treated like a total jobber when outside of ECW. MVP took this one with the Yakuza Kick, but Dreamer had a good showing, which surprised me.

Hornswoggle vs. Matt Striker fulfilled its purpose – as a showcase for WWE’s new child orientated direction, and while nothing special, even as a comedy match, certainly got the crowd into it, and therefore fulfilled its purpose from a creative and artistic point of view.

Chavo Guerrero vs. Jamie Noble definitely had the potential to be a good match and they showed me here that they could probably have a much better match if given more time and a feud. As this is unlikely to happen though, we’re left with this match, and what we get is still pretty good. Chavo looked good as the sneaky heel and the criminally underutilised Noble was able to shine, including executing a great Northern Lights Suplex and generally looking very polished and smooth. Guerrero puts Noble away with the Frog Splash, and Bam Neely does absolutely nothing to justify his paycheck. Still a good little match here.

Next up was The Big Show vs. Mark Henry. This looked to be a DUD on the level of Kane vs. Mark Henry from One Night Stand 2007 but the two were never really given the chance to get going, as The Great Khali ‘ran’ in for the no contest after a few minutes of not bad but not really good action. The focus here was clearly on Big Show vs. Khali at Backlash, but following on to my thoughts on CM Punk earlier, the way that they treated Henry here, as a basic jobber to the stars, was not conducive with him being crowned ECW champion a couple of PPVs down the road.

The match up that had the unenviable job of following that choice effort as Victoria vs. Cherry. I can’t really comment on Cherry as a worker as I haven’t seen any of her non-WWE stuff but she never really impressed me with anything in her WWE run. I don’t know what it was, but she just did not really seem like a good fit and was never really given the chance to showcase anything as a worker. Case in point here, as Cherry does take the win, but gets essentially squashed by the superior Victoria in the run-up to the finish and needs help from Michell McCool to put her opponent away. Other than that, there’s nothing I can say about this match – on a side note Cherry was later drafted to RAW, where I thought we might see some more of her in the ring, but alas it was not to be and she was fired shortly afterwards.

The penultimate match on this Smackdown was another squash with Vladimir Kozlov fighting an unnamed jobber. This was another powerful showing from the big Russian in a seemingly endless succession of convincing wins for the big guy. He hit all of his offence well here and seemed to get over with the crowd so mission accomplished as far as this match went. For Kozlov as a whole, we’ll soon see if he justifies his big push, as he worked his first real competitive match against Jeff Hardy on last week’s Smackdown (which I haven’t seen yet) and is due to challenge HHH some time soon.

And so we come to the main event of this Smackdown, and of the DVD itself, WWE Champion Undetaker against Batista in a non-title match.

These two had previously competed in 2007’s best series of matches, encompassing supercard bouts at Wrestlemania, Backlash, Cyber Sunday and Survivor Series, and also in a triple threat match with Edge at Armageddon. Combined with a last one other superior bout in a cage on Smackdown, this feud was definitely one for the ages and I would certainly recommend tracking down any of the afterforementioned bouts on DVD if you can find them.

As for this bout, it sadly falls short of their previous bouts, perhaps now suffering from over exposure, and is hampered by a non-finish involving Edge and his cronies. Still, what in-ring action there is between the two is very good indeed, and both have a great chemistry that has produced some of the better super heavyweight matches in 21st Century WWE. Interestingly enough Taker and Batista would go on to top this effort the next week in a no DQ match that was much closer to their earlier standard.

Still a worthy effort, certainly compared to the more lacklustre main events on the other two shows, and easily the second best match on the DVD.

As a show this was not bad, bookended by a good segement and a decent main event, and the MVP and Chavo matches both were decent little time fillers. Everything else was a squash or not really needed. I can see why they did the Hornswoggle match, but the other stuff was probably one short match too many – they could have taken off the women’s match for example, and added time to the Chavo match or the main event. However, it was still a pretty good show, all in all, and I would certainly recommend Undertaker-Batista completists to get this as their match was the definite high point here.

As a complete package I have a hard time really recommending WWE Live In The UK: April 2008 unless you’re a diehard William Regal fan, or a really, really big fan of the Batista-Undertaker and Michaels-Jericho rivalries. The shows on this DVD are a decent selection of what you get on WWE TV every week but I leave it to the reader to decide if it’s worth paying money to see again.

As mentioned earlier, I do think that the shows would be worth buying I you were actually live at the shows, as it’s always good to have a more permanent memento of the shows that you’ve been to.

If you’re in the UK, you can pick up a copy of this DVD exclusively via Silver Vision by clicking here.

James Mustoe
james@ifight365.com