As I’m sure many of you reading know, One Night Stand was originally the title for ECW’s successful reunion PPV, which then led to the ECW being bought back as a third brand. After the dreadful and highly unsuccessful ECW PPV December to Dismember, and then the call from Vince to end single branded PPVs (a move I agree on), One Night Stand was now just another WWE PPV – but with gimmicks!

Yes, every match on the show is some kind of a gimmick match. Overkill? Maybe, but in fairness, WWE, unlike TNA, don’t tend to go crazy batshit with gimmicks on their PPVs.

One Night Stand 2008 kicked off with a Falls Count Anywhere match between Umaga and Jeff Hardy. Any fan of the old 24/7 WWF Hardcore matches would probably enjoy this flashback to 2000. Sadly, there was no Crash Holly or Steve Blackman, but there was Jeff Hardy doing slides down stair rails. It was a fun match with a somewhat hokey finish, that being Jeff’s Swanton off the truck “on to” Umaga.

The Singapore Cane match was one of the shocks of the night as far as being an actual fun match. There was a fun spot with some football player getting nailed with the cane by Chavo, and then the football player got his revenge and killed Chavo with the cane. The visual of Big Show legit bleeding and just going wild and killing everyone in sight with canes was awesome.

After two fun matches, we struck out with the First Blood match between John Cena and JBL. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad, it was just boring I guess. The finish was pretty ridiculous. While having a chain wrapped around his arm, John Cena applied the STFU to JBL which caused JBL instant internal bleeding. Yes, within 2 seconds JBL was bleeding from the inside!

The show then suffered a boring ass divas I Quit match between Melina and Beth Phoenix. I really don’t see anything in Melina anymore, but I guess that is something for some other time.

The next match delivered, Batista and Shawn Michaels fought in a stretcher match. It was a good match between these two in their feud blowing off match. It ended up with Batista killing Michaels and uttering the words:

“I’m not sorry. And I don’t love you”.

A great play off of what the whole feud was about – Ric Flair’s last match. Jericho came down during the match to “coach” Michaels on, looking back; it was another great little thing to set up Michaels vs. Jericho later on.

Triple H then defended his WWE title against Randy Orton in a last man standing match. This was the infamous match were Orton got hurt (breaking his collarbone to be specific) after taking a crazy bump where Triple H reversed the RKO by throwing Orton over the top rope to the floor. Orton got to his feet only to be smashed in the head with a Hunter Hammer Shot!

Sadly, Orton telling the crowd to “Shut the fuck up” after they were chanting his name was silenced out, but Orton getting pissy with a kid was shown.

The main event of One Night Stand was the TLC match which Undertaker lost and thus had to be banished from the WWE for good. As far as TLC matches go, this was easily the weakest of them all, but the standard of TLC matches is extremely high. With that said, it was a perfectly acceptable main event with the usual cool tables and ladder spots.

Undertaker, who has to be closer to 50 than 40, took a stupidly insane bump from near the top of the ladder in the ring, to crash all the way to the outside where tables awaited him. Edge then reclaimed his World title and went on his merry way with La Familia. Undertaker slowly got to his feet and walked off to the back for the “final” time looking dejected.

The DVD extras were almost non-existent. There was 4 historic Undertaker moments; you know the same ones you see before Wrestlemania or when ever something big involving the Undertaker happens. They were his debut at Survivor Series 1990, King of the Ring 1998, Royal Rumble 2007 and his World title win at Wrestlemania 23.

I’d say get this. By all means it wasn’t the best show of the year, but if you’re looking to get a show with fun matches or just looking for something decent to include in a special offer, then add WWE One Night Stand 2008 to your collection.

I give this show a solid 3 out of 5. If you’re living in the UK, you can pick up a copy via Silver Vision by clicking here.

Steve McLaren
steve@ifight365.com