Going into last night’s Survivor Series PPV, I wasn’t overly confident that the show would be a huge success.

Prior to Sunday morning’s “incident” with Jeff Hardy (more on that later) I thought the show was lacking any spark and at best would be solid.

I didn’t even get that.

Edge flying into Boston for the PPV almost guaranteed on Sunday morning that he’d be making an appearance on the night. Personally, I thought it would have made sense to have him involved in the Undertaker-Big Show casket match (and man did that match last night need something as it was terrible). But as the day unfolded and we learnt what WWE were planning to do (or not do) with Jeff Hardy, then it became a little clearer what could happen.

As I noted a couple of times during our live PPV coverage on Sunday night, I was still of the impression that Hardy could appear out of nowhere and be involved in the match. I certainly got that impression from Jim Ross’ opening announcement. But it wasn’t to be. Instead of Hardy having a main event match and possibly a run as champion, we instead were “treated” to a truly awful WWE title match and some bad booking along the way.

Before looking at the PPV I want to address WWE’s decision to announce that Hardy had been found ‘unconscious’ in his hotel. I think its self-explanatory as to why it was a stupid decision on Vince’s part to do things how they did. Those involved knew fine well that the Internet would buy into possibility that Jeff had done something stupid. He has a couple of strikes on the Wellness policy which many were immediately linking the “story” to. For a Sunday morning we did much higher traffic than we’ve done since opening this website a couple of months ago with the exception of UFC 91’s Couture vs. Lesnar fight earlier this month.

To think that an angle could get such attention so early on a Sunday morning just shows you how popular Hardy is, as was proven when the Boston crowd turned on Triple H and Kozlov seconds into their awful, awful match.

But as well as showing you how popular Hardy is, it was also a major newsworthy story because of the circumstances. If Shawn Michaels, Triple H or Batista had been “found unconscious” you’d have thought it was a work from the start. But because it was Hardy, there was doubt in a lot of people’s minds.

The fact it was done on the morning of a PPV shows you exactly what a scummy business professional wrestling is and how people at the very top of a corporate company can be scummy as well. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one having flashbacks to learning of Eddie Guerrero and Brian Pillman’s deaths.

And as tasteless as it all was, I can’t believe they had Hardy go over Undertaker and Triple H on TV over the past two weeks only to do this? It was just stupid, sleazy booking.

So onto the PPV…

- The opening match was a solid match with Team HBK (Shawn Michaels, Rey Mysterio, The Great Khali, Cryme Tyme) beating Team JBL (JBL, Kane, MVP, The Miz & John Morrison) and Shawn Michaels, Rey Mysterio and The Great Khali being the survivors. I said in our PPV preview piece that it was a very random choice of wrestlers and the match did seem pretty random as well. Khali as a babyface on the apron with HBK and Mysterio just looked weird.

I was expecting more from the match, but even though it didn’t really deliver massively, it was still one of the better things on the show.

- The Divas match was next and reminded us that Mickie James is by far the most popular Diva on the roster. It also reminded us that Michelle McCool is not over and shouldn’t be in the spot she is in (and we know why she is in that spot) and that Maryse shouldn’t even be in the ring.

Seriously, Beth Phoenix should have just destroyed the Smackdown team in seconds. I’ve really enjoyed some of the women’s work this year but this had no place on a PPV.

- Earlier we had an interview with Triple H. It was actually a poor promo from Trips and did nothing to convince anybody that a singles match with Kozlov was going to be worth watching. An interview with Matt Hardy at least gave us some details on what had happened to Jeff Hardy, who was hit in the back of the head. Admittedly, at this point, I still thought we’d see Hardy in the match.

- The Undertaker vs. Big Show in a Casket match followed this. I was expecting quite a lot from this and as I mentioned earlier, I figured they’d have Edge return here. To me, that would have made sense. Regardless, I thought we’d get a solid match as these two have been working well together.

Instead, we got a match that was poorly put together with a crappy ending. I did wonder if somebody made the call to have them go shortly than originally planned. If not, I’d love to know why they thought going to a table spot seconds after the opening bell made sense rather than building up to it.

As for the finish, I hated it. It looked really poor I thought.

- After some filler with the Colons, Bella Twins, Boogeyman and Charlie Haas we had our final traditional elimination match of the night with Team Batista (Batista, Matt Hardy, CM Punk, Kofi Kingston and R-Truth) vs. Team Orton (Randy Orton, Mark Henry, Cody Rhodes, Shelton Benjamin and William Regal. This was average at best. Too many people just seemed to be off their game and it really felt like a glorified house show at some points during the night than one of the supposed ‘Big 4′ PPVs of the year.

The good thing coming out of the match was that they had Rhodes survive. That was smart to keep the storyline with Orton going I thought. It was a lot less “random” than the opening match as well, with some thought given throughout to storylines, which is encouraging. For those wondering, Regal was out of their in seconds as he had been unwell over the past few days.

- Kozlov’s pre-match interview was dull. But not as dull as his WWE title match with Triple H. This was a shitfest. The thing we learnt from this was that Kozlov sucks. While his weaknesses have been well-hided on Smackdown, its clear that past the 2minute mark, the guy is lost. Trips worked hard, but this was his worst outing that I can remember in a long time. I think the Scott Steiner match back in 2003 was probably the last time I’ve watched a Triple H match and had the urge to put my foot through the television.

But as crappy as the match was, at least we had something interesting happen towards the end. Nuclear-heat magnet, Vickie Guerrero informs us the match will be turned back into a triple threat. Of course, the crowd pop for this and think Jeff Hardy is returning, but instead WWE swerve us and Edge makes his return.

I’m still split on whether or not this was good or bad booking. The good coming out of this was that Edge is back, he’s an insane heel still and we could have some fresh matches. The bad is that we’re told Jeff Hardy isn’t able to compete in the match, but he sprints to the ring just seconds after Edge to lay people out. He looked healthy enough to me. And why is Edge back with Vickie? Hopefully we’ll learn more of where they’re going to go with this on Smackdown this week.

- Main event time was next and if you thought Cena wasn’t taking the title you surely can’t have seen what has seemed like hours of Cena promo videos on WWE programming these past few weeks. I said last night that Cena didn’t look at 100% to me and looked quite limited in terms of what he could do. I’ve not watched the match again yet but I’m standing by that. I know they had a storyline going with it, but for me, Cena’s work wasn’t quite there – and I’m a big fan of his.

The title changed was expected though, although I think they’ve made a mistake by putting the belt on him so soon. Time will tell, however, and we’ll see where we go from here over the next few weeks on Raw.

Overall, the 2008 Survivor Series was a huge disappointment.

Phil Lowe
phil@ifight365.com