After the great episode last week where Jeff Hardy was rehabbed successfully in beating The Undertaker and creating a new darker side to his personality, it was now time to see if this could be sustained or if the WWE would blow it after week one.

We start with a tag team interpromotional match as R-Truth and Matt Hardy beat Shelton Benjamin and Mark Henry. Matt was carrying the knee injury he suffered the night before this was taped, which meant Truth did a lot of the ring work, and got the pin beating Shelton with an ax-kick. That looks shit and his corkscrew elbow looks awesome, so I think that move needs to be his finisher from now on. I’m not a fan of Shelton and R-Truth, a feud WWE think so little of that it was just a dark match at Cyber Sunday, continuing. Although maybe they wanted a “less prestigious bout” to be pre-taped incase they booked the show to end early or something.

Some girl interviews HHH who makes jokes about staring at her tits.

Miz and Morrison confront Festus and Maria backstage, and Morrison tells some home-truths about her wwe.com photos. Yes it is amazing what airbrushing can do. Looking at Maria today and looking at her looking a million times hotter only 2 or 3 years ago it’s amazing it’s the same woman.

Miz and Morrison beat Jesse and Festus. If you’re just reading spoilers you’d think it was criminal that this match only got three minutes (did I just hear you say…) but watching how they did it, it actually worked and fit the characters of all involved. After Festus dominated early, Morrison ducked outside and rang the bell, which sets off Simple Festus as you know, so Miz hit him with the Reality Check neckbreaker for the win.

Triple H lost to Jeff Hardy in a really good long match, if a little heatless due to it being the second show taped that same night. It follows the same formula as Hardy’s matches with HHH in the past in that he’ll take the fight to HHH, but make mistakes and HHH will take charge, but Hardy will fight back and hit some big move to turn the tide back his way. Really for the first time since The Rock, HHH has found somebody that he has unbelievable chemistry with and doesn’t go over the top with things like his Michaels matches sometimes did, and he isn’t trying to Bigfoot him so it seems. I could watch these two wrestle forever, and I think if HHH turns heel this is a match that could main event WrestleMania from the SmackDown side. Kozlov ran down for the distraction, so Hardy took him down with a tope, then when he got back in he surprised HHH with a rollup for the win, changing the Survivor Series WWE Title match to a Triple Threat.

EDIT: No sooner had I wrote this than I got a text from Phil Lowe telling me to go on wwe.com, where the headline story is that Hardy was found unconscious in his hotel this morning. Lets hope that story doesn’t take a turn for the worse later today.

The Brian Kendrick knocks some backstage crew guy’s coffee out of his hand.

Kendrick and Ezekiel beat The Colons in a non-title match. For two teams given four minutes, they really packed a lot in, but Carlito and Primo losing cleanly doesn’t really do much for your babyface tag team champions.

UK jobber James Mason beat MVP when The Great Khali distracted him in a short match much the same as last week. Keep in mind the live crowd had been watching wreslting for around three and a half hours at this point, and they were dead and it’s no wonder when you get bland local jobber v. guy who loses all the time.

The Bella Twins beat Victoria and Natalya doing a twin switch behind the referee’s back. I love that old heel tag team tricks which I still mark out for today are now babyface moves.

The show continued falling off the cliff they’d been sliding down ever since Hardy/HHH ended, again pointing out the ridiculousness of not having that close the show. Instead the show – and the FOUR HOUR TV TAPING – ended with The Undertaker reading Big Show his Last Rites. Show interrupted to say he’s not scared. The lights went out, and when they come back on, Vickie Guerrero is in the ring and Undertaker grabs her by the throat and drops her into the casket. Big Show threw Chavo in the ring, distracting Taker long enough to lift Vickie out of the casket, and so Taker tombstones Chavo and puts him in the casket instead.

Up to and including the HHH-Hardy match I really enjoyed this show, but everything after that sucked. The final segment did NOTHING to make me want to buy the PPV, so from that standpoint, you have to say the go-home show was a failure.

Mark Bright
mark@ifight365.com