wrestling / Video Reviews
Dark Pegasus Video Review: WrestleMania XXVII
June 24, 2011 | Posted by
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| WrestleMania XXVII by J.D. Dunn Twitter.com/jddunn411 Facebook.com/jddunn411 So I guess this is Edge’s final match ever. Funny, when I first saw him hanging out in the crowd in the trenchcoat, I’d hoped he’d have a chance to be a dominant superstar, but it never occurred to me that he’d actually get that chance back in 1998. Del Rio gets a good shot in on the arm and goes to work on it for a while. Edge avoids a charge and hits a somersault plancha to turn the tide. Brodus Clay teases interference before backing off. What an odd-looking human being. He looks like Dinobot Snarl in robot mode. Back in, Edge hits a few shots, but Del Rio delivers a double-knee armbreaker. Edge counters the rolling cross armbreaker for two, but Del Rio grabs it moments later. Edge makes the ropes. Edge goes up but gets enzuigiried off for two. Christian fights off Rodriguez and Special Clay after some interference. That leads to Edge missing a spear and getting caught in the cross armlock. Edge counters to the Edgecator as Christian takes out Clay with a Tornado DDT on the floor. Del Rio rolls through the hold but gets speared at 11:08. Not exactly epic or anything, but it was a serviceable enough title match. Little things like Edge using technical skill to block the armlock and then countering his counters helped lift this beyond average. **3/4 Rey inadvertently smashed Cody’s face with his kneebrace during a 619, causing the pretty boy to become hideous and depressed. Rey’s superhero motif this year: Captain America. Come to think of it, Cody does resemble Winter Soldier a little. This is a pretty solid little match highlighted by Cody’s delayed superplex. He even has a small-but-vocal following in the crowd. Maybe residual Dusty love? Cody counters the 619 to a catapult into the bottom rope. Cody’s mask gets knocked off in the fracas, and Rey hits the 619. It’s like Brutus Beefcake all over again. Rey dons Cody’s mask and hits a series of running headbutts. Nice! A diving headbutt gets two. Cody’s support is growing at this point. He rips off Rey’s kneebrace and blocks a tope with it. That leads to CrossRhodes at 11:58. Cody may have latched onto something here as it looks like the crowds are getting into him, something I wouldn’t have thought possible a year ago. Rey really seems to turn it up from WrestleMania through June, and this was no exception. Loved the booking around the mask and kneebrace, and it was nice that they paid that off. *** Ayn Rand would be so pissed at the Corre’s ethos. We barely have time to get into the match before everyone hits their signature maneuvers. The Cobra on Heath Slater sets up the Big Sleep from the Big Show. A black hole opens up under Slater’s feet. He dives in. It has no bottom. Corre gets jobbed out at 1:32. Barely a match. 1/2* Even the opening video package shows that there is no real good guy in this feud. I like it. Orton isn’t Superman. Cena is Superman. Orton is Batman – a disturbed sociopath residing in his cave, haunted by demons in his head. Now that I think about it, Punk is not all that different from the Joker, the tyrant who thinks he’s a libertarian. Plus, both Joker and Punk’s hired goons tend to suck. Good start as Orton kicks the crap out of Punk only to have the resourceful Punk kick the steps into his knee. Punk goes right after the knee, always keeping the sick and twisted character up. Punk calls for the Go2Sleep early, but Orton slips out and goes for the RKO. Punk counters with a roundhouse kick. NICE! ONE, TWO, THR-NO! A flying crossbody gets two. Orton crotches Punk on a second attempt, though, and superplexes him. That’s not the way your daddy used to do it. Punk wraps Orton’s leg on the post and applies the ringpost figure-four. Back in, Punk continues the punishment with the side-Indian Deathlock. Orton fires back with a Thesz Press and an Angleslam (::chuckle::). Punk SWEEPS THE LEG and locks in the Anaconda Vice. Orton makes the ropes, though, and drops Punk with a rope-assisted DDT. Orton sets up for the punt to the head, but his ankle gives way and he collapses. He does strike with an RKO attempt, but Punk shoves him away and dives to the apron. Punk measures Orton and springboards… right into an RKO. Orton snatches victory out of the jaws of defeat at 13:45. Good psychology all around, with Punk driving most of the action and storyline of the match. Orton seems to be having trouble finding a niche as a babyface because the writers don’t understand the concept of the rogue babyface (see Austin, Steve). Best match of the night so far. ***1/2 Jim Ross and Booker T replace the participants on commentary. I find it mildly ironic that Cole’s heel act started as an attempt to get Daniel Bryan over, but here it is a year later and Bryan is getting bumped from the show while Cole is a “main eventer.” Lawler quickly dispatches Jack Swagger – the guy they were pushing as a world champion a year ago – and confronts Cole, who is hiding in the Fortress of Wussitude. Cole offers an olive branch, but Lawler isn’t having it and yanks his head into the partition. Swagger jumps Lawler from behind, though, and puts him in the anklelock. Cole goes after the leg in histrionic fashion. He even busts out a low-level pump-splash in the corner. DOWN COME THE STRAPS! THE AN-COLE-LOCK! Lawler rolls over and pushes him away. He stomps a mudhole, so Swagger throws in the towel. Austin ignores it, so Swagger gets in his face. STUNNER! Huge pop for that. Cole gets up and goes off on Austin, so Austin spins him around into a Lawler haymaker. Fistdrop, but Lawler pulls him up at two. Anklelock, and Cole taps. Austin makes absolutely, positively sure that Cole wants to submit before signaling for the submission at 11:11. Rather long, especially considering what’s to come. * Ten years later, and they decide to do it again. The knockoff of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” isn’t nearly as cool as the original. HHH appears briefly as King Leonidas before coming out as himself. That’s cooler than the throne thing. No Johnny Cash for Taker on the DVD. They take it to the floor right away, and HHH tackles Taker through the Cole Mine. That just pisses Taker off, and they slug it out. Taker goes up early but gets dragged off. Ross starts scribbling an epitaph for the streak as Hunter whips Taker into the barricade. Hunter takes him up to the top of the table for the Pedigree, but Taker backdrops him to the floor. Sickening. It is at this point that I begin to feel like I walked in on the last third of an hour-long match. That leads to the over-the-top tope. That leads to some laying around. Taker charges on the floor but gets spinebustered through the table. Back in, Triple H mounts Taker in the corner and nearly gets the Last Ride. Taker gives him Snake Eyes instead, but Hunter counters the big boot to a spinebuster. Taker grabs a chair and goes to town, but Hunter breaks it up with the Pedigree! ONE, TWO, TH-NO! Hunter mounts him again, but Taker hits the Last Ride this time. ONE, TWO, THR-NO! Tombstone! ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! He goes for another, but Hunter slips out and DDTs him on the chair. They take a full minute to stagger up. PEDIGREE! ONE, TWO, THR-NO! And another. ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! Hunter grabs the chair and goes to town on him like Austin ’01. And there’s one to the head. Taker struggles to his knees, and Hunter yells for him to stay down. Hunter does the throat-slit gesture and delivers the Tombstone. ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! Hunter is spooked. He goes out and gets his sledgehammer, but he hesitates long enough to give a sermon. Taker drags him down into the Death Rattle. Hunter struggles and grabs his sledgehammer, but he drops it and has to tap at 29:21. Although it’s by no means on the level of the Shawn Michaels matches, this one has been unfairly maligned by a lot of people. That’s like blaming Derrick Rose for not being Michael Jordan. Hell, Michael Jordan couldn’t even live up to Michael Jordan when he was with the Wizards. The main problem with the match is what I said about mid-way through the recap: They wrestled the last half of a sixty-minute match, which means they didn’t have the benefit of building up. Six minutes in, they were destroying the set and trying to recover between big spots. For these two – and probably only these two – that makes sense, though. ***3/4 They got some balls booking Snooki as a babyface. You don’t want to insult the intellectual integrity of wrestling fans, after all. Trish looks might good, though. Lawler jokes with Ross that “anything that would happen to your face would be an improvement.” Yikes. I know it’s a standard line, but probably not the guy you want to say that to. Trish takes on both members of LayCool, which is probably a good idea. Trish hits the Chick Kick at one point. Holy Shit! She does kinda look like Mickie now. I was kind of hoping she’d bust out the fingerbang & lick move on Layla, but it was not to be. Morrison wipes out Ziggler with Starship Pain, and that allows Snooki to hit a handspring back elbow on McCool. Her handspring splash leaves a lot to be desired, but it gets the pin at 3:15. Was this really worth getting pissed off over? For Morrison or anyone else? It’s the equivalent Tony Stark’s cameo in the Hulk. 1/2* Okay, I’ve caught up on some of the 2011 Raws, and we’re all in agreement that Riley has a homosexual fixation on Miz, yes? I don’t mean that in a “Haha, all wrestlers are homos” way. I mean that’s the subtext I’m supposed to get. If they could do it with Mickie and Trish, there’s no reason they couldn’t do it with Riley and Miz. Cena gets an epic entrance, far more extravagant than Miz. I know what you’re saying, “Well, Cena is the star. He’s the draw. Miz is just the champion.” *There* it is! Miz suckerpunches Cena early and hits a corner clothesline. Miz tries a clothesline but gets side slammed. Hey, isn’t that Mason Ryan’s finisher? A second corner clothesline misses, and Cena hits the Civilian Slice for two. Miz pummels him for a while, and Cena trips over him on a dropdown spot. Actually, I wish that would happen more because that’s supposed to be the point of dropping down in front of someone. It’s just become so routine that we expect the victim to avoid it. Cena gets fired up, but Miz is one step ahead of him. Riley trips up Cena from the outside, leading to the Skull-Crushing Finale for two. The ref gets bumped right before the Attitude Adjustment. Oh, darn Cena’s luck. Okay, I get stacking the deck against Cena to make it look like it’s not a foregone conclusion, but this is getting a little ridiculous. Riley sneaks in and knocks Cena silly with the briefcase. That gets two. Miz tries to use the briefcase and takes out Riley. Oops. ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT! ONE, TWO, THR-NO! Apparently, Miz has the power to kick out of that now. To the floor, Cena gets a half All-Japanish clothesline that sends Miz into the crowd. That’s enough for a double countout at 14:42. No one is impressed with that, least of all the Rock. Rock restarts the match, and Cena goes for the AA immediately. ROCK BOTTOM ON CENA! Miz crawls over and gets the pin at 19:40. Okay, I get that you can’t settle things on TV because we have to buy the PPV. And I get that you can’t settle things on PPV because we have to buy the *next* PPV. But now they’re using WrestleMania as a precursor to… the next WrestleMania. Tune in next year if you want to see the exciting conclusion? That’s a bit much to ask, and they’ve already written Miz, the winner here, out of that story. The match had a decent story going on before the clothesline. The idea was that Cena could beat Miz on his worst day, but Miz got in a lucky shot early on, rendering Cena helpless – Ross and Lawler note his lethargy several times. If they had just gone with that, it would have been okay, but they had to set up next year’s show with the Rock nonsense. It’s one thing to build on the past as they did from Shawn vs. Flair to Shawn vs. Taker I & II, to Taker vs. HHH. Those were all self-contained. This was sacrificing the main event of your show to build to something a year away that people will probably be sick of by the time you’re done with it. **1/4 |
The 411: Sometimes you have to finish strong, and this did anything but. If the main event had anything like main event quality, Rhodes/Mysterio, Punk/Orton and Taker/HHH would have been enough to recommend the show, but there was way too much crap on here, and in important places like, oh, I don't know – the main event of the biggest show of the year. Mild thumbs down. |
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| Final Score:  6.0   [ Average ]  legend |
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