WWE No Way Out Review 2009

With two Elimination Chamber matches and a well built Shane McMahon / Randy Orton match I was looking forward to No Way Out especially as this was one of the few PPV’s we get for free in the UK.

Good Points

A major push for Edge

After being the top draw on Smackdown for some time WWE furthered his gimmick of being the Ultimate Opportunist when after he lost the Smackdown Chamber interjecting himself in the Raw Chamber match and winning the title in a move reminiscent of when Jericho interjected himself in to the title scramble match many moons ago.

HHH back on top

It is great to see HHH back as champ. Hopefully they give him a long run with the title. After a few years of losing Mania main events it will be interesting to see if he can go in to Mania as champ and leave as champ although if Orton decides to challenge HHH it could be a short reign.

JBL / HBK storyline over

Was glad to see this storyline put to bed with HBK getting the win and I the process getting himself out of his contract with JBL hopefully this will free him up to have a good feud for Wrestlemania.

Bad Points

Orton pushed to the side

After winning the Rumble and his feud with Shane McMahon which built to their match at No Way out I thought his win was very much overshadowed by everything else going on and their match didn’t deliver on the build. Shane didn’t do any bumps better than what he has done in the past and I didn’t feel the intensity which this match needed was there.

Too many last minute changes

Now the odd last minute spontaneous change is good as it adds to the unpredictability factor but it just seems to becoming too commonplace and making the show hard to follow and hard to predict. A good swerve is when you don’t predict it is going to happen but when you look back on it you are kicking yourself for not seeing it coming.

Overall

A wild and entertaining night by the WWE but by having an Elimination Chamber match as the first match out it rather killed the next hour or so of matches before the other chamber match.

WWE Smackdown Review - Friday 13th February 2009

After Raw’s limp effort earlier in the week and with the poor use of Christian in his return on ECW this week I was hoping that Smackdown could do something to get me excited for No Way Out.

Good Points

Push for the chamber

Was great to see a whole show geared around the Elimination Chamber something that Raw should have been doing this week. The show started with Edge talking about the chamber and then Big Show telling him he wasn’t going to walk out of it with the title. Then we had HHH doing a backstage interview talking about his experience in chamber matches and the show ended with a Fatal Four Way featuring four of the combatants in the Smackdown Elimination Chamber which ended with Edge getting involved and causing the match to be thrown out.

Good Jeff Hardy promo

Was great to see Jeff back in the ring giving a promo verbalising what has been happening lately. He sent an emphatic message to Matt and the entire audience that he will be winning his title back.

Bad Points

No Matt Hardy

With the return of Jeff it would have been great to see Matt somewhere on the show to build that storyline. Also I would have put in the chamber with Jeff so they could have teased what their in ring feud may be like but not throw it away too quickly as there are so many other people in there.

No lower card match

Now I loved the time that was given to the chamber but there were three matches on the show which had no bearing on No Way Out. I think Smackdown could have done with having one undercard match as they have built a nice programme with Shelton Benjamin, Chavo Guerrero and MVP or another match could have been Carlito and Primo against Miz and Morrison so there were options there.

Overall

Best show of the week for WWE by far and it has got me excited for their chamber match as I could actually see Edge losing his title but on the Raw chamber I don’t think Cena is any danger of losing his belt.

WWE Raw Review - Monday 9th February 2009

With one week to go before No Way Out it was time for the WWE to put the finishing touches to feuds and matches which they have only had a few weeks to build since the Rumble.

Good Points

The Return of Ric Flair

WWE did a great job of developing the Jericho vs. Mickey Rourke match for Mania with Ric Flair and Jericho having a war of words on the mic to kick off the show. Jericho delivered a great speech to Flair about how over the last year he has prostituted his name like the character Rourke plays in the Wrestler. Adding Flair to the mix adds a great new dimension to the storyline which I can’t wait to see unfold however I will go on to talk about this segment in a bad light later.

A great end

Shane McMahon delivered a great end to Raw as he did one of his famous Van Terminators on Ted DiBiase. It has been a while since we have seen Shane do something death defying like he use to do and hopefully this is just a taste of what is to come this weekend.

Bad Points

No Push for The Chamber

Again there was little mention of it but the booking team had a great idea of putting all the competitors from the chamber in to a six man tag of faces against heels. However it was ruined by giving it no build and having it in the middle of the show. A match like that should be the main event and should have ended in a no contest with everyone pairing off in to their feuds they have going so Cena with Jericho, Mike Knox with Rey and so on.

Bad points about the good points

WWE should have saved the Jericho and Flair segment until after No Way Out there was no point giving time to a feud Jericho will be involved in after No Way Out when he already has a match for No Way Out. The ending was great but during the whole show we had no Shane and only one segment with Stephanie so overall there was little to build the Orton / McMahon match.

Overall

I know you don’t want hype the PPV before the big one too much but if you cut out the little things they could have a solid build. I don’t think anyone cares about The Chamber match and I am unsure to which match they will have as the last match because I have a feeling they may put Orton / Shane last the way they are promoting it when it should always be a title fight that ends the night.

ts

WWE Raw Review - 2nd February 2009

Now with only two weeks to go until No Way Out the last PPV before Mania the storylines are really starting to hot up. What was going to happen between Shane McMahon and Randy Orton, what would Jericho have to say about Rourke and what would JBL do with his employee after not qualifying for the Elimination Chamber.

Good Points

Shane vs Orton signed for No Way Out

It was obvious these two were going to get it on at No Way Out but it was great to see it made official and that it would be in a no disqualification match. Shane got the upper hand originally as he beat on Legacy with a kendo stick only to be ambushed later in the evening by Legacy which ended with Shane having to protect his sister Steph and receiving an Orton punt to the ribs. I’m really loving the heat they are building in this storyline.

A fight for it all at No Way Out

JBL has offered HBK a chance out of his contract with him if HBK beats him at No Way Out but if JBL wins it means he owns HBK for life. I am looking forward to the non title matches more than the Elimination Chamber matches at No Way Out, this should be another excellent match.

Jericho doing a work / shoot

Jericho got on the mic this week to vent the feelings that many people have in real life about wrestlers who can’t step away from wrestling which tied in nicely with the film The Wrestler. It came across well as it felt real and this storyline will give the chance for hall of famers like Flair to come back in which should make or a great build to Mania.

Bad Points

No build for the Chamber matches

There was no storyline build for the Chamber this week. A couple of guys had matches and a couple of guys got put in the match but nobody came out and made a mention of the match. I think the Chamber matches are just going to turn in to throwaway matches which were just used to add something special to No Way Out.

Not much time for Cena

Again this week Cena had the main event but only had one segement before it which was backstage and to interrupt Jericho when he was talking about storyline that Cena is nothing to do with. I have never seen a fit champion get used this sparingly on a show ever.

Overall

If WWE just invested a little bit more time in Cena and the Chamber then it would have been an awesome show.

Raw Review - Monday 18th February 2008

Now as I didn’t want to stay up until 4am to watch Raw live on Sky Sports and as I forgot to set the Sky+ I had to wait until Thursday to watch the fall out from No Way Out.

Now the show in itself was a tight solid show that did what it needed to do but from an entertainment standpoint I didn’t rate it too highly. The important thing was for the show to set the wheels in motion for Wrestlemania which it did but could have been handled a lot better.

One thing to note was the lack of backstage segments in the show with only little bits like Rey Mysertio in the locker rooms with Floyd Mayweather shown with the majority of the action happening in the ring. This is great for the fans in the arena live but from a televisual perspective didn’t make for the most entertaining two hours as it is the skits, vignettes, promos etc that happen behind the curtain or outside of the arena which for me help to build the storyline and character and are thus a very important part of the show.

Lots of things I predicted happened not that you had to be a genius to figure them out. As soon as the show started and Regal announced that John Cena would be facing Randy Orton later on in the night you knew he would win to make it a triple threat for the title at Mania. You knew Floyd Mayweather and Big Show would set up a match for Mania and you knew when Michaels came out to inform everyone of Flair’s Hall of Fame induction that they were building something between them.

Now yes characters and storylines have to make sense and the fans need to be able to follow them, this is how you get viewers tuning back in next week but you need a bit of unpredictability. Yes the Vince Russo era of WCW may have gone too far the other way but when done right the unpredictability factor can make an ok show great. It wasn’t what they set up for Mania which annoyed me but the actual results of the matches on Raw which a three year old could have predicted.

Jeff Hardy beat Snitsky and Kennedy beat Val Venis both winning places in the ‘Money in the Bank’ match at Mania. Now after the push they have been giving Hardy they weren’t going to have him lose and Kennedy wasn’t going to lose to someone who is hardly ever on Raw. If this wasn’t enough Maria had her Playboy shoot at stake if she lost to Beth Phoenix so you knew Maria wasn’t going to lose and you knew newcomer Paul Birchall wasn’t going to lose to Super Crazy as they are currently building his character.

Ok Snitsky isn’t the best wrestler in the world and doesn’t have the best mic skills but to have him beaten by a banged up Jeff Hardy and to book him like they have been doing makes no sense as for him to be able to help build other wrestlers fans have to think that Snitsky has a chance of beating them which they won’t if he is forever booked to lose.

Looking at the first two confirmed competitors for ‘Money in the Bank’ I would like Jeff Hardy to win. He has been on a monster push recently and I think giving Jeff the title shot would be great. With it he could move to Smackdown and could have a great programme with Edge because of the history between his brother Matt and Edge he could get him involved and the storyline would make sense. Also giving him some time as the champion on Smackdown would be a good test for him to see if he could ever be a full time Raw Main Eventer like Cena, Orton and HHH. On the other hand it makes no sense for Kennedy to win it as it will just prove his career is going round in circles. Yes I think he deserves a major title push and he never really got the chance to enjoy his win last year and use his title shot properly but having him win it again I think would be boring and lazy booking.

Now on to my gripe with how they are treating Paul Burchill and Katie Lea. The fans can’t buy in to the storyline or the characters as they are trying to get over a creative storyline but aren’t given any time to do it. They came on to Raw with no build up and without the fans given any warning. The first they knew about them was when the ring announcer announced them no the way to the ring last week. Now last week they were allowed to cut an in ring promo and this week they had a taped promo which played during their match so the fans in the arena were dead. If they are going to give Burchill and Lea five to ten minutes a week on Raw they need to invest some thought and time in to getting them and their storyline across.

So all in all they did the important things right but the WWE need to do more to entertain us.

No Way Out – The Aftermath

We are now definitely on the road to Wrestlemania after a wild and exciting No Way Out PPV from Las Vegas last night.

If you read my preview before you watched the show you wouldn’t have been shocked by many of the results but there was an awesome little surprise in there and some well executed matches and storylines over the course of the longest running (time duration of show from start to finish) PPV outside of the big four for some time.

So as I thought may happen it now looks almost certain that we are going to see a three way for the title at Wrestlemania with Randy Orton keeping hold of his title and HHH winning the Elimination Chamber. This also means that at last we have a heel defending the title against a face at a Wrestlemania after a couple of years of Cena defending. The good thing with HHH is that even though he is a fan favourite he doesn’t have the face characteristics like Cena so we have three strong and different characters going in to it.

Now the chamber matches were for number one contenders spots but they didn’t mention if they were title shots for Raw or Smackdown or if it was like winning the Rumble when the winner can choose which title to go after. But with what they have building on the Raw side I don’t see HHH switching to face Edge or Undertaker switching to face Orton.

The RAW chamber wasn’t just good for HHH as although no sensible person would think Hardy was ever going to headline Wrestlemania they managed to build him to the point some fans thought he was going to win so that will stand him in good stead for the long term. It also now frees Michaels up to retire Flair at Mania and Chris Jericho to continue his feud with JBL. The only problem with this is that it could mean that we have to see a Hardy / Umaga storyline again which wasn’t the best first time round.

The WWE are now trying to do anything to build Randy Orton as a heel and to try and get people to cheer for Cena. To keep hold of his belt Orton hit the ref to get himself disqualified and the one thing that fans hate more than anything is a cheap finish to a match especially a title fight at a main event. This is what is referred to as cheap heat and to me is lazy booking but like I say at the moment the WWE will do anything to get people on Cena’s side.

As predicted the Smackdown chamber match was on early and was nothing to write home about. Good to see Undertaker going over as I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing him against Edge at Wrestlemania, the only thing is where does this leave Batista?

As predicted Edge went over easy against Rey Mysterio but this was helped by the fact that Rey got injured at a live show a few days prior to the event. Although the match was short and predictable what happened after the match is what everyone is going to be talking about today and watching on YouTube.

After the Edge / Rey Mysterio match the Big Show made his return to the WWE which if you read all the internet forums you would have known that he resigned with the company some weeks ago and if they wanted to involv him in Mania they had to do something with him tonight and do something they did.

Now Mania has been in the past famed for its use of celebrities like Donald Trump and Pamela Anderson well last night we found out which celebrity was going to be making an impact this Wrestlemania and in a move reminiscent of Wrestlemania 14 in 1998 when Mike Tyson got involved the WWE delivered again with boxing champion Floyd Mayweather.

Floyd was in the front row to support Rey Mysterio and after the Big Show beat on the beaten and injured Mysterio Floyd and his entourage jumped the ring. Now all you wrestling geeks will know that the Big Show left the WWE to pursue a career in boxing which didn’t happen for him. So after a stand off Big Show knelt down in front of Floyd so that he was on his level and Floyd delivered four vicious shots to Big Show looking to have broken his nose to be then chased through the crowd by an angry and bloody Big Show who was stopped by Shane McMahon.

Now the storylines and angles that seem to get fans attention are those yjay the fans can’t tell if what is happening is real or not (like the Edge / Matt Hardy feud of 2005) which this angle did brilliantly. Some people think Floyd wasn’t suppose to go that far with his punches but I think it was a well orchestrated idea by the WWE to get fans talking and to get a heated feud between the two. Look for there to be some sort of boxing match between the pair at Wrestlemania.

No Way Out was a great example of why WWE are head and shoulders above TNA at the moment is because of the A-List stars they can get to work with them and the way that they can get even non wrestling fans and the international press talking about what happened on their show.

No Way Out

Luckily for us wrestling fans in the UK No Way Out is one of the last remaining free PPV events we get with our Sky Sports Subscription. No Way Out is the last PPV before Wrestlemania and is usually where any major storyline changes or developments happen which will affect the ‘Grand Daddy of them All.’

The event is set to make history as for the first time ever we have two elimination chamber matches on one PPV. Like how they use to do it with the elimination matches at Survivor Series they will have one Raw and one Smackdown Chamber match.

Because Vince always pushes his Raw brand ahead of Smackdown I am not looking forward to this idea. I think it is just a gimmick to get people to buy the PPV in America and I don’t think we are going to see two great Elimination Chamber matches. I think either the Smackdown Chamber will be booked in such a way as to not upstage the Raw Chamber match or in another scenario they will both be equally ok as to not have one upstage the other.

The problem by having these two Elimination Chamber matches is that there won’t be many other matches as the matches take up so much talent and because none of these are title matches they will take away from the title matches that are also booked on the card.

The reason I think they are doing two chamber matches is because John Cena isn’t ready and fit to carry the weight of headlining a PPV which isn’t one of the big four. With only five to ten minutes of actual wrestling on live TV since the Royal Rumble I don’t see the match going long or being a five star match although many fans would argue when has John Cena ever had a five star match. When Raw went off TV this week we were left with Jeff Hardy beating Shawn Michaels trying to get the fans to believe that he could win this Sunday so the creative team are pushing the chamber above the title match which is a rarity.

Now like I say the whole point of No Way Out is to build for Wrestlemania. For the last two years John Cena has been defending the championship at Wrestlemania where it is widely known that PPVs that draw best with the fans is those that are headlined by a face going against a heel champion. Usually I wouldn’t be surprised to see Randy Orton go over to build a rematch for Wrestlemania but as the winner of the Elimination Chamber is suppose to be getting the title match at Wrestlemania I think John Cena will get the win as there will have been no point in bringing him back to lose, this is of course unless they are going to do an angle on Raw where John Cena goes against the winner of one of the Elimination Chamber matches with the winner of the match getting the shot at the title at Wrestlemania. If this doesn’t happen then the WWE could always turn the title match in to a three way which they have in the past.

On the Smackdown side of the card Edge is defending his title against Rey Mysterio. They have built an interesting if maybe distasteful storyline with Vickie Guerrero and Edge but it has made for good TV. With the amount of time invested in Edge since his comeback and the fact that Rey is not long back from surgery and has already headlined a Wrestlemania I think Edge will be going in to the big one as champion.

The other match of note on the card is Ken Kennedy against Ric Flair in the ongoing if Ric loses a match he is retired storyline. It is obvious that Ric is going to survive until Wrestlemania where he will eventually be retired. Kennedy was rumoured to be the man that was going to get the torch passed to him and the rub of being the one to retire Ric but I don’t seem them doing this match again at Mania. The other rumoured guy to be the one to retire is Shawn Michaels but I think it makes sense for Randy Orton to be the one to do it to solidify his character as the Legend Killer. Ok it would take him out of the main event storyline but in the short term but I think in the long term it would do wonders for his character.

So now on to who I think will win the Elimination Chamber matches.

Raw – WWE are pushing Jeff Hardy hard with his face featuring on the event poster, the title match at Royal Rumble and winning the main event on the last Raw before the PPV but personally I don’t think he is Wrestlemania headliner material. I know he has a lot of supporters and fans backstage though so I wouldn’t rule him completely out. Umaga and Shawn Michaels were in two of the top matches last year and both have seemed on a downwards slide since so I don’t see either of them winning it nor John Bradshaw Layfield who has only just returned to active competition. I would love to see Chris Jericho win it as he hasn’t done much since his return but I think after not featuring in the main event last year at Mania and having not won a Mania main event since Wrestlemania 18 I think it his turn to return to the top.

Smackdown – Smackdown is a bit more obvious to call with three guys those being Finlay, MVP and big Daddy V not having any main event experience on WWE PPV’s I don’t see them being trusted with the ball in a Wrestlemania main event. The Great Kahli’s run with the belt was appalling so now that leaves just undertaker and Batista. These two had more main event matches than hot dinners last year although Undertaker’s title run was cut short through injury last year so they could put him back in the Mania main event but personally I think Batista will get the nod in this one although I would like to see Edge and Undertaker.

The Raw before No Way Out wasn’t the best with Jeff Hardy main eventing where it should have been Cena or an ending which involved all the participants of the Elimination Chamber. On top of this you had Umaga turning on JBL which would have been better done in the Elimination Chamber match itself and not on the Raw before. Hopefully No way Out will make up for it by getting us excited for Wrestlemania.