Aside from that, the Kane/Khali match, the Hollywood ass-kissing and the criminally short amount of time given to the only ECW match on the card, SummerSlam was well worth the money shelled out for it. Let's start from the top, Rey Mysterio and Dolph Ziggler. They participated in what I called a MOTY-candidate match on Smackdown, the six-man with Cryme Tyme and JeriShow, and then days later, they went and topped it. The match brought the house down and had me marking out at several different occasions, mostly due to Ziggler. He had a sick dropkick counter to a springboard into the ring and a nice stiff running Rocker Dropper on Mysterio, although the rana ReyRey used to get the finish was pretty sweet too. Mysterio isn't the king of the ranas for nothing.
MVP and Swagger went on next, and while the match was shortish, it was good. It was the win that MVP needed to take the next step, but the biggest starmaking point for this was pre-match, when Porter cut the promo of his life. Seriously, I felt chills hearing him cut that. Is there a reason why he's still paying dues and not in a program with Orton right now?
The tag matches were good to great. The Unified Tag Title match was notable mainly for the revamped theme for the Champs and for the finish, where Show KTFO'd JTG and allowed Jericho to get the pin. Good, standard fare. Meanwhile, the DX/Legacy match was an absolute show-stealer, competing with Ziggler/Mysterio for match of the night. It almost had to be though, as DX's unfunny and tired antics were putting a slight damper on things. Their entrance was overboard, but hey, I guess the crowd loved it. Still, I have to give it up to Triple H here. Even though his team got the win, he and Michaels made Legacy look like a million bucks, like a true threat. The match showed that, and I think when Legacy makes their run at the tag titles, people will take them more seriously now.
Finally, onto the show closer... wow. That was what a TLC match should be. It was insane spot after sick bump after awesome move for a straight 20 minutes. Punk and Hardy brought their A-games, and although I wasn't surprised at the big Swanton off the ladder through the ECW announce table, I was still awed by it. I liked how it segued into the finish as well, with Hardy in his last WWE match for the time being fighting out of the stretcher and making one last gasp. If they had ended the PPV with Punk standing victorious over a fallen Hardy, it would have been awesome, but the way they reintroduced the Undertaker in that spot was phenomenal. You had to send the crowd home happy, and that's how you went about doing it especially if your two heel Champions were going to retain.
This felt like a big show. Even though the build was lacking in some departments, I felt like the WWE delivered on giving the paying audience a satisfying viewing experience, and even though it didn't have the fake pomp that they give to WrestleMania, it felt like a huge event. I felt the way I felt watching it back in 1992, when WWF PPVs had that mystique around them, which is a feat given the way the game has changed over that period of 17 years. I'll give it three-and-a-half stars out of five, and I think if you didn't order it this time around that it's definitely worth buying on either the replay or on DVD.
