Our next match is the next chapter of the Stunning Betrayal we started with the Royal Rumble: Jeff Hardy vs. Matt Hardy in an Extreme Rules match. As we recall, Matt cost Jeff the WWE Championship by interfering in his match with Edge and hitting Jeff with a chair. Also remember the lead-up of horrible accidents that kept befalling Jeff (such as his being run off the road, getting caught in a pyro explosion, and his house burning down), which was thought to be done by Edge. Of course, Matt was behind all of these too. His motivation is surprisingly sound for a wrestling storyline: they both started out together back in the nineties as a tag team, but Matt has had to live with the fact that his own singles career has failed to go as far as Jeff’s, in spite of the fact that Matt was the one who kept Jeff on the straight and narrow. Essentially, this culminates in a mass wave of jealousy and a sense of things simply not being fair. I’m pleased that this delves into more personal reasons than just having a heel turn for the sake of having a heel turn, as well as making it more than Matt just deciding to be evil for the sake of it: you can understand his thought process behind his actions, the pent up frustration, and essentially his child-like anger at, again, the fact that things aren’t fair. Of course, where everything falls general short is in the Hardys’ collective acting ability, which is minimal. Matt really sounds bland in his attempts to convey the psychological mess he’s in, which is standard with his usual promo skills. Also faultering is in the final build-up to the match: up until No Way Out, Matt is the one demanding a match with Jeff so that he can finally prove he’s the better brother (which makes sense, given where Matt is), but Jeff refuses, not wanting to fight his own kin. Now, if they had continued to build on Matt attacking Jeff to get what he wanted, this would be more compelling. Instead, it’s week after week of Matt saying “Fight me!” and Jeff saying “No” without anything changing or really happening. Finally, Jeff concedes, but it’s random in how it occurs: Matt is listing off his crimes against Jeff leading up to Wrestlemania, which he had been doing this whole time, and then out of the blue, Jeff decides his brother ought to be taught a lesson and attacks him. Nothing changes about the circumstance; Jeff just up and changes his mind with no real reason to do so.
Storyline aside, I am glad that this was made an Extreme Rules match, because it’s what both men do best: they take pops by doing something ridiculous, try and get jaw-dropping moments, and fall off things in lieu of having an actual wrestling match. And in spite of popular opinion, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that: there’s just as much science and design that goes into having a good hardcore match as there is in a technical wrestling match, and given that this is what both Hardys excel at, they’re allowed to put on the best kind of show they know how to do. I’d rather watch them work within their comfort zone and put their powers to their specialties than see them attempt to awkwardly wrestle when neither of them are really very good at it.
Matt comes out to the ring first, wearing a snazzy black bad guy coat. Considering how eager he was to get this match, he looks underwhelmed. I think that’s where Matt biggest failure as a heel comes from: he equates “heartless” with “emotionless” and loses all charisma in the process. You can be heartless and still have emotion. Just look at JBL. Jeff enters wearing an ugly design of facepaint and greasy hair. Sorry, fangirls, but I will never understand how anyone can swoon over hair like that. It’s just… ugh. The bell rings, and the crowd, like any other Hardy match, is oddly excited right from the get go. Matt starts things by jawing off at Jeff, though it’s hard to tell what he intends, because his face doesn’t change its expression once. Jeff slaps Matt, and then tackles him to the ground and punches him. If we can accept that Jeff is indeed suddenly brimming with unexplained rage, then this is indeed how the match should start, with Jeff simply looking to hurt Matt. They also get the Extreme stipulation started early by taking out a posterboard of Wrestlemania 25 from under the ring (why on Earth was that there?) and whacking Matt over the head with it. I doubt it does much, but it breaks in a very satisfying way. In essence, this sets the stage for what makes Hardy matches compelling in their own right: they keep up the speed, if not the technical skills, and litter it with spots of things either breaking or falling in order to get the crowd’s collective jaws dropping. If I’m more forgiving to Jeff in this match than I was in, say, his Royal Rumble match with Edge, it’s because the latter example was a wrestling match, which Jeff is not talented in and thus spent most of his time being carried by Edge and being largely ineffectual. This is an extreme match, where he can bust out all of the falling off of things he wants and still having it make sense within the stipulation, not to mention that’s he’s not obligated to go move-for-move with the opponent, but can settle for simply hitting him with things. It’s rather like my reasoning for being behind Cena’s brawling: you can do almost whatever you want in the ring so long as you know the timing and pacing of when to do it, and just as Cena knows when to hit the Miraculous Comeback, Jeff and Matt have a knack for when to hit people with things in a hardcore match, if not hit moves in a wrestling match.
Speaking of hitting with things, Jeff tosses Matt into the barricades around ringside, and then does a running jump off of the ring steps into his brother. There, see? Jeff can fall onto people in this kind of match, and it works. Play to your strengths. On that note, we take the fight back into the ring, Jeff sets up a chair, and does the same running jump thing as he tries to fall into Matt again. In a regular match, he can’t do that, because it would be tacky and tedious to use the same move twice in a row, and would only emphasize Jeff’s limited move set, but here, it adds to the Extreme stipulation and gives us the imagery of things crashing and burning. Jeff tries to fall on Matt for a third time, but Matt’s figured out that Jeff likes falling on him, and hits him with a chair in midair. Matt follows up by smacking Jeff with the chair, and then puts him in a standing stretch choke through the ropes before taking out what I believe to be one of the oddest things you’d keep under the ring: a vacuum cleaner. Seriously, why wouldn’t you just put that backstage where the rest of the cleaning supplies presumably are? Matt hits Jeff over the noggin with the vacuum, and odd as it might be, I think it works. One of the biggest things you have to do in a hardcore match is try and keep shaking things up to keep the audience gasping. Just hitting a guy with a chair over and over again gets old. But all you need to do is simply change the weapon (in this case, a vacuum) and even though the action of hitting someone with a foreign object is essentially the same, what matters is that it’s a /different/ foreign object, and it’s like something new has just occurred within the match. It’s like with a regular wrestling match: you /could/ just keep using a suplex with the intention of wearing the opponent down, but the audience would get bored of seeing that one move over and over, and thus you need different moves in order to keep interest. The effect is the same here.
Matt attempts a pin fall, gets a two count, and then hits a Side Effect on Jeff atop of the steel chair. I’ll say again that I love it when a match stipulation is played to, and that applies here. Hitting a regular Side Effect is fine and well, but hitting it on a steel chair is obviously better, and given that this is Extreme Rules, there’s no reason why it should /not/ be attempted on a steel chair. It shows that the stipulation matters to the action and how it pans out. Also in this line of thinking, Matt drags Jeff over to the ring post and then attempts a surfboard stretch, driving the post into Jeff’s back. Again, a regular surfboard stretch is fine, but one against a metal post is better. Of course, we’re all waiting for the tables, and Matt brings one out and sets it up at ringside, horizontally parallel to the ring. They tease a suplex from the apron onto the table, but Jeff falls on Matt instead. Jeff must be having so much fun, being able to do what he does best and having it work in the context of the match. Our next objects of fun from the ring are kendo stick and a crutch. Now, the crutch kind of makes sense, because if someone were to get injured in the ring, they’d have to be given something to assist them in exiting. Jeff thwacks Matt with his new weapons, which results in some nice noise and splintered wood, which adds to the aesthetics. A trash can is introduced, and Jeff sticks it over Matt’s head before hitting it with the crutch. I appreciate it when two or more items are used in a hardcore match, because it shows that the user is thinking “How do I keep building on the extreme and adding new things to the match?”
Matt awkwardly tries to attempt a false finish by hitting the Twist of Fate, which no one buys because it’s so slow and the culmination of events to this point doesn’t make you think that the match could possibly be over. However, Matt finally does something to earn boos by pantomiming a Swanton Bomb, and nothing gets cheap heat by pose stealing. Jeff stops him with a superplex, and then hits him with a chair on the head, causing Matt to roll out of the ring. Jeff notices the table is still there, and sets Matt atop it with the chair on his stomach, and for good measure, stacks another table on top of it. The set up for this is a bit slower than I’d like, since Matt is clearly in a state to move (he keeps twitching his leg and shifting, looking more groggy than knocked out). It doesn’t matter, because Jeff falls off the top turnbuckle through both tables and through Matt. You’ll notice that nearly every move that Jeff has used in this involves falling, and yet I’m not criticizing him for it as I usually do. That’s because the extreme rules stipulation allows him to fall off things in more than one way, so that each time it looks a little different, and as I’ve said before, variety is good, even if it’s essentially the same thing, and the use of props makes us think that the offensive effect of the same move is increasing. In a regular wrestling match, his falling off of things is more or less the same thing visually and in effect.
Matt is dragged into the ring, Jeff attempts a pin, but Matt gets his foot on the ring rope to stop the count. I’m still not certain how that works, when rope breaks are supposed to be disabled in an Extreme Rules match. Well, Jeff decides that he hasn’t had enough of falling off of things, and introduces a pair of ladders into the ring. He sets up both ladders symettrical to one another, and then leap frogs over one of them to try and fall on Matt. However, Matt, having been fallen on enough times in this match to know when one is coming, finally manages to roll out of the way, leaving Jeff to simply plant himself on the ground. One might wonder why falling on the ground without an opponent is more devastating than falling on the ground on top of an opponent, when you’re still falling from the same height and onto a hard surface, but that’s wrestling logic for you. Matt sticks Jeff’s head into the steel chair, hits the Twist of Fate, which would more or less kill Jeff if this were the real world, and gets the pin fall to win.
It might seem odd given my disposition on both Hardys, but this was a very good match, and for the very simple reason that it was the kind of match that both men can do. They know how to pick their spots, they know how to play to peril, they know how to use the extreme rules to their greatest effect, they know how to use their props in diverse, flashy ways, and they know when and how to get pops from the crowd in these situations. This is how they made a name for themselves, with their early ladder matches and various hardcore shenanigans, and it’s no surprise watching this match. The speed was constant, there were no dead moments, the use of the stipulation was maintained and emphasized throughout the whole thing, the use of props and weapons was various and interesting, and it was just a generally fun thing to watch. Now, I say this with the reminder that the reason this was so good was because it played to their strengths. Sadly, these strengths really, really don’t play well outside of extreme rules. Both Jeff and Matt still aren’t particularly good wrestlers or actors, and thus these compliments I have heaped upon them for this one match are not likely to be replicated in most of their resumes. I mean, take how Matt’s face looks after the match ends: he doesn’t look maniacal, triumphant, or pleased with having accomplished his goal: he looks, as usual, bland. Ah, well.
Speaking of bland, we see Randy Orton backstage in his locker room, apparently getting ready for his match, which will be taking place in about an hour and a half. Good lord, what is with this guy and his set-in-stone face? He’s facing the biggest match of his life against his arch-rival in the main event of Wrestlemania, and he has absolutely no expression. Is he determined? Angry? Frightened? Wondering if he left the coffee pot on back at home? Your guess is as good as mine.
Oddly coincidental, after another particularly good match involving ladders comes another major disappointment. Must be a jinx. We have a match for the Intercontinental Championship, between JBL (current champ) and Rey Mysterio. How, you ask, could an IC match between two of my favorites possibly be a disappointment? Well, for starters, let’s consider the fact the story leading up to this: it doesn’t exist. JBL, after losing Shawn Michaels as his indentured servant, was kind of left high and dry in the story department, as was Rey Mysterio, and it would be hard to have a Wrestlemania without two of the biggest stars in the company fighting for something. Thus, JBL had something of a random title match for the IC Championship against CM Punk on a Monday Night Raw leading into Wrestlemania, and won. This was disappointing in and of itself, because it really was just a title swap, and I always feel that the belt loses something of prestige when it just jumps around from waist to waist without a storyline, or without a reason for the viewer to care about the title change. So already, the thing begins as practically a write-off. Rey then becomes the #1 Contender for the IC Championship… and that’s about it. There’s no emotional development, no story, no reason why the characters care, other than the reason that it’s Wrestlemania and they have to be involved somehow. And when the characters involved don’t care, it’s hard for me too.
Second disappointment: it’s not really a match. JBL enters (noticeably without his limo), and brags to the Texas crowd about how they need him more than ever as Champion, given that none of their sports teams are successful, and the fact that they’re just general failures. You always have to admire a JBL heat-gain, because he puts so much effort into making himself absolutely despicable to the crowd. He promises the crowd that his victory will dominating, and that his performance tonight will be the stuff of legend. Now, I hope you were paying attention to that, boys and girls, because we’re about to hit with the Irony Stick. I’m sorry: I love wrestling and its clichés, but I tend to hate irony. It more or less spoils what’s going to happen next, and feels like the writers think that the fans can’t put two and two together on their own. Rey Mysterio enters, and as per usual his Wrestlemania super-hero outfits, he’s wearing an ensemble resembling Heath Ledger’s Joker. If there’s anything to be salvaged here, it’s that Rey’s costume is pretty sweet. Well, the bell rings, Bradshaw fails at hitting the Clothesline from Hell right of the bat, stumbles into the ring ropes, and Rey hits the 619, getting the pin. The whole thing takes about 30 seconds.
Much like my complaint about the Divas’ Battle Royal, this was billed as a legitimate match, and when I bought this PPV, I expected to see a wrestling match. Instead, I got a joke. As such, I do not feel like laughing, but instead feeling extraordinarily put out by the fact that two of my favorites got under five minutes of screen time in a match that didn’t even really happen. It’s a waste of a potentially good thing, as both men are great in the ring, and frankly, given JBL being the ultimate bad guy and Rey being the ultimate good guy, could probably have put on a solid show. The point is, I wanted, and expected, a match, and instead got something I neither expected nor wanted.
Third disappointment (though ultimately the point and reason why things panned out as they did): JBL, stunned and embarrassed by his loss, quits on the spot and storms out of the ring, earning great applause and cheers from the crowd as he leaves. And indeed, it is the last time Bradshaw is seen competing in a WWE ring. Interviews afterwards reveal that the whole thing was JBL’s idea, and given his style of heel, it makes sense: he didn’t leave with grace or getting a tearful good bye. He entered a conceited jerk and left a poor loser, and his performance was aimed to make Rey look dominating at his expense (which is something JBL always tries to do with the good guys he fights). But although I get where he was coming from, and respect that this is how he wanted to retire, just as a fan, I wish they could have actually had a match. It’s bad enough that my favorite heel of all time is exiting, but does the match have to be kind of lame too?
Although, really, it is amusing that Bradshaw’s cowardly exit is sandwiched between the elaborate and heartfelt farewells given the Ric Flair and Wrestlemania 24 and to Shawn Michaels at 26. The two of them get magnificent send offs for being heroes to the masses, but not to JBL, because he was just a big jerk, and everyone was happy to see him go. Truly, few people were as dedicated to keeping in character than JBL.
And once again, Wrestlemania 25 proves itself to be very well booked and planned. Consider the problem I had with 27: it opened with all of its matches, and then lumped all the mediocre for the rest of the show, causing it to drag. Here, it’s been great match, bad match, good match, great match, bad match, and then counters the bad match with our next being probably the best match in Wrestlemania history (trust me. I’ve seen them all. It’s up there.).
It’s Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels, and this is probably one of the best examples you can have of not really having a storyline, persay, but having a really good build, creating emotion and investment without a conventional plotline. The set-up is thus: Shawn Michaels, having been freed from JBL, is now permitted to be the exciting, happy, show-stopper that we all know and love. And given that it’s the 25th anniversary of Wrestlemania, he feels it right that this quarter-century should be marked by having a clash between two of Wrestlemania’s biggest spotlight stealers: Shawn Michaels (The Showstopper, the Main Event, Mr. Wrestlemania) vs. The Undertaker (The Phenom, unbeaten at Wrestlemania). I love how the yearly challenge to the Undertaker’s undefeated streak gets more interest than most of the title matches. Again, not much plot, but the hype writes itself: not only do you have the sheer star power here, but the two are both consistently great in the ring, and to watch them work together is a treat. But what really garners interest in this is: who will win? Sometimes, you can more or less tell when the Undertaker is bound to win (did anyone really think he was going to lose to Mark Henry?), but here, they play it up very nicely. They run off the theme of HBK being the soldier of Light, and Undertaker being the lord of Dark, and thus create a mental dichotomy that it must be one, or the other, and that each are one side of the same coin, and therefore evenly matched.
Also, in order to get Michaels over as a potential threat, they have Shawn best Undertaker at his own mind games. Actually, it’s fun to watch how each character challenging the streak tries to handle the Undertaker: Edge used his usual cowardly sneak attacks, never daring to face the Undertaker square on; Batista treated him with something of mutual respect; Henry simply tries to overpower him physically. With Michaels, his whole game plan is to simply prove that he can beat the Undertaker both mentally and in the ring. He goes to the ring wearing an all-white ensemble, including a duster and wide brimmed hat, obviously intended to mock Taker, the latter of whom tries to do his classic pop-out from under the ring and try to drag Michaels under, but Shawn dodges it and escapes, leaving Undertaker furious in the ring. Shawn holds a funeral for the Undertaker’s streak, when the lights go off, and sure enough, Undertaker appears… but Shawn has disappeared. Undertaker looks absolutely perplexed, when Shawn crawls out from inside the coffin present and superkicks Taker. What matters here is that Undertaker’s own tricks are being used against him: Shawn is out thinking him, and it’s clear that Undertaker can’t quite figure him out. And when you can beat Undertaker’s super powers, it means that he doesn’t have a complete edge on you. Also, it’s not just a matter of Undertaker being taken down by devious means, and that he still has better odds in a fair fight: he’s being outsmarted, and the failing is personally his, rather than it being due to vile machinations of others. And with Shawn defeating him in the mind games fair and square, it can also follow that he can defeat him physically fair and square.
The entrances also play with the dueling ideologies. Shawn appears after a black out on a platform elevated to the titantron, dressed in his white Taker-esque duster and hat, and is slowly lowered from the heavens. Once he gets to the bottom, he whips off the coat and hat and dons the ridiculously elaborate sequined vests we all know and love, though still with the white and gold theme. Undertaker, on the other hand, enters with the stage being covered in fog, and then elevating from under the stage. I’ve said this a lot, but I do like how they play this as two equals facing one another, and each have their own mind games to play with one another.
The bell rings, and though this might be a bit of a stretch, I do like how both men convey the mental standings of the characters via their faces right at the start. Taker looks frustrated, angry, and just wants to kill this twerp who has had the balls to upstage him for weeks. Shawn looks confident, defiant, and determined to not give in to fear. To that note, Taker tries to just punch Shawn, who keeps dodging under the arms and backhand chops Taker on the chest. It seems that Undertaker, no matter how much he wants to, is not going to be able to just squish Shawn, who is more intent on wearing Taker down. Again, Shawn is playing with the Undertaker’s mind: backhand chops are more annoying and stinging then debilitating. But in a good piece of timing, they have Undertaker finally catch Shawn by the arm and then force him into the corner: in doing so, he avoids looking like a whimp who can’t stop getting slapped and also reminds us that he’s powerful. He’s finally allowed to just take his time and just start decking Shawn, and I like that Michaels is shown that he can’t go punch-for-punch with Undertaker: his advantage is in speed and technical skills, not power, and we’re again reminded that the Undertaker is not only powerful, but looking to destroy. This carries over into the first real “move” of the match, with Undertaker executing a backdrop on Shawn (hey, a backdrop that actually worked!), lifting him high in the air and then crushing him down to earth. What matters here is the impact and the message that Undertaker’s goal is to crush Shawn with power, whereas Shawn’s goal is to chip away at Undertaker.
Undertaker lifts Shawn over his head and drops him to the ground, then drops a leg on the head, then proceeds to level him with shoulder blocks, before finishing off the combo with Old School. Just how he managed to link together these moves was well done: there was variety, we still play with the mindset that Undertaker is looking to destroy and humble, it was pieced together with deliberate intent but didn’t slow down, and finished with a bang. Now, compare this to the combo Shawn puts up: he dodges a running high kick, hits an atomic drop, followed by a chop block, on the same leg, thus getting Taker to drop to his knees, and then levels him in the head with a kick. It’s the same thing, quality wise, except Shawn’s mindset is shown once again to be out-wrestling Undertaker. I’m a sucker for when characterization is maintained in how a match is conducted, as it gives it so much more depth than just moves being executed; it’s about why the moves are done, why they make sense, how they link together, and what we know about the characters for doing these moves.
Shawn puts Undertaker in a figure four leglock, which Taker seems to take with great pain. Maybe it’s because he’s, well, dead, but I always find it odd when Undertaker sells pain in submission moves. You’d think he’d be immune with no working nervous system… Undertaker gets out of the hold by managing to punch Shawn in the face, but no sooner does he get up then receives a dropkick to the knee and is downed again. The continuity of playing with the leg injury is nice, as it means the attacks used prior did indeed have some effect, though I’ll have to keep my eyes open to see how many times it’s forgotten as the match goes on. Actually, it’s more or less forgotten right away, as Taker manages to lift Shawn vertically with apparently little effort and to carry him over to the turnbuckle, but he seems to remember his mistake in continuity and slaps his leg as if trying to get the circulation back. Good save, Deadman. Undertaker has some more fun punching Michaels, then hits a snake eyes, and gets only a two count for his trouble. Well, Undertaker is already set to wrap things up, and winds up for the Chokeslam, but Shawn catches the arm and drags Taker to the ground into a crossface. Much like how Taker had to avoid looking completely outmatched earlier, so here too does Shawn remind us that he’s no whimp. He’s received a beating, but still has a lot of gas left in the tank. It should also be noticed that while Undertaker rallies with heavy hits, Shawn rallies with holds and technical moves.
In a rather awesome counter to the crossface, Undertaker manages to get to his feet, still with Shawn locking in the hold, and then drops him with a sideslam. I think it’s a cool change from going for the obvious rope-break. The two, having shown each other that they’re for serious, try to go punch-for-slap until Shawn counters an Irish whip by kicking Taker in the chest. Taker stands straight up, and I love how he looks completely insulted and furious, rather than in pain. He just cannot believe that Shawn had the gall to pull such an elementary counter. It’s just, well, funny. Shawn goes back to the inverted atomic drops before clotheslining Undertaker and getting him to the ground. He teases the elbow drop, we all know he’s taking too long for it to be serious. True enough, Undertaker has enough time to gain his breath to get up and catch Shawn in midair by the throat, and nearly hits the Chokeslam. However, Shawn teases Sweet Chin Music, which gets Undertaker to drop to the ground to avoid the superkick, giving Michaels the opportunity to put him back in the leglock. The finisher psych here was done well, especially considering no one believed for a second that Michaels was going to hit the superkick: what mattered was how fluidly the moves went into one another, making it look more part of the match and less then garnering a cheap reaction from the crowd, and the fact that the fake-out with the kick leads to another move rather than just existing in its own strange limbo in the match (moves leading to other moves and not just happening for the sake of it garners big points in my book).
Undertaker manages to fight out of the figure four and tries to get in his Instant Death Move (also known as the Hell’s Gate), but Shawn desperately fights over to the ropes to get the break. This leads to both men rolling out of the ring, with Undertaker smacking Shawn’s head on the steps for good measure. I notice their body language has slowed a bit, which makes sense, given that Taker is still nursing a leg and Shawn only just avoided Certain Death. Undertaker tries another leg drop on the apron, but misses as Shawn ducks, and is left limping at ringside. Hey, at least they’re still playing with the leg injury. That has to be some kind of injury-continuity record for wrestling. Shawn decides to do what he does best at Wrestlemania: a moonsault from the top turnbuckle to the outside of the ring. And he does it… and misses. And I mean “miss” in more ways than one. In terms of match story, Undertaker bats him out of the way in mid-air and Shawn hits the ground. In terms of actual performance, you can see that Shawn does not land the moonsault cleanly. He lands on his side pretty hard, and he definitely looks winded (though, really, it’s so darn hard to tell in wrestling…). Shawn in helped up by the ref, when Undertaker does what /he/ does best at Wrestlemania: a suicide dive over the ropes. And he does it… and misses. And again, more ways than one. Storyline, Shawn grabs a camera man and pulls him into the way, blocking the attack. Performance wise, Undertaker plants his head into the ground. Seriously, The camera man does a lousy job of buffering the fall, and is way too far away from where the Undertaker lands to actually help in any way. And you can see in the replay that Taker more or less drills his head into the floor. I mean, he does get his arms up slightly, but not nearly enough to actually cushion the fall. It’s pretty ugly.
Shawn and the referee stall in the ring until they’re certain that the Undertaker is conscious and capable of movement before the ref starts his ten count, and trust me, it is one slow ten count. Undertaker, of course, does get in at nine, but I’m certain it’s not as certain as the plan was supposed to be. But to Michael’s credit, he does his best to make the slow count energetic as he frantically paces the ring and pleads the ref to hurry up and count him out, giving what would otherwise have been dead air a sense of character and added story to the match: Shawn conveys that after the pounding he’s received, he just wants to beat the Undertaker in any way he can, and if it’s by countout, well, so be it. Also playing on this mindset is his face as he tunes up the band for Sweet Chin Music after the Undertaker gets back in the ring: he lookcs tired, angry, and frustrated that he hasn’t put his foe away yet. Rising tension and emotions = good, especially when you consider how stoic and sure Shawn was at the beginning. Also, it’s a good time to tease a finisher, because the audience by now is not so certain that they’re /not/ nearing the end of a match, especially with the fall Undertaker took. Thus, with the audience second guessing themselves, you have a fantastic reaction as the Undertaker avoids the kick, and catches Shawn with a massive Chokeslam. Now, you know that the Chokeslam is at best a two-count move in this kind of match, but what matters is the timing: it was put in at a moment where, in theory, it /could/ have been the end if they wanted to, it came after a moment of near disaster, and thus a kickout was maybe less certain than it usually was.
So Shawn does indeed kick out, and Undertaker looks exhausted, though whether it’s from the headshot or from the intent to establish that his character is wondering what it takes to kill Michaels is anyone’s guess. He tries to Tombstone Shawn, but he escapes, attempts a kick, which is blocked by Taker, but escapes again and this time does indeed hit Sweet Chin Music. I don’t think this worked as well timing wise, if only because Undertaker caught it the first time, and thus the execution of the move was less explosive and spontaneous as it might have been if Shawn had hit it immediately after escaping the Tombstone. There was just too much time in the counter for it to be shocking is all. Also, Shawn takes a very long time in going for a pin, and you know darn good and well Undertaker is going to kick out. The two men are laid out in the ring, but it doesn’t come off as dead air: the two have exchanged finishers, have tried to destroy one another, and are now trying to see who can recover their stamina first. And that, I think, is what makes this such a good match: every moment is used to help further the characters prescence in the match and tell us where their minds are at. That’s the difference between having two guys just sort of lie there (like in the Elimination Chamber at No Way Out) and trying to bide their strength so they can figure out what on Earth they have to do to keep the other guy down.
Shawn gets up first, and limps over to the still downed Taker, who gets pops by shooting up with his hand to grab Shawn by the throat, getting to his feet, and hitting the Last Ride (I love how many finishers Undertaker has). The Last Ride is more potent of a finisher than the Chokeslam, and thus the shock is indeed greater when Michaels kicks out. Again, the Undertaker’s face speaks droves about how pissed off he is that he can’t seem to kill Michaels. Then, oddly, Undertaker decides to go to the top rope and try to drop an elbow on Shawn. Shawn dodges, and Undertaker hits the ground hard. I really don’t get the intention of this move, other than trying to give Shawn time to recoup after the Last Ride. I mean, Undertaker is simply not a top-rope kind of guy, so why is he doing it here? The only thing that makes sense to me storyline wise is trying to mimic Shawn’s elbow drop, but Taker isn’t much for the move-stealing. Whatevs. Now, what happens next makes much more sense. He tries to toss Shawn over the ring top, but Shawn catches the top rope and tries to skin-the-cat. Undertaker takes advantage of this convenient upside-down vertical position by picking him up, dragging him back into the center of the ring, and dropping him for the Tombstone. Like I said earlier, having moves link into one another is a good thing, as it means that what happened prior has some greater bearing. Also, it’s way more spontaneous to have a finisher occur via counter than having the usual wind-up, especially in this case, as it’s not very often you see a skin-the-cat countered like that, and thus it’s more exciting to see it for the first time. Also helping the cause of excitement is that Shawn figures out what’s going on halfway through, and tries to hold on to the ropes in vain. He’s not just limply hanging there and allowing the move to happen, and his attachement to the ropes makes you wonder for a brief second if the Tombstone is going to happen at all, so when it does, it’s all the more gratifying.
And, of course, given that this would be the perfect ending to a match, it is with great shock that we all watch Shawn Michaels kick out. This is undoubtedly the best false finish I can imagine, as it transgresses just being a matter of kicking out of the finisher, but it kicks out of the audience’s expectations. For all intents and purposes, the match could have ended right there, and it would have made sense. The two men had wrestled a great match, all the big moves got in, we’re nearing the twenty five minute mark, and the audience doesn’t necessarily expect that it should go on any longer. In other words, the idea of Shawn kicking out defies narrative convention that we expect to happen. The match continuing on when no one thought it would makes the viewer second guess themselves even more, and you wonder: if the guaranteed ending turned out to not be guaranteed after all, could it be that the guaranteed /outcome/ (Undertaker winning) is not guaranteed? This false finish adds to the match and the overall investment in it, rather than just being a matter of making the wrestler involved look good by kicking out of a finisher. Also, Undertaker, upon realizing what’s happened, looks like he’s about to cry, because he just doesn’t know what he can do. And if the character is having an emotional response to what’s going on, I do as well.
Things slow down a bit at this point, mainly because both men are dead tired. Undertaker tries to set up for another Tombstone, but Shawn counters with a tilt-a-whirl DDT, leading to more lying around. Still, again, this lying around makes sense in terms of story, because the two men have taken a savage beating, and thus are not likely to be going 100%. The slowing-down helps show that the attacks thus far have taken a toll. Shawn drags himself to the turnbuckle, drops and elbow, and tunes up the band in the corner. Also in terms of establishing character: Shawn looks haggard and beaten, and Undertaker has to drag himself up using the ropes to get to his feet. The imagery of being worn down and destroyed by one another is definitely gotten across. Shawn hits Sweet Chin Music, and it’s helped this time by Shawn going quickly for a pin, and not taking his time. Thus, when Undertaker kicks out, it’s much the same emotional effect as before. Both men get back to their feet, and are staggering and reeling something fierce, before they go back to where they started and try to out-punch one another. Neither of them really know how many more moves they can really hit, not to mention their mental state is not exactly perfect, and are just trying to get in the last punch. Shawn knocks Taker down, and then tries for another moonsault off the top turnbuckle, but is caught in midair vertically, and Undertaker drops another Tombstone, this time ending things for good.
This match aces nearly everything I look for in a perfect match. The story, or in this case the build-up, prior to the match gets me invested and caring about the outcome. The characters’ mindsets are established, apparent to the audience, and are acted upon as the match develops. The moves used make sense given the time they happen and what the character is looking to do, giving us both action and character development. The pacing was good, with both men giving and taking, no real moments where it was just a one man show, starting off heavy to get us interested and slowing things down once it both made sense for the match and where we’re on the edge of our seats to see how it ends. The finish was great, keeping the audience guessing and tense while not being a tease. If you want a match to use as an example for wrestling as kind of literature, this would be it.
