Yeah so turns out I haven’t been writing on here more after all. Ah well. WWE Armageddon was over a week ago now (14/12/08, fact fans) but my sister’s been visiting all last week so I haven’t had chance to write about it yet. Be warned, this is probably going to be the least objective review of a wrestling show I’ve ever written. Yes, even less so than last month’s Survivor Series recap where I freaked out over Edge returning. If you can’t already guess why by now, here’s why. OH MY FUCKING GOD. I’m going to attempt to contain myself until it’s time to write about that match because Armageddon was overall a really good show in it’s own right, but seriously, this is the best thing ever and it makes me genuinely happy. :)

Vladimir Kozlov vs. Matt Hardy
I quite like Kozlov, think he plays the unstoppable Russian cyborg role well, and certainly don’t think he deserves a lot of the criticism the net likes to give him. I do think he’s way better at just ploughing through scrubbers than in longer competitive matches like the one with HHH from last month, but this is a good middle ground between the two. Matt Hardy is really one of the most dependable wrestlers in the company so yeah, this wasn’t bad at all. I liked the part at the beginning where they put their dukes up, Matt’s general never-say-die attitude, and the bit near the end where Kozlov hurls Matt head-first onto the ring post, then floors him with the battering ram headbutt. THE MOSCOW MAULER gets the win after some sort of uranage/spinebuster thing. Sweet.

CM Punk vs. Rey Mysterio
This was the finals of a tournament to decide who got a shot at William Regal’s Intercontinental title, which meant he was sitting at ringside on a glorious throne! This was real good, starting off slow and building up, with matwork and trading holds at the beginning, before Punk started to bring out his strikes etc. and Rey went to the high-flying. The crowd didn’t really seem to know who to cheer for at the start, but they ended up being dragged into the match whether they liked it or not. Things I liked: Punk breaking out Alex Shelley’s Border City Stretch while working the arm, Rey reversing a tilt-a-whirl into a swank armbar of his own, and Rey’s moonsault and general flying seeming a lot crisper than in a good while. Eventually, Rey goes for a spinning hurricanrana but Punk counters it into a fucking devastating GTS for the victory. Seriously, he totally just nailed him in the nose with his knee, it’s sick. After the match Regal gives Punk the slow clap. That match should rule.

Finlay vs. Mark Henry (Belfast Brawl)
Before this match, Finlay told Hornswoggle to stay backstage out of harm’s way, which meant we got more of the Finlay of old, beating the shit out of his opponent with kendo sticks rather than getting into comedy japes. This was a perfectly enjoyable match, nothing spectacular but certainly nothing bad. Probably the most impressive bits were actually showcases of how much of a beast Mark Henry is: throwing the ring steps into the ring like it was nothing, snapping first a shillelagh and then a kendo stick over his knee, and compressing a trash can with his body into Finlay’s. Eventually, that disobedient swine Hornswoggle runs out anyway and manages to throw another shillelagh to Finlay, who brains Henry with it for the victory. One of the most bizarre and unsettling things about watching WWE in 2008 is how many Mark Henry matches I have quite enjoyed…

Randy Orton vs. Batista
Good match, especially for their first major meeting, but I think they’ve got a better one in them somewhere down the line. Still pretty good though. Randy Orton just carries himself like such a star at this point, he’s just so over, I think he’s finally ready to live up to the level of stardom WWE have always wanted him to be at. Batista was pretty good in this too, but as I write this, he’s just gone down for a good while with a torn hamstring, so his hot streak is officially over. Orton’s offence was exactly what it needed to be in this: nothing but chinlocks, submissions, nasty stomps and vicious punches. He’s not there to flip about or make you cheer for him; he’s Randy Orton, son of a bitch. The two best bits though were built around Batista knowing Orton so well from the Evolution days, so countering his two main moves: first, reversing the RKO into a cool backdrop-into-Side effect move (it was Mark Jindrak’s finisher, but as if I remember anything about him), then blocking the PUNT with a spinebuster into the corner. Orton briefly makes a comeback and attempts an Alabama Slam out of the corner, but it gets reversed into the Batista Bomb for the win. Nice match.

Michelle McCool, Mickie James, Maria & Kelly Kelly vs. Maryse, Victoria, Natalya & Jillian Hall
This was a ‘Santa’s Little Helpers’ match, which meant they all dressed in awesome little Santa outfits, except Michelle McCool was dressed as the world’s sluttiest toy solider or something, because Undertaker is a filthy old man. The match was, you know, what you’d expect. Things of notice were: how fantastic the outfits were, the brief interaction between Mickie and Natalya being quite good, the commentators clearly not caring about the match so just enjoying themselves and bantering, and Maryse being fucking awesome as usual – cowering in the ropes from Mickie, DOING HER TAUNT, and then going back to cowering as soon as Mickie went for her. She is so great. Michelle got the win for her team after blind-tagging Maria so she could steal the limelight, and hitting the Styles Clash on Jillian. McCool replacing Christopher Daniels’ finisher with AJ Styles’ is pretty funny, like she’s the world’s biggest fan of 2005 TNA or something.

John Cena vs. Chris Jericho
At this point it feels like I haven’t done anything to get over how much I’m honestly enjoying this show. Really nearly everything has been at least good, and the Divas match was good for eye-candy and Maryse, and was kept short enough to be perfectly fine. Punk/Rey was pretty damn good actually and Orton/Batista was maybe better. There was a segment with JBL and Shawn Michaels in between some of the earlier matches, which helped to make their storyline both more interesting and more plausible, and after the Diva match The Great Khali came out with hilarious new Punjabi music and ended up making out with Mae Young, which normally I would be against but his genuinely disgusted reactions were funny so it was cool.

But anyway this match was actively really good, and it’s a shame the Smackdown title match inevitably overshadowed it. I’ve enjoyed a few Cena matches this year quite a lot (HHH, Batista and the first Jericho one mostly) but this was the first time that he looked as good as he did constantly in 2007. And Jericho is way better recently than I can ever remember now that I’ve grown up beyond thinking “will you pleeeeeeeeease shut the hell up?!” is a witty catchphrase, so this is obviously good stuff. They work a story based around their previous match, but Jericho’s antics on Raw (basically being a total prick) have stopped Cena from having any hesitation this time, and he just goes all out with wanting to beat up Jericho. Jericho obviously targets the injured neck again, and his kicks and everything look really hate-filled and awesome. At one point, they made you believe a sleeper was a dangerous move because of Cena’s neck and all that. I don’t really get a criticism of Cena being that he isn’t very good at selling. Some of the other stuff I get even if I don’t agree, but that just seems pretty obviously wrong. Cena took a really good bump off the apron into the steps too. Jericho clearly had no chance of actually winning the match but he made you think he did, especially the reversals section, with continually escaping the FU and hitting the Codebreaker and then freaking out when that didn’t get the job done, and reversing the STFU into the Walls of Jericho. Cena looked really good here too, obviously, and got the win after finally trapping the little rat Jericho for long enough to put him in the STFU. My one problem with this match would be that it’s possibly a bit short, and Jericho seemed to tap out from the STFU instantaneously but whatever, pretty fucking good all in all.

Edge vs. Triple H vs. Jeff Hardy
I have been looking forward to Jeff Hardy winning the WWE championship for like eight years. As soon as the Hardyz started facing Edge & Christian a lot I started to like them, and after all the ladder and TLC matches happened I started to believe that they’d both be, and Jeff in particular, future main eventers. Jeff Hardy is probably the wrestler I have the most ‘connection’ with. Undertaker is my childhood favourite, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels are my favourite wrestlers from an in-ring standpoint if that’s all we’re looking at, and I just really like practically everything Mick Foley’s ever done, but with Jeff, it’s like I’ve grown up with him, as clichéd and lame as that might sound. Anyway, now, it’s happened. There’s been pitfalls along the way of course, mostly because the only thing Jeff loves more than dying his hair and endangering his body is TAKING LOTS AND LOTS OF DRUGS, but for the past year, WWE have been teasing the fuck out of us with Hardy getting so close to winning the belt time and time again, but just not being able to do it. It had gone on for so long that I just assumed they were going to wait until WrestleMania to do it, which I would have definitely preferred, but I’d rather this than it never happen at all, and if Jeff lost many more times he would’ve seemed like a choke artist and WHO CARES BECAUSE JEFF HARDY IS WWE CHAMPION YAAAAAY!!!

Right. Before I go totally insane with unbridled joy, the match itself. It was really good, basically. Even if I wasn’t such a massively biased Jeff Hardy fan, and even if the ‘moment’ at the end wasn’t amazing for me, it would have still been a really entertaining main event. It’s the best and most enjoyable Triple Threat match in the WWE I can remember in ages, and it’s just action-packed and balls to the wall, which suits a Jeff title win perfectly. There’s twists and turns without it becoming like TNA ‘interference for the sake of it’, as Kozlov coming out to stop Triple H from winning at one point made storyline sense, as did Matt Hardy running out, both for revenge and to help is brother. Edge was pretty good in this match, by the way, as the desperate madman who’d just gotten his belt back and was in no hurry to lose it. HHH wasn’t bad…I’m not picking on him or anything, just didn’t seem to ad as much to the match as either Edge or Jeff, but maybe that’s the point, I dunno. They did put the Pedigree over well, with his opponents either escaping it or breaking up his pin attempts, which tied into the end. Jeff stopping HHH from hitting an early Pedigree with Whisper in the Wind looked great too.

I’m not going to list everything I liked because we’ll be here all night and it’s nearly Christmas for god sakes, but I have to say that HHH being an unwilling assist for Poetry in Motion right at the start as fun, and later the Whisper In The Wind with Edge sat on Hunter’s shoulders was fucking great. Edge is a king among men for taking that. Er, I’m trying to think of more cool things HHH and Edge did so I look less like a squealing Hardy fanboy. There was a cool bit with Edge trying to Spear Jeff, who leapfrogs him and HHH gets nailed instead, I guess. Whatever, this was mostly built around being a microcosm of the whole ‘can Jeff do it?’ storyline, with him repeatedly coming close to victory but bad luck or the third man in the match cutting him off or taking him out. Although the coolest spot of the match, and one of the best table stunts I’ve seen in a good while, fittingly involved all three men: Edge gets taken out of the picture briefly while HHH and Jeff fight on an announce table. H sets up the Pedigree, Hardy escapes and goes for the Twist of Fate, HHH escapes, and sidesteps a charging Edge who has appeared from fucking nowhere to Spear Jeff off the Raw table all the way through the Smackdown announce table!!~ Hell yeah!! That was fucking AWESOME.

This leaves HHH and Edge to fight for a bit, with HHH actually getting to hit the Pedigree, which brings about the Kozlov/Matt interference I was banging on about earlier. Before he leaves, Kozlov throws a barely recovered Jeff Hardy off the top to the floor, because he’s a jerk. Edge hits the Spear on HHH but it only gets two, so he goes to the outside to get some chairs as JR amusingly shouts “LOOK AT THIS MANIAC!!”. (I guess by this point I am actually listing everything I liked after all but bare with me). Edge attempts the ConChairTo, only for Jeff to pop up, steal a chair off him and KILL him with a chair shot. Hardy goes to the top rope, only for HHH to thwart him and hoooly shit is this exciting! HHH capitalises with a Pedigree on Edge. Triple H goes for pin…1..2..HOLY FUCKING SHIT SWANTON OUT OF NOWHERE!! Jeff gets the pin, the ref counts three, the crowd goes wild, Jeff Hardy goes wild, I go wild. You’ll notice that when I write about wrestling I tend to show how much I like something by pointless exclamation marks and even more pointless capital letters. I didn’t do that then because there are not enough exclamation marks in the fucking world, and I would have to write in capitals ten feet tall to fully convey how great this was. Just have a look at this again and imagine be going fucking MENTAL with excitement. I don’t care if the actual title reign lasts about three weeks, this was brilliant. JEFF JEFF JEFF JEFF!!!~ :D

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals!!~