It’s new concept and name time in World Wrestling Entertainment. Having changed The Great American Bash to just plain old The Bash, WWE have now gone one step further with a new name and concept, Breaking Point, with all the main event matches to be decided by submission.
The show began with MVP and Mark Henry challenging Chris Jericho and the Big Show for the Unified Tag Team Championship. As an opener it was pretty enjoyable, and even old Henry managed to put in a couple of good moves. The best part of the match for me though were the exchanges between Jericho and MVP. The champions retained the titles in this one. After Henry countered Jericho’s code breaker, Show connected with a big right from the ring apron, knocking the big lug out. Jericho got the cover soon afterwards.
The title action continued with the Miz challenging Kofi Kingston for the United States title. This was even better than the first match, and proof that there are some good stars coming up through the ranks. Kingston got in some good looking offence early on, before the re-modelled Miz made his comeback. It wasn’t enough to get him the win though, even though there were plenty of near falls, before Kingston got the pin after his paradise kick, which came from out of nowhere. Excellent stuff.
The first big grudge match of the show followed, with D-Generation X taking on Legacy in a submissions count anywhere match. Of course, with this show being held in Montreal, we had a reference to a certain incident twelve years ago, in which Triple H claimed total innocence. Then it was down to business, with a brawl around the arena (is this a TNA show?) and some innovative submission moves before Triple H got knocked out backstage. This gave Cody Rhodes and Ted Dibiase the chance to double up on Shawn Michaels in the ring. HBK fought back briefly, but eventually fell to a double submission, with Rhodes applying a figure four around the ring post, and Dibiase capping things off with his old man’s sleeper hold. It wasn’t long before Michaels tapped. While the second match was excellent, this one was even better.
Things went downhill a little with the Singapore cane match pitting the Great Khali against Kane. This really wasn’t very good at all, and just seemed to be filled with endless cane shots, with Kane getting the pin after a choke slam. I really hope this little rivalry gets put to bed.
Then it was back to title action, with William Regal mounting another challenge for Christian’s ECW title, with Regal’s friends Ezekiel Jackson and Vladimir Kozlov banned from ringside. This one lasted quite a bit longer than their Summerslam encounter, and proved to be a great undercard match, with some good exchanges and two good performances, with Christian getting the pin after taking Regal out with the killswitch un-prettier whatever it’s called. Nice stuff.
After a rather pointless segment involving Pat Patterson, Dolph Ziggler and John Morrison, it was on to the first main event, with John Cena again challenging Randy Orton for the WWE title, this time in an I quit match. I’m not really sure what to think of this one. It was slow and methodical at times, and was actually a lot better than their previous encounter, however, I’m not really sure about the part of the match where Orton handcuffed Cena and draped him over the ring post. It looked more like a torture scene than a wrestling match, and given that WWE are meant to be gearing their product towards a younger audience I’m not really sure if this was called for. But anyway, back to the match. Cena eventually managed to get Orton’s handcuff keys, putting one cuff on the champion and applying a variation of the STF, using the chain for extra leverage. Orton quickly quit, giving Cena the title win.
The final match of the evening saw the returning Undertaker challenging C.M. Punk for the World title in a submission match. This was more a brawl than anything, and a damn short one at that. This was supposed to be a main event match, but the actual ring time was under ten minutes! Also, given what part of the world this was happening in, it was kind of obvious to this particular writer what was going to happen. Punk tapped out to Undertaker’s hell’s gate submission, but Smackdown GM Teddy Long promptly appeared and reminded everyone that his predecessor Vickie Guerrero had actually banned that particular hold ages ago. The match was promptly restarted, Punk applied the anaconda vice, and the referee promptly called for the bell. Punk had retained the title in what could have been a good match, but was ultimately rather confusing and wanting.
In conclusion - when my brother first told me that this show was being held in Montreal, I immediately said that there was going to be a screw job finish somewhere. And I was right. My, how original the WWE creative team are! As for the match concerned, I still can’t figure out why the final match of the show, the main event between Punk and the Undertaker was given so little time. They could easily have been given the time that was previously allocated to the Ziggler/Morrison match, but instead they had to put in a pointless segment that would have been better played out on Smackdown.
As for the rest of the show, it was good, save for the Kane/Khali match. If they don’t tinker around with the concept of this show, it could last a good few years.