2009 MOTY List is caught up to WrestleMania, holy crap

1. Jack Swagger v Christian, 2/24
2. John Cena v Rey Mysterio v Chris Jericho v Edge v Kane v Mike Knox, WWE, 2/15
3. John Cena v Shawn Michaels, WWE, 1/12
4. Matt Hardy v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/13
5. Jack Swagger v Matt Hardy, WWE, 1/25
6. Edge v Triple H v Undertaker v Jeff Hardy v Big Show v Vladimir Kozlov, WWE, 2/15
7. John Cena v Big Show, 3/30
8. The Miz v Primo, WWE, 3/10
9. John Cena v Chris Jericho, WWE, 2/2
10. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/3
11. Big Show v MVP, WWE, 1/16
12. John Cena v JBL, WWE, 1/25
13. Finlay v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/6
14. Jack Swagger & Mark Henry vs Christian & Finlay, 2/17
15. Randy Orton v Shane McMahon, WWE, 2/15
16. Jeff Jarrett v Kurt Angle, TNA, 1/11
17. The Miz & John Morrison v Primo & Carlito, WWE, 3/13
18. JBL v Rey Mysterio, WWE, 3/30
19. Jack Swagger v Christian, WWE, 2/10
20. Finlay v The Brian Kendrick, WWE, 3/13
21. The Miz & John Morrison & The Brian Kendrick v Primo & Carlito & R-Truth, WWE, 2/6
22. Jack Swagger & The Miz & John Morrison v Christian & Finlay & Tommy Dreamer, WWE, 3/3
23. Chris Jericho v Jerry Lawler, WWE, 3/30
24. Christian & Finlay v Mark Henry & Kane, WWE, 3/31
25. Shawn Michaels v JBL, WWE, 2/15

OFF. John Cena & Shawn Michaels v Chris Jericho & Randy Orton, WWE, 1/5
OFF. Rey Mysterio v Kane v Mike Knox, WWE, 3/2
OFF. Edge & Big Show v Triple H & Undertaker, WWE, 2/6
OFF. CM Punk v JBL, WWE, 3/9

7. John Cena v Big Show, 3/30

So for whatever reason I really wasn’t into their February match but this was great. Show is an intelligent monster, animalistic enough to just butcher Cena with his offense but crafty enough to go after Cena’s back to block his finisher, which is what finished Show in their first match. Cena is still pretty much the best seller in wrestling and he is awesome here. He doesn’t get much of a chance to do a whole lot offensively but that’s kind of what’s going to happen sometimes. The finish is hot and that’s a fucking beast of a chokeslam for Cena to eat. Post-match is kind of a weird go home for a WrestleMania world title match, with Cena dead in the ring, Show staring at Edge like he’s retarded, and Edge… well… kind of looking retarded. Or like a very pleased child. Oh well.

18. JBL v Rey Mysterio, WWE, 3/30

This has long been one of my favorite match-ups in wrestling. When JBL first came out of retirement in 2007 I really wanted a JBL/Rey match for ‘Mania 24. It didn’t happen, but then they put it on the card for ‘Mania 25, and I was going to that show, so this worked for me. At the time throwing this match out on RAW immediately before the PPV struck me as insane, after the PPV match went 20 seconds it makes more sense, especially when JBL retired right after the 20 second PPV match. Old bastard needed something good to go out on and this is that. Not their best match, not by a long shot, and maybe not even good enough to be this high at this point, but God dammit I miss JBL and I love JBL vs Rey so this had to go on here. As it is, even with only getting a 20 second match between them live in Texas, I also got to see them wrestle in Toronto last December. So after JBL came back these two never had a match like their ‘06 classic but they DID have three matches and I was live for two of them. I think I’ll take that.

23. Chris Jericho v Jerry Lawler, WWE, 3/30

Yeah so it’s only three and a half minutes but fuck me three and a half minutes of Jerry Lawler is still going to be better than twelve minutes from most guys. Lawler looks like a fucking champ here, it’s a shame that he doesn’t get in more matches and while I’m not complaining with the legends match we got at ‘Mania, Lawler would totally have been an acceptable opponent for Jericho. Speaking of Jericho, he’s awesome here. Since moving to the legends thing full time after No Way Out he hasn’t really had many matches, actually I think he only really had the Kofi match, which was good but didn’t make the list. This is better, Jericho sells for Lawler as if King was going to headline WrestleMania instead of call it, and he manages to come off as a killer at the same time. All in three minutes! It’s too bad we didn’t get twelve minutes on PPV with these two, could well have been a top five match.

24. Christian & Finlay v Mark Henry & Kane, WWE, 3/31

Not as good as some of the other matches where Finlay and Christian teamed, but it’s still Finlay and Christian as a team. They’ve got their team formula down pat by now, where Finlay works the face-in-peril stuff with his hard hitting hope spots and then Christian comes in off the hot tag to get all his big stuff over (I mean he’s only been back a month and a half at this point, so yeah). Henry also rules here, because Henry is damn awesome, his finish sequence with Christian was damn nice and I totally wasn’t expecting the second slam attempt. Kind of thought this would go another few minutes based on the skimpy lineup for the show but hey gotta show those music videos sometime. Kane is a step down from Swagger as a partner for Henry but he was fine here. Your usual good ECW tag.

2009 MOTY List feat. a very good week of WWE wrestling!

1. Jack Swagger v Christian, 2/24
2. John Cena v Rey Mysterio v Chris Jericho v Edge v Kane v Mike Knox, WWE, 2/15
3. John Cena v Shawn Michaels, WWE, 1/12
4. Matt Hardy v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/13
5. Jack Swagger v Matt Hardy, WWE, 1/25
6. Edge v Triple H v Undertaker v Jeff Hardy v Big Show v Vladimir Kozlov, WWE, 2/15
7. The Miz v Primo, WWE, 3/10
8. John Cena v Chris Jericho, WWE, 2/2
9. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/3
10. Big Show v MVP, WWE, 1/16
11. John Cena v JBL, WWE, 1/25
12. Finlay v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/6
13. Jack Swagger & Mark Henry vs Christian & Finlay, 2/17
14. Randy Orton v Shane McMahon, WWE, 2/15
15. Jeff Jarrett v Kurt Angle, TNA, 1/11
16. The Miz & John Morrison v Primo & Carlito, WWE, 3/13
17. Jack Swagger v Christian, WWE, 2/10
18. Finlay v The Brian Kendrick, WWE, 3/13
19. The Miz & John Morrison & The Brian Kendrick v Primo & Carlito & R-Truth, WWE, 2/6
20. Jack Swagger & The Miz & John Morrison v Christian & Finlay & Tommy Dreamer, WWE, 3/3
21. Shawn Michaels v JBL, WWE, 2/15
22. John Cena & Shawn Michaels v Chris Jericho & Randy Orton, WWE, 1/5
23. Rey Mysterio v Kane v Mike Knox, WWE, 3/2
24. Edge & Big Show v Triple H & Undertaker, WWE, 2/6
25. CM Punk v JBL, WWE, 3/9

OFF. Big Show v Festus, 1/30
OFF. Big Show v Triple H, WWE, 1/9
OFF. Randy Orton v Undertaker, WWE, 2/9

So this (03/9-03/13) was a damn fine week for WWE shows. RAW had the Punk/JBL title change match that made the list (and by the end of the week is barely hanging on), both RAW and Smackdown! had good Kofi Kingston matches that didn’t make the list (against Chris Jericho and Edge, respectively), ECW had a nice four minute kickfest with Tyson Kidd and DJ Gabriel (who I am digging the fuck out of but seems to have disappeared), not to mention maybe the best battle royal I’ve ever seen. On merit alone it is easily on this list, maybe even top fifteen or higher. Unfortunately I decided at the start that I wouldn’t include battle royals of any sort (to prevent myself from just sticking the Rumble at number one, I guess?) and I’m not in the mood to type out fifteen different names for one spot. However I may change my mind later and throw this on here. It was really fucking good. Smackdown! had an interesting ‘Taker/Kozlov match, wouldn’t really call it that good and it’s certainly not coming anywhere near this list but at one point ‘Taker takes like ten straight strikes to the face from Kozlov and he has to put up his hands by the end because Kozlov is not pulling those things at all. Then there were also these three matches which all made the cut!

7. The Miz v Primo, WWE, 3/10

This is another one of those ECW television matches that I’d seen pimped elsewhere so I was cautiously looking forward to it. Going in I hadn’t really been much of a Colons fan, I mean yeah I liked Carlito back in 2006 when I started watching wrestling but I also liked TNA back then so that’s not a good representative. I’ve been a really big Miz fan for a long time but I haven’t seen too many quality singles with him. This was pretty much what I was looking for, it just built and built towards the end. Having Morrison and Carlito on commentary actually helped, because at the beginning of the match where they are working slower and feeling each other out the commentary keeps you interested, and by the end when they’ve kicked it into high gear you don’t even notice them. So no matter what, the match holds your attention, which is exactly what you want. It builds and builds from a slow start until a hot finish. I don’t know that any of their tag matches were as good as this but damn does it ever make me want to see the tags.

16. The Miz & John Morrison v Primo & Carlito, WWE, 3/13

So not only is this a good week for WWE, this is the week that finally sold me on the Colons. Three matches in the top 25 by mid-March and I’d imagine a couple more will end up on there before they break up. They had a tag two months earlier that I didn’t much care for, and one the week before that was ok but kind of weirdly structured, it was almost all babyface offense with limited heel heat segments even though it got a lot of time. This blew both away, real good old school tag match with good heat stretches and a hot finish. Miz outclasses Morrison as a heel here, between his performance in this and the Primo match on ECW I don’t know how anyone would think Morrison was the stronger member of the team. Carlito throws really nice punches and Primo’s white meat babyface stuff works really well as a foil for the 00s reality douche heel work. Like the Primo/Miz match this left me wanting more of these four together.

18. Finlay v The Brian Kendrick, WWE, 3/13

I almost didn’t even bother watching this, I mean it barely touches four minutes in tape time but Kendrick is a really great cocksucker heel and Finlay does enjoy beating the shit out of smaller dudes, so I went back and watched it. It did not disappoint, Kendrick is an absolute motherfucker here, any sensible man would want to see Finlay go all Bear Jew on his ass with that Irish stick. I on the other hand write a wrestling blog and thus am clearly not a sensible man, so all I could think of was ‘why did you have to love drugs so much and rob ME PERSONALLY of seeing you work upper card’. I think it’s a very valid question. Finlay isn’t as spectacular in this as he is in his better Swagger matches and Kendrick doesn’t have the stuff (to use a baseball term that probably doesn’t really fit) to match Swagger, but Finlay is still very good and I really can’t say enough about Kendrick being a total fly on your ass. This needed fifteen minutes on Superstars or something.

2009 MOTY List, still very far behind

1. Jack Swagger v Christian, 2/24
2. John Cena v Rey Mysterio v Chris Jericho v Edge v Kane v Mike Knox, WWE, 2/15
3. John Cena v Shawn Michaels, WWE, 1/12
4. Matt Hardy v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/13
5. Jack Swagger v Matt Hardy, WWE, 1/25
6. Edge v Triple H v Undertaker v Jeff Hardy v Big Show v Vladimir Kozlov, WWE, 2/15
7. John Cena v Chris Jericho, WWE, 2/2
8. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/3
9. Big Show v MVP, WWE, 1/16
10. John Cena v JBL, WWE, 1/25
11. Finlay v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/6
12. Jack Swagger & Mark Henry vs Christian & Finlay, 2/17
13. Randy Orton v Shane McMahon, WWE, 2/15
14. Jeff Jarrett v Kurt Angle, TNA, 1/11
15. Jack Swagger v Christian, WWE, 2/10
16. The Miz & John Morrison & The Brian Kendrick v Primo & Carlito & R-Truth, WWE, 2/6
17. Jack Swagger & The Miz & John Morrison v Christian & Finlay & Tommy Dreamer, WWE, 3/3
18. Shawn Michaels v JBL, WWE, 2/15
19. John Cena & Shawn Michaels v Chris Jericho & Randy Orton, WWE, 1/5
20. Rey Mysterio v Kane v Mike Knox, WWE, 3/2
21. Edge & Big Show v Triple H & Undertaker, WWE, 2/6
22. CM Punk v JBL, WWE, 3/9
23. Big Show v Festus, 1/30
24. Big Show v Triple H, WWE, 1/9
25. Randy Orton v Undertaker, WWE, 2/9

OFF. Chris Sabin v Alex Shelley, TNA, 1/11
OFF. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/15
OFF. John Cena v Shawn Michaels, WWE, 1/26

17. Jack Swagger & The Miz & John Morrison v Christian & Finlay & Tommy Dreamer, WWE, 3/3

This is kind of strange, because Miz and Morrison went out and took their six-man tag match onto all three WWE shows. This is the second one, from ECW. It’s a lot better than the third from RAW, which seems crazy because it’s replacing Swagger with Kane (big step down) and Dreamer with Mysterio (nearly incomprehensible step up). But that match was short and kinda shitty. The first one was on Smackdown! a month before the ECW match, and it had Kendrick instead of Swagger on the heel team, which is a plus for the ECW match, traded the Colons for Christian and Finlay, which is a plus for the ECW match, and R-Truth instead of Dreamer on the face team, which is at worst a wash. So the ECW match had the best lineup of the three but it’s only the second best, I definitely liked the first one more. This is still a pretty awesome match, but for some reason they decided to have Dreamer working FIP and Miz and Morrison work the bulk of the heat which doesn’t work so well for me when presented with more attractive options. Finlay trapping Miz in the apron at the start of the match is pretty boss and it’s a shame he doesn’t get to do too much more, but then again he’s pretty old. When Christian gets the hot tag the match finally kicks into A++ gear and leads to a great finishing stretch with Morrison, Christian, and Swagger. A damn fine six-man.

20. Rey Mysterio v Kane v Mike Knox, WWE, 3/2

So I fucking hate triple threat matches. I was texting my friend Brian one day about this and he was amazed because he thought I preferred multi-man matches to singles. I gave my phone the funniest look when I read that. I also tend to not like them when they’re run with “RAW guys”, because “RAW booked wrestling” is almost always really really fucking lazy with the tropes they use. So I was pretty surprised when I dug this match as much as I did and it is all, entirely, 100% Rey Mysterio, your 2009 wrestler of the year (yes, I’ve decided this as of March when I watched two straight John Cena television main events, couldn’t really get into either of them, decided he just isn’t as good without a title for whatever reason, remembered that he’s only held a title for like nine total weeks as of the end of August, and went “…oh”). The match does start with the stupid three way crap of ‘knock a dude outside, other two dudes work each other’, but it’s ok because Rey takes a swank bump to set that up. Then Kane takes a shitty bump, but it’s ok because you’ve got Rey in there with Knox. Then they abandon the two inside one outside bullshit and get down to all three in the ring, Rey running around hitting both of the big dudes with all this great looking Rey offense. Kane and Knox are pretty much perfect as pillars for Rey’s insanity, and they both kill the fuck out of him when it’s their turn to smack Rey around. The ending sequence is awesome and it has everyone biting on nearfalls. Even me. I watched this match live six months ago. What the fuck? I almost think this should be higher.

22. CM Punk v JBL, WWE, 3/9

CM Punk is my favorite wrestler but I’m not really that high on too many of his matches, this is his first match on the list. It’s the last match of his Intercontinental title reign, which sucks in a sense, but is also awesome because I really like JBL, too. JBL manages to beat the shit out of the Punk in a manner that lets you admire the stiffness and brutality, as opposed to the Punk/Regal series where it was vaguely creepy to the point that I found the matches uncomfortable to watch. JBL also has the best clothesline in the God damn world and Punk takes two of them like a fucking MAN. Punk works just fine as the fired up babyface here and JBL works in his big match violence stuff and I don’t know, I just got into it. Fun little match!

2009 MOTY list is Jack Swagger vs Christian, motherfuckers!

1. Jack Swagger v Christian, 2/24
2. John Cena v Rey Mysterio v Chris Jericho v Edge v Kane v Mike Knox, WWE, 2/15
3. John Cena v Shawn Michaels, WWE, 1/12
4. Matt Hardy v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/13
5. Jack Swagger v Matt Hardy, WWE, 1/25
6. Edge v Triple H v Undertaker v Jeff Hardy v Big Show v Vladimir Kozlov, WWE, 2/15
7. John Cena v Chris Jericho, WWE, 2/2
8. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/3
9. Big Show v MVP, WWE, 1/16
10. John Cena v JBL, WWE, 1/25
11. Finlay v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/6
12. Jack Swagger & Mark Henry vs Christian & Finlay, 2/17
13. Randy Orton v Shane McMahon, WWE, 2/15
14. Jeff Jarrett v Kurt Angle, TNA, 1/11
15. Jack Swagger v Christian, WWE, 2/10
16. The Miz & John Morrison & The Brian Kendrick v Primo & Carlito & R-Truth, WWE, 2/6
17. Shawn Michaels v JBL, WWE, 2/15
18. John Cena & Shawn Michaels v Chris Jericho & Randy Orton, WWE, 1/5
19. Edge & Big Show v Triple H & Undertaker, WWE, 2/6
20. Big Show v Festus, 1/30
21. Big Show v Triple H, WWE, 1/9
22. Randy Orton v Undertaker, WWE, 2/9
23. Chris Sabin v Alex Shelley, TNA, 1/11
24. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/15
25. John Cena v Shawn Michaels, WWE, 1/26

OFF. Triple H v Undertaker v Big Show v Vladimir Kozlov, WWE, 2/13

1. Jack Swagger v Christian, 2/24

Okay. So it’s August now, pretty much six months to the day since this match actually happened. I went to WrestleMania this year. I was legitimately more excited to see this six-month old match today than anything on WrestleMania. I do not remember the last time that I was this excited to see a new match, let alone a match that I’ve had sitting on my hard drive for six fucking months. This is something similar to what I did with Wall*E. Downloaded it, left it sitting on my hard drive, heard great things about it, slowly got more excited to watch it until I actually realized I’d be watching it soon, at which point I started getting really, really excited. I’ve been buzzing, BUZZING for fuck’s sakes, with excitement to watch this match for the last few days now. I could have watched this match at any point in the last six months. But I Wall*E’d it. And true to form with Wall*E, this meant two other things:

1) It wasn’t nearly as superficially satisfying as a usual great movie (or match) that I happened to watch out of nowhere, only to find that it’s really fucking great, is.

2) It was still undeniably super fucking great.

Was Christian always this good? Like, do I need to go back and watch some more fucking TNA? I’d totally do it if someone is going to tell me there are more Christian matches of this caliber. Or at least comparable calibers. It’s early into his ECW run so all of his now-usual spots are new and he’s working top face like he’ll never get this shot again. The deal with Christian is that he was put onto ECW to fill Matt Hardy’s roll of top babyface after Matt Hardy was moved to Christian’s roll of Jeff Hardy stalker. I’ve been really high on Matt Hardy for a couple years, consistently putting him in the top five wrestlers in the world in my books. Christian goes out and LITERALLY replaces Matt Hardy, wrestling the best Matt match that Matt ever wrestled, with of course the side note that Matt isn’t actually in this match. The beautiful thing about it is that it doesn’t ever feel the way that the other Swagger vs top ECW babyface matches did, where they were great and awesome but at the end of the day it was Swagger put into a Matt match (or a Finlay match), and he just happened to excel. Christian doesn’t do that. Yeah, the match is still based around the limb selling the way a Matt match is, Christian still throws the impactful sounding strikes the way Matt does, the match is laid out just as smartly as any Matt match ever has been, but this manages to be Matt Hardy vs Jack Swagger if it was booked to be John Cena vs Shawn Michaels. I guess that’s really the best part of this match, it’s the 1/13 Hardy/Swagger match mixed with the 1/12 Michaels/Cena match, which to this point were my two favorite singles matches of the year.

Of course this isn’t to say that Christian is a bystander in this match, just like it would be wrong to say that Swagger was a bystander in the Hardy or Finlay matches. Maybe it’s a little easier to praise Swagger here. I don’t know. It’s an impeccably paced, planned, and wrestled 25 minute TV main event that takes a pre-RAW crowd and drags them into it. It almost feels wrong to praise individual spots that Christian or Swagger pull off here. Swagger is Swagger, with his brutal power offense and quick amateur offense, slowed and paced to go 25 minutes, and while the end result is different and maybe not as viscerally pleasing as his 14 minute speed of destruction offense matches, it’s still really great and pretty much on a level higher than just about anyone in WWE. With the way Triple H kills off Orton and Cena falls off after April (more to come), there’s a really, really good argument that Jack Swagger is the first-half-of-2009 wrestler of the year. It’s basically him or Rey Mysterio. Dude’s been on television for five months and he’s already taken his best match and adapted it to an even better match featuring two established WWE main eventers and beat THAT match, too. What the fuck more could anyone want from him? To go back to ECW so he could have awesome matches again? Oh.

But while Swagger’s first run of matches were all about Swagger and how he adapted in the universe of a Matt Hardy match or a Finlay match, this is about Christian in the same way that Wall*E was the star of that movie. I don’t remember the moment in Wall*E, off the top of my head, where I changed from someone passively watching something that he was excited for with a smile on his face to completely immersed in the art. In this match, I was sitting there, thinking it was really good, but kind of felt let down. I’d waited months. I’d buzzed. And yet I was sitting there with the smile, happy with what I was seeing but detached. Then Christian actually manages to get out of the powerbomb and I marked the fuck out. This match was six months old, and I came in with impossible expectations. And I still marked out.

This match isn’t the Wall*E of movies. I don’t know that it will be #1 on this list at the end of the year (or #2, as Wall*E ended up). I don’t think that it has the one man performance of Rey Mysterio in the RAW Elimination Chamber, or the crowd emotion of Cena/Michaels. I don’t know that Christian’s impression here was more relatively impressive than Swagger’s mark in Hardy/Swagger. But for a match that combines all of those things and puts them together in a prettier package, it sure managed to get a lot of damn words out of me.

Wrestling. Hot damn.

2009 MOTY List

1. John Cena v Rey Mysterio v Chris Jericho v Edge v Kane v Mike Knox, WWE, 2/15
2. John Cena v Shawn Michaels, WWE, 1/12
3. Matt Hardy v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/13
4. Jack Swagger v Matt Hardy, WWE, 1/25
5. Edge v Triple H v Undertaker v Jeff Hardy v Big Show v Vladimir Kozlov, WWE, 2/15
6. John Cena v Chris Jericho, WWE, 2/2
7. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/3
8. Big Show v MVP, WWE, 1/16
9. John Cena v JBL, WWE, 1/25
10. Finlay v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/6
11. Jack Swagger & Mark Henry vs Christian & Finlay, 2/17
12. Randy Orton v Shane McMahon, WWE, 2/15
13. Jeff Jarrett v Kurt Angle, TNA, 1/11
14. Jack Swagger v Christian, WWE, 2/10
15. The Miz & John Morrison & The Brian Kendrick v Primo & Carlito & R-Truth, WWE, 2/6
16. Shawn Michaels v JBL, WWE, 2/15
17. John Cena & Shawn Michaels v Chris Jericho & Randy Orton, WWE, 1/5
18. Edge & Big Show v Triple H & Undertaker, WWE, 2/6
19. Big Show v Festus, 1/30
20. Big Show v Triple H, WWE, 1/9
21. Randy Orton v Undertaker, WWE, 2/9
22. Chris Sabin v Alex Shelley, TNA, 1/11
23. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/15
24. John Cena v Shawn Michaels, WWE, 1/26
25. Triple H v Undertaker v Big Show v Vladimir Kozlov, WWE, 2/13

OFF. Jeff Hardy v Edge, WWE, 1/25

11. Jack Swagger & Mark Henry vs Christian & Finlay, 2/17

So Jack Swagger at this point is pretty clearly rapidly becoming one of the best wrestlers in WWE (when I say ‘at this point’ I tend to mean at the point of the match itself, I’m like six months behind now). Finlay is a guy who will hit you hard in the face and it is awesome. He’s had several very good to excellent matches with Swagger. Mark Henry is an athletic giant who is one of the absolute SMARTEST workers around. I named this damn blog after him, and he makes a nice little team with Swagger. He’s also had several good matches with Finlay at this point. Then you have Christian, who came back to WWE and completely randomly was super fucking awesome. Like instantly becoming Swagger’s running buddy for fastest riser in WWE. And this match is only his second match back! But you throw these four together in a tag team match on ECW and give it some time and you pretty much expect it to be good. That’s the nice thing about ECW, what sounds good is going to BE good, and what doesn’t sound good is probably going to be good anyway. This is completely the opposite of RAW where you get something that sounds like it’s going to be fucking awesome and it sucks just like everything else. But that criticism will become more prevalent over the course of the year, as of February RAW was still awesome, and so was this match. Nothing super spectacular but a real good little tag match with four real good guys. Sometimes there is nothing wrong with getting exactly what you’d expect.

2009 MOTY list is unspeakably lazy

1. John Cena v Rey Mysterio v Chris Jericho v Edge v Kane v Mike Knox, WWE, 2/15
2. John Cena v Shawn Michaels, WWE, 1/12
3. Matt Hardy v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/13
4. Jack Swagger v Matt Hardy, WWE, 1/25
5. Edge v Triple H v Undertaker v Jeff Hardy v Big Show v Vladimir Kozlov, WWE, 2/15
6. John Cena v Chris Jericho, WWE, 2/2
7. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/3
8. Big Show v MVP, WWE, 1/16
9. John Cena v JBL, WWE, 1/25
10. Finlay v Jack Swagger, WWE, 1/6
11. Randy Orton v Shane McMahon, WWE, 2/15
12. Jeff Jarrett v Kurt Angle, TNA, 1/11
13. Jack Swagger v Christian, WWE, 2/10
14. The Miz & John Morrison & The Brian Kendrick v Primo & Carlito & R-Truth, WWE, 2/6
15. Shawn Michaels v JBL, WWE, 2/15
16. John Cena & Shawn Michaels v Chris Jericho & Randy Orton, WWE, 1/5
17. Edge & Big Show v Triple H & Undertaker, WWE, 2/6
18. Big Show v Festus, 1/30
19. Big Show v Triple H, WWE, 1/9
20. Randy Orton v Undertaker, WWE, 2/9
21. Chris Sabin v Alex Shelley, TNA, 1/11
22. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/15
23. John Cena v Shawn Michaels, WWE, 1/26
24. Triple H v Undertaker v Big Show v Vladimir Kozlov, WWE, 2/13
25. Jeff Hardy v Edge, WWE, 1/25

DROPPED: The Miz & John Morrison v Rey Mysterio & Kofi Kingston, WWE, 1/5

Holy shit that got up to 25 in a hurry. And like the title says, unspeakably lazy.

1. John Cena v Rey Mysterio v Chris Jericho v Edge v Kane v Mike Knox, WWE, 2/15

Because Rey Mysterio and John Cena are the best wrestlers in America, and fuck you.

5. Edge v Triple H v Undertaker v Jeff Hardy v Big Show v Vladimir Kozlov, WWE, 2/15

Because Edge is out early and Big Show rules and the ending run is pretty great and fuck you..

6. John Cena v Chris Jericho, WWE, 2/2

Because these two know how to work meaningful learned psychology, and fuck you.

7. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/3

Because his name is Finlay, and he loves to fight. And: fuck you.

11. Randy Orton v Shane McMahon, WWE, 2/15

Because Orton can drag almost anyone, kicking and screaming, to a ‘fuck you’ great match.

13. Jack Swagger v Christian, WWE, 2/10

Because it hints at further greatness to come, while being awesome in itself, and because fuck you.

14. The Miz & John Morrison & The Brian Kendrick v Primo & Carlito & R-Truth, WWE, 2/6

Because this is a seriously awesome six-man tag that shocked the hell out of me. Fuck you.

15. Shawn Michaels v JBL, WWE, 2/15

Because it was the last in the great series of JBL/Michaels emotion-fests, and fuck you I miss JBL.

17. Edge & Big Show v Triple H & Undertaker, WWE, 2/6

Because Big Show totally rules it here and makes this hilariously fun, and fuck you.

20. Randy Orton v Undertaker, WWE, 2/9

Because the ending sucks but ‘Taker is a great foil for Randy and because fuck you.

22. Jack Swagger v Finlay, WWE, 2/15

Because this is the worst of these two, but it’s still these two, and fuck you.

24. Triple H v Undertaker v Big Show v Vladimir Kozlov, WWE, 2/13

Because fuck you, that’s why.