‘09 MOTY list update

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

OFF. CM Punk v Kane vs Christian v Kofi Kingston v Shelton Benjamin v Finlay v Mark Henry v MVP, WWE, 4/5
OFF. Jack Swagger v Christian, WWE, 2/10
OFF. Finlay v The Brian Kendrick, WWE, 3/13
OFF. The Miz & John Morrison & The Brian Kendrick v Primo & Carlito & R-Truth, WWE, 2/6
OFF. Jack Swagger & The Miz & John Morrison v Christian & Finlay & Tommy Dreamer, WWE, 3/3

7. Evan Bourne & Primo & Carlito v Tyson Kidd & John Morrison & The Miz, WWE, 4/7

After finishing RAW the night before and throwing the ten man on the list (more later), I was pretty convinced that it would be tough to top that, at least for a while, for best tag match in WWE this year. And then I watch this and holy shit, total blow away match. Kind of ironically it knocked off one of the six-man tags that Miz and Morrison were in earlier this year, and this really is the best possible version of those six mans from earlier. Morrison is crushing Carlito with his strikes, Kidd and Miz tear up Bourne who is probably no worse than third best selling babyface on the roster, Primo is his usual awesome self coming in off the hot tag. The only thing I didn’t like about this match was that it made me remember that this was the last week of Morrison/Miz, and that we never got a Miz/Bourne match. No, RAW matches since they were drafted don’t count because fuck RAW. I don’t want to go jumping ahead and saying ‘no for real this is the best WWE tag of the year’ because well look how far that went when I tried to do it last time, but outside of maybe the Backlash six man I can’t think of a whole lot off the top of my head that will top this. One of the best matches of the year, tag or no tag.

11. John Cena v Jack Swagger, WWE, 4/13

Placing this match was tough, I ended up putting it above the Swagger/Finlay matches which was took me a long time to settle on. In the end I decided this wasn’t as stiff, but was just as good, and it felt way more like a big time match. Besides it’s pretty fitting to have this above the Finlay matches, as it really marks Swagger’s arrival as a top tier wrestler in WWE (hindsight makes this break my heart, btw), and it’s real neat to watch Swagger going from the game young kid who took and gave awesome beatings with Finlay to the dude manhandling the biggest star in wrestling. Cena’s STF also looked pretty great here too, and he’s totally believable from the first lock up as a guy who is slowly realizing Swagger is the real shit. And he is. Or was. It is September and I miss awesome Swagger matches :(

12. The Miz v Kofi Kingston, WWE, 4/13

This was a pretty eye opening match and I thought long and hard about putting it above Cena/Swagger. It wasn’t as good as the Primo match Miz had, I mean Kofi isn’t as good as Primo, RAW is a shittier environment for quality than ECW, and the finish to this match sucked, but it was totally in the same league and totally shocked me. I didn’t think it would even hit four minutes and next thing I know they’re going twelve and it’s awesome. Probably Kofi’s best match ever, and Miz is at his usual level of heelishness here. Which is to say ‘fucking awesome’.

18. John Cena & Jeff Hardy & CM Punk & Rey Mysterio & Ricky Steamboat v Edge & Big Show & Chris Jericho & Matt Hardy & Kane, WWE, 4/6

So I actually stuck around in Texas for RAW the next night and this was the highlight of that show, a really awesome, long ten man tag. I’m glad it got so much time because unlike the girls’ ten man from earlier in the show where like three people actually got in, everyone here got in and had time to not only show off what they had but further along their storylines. Jericho comes in and goes right after Steamboat, Matt runs away from Jeff whenever possible, Kane keeps trying to murder Punk, Edge and Show hate each other. Plus there’s a really long face in peril section featuring fucking RICKY STEAMBOAT. I thought this was also probably Punk’s best performance of the year to date, he got a really long FIP section too that I thought ruled. Good stuff all around.

25. Jeff Hardy v Matt Hardy, WWE, 4/10

I was actually pretty surprised with how much I liked this. I dug their ‘Mania match but surely at least part of that was being there for it, and really it didn’t feel like they were trying to hurt each other as much as they were trying to do a bunch of flashy shit with weapons. In terms of hate translating across the screen I thought this match blew the street fight away. I do really like the stretcher gimmick because it usually translates to nail biting false finishes, and I thought they were just laying in on each other way more here. Matt trying to run over Jeff’s head with the stretcher ruled, Jeff using the stretcher as a skateboard to hurl himself at Matt was cool, both Hardys falling onto the stretcher while it had a chair on it was pretty sweet too. I liked it!