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Or…the one that had a great Mick Foley promo
Welcome to the top five! To those of you who have read this since we started off with the trainwreck of Undertaker vs. Underfaker, thank you. We are almost at the finish line. It is much more fun to write about the good matches (like this one and the next four) than the bad ones. These next five were a joy to watch and write about.
This one is the blowoff match to a feud that was well over a year in the making. It started, believe it or not, with Mr. Kennedy winning 2007 Money In The Bank match at WrestleMania 23. On an early May edition of Monday Night Raw, Edge challenged Kennedy for the Money In The Bank briefcase. Edge, being the devious cur that he is, attacked Kennedy before the bell, laid him out and won the title shot.
He had it for all of four days (well, one day in "real time" because Smackdown is taped on Tuesdays but airs on Fridays). On that Friday’s episode of Smackdown, Undertaker and Batista – another great feud – had a brutal steel cage match for the World Heavyweight Championship that Undertaker barely won when Mark Henry came out and beat the crap out of the Deadman just because he could. Edge then came out, cashed in his title shot, speared the Undertaker and won his first World Heavyweight Championship.
‘Taker was hurting and missed about four months. Edge himself tore his pectoral muscle and was stripped of the title in July of 2007. With both Edge and ‘Taker out, Batista, Great Khali and Rey Mysterio picked up the slack. So instead of Edge vs. Undertaker we got Batista vs. Great Khali. That was fun.
Undertaker and Batista wrestled for the Big Gold Belt in a Hell in a Cell at Survivor Series that year. ‘Taker tombstoned Batista onto the steel steps and as he was going for the easy cover, Edge, dressed as a camera man(!) (video here) smacked Undertaker with the camera and cost him the belt…again.
Edge won the title in December of 2007 and held it until Undertaker took it back in the main event of WrestleMania XXIV (read BIGPALE’s review of that match here). Good match, but these two weren’t finished yet.
The feud starts to go off the rails a bit here. Undertaker won a rematch at Backlash but Smackdown GM Vicky Guerrero stripped ‘Taker of his belt for using his modified gogoplata submission maneuver. A rematch at Judgment Day saw Undertaker win via countout. Edge won the title in a superb TLC match at One Night Stand when La Familia (including Zach Ryder in a past life) interfered and Edge threw Undertaker through a stack of tables. Not only did Edge win the title, but Undertaker was "banished" from WWE. The Deadman had to go on another injury sabbatical.
But wait, there's more! CM Punk, capitalizing on both his Money In The Bank contract and a Batista Bomb, took the World Heavyweight Championship off Edge on an episode of Raw. In his grief, Edge had an affair with Alicia Fox, the wedding planner for his and Vicky Guerrero's wedding.
This made Vicky less-than-pleased, and she "reinstated" the Undertaker and made a Hell In A Cell match at SummerSlam.
The best part of this was yet to come. Edge, fearing for his life, asked Mick Foley, then a color commentator on Smackdown, for advice in beating the Undertaker. Edge was quite simply acting emo (if that's even how the kids use that term), all lovesick and whiny and mopey. After a brilliant promo from Foley (here's an abbreviated version but you should really watch the entire thing) Edge understood that he needed to become a maniacal monster, as opposed to a whiny man, in order to beat the Undertaker at the latter's own game. He then beat the crap out of Foley in order to show off his new persona.
Main Event Time!
Jim Ross and Tazz (who was better on commentary in WWE than I remembered) did a great job of making Edge look like a legitimate threat. They highlighted his new frame of mind and built him up. I wish announcers today did a good job of making wrestlers look like threats, instead of bickering amongst themselves or trying to make points with cheap one-liners.
The first two-thirds of the match was Edge just beating the crap out of Undertaker. Edge was showing off his new persona. After spearing 'Taker into the ring steps, Edge set up two tables outside the ring on top of each other, in the space between the ring and the cell closest to the entrance ramp. Hold this thought.
After a few wicked-looking chair shots, including one to Undertaker's throat, Edge set up a ladder, put a dead Undertaker on a table and then jumped off the ladder with a chair like an elbow drop, just like he did to Foley in the video linked above. He was dominating this match and the crowd hated him for it.
Undertaker made his comeback, but it was cut short as Edge leapt off the ring steps and speared 'Taker literally through the cage. After some more brawling outside, Edge ran across the top of the Raw and Smackdown tables and speared Undertaker through the ECW announce table. Just a great move. JR of course sold this huge.
By the way, we didn't get our first pinfall attempt until nearly three-quarters of the match was over. The two men traded finishers, with the crowd popping more each time a desperate shoulder got off the mat.
Finally, Edge went for an Old-School, which Undertaker countered. Remember those two tables I mentioned a few paragraphs ago that Edge set up at the start of the match? He took a chokeslam off the top turnbuckle into those two tables. I loved that when it happened you had mentally forgotten about the two tables being set up because Edge set them up such a long time ago. To me at least, this made the spot that much bigger.
Edge getting chokeslammed through a couple of tables (via www.wwe.com)
Taker brings Edge into the ring and pays him back for all he's done. A camera shot, con-chair-to, spear and finally Tombstone later and Undertaker is victorious. After the match, as 'Taker is walking back to the locker room, he sees that Edge is moving on the TitanTron so heads back into the ring and sets up a ladder. 'Taker chokeslammed Edge though the ring. A few moments later, the hole in the ring was engulfed in flames. Cool ending to a great match.
Edge came back at Survivor Series and interrupted a God-awful Triple H-Vladimir Kozlov match, where he won the World Heavyweight Championship again. Undertaker bounced around from Big Show to Jeff Hardy before he and Shawn Michaels had one of the best matches in the history of the WWF/WWE at WrestleMania 25.
Curtain Jerker's Star Rating – 4¼ to 4½ seems fair. Great match to end a great feud.
Up Next – A member of the Kliq was the special guest ref for this one.
Also in this series:#7 - Angle vs. Triple H vs. The Rock
#9 - Steve Austn vs. The Undertaker
#11 - Triple H. vs. Mankind vs. Steve Austin
#18 - Triple H vs. Brock Lesnar
#19 - Hogan/Savage vs. Andre/DiBiase
#22 - Hogan/Beefcake vs. Savage/Zeus
