wrestling / Video Reviews
Dark Pegasus Video Review: Edge – A Decade of Decadence (Disc Three)
December 3, 2008 | Posted by
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| Edge: A Decade of Decadence, Disc Three by J.D. Dunn Re: “Edgy” Edge in 2004. Some of you have argued against my interpretation that Edge was too edgy in 2004 to work as a babyface. I would say that he failed because they made him desperately edgy, like central-casting edgy. People didn’t buy it. In other words, if Austin 97 was Nirvana, Edge 04 was Bush. Worked out in the end, though… for Gavin Rossdale anyway. The DQ rule is waived, so if Edge gets disqualified, he loses the title. Cena overpowers Edge early, and they tease a ref bump. Cena misses a charge and posts his own shoulder. Cena makes it in at 8 but gets knocked off the apron for another teased countout. Even his hometown fans are booing Cena. Ross says we are “literally in Cena’s backyard.” Must have been a bitch to mow. Cena elbows out of a chinlock but runs right into a big boot for two. Edge goes up and fights his way out of trouble, hitting a flying clothesline for two. Cena powers out of a camel clutch and hits the Throwback. Lita grabs a chair, but Edge waives her off. That’s enough distraction to allow Cena to come back, though. Cena hits the Five Knuckle Shuffle, but Edge counters the FU to the Impaler! ONE, TWO, THR-NO! Cena goes for the Super FU, but Edge counters to an Electric Chair, which Cena then counters to a Victory Roll for two. I thought that was it. Lita tries to get involved again but gets knocked off the apron by Edge. Cena schoolboys him for two. I thought that was the end too. Edge readies for the Spear, but Cena sees him coming and drop toeholds him into the STFU! Lita tries to interfere again, but Edge waives her off while in the hold and makes the ropes! The ref drags Cena off Edge, allowing Cena to sneak Edge some brass knuckles. Edge misses a swing and winds up in the FU, Lita jumps on Edge to block, but Cena just shucks her aside. That allows Edge to slip out of the FU and BLAST Cena in the back of the head with the brass knuckles for the win at 15:41. The booking down the stretch was fabulous with both guys teasing spots where the match should end but didn’t, and Edge & Lita sold the psychology of the rules changes perfectly. A match that easily surpassed my expectations. ****1/4 These two are the past two winners of the MitB. It’s odd how much history they do have with one another, since Edge was the one that practically handed over the title to Van Dam at ONS2. Van Dam monkeyflips Edge over and sends him to the floor with a kick attempt as we go to break. We come back to RVD holding an armbar. Van Dam gets caught coming back through the ropes, and Edge gives him a neckbreaker to bring him back in. Things bog down as Edge grabs a chinlock. Van Dam stretches for the ropes before kicking Edge in the head to get out of it. He hits a spinning kick in the corner, but Edge cuts off Rolling Thunder with a powerslam. SWEEEEEET! Edge sets up for the superplex, but Van Dam crotches him on the top and sends him to the floor with a spinning wheel kick. Back in, Edge fires off a dropkick to block a flying crossbody. Van Dam avoids going into the buckle, kicks Edge in the face, and hits a split-legged moonsault for two. Another spinning wheel kick sets up the Five-Star, but Randy Orton runs down. Van Dam stops to kick Orton, but that allows Edge to recover and spear him for the win at 13:30. It would have been interesting to see a younger, pre-injury Edge take on Rob Van Dam. Say, in 1999 or so. Edge was a much more mature wrestler here, though. ***1/4 Looks like they got Orton up long enough to get him to the show. Actually, I’ve been anticipating this match-up for a while now. Edge slaps Orton right in the face and gets him to chase him around the ring. Orton slides in and pokes Edge in the eye (according to JR, looked like a slap to me). Btw, what exactly is a “strategically placed slap,” Jim Ross? Edge plays face-by-default. Cool storytelling moments: Orton beats Edge like a dog, chokes him on the apron, and then knocks him off the apron into the crowd barrier, so Edge beats Orton like a dog, chokes him on the apron, and knocks him all the way into the announce table. The crowd slides back over to Randy’s side. Back in, Edge hits a spin kick and goes up, but Orton crotches him. Edge fights Orton off but comes right off into a dropkick. The Stretch Backbreaker gets two for Orton. A powerslam gets two more, but Orton runs right into the Edge-o-matic. They both go for a crossbody block, and you can guess how that turns out. Edge recovers and takes off the turnbuckle pad, but the ref argues with him long enough for Orton to roll him up for two. Edge counters for two of his own and then schoolboys Orton with his feet on the ropes for two. Orton returns the favor but gets caught cheating. The RKO is countered to the Edgecution. ONE, TWO, THR-NO! Orton is really developing a following here. SPEAR—MISSES! Randy sets up for the RKO, but Edge shoves him away and hits the spear at 16:00. Not really a proper blowoff for Rated RKO’s breakup, but I’ll take it. *** We get the last few minutes of the Batista vs. Undertaker cage match. Both guys drop down at the same time (at least according to the split-screen replay). The ref declares the match a draw, so the Undertaker retains. Taker is busted open and staggering. Mark Henry runs down and destroys the Undertaker. He hits the World’s Strongest Slam and walks out. Now, Edge comes in and cashes in his title shot. After they get through all the announcements, Edge darts over and covers. ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! Again. ONE, TWO, THRE-NO! Taker tries to sit up but just falls over. Finally, Taker staggers to his feet but gets SPEARED! ONE, TWO, THREE! Edge wins the title at 1:24. Great moment. JBL goes from disgust to admiration in sixty seconds. This kicked off a feud that lasted over a year and solidified Edge as a perennial main-event threat. 1/2* If Batista doesn’t win the title here, he won’t get another shot as long as Edge is champion. Batista tries to wrestle early. He charges, but Edge sends him over the top. Batista gets to the apron, so Edge posts his shoulder. Back in, Batista armdrags Edge but posts his own shoulder when he misses a charge. Well, that’s just bad luck. Edge works the shoulder over with a crucifix hold. Batista comes back with a clothesline…and another. Then, he gets two off a Bossman Slam. Edge reverses the Demonbomb to the Impaler DDT for two. They exchange nearfalls, and Batista sets up for the powerslam. Edge slips out and hits an Edge-o-Matic. Edge sets up for the spear, but Batista beats him to the punch, as it were. Batista sets up for the Demonbomb, but Edge just hits a blatant low to save the title by DQ at 12:49. Teddy Long won’t go for that, so he restarts the match and waives the DQ rule, so if Edge gets DQ’d again, he loses the title. Edge hits a spear for two and grabs a chair. Then, he realizes that he can’t disqualified and drops it. See, work the stips. Back in, Batista rolls him up for two and then tosses him to the floor. DEMONBOMB ON THE FLOOR! Oh, but Batista can’t get back in the ring in time and gets counted out at 2:06 (or 16:40 total time). Batista gives Edge another Demonbomb to vent his frustrations. A surprisingly good match in spite of its goofy booking. ***1/2 Rey gets a pretty solid chorus of boos directed at him. New Yorkers despise pluck – and stale wrestlers. The dorky helmet he wears to the ring probably doesn’t help either. Rey hits a sloppy bodyscissors takedown early. Edge tosses him to the floor where Hawkins and Ryder get a little too close for the ref’s comfort, so he tosses them. Edge goes after Rey’s surgically repaired knee and applies a half-crab. Rey kicks his way out of that and goes for the 619, but Edge pops up and powerslams him for two. Edge goes back to the leg for a while. He sunset flips Rey, but Rey rolls through and kicks him in the head for two. A weak doublestomp gets two for Rey. Rey sends him to the floor and slides out with a DDT on the floor. Back in, Edge just boots him in the face but misses a spear. A headscissors sets up the 619, but Vickie Guerrero makes a miraculous recovery and yanks out the referee. Rey goes for another 619, but Vickie sacrifices herself to protect Edge from it. Rey tries to hit the West Coast Pop anyway, but Edge spears him out of the air for the win at 12:34. Both guys are broken down from injuries, so this was just them kind of going through the motions until the wacky booking kicked in. **3/4 If Taker loses, he’s gone from the WWE. Taker boots Edge in the face and hits the Old School Ropewalk Forearm early. Taker sets up a stack of tables outside the ring, but since no one can even get on top of those unless they’re tipped off a ladder from the ring, I know this is just for later use. Edge knocks Taker down and goes up a ladder. Taker yanks him down and sets up a couple of ladder on the corners. Why? So when he goes up, he can shove Edge off into one of them, and Edge can bounce off and shove the Taker off into the other. CONTRIVED PSYCHOLOGY~! To the outside, Taker tries his apron legdrop, but Edge blocks with a chair and clips Taker’s knee. Taker shrugs it off and goes for the Last Ride on a ladder, but Edge goes low. Edge hits a few chairshots and splashes Taker through a table. Edge goes up but has to come back down and spear the Undertaker because Taker was recovering too quickly. Edge gets a big ladder and waffles the Undertaker with a chairshot. He lifts the chair over his head for the coup de grace, but Undertaker goes low. Edge heads to the apron to recover, so Taker chokeslams him on the ladder stretched between the apron and the crowd barrier. Taker goes up, but Hawkins & Ryder run in and pull him down. They set him up on a table and put another table over him. Why? Who the hell knows because he just tips over the table and chokeslams them both through tables on the outside. All of this allows Edge to recover and spear Taker off the apron. Edge resets the tables the way Hawkins and Ryder had them. Oh, and he turns the ladder to face them. Why? Because he needs them to be that way so when he goes up, Undertaker can catch him and give him the Last Ride through the stack of tables. I’d say that would normally be the finish, but there are a stack of tables on the outside that still haven’t been used, so Chavo Guerrero and Bam Neeley run in. Taker fends them off, though. The ladder is directly under the belt, which won’t work at all, so he pulls it over toward the edge of the ring near the stack of tables. Why? So that Edge can recover and tip over the ladder, sending Taker through the stack of tables on the outside. Okay. That’s all the tables. Edge can go up and get the title now. And that’s just what he does at 23:33. I’ve heard some people call this a Match of the Year Candidate, but with such laughably contrived spots, it doesn’t even come close. All ladder matches have a bit of contrivance, but it isn’t always made so obvious, and usually it’s only noticeable on multiple viewings. With this, I saw them setting up things a mile away and doing things that only made sense because they had to arrange everything for later bumps that they were going to take. HOW FUCKING CONVENIENT! Anyway, enough with the negatives. Taker held his own in the bumping department. The spots that they did set up were pretty good, and there was nothing really wrong with the match outside of the “tells.” There just wasn’t a moment where I believed anything I was seeing was real. That makes it hard to go above ***. It’s all Undertaker early as he beats Edge around the ring and Snake Eyes Edge into the ring steps into the corner. Edge apparently blocked, though, and sends Taker into the steps. A few chairshots rock the Taker enough for Edge to set him up on a table. Edge splashes him through the table. Taker sits up and goes for a chokeslam, but Edge fights out of it. To the floor, Edge slips out of a Snake Eyes and spears Taker THROUGH THE CAGE! That knocks over part of the cell wall and lets them get out. Taker whips Edge into the barricade. They fight up to the announce tables where Edge runs across all three tables to SPEAR the Undertaker. Back in, Edge nails Taker with a camera in a play on the Survivor Series match. That gets two. Edge readies for another spear but gets chokeslammed. Taker sets up for the Last Ride, but now Edge goes low. Taker shrugs it off and tries again, but Edge slips out and spears him for two. Taker sets up for a Tombstone on the steps, but Edge counters to the Edge-o-Matic. Edge goes up, but Taker catches him and chokeslams him through a pair of tables on the outside. Now Taker hits a spear and nails Edge with the camera. That sets up a Conchairto and the Tombstone at 26:41. I’ve been reading a lot of MOTY talk, but like the TLC match it felt more like a walk-through than an actual match. The match did have three great spots – Edge’s spear through the cell, the spear on the tables, and the chokeslam through the stacked tables – but it felt like they had just written down a bunch of spots they wanted to do and went through them one by one without anything to hold the match together. I think the crowd reaction demonstrates that, as they would pop for the big spots and then get listless waiting for the next setup. That’s not to say it’s a horrible match. It was actually fairly entertaining in patches, but it’s more of a collection of spots than anything. ***1/2 |
The 411:Â For those who started watching during the Attitude era, I'm sure there has to be a sort of kinship with Edge. He started with the WWE right as they were taking off, so many new fans got to watch him grow from a rookie, to a legendary tag wrestler, to a main event superstar before their eyes. He is what Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels were to my generation. The DVD is chockfull of greatness. Don't expect to hear much about Edge's origins or thoughts and feelings on his career. He's in full, arrogant, self-stroking, crapulent form here. It would have been interesting to hear his side of the Lita situation, but it's probably a good idea that he doesn't open old wounds. Highly recommended. |
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| Final Score:  8.5   [ Very Good ]  legend |
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