The Year in PPV- 2012, Part I

Here we get to the one year in the PG Era that I truly think showed many of the positive qualities of the family friendly programming: 2012. While the heavy blood, swearing, and sexual content were gone, we still had many great characters that came out and put on spectacular PPV matches. In the context of current wrestling, 2012 is important in establishing the status quo we have today. We are now in a stage where legends can come and go whenever they please and have their spot given to them (including our current WWE World Heavyweight Champion in 2014), while also having a talented young roster of superstars coming up through the ranks, and our established current main eventers still relevant and holding their own against the part timers and the up and comers. So there's a lot about 2012 that celebrates the past, present, and future of the company.

Just to get some insight on all that happened in this year, let's look at what happened in 2012: we witnessed the rise of Ryback, the debut of The Shield, the returns of Chris Jericho and Brock Lesnar, the End of an Era, the phenomenon that was AJ Lee's many romances, a Money in the Bank winner fans demanded to see happen, a match that was dubbed Once in a Lifetime, the strangest Tag Team Champions since Booker T and Goldust, the short lived legacy of People Power, and a WWE Champion that held the belt for the ENTIRE year.

So let's start 2012 by embarking on the Road to WrestleMania...


1. Royal Rumble

The year gets underway with some spectacular action at the Royal Rumble. You know a show is bound to be exciting when the first match of the night is a Triple Threat Steel Cage match for the World Heavyweight Championship. Daniel Bryan really had the deck stacked against him by competing against Big Show and Mark Henry and while the ending might seem abrupt, it really helps escalate the progression and gimmick of Bryan's title reign. However, any momentum this title match produced was quickly halted with a filler Diva's tag match and a disappointing match between John Cena and Kane. The building was then brought back to life following the PPV debut of The Funkasaurus, Brodus Clay (still surprised that got over with the fans), and a very solid WWE Championship match between CM Punk and Dolph Ziggler. Aside from two of my favorites going at it for the belt, there was an added bit of story in Punk's feud with authority figure John Laurinaitis as a special guest referee that echoed the famous Austin/McMahon feud of the Attitude Era.

But the night's biggest highlights is one of the best Royal Rumble matches I've ever seen, and the reason I say that is because it does all of the things a Rumble match should do. It has all kinds of surprises in the forms of returning legends and notable superstar performances. The best stories told throughout the match include the rise of young, future main event heels in The Miz and Cody Rhodes, the feud between Randy Orton and Wade Barrett, Mick Foley, Santino Marella, and Ricardo Rodriguez offering some early match comedy, all THREE commentators get a chance to enter the match, and the match concludes with one of the best ending battles in Rumble history. Many fans thought they knew how the match was going to end, but by the end of the match the crowed was surprised to find a future main event star was on his way to WrestleMania.

Highly Recommended


2. Elimination Chamber

The main selling point should be the Elimination Chamber matches. So why are neither of them the main event? The actual main event of the show is an ambulance match between John Cena and Kane. Fans did not care about this match, they certainly felt it wasn't the proper feud for Cena to be having before facing The Rock at WrestleMania, and the inclusion of Zack Ryder and Eve makes this all the makings of an extremely crappy soap opera. Add on some filler championship matches and a mediocre segment involving John Laurianitis and THREE returning superstars, and the rest of the show becomes fully dependent on the two Chamber matches.

The first Chamber match saw CM Punk defend his WWE Championship against Kofi Kingston, The Miz, R-Truth, Chris Jericho, and Dolph Ziggler. While there's one teeny tiny aspect of the match that's a letdown (the elimination of a certain "Y2J"), there is a ton of high quality action. The second Chamber match saw Daniel Bryan fight Cody Rhodes, Wade Barrett, Big Show, the Great Khali, and Santino Marella (I'm serious) for the World Heavyweight Championship. Considering that Khali and Santino replaced Mark Henry and Randy Orton, this match would at first feel like a letdown but the crowd fully buys into rooting for Santino. I have a tough time saying which one's better because they both have their pros and cons, so that might be a positive on the show's part that there isn't a definitive Chamber match from the night, but rather two very good matches.

Skip It


3. WrestleMania XXVIII

Every generation has that one defining WrestleMania and for the longest time I thought it was WrestleMania XXVIII. Normally, that would be my undisputed pick for the PG-Era, but with how WrestleMania XXX turned out, I might have to do a post comparing the two. Nevertheless, let's get back to WrestleMania XXVIII. There's so much going well for this show, that even the midcard is able to fully entertain the fans. While it could have used a few more minutes, the Intercontinental Championship was defended in entertaining fashion by Cody Rhodes against Big Show, in a feud that pointed out all of Big Show's WrestleMania failures (gotta love a guy like Show who can poke fun at himself like that). And surprisingly enough, the diva's tag team match (which doubles as a celebrity match) of Beth Phoenix and Eve against Kelly Kelly and Maria Menounos is one of the most well-done women's matches I've seen at a WrestleMania in quite some time.

The card can also boast a strong gem of a match between Kane and Randy Orton, that I'm sure NO fan was expecting to be as good as it was, since the feud came out of nowhere (insert RKO joke) and both men have the reputation of not being able to carry matches. So how did they pull out a good match at a Mania? Anyways, we also have a fun 12-man tag team match to determine the General Manager for both RAW and SmackDown. On RAW, we had John Laurinaitis and his team of David Otunga, The Miz, Dolph Ziggler, Jack Swagger, Drew McIntyre, and Mark Henry. For SmackDown, Teddy Long comprised a team of Santino Marella, Zack Ryder, The Great Khali, R-Truth, Kofi Kingston, and Booker T. Add some shenanigans from the Bella Twins, Hornswoggle, Aksana, and Vickie Guerrero and we have a complete clusterfest that still feels entertaining thanks to the stipulation of the match's outcome. If there's one thing to complain about, it's the World Heavyweight Championship match that opened the show. It's Daniel Bryan vs. Sheamus in a match that only lasted for 18 seconds. The match itself led to what we now know as the YES! Movement, so that's a pretty good aftereffect to come out of that 18 second debacle.

But this Mania leaves its legacy in the form of THREE instant classic main events. There are two obvious one's that don't even need further explanation. The first is Triple H vs. the Undertaker in a Hell in a Cell match with Shawn Michaels as guest referee (NEED I EVEN SAY MORE!!??!?), and the second main event (and the match to close the show) is the match everyone waited a year to see: John Cena vs. The Rock. Even if the tagline for the match proved to be a waste a year later when they had a rematch, the match is still fun to see these two iconic figures clash and to hear the Miami crowd fully behind The People's Champ. The one that's gaining a lot more popularity in recent years though is the WWE Championship match between CM Punk and Chris Jericho. It's time to look at a formula folks: you take two of my all-time favorite performers (second and third to Shawn Michaels), have them both claim to be the Best in the World, have them battle for the company's richest prize, and you have that match on the grandest stage of them all. Sounds like a winner to me. The best way I can summarize WrestleMania XXVIII as an event is that it had the End of an Era, a Once in a Lifetime match, and the Battle of the Best in the World.

Highly Recommended 


4. Extreme Rules

The post-WrestleMania season gets underway with a PPV in one of the best wrestling towns around: Chicago. Sure, there are a handful of squash matches and surprises (and not all of them have an extreme stipulation) but there are once again two VERY good world championship matches. Redeeming their 18 second letdown at WrestleMania, Sheamus defended the World Heavyweight Championship against Daniel Bryan in a 2 out of 3 falls match. These guys show that they have great chemistry and I wish they would've had that opportunity to shine at Mania. And in a match that saw the hometown hero return, CM Punk defended his WWE Championship in a Street Fight against Chris Jericho. At this point, these two can't have a bad match together and the Chicago crowd is fully behind Punk to beat the snot out of Jericho after he targeted Punk's family and straight-edge beliefs. But at the end of the night, it all came down to the buildup of the main event.

After being away from the WWE for 8 years, Brock Lesnar finally made his return and set his sights on one man: John Cena. The two engaged in a very personal, physical, and bloody extreme rules match. You could really feel during this match that these two legitimately hated each other and the Chicago crowd loved seeing Cena get bloodied up and mauled by Lesnar. Then, in a very interesting turn of events, many of the fans actually were swayed over to actually rooting for Cena. Go figure, it's a match like this that actually gets a Chicago crowd to appreciate traditional storytelling in a wrestling match. Fans can debate the match result as long as they want, but this match really felt like a scenario where both men had to win and is an entertaining clash of titans to see on PPV.

Highly Recommended


Initial Thoughts: Some of the quality is really lacking on building the entire PPV card at this point, but a lot of the shows are salvaged thanks to the qualities of the main event and upper mid card feuds. The part timers create a sense of nostalgia at WrestleMania, and the current superstars still have opportunities to shine at the other shows. Already there's a lot of focus on Punk, Sheamus, and Bryan as the newest main eventers, while Orton and Cena still have their main event credibility. Add Lesnar, Jericho, Triple H, Undertaker, and The Rock into the mix, and you have a lot of talent going on in your roster. But for the next few months, the part timers would be less frequent and it would be up to the current superstars to see if they could still perform well on PPV.

Continued in Part II...


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