Review of WWE: Armageddon 2005

Introduction

Held on 18th December 2005 at the tastily-named Dunkin` Donuts Centre in Providence, Rhode Island, the WWE`s final pay-per-view spectacular of 2005 was Armageddon, which featured the wrestlers from the Smackdown! brand. The main attraction of the evening was the Hell in a Cell contest between The Undertaker and Randy Orton, whilst Chris Benoit and Booker T had match number four in their Best-of-Seven series. The full card was as follows:

Hell in a Cell main event:
Randy Orton vs. The Undertaker

Champion vs Champion Tag Team Title Match:
Batista & Rey Mysterio vs. Big Show & Kane

Cruiserweight Championship Match
Kid Kash vs. Juventud

Handicap Match
Bobby Lashley vs. William Regal and Paul Burchill

Match No. 4 of a Best-of-Seven Series
Booker T vs. Chris Benoit

MNM vs. Super Crazy & Psicosis

JBL vs. Matt Hardy

Video

Video is presented in 4:3 fullscreen PAL and, as we have come to expect, is excellent, even better than the original digital television broadcast. The action itself - in terms of camera work - is also well-captured in that inimitable WWE way.

Audio

Audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 and is also excellent, although this is not surprising considering the source material. There are also Dolby Digital tracks in Spanish, Italian, German, and French. There are even Dutch subtitles for the English track.

Features

Recently, the WWE has been putting less and less extras on it`s pay-per-view releases, which isn`t really such a bad thing, because the video quality of the main feature has noticeably improved, without missing anything mind-blowing as a consequence. Here, there is only one extra, which is a montage of skits that have been taped at the "Friendly Tap" bar in Cumberland, Rhode Island. The relevance of the bar, owned by former referee Tim White, becomes significant during the main feature.

Conclusion

Coming off the Survivor Series, Armageddon 2005 was not expected to be a major event in terms of pay-per-view buys or in-ring action. The main event was one that we had seen before, albeit not in the Hell in a Cell cage, and with Smackdown`s other major player, Batista, suffering a serious back injury in the weeks before the show, fans could have been forgiven for missing this one in favour of waiting for January`s Royal Rumble.

The evening began with an in-ring interview with JBL, which might have been the most entertaining thing about his match with Matt Hardy. That is a little harsh, admittedly, but the match really had no premise, unless you count JBL attacking Hardy the week previous on Smackdown. You can`t expect people to be interested in an undercard match that serves no purpose. That said, Hardy took several nasty shots here, none moreso than the horrible neck-vice between the top and middle rope, the same move which cost Mick Foley his ear on a WCW event in Germany in 1994.

Next up was former tag team champions MNM taking on Psicosis and Super Crazy, The Mexicools. I quite enjoyed this match, and there were some excellent high-flying moments. However, there were also occasions where the action looked a little robotic, which dragged the bout down.

Match of the night went to the next contest, which was the fourth in the Best of Seven series between Chris Benoit and Booker T. This match started out slowly, with a lot of ground wrestling, but the heat was soon turned up, and this evolved into a well-paced, hard-hitting affair. I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw Benoit have a bad match.

Following some Boogeyman hilarity, our own William Regal and Paul Birchall took on the much less gifted - unless you want to talk aesthetics - Bobby Lashley in a handicap match. This was brief, thankfully, and showed that Lashley isn`t the monster that the WWE wish he was. Regal, especially, deserves better.

Next came the skit from the Friendly Tap bar, which was an attempt at black humour that no-one found funny. Fuelling all arguments that speak of wrestling as a depraved atrocity, former referee Tim White - whose career was ended after an injury during a Hell in a Cell match - apparently committed suicide as a result of the horror he had experienced in the Cell. Not funny, and not smart; in the wake of the sudden death of Eddie Guerrero, the crowd reacted angrily to this skit and halted any momentum that the show had garnered.

I actually felt sorry for Cruiserweight champion Juventud Guerrera and his opponent Kid Kash, for having to try to follow the Friendly Tap skit. In itself, this is quite a good match, with both participants putting in a good effort. It is a shame that their efforts were not rewarded with a greater response, but you can hardly blame the crowd for that.

Why Kane and Big Show, the RAW tag team champions, were here on a Smackdown! show, I`ve yet to decipher. But the fact of the matter is that Batista, one half of the Smackdown! champions with Rey Mysterio, was clearly in no condition to wrestle given the severity of his back injury. His offence looked poor and his movement was clearly impaired. As such, it was left to Mysterio to carry the match, but even he couldn`t save this one.

The main event was a long but well-told affair, which culminated the feud between Randy Orton and The Undertaker. During this event, previous Undertaker Hell in a Cell encounters were shown in clip form, building up the contest. This actually backfired in that the crowd were expecting something just as dangerous as the Undertaker vs Mankind 1998 match, the clips of which have to be seen to be believed. In no way was this a poor match-up, but the expectancy of the crowd, coupled with the dampener that the Friendly Tap skit had put on the show, made this match drag a little more than it actually did.

Overall, this was another average WWE show, which was saved only really by a good main event, and the very good mid-card match between Chris Benoit and Booker T. Whilst the injury to Batista is a big problem to Smackdown!, they have at least in recent weeks replaced him with Kurt Angle, who is currently the World Heavyweight Champion. This should ensure that future Smackdown! events are of a higher quality, because as things stand, Smackdown! is all-too-often seen as second-best to WWE RAW.