The following are results from the WWE live event in London, England from Friday, November 11, 2011. The report comes courtesy of Ian Hamilton and F4WOnline.com.
The show was almost sold out, As with all of the other shows, there were a lot of kids present, and the merchandise was selling very well. We got to the arena at around 4pm, and there were already queues for the merchandise – these only grew as the night progressed. Available on the stands were the new John Cena t-shirts (surely “Rise Above 3.0” should be a new shirt for Raw, given their ratings?), CM Punk’s “Best In The World” and Ice Cream Bar shirts, along with shirts for Zack Ryder, Santino Marella, Alberto Del Rio and Randy Orton (uhh). They also had promotional shirts for WrestleMania 28: Rock vs Cena…
The card wasn’t much different from what they’ve done on the rest of the UK tour:
1. Santino Marella beat Drew McIntyre
– comedy match with McIntyre taking most of the offence. Santino sold his knee towards the end, before hitting the Cobra for the win.
2. David Otunga & Michael McGillicutty beat Alex Riley & Primo
– a nothing match, with very few people in the crowd caring. Not surprising when the babyface team is Alex Riley and a guy who’s hardly been on TV (and when he has, he’s been as a heel). Otunga and McGillicuty worked the usual heel spots, but this was as forgettable as it suggested.
3. Mason Ryan beat Curt Hawkins
– Good to see Curt Hawkins has a job here still… and he seems to have found Johnny Polo’s old cane. He didn’t get any reaction, apart from a few “HBK” chants when he propped himself across the top turnbuckle early in the match. A glorified squash match, with Ryan winning with the pumphandle slam.
4. Dolph Ziggler beat John Morrison to retain the US title
– a good back-and-forth match here – Ziggler cut a pre-match promo that only exacerbated how stupid him remaining in the midcard is… Morrison actually came close to winning a few times (close enough that you could believe the US title would change hands on a house show in the UK…), but Ziggler got the W in the end. Post match, he returned to the ring to get some afters on JoMo, who eventually took the upper hand and hit the Starship Pain to send Ziggler packing.
** Usual pre-intermission garbage with the Bellas and a dancing contest **
5. Beth Phoenix beat Eve Torres to retain the Divas title
– it was what it was. Beth won with whatever they call the Bitch Clamp nowadays. They repeated the post-match stuff from Ziggler/Morrison, except Kelly Kelly ran in to save Eve. Nice to see they flew her over for the whole tour just to do run ins!
6. John Cena, Zack Ryder and Kofi Kingston beat The Miz, R-Truth and Kevin Nash in a six-man
– Cena got the pop you’d expect from the crowd, which wasn’t as split as I expected to be (at least in my section). Zack Ryder, whose merchandise was a distant third-best seller on the night behind Cena and Punk, got some reaction, and looked to have recorded something for his YouTube show for next week. Pre-match, Miz and Truth had the crowd eating out of their hands, with some really good material. Again, I fully expect them to be mired in the mid-card by next summer, if not sooner. Cena got the win for his team.
7. CM Punk beat Alberto Del Rio via disqualification; Del Rio retained the WWE title
– a LOT of stalling. Larry Zbyzsko would have been proud of this one… Plenty of drawn out spots, such as Del Rio being kicked once by Punk, then leaving the ring for a nine count, only to return to the ring and exit again immediately. Once the action got underway, Del Rio worked on Punk’s arm, with some copious interference from Ricardo Rodriguez. Ricardo got ejected after being caught knocking Punk to the edge of the apron, but he returned following a ref bump, only to get pantsed. Punk hit the GTS on Del Rio, but Ricardo ran in with a chair shot to get the DQ.
Post match, Punk dodged a chair shot from Ricardo, only for several heels (including Dolph Ziggler and some random masked fat guy… an agent, perhaps?) to beat down Punk. Cena, Ryder, Kofi and… Eve (?!) ran in to make the save, as everyone bar Ziggler ran off. That left Ziggler in the middle of the ring, with Punk, Ryder, Kofi and Cena surrounding him, and Eve standing there too. Punk took the mic and announced that it was Ziggler’s birthday, and as a present he’d have four doors to choose from: Zack Ryder (“who goes woo woo woo”), Kofi (“who goes boom!”), John Cena (who does the [stupid hand signal]) and CM Punk (who’ll put you to sleep – not too sure about that proclaimation!).
Cena then grabbed the mic and pointed out Eve was there – of course, Ziggler took that option. Cena said he didn’t want the night to end on violence, so offered to shake Ziggler’s hand… before giving him an Attitude Adjustment. Follow that up with a Rough Ryder, a Boom kick, and a GTS, and the night was nearly over, until Eve hit a top rope moonsault on Ziggler to send everyone home happy as CM Punk damn near watched everyone leave the arena.
