100 Worst WWE Matches Ever - 46 - Triple H vs. Vladimir Kozlov
WWE Championship - Survivor Series 2008
It’s Sunday 23rd November 2008.
In preparation for watching tonight’s Survivor Series, you check WWE.com, or your favourite wrestling news website, only to be met with this:
No other information, no other comment, no indication that this wasn’t completely legitimate. One article posted on WWE.com in the dead of night and it wouldn’t be for hours before WWE would follow up on this. Many wrestling fans online were understandably concerned. Now if wrestling journalism was in any way legitimate, they probably could have ascertained that this was a work quite quickly. However it’s not and that leaves two major problems with this. Let’s start with how this all plays into what we as an audience know about articles like this from WWE. This type of article has never up to this point been used in a storyline, to my knowledge. This kind of post is usually reserved for one kind of article from WWE and it usually doesn’t have a happy ending.
The second and more pressing issue, is that it’s Jeff Hardy that they run this storyline with. If you had to ask anyone in 2008, which WWE wrestler do you think is most likely to have a tragic ending, who would it be? The answer would, unanimously, be Jeff Hardy. Hardy’s drug issues were well documented, even as recently as earlier in this year where he suffered a suspension which ended his probable Money in the Bank win. He had already been fired by this company for his self-destructive behaviour, then turned up in TNA only to get fired again for similar reasons. To choose this man to run this kind of article is ignorant at best, and malicious and manipulative at worst.
And frankly, given WWE’s priors I do not give them the benefit of the doubt and put this down as a naive bad choice of words. This is outright manipulative and they knew exactly what they were doing. You only need to look as far as Eddie Guerrero, Road Warrior Hawk, or Brian Pillman to see how easily WWE would use real life tragedies for their product. They do not deserve the benefit of the doubt in this case.
This doesn’t even get into the fact that this angle was run the day of the PPV. They couldn’t have run it several days before on SmackDown? Instead they left it ambiguous - some people had bought the PPV already. People that bought the PPV because they full expected Jeff Hardy - currently the most popular wrestler in the world - would win his first WWE Championship. The whole storyline they had been running on SmackDown for the last three months.
The video package still heavily features Jeff Hardy, which the commentators point out and apologise for. All the while doing the typical sombre WWE tone that would become a staple of WWE’s commentary for years to come whenever they had to sell anything “tragic”.
The match was originally meant to be Kozlov vs Triple H, but everyone rightly acknowledged that as a really awful idea. They later inserted Jeff Hardy into the match to give it some much needed interest. Remember in Game of Thrones when Ramsay Bolton is first introduced by releasing Theon from his imprisonment and giving him that glimpse of hope and freedom. Just for it all to be a trick for Ramsay to hunt him down, cut off his dick and torture him endlessly? That’s this match, and we’re all just Reek in the end.
After all, who would possibly want to see just Triple H vs Vladimir Kozlov?
Ultimately, WWE would get their answer during this match.
Nobody.
Not a single solitary person who walks, or has ever walked on this planet wanted or needed this match as the WWE championship match on one of the WWE’s traditional big four shows.
If you ever feel bad for Theon Greyjoy, take solace in the fact that it is just a piece of literature. He isn’t real, nor is his torture. We are real, and this is every bit as painful.
I like to talk about the crowd reactions to these matches when they’re particularly noteworthy. After all, if someone who has paid money to see your product then turns against it, you know you’ve done something quite wrong. The first “boring” chant for this match takes place after less than 30 seconds, which tells you exactly what everyone thinks of the men involved. There is no interest to be had here. It’s amazing that someone as smart at politicking as Triple H allowed himself to be put in this position because he must have seen the reaction to this coming. Unless his ego and over-inflated sense of self-worth is truly on a scale that I cannot fathom. Nevermind when you put him in the ring with Vladimir Kozlov. It’s almost like WWE wanted to re-run Hulk Hogan versus generic foreign heel of the month. Of course, Triple H is not Hulk Hogan. In terms of being a babyface, he might be as far from Hulk Hogan as anyone in history, because he’s probably WWE’s least sympathetic babyface world champion they ever had.
Kozlov debuted just after Wrestlemania 24, and spent 6 months beating jobbers in uninteresting squash matches and never getting over. Prior to this sudden main event push (and when I say sudden, I mean it), the most memorable part of his WWE run was the meme-worthy “I love Double Double E” comment from an episode of ECW on Sci-Fi in 2007. Wrestling fans, contrary to belief, aren’t stupid and can acknowledge when something is good or bad. The foreign heel schtick may feel overdone. However, as Rusev would show a few years later, it could get over in front of a modern audience if the performer was good and booked in a way that puts him over against credible talent. Kozlov - outside of him being utterly unremarkable in terms of look, presentation, and gimmick - also happens to be a very bad wrestler. The stoic, brutish Russian villain trope had been overused in media for about forty years by this point, and done far better in the likes of Rocky IV and various Bond films than fucking Vladimir Kozlov. You have to do something special to stand out, not Kozlov with his horrible look, lame music, rubbish attire, and frankly embarrassing facial expressions.
Quite fittingly as I sit reviewing this match following this week’s announcement, we have the rare “TNA” chant on WWE television. Always one of my favourites when a match is so bad from this era that they get the fans chanting for TNA of all things.
If you’ve ever watched a match and thought that the two people are just killing time, then known it’s never been more apparent than this. The commentators openly discuss how basic the wrestling is. JR talks about how Triple H takes inspiration from Harley Race and Ric Flair in his wrestling style, and I hope he feels as ill saying it as I feel hearing it. It’s an exchange of holds, which can in itself be engaging if the wrestlers feel like they’re putting effort and struggle into it. A great example of this would be if you put on any Regal versus Benoit match, and watch how they move between hold to hold.
This match, on the other hand, is a boring exchange of holds and then sitting in each one until it’s time to move to the next. There’s nary a transition in sight, no struggle, just a match slapped together with the most basic of holds for 90% of the match. Just look at the meandering movement around the ring between these two. There is no illusion of a fight here, just moving from one basic move to another. Words don’t do justice to how lame and lethargic this match is. All this while the fans are torn between one of the longest continuous boring chants ever, and chanting for Jeff Hardy.
Beyond that, for a guy who is as big as he is, Kozlov has some truly unimpactful offence. Everything he does looks slow, and weak. You can get away with slow offence if it looks good. You can sometimes get away with weak offence if it’s paced well. You cannot get away with slow and weak. Don’t be mistaken for thinking Triple H is any better here, because this might be the most phoned in performance of his life too.
After killing twelve minutes (which felt twice as long), we finally arrive at the finish. In what is the sort of lame contrived setup that could only come from a Triple H match, he hits the pedigree on Kozlov. But because this isn’t the end of the match, he plays dead and acts like he cannot possibly capitalise due to the brutal war he’s been through. Yeah, those bearhugs will do that to you.
This is of course all to lead to the actual ending. Vickie Guerrero comes out and says that this match really is a triple threat match after all.
“He’s here, he’s here, here he is!” she says, as the fans erupt because they all think it’s Jeff Hardy. But it’s all a shocking swerve, as it’s actually the returning Edge - who had last been seen sent to hell by the Undertaker at Summerslam. All the while, both Triple H and Kozlov are still in the ring, selling the effects
of a devastating pedigree clearly hit with such velocity that it paralysed both men. Jeff Hardy also returns among all this nonsense - albeit with all the punctuality of Papa Shango. He’s so late getting to the ring that the “ultimate opportunist” Edge has to stall making his cover long enough for Jeff to make it to the ring. Not only does this make Edge look like a complete dumbass, but it completely contradicts his gimmick. Ultimately Jeff’s interference only serves to help Edge win the title in the end, so again you wonder what’s the point? This would be the third time in as many years that Edge won a world title in a match where he only had to do a single move. The ultimate opportunist gimmick was good for a cheap pop for a title switch, but it didn’t make for creative writing at times.
This is a match that somehow falls to the incredibly low standards of the booking surrounding it. Truly one of the worst WWE Championship matches in company history for both the match itself, and everything surrounding it.
Up Next - The worst Money in the Bank cash in of all time.
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