The Katz Files – Arnie Katz
Bragging Rights Analysis!
The Kingfish Arnie reports the major happenings at
Bragging Rights and delves into what it all might mean.

As a show, Bragging Rights added up to less than the sum of its parts. There was nothing truly horrible, but it was a B- package – and a PPV should rate at least a B+.

It turned out pretty much the way it looked on paper. The matches were all right, but ultimately not very meaningful.

One thing that hurt is that the theme tanked. If WWE does Bragging Rights in 2010, they’ll have to overhaul the whole thing.

They can begin with the supposed signature match of the pay per view. The seven-on-seven contest had some good moments, but I predicted Big Show’s treachery after watching the RAW on which Triple H formed his team. The only part of the formula the writers missed was that Show didn’t take off his RAW shirt to reveal a Smackdown one underneath.

A last-minute attempt to bolster the theme had the opposite result. The claim that a roster had to win two of three Bragging Rights matches just cheapened the seven-on-seven.

The design –if you want to call it that – needs re-thinking, too. Ending it with a single pin or submission turned it into just another cluster schmazz tag team mess. Who wants to see 12 guys standing around while two fight? This should’ve been an elimination match in which pins and submissions whittled down the teams.

A longer “Bragging Rights” match would have bumped the Iron Man match off the card, but WWE could’ve put it on a different pay per view. As it was, the Orton-Cena showdown was decent, a B/B+, but it had quite a bit of laying around on the mat and general stalling.

That’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with another installment of the Internet’s fastest-rising daily wrestling column. I hope you’ll join me then – and, please, bring your friends.

– Arnie Katz
Executive Editor
Crossfire4@cox.net
(10/27/09)