Review of WWE: The Great American Bash 2007

Introduction

Given that the Great American Bash was the first WWE pay-per-view to be held after the Chris Benoit murder-suicide, there was some concern as to how the event would compare, in terms of viewers, to other shows in 2007. At the time, WWE was taking a hammering in the press, and were consistently making things worse for themselves, and several episodes of the weekly Raw show were down in ratings.

Perhaps to combat this, the main event of the Great American Bash was John Cena`s defence of the WWE Title, against Bobby Lashley. Though this bout had been set up somewhat by an altercation between the two at the previous pay-per-view, Vengeance, it is possible that this clash was brought forward from what would have been a marquee match at Summerslam.

Elsewhere on the card, The Great Khali defended the World Heavyweight Title again Kane and Batista, and Umaga faced Jeff Hardy for the Intercontinental Title.

The Great American Bash was held on 22nd July 2007, from the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California.

Video

Video is presented in 4:3 fullscreen PAL, and is very good for a DVD of this genre. This may be your average WWE production, but that simply means that the look of the show maintains a very high quality.

As for the transfer to DVD, it is also good, although there are some compression artefacts noticeable throughout.

Audio

Audio is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, and is also very good. The front speakers handle the full spectrum of event sounds (music, in-ring action, crowd noise, commentary), and the surrounds accentuate the music, crowd noise, and in-ring action. There`s no doubt that these 5.1 mixes are an improvement on their 2.0 counterparts, and bring you a closer to being in the arena.

For international viewers, there are 2.0 mixes available in Italian, German, Spanish, and French. There are subtitles available in Dutch, Portuguese, and Greek.

Features

Two short clips from the Smackdown and Raw television shows appear here as extras, the first being "Edge`s Mardi Gras Celebration", which commemorates his victories to keep his World Heavyweight Title. I can only imagine that its inclusion is because of the legitimate injury that Edge incurs during the segment, that would force him to relinquish the title.

The second segment is from Raw, in which John Cena confronts Bobby Lashley, as he is about to sign the contract for their WWE title match.

Neither this, nor the Smackdown clip, have any repeat-viewing value.

Conclusion

The US Title feud between Matt Hardy and MVP - which, bizarrely, also included a tenuous tag-team title-winning partnership - was one of the highlights of the WWE in 2007, so it was a little surprising to see them in the opening contest here. They produced a good match, which unfortunately ended just as it was beginning to really draw the fans into it.

The Cruiserweight Open Title match - scheduled to be Chavo Guerrero vs Shannon Moore vs Jimmy Wang Yang vs Sho Funaki vs Jamie Noble - was a reasonable match for what it was, until a dreadful ending really took things down a notch. The under-utilisation of the Cruiserweight division is one of the biggest failures of the current WWE product.

The less said about The Sandman`s "Singapore Cane on a Pole" match the better, although it was mercifully short, but things didn`t get much better with the Women`s Title match, in which Candice Michelle defended her belt against Melina.

Much better was the Intercontinental Title match, which saw the ever-popular Jeff Hardy challenge Umaga. This was a very entertaining little man vs big man match-up, which the crowd was particularly into. It was also a very good example of how a story can be told within a wrestling match.

The ECW Title match between champion John Morrison (the former Johnny Nitro, complete with Jim Morrison gimmick) and CM Punk was interesting, although it was let down by the odd finish. Next up was Randy Orton vs 61-year-old Dusty Rhodes in a Texas Bullrope match, which was far from a classic, but told quite a good story in the short time that it had. It was far from a pay-per-view calibre match, however.

The penultimate contest was a three-way World Heavyweight Title match, as The Great Khali - perhaps the worst World champion of this or any other year - faced Batista and Kane. The match was embarrassing in several instances, although at least there were a number of minutes in which Khali was not involved.

The main event WWE Title match of John Cena vs Bobby Lashley did not have the television build-up that the match deserved, but even so, both men put forth an excellent performance, in what was a very good WWE-style match. It would have been interesting to see the two go ten minutes longer, however.


Overall, the WWE can be thankful to Jeff Hardy and Umaga, and John Cena and Bobby Lashley, because without them, The Great American Bash would have been the polar opposite of "great". Matt Hardy and MVP put together a good match, that was marred by not having quite enough time, and the John Morrison vs CM Punk was quite good until a poor finish, but the rest of the card left a lot to be desired, with the World Heavyweight Title match most culpable.

If you are a fan of Hardy, Umaga, Cena, or Lashley, you will likely want to add The Great American Bash to your collection. But if you are interested in WWE events as a whole, this may be one to avoid.