Well, I have to say "Unforgiven" was pretty awesome, and it was a true experience to be there live to support our hometown boy and girl, Edge and Trish. The rest of the matches were pretty hot too, and call it having my head turned by being there live, but I would say this was definitely the best single-brand PPV put out by WWE this year, and possibly the best PPV of the year, period -- it's at least up there. As disappointing as the result in the main event was -- John Cena regaining the WWE title -- Cena still did step up to the plate, prove his detractors wrong once again ... and at some point, we need to respect this dude. He works his ass off, and we can criticize the gimmick all we want, but he's trying to be the wrestler we all want him to be. He deserves props for that. I ended up not cheering either man per se by the end of this match, but cheering the action itself.

Biggest pop of the night goes to Trish ending her match with Lita with a Sharpshooter. I know a lot of the American wrestling fans I talk to don't get why that was such a 'pop' moment, which proves maybe what Trish said to 'Live Audio Wrestling' right after the PPV: 'it's a Canadian thing'. But to give Trish and Lita an 18-minute match, which ended in that manner ... it was incredible. And the rest of the card had many pleasant surprises: Umaga-Kane had a tremendous big-man match. I think Kane's having his status as resident monster challenged after a couple of lacklustre years has put a real fire back under him, as his performances against Umaga have really stepped up compared to past recent performances. Orton-Carlito was a strong match, though I wish they hadn't taken away from Trish's TV time to cut to such a heelish promo on Orton's part. The Highlanders-Spirit Squad was ... well, it was. And it didn't suck. In fact it was a real old school tag team match, which was kind of neat to see. Although I don't get the logic to keeping the belts on the squad ... unless with the Hardys likely reuniting, Cryme Tyme coming back, etc., maybe they are actually going to spend some time building up the tag division now.

Speaking of the Hardys ... I loved Jeff's match with Johnny Nitro, it was a risk to open with this one since Jeff has a way of missing spots and Johnny, while a tremendous talent, is still fairly green. But they truly impressed, and it was a trip down nostalgia road for me, a charter member of the infamous "Matt Board", to see the old Team Xtreme -- Jeff/Matt/Lita -- reunite. I wish they'd just done more with that. It should have built to the Hardys interfering in the Lita-Trish match, or the TLC match with Lita's man Edge, or at LEAST the Hardys defending themselves/harping on Lita after she walked away -- but it came to nothing. And with Jeff going solo again the next night on Raw ... it made little to no sense. But not a whole lot of Raw did -- which we'll get to in a minute.

The last thing I want to mention is the Hell in a Cell match. I was really afraid they'd put the HIAC and TLC matches *boom* *boom* one after the other, which would be a huge specialty-match and high spot overload for us fans. But they didn't, and the HIAC got the earlier, arguably less-prestigious, spot on the card. Which given the egos of the Helmsley-McMahons, impressed me greatly. The faces got their win, and despite the lack of the expected major bumps off the top of the (new, bigger, harder-to-video-record-through) HIAC, it was still a bloody massacre. My only complaint was that Big Show went the opposite direction from Kane: despite months of trying to reestablish himself as a dangerous monster who deserves to be on the extreme ECW show, he takes one ball shot and is down for six minutes. How do you figure he'll be received by ECW fans upon his return? Boo! Still, while I missed Shane McMahon and/or Shawn Michaels taking some wicked bumps, I understand that with two high impact matches on the card wanting to save a few sick ones for the later match; and it was still the bloodbath massacre we expect HIACs to be anyway.

Which brings me BRIEFLY to the TLC match before going on to rant about the much less satisfying Raw; Edge was genuinely touched by the fans' reception of him, and what wasn't seen on TV was him waving to us as he left; he was truly over, and he and Cena both proved they deserve to be in the spots their in -- I just hope Edge's championship days aren't behind him, and that we'll ultimately see and Edge-Triple H title program soon ... that's what I hope WM 23 is building to. And speaking of build, I thought Raw would be something tremendous. With a huge amount of momentum coming out of a stellar PPV, and the always-rockin' Montreal crowd, I figured this would be a great show. And judging from the opener, I figured it would be. I LOVED how Edge was greeted as a hero by the fans while Cena was booed out of the building practically, and in a 5-second promo about how Montreal wasn't Canada, and he wouldn't fight Cena 'for these Kermits, ribbit ribbit', managed to turn the crowd against him instantly. While it's sad to see how easily manipulated we wrestling fans are, it was a GREAT instant switch, a great heat generator ... and probably not even for the reasons the Yank fans would think.

But then who gets involved but Cade and Murdoch? I'll jump on the band wagon with the sentiments of -- great tag team and would love to see them in a tag team title program soon with say the Highlanders or the Hardys or Cryme Tyme or whoever. But they've been off TV (maybe they've been on Heat?) for months ... they do one run-in on Edge's behalf, and they're in the main event with DX, Edge and Cena? Nooo. And with that, the energy, for me, was sucked out of Raw *just like that* (thanks Trish). The rest of the show had its moments -- the six man IC title match was a tremendous match that they gave a good chunk of time to as a TV match; giving a start to a Lita-Mickie James feud makes sense if they're wanting to keep the women's division alive now that Trish has exited; etc. But the constant video messages to the McMahon's (especially giving Shelton Benjamin such a crappy reintroduction to the TV audience as to play the race card when questioning why he hasn't gotten a push), the involvement of Cade and Murdoch in the main event, etc., was no way of following up such a fresh-seeming PPV. It was a great new start, and then more of the same -- Edge-Cena isn't over, DX is still after the McMahons, Umaga-Kane are still unresolved ... yes, a big complaint is that WWE's hotshotted angles and doesnt' give feuds enough time, and they're trying to do that, but so much feels stale now, they should have continued on the new path they'd beaten for themselves Sunday night. Hopefully this was just an off night and they will.

For the record, the last thing I want to note -- I think Shawn Michaels has finally been forgiven in Montreal, judging by the pop DX got when they showed up. 'Montreal is HBK Country' is not a sign I ever expected to see. As a Shawn fan, I was so excited ... I can only imagine Bret Hart is disappointed in his fellow Canadians on the one hand ... but on the other hand he obviously managed to get over this at least a year or two ago; maybe it is (shock of shocks) indeed time for us to do so as well. Vince, you might want to get this message before you return to Montreal for Survivor Series next year, on the 10th anniversary of the Screw Job: we're all over it, including the players involved. Maybe you finally should be too.