Saturday Night’s Main Event XXXIV

Date: 06/02/2007 (taped 05/28/2007)

Location: Toronto, Ontario — Air Canada Centre

Announcers: Michael Cole & Jerry “The King” Lawler

The Setup 

We got a rematch of the fucking mat classic that was Cena vs. Great Kahli (I’m not being nearly as sarcastic as you think). Edge and Batista combined their feud with Chris Benoit and MVP for a SmackDown tag team match, playa. They didn’t really load up the show for SNME. 

The Business 

The show did an abysmal 1.7 TV rating and 2.7 million viewers, which would have been a record low for the series. For context, comparing this show to the two SMMEs in 2006 probably makes more sense since the television landscape was the same. The number was down almost 43% of their average viewership for the two shows the year prior. Those shows were bigger deals with Austin on the first and Hogan on the second, but that’s a massive plummet on network TV. It’s interesting that with a kind of freak show main eventer like Kahli to hopefully help with a casual audience, this was no Hogan-Andre. 

HistoryofWWE has the show selling 14,000 tickets, but papering enough for a sellout. 

Results

The Great Khali (w/ Ranjin Singh) def. John Cena — ~6:20 **1/2

Bobby Lashley vs. Mark Henry — Arm wrestling contest ended in no contest — NR

Batista & Chris Benoit def. Edge & Montel Vontavious Porter — ~10:37 **3/4 

Finlay & Hornswoggle def. The Boogeyman & Little Boogeyman — ~3:49 NR

Kane, Doink the Clown & Eugene def. Kevin Thorn, Viscera & Umaga — ~10:55 1/2*

Snap Bumps 

-This Kahli-Cena match wasn’t as good as the PPV in part because Cena fighting back from the bottom didn’t happen because it was mostly a squash, but Cena still sold everything great. It ended with an authoritative Kahli tree slam and a clean win over Superman in a non-title match. 

-The SmackDown tag was pretty good, particularly when Edge and Benoit were together in Canada. Edge took his belt and stayed on the ramp when Benoit finished the match for his team with a diving headbutt on MVP. So MVP loses to Benoit again in their feud. Man, he was booked horribly. 

-They had the little people in with Boogeyman and Finlay. It was what you’d expect for the most part and perfectly fine. 

-They had Extreme Expose have a dance routine interrupted by Hornswaggle and Boogey’s little friend. Why was this on a big network TV show? Did little people do well in some WWE-led network TV market research? 

-The six-man was like putting all your toy wrestlers in a box and picking the first six for a tag match. Kane won over Big Vis, but this was a bad match. It dragged with heat on Eugene forever. 

-Poor Umaga can’t even be given something interesting now that he’s not in main events. What a waste. 

-Mark Henry replacing Vince and attacking Lashley in the arm wrestling contest was perfect. Vince is such an easy heat, and Lashley couldn’t get over by only having matches with people, so Vince being his foil worked well. 

The Verdict

Thumbs Down. None of the wrestling was good enough to be a hook, and there was too much bullshit on at the end. There was no reason to expect a good rating out of this.