Take my word for it: as I tried to multi-task, I soaked in the PPV (only thing lacking: I had no audio stimulus), and if you skipped this one, you skipped nothing. The cool bits (and there WERE some) are cool in the re-telling, and the lame bits (and there were MANY of these) were sucky for upwards of 60 minutes at a stretch.
 
The following PPV Recap will be exceptionally brief, but it will be All You Need To Know. It will (hopefully) have saved you $50 tonight. Not to mention, saved you three hours of time. You know how to thank me (which is also how you can help keep OO up and running).
 
Here's the quick and dirty:

• The Miz beat John Morrison in a double-non-title match. Solid opener with good pace. I went in thinking Morrison was a no-brainer winner, but they (pleasantly) surprised me, playing off of Miz's awesome commentary work of late: just as Miz predicted, Morrison kept going for high-risk, and Miz picked him off. When Johnny when for Starship Pain at the 15 minute mark, Miz was playing possum, caught him, and rolled him up for the cheap win.
   
• Lady SD beat Lady RAW. So the men get 7-on-7 and the women get 3-on-3? Man alive, those uppity post-Civil War negroes had it GOOD: they were about 20% closer to being a real person than these lowly womanfolk! Match was pretty crap. Finish was again a mild surprise, as they downplayed SD Dissension in order to let Beth Phoenix score the clean pinfall win. Pretty cool: Beth gets to one-up SD Champ McCool (same as dissension would have done), but SD still wins, thus leveling the "Bragging Rights" betwixt brands at one match apiece.
  
   
• Undertaker beats Batista, Rey Mysterio, and CM Punk to retain the World Title. Match was OK, but Friday-licious. Nothing special. It just served as an inoffensive pretext for the post-match angle. Rey cost Batista the win first, then at the very end, Batista went on a tear where he tossed Punk out of the ring on a believable near-fall (on Taker), then did the same to Rey (costing Rey a win). Then Batista tried to win, but Taker had time to recover, and came back to chokeslam Batista and retain his title.
   
  Easy enough. But after the match, Batista and Rey lingered in the ring, and Josh Mathews interviewed them about when they each thought they lost their chance to win the match. Rey played it lame and cliche, but Batista thought there was no "we" there was a "him," and he didn't lose until Rey screwed him over. Then he announced he would take Rey's head off. Rey was all "You're ribbing me; c'mon buddy, let's simmer down and get drinks." Batista was all CLOTHESLINE YOUR F'N HEAD OFF. We have a heel turn.
   
  
• Team SmackDown (Jericho/Kane/Hardy/Finlay/Hart Dynasty) beat Team RAW (DX/Big Show/Swagger/Kofi/Rhodes/Henry). Another match that wasn't really BAD, but it was lame and free-TV-ish, which does NOT compare well with Intense Playoff Baseball. Most guys got shots to shine early, then the heels (SD) took an edge for a while, mostly working over HBK (the Face In Peril). About 15 minutes in, a hot tag to HHH. House cleaning. Pier 14 job. Big Show becomes legal for Team RAW. In the chaos, Show offers to help Kofi hit a Rocket Launcher, but Show (SHOCKINGLY~!) turns and slams Kofi the mat. HHH is the only other RAW member still standing, and tries to confront Show, but gets a single KO Punch for his trouble. Jericho tags in as the legal man for Team SD and pins Kofi. Fin. 
   
  The Show "swerve" was utterly expected (by me, anyway), but I'm still kinda surprised they still gave SD the "bragging rights" (including a lame-ass trophy that has all the prestige of the Silver Samovar Tea Pot Trophy that they sometimes claimed was on the line during European Tours back when I was in grade school). Whatever... the upshot is still that this sets up DX vs.. JeriShow, which is OK by me. WWE knows that nobody actually buys into SD being better than RAW because of this.
   
  
• John Cena beat Randy Orton in an "Anything Goes" IronMan Match. You want a real, detainled recap? Go somewhere else. This is skin and bones...
   
  This match hit as the ballgame got good. Also: this match promised to suck. From what I saw: it did. And it sucked EXACTLY THE WAY I PREDICTED, with WWE shitting the bed on the "Anything Goes" gimmick and booking this the most spastic and retarded way possible that only 8-year-olds could enjoy. Which is great if you're going Rated-G! But not so great when you're going Rated-G and you're average viewer is still 38! Which is real data! The average WWE viewer is still older than US! But WWE is convinced that marketing to 10 year olds is SMRT! Wow.
   
  Anyway, the stupidity here was that in an "Anything Goes" match, they still honored a 30-second "Rest Period" after all falls. Which is dumb, since you couldn't get DQ'ed for NOT honoring that rest phase, and you SHOULD have just kept hitting bombs (or kept cinching in submissions) once you got an advantage. And it becomes double-dumb when they went warp-factor-seven on the falls... so not only did these two dipshits act stupidly after each fall, they acted stupidly SEVEN TIMES IN THE FIRST 20 MINUTES. Hyper stupid!
   
  That's right: seven falls in 20 minutes after these two loads wasted 25 minutes of our time on the past two PPV just getting to ONE fall. I hate you, WWE.
   
  After it got to 4-3 in favor of Orton the last 40 minutes tried to have s tory, but I couldn't give a shit. Part of it involved Orton trying to operate pyrotecnics, which was just beyond gay. I mean: even gayer than A-Rod. And I say that AS A YANKEE FAN.
   
  It eventually got to 6-5 in favor of Orton, then it spilled outside. The match then magically became "Falls Count Anywhere," too. And Cena scored a tying fall outside the ring after an FU through the announce table. Then, in the closing minutes, it went back and forth in the most mechanical and unchemistric fashion imagineable until 45 seconds left. At that point, Cena cinched in the SSTF. And then DOUBLE CINCHED with EXTRA EFFORTING. You'd think Orton would hold out and go to overtime (since lord knows, Cena would have granted him the "Rest Period"), but nope... with just four seconds left, that ladyboy Orton sissily taps out to the worst STF ever, and Cena is the 7-6 winner and YOUR new champ. Whee?