Gimmick Some Lovin': Last Man Standing

The Match

Kane takes initiative to settle a debate over county infrastructure with a gorilla press slam to the outside.

There's a lot about this match that really works, and the only thing that doesn't really work is that those elements are not taken far enough.

Kane is at his best when he is an absolute monster, a literal horror movie villain needing to be overcome at all costs. He's definitely that in parts of this match; think Michael Meyers with a Crossfit membership.

Jericho, meanwhile, thrives on being flashy, arrogant, and bumping around like a pinball for bigger guys, which Kane happily obliges multiple times (like with a brutal chokeslam during the match's in-ring portion or the above throw to the floor).

The brutality, however, never approaches a level that befits the match. It's fun, and it's entertaining, and it's well-wrestled, but it really doesn't approach the level of intensity one would expect from a Last Man Standing Match.

Before calmly chiding Mideon (with their fists) for interrupting a spirited debate on the estate tax, Jericho and Kane brawl backstage near a truck full of mulch and hay

Kane presses the "A" button on his XBox controller to interrupt Jericho's entrance, and the two immediately brawl to the back; Kane attempts some great Jason Voorhes-style murder by trying to lob a wheeled trunk at Jericho's head, then later following it up with a vicious shovel swing, both of which Jericho narrowly avoids.

The match progresses back to the ring, where the bulk of the action takes place, and it's where most of my criticisms lie: after the (admittedly, very fun) backstage action, which included both men attacking Mideon for the high crime of standing around while two people are trying to fight, this becomes almost a regular match.

A well-wrestled, well-paced, enjoyable match, but a very standard match nonetheless. Kane methodically attempts to destroy Jericho using every wrestling move in his arsenal, while Jericho flies around the ring either as a result of his opponent's fury or as a series of last-ditch attempts to gain control of the match.

However, this is where a better feud would have served the match well. A Last Man Standing contest is typically presented as the "nuclear option" for a feud: these two men have clashed so often, and so violently, that the only thing left for them to do is to brutalize each other until one man is unable to stand.

This match (as we see a lot in the modern era of WWE) needed a better feud to justify the stipulation, and seems to exist only to have another unorthodox contest on the card.

Jericho and Kane had a fine wrestling match, but it wasn't a particularly good fight, which is what was needed here. If the company had leaned better either toward a standard wrestling match (which the two were doing an above-average job of presenting) or the pure chaos that we'd see later on in the show's main event (which is typical of these hardcore brawls), the match would have improved significantly. As it stands, the match is just good in a year of great-to-stellar wrestling.

The finish comes when the two men brawl through the abandoned cars parked near the entranceway (which I suppose represent the end of the world named by the show's title and which I'm sure Jericho got a great deal on with the TrueCar app); the pair wind up on a platform overlooking a table just behind the entrance set.

Kane attempts to chokeslam Jericho off the platform and into the table, but Jericho reverses into a slow and weak-looking version of the one-handed facebuster he uses to set up the Lionsault.

When this is the source of your hatred, I'm sure it's difficult to come up with a more forceful battle.

When referee Teddy Long begins his count, Jericho notices Kane beginning to stir, so he rocks a decorative stack of barrels until it collapses "onto" Kane (but, in reality, leans against the barricade that separates the front row of the lower bowl from the arena floor and just makes Kane a nice little lean-to where he can write his next campaign speech).

A cool little touch that's easy to miss is Kane's hand coming up from between the barrels (suggesting that he was able to continue the match), which Long doesn't notice (holla) and which Jericho stomps back so that the count can continue.

It's a good bit of continuity of the fact that Jericho, even as a babyface, is kind of a jerk, and walks a very fine heel-face line (with, really, the target of his obnoxious and self-serving actions determining his alignment more than those actions themselves).