Wrestling with 'The Great American Bash'

The Bash, held at the Nassau Coliseum on Sunday, was definitely a hot ticket, selling out 14,000 seats in just 45 minutes back in May. Never mind that all I know about wrestling could fit on the head of a pin. And never mind that I’m pretty much on the prim side of, say, Charlotte from Sex and the City. I could do this, I told myself. I could totally hang with the boys and not seem like the Church Lady from SNL.

As we were waiting on the security line, I noticed there were some clearly defined groups. About five or six young men had caps and T-shirts with the words “Cena Sucks” on it. After a few minutes, an older man came up to them smiling, holding the sign “JBL Sucks.” They eyeballed each other for a few seconds, nodding and smiling warily, but no verbal smackdowns ensued. That was quite a civil exchange, I thought. I was encouraged.

The show, which featured stars from RAW, ECW, and Smackdown (and aired on Pay-Per-View), started off with the standard wackiness I expected from wrestling: really loud heavy metal music; lots of posing and sinister-looking soap-opera faces; and a politically incorrect use of midgets (this would be the Irish wrestler Finlay’s tag team partner, who was mainly there for comic relief, and yes, everybody laughed).

More Bash after the jump...

I do have to say there were some truly spectacular physical stunts: backwards flips off the top rope, lots of Cirque du Soleil-style contortioning, with a crowd appreciative of everything. (Even those who couldn’t tell a moonsault from a Brazilian Heel Hook if their lives depended on it. Ahem.) Could I have done without seeing all the blood that spewed forth from Shawn Michaels at the hands of Chris Jericho? Yep. The latter boasted that his opponent had had his last match, since he was now suffering from… dramatic pause here… a detached retina. And the pre-taped segment that showed John Cena and JBL battling it out in a parking lot, with Cena attaching jumper cables to JBL’s crotch and JBL in turn gassing a car and lighting it on fire with an unconscious Cena inside? A bit over the top, to put it mildly.

But I’ve passed over my favorite match of the event, and no, it wasn’t the love triangle involving Edge and Vickie Guerrero and the wedding planner (though I do secretly adore the fact that the featured match was based on a timeless story of a cheater and a woman done wrong, plus the ensuing catfight). It was the match between CM Punk and Batista, a fellow known as the Animal. Batista, with none of the obvious mugging for the camera that the other Superstars employed, had a quiet yet forceful presence, and was clearly the classiest wrestler of the whole bunch. No matter that his match ended in a disappointing double disqualification. He performed his classic move (I’m told), the Batista Bomb, which has to do with getting your opponent face-forward on your shoulders and promptly dropping him to the mat (and yes, I learned the mat is mic'ed to heighten the sound so folks in the rafters can hear it). He didn’t say much, but he didn’t have to. One look at the dragon tattoo on his back and the six-pack on the flip side and oh my, is it getting a little warm here in the Coliseum? I’m thinking he could be the next big crossover wrestling star, like the Rock. And look, he’s the thinking woman’s wrestler -- he’s already written an autobiography detailing his hardscrabble background. It’s enough to make the Church Lady stand up and start whooping it up with the rest of the crowd.

All right, you wrestling fanatics, what did you think of the Great American Bash? Do you think Edge will reunite with Vickie? Who was your favorite? Have at it.