96.
World Heavyweight Championship
The Great Khali (c) vs. Batista
Summerslam 2007
SmackDown in 2007 can only be described as a cursed brand. After being absolutely rinsed in the draft (losing Booker T, Chris Benoit, and Mr Kennedy with not a lot in return), the World Heavyweight Champion Undertaker ended up getting a serious injury. Enter Edge, who came over from Raw to save the main event scene …until he himself got injured and had to vacate the title within a matter of weeks. To further these injury woes, SmackDown was already dealing with long term injuries to Rey Mysterio. What about Raw and ECW? Surely they had more talent that they could lend to the cause. Well no, because in the aftermath of the Chris Benoit tragedy, a massive steroid scandal saw the aforementioned Booker T and Mr Kennedy - and others - in some trouble that left the other two brands in their own mess.
With a vacated World Heavyweight Championship, it was time to find someone new. WWE in all their glory, decided that Khali was the guy going forward. In fairness, due to the above situation, the choices were slim. Just look at the guys involved in the battle royal to decide the vacated World Championship:
Great Khali, Batista, Kane, Mark Henry, MVP, Finlay, Matt Hardy, Chavo Guerrero, Chris Masters, Brett Major, Brian Major, Dave Taylor, Deuce, Domino, Eugene, Funaki, Jamie Noble, Jimmy Wang Yang, Kenny Dykstra, Shannon Moore
After you get past Batista, it’s real slim pickings. If it were me, and you really didn’t want to give it to Batista for whatever reason, then MVP was the guy. Instead we got this iconic image:
That leads us to this match. After having a shockingly ok match with John Cena at One Night Stand, you’d be forgiven for thinking this might have some potential. Not only that, but these two actually had a fun Punjabi Prison match two months after this one. Khali, with enough smoke and mirrors to make Robert Angier blush, could in fact be dragged to something resembling a competent match. However - while people cite that fun Punjabi Prison match, or the John Cena One Night Stand match as the shining moments of Khali’s in-ring career - they overlook that both matches were sequels to awful singles matches.
There’s a lot of scope for Khali matches in this list and a lot were in consideration. Some may yet to appear. This is a man that was deemed so horrible that WWE were embarrassed to have him wrestle on live TV for a year after his first PPV match. Expectations for most Khali matches are rock bottom, so filling the list with too many Khali matches feels like low hanging fruit. Batista, on the other hand, had found himself in the middle of a career year in terms of in-ring quality thanks to the discovery that he and the Undertaker had remarkable chemistry with one another.
Going into the match, the story is that Batista can’t survive the Khali vice grip, however he did manage to get Khali off his feet a couple of days earlier on SmackDown. The main problem this match has is Khali’s offence looks awful. You can almost forgive Khali’s poor selling because he’s a monster who isn’t supposed to sell. That said, his orchestra conductor arms will always be some of the goofiest selling you’ll ever see.
But by far the biggest issue is Khali’s offence just doesn’t look impactful at all. For such a big guy, none of his offence looks like it would hurt. When a guy has to bump around trying to make it watchable, it only works if the offence looks slightly impactful. Not once when watching this match would you ever assume Batista is hurt by any strike. That in turn makes Batista’s selling look stupid that he’s selling so much trying to put Khali over.
Following the opening exchanges, Khali gets a nerve hold which leads to “you can’t wrestle” and “boring” chants. This lasts for approximately 50% of the match until Batista hits a singular Spinebuster. Khali catches Batista coming off the top rope, hits the tree slam and gets 2. Khali then hits Batista with a chair after the referee practically begged him to take it from behind his back, leading to the anticlimactic DQ finish. 7 minutes of alleged action for a DQ finish. If the play-by-play is short here, its because there’s so little to discuss because nothing happens.
Even more insulting was the commentators trying to justify the DQ. Cole claims that Khali knows he couldn’t beat Batista so he got himself disqualified. This was a classic Cole line tht he’d always use in situations like this. That barely works at the best of times, but the rare times it does is when it feels earned. Batista hit one move in the entire match. A spinebuster. What part of this entire ordeal made anyone think that Khali didn’t have the match comfortably in hand? If you’re going to do that story to justify your awful finish, at least try to make it seem that way.
Furthermore, this was another in a trend for SmackDown Summerslam main events. This was the third time in four years that the SmackDown world title match ended in a disqualification. It certainly reinforces the B-Show stigma that the brand had in the post-Brock era, and each time seemed to get lazier and lazier.
I know a lot of people talk about the Kane vs Khali match from Wrestlemania 23, and while that is pretty bad, it at least didn’t have a finish this stupid (and given that finish involved a giant rusty hook, that’s impressive), nor was it 7 minutes long and a world title match on a big four PPV. For that reason, I give this match the nod over it, though I certainly wouldn’t begrudge anyone who opted for that instead.
Up next, the most infamous feud of 2009.
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