Final Summerslam thoughts

By Rick Morris

By and large, Summerslam was a lazy, paint-by-numbers effort from the WWE "braintrust." Here are the main points of the evening:

* The HHH and Rey Misterio comeback matches were decent, but nowhere near off-the-charts and they seemed to be tasked with completely carrying the undercard.

* Khali and John Morrison retained the World and ECW titles, respectively, with an unforgivable non-finish for a major card and a screwjob finish, respectively. CM Punk loses some credibility as ECW's anchor face wrestler, while Batista's 7th consecutive PPV match ending without the World Title around his waist signals a downward spiral from which he will never recover.

* The Steve Austin surprise appearance seemed to be a sheepish bone tossed to fans who expected more from what is arguably the second greatest wrestling PPV of the year.

* Umaga's babyface push gained momentum with his clean pinfall of Mr. Kennedy, but this loss is very inconvenient for Kennedy as his mega-push based on the Lashley injury and his anticipated reveal as "Mr. McMahon's illegitimate son" takes a setback here.

* John Cena and Randy Orton started the main event match slowly, but built to a pretty good effort. They were aided by great crowd heat, albeit the now-familiar "Cena split crowd effect" in which men boo the babyface Cena heavily while women and children cheer him. Much like the Umaga match, Cena gains even more credibility with this win -- albeit, credibility he hardly needed, since he's been through the lion's share of the roster -- and leaves one of the few main-event heels in bad shape. With King Booker, Kennedy and Orton having been pinned this evening, Cena is bereft of credible heel challengers at a time when he's already beaten everyone -- unless a HHH heel turn gets hot-shotted. The creative department doesn't seem to be planning anything too far in advance, so there may be a lot of twists and turns between now and the Survivor Series.