Phil's Updated 2007 MOTY List

1. John Cena v. Umaga WWE 1/28
2. Solar 1/Mano Negra v. Negro Navarro/Black Terry Lucha Libre VIP 3/10
3. MNM v. Hardy Boyz WWE 1/28
4. Briscoes v. Ricky Marvin/Kontaro Suzuki NOAH 1/21
5. Takeshi Sasaki v. Yuki Miyamoto BJW 3/14
6. John Cena v. Shawn Michaels WWE 4/1
7. Shinjiro Ohtani/Takao Omori/Kazunari Murakami v. Kohei Sato/Hirotaka Yokoi/Yoshiro Takayama Zero 1 1/19
8. Undertaker v. Batista WWE 4/1
9. BJ Whitmer v. Jimmy Jacobs ROH 1/27
10. Necro Butcher v. Toby Klien CZW 1/13
11. Chris Benoit v. Chavo Guerrero WWE 1/16

6. John Cena v. Shawn Michaels WWE 4/1

This was really the match that ends all arguments about John Cena. Shawn Micheals is personally the most loathsome thing in wrestling. I have such a visceral hatred of him, the fact I enjoyed this match as much as I did was pretty much a miracle, and it was all Cena.

Micheals comes out in this preposterous Christian stripper outfit with goofy crosses hanging down and mingling with his chest hair, he looks like a Ted Haggard rent boy post Protease. Then while Cena is coming to the ring he is making faces like a drag queen doing Cher. He is like Paul Lynde at this point, I have no idea how anyone can take him seriously. The first part of the match is all about crafty Micheals outsmarting Cena. Micheals is pretty terrible in this part, ducking punches like he is bowing to a Japaneese lady, throwing wrestling school trainee level chops and mincing around the ring like a less masculine May Flowers. Cena was great though, showing frustration through his face, struggling against poorly executed holds, and bumping big for whatever those punch like things were supposed to be. At one point Micheals had Cena in a loose headscissors, and Cena must have held his breath because his face is turning purple. Micheals does hit a nice Asai, although even the coolest thing about that was how Cena catches it against the table so it looked like his back was broken.

The next section was Micheals working the leg and he basically used stomps and chop blocks which he can pull off. People are bitching about the leg selling, but I thought it was fine, Cena sold it a ton when it was being applied, and also sold it during the first part of his comeback, until he was able to shrug it off. He didn't just stop selling, there was a transition. Somewhere in this Micheals takes a shitty looking posting and blades, but still basically controls. The piledriver on the steps was pretty great looking, although I don't get why Ross kept calling it a spike piledriver. Who was the spiker? I guess Jesus is his Arn.

You normal Micheals formula match has the opponent control the match, destroy Shawn's surgically repaired back, hit all of his finishers, Micheals then Resurrects hits his superkick and pins his opponent. It is a match structure that makes his opponents look like shit,. Here he controlled the match, while he doesn't really have enough stuff to control a match, at least he doesn't make all of Cena's stuff look like shit, by ignoring it.

The finish run was a lot better then in the other title match, you had the kick outs of the finishers, but they weren't just running through their finishers for two counts, they were mixing it up. I loved the constant drop toe holds by Cena, they looked great and it is a very cool set up for the STFU. Cena's fatigue selling was awesome, and I liked them laying on each other at the end, although Micheals rubbing Cena's cock was pretty fucking uncomfortable, I guess jerking Cena off was a match strategy "Hunter is always spent after I do this."

Pretty amazing one man show, it seems pretty crazy to say, but Cena may be the best wrestler in the world right now. No one around works big time main event wrestling better. He may not do as many cool things as say Austin Aries, but everything he does counts.

8. Undertaker v. Batista WWE 4/1

The disappointing Batista v. JBL matches always started with great big man slugfests, but they would be main eventing and have to go 20+ so you would have long chinlock sections. This wasn't a main event, so they could work a brawl the whole match. I really liked most of this match, big guys going after each other, and some big moves sprinkled in. The tope was awesome looking, and pretty crazy to do with only one guy catching. The match fell apart a little at the end though, as they really did this obligatory WWE main event finish. A guy hits his secondary finisher for a dramatic two count, then the other guy hits his secondary finisher for a dramatic two count, rinse repeat. It is pretty cliched and it really looked tacked on here. Still this was damn fun for a match nobody expected anything from.