DRAMA AND DIRTY TRICKS
- 01/03/2008 (1:51:40 pm)
- Media
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Drama and dirty tricksRivalries will get settled in the ring when WWE comes to Elmira.
January 3, 2008
By John P. Cleary
[email protected]
Star-Gazette
Under the most pleasant of circumstances, Dave Batista is, well, an intense young man. Smarting from the loss of the World Heavyweight Championship to rival Edge, Batista is raging.
He'll get the chance to take out that frustration on the new champion Monday at Elmira's First Arena, when the wrestlers of the World Wrestling Entertainment's SmackDown and ECW brands return to Elmira.
Wrestlers MVP, Finley, CM Punk, Chavo Guerrero and others are scheduled to appear in the event, planned for 7 p.m. The card is subject to change.
The headline match pits Batista, known as "The Animal" for his temper and brutal attacks, against Edge, the high-flying two-time world champion. Batista, a 6-foot, 6-inch, 290-pound former bodybuilder, relishes finishing off opponents with the Batista Bomb, a head-over-heels slam that leaves them twitching in the ring.
Edge is a classic wrestling villain, using mind games and sleight-of-hand to disarm rivals. He used look-alikes to confuse Batista and legendary champion The Undertaker to win December's "Armageddon" pay-per-view three-way-title match. His flashy tattoos and risque behavior earned him the nickname the "Rated-R Superstar."
CM Punk is the reigning ECW World Champion. ECW, the legacy of the ultra-violent Extreme Championship Wrestling promotion of the 1990s, features hard-core wrestling as likely to include beating with garbage cans or barbed wire as it is headlocks and body slams. CM Punk prefers to eliminate rivals with the Anaconda Vice sleeper hold.
He has been feuding with Guerrero, the third generation of one of wrestling's most enduring families. His grandfather, Gory Guerrero, was a wrestler and promoter, and his uncle, the late Eddie Guerrero, was a champion in several promotions. Like his uncle, Guerrero is famous for his leaps from the top rope.
In comparison to CM Punk and Guerrero, Finley is an old-school throwback. According to his WWE biography, the Irishman held 16 major European championships before coming to the United States in the mid-1990s. He's sometimes assisted at ringside by Hornswaggle, an evil leprechaun character who emerges from an eerie green glow beneath the ring to help.
Learn more about the wrestlers and see photographs and videos of their matches at www.wwe.com. Warning: Some of the content may be inappropriate for younger children.
Tickets cost $60, $40, $30 and $20 and are available from the First Arena box office or Ticketmaster at (607) 722-3711 or www.ticketmaster.com. Additional fees may apply.
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