By Greg Parks, Torch specialist

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I thought of making this a regular feature on the blog here, as my friends and I gather every month (or PPV, I guess) at our apartment to watch the latest WWE offering. This month, we had The Bash. There were five of us total, and to show you what the average fan thinks (though I've done my share to help smarten them up), I'll also post some of our discussion points about the matches and give my all-important star ratings as well.

(1) ECW Scramble Match: Some of the guys were disappointed this was first and not Khali vs. Ziggler, though one of my friends thought it better to start this out for the crowd rather than the clunker that Khali vs. Ziggler promised to be. Even some of us were making fun of Swagger's lisp, which means WWE isn't totally off-base I suppose in doing that on TV. It looked like Swagger was bleeding from the mouth again, I believe the second straight match for him. We all agreed the corner dropkick by Dreamer was weak; the match was okay, but really never got on track. (**)

(2) Rey Mysterio vs. Chris Jericho: One of my friends jokingly wondered if Rey wore the mask all the time, which led to a discussion of the possibility of a sitcom of a family of luchadores who wear masks 24/7. Another friend remarked that it looked like he was watching Mysterio circa 1996 at times in this match. Jericho's codebreaker on Rey was beautiful, as was the match as a whole. (****)

(3) Dolph Ziggler vs. Great Khali: The place erupted in guffaws when Ziggler proclaimed himself the man, only to be slapped hard in the chest by Khali. Not a lot to this one, other than Kane's reappearance. One of my friends is huge on putting new/younger guys over big, so suffice to say, he wasn't happy about the ending to this one. (3/4*)

(4) Edge & Jericho vs. The Colons vs. DiBiase & Rhodes: I thought maybe Edge and Jericho would tease dissension again, leading to Team Priceless winning, but I guess I was grasping at straws there. There was an argument over the merits of a tag-team triple-threat match, and how come one guy from each team isn't in the ring at once. The conversation wandered to the Punk vs. Hardy match, where some suggested Hardy could win, only for the under-fire Teddy Long to grant Punk his rematch clause right after and Punk would win again. (**3/4)

(5) Michelle McCool vs. Melina: Mature guys that we are, the talk was mostly about Taker and McCool's love life. While McCool's finisher's name stinks, another friend suggested "The McCool Down," which I think is a better name. (**)

(6) C.M. Punk vs. Jeff Hardy: I liked the false finish, because it made the crowd turn even more on Punk without him even doing anything heelish. The ending was a cop-out, but was OK in the sense that it continued to make one wonder about Punk's motives. I think this one has been severely overrated in some circles; it was a pretty basic match I thought with a not-so-satisfying finish. (**3/4)

(7) John Cena vs. The Miz: My friend with the hang-up on new stars going over has been a big fan of The Miz and hates Cena, so you can bet he did not like the finish. I didn't either, and we even made jokes about Cena being so bored as to read a book if Miz put him in a half-crab or something. None of us, really, were happy with the result. I had no problem with Cena going over, but in a different way. Oddly, if this were any other two people, I think this would've made the most sense to blow-off this feud, if indeed this is exactly that. (**)

(8) Randy Orton vs. Triple H: Most of the talk during the match was how we believed the match would end (well, the final fall anyway). We all groaned at the well-placed sledgehammer, as well as another beating being taken by the Legacy members. This was way too stale of a match-up to get excited about. (***)

My put-over-the-young-guys friend gave it a 3 out of 10 (he's always hypercritical though), but I thought it was a thumbs-up show, despite some of the questionable booking decisions. In-ring work was pretty solid for the most part, making up for it.

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