The 2007 New Year's Revolution was the third annual and final New Year's Revolution professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event and 200th PPV overall produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It was held exclusively for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw brand division. It took place on January 7, 2007, at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri. The New Year's Revolution PPV was discontinued after this 2007 event due to the reduction in the number of PPVs per year following WWE's discontinuation of brand-exclusive PPVs after WrestleMania 23 in April. In January 2020, WWE revived the event's name for a series of WWE Live shows called the New Year's Revolution Tour.
There were seven matches scheduled on the event's card. The main event was a standard wrestling match, in which WWE Champion John Cena defeated challenger Umaga to retain his championship. Two predominant bouts were featured on the undercard. The first was a tag team match, in which World Tag Team Champions Rated-RKO (Edge and Randy Orton) fought D-Generation X (Triple H and Shawn Michaels) to a no-contest, thus Rated-RKO retained. The other was a steel cage match between Jeff Hardy and Johnny Nitro for the Intercontinental Championship where Hardy retained.
The event received 220,000 pay-per-view buys, which was less than the 294,000 buys the previous year's event received. When the event was released on DVD, it reached a peak position of fourth on Billboard'''s DVD sales chart for recreational sports. It remained on the chart for six consecutive weeks.
Production
Background
New Year's Revolution was an annual pay-per-view (PPV) event, produced every January by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) since 2005. The name of the event was a play on the Western tradition of New Year's resolutions. The 2007 event, which was held on January 7 at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri, was the third event in the New Year's Revolution chronology, and like the previous two years' events, it was exclusively produced for wrestlers of the Raw brand.
Storylines
Seven professional wrestling matches were featured on the event's card, which were planned with predetermined outcomes by WWE's script writers. The buildup to these matches and scenarios that took place before, during and after the event were also planned by WWE's script writers. The event featured wrestlers and other talent from WWE's Raw brand, a storyline expansion in which WWE assigned its employees. Wrestlers portrayed either a villain or fan favorite gimmick, an on-screen character, for the entertainment of the audience.
The main rivalry heading into New Year's Revolution was between John Cena and Umaga over the WWE Championship. The rivalry all began on the November 6 episode of Raw, one of WWE's main television programs, when Cena interfered in Umaga's match while accepting a challenge to a match by Kevin Federline. One week later, Jonathan Coachman, an on-screen authority figure of Raw, a portrayed match maker and rules enforcer, announced that a match between Cena and Umaga would take place, which ended in a no-contest due to interference. Three weeks later on the November 27 edition of Raw, Umaga (through Armando Alejandro Estrada) issued a challenge to Cena for the WWE Championship, which Cena accepted. The following week, Cena was assaulted by Umaga after his match, and both were confronted by security. Afterwards, neither of them could touch each other outside of a match until New Year's Revolution. On the December 18 edition of Raw, Cena, along with D-Generation X, (Triple H and Shawn Michaels) faced off against Umaga and Rated-RKO (Edge and Randy Orton). The match ended in a no-contest after Cena and Umaga started brawling to the backstage area. Two weeks later on the January 1 edition of Raw, Cena faced off against Federline in a No Disqualification match, a match where there is no rules and the only way to win is by pinfall or submission. During the match, Umaga came to the ring and hit Cena with the WWE championship belt, which allowed Federline to pin Cena for the win. This led to a 4-on-1 handicap match later that night between Johnny Nitro, Johnathan Coachman, Umaga, and Estrada and Cena, where Cena attacked Umaga with a folding chair, causing the disqualification.