WWE RECAP!: Friday Night Smackdown

Welcome to what will (hopefully) become a somewhat steady feature here on The Rookies – WWE Recap! Just WWE for now, because I don’t want to also watch TNA. Also TNA kinda sucks.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I am by no means what those in the know would call a “real” wrestling fan. I, like a good portion of us college-aged males, watched it religiously during the Monday Night Wars/Attitude era, but have fallen off drastically since then. And by “drastically” I mean “oh my god I never watch pro wrestling what did I get myself into.”  So this will either end up being really fun and entertaining, or crash and burn to the point of ending my career in Blogoslovakia once and for all. Let’s get to it!

WWE Smackdown!

I’m a little better versed in Raw as of late, but Tuesday was our first day and I had just lost my entire life savings bidding on a pink DS lite on Swoopo, so I really wasn’t in the mood. (They make you pay for the bids, the limey geniuses) But after a few nights working the local truck stop men’s room, I’m rarin’ to recap just ONE DAY PLUS SOME HOURS before the Royal Rumble in Detroit. Let us begin.

Last Week

Triple H’s Rumble status was put on the line by Smackdown! General Manager Vickie Guerrero in a match between The Big Show and MVP (who hadn’t won since August) where Hunter was banned from ringside. MVP (who was Triple H’s representative) won thanks to interference from Triple H (on the entrance stage, which is actually quite far from the ring). To punish Triple H for using such a devious loophole, gerbil-face Guerrero put him in a match this week with undefeated Vladimir Kozlov. Later, some “bad” pyro “hit” Jeff Hardy as he entered during Edge’s interview show and caused him to flip around and scream because he was “hurt”. This is a continuation of the “black cloud” that’s probably not actually due to Edge because no one will stop saying that it’s due to Edge. Also, The Undertaker made a video about how people should be scared of him in the Royal Rumble because he’s evil and tall.

This Week: The Main Event

The aforementioned Kozlov-HHH match. A very physical match from the get-go, with both wrestlers ending up on the ouside almost right off EXCUSE ME

EXCUSE ME

EXCUSE ME

Chubby Latina version of Stephanie McMahon Guerrero stops the match so she can apologize profusely for forgetting that it was a Handicap Match, and that Kozlov’s partner was The Big Show, because a lumbering big man is EXACTLY what this match needed. What had the opportunity to be good (at least storyline-wise) one-on-one match between Hunter and Kozlov turned into a fairly paint-by-numbers handicap match, with Triple H putting up something of a fight before Koslov pinned him in anti-climatic fashion. Not terrible, and sets up something for Hunter at the Rumble, but it sure could have been better.

The Worst

Could have gone to either Undertaker vs. Shelton Benjamin or The Great Khali vs. Chavo Guerrero (it’s “It’s popular big guys that don’t do much beat up underutilized short guys night on Smackdown!”), but at least the former feature some of Benjamin’s (gold?) standard ring prowess before he lost. In contrast, while Chavo showed some of his consistently great skills on the mic, his match mostly featured The Great Khali jutting out his superhuman chin, Chavo flailing, and Chavo losing.

The Best

On a night where none of the matches were spectacular, The Miz & John Morrison vs. Carlito & Primo was certainly the most entertaining, if not the best executed. Because these are two high-energy, high-impact tag teams, there’s way more opportunity for screw-ups. Early on in this match, Primo went for a hurricanrana out of the corner but landed awkwardly, causing him to fall right off Morrison and causing Morrison to flip himself onto the mat. Later on, Carlito misses a springboard elbow and recovers by essentially standing there. But all that aside, the match had a good fast pace, both teams executed good tag manuvers, and there was even a hidden tag-based ending (I LOVE those).

The Rest/Stray Observations

- After Matt Hardy attacked Edge while he fluctuated between “I respect Jeff Hardy” and “JEFF HARDY YOUR LIFE IS OVER AT THE ROYAL RUMBLE I MEAN TOTALLY”, Edge won a no-DQ match to close out the first hour with help from Mark Henry and Matt’s RR opponent, Jack Swagger. Caveat: I’m sure Chekov would agree that, just like a gun brought on stage in the first act needs to be fired at some point, cement exposed by an angry Hardy should have someone’s head bounce off it by the end of the match.

- I’m new to the Tazz and Jim Ross announcing team, and I can’t say I like it. There was a lot of dead air, a lot of akward transitions, and a LOT of dead air leading to awkward transitions leading to blatant hyping for the Royal Rumble.

- There was a Divas tag match where one woman came and beat up another woman who, in turn, beat up the first woman while Maryse spoke French to Tazz and JR. It was more confusing than it sounded.

- At one point, it really sounded like Jeff Hardy said “I got nose for you, Edge”. In an unrelated note, “I AM NOT A GO-FER”

- The Undertaker is getting a huge push going into the Rumble, which means he might win, which would be a fucking joke.

- The Rumble is always one of the best pay-per-views of the year. I’m going to try and watch it if I can, but I’m poor and in college, and so are all of you. It’ll still be good next week, when it’s in 20 parts on YouTube.