No Todd Grisham (on his honeymoon) or Jim Ross this week, we get Cole & Lawler. I want to send my best wishes to Jim Ross, who is recovering from Bell's Pallsy. He's a good man who I've exchanged emails with in the past and he's always been helpful. Plus, having watched WWE as much as I have and read so much of his words in the past I feel like I know the guy. He's a great man. He won't be working the PPV. Hopefully he's on our TV screens again soon. I'll miss him.
We start out with the best in the business, Chris Jericho. He talks about how his Team Smackdown is weak. Then each of the SD guys came out. JTG without Shad, who was sick, who Jericho claimed was arrested for stealing a car. Classy. Then each guy came out. First Escobar with Vickie, then Ziggler, then McIntyre (who claimed to be captain of the team with his experience of one month) and finally co-captain Kane came out. He said none of them were worthy of being on his team. Uh, didn't they all win matches last week? I saw them win matches. This all led to these four guys against five new guys who, in most cases, lost last week. In other words, having qualifying matches last week meant absolutely nothing.
R-Truth, Finlay, Matt Hardy & Hart Dynasty d. JTG, Eric Escobar, Dolph Ziggler & Drew McIntyre
They got about 9 minutes and it was nothing special. The problem with a match with this many people in it is it's hard to work over one guy for a while like in a traditional tag since there are so many standing on the apron. The new team won after Finlay hit JTG with the shillelagh while the ref wasn't looking and Hardy pinned him after a Twist of Fate. Basically they're telling us that the new five guys had to cheat with a weapon to beat the team of four guys who are supposedly weak. Does that make sense? I don't think so. Keep in mind everybody on Team Smackdown won a match last week, so they did earn their spot. The reason it was changed was apparently because when Vince McMahon saw Team Smackdown in the ring against Raw he thought they looked weak. Yes, the same guy that put over all five SD guys last week changed his mind this week. Maybe on Sunday there'll be a whole new team.
Backstage Punk talked with ref Scott Armstrong (a former wrestler in WCW by the way) and Teddy Long. Basically, Armstrong wasn't sure if he should screw Undertaker because of his family's good name (his dad was a wrestler and he has brothers in the business including Road Dogg). He told Punk that somebody else had to do the dirty work and then he left, only to run into crazy Vince who said, "we need to talk." A month ago, they screwed the Undertaker in private. Now they do it in front of the camera. Gee, I wonder if it will work.
John Morrison d. Mike Knox
Remember when Knox was being built up like a monster? Now he's losing in three minutes. At least he gets a 20 second clip every match talking about body parts. The chemistry wasn't that great and Morrison barely hit the Starship Pain for the win. I don’t love that as a finisher. Post match, he cut a promo. It was okay. As I said last week he's much better at talking to somebody in-ring than he is at speaking to the crowd.
Backstage Jerikane (not as good as Jerishow, I admit) told their new team they were more impressive than the pervious team and that they should watch the Jerikane vs. Batisterio match later.
More backstage with my girl Mickie James with Mae Young. Mae is still hanging in there, good for her. Michelle McHeel comes in. Mickie talks about how Michelle left her off team Smackdown because she wants to avoid her. Mickie told her to break a leg. Yeah, you go girl. I love wishing harm on another person! It's smart, sexy and powerful. Beth came in, told McHeel that she won't have the belt for long and Mae was like, "she told you." McHeel told her to shut up and Mae gave her a bitchslap. I liked it just fine.
They threw to a video package about Rey and Batista last week where Rey pinned him although Batista had his shoulder up, which the ref didn't see. Then the two walked and Rey said he learned a lot about Batista that he didn't know. Is there a chapter on how many of the WWE divas that Batista has been with? Their tag match is next.
Rey Mysterio & Batista d. Chris Jericho & Kane
Two minutes in, Kane pulled Rey out of the ring and that meant a commercial. Predictably, the heel side worked on Rey for the majority of the match until he got Batista in there. He went to finish off Kane, Jericho saved him, Batista took care of Jericho, which allowed Kane to big boot and then post him. Rey went at Kane, who spiked Rey into the mat with a chokeslam. That looked stiff. When Kane turned around he was met by a Batista spear for the victory. No real controversy by the faces. Just a solid TV tag match.
More backstage with the conspirators huddling up. Vince was talking to Armstrong about how his dad "Bullet" Bob might make the Hall of Fame next year if Scott co-operated tonight. That left Scott to think. During all this, Punk had this goofy grin on his face.
Mickie James d. Layla
Two minutes. Mickie James won. Layla wasn't in the right spot at least twice, but they held it together enough to make it decent. Mickie hit a really nice looking neckbreaker and also a spinning kick for the win. I love how they say it came "out of nowhere" even though she was standing in front of her opponent. Please put Mickie against Michelle or Natalya.
Another video tribute for Captain Lou Albano. The crowd cheered at the end as they should. Same one as Monday, which was great.
They aired the excellent Cena/Orton video package that makes the feud better than it has been. Then they ran down the PPV card. My preview is at the end of this review.
World Title Submission Match: The Undertaker (c) d. CM Punk
Punk came out with Teddy Long and Scott Armstrong. The deal was Punk was very happy about this, thinking that he'd win the match because he's got the same corrupt ref and GM. Of course since that match happened they barely mentioned that Undertaker beat Punk clean in about ten minutes to win the belt, or that Undertaker abducted Long for a week. They didn't work that hard in the match. It was more about the story than anything. Punk kept trying to go for a submission while Undertaker kept fighting out of it. They did little things like when Undertaker was going for the top rope clothesline, Long would stand up and that distracted him enough to hurt him. That allowed Punk to work him over a bit when he asked Long for a chair. He gave it to Armstrong. Punk took it from him, then missed a charge on Undertaker, who proceeded to chokeslam Armstrong. Then he stared down Long, who took off. This allowed Punk to hut Undertaker with chair shots in the gut, back and head (Undertaker did smartly block it with his hand). Punk told Teddy to get another ref, so he waved down Mike Chioda and while this was happening Punk had his Anaconda Vice reversed into a Hell's Gate for the Undertaker. Crowd went nuts, Punk tapped about five seconds later as the Deadman retained. The show ended with Punk retreating while Undertaker held the belt up triumphantly.
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It was an average show again this week, much like last week. The problem is the Bragging Rights PPV isn't that appealing, so when you spend the majority of the show hyping up that show it's hard for me to get excited as a viewer. The matches weren't great. They were Raw-like in their normalcy. If you missed this show you really didn't miss much although I'm sure WWE thinks that changing the Smackdown team is a big deal. To me it's a sign that the person booking the shows (Vince) needs to plan better long term.
Three Stars of the Show
1. CM Punk - He was great as the smiling heel who thought everything would go well.
2. Rey Mysterio - He's here because Kane spiked him and it looked nasty.
3. Captain Lou Albano - There's nobody else that stood out, plus I love the Captain Lou song so much!
Qua 11 Nov 2009 - 22:55