Smackdown Report for 1/8

Opening Batista/Rey confrontation is opening Batista/Rey confrontation.

Ziggler/Kane was better this week than last because they stuck to mainly the fun energetic mat stuff as opposed to shitty, shitty strikes. Usually I’m all about the striking but not from these two. You also didn’t have the annoying cutaway, and the finish was pretty clever. Still not great stuff but these two are an interesting pairing and I could probably keep watching their stuff. As long as it doesn’t get too long, because fuck that. And they need to work some tags with Mike Knox and Finlay so they’ll start hitting like men.

I probably don’t really need to talk about the backstage divas thing but Layla owned it. Jericho in the locker room with the Harts was pretty funny because when he was talking Natalya was looking at him as if he was proposing some scat fucking. Somehow this led to R-Truth which made me massively disappointed, this apparently was gonna be a Harts & Jericho against Cryme Tyme and Truth six-man tag. Jericho gets to continue his crusade against minorities in WWE which is getting pretty funny at this point. Seriously, since the start of 2009 he’s railed against the elderly (the Rourke/Flair/Steamboat feud that took like four months in hindsight), Mexicans (Rey), blacks (Cryme Tyme, MVP & Mark Henry, Batista is Filipino but he grew up in Washington so he’s gotta have some black in him, plus now Truth apparently), midgets (DX has Hornswoggle), and Legacy has pretty clearly been booked as the WWE’s gay troupe and he had a PPV match against them, too. Can’t wait for Jericho to start wrestling for the women’s title or something like that. The only thing that stood out about this match was realizing Shad shaved his head and doesn’t have his braids anymore. Well, and Jericho busting out the Lion Tamer for the finish. That was cool. But this had to be the least interesting six-man WWE has run in forever.

Not really sure what to put down about CM Punk shaving young James and initiating him into his straight edge cult. Except that every single moment of it was fucking awesome. Every single moment. If the show was just this segment repeated ten or twelve times it’d still be so great. And then it leads into Luke Gallows vs Matt Hardy, which on paper should be awesome, provided my January 2008 scouting report is still valid (and as I said, I’m keeping my eye on Matthew). Gallows really lucks out with gimmicks, the Festus thing was awesome, and his gear now is just absolutely perfect for the sXe punk rock soldier. He’s pretty much the perfect second for Punk and watching them as a unit makes me want to say ‘fuck watching this show’ and watch SLC Punk! instead. Anyway the match is quite good, Gallows still rocks even with the transition and Matthew has earned my approval for today. Wouldn’t mind seeing these two get a longer Superstars slot.

Vickie Guerrero rules but the shit with Maria selling the Celebrity Apprentice show was hideous and I skipped through it. Beth Phoenix and Layla have a surprisingly good match that is pretty much all Layla stooging, probably my favorite women’s squash I’ve seen. There’s a post match angle and Mickie is wearing the ugliest top. Like the entire storyline here is that Michelle and Layla are calling Mickie this slovenly beast and she comes out wearing that top? Wouldn’t have been my choice. At all.

I decided to skip through the Bret-Hart-on-RAW recap and ended up skipping through most of Drew McIntyre interview and after his match last week I decided I wasn’t going to bother rewinding. Then John Morrison showed up and somehow this all ended up better than that aforementioned shit match. Weird how that works.

Batista’s spotlight is awesome. It’s just a normal spotlight and it’s not nearly as high end or superstar as the ol’ cum pyro but it’s a pretty great way to get over that he’s a total asshole. I think this is like the fourth Rey/Batista match in about a month and a half at this point, pretty exciting matchup (again using the scouting report) but that’s a bit overkill, no? The match is good, don’t know if it’s as good as the Gallows match from earlier but it’s pretty close, Rey eats Batista’s spear like a champ and Batista is just such a glorious asshole now. However the Undertaker chicanery for the finish really kills this, you go from Batista being a pompous ass to the lights out, and it’s really terribly disjointed from there. I guess ‘Taker came out and gassed them or some shit. I guess that’s how you set up a three way, though I’m not sure why they… you know what, nevermind.