Smackdown for 1/15

Chorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre.

Mr. Chris Jericho, complete with a makeup job on his jaw, cuts your standard “Chris Jericho is angry at DX promo”. Ok. John Morrison’s smile coming out of the slow motion entrance looks really unnatural, although when he gives the glasses he does look genuine. I guess these two are going to have a match now? Ok. There is immediately a shitty Morrison clothesline sending Jericho over the top and then Drew McIntyre comes out. What? I guess he’s going to sit outside and provide Morrison motivation to hulk up. No, really, that’s a spot they did. Morrison is in the Walls of Jericho, McIntyre taunts him with the Intercontinental title, and this leads Morrison to gritting his teeth and dragging him over to the ropes. What a match. Not in a good way, though.

“One nation under Punk, indivisible, with integrity and sobriety for all.” Fantastic. Punk as late-night informercial televangelist and Luke Gallows as his testimonial is the best act in WWE. “Luke, go get me that man.” That man is Trevor, Trevor is better at being the test subject than James was last week. “He doesn’t even know!” The best part of these segments is that Punk gets better and more maniacal each week. Him going borderline psychotic with excitement if he demands to know if Trevor is “true ‘till death” is wonderful. Totally wonderful. And then they have to go and ruin it by transitioning into a match. Fuck. Actually, technically we have Trevor’s pit stains first. Those aren’t very nice either. But yeah, they ruin it with a match. And the worst part is that they just play Khali’s music, and I’m like ‘holy shit are they going to have Khali, the party playboy guy, try to defend Trevor’s rights to pound beers and snort lines?’ and then Matt Hardy comes out too and it’s a four-way tag match with three teams that aren’t very good. The match, accordingly, is not very good. And then Trevor’s pit stains come back. They’re still not very good. But at least he’s a reminder of when this whole paragraph DID represent good things.

Josh Matthews, who @cockswoggle HATES, knocks on Batista’s door for an interview. Batista has this great look when he opens the door that basically says “look, I have Kelly Kelly back there and she sucks a mean dick, so do you HAVE to be bothering me right now?” This is confirmed when he just glares at Josh the entire time, blows off his questions, and says “knock on this door one more time and… you know what I’m saying?” Somebody’s gon’ get dey ass licked.

Undertaker has promo time. I support this in general but I also start yawning viciously during his entrance. Promo is what you’d expect, collecting souls and all that. He puts a hilarious emphasis on ‘two decades’ when informing us of exactly how long he’s been collecting souls for. Good promo, I guess.

Mickie James and Beth Phoenix have a match. It’s actually the best and most violent match on this show so far. It is followed by Michelle McCool and Layla attacking Mickie, which is accordingly the most violent angle on the show thus far. If it wasn’t for the incredible Trevor head shaving deal, it’d probably be the best single segment on the show (main event pending, I suppose). Interesting.

Oh GOOD it’s Kane, perfect. This match is kinda neat at first because Kane is beating the ever living piss out of Dolph Ziggler and I’m like hey, I like Ziggler, I don’t want him getting squashed really but at least it’s not going to be an even longer version of their last couple matches. Nope, I was wrong. Very wrong. This is the longest edition yet and really, once you realize it’s going a while, the only interesting part if how fucking ridiculous Ziggler’s hair gets. Like Sycho Sid ridiculous. It’s what you’d expect after the last two, not terrible or anything, probably the second best of their matches. maybe even the best. But it’s too long and you can’t run the same thing three weeks in a row unless it keeps getting better or it was really good to start with. And this wasn’t.

The Royal Rumble ad campaign this year sucked. What the fuck, is this The Matrix? A subtle attempt to promote Mr. Anderson in TNA?

Batista vs Rey! Surely this won’t have another Undertaker finish. It’s in a CAGE! And holy shit it’s awesome. Batista is all “wellll I COULD win but you called me out of Kelly Kelly’s meat wallet for this so I might as well fuck with the little beaner who’s been fucking with my shit for the last three months”. Rey quickly realizes that he has two options, escape or die. He tries to wrestle the match, sets Batista up for the 619, is like ‘oh shit there’s a cage’ here and Batista just starts laughing at him. Batista is a glorious, glorious man. So the rest of the match is “Rey fights for his life and tries to escape while Batista is really just being an asshole and tossing the little boy around”. And then Rey wins! And it’s awesome. So fucking awesome. A fine way to end a show of wrestling.

Best matches are Batista/Rey, Mickie/Beth, Kane/Ziggler. Best angles are Punk saves Trevor, Michelle and Layla attack Mickie.