Not a lot of time to write over the past couple of days, so I just wanted to give my impressions of the last few days of wrestling shows.
Smackdown: Thought it was a good show. I loved Swagger putting the ankle lock on Rey again and dragging him from the back into the arena. I’m almost wondering if they’re building toward a scenario where Big Show wins MITB, and cashes in the shot that night against Swagger after he’s demolished Rey. At least that’s what I was thinking until Swagger ended up in Kane’s red light room. Now I’m not sure at all of what’s going on. I thought the Straight Edge Society segment was well done, although I’m not sure what’s gained by turning Luke Gallows against CM Punk and Serena. I loved the Teddy Long stuff with Drew McIntyre. I love Teddy Long. I’m not sure where they’re going with the Christian/Matt Hardy feud, but I’m sure it’s just the WWE’s way of continuing to punish Christian for his dalliance with TNA. I couldn’t care less about Dolph Ziggler, Chavo or Vickie.
Victory Road: I predicted the winners correctly in 6 of the matches, although my additional predictions for how the finishes would happen were mostly off. In retrospect, I suppose it doesn’t make sense to take the title off RVD, but I really thought they would. I felt like the main event was too short, and that some of the undercard matches *cough*women’smatch*cough* were unnecessarily long. I really didn’t care for the X-Division title match, as I thought it was pretty ugly. The mystery tag team (which turned out to be Samoa Joe and Rob Terry) wasn’t nearly the pay off I was hoping for, even though I love watching Samoa Joe. I did like the hug/awkward look/handshake from AJ and Kazarian at the end of the match, though. Hernandez vs Morgan was okay, and Supermex’s dive from the top of the cage was awesome, but I felt like the match dragged in spots. Oh…and TNA, when every single member of the roster can snap a pair of handcuffs, it ceases being interesting. Stop. Now. Angle and Pope was a good match. Lethal vs Flair was a good match, and I was shocked that Flair tapped to the Figure Four. Those two seemed to work really well together. That match and the tag team championship match were the two best matches of the night. Speaking of which, Motor City Machine Guns vs Beer Money, Inc was a great match. The false finish was weird, but the match as a whole was awesome. Overall, I thought it was a good PPV, that had a couple of low spots. MCMG vs Beer Money was the match of the night.
Raw: Let’s get this out of the way: WWE, please stop getting crappy guest hosts for your flagship show. Florence Henderson was terrible, and didn’t bring anything to the show. Santino’s bunch vs Regal’s bunch was ridiculous. Doink? Doink? Really? Other than that, I thought Raw was pretty good this week. I’m tired of the Hart Dynasty/Usos drama, but what else are they supposed to do, since there aren’t any other tag teams for the Hart Dynasty to wrestle? Mark Henry vs the Miz was an okay segment that was made better by what happened on NXT. Edge vs Randy Orton was a good match, but the real treat came after the match, when Chris Jericho gave Edge a Code Breaker, and Evan Bourne tried to get payback on Orton from last week. Randy delivered an RKO to Bourne as he was coming down in the Airbourne maneuver, and it was, to quote my friend Dave on twitter, “13 different kinds of awesome.” It needs to be seen. I liked that the Nexus was stalking people backstage and beating them up prior to their match with Cena. That match was about as good as a match featuring Cena vs 6 guys could be, and I liked Sheamus coming down to help Cena, although I think it would’ve been better if it had happened with one more Raw to go before the PPV. I’m sure that they’ll interview Sheamus before the match, and he’ll try to explain it, I just think it’s going to end up not as effective as it could’ve been. I should also mention that I could watch Justin Gabriel’s 450 somersault splash over and over, it’s right up there with Airbourne as my favorite finishing maneuver in the WWE right now. Anonymous GM Wrestling Quote of the Week: “Just when you think you’ve got the answers, I change the questions” made famous by Rowdy Roddy Piper
NXT: The battle royal was great. Although, I want to find out what happened to Alex Riley, as it looked like he had blood running down the back of his head when he got eliminated. I liked the way it worked out…even if they didn’t explicitly state that it was a team battle royal. I was fine with that decision, because I think it’s too early for there to be any kind of split in the Nexus’ wall. However, I need to point out that Wade Barret’s “If you’re not Nexus, you’re against us” is a terrible catchphrase. Just terrible.
Wrestling With Wrestling 