I thought I’d try a Smackdown review this week for two reasons. Firstly, our resident Internet dervish, Mrs Linda Robin, has taken a week off to work on her tan and secondly I was feeling so deflated from this week’s poor Raw show that I needed to feel positive about something and I hoped Smackdown would pull me from the doldrums. I appreciate that this review will appear a little late to any American readers as the show was broadcast on Thursday but it will seem more pertinent to my fellow UK WWE addicts who watched the programme either last night or the night before. At the end of the review, I will address some issues regarding this Sunday’s Great American Bash PPV and another Smackdown related subject that caught my eye.
But first, Smackdown, which was dominated by two quality wrestling matches and a final segment that almost worked. The show opened with Rey Mysterio and Super Crazy in an out-of-feud match with Rey’s current antagonist Eddie Guerrero sat at ringside on commentary. I’ve read some negative comments regarding this match but I felt it was a cracking encounter, thanks entirely to the superior skills of both competitors. I can see why some might have found it a little light on high-risk offensive manoeuvres for a cruiserweight contest but it perfectly demonstrated that two luchadors can assemble a traditional American-style match complete with strong mat work and wear-down holds. It would be wrong of the WWE to think that this type of booking is necessary in order to get international wrestlers over with mainstream audiences but it is certainly a worthy endeavour to adapt and highlight the abilities of those who have the talent, rather than labelling them as ‘just high-flyers’ and expecting nothing more therefrom. It was also nice to see that ‘Mexicools’ gimmick was left on the other side of the ropes and it didn’t adversely affect the content of the match, either through awkward ring attire or amusingly-named finishing moves (though I did come up with the ‘Mower-bomb’). I guess it’s pointless complaining about the cheap finish, when Eddie stormed the ring and broke a leaf-rake over Rey for the disqualification, because it’s ultimately all about Eddie and Rey’s PPV match this Sunday and I’m sure that there’ll be other times for the Mexican revolution to take centre stage, in the mid-card at least.
The second big contest of the night featured Eddie Guerrero reluctantly matched up against long time buddy and occasional rival Chris Benoit. I liked that Benoit took the advantage prior to the match by calling Eddie back and taking an aggressive stance on the microphone because, when Guerrero made the first offensive move, it meant an immediate momentum shift before the second punch had been thrown. As you would expect from these two, the exchanges were crisp and stiff, never allowing the audience to feel that any offence was pulled or floated to protect an untested friendship. The pace slowed in the middle as holds were applied but these were always presented as possible submissions, not just breaks in the action, and the progenitor of each was constantly working the hold for a better position. Even with some seemingly unintentional colour from Benoit and typically heelish actions from Eddie, nothing came close to distracting attention away from the solid foundation of technical brilliance and tacit chemistry that these two have and it far outshone anything presented on Monday nights in more than a few weeks. Again, the match was unlikely to reach a satisfactory conclusion but I felt the walk-away finish from Guerrero left something in the pot to be resolved later and seemed fresh thanks to its singularity, not like Carlito’s similar exit two-weeks ago on Raw which suffered from being just another step in an overly-booked process.
The finale of the show was an attempted speech by JBL, who looked like a chubby, white Apollo Creed, and an eventual face-off with Batista. JBL’s promo was strongly delivered but light in content or creativity and wasn’t a patch on some of his recent efforts. Batista emerged in ‘game-show host’ mode, which I can take or leave but I know some of you like, and the physical element of the segment was predictably taken by Orlando Jordan, which left JBL and Batista to argue from distance and preserve their main event match at the PPV.
Elsewhere, Booker T wrestled Simon Dean in as close to a squash as you can get without the massive difference in pay or lack of entrance music. Any sympathy felt for Dean must be tempered with the knowledge that he must surely want this weak, old gimmick to die on its ass as soon as possible so he can go back to playing air guitar behind the two more popular members of the BWO and collect his wages in peace. Animal and Heidenreich worked one move, for twenty seconds, and left. Cool. Christian gave good promo from the backstage area and still comes across as underused. It’s exactly this type of young, over talent which should be carrying the flagship shows right now, but then Vince seems to be taking his eye off a lot of things recently. Candice came out and offered it free to the troops (unfortunately she meant the PPV) but Melina ran in to spoil her fun and then Torrie came out to spoil mine. The only other thing of note from the show was the proliferation of JBL ‘Great American’ promos which ran throughout the night. Surely this kind of attrition should be kept for heels who are dangerously close to becoming faces, based on their coolness and entertainment value, and fans need constant reminders that they are actually quite annoying. JBL’s character is neither cool nor intentionally entertaining.
Overall, Smackdown was by far the better of the two main shows this week, benefiting from the creative team putting faith in the abilities of their wrestlers to put on good matches and in the fans for wanting to see a majority of wrestling on the show, albeit with emotive storylines behind the action. Where Raw falls down in treating fans like children who don’t know what they want so they’ll accept anything, Smackdown is laying a solid foundation on which it can build where the wrestlers are recognised as the talented ones (hence the word ‘talent’) and audiences are rewarded for their interest and passion. On Raw, it sometimes feels like we are punished for caring.
The big news surrounding Smackdown is UPN’s desire and the WWE’s agreement to ‘kill-off’ the Mohammad Hassan character at the Great American Bash in his match with the Undertaker. Having the luxury to extol the virtues of artistic freedom is one thing but corporations and advertising are king in this capitalist Utopia and Vince would be crazy to jeopardise his generated revenue to protect a gimmick. I, like most, feel it would be unfair for the man to be released, especially as he was doing his job very well, but maybe it is time for the Hassan character to be dropped, if only to prevent further releases based on the loss of income from television advertising. Knowing Vince’s penchant for ‘real-life’ storylines, I dare say we’ll see Hassan again as a bitter, manipulated wrestler who just wanted a chance but was hounded out by a knee-jerk television station and compliant management. As I said last time, I personally drew no unacceptable comparisons between the Hassan gimmick and the recent London bombings so the furore is a little wasted on me. But I won’t miss this topic in future columns either.
And so on to the Great American Bash PPV. Even though the card is stronger than most Smackdown only PPV’s, I wouldn’t be watching this one if it weren’t free-to-air for us here in the UK. A few matches have me interested (Batista/JBL, Taker/Hassan, Christian/Booker, Guerrero/Mysterio) for various different reasons, one match that I could live without (Animal & Heidenreich/MNM) and one which might work (BWO/Mexicools). As for the Torrie/Melina ‘match’, just pray the guy behind you in the crowd is making that noise because he’s slapping a very small banana. The PPV has enough talent within the matches to make the minutes worthwhile and there are enough secondary issues to make the show work, even if the wrestling doesn’t. It might be a mistake to put so much weight behind the outcome of one PPV, but Smackdown must make a decision soon about its post-draft future and now would be a good time to start. I hope it’s the right one, whatever that might be.
Lee
