Monday Morning Backlash on The “New” SyFy Smackdown with Undertaker and Kane

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As regular readers know, I quit watching Smackdown regularly months ago, so, with the big SyFy change at hand, I figured I’d ask a fellow wrestling fan’s perspective on the show. Here’s the perspective of another big wrestling fan who, coincidentally, quit on the show, longtime Pulse contributor and all around house of pain, Brad Curran.”

I’m going to a Smackdown house show next week. I’m pretty excited. Which makes the fact that I don’t actually watch the show regularly anymore odd. I’m only slightly less out of the loop than someone who might be wondering whether Brock Lesnar’s the champion and what happened to Los Guerreros and their sweet low rider.

Of course, what I’m vaguely aware of is part of why I haven’t been checking out the show much. I don’t have any beef with the Undertaker and Kane having another go ’round in their feud on a lot of levels. I can buy the reasons that I’ve seen to justify it (it’s been years since they last had a serious feud, it’s new for the kids that are the primary audience now, it’s nice for Kane to have one last big run, Kane finally has the upper hand for once) but that doesn’t mean I actually want to watch the storyline on a weekly basis. The fact that the one episode I have caught lately ended with them doing promos at each other probably didn’t help on that front, either.

Just because the main event’s not doing much for me doesn’t mean the whole show should be a write off, though. And in theory, it shouldn’t. Despite losing some key pieces from their amazingly hot run last summer, Smackdown still has some damn good talent in the undercard. I’m a big Christian fan, and his run in ECW showed he can get something out of anyone. Kofi Kingston’s entertaining. Back when I was still watching Smackdown, Cody Rhodes was starting to become a favorite (which was a big turn around from his Legacy days, when he bored the crap out of me. Literally; he made me boredom poop.). Kaval just debuted, and he was the reason I watched NXT season 2. I have as big a man crush on CM Punk as the next member of the IWC. None of that has made me want to watch the show. Neither did Rey Mysterio’s run on top, despite the fact that he’s an all time favorite of mine. Of course, that’s because Rey has never, ever been booked well on top, which is something I bitched enough about in an inappropriate spot on this site years ago.

On one level, my apathy for the show is something I go through with wrestling in general. I barely watch anything beyond Raw these days for a variety of reasons, from scheduling conflicts to the fact that I come perilously close to breaking the fast forward button on my DVR every time I try to watch Superstars.

There’s also the fact that the show’s been in a holding pattern with the transition from My Network TV to SyFy, which is something Aaron brought up to explain his apathy months ago. I have to say, I will be watching their debut on the channel that brought us “Sharktopus” and “Mansquito”. Beyond the hype I’m sure WWE will use to persuade me on Raw, I should probably catch at least one episode before I go to that house show, so I’ll have some idea of what’s going on with the show before I go see it live. Otherwise, I might as well be asking how much everyone weighs.

Check back tomorrow for the Tuesday Morning Backlash with WWE Raw thoughts!

Glazer is a former senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus.