Welcome to the last and what should be the most dull stop on the “Interinactivity Returns” tour, as I recap WWE SmackDown! for the first time EVER. I’m not sure how long it had been since I watched a full episode of WWE Raw, at least up until a couple weeks ago when I did the recap, but I’m sure I watched one during the WrestleMania buildup. I hadn’t watched a full episode of Impact Wrestling since I had quit recapping it. SmackDown, though? I haven’t watched ANY of that in YEARS, other than that Shaemus and Mark Henry stuff that I YouTube’d to try to figure out what disease to diagnose most of you with. (Blindness, in case you’re wondering.)
I have absolutely no idea what is going on for this show in it’s present format, especially since they started throwing SmackDown! guys on RAW. None whatsoever. I assume Randy Orton is still Batman? That doesn’t sound appealing. What else do they got? Cody Rhodes, Shaemus, and Mark Henry? WADE BARRETT?!?! Wow, this sounds terrible. I am absolutely dreading this.
All right then, if I’m gonna do this, I need some help from THE BEST F#%&ING TNA TEAM EVER!!! WE’RE BACK BABY!!!
I’ll give Cam a call first.
* Dials Cam *
Cam: Hello?
Hey, Cam. How’s it going, man?
Who the fuck is this?!?!
I still can’t understand what you’re… It’s Blair.
Who?
Blair… remember??! I wanted to know if you were up for watching SmackDown!
Who the fuck is Blair?
I’m Blair! Do you want to watch SmackDown!?
Don’t ever call here again. I have guns.
*Hangs up*
*Dials Jack Newbury*
Hello, Blair.
Hey Newbury! How’s it going, man?
Fine.
That’s cool.
…
I’m good too!
That’s fantastic.
So listen… I was wondering if you wanted to watch SmackDown! with me later on tonight.
No.
That’s it? You’re a Pulse writer now! Let’s have some solidarity! Just no?
Yeah.
You don’t even want to watch a bit of it?
That’s right.
… oh. Uh… okay.
…
… so… how are you doing?
I have to go.
Oh… sure, no problem. I just wanted to see how you…
My family’s having dinner.
Oh, yeah, dude, totally. I understand. Yeah. My family’s getting ready to have dinner soon too.
You don’t have a family.
Well, what I mean is that me and my dog are…
Goodbye, Blair.
*Hangs up*
*Dials Crystal*
*5 minutes later…*
This is going to be awesome. Hiring a bunch of strippers and throwing a party is one of the best ideas you ever had, Blair. Where is this party? What time are the strippers going to be there? And when are the donkey and belly dancers supposed to show up?
I was thinking… hoping… we could watch some SmackDown! before it goes down, maybe?
…
…Â
…
The strippers are totally on their way and stuff.
You’re a dick, Blair.
*Hangs up*
*Dials Swayze*
Hey, man.
Hey, Swayze! What’s going down?
Actually, I was a little bored. Trying to figure out something to do.
It’s funny you should say that. It just so happens that…
Look, Blair. I know you are trying to get people to watch SmackDown with you.
You do?
Yes. Everyone knows.
Oh. Well, I just thought that…Â
Shut up, Blair. Shut up and listen. I actually suggest you listen to me harder than you’ve ever listened to anyone in your entire life. No one wants to watch SmackDown with you. No one wants to watch SmackDown with anyone. No one wants to watch SmackDown alone.
… but…
The main attractions for the show are Mark Henry, Cody Rhodes and Shaemus. What don’t you understand?
Well, maybe they…
No. Maybe nothing. At all.
…
Do we understand each other?
I… I gotta go.
*Hangs up.*
Well, I guess I’m going this alone. Man, why don’t I have some kind of robot that will recap bad wrestling shows so that I don’t have to?
I know, right?
…
…
… nah.
All right, fine. I can do this. Do I really have to put the exclamation mark at the end of the word “SmackDown!” every time?
Really?! FINE!!! FUCK IT!!! FUCK EVERYTHING!!!
The Mark Henry Power Hour!
Wow, the theme song for this show is like… wow.
Alberto is here. The crowd doesn’t seem to know whether to cheer or boo, but they cheer some. As the music goes off, it does seem like they’re cheering him. He seems pleased. Then he talks about John Cena and this Sunday. He then shows Cena knocking him out with steel steps. Alberto says that he wanted to come to Mexico to compete for them, but Cena robbed them of that. He then speaks Mexican and the people still cheer him.
Snap, Teddy Long is still around! He says that Del Rio was checked out for physicians and cleared to compete and that he’s trying to get out of the match. They pipe some cheers, which is funny because they showed the crowd and they were doing nothing. Then Del Rio spoke something to Teddy Long and they ACTUALLY cheered. How could they not have seen these reactions coming? That’s just lazy. Teddy Long says the match is happening tonight. More piped cheers. Segment over.
Mark Henry comes out to piped boos, as again, the crowd is clearly doing nothing. A graphic comes up for Sin Cara .vs. Sin Cara. The heel champs stare each other down. Commercial. Then they show some Mexican ruins. Then they show the graphic for Show and Henry this Sunday. Then they show Henry in the ring again. Then they show some slow-motion clips of Henry beating Morrison. Then Morrison comes out in slow-motion. I’m going to have a seizure here. This is just all over the place.
John Morrison .vs. Glass Jaw Henry
There’s no commentary? Henry tosses Morrison out of the ring. Then Henry goes out and pushes Morrison against the post. He like… arches Morrison’s back against the ropes. Then we get some kicks, and a chinlock. Claps for Morrison, then I go forward in time to Morrison hitting Starship Pain. What the hell? Morrison jumps into him, falls, gets kicked, and then Henry tosses him in the air, catches him, slams him, and pins him. That was an admittedly cool move. I guess this was the “we’re not jobbing him out, see? John Morrison!” match. They show replays of stuff we didn’t see because of that time wormhole that the show went through.
Winner: Mark Henry
Henry is walking to the back. STUNNED SILENCE.
Vickie is talking to Christian about something. Teddy comes in. Christian wants a title match. Teddy puts him against Shaemus. He puts Dolph against Ryder for the US Title, meaning that Dolph wrestles twice on Sunday. Zack Ryder comes in and goes “Woo” and leaves. Vickie screams. Uh… okay.
The commentators are back now. They do the usual BS. Then they recap the Sin Cara .vs. Sin Cara feud. It looks… confusing, but I guess it had some background in Mexico that I’m not aware of.
Wade Barrett comes out, then cuts a promo about how he’s not aligning himself with losers anymore. Daniel Bryan comes out with a badass new leather jacket. I guess he’s not shaving until WrestleMania.
Wade Barrett .vs. Daniel Bryan
Daniel goes down early and Barrett drops a leg. Barrett goes for his crappy finisher for jerks, then Bryan escapes then Barrett does a swinging move that I can’t name but that looks 10 times better than his actual finisher. Barrett then chokes him on the ropes. Barrett then hits him with a big boot as Bryan is tied between the ropes, and Daniel goes to the floor.
Barrett rolls him in for a 2-count. Headlock by Barrett, Bryan powers out and gets a foot up followed by a mule dropkick from the second rope. 2-count for Bryan. Barrett boots him again, then starts punching him. Submission by Barrett, but Bryan powers up and flips off the ropes, hits the other ropes and kicks his face off. Bryan launches an Austin Aries dropkick and gets 2. Barrett misses a clothesline but hits a nice kick on Bryan’s stomach. Pump-handle by Barrett gets him a 2-count.
Foot up by Bryan gets Barrett, but Bryan jumps into Wade’s asshole finish for assholes. Pin. I don’t buy that no one can kick out of that stupid shit. Decent match, aside from that though.
Winner: Wade Barrett
Vickie calls Johnny Ace. A guy with a mic asks who she was talking to, even though we just heard the whole thing. She wants to be GM.
Here’s Shaemus. His music is the most terrible thing I’ve heard in a long time, until the chorus hits, then it’s kinda cool. They piped cheers for Shaemus, although it looked like he was getting enough cheers on his own. They recap the Christian feud. Poor guy. Vickie comes out in a Mexican-ish dress. They pipe boos. Oy. As Christian’s music hits, some cheers erupt, so they pipe boos. I fucking LOVE this show.
Shaemus & Zack Ryder .vs. Fake Billy Gunn & Christian
The best part of this match was when Cole called Booker T “G.I. Bro”. Ziggler beats up Ryder for a while. Christian pretends that Shaemus is Goldberg. Ziggler is actually a decent wrestler, the times I’ve seen him have not been bad at all. Anyway, this goes much the way you would expect it to. I can’t be bothered to go through it in detail. It was tough to concentrate because Cole was yelling at Booker T for like 2 minutes during the climax of the match about absolutely nothing. Much like Barrett, Shaemus has one really cool move that’s not his finisher. When that doesn’t work, he hits his retard Matt Morgan kick and pins.
Winner: Shaemus
I guess a couple weeks ago, Cody Rhodes “bagged’ Randy Orton. This apparently is supposed to be something shocking. I’m not totally sure why. Now Cody is walking in the back with some dude, and he is asked “what his thoughts” on that are. Is that fucking rhetorical? Isn’t it obvious? He doesn’t like Randy Orton. That’s all there is to it, apparently. I’m glad they did that interview. Anyway, this segment serves no purpose. I only bring it up because Cody’s guy in a suit put a bag on the camera. That was awesome.
Oh, now Cody is in the ring breathing through his mask. He shows Mark Henry beating up Orton back a couple weeks ago back when that sort of thing happened more often. Then he put a bag on Orton’s head. Because they didn’t just show that 2 minutes ago. Cody is breathing really heavily and speaking awkwardly. Is this why people are starting to get behind Rhodes now, seriously, actually? Because the crowd is absolutely dead silent here. PIPE SOME BOOS ALREADY!!! Cody goes over his history with Orton. This goes on for way too long. Cody is indeed rocking the cool IC belt again though.
He calls out Randy. Randy comes out and the crowd goes absolutely batshit. They didn’t need to pipe cheers there either, but that didn’t stop them from doing it. Is this the norm over on this show? Because they could pipe cheers that sounded less “screachy” and it wouldn’t make it so obvious. Orton says he should have killed Rhodes. Orton says that putting a bag over his head means nothing and that he’s just going to kick Cody’s ass.
He hits the ring, but gets attacked by guys in suits that the announcers call “baggers”. He has a TEAM OF THEM?!?! Haha, okay, that’s pretty awesome. I guess people gotta take work where they can find it these days. They brawl, but Orton gets the upper hand and smokes him and rope-DDT’s one of the “baggers”. Rhodes has to get the belt before he can escape, even though this isn’t a match. So Randy RKO’s a bagger. Cody still needs pads.
They interview what I’m assuming is the fake Sin Cara. He speaks English. Then they interview the real Sin Cara. He speaks spanish. Then the fake one speaks spanish too. But they don’t have subtitles for the fake one. So the announcer makes him repeat it in English. I guess the real Sin Cara stole the mask from the fake Sin Cara years ago. Does that flip the names around? I don’t know. Blue Sin Cara at one point calls the black one “Sin Cara Negro”.
Mask .vs. Mask
Sin Cara .vs. Sin Cara
The announcers also have no bloody idea which one of these guys is the real one apparently. So it’s nice to know that it’s not just because I’m missing anything. Michael Cole explains the significance of losing the mask. They got the mood lighting going again.
This match had way too much in it to do a play-by-play. Unlike with the other match, which I just didn’t care about. The mood-lighting is really dumb though. The crowd responded better to this match… ACTUALLY responded well… than any match on the show. Mostly because of where the show is, obviously, but the fact that they did more than 4 moves probably didn’t hurt either.
Good action, but not a spot-fest either, which was good. A ton of arial moves, but the black Sin Cara also tried to get it ground-based for a while. Black Sin Cara also tried to take the mask off blue Sin Cara a few times. Blue Sin Cara just about won with a Swanton, but only got 2. Blue Sin Cara won by submission, that was a surprise. Wow, a match that didn’t end with a generic finisher!
Winner: Sin Cara (Obviously)
Black Sin Cara refuses to unmask. So they fight some more, until blue Sin Cara takes black Sin Cara’s mask off. Blue Sin Cara dives through the ropes. I guess he’s made his point. For some reason, Cole is upset by this.
Brodus Clay is coming soon. So make sure you got your “NEW VADER” quotes ready.
Beth Phoenix and Natalya are in the ring. They talk and it’s boring, but at least they can string a sentence together unlike Velvet Sky and Angelina Love. Like, for me, the WWE Divas are dull, and can’t really wrestle, but they still give off less of a “I’ve blown my 300 lb parole officer after me and my boyfriend got caught cooking meth in our basement suite” kinda vibe.
Anyway, some girl comes out. She also cuts an awful promo. I guess Natalya and Beth are supposed to be like Lay-Cool now. Other girl shoves Fake Lay-Cool. Segment over. Powerful stuff.
Alberto’s ring announcer really gives me the creeps. That’s not a complaint, because I realize that’s the point of it, and I understand that. He looks like one of those guys at a fair who wants to read your fortune but you don’t go into his tent because they way he looks at you makes you feel like he probably raped someone at some point and you kinda smell something that could be coming from a rag of ether inside the tent. I don’t know. Like, I don’t know what it is. It’s mostly the eyes, I guess. I can’t look directly at him. I can handle creepy, but he’s like… funeral creepy.
Big Show .vs. Alberto Del Rio
I guess this is Big Show’s first match in a while. These guys go back and forth. The crowd is behind both guys at different points, although Show got a lot of boos from the Mexican crowd despite WWE’s best efforts to get people to dislike Del Rio. At one point Del Rio tries a dropkick and Show just swats him out of the air. Show totally manhandled Del Rio for most of the match. It was Mexico, so I was totally surprised that Del Rio was getting no offense in, but he did hit a dropkick on the legs, followed by a bunch of nice kicks to the head, followed by a DDT for two. Crowd was into that sequence, but Show just swatted Del Rio away a few seconds later.
Show splashed Del Rio in the corner, but Del Rio eventually got the armbar on after Show missed a move. He holds it on for a while, but Show doesn’t tap. Show then just stands up and dumps Del Rio off him. Show goes for the chokeslam but funeral rapist comes in and jumps on him.
Winner: Big Show
Show gives them both the ham-hock of death.
The unstoppable Mark Henry runs (briskly waddles) into the ring and Show, who has already wrestled the WWE Champion and now has a bad arm, knocked Henry with one punch. I guess he decided throwing Henry through a table was too much work. So, things are pretty much back to normal it looks like. How’s that unstoppable booking you guys were all excited about?
All in all, they had a couple decent matches, and you guys know which matches those were. Don’t know if that’s how SmackDown rolls, or if it’s because they knew Mexico is a market that demands more matches.
That’s it for the Interinactivity Returns Tour. It’s been a wild ride. THE OCCUPATION IS OVER!!! LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE!!!
See you next Friday for your next Interinactivity column.
I’ll be in my trailer.
– Blair
