I wasn’t around for Smackdown this week because I took a trip to Boston. I haven’t reached the point with Smackdown yet where I trust it enough to tape it. We’re still in that tentative, feel-each-other-out part of our relationship. MM was supposed to take care of doing ten thoughts for me, but he bailed. I don’t blame him… being mustachioed baseball player takes a toll on one’s fandom… especially during spring training.
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1) The Big Show faced Brandon “The Thrill” Hill in an “Exhibition MMA Match.” A quick Googling of Brandon Hill leads to… absolutely nothing. Everything about this match took too long. Hill took about an hour to get to the ring, Big Show had to be asked 10 times to come to the center of the ring for rule instructions, then shoving before the rule instructions, then the actual rule instructions…. all for a ridiculous match with a foregone conclusion. Squash matches are good and all, but at least be efficient in getting through them. As for the MMA Match, it strangely resembled a wrestling match with one guy wearing boxing gloves while the other guy did not. All told, it took me 7 minutes to get through something that should have been two.
2) The Big Show and Mayweather had a promo-off…. and by “promo-off” I mean “Big Show trying to interact with a pre-taped Mayweather while following a script.” The result was stupid and disjointed. This kind of promo never works because neither guy can play off what the other is doing… at the end it looks confusing and ridiculous with both guys eventually talking over each other. If you’re going to make the guy do a promo for Wrestlemania, at least have it pre-taped and don’t try to have the two people interact. It doesn’t work. They stubbornly repeated this later when Mayweather was “interviewed” by JR and King. With the highlight being JR asking him a question and Mayweather responding “Don’t talk to the king like that, I’m the true king.” Remember in old Madden when the commentary would say something hilariously unrelated to what was going on? Think of that, but without over-tired computer programmers to blame it on.
3) I don’t know who Brandon Hill is, but the bump he took from the Big Show is something the insane WCW luchadors never even did. At least when they jumped out of the ring onto the floor there were guys to break their fall. Show threw him out of the ring onto the padding around the ring. Show’s 7 feet tall… with his arms over his head has to be at least 10 or 11 feet, right? Add about 4-ish feet for the ring and that’s like a 15-foot fall onto your hip. That can’t be pleasant.
4) Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair teamed up to beat Cade and Murdoch. After the match, Shawn again told Flair that there was no way he wanted to be the guy responsible for his retirement and laid an insult at the Nature Boy’s feet. The Gauntlet is down, gentlemen. I’m giddy over what Flair is going to do to Shawn next week to piss him off.
5) Why wrestling is absurd: John Cena gets the chance to do whatever he wants to his opponents and he simply puts them in a match against each other. If it was you, wouldn’t you force them to fight a gauntlet match against everyone on the roster culminating with each other while giving yourself the night off? Don’t you think you’d get your chance against Mr. Kennedy sometime further down the line? You know, like sometime after your World Title shot?
6) After Cena’s victory, they pan the crowd and show a girl with a Cena shirt on dancing to his music. A real salt of the earth type fella is screaming at her to sit the f*** down. I am reminded why I stopped going to wrestling events. I’ll leave you to figure out which person I’m talking about: one, the other, or both.
7) Santino’s plan of screwing with everyone’s head by putting his head on Maria’s body worked. Even when I saw her cover, I was still thinking of Santino’s face on her body and getting creeped out. I’d like to thank the WWE for ruining the only Playboy I’ve wanted since Sable’s.
8) And speaking of things ruining the only Playboy I’ve wanted since Sable’s, Maria going from adorable airhead to yappy, Girl Power girlfriend knocked her from a 10 to like a 6.5. You know, all wrestling storyline aside… if you had a girlfriend you’d been with for a while and all the sudden she laid this “I’m going to be a stripper” or “I’m going to do Playboy” on you… wouldn’t YOU have second of being creeped out, too? I mean, obviously this whole thing is over the top for a wrestling storyline, but doesn’t Santino kind of get some sympathy in this? Isn’t the entire point of dating a really, really hot girl is that guys get jealous because they know you can see her naked and they can’t?
9) And further speaking of the most disturbing things on Raw, now including Santino’s head on Maria’s body, I’d like to thank the WWE for re-airing for the “Mae Young gives birth to a hand” segment. If anything, new fans can now be in on the joke. As an aside: wouldn’t you read a book on Mae Young’s life? It’s got to be an interesting read, right? How in the world did a lady get in to wrestling in 30s and 40s… and what kind of shenanigans must she have been a part of?
10) Line of the night goes to JBL: “I know you said he’s weak and innocent… but I prey on the weak and innocent. It’s how I made my fortune. And, quite frankly, it’s fun.” As the Hornswaggle is Vince McMahon’s son draws to a close, I give them credit for making me WANT to see a JBL/Finlay match… something I wouldn’t have remotely cared about three weeks ago.
