Now that the annual ritual of gorging and consumption is over, would you care for some reactions to televisied wrestling shows?
Impact:
1. The young guys finally have a proper faction name, Front Line, and the accompanying generic music. I’m expecting AJ to tell Sting that he’s out of touch with the rest of TNA’s audience because he doesn’t understand Nascar and Myspace now. I’m also expecting no one but maybe Glazer to get that reference.
2. Further on the name front; it’s kind of sad that it took Rhino (in storyline terms) to come up with a faction name for the young guys. He got a pretty insane overpush this week, and I say that as a long time fan of the guy’s. I mean, on one hand, it’s nice to see him not wasted in a feud with Kip James or anything, but considering he was just feuding with Kip, his presence all over the show this week was jarring. It seems like they’re just trying to justify his spot in a top level match with Angle at the PPV by really going overboard with his elevation (which is not unlike how they pushed him to the main event in 2005, when he won the NWA Title from Jarrett), which is apparently supposed to offset his inevitable job.
3. So, “Palin’s” coming to Impact. It’s nice that they’re not putting it on PPV, at least. Since Tina Fey’s out of their league, it would be pretty rad if they got Lisa Nova to do the impersonation there.
4. I’m as bemused by Kip James’ continued employment/existence as anyone, but I did think it was pretty funny when he interrupted Creed’s dance routine by punching him in the face.
5. During the heated backstage argument between between Christy Hemme, Traci, and their respective cleavage, Traci tried to warn Christy off picking a fight with Kong by saying that Kong had been training since birth. I have not been able to get the image of angry toddler Kong terrorizing pre school out of my head since. It is hilarious. Hemme getting a title match with Kong? Yeah, I’m leaving that alone. Christy does at least have the whole “plucky underdog with a lot of determination” quota for Kong’s opponents that Gail Kim and Taylor Wilde did, so at least they’re keeping the dynamic consistent, if not the work rate.
6. I didn’t care much for the Rave, Bashir, and Morgan three way, but Morgan’s fallaway slam on both guys was pretty cool.
7. Alex Shelley said that Foley looked like the C.E.O. of bum fights. That’s a pretty great burn.
8. Give Don West credit: at least he mentioned why Bashir and Shelley were going for a bunch of covers on Rhino that were so easily broken up. Or give credit to whoever fed him the line. But hey; he did something fairly competent! I hope Jarrett gave him a gold star after the show.
9. Shelley’s rampant douchebaggery made him more worthy of the turkey suit than Bashir’s America hating, apparently. At least this tied in to the ongoing angle between the Guns and Foley. That, Foley having fun with the turkey jokes, and the pretty funny image of Shelley selling the Double Arm DDT in the suit made this watchable for me.
10. Despite Ray’s prowess on the mic (which is really impressive if you never saw him in ECW), that least segment did drag a bit there. I did like how they built to it, though, and 3D siding with the young guys does make sense based on the whole “you were in these guys shoes in ECW” thing Rhino brought up in his appeal to them. While this could easily lead to a swerve, I wouldn’t be surprised to see 3D stay face and feud with Beer Money, either, given that they seemed to be setting that up a few weeks ago.
Smackdown:
1. I was expecting them to give some explanation for Edge making up with Vickie during his celebratory interview, given the way their relationship was going around the time she sent him in to Hell in a Cell for cheating on her and he responded by going completely insane. But he spent the whole time focusing on Hardy instead. Sure, after months of Kozlov and Big Show as the top heels, I’m sure we’re all more than happy that Edge is back, but I was expecting something to explain why they were back together.
2. I could swear that Jeff “lost member of the Misfits” Hardy got a bigger pop than Hs when Vickie announced their names. That and Edge focusing on him during his interview suggest a feud’s forthcoming there.
3. It was nice to see “King Diamond” Hardy switch things up a bit and do a Tree of Woe version of his corner dropkick during his match with the Kendrick.
4. The match between Hardy and the Kendrick worked fine on a story telling level (Jeff was focused on getting a quick pin early on, and tried to hit his bigger spots as things went on, while Kendrick relished his role as the spoiler), but it dragged in places to reach 12 minutes and change.
5. Matt vs. Kozlov used more over stalling to go the distance it did, but I actually found Matt’s stall tactics pretty entertaining.
6. Helms became the first person to announce his return to the ring via pop up video. It should be interesting to see what style he’s going to work in now that he’s a wisecracking face.
7. McCool turned heel on Maria, apparently. They had been building that for the last month.
8. All of the antics with the ring bell during the match between the Douches and Jesse and Festus reminded me of something they’d do at a house show. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you, especially given how funny Miz’s impression of Festus was.
9. It’s funny that Shelton and HHH had a Beat the Clock match in the main event, since they had one the first time they used that gimmick. On RAW. Four years ago. Still, this was their usual good match. Have they ever had a bad one? That said, the fact that it took a ref bump to keep HHH from finishing Shelton off quicker than Hardy did Kendrick gives Hunter Haters something to work with. I wonder if they just make that a part of the booking of his matches now.
10. So, we get a tie between “Looks like a really skinny Raven without makeup on” Hardy and HHH, which gives them some booking options and deals with the fact that both guys have legitimate claims to a title shot and feud with Edge. It does sort of pull a Duffman and make the preceeding two hour show completely pointless. It did cut Kozlov out of the title picture, so if nothing else, that was a positive development.
