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Wrestling’s 4R’s Monday Edition 5.17.10: ROH, Superstars, Impact and SmackDown Reviewed!
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In HD where available…
By: Aaron Hubbard
ROH on HDNet 05.10.10:
QUICK RESULTS:
The Briscoe Brothers d. The Dark City Fight Club [**3/4]
Austin Aries won a Pick 6 Battle Royal [*3/4]
NOTHING OF NOTE: For the first time, there is nothing on this show I can put firmly in the right.
BRISCOES VS. DCFC: Our opener was solid as usual, a tag team encounter between Jay and Mark Briscoe and the Dark City Fight Club. The problem was that this was the only real wrestling match on the other show, with the other match being a battle royal. Solid isn’t really acceptable in this case. Judging by the fact that the Briscoes didn’t get a proper entrance, this was taped before they lost the belts, but instead it’s treated as if they are working their way back into contention. I know it isn’t entirely ROH’s fault because of the two weeks HDNet wouldn’t air them, but the continuity gap is starting to mess with me.
PICK SIX BATTLE ROYAL: For any delusional ROHBot out there who claim that ROH does everything better than WWE…watch this match. How hard is it to take six guys, all of them decently talented at minimum, give them 12 minutes, and book an entertaining match? Apparently, really freaking hard. Let me sum this up: typical battle royal “let’s fake trying to eliminate people”, double elimination of Eddie Kingston and Joey Ryan to continue the never ending feud between Necro/Kingston and the Embassy, triple elimination of Rasche Brown, Austin Aries and Rhett Titus double team Jerry Lynn, Lynn overcomes the odds and eliminates Titus, Aries wins seconds later. Nothing state of the art, nothing revolutionary, nothing I wanted to see. There were two things I liked about this match: 1) Rasche Brown was booked like a monster even against top stars like Aries and Lynn and it took three men to eliminate him. 2) Austin Aries, by sheer force of will, plays his heel role so well that anything he is in somehow manages to be entertaining. But guess what, this match doesn’t matter! Not even in the “ROH doesn’t matter” way, it’s because Aries lost this Pick 6 spot TWO DAYS before this aired! Insert frustrated Charlie Brown here.
TOO MUCH RECAP, NOT ENOUGH WRESTLING: Okay ROH, here’s another freaking rant from me. Unless TNA goes out of business and the fans start watching you out of hatred for TNA, you aren’t going to attract new fans with a one-hour TV show on a channel that most people don’t even get. I have to wait for a guy on YouTube to upload your show in order to watch it. I’m willing to make that sacrifice because I love the wrestling you guys put out, I love the old school booking with simple stories that aren’t complicated. I do point out stuff I don’t like, but I watch it anyway because I am a dedicated fan of the product who wants to see a good wrestling show. People like me, who are ROH fans who’ve followed your product for a long while, are the people watching your show. Most of us watch it every week, by hook or by crook.
PLEASE keep this in mind when making your shows. Most of us know what is going on, we don’t need all the video packages telling us what happened last week because we watched last week A little recap, I can deal with. Almost 2/3rds of the show? That’s too much. WWE doesn’t even do that. Remember what your bread and butter is, the reason fans pay to watch you, the reason you exist. Wrestling. You are a company that focused on providing quality matches for the people who spend their hard-earned money to watch you because they are tired of the product produced by WWE and TNA and want something different. Put on the best wrestling show on television, EVERY week. Make people want to see your show. Give me something to rave about, so that someone might hear about this amazing new product and tune in to see what the fuss is about. That is how you build your fan base. By pleasing the fans you have, so they spread the word. Not by showing Delirious getting kicked in the throat a hundred times.
Every week, we have trolls begging for me to stop the 4 R’s of ROH. Episodes like this make me wonder why I bother. This episode sucked. Plain and simple. I’d even go on record and say I haven’t liked an episode less in the entire run of the show. Recommendation to avoid. SHOW RATING: 2.5 |
By: Chad Nevett
iMpact! 05.13.10:
QUICK RESULTS
– Tara defeated Taylor Wilde [3/4*]
– Brian Kendrick defeated Douglas Williams [*1/2]
– Matt Morgan destroyed Generation Me in a match that may not have officially begun or ended [N/A]
– The Band defeated Matt Morgan (C) for the TNA World Tag Team Championship [N/A]
– Ink, Inc. defeated Beer Money, Inc., Team 3D, and the Motor City Machine Guns in a four-way match [***]
– Orlando Jordan defeated Tomko [*1/2]
– Tara defeated Sarita [*]
– AJ Styles defeated Rob Van Dam and Jeff Hardy in a three-way match [**1/2]
BEER MONEY, INC. vs. THE MOTOR CITY MACHINE GUNS vs. TEAM 3D vs. INK, INC.: This is a rematch, of sorts, from last week, but with Ink, Inc. thrown in for the fun of it. It’s no secret that I hate tag matches with more than two teams, because I despise the idea of anyone losing a match because they weren’t allowed to win it, stuck on the apron. I know, I know, having four guys in the ring with their partners waiting for tags would be too much and too hard to keep track of, but I still don’t like the concept of these matches. That said, this was a pretty good match. We got a few different sort of matches in here with the Motor City Machine Guns looking very cohesive and flashy, working like a well oiled machine (no pun intended) much of the time with Beer Money and Ink, Inc. doing the heavy lifting in the middle of the match, giving us, essentially, a tag match between those two teams with Roode and Storm making a lot of tags while beating down Shannon Moore until Moore could finally make a tag to Jesse Neal, which brought everyone into the ring for that final clusterfuck. Throughout the match, every pin was broken up by someone, so getting everyone brawling or injured on the outside is necessary for the finish, which had Neal confronting Team 3D after he prevented them from winning, leading Ray to get hit with the Mooregasm and, then, a spear by Neal for the victory. The match began with a mix of everyone (save Ink, Inc.) before settling into Beer Money/Ink, Inc. before devolving into a big brawl with a Team 3D/Ink, Inc. finish with Moore and Neal picking up the win, which they needed going into Sacrifice. Good storytelling and, as always, the Guns looked fantastic and were the most over out of any team.
ROB VAN DAM vs. AJ STYLES vs. JEFF HARDY: Throughout the night, we saw backstage clips of Ric Flair, and RVD and Jeff Hardy promoting this match, and I am not a fan of that ‘documentary-style’ filming. I don’t think it makes the segments any better and, if anything, makes them harder to follow with ambient noise obscuring what’s said and the captions at the bottom of the screen being so stylized that I don’t know why they bother. But, those were just a small part of this match, which was pretty strong. It began, as expected, with Hardy and RVD double-teaming AJ before turning on one another, but that’s the logical story, so I’m not complaining. AJ looked great here, playing off both men well. Because of the match was so short, there wasn’t a lot of down time, anytime one guy had another beat down, the third would jump back in. Things ended a little prematurely when Mr. Anderson came down and attacked Hardy on the outside, distracting Van Dam, and allowing AJ to take advantage. It ended with AJ doing a dive over the top onto all three, DDT’ing Van Dam on the outside, and then getting the pin with his feet on the ropes. I didn’t think the feet on the ropes was necessary aside from giving AJ the heel some way to cheat, but, come on, RVD was done. AJ has the upper hand going into Sacrifice, which is the way it should be, and this match was good.
ERIC BISCHOFF LOVES RVD, AJ STYLES NOT SO MUCH: Eric Bischoff kicked off the show by bringing out Rob Van Dam to set up his title defense against Jeff Hardy (because the fans voted for it!) for that night. Except, he couldn’t get a hold of Hardy, so RVD would be getting the night off, which RVD didn’t like one bit. Apparently, the best part of being the champ is defending the championship to prove you’re the best. Thankfully, AJ Styles came out to oblige him by challenging him to a match and throwing out some lame insults. But, then, Hardy was there, making some joke about the new 8:00 call time throwing him off, and he’d love to be in a match that night, so why not make it a three way? So, Bischoff booked the match and AJ was pissed off. Nothing too bad about this, but there wasn’t anything great either. Pretty standard stuff.
TARA vs. TAYLOR WILDE/TARA vs. SARITA: If this was just the first match, I’d probably have put it in the Right since it sold the idea well enough, but the second match was unnecessary and detracted somewhat. First, we had the Beautiful People doing a promo, which introduced the match on Sunday between Madison Rayne and Tara, title versus career. Then, Tara taking on one of her teammates from last week, specifically the one she attacked during the match. For whatever reason, Sarita was banned from ringside, which was completely random and uncalled for since Wilde and she are faces, and the ringside banning is usually reserved for heels. The match was short and sweet, but sent the message that Tara is a little unhinged as she attacked Wilde after the match with her knee brace before Sarita made the save.
Later in the episode, Eric Bischoff chewed out Tara, making me wonder why her attacking people after matches warrants a lecture as opposed to, oh, every other person in TNA doing it without any consequences. As a result, she would be facing Sarita right then and there, and, while a match I enjoyed more by itself, it was entirely counterproductive to the first one as Sarita dominated. She just kicked the shit out of Tara for the entire thing until the ref pulled Sarita off, Sarita struggled, accidentally hit the ref with a wild elbow, and Tara took the chance to use her knee brace again as a weapon to pick up the win. This match made Sarita look great, while Tara looked like she didn’t belong in the ring at all. A bit of a mixed message.
DOUGLAS WILLIAMS vs. BRIAN KENDRICK: Before this match, Williams taunted Kendrick by, again, calling him crazy and saying that this would be a non-title match since Kendrick is a loser. The match itself was alright. The two had decent chemistry, but it didn’t last long enough to really go anywhere. Kazarian came out and did commentary before heading towards the ring to take the X-Division belt, distracting Williams and giving Kendrick the win. This was more about Williams/Kazarian, which is fine, but I’d have rather it been addressed directly or this match given some more time.
ORLANDO JORDAN SENDS A MESSAGE TO ROB TERRY BEFORE TAKING ON TOMKO: While Rob Terry watched Abyss getting arrested instead of having the scheduled Global Championship match, Orlando Jordan attacked him from behind, beating him down until grabbing a pipe from underneath the ring to finish the job. Taken alone, it was a good lead-in to their match at Sacrifice, building on last week’s attack in the O-Zone. After the commercial break, however, Jordan was still in the ring and asked if people wanted him gone. They crowd responded in the affirmative, so Jordan said that, if anyone wanted him gone, all they had to do was make him leave the ring, sending an open challenged to the back. Tomko took it up and the resulting match was fine. Neither man has wrestled lately on Impact and both were rusty and sluggish. Tomko was a Rob Terry stand-in as the big man, allowing Jordan to demonstrate that he could beat a larger opponent. Jordan needed the win and he got it, the match just wasn’t that good. I imagine his match with Terry at Sacrifice won’t be any better.
HARDY AND ANDERSON KEEP THE PARTY GOING: After the three way main event, Jeff Hardy stayed in the ring, got on the mic, and demanded that Anderson come down there so they could settle things, but Anderson just backed off, heading for the back… until Hulk Hogan showed up to block his way. Anderson tried to fight his way past, but Hogan is the TNA king of blocking a punch and then laying his attacker out with a punch of his own. Hardy got involved and beat on Anderson down the ramp and up the side until sticking Anderson on a table, getting on the announce table on the stage, and doing a Swanton Bomb off of it onto Anderson. I didn’t think this was necessary after Anderson’s interference in the match and, aside from Hardy doing a Swanton, it wasn’t anything special.
GENERATION ME vs. MATT MORGAN/TNA TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH – MATT MORGAN (C) vs. THE BAND: This week, Hogan was supposed to announce Morgan’s partner for his title defense at Sacrifice, but he hadn’t yet, so Matt Morgan decided to kill Generation Me in their two-on-one match. Morgan just went through them without any effort, eventually setting up Jeremy for the kick to the head against the ring post until Samoa Joe came out and made Morgan look like nothing, taking him down with ease before hitting him with the Muscle Buster. Joe left, a job well done, and the Band’s music hit, Nash carrying his Feast or Fired title shot, and pinning the laid out Morgan for the win. So, the Band is now the tag team champions, which is just wrong in 2010. Plus, now, it’s the Band versus Ink, Inc. for the titles at Sacrifice, which makes no sense. Ink, Inc. are only a tag team because of Morgan and their instant title shot only makes sense because of their problems with Morgan. Logically, this was a good time for Nash to cash in his shot, but it doesn’t make any sense within the context of the other stories.
ABYSS IS ARRESTED: Chelsea claimed to be assaulted, they dragged it out, eventually Abyss was arrested just before his match with Rob Terry, and, later, we learned that Desmond Wolfe and Chelsea made the whole thing up to frame Abyss after Lacey Von Erich caught them plotting it in the women’s bathroom. Do I even need to explain why this bullshit is in this category?
A couple of good matches, some other decent stuff, but way too much time was taken up with the whole Chelsea assault/Abyss gets arrested crap. That story was so awful it left a bad taste in my mouth for the whole show. A middling show overall. SHOW RATING: 5.0 |
By: Steve Cook
Superstars 05.14.10:
QUICK RESULTS:
Maryse & Jillian b. The Bella Twins
Vladimir Kozlov b. Ryan Mitchell
Curt Hawkins & Vance Archer b. Matthew Busch & James White
Dolph Ziggler b. Chris Masters
MARYSE & JILLIAN vs. THE BELLA TWINS: It amuses me that people continue to question the awesomeness of the Sexiest of the Sexy. Exhibit 349 D was the ending of this particular match. After finishing Nikki off with the French Kiss, Maryse & Jillian proceeded to talk some trash on Brie until Eve Torres ran down. Kudos to Eve for not running into the ropes while doing a run-in this week. Eve wanted to get some of Maryse (and by God, who isn’t?), so Maryse threw poor Jillian in her way while getting the heck out of Dodge. Smart girl. Add in the fact that she won the match and it was a pretty good Maryse night. As for the match itself, it was pretty decent for Diva fare. I don’t know why the Bellas winning would have been an upset, because they’re a regular tag team (sisters, no less) while I don’t recall Maryse & Jillian ever teaming, but I’m not Michael Cole so what do I know?
DOLPH ZIGGLER vs. CHRIS MASTERS: If you’d told me a year ago I would have enjoyed a match featuring these two guys, I would have thought you were out on a bender with Geoff Eubanks. These guys have similar WWE career paths…horrible debuts, a long road back to respectability, body types that WWE likes to push…no wonder they’re in your Superstars main event! Seriously though, this was pretty decent stuff. It was a little too dull to end up in the right section, as these guys typically work better with people smaller than them. The match wasn’t bad, but it was ultimately forgettable. I wouldn’t be offended by either of these guys getting a push, though.
SQUASH CITY!: OK, don’t get me wrong here…I enjoy a good squash match. The ROH on HDNet show often features squash matches that I enjoy with guys like Rasche Brown & the Dark City Fight Club. I enjoy those matches because the jobbers get the crap beaten out of them. We all like watching the Christians getting thrown to the Lions every once in awhile, right? So yeah, squashes are fun…but I was never really impressed with the offense of Kozlov or the new team of Archer & Hawkins. A squash match needs impressive offense to work, otherwise it’s just a short bad match. These two matches fell into that category.
Nothing of note.
Not a whole lot going on here this week. A couple of lame squashes and a dull main event make this week’s Superstars pretty skippable, unless you’re a member of the Maryse fan club like me. SHOW RATING: 5.0 |
By: Jeremy Thomas
WWE SmackDown 05.15.10
QUICK RESULTS:
Kofi Kingston d. Christian [***]
Shad Gaspard d. Jesse Guyver [¾*]
MVP & JTG d. The Dude Busters [* ¾]
Layla & Michelle McCool d. Beth Phoenix [*]
Kane d. Chavo Guerrero [¼*]
Rey Mysterio d. CM Punk by DQ [** ½]
NEVER BRING A TROPHY TO A GIANT FIGHT: Toward the end of the first hour a host of trophies were brought to the ring, including the awesomeness of a Scrabble Board Trophy. Now, that is an award. They belonged to Jack Swagger, and the World Heavyweight Champion made his way down to the ring looking debonair in his suit and wearing a cocky grin during his slow path to the ring. Swagger soaked in the boos and climbed into the ring where he took a mic and proceeded to inform the crowd all about his life. He talked about all his accomplishments, showed us his pictures of life as a kid, talked about how he was fifteen pounds at birth and how all those words mean something to an Eagle Scout, and botched the name “Order of the Arrow.” Sorry, I recognized that as a former member myself. We saw pictures of Swagger as a state wrestling champion and went on from there. See, this is exactly what they need to do. Swagger isn’t bad at all on the mic and he doesn’t generate X-Pac Heat, he is legitimately over as a heel and it’s because he’s been booked fairly well so far for the most part, especially since Extreme Rules. No one wants to see Swagger talk about all his accolades but no one hates seeing him do it, they just love booing him. It’s worked out very well and I’m digging on Swagger as the champion. Best line, by the way? How the sandwich named after him—the Swaggie—”tastes like freedom.” Brilliant.
Of course, we knew this wasn’t going to last, and down to the ring came the Big Show. Show had a big old smile on his face as he made his way to the ring and then climbed inside. Jack was immediately nervous and didn’t want Show to damage his awards, but Show was more interested in his Scrabble Championship. Whoops, clumsy Big Show, it got stepped on. Swagger begged Show to leave before his life’s work got broken, but Show wanted to talk about the Viennese Ballroom Dancing Championship Trophy. Oopsie! Swagger sold this nicely and then attacked Show, which meant the gloves were off. The trophies got broken, Swagger pitched a fit and the crowd loved it. This is perhaps a little silly of a way for them to build a feud, trashing trophies, but it works fine for a first feud and I enjoyed it especially considering both men’s delivery.
REY MYSTERIO vs. CM PUNK: Our main event was Rey Rey taking on his opponent at Over the Limit in a one-on-one match. Now, I will say that it may not have been the best move for them to give this match away, but they kept it unresolved thanks to the finish so I was generally okay with it. Besides, it’s not like it’s a first-time matchup. Basically, the point of this was to get Punk some momentum back after Rey played his mind games and had nearly shaved Punk’s head multiple times, and in that I felt it worked. Obviously these guys have worked together a fair amount lately and have built some good chemistry with each other; it paid off well in this match without the two having to go all-out and but the expectations for the PPV overly high. They had almost ten minutes and made good time of it, creating a well-paced match with a solid story to it that kept the crowd hot. Punk controlled the pace for the most part with Rey Rey having his usual comebacks, and they both worked well in their roles. I do think that the double mystery men angle hurt the ending a little but they were trying to get the angle over so I can accept that. The show ended with the Society looking strong and I’m okay with that as it built toward their Pay-Per-View confrontation nicely.
CHRISTIAN vs. KOFI KINGSTON: Okay, I feel very bad putting this where I did. The reason I feel bad is because the talent did their damnedest to get this over and to make the Intercontinental Title seem important. I liked them having Teddy Long come out to do the match introduction himself. I also liked that they focused the pre-theme video package on the title. This was the right match to put on first because Christian and Kofi are exciting workers who the fans certainly love. That resulted in a good match with good heat. Often times when you have two babyfaces competing against each other, the crowd reaction suffers; it was not the case here. They were definitely into both men and Christian and Kofi had a great match on top of it. They started off a little slow but that just allowed them to build it nicely and not burn either man out. There were some great pin reversal segments, some good counter wrestling and the match played out very nicely between them. Kofi got the win which really seemed like the moment to let them go full-bore with Kofi’s breakout on SmackDown. And then…
Now, don’t get me wrong people. I get that by doing this, they’re trying to get Drew more over as a heel. The problem is that they’re doing a few things in the process. First of all, they’re not helping Drew be bought as a legitimate member of the roster any. Drew has only been made to not look like a joke (by official record) because he’s been able to suck up to Vince. It’s fine to be a brown-noser, but you have to be able to back that up. Further injuring an already-injured member of the roster doesn’t do that; having every loss you get (which is most of your recent matches) “expunged” doesn’t help either. And getting your title back just because you have super-spiffy kneepads doesn’t do it either. Second, this sells Kofi short. Why should the fans care about him—or anyone in the tournament—when every gain he has just gets retconned? And finally, it bait and switches the fans. The fans were looking to see a new champion, not this whole thing. I did like the match outside of the end and Drew did get heat, so that keeps it out of the wRong but not much more than that.
SHAD vs. JESSE GUYVER: So, this was a squash match to get Shad over as a big, bad heel. He was facing poor Jesse Guyver, who Striker noted has a degree in anatomy. Jesse Facts for the win! But yeah, this was a perfectly proficient flattening on Shad’s part. He mopped the floor with Jesse and basically brutalized him for a bit before ending things mercifully. This being a squash match, we shouldn’t expect anything innovative and we didn’t get it, but Shad looked just fine. It was functional and that was all it needed to be.
MVP & JTG vs. THE DUDE BUSTERS: Poor MVP. Don’t me wrong, the guy got a win and all, but when you’re tagging with the guy NOT getting a push after a tag team breakup to beat the new tag team J.O.B. Squadders, you know that your push is being curtailed once again. You have to give credit to Striker for trying to get the Dude Buster gimmick over with such great comments as how they’ve pre-ordered tickets to The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. The match was actually not bad, as Caylen and Trent showed more than they have in their SmackDown appearances to date and JTG made for a good face-in-peril before Montel came in off the hot tag. I’m glad to see Porter getting a win, even if it’s as part of a tag team he doesn’t need to be in. There was a heck of a lot to like here, and while I was close to making It a Right it just seemed too random for it to really go anywhere. I hope MVP isn’t in another pointless tag team like he was with Henry.
BETH PHOENIX vs. TEAM LAY-COOL: I’ll admit it, I was concerned when Rosa Mendes was in the ring for this match, especially knowing that Beth was injured. But this was not to be, thankfully. Instead we got Vickie Guerrero out and delivering her catch phrase, then ordering Rosa out of the ring so that Team Lay-Cool could get a title match. According to Vickie’s comment, she’s still the General Manager of Raw. Then what the hell is she doing on SmackDown? Do I seriously get to deal with her two nights a week? Good Christ. The match was entirely chaotic and not in a good way; outside of the coolness of Beth hitting a double Samoan drop this just wasn’t very good. The ending was also silly with Michelle and Beth knocking heads with allowed Layla to win the Women’s Title. I will say that this could at least turn into some fun dissention in the ranks, and I’m happy to see the belt not on Michelle once again. But there is some irony in Matt Striker’s comment that after the match, the arena was silent. I think he meant it in a different way, but you can bet how I interpret that.
KANE vs. CHAVO GUERRERO: Here is the match for those of you who thought that Chavo getting goozled by Kane last week wasn’t enough. All one of you. Chavo was all up in Kane’s face, and almost got choke slammed for his trouble. He got out of that though, and ended up lasting all of about a minute and a half before Kane killed him. Well, it popped the crowd I guess. There was nothing to this match, and I’m not going to waste much more time on it because it did nothing other than waste time at a point when time didn’t need to be wasted.
DID YOU KNOW?: Nope. And, as always, I don’t care.
For the second week in a row, the Blue Brand rating drops. There were some good things to be sure but not enough for me to give this a recommendation. We had the positives of the Pay-Per-View matches building well, but otherwise SmackDown seems lost with what to do with the roster. The midcard is meandering around and that doesn’t make for complete shows. If they can figure that out they’ll be in good shape, but for now we’re just treading water. SHOW RATING: 6.0 |
No comments tonight so I can watch the TNA Pay-Per-View. Back on Friday!
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