Wrestling’s 4R’s Tuesday Edition 02.03.09: TNA Impact and WWE Smackdown Reviewed!

Posted by Larry Csonka on 02.03.2009

It’s the Tuesday Edition of the 4R’s, and the Main Event Mafia is NOT taking over this column.

How the 4R's of wRestling Work!
Here is a quick explanation of the 4R's. The column will run TWO times a week. On Tuesdays I will discuss TNA Impact and any PPV's, while my partner in crime Jeremy Thomas discusses WWE Smackdown. The column will run again on Friday's, covering WWE Raw, with Jeremy Thomas as well as ECW on Sci-Fi by myself. If there is a PPV that weekend, I will also run the RETRO R's of the show from the year before as well as address some comments when time permits. I will group my feelings on the shows in various categories: The Right, the wRong and the Ridiculous. The Right is stuff that worked very well: a great promo, a great match and so on. PuRgatoRy is a section between the right and wrong. It shows equal traits from both sides that cannot be ignored and need discussed. It is not a bad place per say, as things can get remedied or go the wrong way the very next week. The wRong is what it sounds like: bad matches, bad or boring promos and so on. The Ridiculous is stuff that had no right on TV: Stupid angles, Diva searches and so on. And there is always a possibility of a 5th R, which is as bad as they come, unless you are TNA. They have a special R all of their own, the 6th R; the Russo-FN-Riffic~! This column is supposed to be analytical, and at the right time very critical of the shows, it was the whole reason it was created. This is not a "mark" column, nor a "smark" column, my goal is to analyze the show from many different fronts, reward the good and call out the bad. I will not apologize for my opinions, they are as they are, whether positive or negative.

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In HD where available…


By: Larry Csonka

iMpact! 01.29.09:

THE SHOW:

** I have decided to go free hand for this one, to change it up, and just to discuss the show in a more free thought fashion. Sometimes you just have to break up the regular format to keep it fresh, and this week I just felt that I needed to do that here. Have fun kids, and thanks for reading.

The show began with Angle taking over Jarrett's office, and basically putting himself and the Mafia in charge of the show. Coming off of last week's show, where he took out AJ and injured him, and with the fact that Jarrett was gone, it made sense. I couldn't help but to have nWo flashbacks, but I was willing to give it a go.

I have decided that Sharmell and ODB have a great chemistry. All of their interactions have been great since they are polar opposites. I know that not every one likes ODB, but I dig her and her wacky charisma. It is a shame that Sharmell isn't a good in ring performer, because a feud with the two of them would be very good. Although not being very good in the ring doesn't stop TNA or WWE from putting people in the ring.

ODB had to battle the Kongtourage, in what would be the first of three handicap matches. I know, you can feel my joy. The idea is good as the MEM is punishing ODB, but they were also able to add heat to the upcoming Kong vs. ODB title match here. The match served its purpose, but I was already starting to get annoyed by the commentary. Yeah, I get it, you guys think ODB looks like a guy, tremendous.

Booker vs. the Referees was the next match, as Booker was going to beat down some Zebras in retaliation for Shaky Shane Sewell's actions as of late. This wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Booker beating on the refs was decently entertaining, the commentary did make me laugh, and it brought out Sewell, which was build to the match they were going to make.

Matt Morgan vs. Petey Williams was one of those matches I could have done without. I would have much preferred that Petey just charge the ring, brawl with Morgan and tell Angle to fuck off. What is he going to do, fire him? Angle has no real power. Petey looked like an idiot here, plain and simple. After the match, Young and Creed came to the ring, but they got their asses handed to them as well. Go Frontline. If only Super Eric was there.

Team 3D vs. Sting was made by Angle earlier in the night, to which Sting did not approve. I liked that because it is bringing more tension between Angle and Sting and should lead to the Angle title win and Sting's absence to heal and then come back to finish out as a face. The match was actually better than I would have thought. We got the big beat down, and Foley, LAX and Abyss made the save and cleared the ring. Once again Foley saves the day, and the Frontline weak as they have the MEM continually out numbered, yet unless Foley is around, they can never do anything resembling effective. Foley took control of the show back, and looked to punish Angle and Steiner with matches.

Steiner vs. Abyss was a match that explains a lot of what is wrong with TNA. Foley made the match of Abyss vs. Steiner, with ABYSS only allowed to use weapons. TNA has the knack to create these matches where they make the faces unlikable. They are supposed to make the faces sympathetic, and by stacking the odds in their favor and by having them fail in the end, by not having them win, even when they do have the odds. Worst faces ever. Suicide made an appearance, played by Daniels, and I felt that it fell flat. Daniels doesn't have the crispness that Kazarian did with his appearances, and really, we couldn't have just had the return of the Fallen Angel here?

Brutus Magnus debuts next week. I can't say that I am really excited, because it will likely be weeks of squashed ala Vladimir Kozlov. But that all being said, I am willing to give the guy a chance.

And then this is where TNA TOTALLY PISSED ME OFF! The whole gimmick of the early part of the show was that the Main Event Mafia was able to take over Impact because Jarrett was out and hurt, Joe wasn't there to help, and that they took out AJ last week. So then, then they go and show footage of the UK tour, which seeing the huge crowds looked so great, but they still fucked up big time. THEY SHOW JOE AND JARRETT, FRESH AS DAISIES WRESTLING ON THE TOUR WHEN THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HURT! This was stupid and was an insult to the fans watching the show. They ask us to suspend out belief in wrestling, but it is hard to do that when you ruin it on the same show that you are selling that angle on.

The Bull Riding crossover was next. Overall it was harmless, TNA has to give some back to Spike, the Bull Riding show was next, they were hoping that some of the audience would stay for that show, it makes sense. Beer Money was great, even if the segment was under a minute. As long as these Bull Riding dudes don't come back to wrestle, we're all good with this.

LAX vs. Kurt Angle was the main event of the show. By this point I didn't want to see another handicap match ever again, it was like sensory overload or some shit. I will say that as far as a wrestling match goes, this was fucking great. Angle is still awesome, just like he was for all of 2008, Homicide looked like a believable threat and Hernandez looked great. Unfortunately what hurt this is that Kurt Angle, BY HIMSELF, beat LAX, CLEAN! Yes I realize that Hernandez was tossed to the floor and all, and I do agree that the match was very good, but come on! CLEAN? Hell, this is the one time that Shenanigans and or a run in would have been fine. The good is that it was a god match and that Angle looks great heading into the PPV. The bad is that former tag team champions LAX lost CLEAN to one man, and that the Frontline AGAIN end up looking like PUNKS.

Is Joe really back? Honestly, I find it hard to care these days. Don't get me wrong, I am a big Samoa Joe fan, but the facts are this. His title run was an abortion, he has had his nuts repeatedly cut off on national TV, and his new look is either too much Umaga, or current day Mike Tyson. Either way, bad. Trust me, more than anyone I want bad mother fucker ass kicking Samoa Joe back and running wild, unfortunately I have no faith in TNA's creative team to book him properly.

The 411

Part of me found the show completely entertaining as Booker and Nash seemed to make fun of the company the entire time they were on commentary. "Matt Morgan, He's um, he's big." Yeah, seriously, that's about all he's got. The Frontline, if it wasn't already, is a complete joke. They have such a numbers advantage, but the only one who gets to look good is Foley. Hell, they brought in new bodies tonight and they STILL got owned.

Bottom line is this, it may have had its entertaining moments, but it did NOTHING to help the Frontline, it did JACK AND SHIT to make people want to buy the PPV and it is the continues booking like this that will continue to damage the company.

Also, for those saying, "Well, the ratings were up, " yeah, they were because of the show LEADING INTO this, I will be interested to see how this week does.

Finally, for those saying, "Well, at least TNA tried something fresh," no, no they didn't. This was as bad as when the nWo took over Nitro. The only difference is that TNA was smart enough not to have 30-minutes of set building, and that they didn't have millions of fans to lose through out the broadcast.

There are times when I watch TNA and just feel that they are creatively bankrupt.

As a reminder, I will be going by the 411 scale. Also, PPV rankings can and will likely change through out the year:

0 - 0.9: Torture
1 - 1.9: Extremely Horrendous
2 - 2.9: Very Bad
3 - 3.9: Bad
4 - 4.9: Poor
5 - 5.9: Not So Good
6 - 6.9: Average
7 - 7.9: Good
8 - 8.9: Very Good
9 - 9.9: Amazing
10: Virtually Perfect

SHOW RATING: 2.0 of 10

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By: Jeremy "NOT LARRY CSONKA" Thomas

WWE SmackDown 1.30.09

The Right:

BROTHER MATT EXPLAINS IT ALL: SmackDown started off without entrance music, without the big pyro or anything…just Justin Roberts introducing the newest SmackDown superstar, Matt Hardy. Matt made his way slowly down to the ring, chair in hand, as the crowd dropped a huge amount of heat on him. I'd say that heel turn was pretty successful. In a nice touch, he appears to have started his training course at the Chris Jericho School of Being an Asshole by trading in his pop-promoting usual T-Shirt for a black button-down and jacket. Now, I'll admit I was a bit concerned here…Matt's never been the best guy on the mic, and having him out alone to discuss why he turned on Jeff seemed like a risky prospect. To his credit, he did the smart thing and took his time, not rushing things; he even waited to give the fans a good chance to boo him before starting. I find it interesting that he's not taking credit for the "accidents," at least not yet. He didn't say no, just that we couldn't prove it. Whether that's a sign of the ‘E being smart enough to have their talent not admit to breaking the law and committing continuity lapses by making us wonder why they're not in jail or something else I'm not sure yet; I can't imagine them bringing up someone else as the culprit to muddy the feud. Or rather, I hope they don't. Matt delivered a powerful and effective promo that made Matt's heel turn solid and even almost understandable, at least from Matt's perspective. That's the hallmark of a good heel, and he's done exactly what he needed to. One thing I have to point out that I absolutely hated was the slow, ominous score to the promo and the videos intercutting the promo. They should have left it on Matt and not tried to make this seem theatrical; it nearly ruined the experience, and it's a credit to Matt that it came off as well as it did. In the end, he got the fans absolutely hating him and that was exactly what he needed to do; we'll see where the feud goes from here, but I'm optimistic, even if the post-production editing hamstringed things.

CHAVO GUERRERO vs. MVP: And so continues Montel's path of redemption that began a couple of weeks ago thanks to ‘H. Much like Matt's heel turn's been done well, MVP's face turn has worked out pretty well for him thus far. I still have faith in the ‘E's ability to fuck it up if they lose focus on him, though I'm hopeful it won't happen. MVP seemed to have a little of his confidence back and was carrying himself a little better on the way to the ring. Now, Chavo was the perfect person for MVP to face here for two reasons. First, he's able to sell very well and MVP needs to look like a million bucks to start rebuilding his credibility in the ring. Second, Chavo is a jobber to the stars. He's high up enough on the card that a win over him still means something but is low enough on the totem pole that it's entirely believable for MVP to be able to beat him right now. Chavo's the perfect guy to put Mr. Porter over, and that's exactly what he did here. That said, it wasn't a squash on MVP's part and that's good too, as Chavo still needs to get enough offense to look sort of good when he's putting people over. They had a good, clean match that had some decent psychology with Chavo working the arm in the early going and then had MVP winning cleanly. After the match he told Tazz that he was coming for his United States title, which is good; I think Shelton and MVP could have a good little feud between them. This all worked just fine and I have no complaints.

THE UNDERTAKER vs. MARK HENRY: This was a qualifier for the SmackDown Elimination Chamber match at No Way Out, featuring Taker and an ECW guy. Anyone who tries to tell me the brand extension means something still gets pure and unadulterated laughter, for the record. The Dead Man of course got the huge crowd pop with his entrance, although Henry didn't exactly light the crowd on fire; unfortunate, as he's actually been used fairly well on ECW, other than his constant jobbing to Matt Hardy. Guess that's not a problem anymore, eh? No, Henry and Taker have never been great together in the ring, but it appears that even that's improved after Henry's work over the past several months on improving himself. Atlas provided some good managerial work on the outside as his client actually acquitted himself all right. I'm not going to say that Henry had his fair share of offense, but he was hardly squashed by the Dead Man here. The match did drag in a couple brief moments but mostly this was tolerable if entirely unspectacular work from the two guys, and the right man got into the Elimination Chamber.

EDGE'S CELEBRATION TIME: Vickie the Chipmunk showed up In the middle of the ring following a recap video, being introduced by Justin Roberts so that she could introduce the new champion Edge; do you suppose the ‘E's got a Department of Redundancy Department for such situations? Edge made his way down to the ring as happy as a clam as the crowd happily hated on him. He wanted to finally acknowledge the fans for once and open up a public discourse about the accidents that the Day-Glo Warrior had suffered…that he had plead his innocence but been called a liar. However, we were all dead wrong. Edge was just in a great smarmy asshole mode, rubbing it in and pulling in the heat rather nicely. He demanded that the crowd apologize to him—shockingly, they didn't, although Edge accepted anyway. He then shilled his DVD and then gave us fans a serious tease by calling out, "For the benefit of those with flash photography…" and then went into a new five-second pose: making out with Vick. The funniest thing here was the fan that could be clearly heard saying "No! No! NO!" The Christian tease was classic Edge though; remember, this is the guy who was part of a Matt Hardy tease during the Edge/Lita wedding, just to get him over as more of a heel. Edge is fairly savvy as far as the IWC goes and I know this is likely to bring the CLB in soon—and am excited for it—I wouldn't be shocked if Christian was still a little ways away and this was just something for Edge to play off the rumors.

Either way, the five-second pose actually only lasted about three seconds before the Big Show interrupted, making his way down to the ring with a shit-eating grin. He walked up to Vickie and gave her a big ol' hug and then reached for the title belt, which caused Edge to high tail it with Vickie in tow. This is certainly an interesting development and I'm not sure where they're taking it, but I've been waiting for some sort of payoff to the Show/Edge situation, and something about the way Vickie was smiling in that hug makes me wonder if Show took care of Vick in more ways than one while Edge was down in Hell. We'll have to see where it all goes, but this was good work.

puRgatoRy:

UMAGA vs. JIMMY WANG YANG: Umaga made his big return on SmackDown after several month's absence and several week's build to his return, taking on poor Jimmy Wang Yang. Yeah, I don't think I need to explain too much how this turned out. The Asian Cowboy played the part of a pancake as Umaga threw him around the ring, ripped his shirt half-off and generally acted like a crazy Samoan wild man. I can't help but be amused that the crowd loves Umaga now, since I think I'm moderately sure he's supposed to be a heel. Yes, I know that he's kind of been built for a face-ish reaction, but let's face it, they put him up against a face here (even if an undercard one) for his return match. That said, they went nuts when he went for the THUMBPOKE OF DOOM and generally were giving him the face pops. We'll see if this is the way the ‘E's trying to go with him based on future events. The match was nothing at all to speak of but worked to get Umaga back on TV and looking dominant suppose, so it gets a partial pass for now.

EVE GETS SOME PAYBACK: Eve was backstage with a microphone ready to help pimp out Cena's new movie when Michelle McEvil showed up and stole the mic away. She started mocking Eve and trash-talking her, telling Eve that she was surprised she was even still around and how she got what she deserved. This continued on for just a bit before Eve decided she couldn't take it anymore and she slapped the taste out of Michelle's mouth. Michelle did marginally better with this promo then she's done as of late, although she still sounded wooden. Seriously, Taker, can we get this woman an acting coach please? The high point though was her reaction when Eve slapped the shit out of her; she just smiled a little, as if to say "Okay, point to you," and walked away. This was very short and wasn't terrible. I'm okay with that out of the Butterfly Division.

The wRong:

R-TRUTH vs. THE BRIAN KENDRICK: You know, I'm a big fan of TBK, and R-Truth isn't as terrible in my book as he is in other peoples'. This, however, wasn't good. I know that THE Kendrick is in hot water with the ‘E once again, this time for not listening to the road agents, but I fail to see why that means the match has to suck. Bonus points early on to TBK though for his prancing around behind Zeke while the big guy stared off with Truth…it was very reminiscent of the little dog in the Warner Bros. cartoon hopping around like a sugar-hyped freak while the big dog stood in the way. Unfortunately for THE Kendrick, Zeke got tossed immediately afterward, which led into aforementioned iffy match. Not to be fair, it would be a bit much to say this match was terrible; it wasn't, it just wasn't very good. They only had a couple minutes to work and didn't make as much out of that time as they really could have. The whole thing was pretty disjointed and didn't do much for me. Hopefully TBK gets out of the doghouse soon so they can have a better match later, like I know they can.

THE BIG SHOW vs. FESTUS: Following on the Edge/Vick/Show segment, the Showster stayed in the ring to compete in this Elimination Chamber qualifier against…Festus. Uh…all right. This had an interesting moment early on where Festus very nearly picked Show dead up, and did manage to get him off his feet; that is admittedly impressive work by the guy, even if it didn't go anywhere from that. Outside of that, this just wasn't good for several reasons. First, it was too short as usual and didn't get them any real time to tell a story. Second, Festus is supposed to be, according to his gimmick, the guy that everyone is scared of because he's a monster who loses it and destroys people when the bell rings. In this case, he just got squashed. Admittedly he got squashed by someone even bigger than him, but it still did some damage to what little cred Festus and his gimmick had. Finally, the match just wasn't good. There were several sloppy moments, the biggest of which was the tornado DDT that very nearly looked botched as opposed to just sloppy. If you can't pull off the athletic moves, then just brawl like you're supposed to. That's our lesson for today.

'H vs. THE GREAT KHALI vs. VLAD KOZLOV: After the Raw Rebound, which at least managed to make Shane-O's rabbit punches look better than they did live, we got this match as our main event for the evening, a three-way for a spot in the Elimination Chamber. This was certainly…an interesting match-up, although I don't think the exact outcome was ever in doubt considering who was involved. It was just a matter of how we got there, which honestly wasn't that appealing. There were way too many stare downs in the beginning of the match, especially considering we got less than ten minutes for the whole thing. After the commercial break things settled into something more tolerable, but they used the standard triple threat formula of leave one guy down while the other two go at it, which made for a pretty boring match. ‘H and Kozlov don't work so well together, and Khali's far from a great worker himself to say the least. So instead we got a match that just didn't work right and never seemed like it was going to go any other way but the way it ended. There are a lot of great ways to end a show, and there's worse ideas then popping the crowd with an H-Man Elimination Chamber qualification. All in all though, this just wasn't good at all.

The Ridiculous:

DID YOU KNOW?: Nope. And, as always, I don't care. I especially don't care when you're trying to claim more viewers than the X-Games. Seriously, that's like saying "We drew in more viewers than the Magic: the Gathering Pro Tour Finals on ESPN-2!" Not that impressive.

VIDEO PACKAGE OVERLOAD, TAKE THREE: This is three straight shows I've had to bitch about this. Listen, I love the videos, and this wasn't quite as egregious tonight as it was with the four Randy Orton punt recaps on Raw. Still, we had the opening Royal Rumble Hardy recap, the WrestleMania recap, the "Umaga Returns" video, the Elimination Chamber hype video, the Kozlov training video, the recap of Rourke and Jericho, the WrestleMania XX recap, the 12 Rounds Trailer and then the Raw Rebound. All combined, that's probably about fifteen minutes that could have been devoted to other portions of the show, such as a longer segment for the Butterfly division, a segment between Shelton and MVP, or even more time for the matches. I can even accept that some of these were fairly necessary; I can see the opening video, one WrestleMania recap, the 12 Rounds thing, the Elimination Chamber video and the Raw Rebound. That wouldn't have been too much. This? Yeah, it was way too much.

The 411

Outside of the opening Matt promo and the Edge/Vick/Show in-ring segment, nothing really stood out. Chavo vs. MVP was good enough and Taker vs. Henry wasn't bad, but they weren't particularly memorable either. On the flip side you have a few bad matches taking up the bulk of the actual wrestling and not much else to offer, making this a thoroughly pedestrian SmackDown.

SHOW RATING: **½

Comment Time With Jeremy!

From Brad:
Angry Steph = Happy pants, your so right about the McMahon-Helmsley era if she brought this type of stuff to the table.

I admit, Im an Orton fanboy, I say the show should just be called defecate_all_over from now on. Oh and about the pop/heat ratio - Any chance that Cena and Orton switch roles permanately on that?

Gods, I hope not Brad. Orton does not need to be a face, he's the best natural heel the company's got right now and he's burning red-hot. He needs to stay a heel and dominate Raw's main event scene for a while.

From: Wolfgang
"Vintage isn't a bad announcing catchphrase. It's quite good. It's just been sooooooo overused it's becoming meaningless (Damn you, Cole!).
It's like a large Hawiian pizza with extra pineapple washed down with a large bottle of Coca-Cola - it doesn't matter how nice it is once every 3 months, you don't want one 10 times a night.

And from DaJ:
thats true, because tazz coined the phrase vintage undertaker a good 6 months to a year before vintage cole used it as his comfort blanket.

Absolutely agreed Wolfgang, and DaJ you're obviously correct. If Vintage was a rarely-used catchphrase or one that was busted out every now and then, it would be just fine. The problem is Cole took it from Tazz, who used it without overusing it, and then started going nuts with it. I don't mind that he started using it, 'cause Tazz obviously doesn't mind. Just that he ran it into the ground and kept on going. And going. And going.

From KanyonKreist:
Doesn't I.E.D. mean "Improvised Explosive Device"? As in, those things that blow our humvees up in the middle east?

Those are I.E.D.'s, yep. For your fun facts moment, it also stands for International Endowment for Democracy, instantaneous electrical detonator, intelligent electronic device, the Institute for Educational Development, the Institution of Engineering Designers and Istituto Europeo di Design. Don't say I never taught ya anything new.

From Guest#1520
Stephanie McHotness?

Tattoo Killer?

Mate, call them by their proper names, as you fucking SUCK at making up humourous ones.

So do you. I mean, Guest#1520? Who thinks THAT'S a funny name?

From Bemini:
And it has been ridiculous every time. Look, the guy takes crazy bumps and works his ass off. But he exposes the business every time he's out there. We're supposed to believe that Kane is this unstoppable monster that even the top wrestlers fear, but a non-wrestler half his size can go toe to toe with him??

Daddy's Boy is a glory hog. He comes in, does a spot fest match (that BTW, his appologists would likely bash a worker like Jeff Hardy for), usually goes over the wrestler, and disappears for a year or two. And let's not forget that Shano doesn't have to be tied down by the WWE style that the rest of the roster is subjected to.

Monday Night was one of the most ridiculous things I've seen in wrestling in 20 years. Orton has been the most improved act on Raw this year and he just had his legs cut out from him. And for all those that say it will be fine because he'll beat Shane at NWO, I cry BS. Wrestlers never come out better working with Shane, because win lose or draw, all anyone talks about afterword is Shane O'Mac.

First, I'm a Shane apologist, and far be it from me to bash a good spotfest, no matter who's in it, so you're wrong on that count Bemini. I would hardly consider Shane a glory hog, as he's mostly stayed involved on the business end and rarely shows up on TV. I understand your point to a degree, however I think we have to stop thinking of Shane as "just a non-wrestler." When you can work a match as well as Shane does (Monday night notwithstanding), you're not just a non-wrestler. Everyone's got their opinions, and yours is perfectly valid; I absolutely disagree that he had his legs cut out from under him, and I do think that's a bit of an overreaction. Randy will come back strong, he was just surprised by Shane's rather explosive appearance. Thanks for reading though!


From Deathpool
Whats up with the Triple K thing for Kelly Kelly? Does her middle name start with a K or something? I always hate it when writers develop a nickname for someone that you'd only recognize if you read all their columns. Otherwise, good writing, and glad to see someone enjoyed the ending to Raw as much as I did. Was surprised to see so many people shitting all over Shane taking out Legacy.

This is my most commonly asked question for some reason. It comes from Santino calling her "Kelly Kelly...Kelly" one Raw, and since I was calling her Double K at the time, it then became Triple K. It has nothing to do with the racist organization; I'm takin' it back. Anyway, thanks for the comment, and I'm happy to know we don't stand alone on not minding the Shane bit quite so much as others.

From B.W.G.:
You probably should move the tag title match to puRgatoRy, simply because it was a "go through the motions" match...at least in past CT/MnM v2 matches, they've at least given the impression that CT could actually win the titles.They didn't even try to do this on Monday, though, and the result was even more predictable than usual for it. That's not knocking the poeple involved: these two teams have great chemistry and can hopefully do their part to bring the division back to some prominence someday.

Give Shane a little time: he's shown repeatedly that he can adjust/adapt quickly to any any angle he's in and shine in whatever role he's given...by this time next week, he'll be back in fighting form, guaranteed

Maybe I was just happy with how much better it was then their bad match the week before. It was fairly predictable, yeah, but I still thought it was a decent (if not great) match. I agree with you that the teams have chemistry and if they don't give Morrison the big singles push, I'd love to see an extended feud between the two. As for Shane, I certainly hope he'll be in fighting form. I love Shane-O, so I want to love this angle; they just need to not fuck it up. We'll see!

From JcJames:
@Jeremy Thomas -Great job on the 4r's for Monday Night Raw. I have to agree on on the majority of your rights or wrong, glad you didn't sheep along with the rest of the IWC and whine about the Shane angle. We haven't given it time to develop, see what's going to happen after this latest altercation.

Could it be that Shane was missing badly cause he's in league with the Legend Killer? Maybe it's Shane that voices Orton to do what he does, anger condition my ass. I just rather give this angle a chance before jumping all over it. Again, great job.

Never say never with the McMahons. I wouldn't be shocked if Vince came back at some point to reveal he was in league with the Legacy all along and let Randy give him a concussion to lure Steph and Shane into a false sense of security so they could be taken out and Vince could get his show back. So yeah, Shane being in with Orton is a possiblity; I think that Steph is the more likely candidate though. We'll see how it develops from here, and no matter what it should be interesting.

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2009 PPV Rankings:
-ROH RISING ABOVE {8.0}
-WWE ROYAL RUMBLE {7.25}
-TNA GENESIS {7.0}

2009 TOP PPV Match Rankings:
-[ROH RISING ABOVE] - ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Nigel McGuinness © vs. Bryan Danielson (****½)

-[ROH RISING ABOVE] – I QUIT MATCH: Jimmy Jacobs vs. Austin Aries (****¼)
-[TNA GENESIS] - Kurt Angle defeated Jeff Jarrett (****¼)
-[TNA GENESIS] - X-Division Title Match: Alex Shelley defeated Chris Sabin (****¼)

-[WWE ROYAL RUMBLE] – THE ROYAL RUMBLE MATCH (***¾)
-[WWE ROYAL RUMBLE] – WWE TITLE MATCH: Edge defeated Jeff Hardy (***¾)

2009 PPV MVP AWARDS:
Not every PPV will have one, it just depends on who I think steps up and deserves some extra recognition.

-[TNA GENESIS] Sabin, Shelley, Angle and Jarrett – Rocking The House
-[ROH RISING ABOVE] – Danielson and McGuinness - Defining the ROH World Title
-[WWE ROYAL RUMBLE] – RVD – The Joke Pays Off

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And I'm out of here!