Wrestling’s 4R’s Monday Edition 09.28.09: TNA Impact, ROH on HDNet, WWE Smackdown, and WWE Superstars

In HD where available…

By: Aaron Hubbard

ROH on HDNet 09.21.09:

QUICK RESULTS:
– Austin Aries retained his ROH World Title by defeating Grizzly Redwood [**1/2]
– Erick Stevens defeated Brandon Day [3/4*]
– Necro Butcher defeated Jimmy Rave by disqualification [1/2*]
– Roderick Strong, Bryan Danielson and KENTA defeated Eddie Edwards, Davey Richards and Chris Hero [****1/4]

A-DOUBLE L-DOUBLE: We got the second title defense on ROH on HDNet this week, as Aries introduced his Austin Aries Lucky Lottery, where he pulled names out of a hat. The first name was Kenny Omega, who wasn’t there, and the second name was Grizzly Redwood, who was there. Grizzly came out, Aries made fun of his small stature and basically squashed him. I say “basically”, because Grizzly got a decent amount of offense in and really did benefit from the match. The whole time, Prazak over exaggerated the commentary by playing it like an amazing back-and-forth contest comparable to the great title matches in history. After the match, Aries said he felt great and that the match was a Match of the Year Candidate. Prazak was all over this saying that Steamboat vs. Savage and Joe vs. Punk pale in comparison to the classic that was Aries vs. Redwood. Aries came across as the biggest chickenshit in history, and this was highly entertaining. Not a classic match, but a great television moment.

THE COMMENTARY: Alright guys, Mike Hogewood has officially grown into his role. In addition, Dave Prazak has played up his heel role to perfection, so they compliment each other perfectly. As mentioned, the commentary on the opening match was great, with Prazak comparing it to Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat and Hogewood ending it with the saddest “Slap the Porpoise” ever. We didn’t get any major snafus and I enjoyed it for the whole show. No, Mike isn’t perfect. He referred to Davey Richards as “the other wolf” and said that experience as a tag team is overrated, but that was the worst of it. He could really serve as an excellent commentator in the next few months.

HYPE FOR NEW YORK: ROH has a big show this weekend in New York, as Bryan Danielson and Nigel McGuinness will say goodbye to the company before leaving to go to WWE. In addition, we will see the second Ladder War between the American Wolves and Kevin Steen and El Generico. We got a video package for the Ladder War where the Wolves talked about it. We also got a hype video for Eddie Kingston and Chris Hero facing each other at the show, and they announced that Bret Hart will be there as well. ROH needs to use TV to sell their live events. They did that last week and they did it even better this week.

HYPE FOR NEXT WEEK: We found out that next week, we will see Tyler Black and Jerry Lynn take on Rhett Titus and Kenny King, and we get hype for that, a video which wrapped up the events that happened when these two faced each other two weeks ago quite nicely. We also got an excellent video package recapping the feud between Claudio Castagnoli and Brent Albright to hype up their Steel Cage Match next week. It’s the first cage match they’ve had on TV and should be good. They hyped up next week’s show wonderfully and I can’t wait to see it.

THE MAIN EVENT: Let’s keep this simple. Bryan Danielson is amazing. KENTA is amazing. Strong is great. Hero is great. Richards is great, Edwards is good, and together they are amazing. Therefore, barring interference and the match lasting six minutes, this was going to awesome. All six men worked really hard, the match was fast-paced, intense and exciting. Roderick Strong got the win by pinning Edwards, which was the right result. I really can’t complain about anything, except that it didn’t go longer.

STEVENS VS. DAY: This was just there. Erick got his big spots in, Day worked over the ribs before getting beat. It was okay and inoffensive. And if Stevens had just sold the ribs, I would have put this in the right.

RAVE VS. BUTCHER: This was more angle advancement than an actual match. We got a couple of sick spots with Ernie hitting his senton onto Necro’s leg while wrapped in a steel chair, and Rave getting thrown onto the rail. Rave got his heel hook put over, we got staples, and we got a huge pull apart brawl between Necro Butcher and Bison Smith at the end of it. Not enough right to justify it being above purgatory, but nothing bad either.

NONE:

NONE:

By: Steve Cook

Superstars 09.24.09:

Michelle McCool & Leyla vs. Maria & Melina: I was not expecting a whole lot from this match considering the participants involved, but it was actually pretty decent. The Maria/Melina teaming was pretty strange considering their current beef over Dolph Ziggler, but this did help extend that story. I wouldn’t rank Maria in my top 10 women wrestlers, but the thing she probably does better than anybody else on the Diva roster is playing the Ricky Morton role of getting beaten up most of the match. Of course, this match wasn’t long enough for that bit of storytelling to really go anywhere, but Maria still played her role well and looked hot, which is all I really ask.

Primo vs. Chris Masters: People are loving them some Primo, and after watching some of his matches I don’t get it. Maybe they’re overrating him now so if he gets good later they can say they knew it all along. This is also my theory for why people pimp Dolph Ziggler. However, it’s a good thing to give a guy like Primo a win every now and then, even if the announcers put it over as a complete fluke. Chris Masters is still trying to find himself, and I’m starting to wonder if he’ll have to find himself elsewhere pretty soon.

Matt Hardy vs. Kane: This match was probably doomed to me from the minute it was booked. I’m not a big fan of either Matt Hardy or Kane’s work, but I was willing to put my discontent aside and grade this match fairly as a broadcast journalist. However, after almost twelve minutes of boredom and a disqualification for crotching somebody on the top rope (Really?), I had nothing in my heart but more dislike for the individuals involved. Oh, I’m sure they’re fine gentlemen outside the ring and I’d have a beer with either if they were in my bar, but Matt’s never really done anything for me outside of a tag team situation and Kane’s array of horrible storylines generally make me change the channel on anything involving him. I really don’t know what the casual fans see in these two other than they were around when wrestling was still popular, but people do like them. Unfortunately, they didn’t really like the disqualification and cheered when Kane chokeslammed Hardy after the bell, so the finish didn’t get the result that the bookers had to be hoping for.

Ask the Divas: This is the part where I would complain about Ask the Divas, but apparently they buried it in the segment with the recap of other shows and I didn’t see it. I have to come clean and admit that I don’t watch the part of the show where they show the Raw or Smackdown Rebounds…I hope that doesn’t make you think less of me as a person. This week I was watching the 12:00 AM edition of the show and Sex, Lies & Videotape was on Showtime at the same time, so I was watching that during commercials and the recap portion of the show. James Spader’s hair in that movie is incredible. And whatever happened to Andie MacDowell? She was great in that movie, but I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything else I liked since then, other than Groundhog Day.

By: Daniel Wilcox

iMpact! 09.24.09:

Opening Promo: This week’s Impact kicked off with the Main Event Mafia hitting the ring just for a change. But apart from the repetitive nature of it, I really liked this opening segment. First of Angle cut a really strong promo discussing the events of No Surrender and set up the match between him and Matt Morgan at Bound for Glory. We then get Eric Young coming out and questioning the dominance of the Mafia. What made this work is that Angle didn’t run down the World Elite and put over his own group, and even stood up to his own man Booker in favor of working with Young, thus giving the Elite a decent rub. This was a really strong opening overall.

Street Fight – The Pope vs. Suicide: I could probably watch these guys go at it every week for a long time. I loved that they got added to the pay-per-view, where they had a good match, and although there wasn’t really a need for it, they had a third match here and it was another strong one. This didn’t reach the heights that their Falls Count Anywhere match did, probably because it didn’t get enough time, but it came pretty close and was an entertaining bout nonetheless.

AJ Styles’ First Promo as Champion: So we get AJ’s first promo as TNA Heavyweight Champion, and he quickly calls out Sting and thanks him for what he did at No Surrender. I appreciate Sting trying to put AJ over and all, but does it not weaken AJ’s reign if Sting essentially gave him the title? Regardless, I thought both guys did an admirable job on the mic here and they set up the main event for Bound For Glory quite well. I’m not sure I want to see this match again as they’ve never really exceeded “good” in their previous matches, but who’s going to complain about AJ in the main event? Of course, there’ll be some complaining if the Stinger goes over, but we’ll wait and see what happens first.

Bobby Lashley vs. Jethro Holliday: This was a total squash, which is absolutely fine because Lashley needs to look dominant. Lashley looked impressive, and he’s busting out the dragon sleeper, which is always a good thing.

Rhino vs. Brother D-Von: I actually quite like Rhino’s new direction; as I’ve said before he’s a talent who’s been terrifically underused by TNA in recent years. His “match” with D-Von here though was not good; the blood was unnecessary, as was the non-finish. The post-match stuff I kind of liked, but I’m a little worried about where this is going; who is going to be teaming up with Rhino to take on the Dudleyz? It’ll have to be a hell of a worker to make the matches between these guys much good.

Knockout’s Tag Team Title Match: First of all, this was a pretty good match, probably about as good as you can get in under five minutes in all honesty. But I do have issues. I don’t like jobbing the new Knockout’s Champion the week after she one the strap, even if it is essentially in a two-on-one scenario. I didn’t like the fact that Tara and ODB were thrown together as a pairing; Tara’s been teaming with Hemme and now she has a random new partner, just proving what a farce the division is. And finally, the match got no time at all. So although they tried really hard, this just wasn’t working for me.

X Division Championship Three-Way: I’m going to be repeating things here that I just said in the last paragraph. Good match, shit booking in giving them five minutes. With these three guys at the top of the X Division, and with guys like The Pope and Suicide coming through, TNA really has a chance to make the division mean something again, but instead they’re just pissing away title matches involving the three top guys in the division, in five minutes, on free TV. Again, all three guys worked hard and they had a really good match under the circumstances, but the directionless of this division is sad to see considering where it was three or four years ago.

Kurt Angle and Eric Young vs. Hernandez and Matt Morgan: OK, I know this was more of an angle than a match, and I know that they want to put Hernandez and Morgan over strong, but three minutes? Three fucking minutes? Could we not have lost some of the retarded backstage skits with Foley, Borash, Nash and Dr. Stevie, and given this the extra time? This sort of booking is one of the most frustrating things about TNA and really soured my opinion on what was an otherwise really good show.

Tag Team Championship Match: Shit match, shitty, predictable finish, shit booking. What the fuck are these guys feuding over exactly? A fucking picture, trading cards or something? This is absolute shit and one of the many reasons TNA will not be in the same league as WWE any time soon, and this is coming from someone who has really enjoyed their product over the last six months or so. I mean for fuck’s sake, it’s like the bookers realized we all knew Abyss and Foley would fight at Bound For Glory, so they decided to come up with the most ludicrous way of getting us there to make up for it. Fuck this shit.

By: Jeremy Thomas

WWE SmackDown 09.25.09

SPECIAL DELIVERY FOR MR. PUNK: OUR Straight Edge World Heavyweight Champion made his way down to the ring to start off the show, taking a few moments to soak in the utter hatred from the crowd before starting. He began with the usual straight edge spiel, but this time he had a point…he wanted to remind us of his accomplishments. He reminded us that he got rid of Day-Glo and that he’d made the Undertaker tap out, then gave an awesome little “I did that, that was me, I did that!” He demanded that someone in power come out, give him some respect and tell him who his next opponent was going to be, then mocked that no one was left before the lights went out and the druids came down with a coffin. Punk had some great facial expressions of panic here as he grabbed a chair and started wailing on the coffin. One of the best moments here though was when Punk reached out for the coffin and JR, who along with T-Grish had stayed silent for most of this, just sort of murmured “careful…” That made me chuckle.

As it turned out, Teddy Long was in the coffin, bound and gagged. Punk’s reaction was pretty good as he took the opportunity to mock Teddy and then finally untied him. Long staggered around a bit, then got the mic long enough to reverse the ban on the Hell’s Gate. Also, Punk was defending the World Heavyweight Title against Taker at Hell in a Cell…and was wrestling him non-title tonight. He then rolled out of the ring to the floor and staggered off. See Teddy, that is why you don’t screw with the Dead Man. The crowd loved this whole thing, and I liked it. I thought it played nicely for the most part and it did what it needed to do. I do think that there was a bit too much staggering and dead time after Teddy got out of the coffin, and I think that with the entrance and all that it ran out a bit long. But Punk was on top of things with his promo and the point carried well, so I was happy.

THE BOSS SHOWS UP: Midway through the first hour, Vinnie Mac himself was seen walking through the back. Punk came up expecting to have the boss on his side regarding the Hell’s Gate, but Vince—awesomely—told Punk he should have thought of that before he screwed Taker. It’s classic Vince, who clearly liked Punk during the Hardy feud and was on his side…but when it comes to drawing Taker’s ire, Vince knows better. Smart man.

After the commercial break, he came down to the ring to what was actually a nice face pop. Of course, that didn’t last long as he started ragging on Oklahoma and J.R. just because. He then proceeded to announce how next week was going to be a Super SmackDown in celebration of its ten years on the air. That sounds like a great little plan, if you ask me. After he was done with that, he put over his newest signing, calling him a future World Heavyweight Champion and a whole host of other accomplishments. That man? Drew McIntyre. I have to admit, this has me very intrigued. Now sure, the last person Vince personally introduced and put over like this was Elijah Burke and we all know how wasted that potential was. But this is a different show and the SmackDown crew seems interested with putting over new talent. Drew’s promo was also very good and had the crowd solidly against him. And that in turn brought Truth down, rapping through the crowd and then attacking Drew. This was obviously a hell of a lot better than just repeating the Drew beats on Truth segments we’ve seen as of late. I have to believe that Creative and Vince are very high on Drew if they’re willing to give him that kind of an introduction. I dug this, it wasn’t a ground-shaking Vince appearance but it still came off quite well.

BIG SHOW vs. BATISTA: Batista looked good last week in his return, going over Randy Orton on Raw and Chris Jericho on SmackDown. Of course, those were two people who work very well with Batista. This week we had Batista versus Jericho’s partner and co-champion, and I was a bit worried that this match would drag some. We got a recap of what happened between the Manimal and Jericho before the introductions, and Jericho was down at ringside accompanying Show. Jericho awesomely argued with the referee about his right to be there immediately after the bell, and spend the entirety of this match doing good stuff on the outside like shouting at J.R. about Batista getting tossed down or jawing at the crowd. He makes a sharp-dressed male cheerleader, I have to admit. Wait, that way the Top 5 for last week, my bad. The match itself wasn’t particularly great, but it was booked well. It was unsurprisingly a bit slow, but they kept the crowd into it and put Show over as a dominating monster while still giving Batista some momentum and times to look good. They had Batista bust out an ankle lock, so he has a submission maneuver assumedly, and he didn’t just flatten Show which makes me happy. This wasn’t a great match but I appreciate the developments.

CM PUNK vs. THE UNDERTAKER: We had almost sixteen minutes left (not including commercials) when the entrances began. By the time the match began, we had ten minutes left. Take that for what you will. Punk seemed highly confident and even positively anticipating this match before the bell, and then played a game of “dodge the Taker fist” for the first minute or so. This was booked quite well, with a lot of story to the match and some great moments in it. Punk also didn’t look in over his head in this match, which is a positive trait that they’ve managed to continue throughout the Punk/Taker feud. Certainly, Taker looked dominating in portions, but Punk fought back consistently and Taker let Punk be the striker of the match, which is usually the Dead Man’s big strength. I think it’s well past the point where anyone rational has any right to be worried about Taker just burying Punk, for the record, as he looked really good here and outsmarted Taker once again. Frankly, this was better than their Breaking Point match. Not as controversial and not as “big” a moment, but I liked this more.

JOHN MORRISON & FINLAY vs. DOLPH ZIGGLER & MIKE KNOX : During Finlay’s entrance, T-Grish noted that the Irishman’s music was not what he was all about. I agree, Todd…so why the hell doesn’t someone change it? You know, just saying. On the plus side, the crowd is starting to react a little better to Knox, and Finley does get a lot of credit for that. The match started off nicely with Finlay in control until an unseen tag to Knox turned the tables. Now, it must be said that this match was not as good as many of the Blue Brand opening matches have been. The match was a bit slower than I might have expected and they seemed to be replaying the various matches between these guys, just adding the standard tag format with Finlay as face-in-peril. However, there’s nothing overly wrong with that, it simply suffers by comparison with what we’ve generally seen as the norm to start the show. Morrison got the pin on Knox with Finlay’s help, which I assume will mean we’ll see Ziggler strong next week. Again this wasn’t bad, just a letdown from what I expected of these four.

BATISTA SPEAKS: A bit after his match with Show, the Manimal was backstage with Josh Matthews, and he told Josh that he was going to challenge Show and Jericho for the tag titles at Hell in the Cell. He said his partner was going to be one of his best friends, a former World Champion and one of the best entertainers to compete here in the WWE. Was anyone else getting ready to start the Ric Flair countdown watch, or was that just me? As it turned out, his partner’s going to be Rey Rey, and I’m okay with that. We know Rey works well with Jericho and this will make for a very interesting match. My only problem with this is that I was pretty sure MVP and Mizark were set for another match with Jericho and Show. I know, it wasn’t announced but they certainly seemed to be building to it. Batista’s promo delivery was also subpar, though it gets a slight pass because he seemed a bit gassed from his match he’d had some time earlier. The good cancels the bad out, and that drops this right in the middle of the road.

THE RETURN (AND DESTRUCTION) OF JEEZY: Jeezy showed up backstage to hang with Cryme Tyme and Eve, who told him that he needed to prove himself. They gave him a can of spray paint, and Jeezy returned with the SmackDown and WCW DVD’s. This, in turn, got him in trouble with Teddy, who wasn’t in the mood for shenanigans after spending a week with the Dead Man. Jeezy developed a backbone at the perfectly wrong time, and the end result was a match. His opponent? Well, we’d find out in the ring. It turned out of course to be Kane, but before we get to that I should point out that, against my expectations, Jeezy is actually somewhat over with the crowd. Are they going to actually go somewhere with this? Honestly, I doubt it. Jeezy is Raw’s version of Chavo and Santino, and so I doubt this is going to do much for the guy’s credibility. But hey, everyone’s got to have a role, right? The match of course was an utter squash to try and get Kane over, which it didn’t do because Kane is already over and we’ve seen him squash scrubs for years. Jesse flopped admirably but that’s about all that this segment was worth.

JTG vs. DH SMITH: In a continuation of the fun little Cryme Tyme/Hart Dynasty feud, we had JTG taking on DH Smith in singles competition. These guys have done some good stuff with each other over the last several weeks. JTG attacked Smith right off the bat, which played off the heat in the rivalry well. With Cryme Tyme being as fun loving as they are, for JTG to be that focused helps sell the feud nicely. Unfortunately, the match itself was way too short. It basically consisted of JTG owning Smith for a while before the girls started fighting, which caused enough chaos for Kidd to interfere and put JTG in a vulnerable spot to take the pin after a back suplex. I’m glad to see they’re putting the Harts over more each week and losses don’t hurt Cryme Tyme any, but otherwise this just felt like the first third of a good match with a finish tacked on the end.

DID YOU KNOW?: Nope. And, as always, I don’t care.

From Tom:
What really bugged me about the Swagger/Kofi match was the fact that Swagger was in control of the match when he decided to steal the title and take a walk… wouldn’t it have made more sense for Swagger to stay in the match so he could actually WIN the belt legally instead?

Wait…you’re expecting logic here? Silly boy! Seriously, it probably would have made more sense, yes. But then, maybe he’s hoping for the triple threat match so he could play Kofi and Miz off each other, then get in there and take the pinfall. I agree it was not the smartest decision, but there was enough about this match that bugged me that I didn’t feel the need to bring it up.

From PurplePeopleEater:
“Santino’s better at being a bad comedian than Ziggler, because at least he’s doing it on purpose.”

When has Ziggler ever tried to be a comedian?

I’m going to assume you didn’t see Breaking Point, PPE. Ziggler basically cut a comedy act on Patterson and was clearly going for laughs in-character, and not only were they not funny, they weren’t so unfunny that it worked as bad comedy. That’s what I meant.

From Miz fan:
“Santino’s better at being a bad comedian than Ziggler, because at least he’s doing it on purpose.”

Idiot.

I know you are, but what am I, times infinity! Nyah.

From The Great Capt. Smooth
I didn’t mind Cena doing the jokes on Orton, because it fit into what he said about Orton turning this into a joke by saying exactly what Cena said he would. As far as his faces go, I loved it, because while Orton was talking, I kept thinking to myself, “Why does he make those odd faces?”. I think I suffer from “WWESP”.

We all suffer from WWESP from time to time, I’m pretty sure. I understand why they did this and it did make sense, but it does not at all jive with his supposed pledge to be more intense, more focused, etc. than he’s ever been. I have to assume we’ll see more of that on Raw…I would hope so, since it’s the last one before HiaC.

From hiro:
“while Mizark was the son of the Kool-Aid
Man and Miz was the son of a jackass.”

i thought miz = mizark…who the fuck is mizark? stop naming ppl things. just go with their wrestler name instead

Welcome to the R’s, hiro. If “Mizark” bugs you, you should probably skip over my “Day-Glo Warrior” and “Manimal” references. Just sayin’. Thanks for reading though!

From james T.
i also liked how DX put a little bit of the old DX in there promo. how they did the whole “WHO IS DA-DA-DA” and then the other member goes “ME” it’s funny how 12 years ago that got them heat and now they use it to get a pop.

Most of the things DX does will always be over, and that I think is why the group keeps coming back. They’re insanely popular with the crowd still and they can bust out the old stuff for nostalgia pops. I think that as long as Shawn and ‘H are both in the ‘E, we’ll see DX coming back time and again. Which, really, isn’t a bad thing.

~403~