Wrestling’s 4R’s Monday Edition 10.26.09: ROH on HDNet, WWE Smackdown, WWE Superstars, And TNA Impact

In HD where available…

By: Aaron Hubbard

ROH on HDNet 10.19.09:

QUICK RESULTS:
– Kenny Kind defeated Jerry Lynn [**1/4]
– Nigel McGuinness defeated Sal Rinauro [3/4*]
– Colt Cabana defeated Claudio Castagnoli[**3/4]
– ROH World Title Match: Austin Aries defeated Bryan Danielson [****1/4]

OLD SCHOOL VS. NEW SCHOOL: The feud between Aries’ Lackeys (Kenny King and Rhett Titus) and the mentor-student team of Jerry Lynn and Tyler Black continued. These four had a dreadful match a while back, but Black and Titus had a good match last week and these two had a good match this week. Not quite as good, but still very good. Both guys looked good and Kenny got a fluke-ish win with the help of Rhett Titus, but he still got some shine by countering Lynn’s big moves earlier in the match.

SAL SQUASH: Obviously Nigel won this and not Sal, but Sal has gotten such a character as a coward that when his matches are more about how entertaining he can be getting beat up. Nigel promised to not injure Sal in the beginning and they did some nice chain wrestling, and the look of “Hey, I did something!” when Sal countered a wristlock was wonderful. Nigel then got a bit more serious and teased a Tower of London on the apron, but decided not to do it since it just satisfies the fans thirst for blood. He won with the London Dungeon shortly thereafter. Good stuff.

CC VS. CC: We saw a good, competitive match between Claudio Castagnoli and Colt Cabana. These guys always have good matches, because they are similar in size and style. Claudio does “smug” so well that you can’t help but boo him, and Cabana is instantly lovable. They went out there and did a lot of European chain wrestling and then Cabana won with a surprise bridging pin out of a series of near falls. This didn’t do much other than being a fun match, but that’s all it needs to do.

THE BEST IN THE WORLD: I am of the opinion that the best two workers in the United States are Austin Aries and Bryan Danielson. They are both incredible and they have fantastic chemistry with each other. Par the course for these two, the match was an awesome match, but it was not the typical “ROH Style” of match. They worked a more WWE style of storytelling and pacing but with enough ROH-type moves to set them apart as different. There is no such thing as a typical Aries-Danielson match, because they change it up every time. This was a terrific example of both men’s ability to tell a story in the ring; every move meant something, from the headlocks to the high spots. Aries was unable to win with the Last Chancery and exposed a turnbuckle, and Danielson did everything to avoid getting sent into the buckle. But eventually, Aries rolled through an Ankle Lock and the momentum was too much for Danielson to stop. Aries then dropkicked Bryan’s skull into the buckle and got the win. It’s not a clean finish, but at least it was Aries’ cheating and not someone else, and they built to the finish so it didn’t feel tacked on. If this is a sign of what Bryan will bring to the WWE, then neither the WWE fans nor the ROH fans need worry.

THE JERRY LYNN INJURY: This is one of those things that as a reviewer, you don’t want to review. Jerry Lynn suffered an injury after Kenny King and Rhett Titus botched a double piledriver, dropping him on his head. This was a totally legit injury and not the way you want the show to start. Even with the awesome main event, my mind was on Jerry. ROH worked the situation well as far as business goes; Nigel cut a promo saying it was our fault that Jerry got hurt, because we demand they take risks. This continued the great work-shoot character that Nigel worked for the last few months of his ROH run. Kenny got some promo time to say that Jerry Lynn needed “a little help” retiring, and came across as the world’s biggest dick. They also shilled rohwrestling.com by telling you to go there for updates on Lynn’s condition. On the one hand, it’s smart business to do all this, and on the other hand, you almost feel as if they were exploiting the injury. I can’t put this in the right in good conscious, but they handled it well.

NONE

NONE

By: Daniel Wilcox

iMpact! 10.22.09:

Angle Opens The Show: So the first Impact after Bound for Glory opened with Kurt Angle coming out cutting a promo that was typically good, and this promo essentially cemented his face turn. I like this, because it’s obvious that the fans have been wanting to cheer for the guy again for quite a while and he’d done pretty much all he could as a heel; the Mafia having run its course. I love how he put over the likes of AJ, Morgan and even EY. Angle then got interrupted by Rhino, who weirdly enough has become one of the better heels in the company. I’ve said for a long, long time that Rhino is a hell of a talent and I’m really glad he’s finally being used again by the company; they just need to find him a partner to go up against Team 3D. What’s Raven up to these days?

Desmond Wolf Debuts: So this is the bit everyone has been talking about. Nigel McGuiness “Swerved” us all by showing up in TNA rather than WWE, and while I feel that ultimately WWE would have worked out better for him, in the short term this is seemingly a good move for Nigel as he already finds himself in a feud with the company’s top guy. Not only that, but he had a strong first showing on Impact, assaulting Angle in the back, and then laying him out to end the show. The guy will go far in TNA, no doubt, and he wouldn’t have moved so quickly up the card in WWE, and now at least people will get to properly appreciate his talents rather than wonder what all the hype was about.

Awesome Kong vs. Raisha Saeed: Simply put, Kong kills bitches dead. This was a decent little match stemming from the incident that occurred at the pay-per-view whereby Saeed cost Kong the title. Of course the fun came post-match when Kong dragged the lifeless body of Saeed off the ramp and decided to hit an Awesome Bomb off the stage. Nice. Now obviously from here Kong goes solo, but in terms of Raisha, this can go a couple of ways. Either Alissa Flash makes more appearances and essentially becomes a full-time Knockout, or Saeed returns in a few weeks with a new monster Knockout to rival Kong. I’m fine with either scenario, and am really just glad they’re getting Kong to go solo.

Ultimate X – Motor City Machineguns vs. Lethal Consequences: You can piss and moan all you want about doing another Ultimate X match after Bound for Glory, but as long as the match is as good as this was, I am absolutely fine with it, because as a wrestling fan, there’s nothing more I love to see than good wrestling matches. While it didn’t really compare to last Sunday’s hectic fare, it was a hell of a match and the Guns are number one contenders, which is awesome. Hopefully it’ll result in a long program for them. Also worth noting, I was really glad to see no-one take any overly risky bumps during this match in the wake of what could have happened to Daniels at Bound for Glory when he took that horrifying fall.

The Turning Point Main Event: Now when I heard that the main event for Turning Point would be a rematch of the classic three-way that main evented the first and only Unbreakable in 2005, I was ecstatic. That match should be grand, if not a patch on their work from four years ago. But in thinking about, why the hell has this match be signed? Neither guy was victorious at the last pay-per-view, nor do they have any real claim to a title shot, unlike Angle, Lashley or others who should theoretically be higher up the totem pole. While I’m all for great wrestling and putting the onus on younger guys, I don’t really want to see it at the expense of continuity and any sense of logic.

Homicide vs. Amazing Red: This is a classic example of TNA booking, and I do say the exact same thing every single week, normally more than once. Good match, but it got no time. I am pleased to see, however, that Homicide is being used well following the break-up of LAX and the heel turn.

AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels vs. Samoa Joe and Kevin Nash: Not too much to say here as this was a really bland and uninspired little tag match. Even Joe seemed a little off in this match and ultimately, it should have been better. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t terrible, and it didn’t help that it didn’t get much time, but with three of the four guys involved, you expect better.

Six Sides of Steel – British Invasion vs. Beer Money: I really can’t fault the efforts of the men in this match, as I thought this was on par with the Ultimate X match from earlier in the night. I’m a fan of everyone involved in this one and it was a really fun match. But really, a DQ finish in a cage match? That’s just fucking stupid. And the “referee’s initiative” thing is a poor excuse. Awful ending to an otherwise great match, hence its position in the purgatory.

Rhino vs. Hernandez: It was probably a blessing in disguise that this didn’t get much time because what we saw pretty ugly. Furthermore, I hate having Rhino lose clean because as I said earlier, I really think they can make something out of him this time around. Finally, “he’s not worth it”? When does that ever come into wrestling. Team 3D should’ve joined in on that beating, or do they not care that the guy cost them the tag titles at the pay-per-view? Or are we just forgetting that? Not good.

Matt Morgan vs. Scott Steiner: This was just an ugly, ugly match. And I really do not like the sound of a Lashley/Steiner feud. They also seemingly don’t have much for Morgan to do, which isn’t good considering he was one of the guys who is meant to be the focus of this new “push the young guys” thing. But yeah, poor match, and not a bright future on the immediate horizon for any of these guys.

The End of the Main Event Mafia: While I mentioned earlier that I thought the Mafia had run its course, I was really disappointed with the way they ended. Yes, Booker’s gone and that’s unfortunate, but they could have done a better injury angle to write him off, because the one at the pay-per-view sucked. And the other guys are either pretending the Mafia is still going, or just doing their own thing. No big final loss to put the nail in the coffin or anything like that. It just fizzled out a la nWo in 2002. Not good.

NONE

By: Steve Cook

Superstars 10.22.09:

Kelly Kelly vs. Gail Kim: I have to admit that when I saw this match on the Superstars match listing, I wasn’t exactly optimistic. Kelly’s matches tend to vary in quality based on her opponent, and Gail hasn’t been as good in her WWE comeback as she was in TNA. However, Kelly looked pretty good and had the fans of her hometown behind her in a bit of an upset over the former Women’s Champion. Gail looked better in this match than she has in her previous efforts, and for once had a match without a spot that looked a bit too scary. I can get behind a face vs. face match with nobody cheating , and for those of you not liking that Kelly went over Gail, you can take solace in the fact that Gail only lost because she made two ill-advised moves that didn’t work out for her. Kelly’s new finisher works for her. I didn’t really get a good look at her family, so I can’t say whether there were some sisters I might have a chance with or not.

Drew McIntyre & Eric Escobar vs. Matt Hardy & R-Truth: I know some people didn’t like Triple H & Shawn Michaels’ treatment of McIntyre & Escobar in their promo on Raw, but they merely spoke the minds of what most people were surely thinking…”who the heck are these guys and why are they on Team Smackdown?” Sure, McIntyre’s been put over by Mr. McMahon himself as a future world champion, but he hasn’t been around long enough to prove himself worthy of such praise. As for Escobar, we know he’s probably a sleazebag because he’s dating Vickie Guerrero, but he’s only been on Smackdown for two weeks and had a grand total of one match. Why should DX be impressed? Well, maybe Escobar & McIntyre turned some heads on this edition of Superstars, as they proved their singles victories over Matt Hardy & R-Truth could be repeated in a tag team match. The kids got some time to work in this match, and the veterans did their best to make them look good. That’s why Matt Hardy, even though I give him a bunch of crap for the stuff he pulls on the Interwebs and don’t really consider him main event material, is a useful component of the WWE roster. You need guys like him around to help the young guys step their game up and get to the next level. Killings can also be useful in that role when he’s on his A game. McIntyre & Escobar came a long way tonight…unfortunately for them, WWE Creative wasn’t quite ready to put them in a PPV main event after all and it remains to be seen how that will affect their status with the WWE fanbase.

Goldust & Tommy Dreamer vs. Ezekiel Jackson & Vladimir Kozlov: This didn’t end up in the Purgatory section because of the match itself…I had no complaints with that. My beef is with the even-steven booking that was showcased by the finish and aftermath of the match. A split second after Goldust actually managed to get a victory over William Regal’s henchmen, he and Dreamer were immediately squashed and hit with finishers. You know what happens when everybody gets pushed at the same level, right? Nobody gets over. The finish did work with Jackson & Kozlov’s reputations as not really giving a crap about wins and losses as long as they get the last laugh, so I kept it out of the Wrong & Ridiculous section based on that. Who would have thought back in 1996 that in 2009 Tommy Dreamer would be teaming with Goldust? Not too many people, I’d reckon.

NONE

NONE

By: Jeremy Thomas

WWE SmackDown 10.23.09

JOHN MORRISON vs. MIKE KNOX: As Morrison made his way out from the backstage area, Vintage Cole remarked that Morrison’s was one of the coolest entrances you’ll ever see. See, everyone can get one right once in a while! Knox’s entrance, on the other hand, was a bit less exciting. We got another backstage vignette from psycho-boy about muscle trauma and liver collapse—effective as always, but a few vignettes does not get one over with a crowd. This was actually a pretty good match, with Knox getting some periods of good dominance while Morrison of course had his exciting moments of control. The size mismatch was played up pretty nicely and the match was laid out very solidly. Putting Knox in efforts like this is good; the only problem was that it seemed over before it got a chance to start. Morrison needed a solid win though and he got it, and people will remember that Knox seemed pretty good here. And Morrison’s mic work after the match was pretty solid—short but sweet, and that’s what it needed to be. That’s enough to get this into the Right.

MAE YOUNG HAS A PIMP SLAP OF DOOM: Backstage, Mickie James was hanging out with Mae Young, of all people. Now, I always get a little worried when Mae shows up because it almost always means she’s going to be stripping down or making out with someone for gross-out humor value, but they didn’t do that here thankfully. Michelle showed up and played nice with Mae before she started ragging on Mickie for not being on the Blue Brand team in the Diva’s match. Mickie said Michelle was scared of her, and Michelle said she was dreaming. This ended up with Mickie stomping off and Beth told Michelle she wouldn’t be holding the title for long, and walked off. Michelle then got slapped by Mae Young. This all came off pretty well; I liked some of the things they did that were subtle, like Beth and Mickie both having red in their outfits and no blue which paints them as the invaders to SmackDown and works into the brand vs. brand thing nicely. And Mae wasn’t in “horny old granny” mode, but yet her pimp-slap of Michelle didn’t do anything to make the champion look like a wuss either. I liked this and thought it carried off well.

BATISTA & REY REY vs. KANE & JERICHO: Before this match we got a recap of last week’s match, then went to Big Dave and Rey good-naturedly arguing about whether the shoulder was down and who was going to win at Bragging Rights. The more I think about this, the more I think Big Dave is really going to turn on Rey and go heel, which I’m totally okay with. He’s sort of stale as a face and his matchups on the heel side would be fresher.

The faces came out first for the match, and the Manimal’s pop was intense but dwarfed by Rey Rey’s. Then the heels came down to good reaction, and we got into the match. As a match, this was impressive. Big Dave and Rey Rey worked well as a team, Jericho was awesome as always and Kane really brought his working boots for this match. Of course, Rey was the face-in-peril during those portions of the match and he knows very well how to sell for Kane and Y2J, so that was unsurprisingly good. The crowd was pumped when Batiste came in and while his offense wasn’t some of his most innovative, it was good enough not to drag the match down any at all. The end result portrayed Dave and Rey Rey as on the same page, which was good, and it paints Rey as truly an uber-face who sacrificed himself to win the match. It sent the faces for the Fatal Four-Way into the Pay-Per-View looking strong, and I don’t mind that one bit. Good stuff here all-around.

Before the match, we had a bunch of segments leading up to it, and they carried off pretty well. The first was Scott Armstrong telling Punk that he wasn’t going to be the ref, and Punk doing an awesome job of shitting on the Armstrong Legacy, then Teddy Long talking about his hesitance and Punk calling him out on it. Armstrong refused to do it and stood up, being willing to risk his job if need be. Vince quickly showed up, and by the time we saw them again mid-show the situation had changed:

I can’t decide what I love more about this…the sad, resigned expression that Scott has, or the giddy, almost schoolboy-ish glee that Punk seems to have. Vince talked Punk up and CM played it off beautifully. I enjoyed Vince’s little speech about the “time of the year” and leading that up to WrestleMania and the potential Hall of Fame induction for Bullet Bob. And the devil gets his due here. The segments were played out very nicely and I enjoyed how they set it all up.

Once we got to the main event, Punk came down with Teddy Long and Scott Armstrong backing him up. He got on the mic and proceeded to piss the crowd off by talking about how he could humiliate and beat down everyone in the crowd and reduce all of us at home to tears in the blink of an eye, but it paled to knowing he’d make the Dead Man tap out a second time in a few. Punk was good as ever on the mic here, and the reactions of Teddy and Scott were great as they sold how much they didn’t want to be a part of this. Their reactions were almost as good there as they were when Taker came down, leaving the two absolutely mortified and Punk utterly giddy. Dude, the guy was jumping up and down and laughing…that was AWESOME.

So the match itself, I was concerned about. Taker’s not been around and you have to believe he wanted to keep himself rested for the Pay-Per-View. Still, he did a good job here and Punk did as well. This was almost more angle than match, but there was some good in-ring stuff as well and Taker and Punk played off each other nicely. I know a lot of people will be complaining about how Punk was relying on “the fix,” but there was some good stuff where Punk turned the tables on his own too. Once the angle came into play it carried off very nicely; Armstrong got choke-slammed and Teddy Long nearly got out of dodge. This was played up nicely and everyone tried to do their part, but Taker countered the Anaconda Vice into the Hell’s Gate to get the win and retain. All in all, I liked this. I don’t see why they needed to screw Punk’s cred here but it didn’t take that much of a hit and losing solidly just before a PPV often means good things going into the show, so you never know. Overall the story was more important than the result and I enjoyed this one.

DIDN’T WE SEE THIS ON MONDAY?: SmackDown kicked off with Chris Jericho showing up solo, much to the dislike of the crowd. They recapped the end of Raw with Team SmackDown facing off with Team Raw and the brawl that ensued, and then the Blue Brand Team Leader got on the mic. He talked up how he was going to further cement his legendary status come Bragging Rights, and then decided he needed to prove the viability of Team SmackDown. The new SAT Word of the Week: Oral cavities. Okay, that kind of amused me. JTG then came out and faced off with Jericho, saying Shad was sick and giving the Tag Champ the opportunity to tear on him a bit. Before JTG could speak up, Vickie Guerrero came out and announced Eric Escobar’s arrival. Vintage Cole called his debut last week “impressive.” Uh-huh. Escobar got on the mic…and you know, he wasn’t terrible at all. He was far from great, but he did the job all right. The only reason he seemed lacking I think was because he was followed up by Dolph, who is quickly becoming one of the top heels when it comes to mic work. Drew came out in a silly looking pseudo-long coat thingy, and he had his moment to speak, which he did solidly as usual. And finally it was Kane. Awesome moment: Escobar subtly maneuvering Vickie in front of him when Kane looked him over. The gist was that Kane and Jericho had booked them in a four-on-five tag team match with the winning team going onto Bragging Rights. This wasn’t bad, and everyone who spoke did a good job of it for the most part. The problem was that it felt like Raw Redux. They did the same thing on Raw, just with a minor variation or two, and so this kind of seemed to pale by comparison. I’m not hating on the talent, just the way the segment came off which seemed like a retread.

RAW ANNOUNCING TEAM ON SMACKDOWN: Call this a minor gripe, but one thing that bugged me about this show was Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole taking J.R. and T-Grish’s place due to J.R.’s health problems. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some disturbed bastard who says “screw the stroke, J.R. should show up anyway!” My problem here is, why take Grisham off? Bring Lawler over and let him call the show with T-Grish. Look, you’ve got two possible avenues of thought here. Either Todd Grisham isn’t ready to call a show without J.R. or he is. Now, if he is, then let him do it. If not, then you can suffer a bit in the announcing for one show while you pair him with a veteran like Lawler and let him get some experience with someone else. I even get how this worked in the Bragging Rights concept with the Raw announcers calling SmackDown, but that wasn’t played up much and so the point there is lost. It’s not a major thing, but I do think it was a bad decision to make.

MICKIE JAMES vs. LAYLA: So, this was Mickie’s first match back on SmackDown, and she had as an opponent someone who’s improved a fair amount since these two last faced in Layla. The crowd gave a pretty standard pop for Mickie; nothing fantastic, but they weren’t dead either. They were quieter for Layla unfortunately, which is too bad because she’s picked things up a lot. What’s also too bad is how this match started off, which was heavily choreographed and disjointed. They settled into a better rhythm once Mickie got back in the ring and Layla started to work Mickie over. It was only good toward the end, and was merely tolerable with punctuations of bad for the rest of it. Mickie executed the hook kick nicely and Layla sold it well, but ultimately this was not a good match.

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

FOUR-ON-FIVE MATCH OF STUPIDNESS +5: Okay, really? I mean, REALLY? So folks, pretend you’re the head of SmackDown’s Creative Team. You’ve decided that it’s time to push new talent. You have some people that maybe you’re pushing too fast, putting them in Pay-Per-View main events before they’re ready or have even had a lot of matches. But for the most part, you’re just putting new people in the upper midcard and the crowd is responding. So what do you do for the go-home show before your Pay-Per-View?

a) Put each of your talent, especially the guys who haven’t quite gotten credibility with the crowd, over established midcard talent in one-on-one or two-on-two matches.
b) Put them in a main event five-on-five match where they fight strongly but then go down to legitimate main eventers, thus elevating them by virtue of looking good in defeat.
c) Book them in a four-on-five handicap match against the guys they beat for their roster spots just last week, erasing any credibility that they earned from seven days ago.

If you said C, you should apply at Titan Towers now. And also, I hate you. What in the hell prompted this? Is this something to do with Shad’s “sickness” situation? Did someone actually realize that Escobar and McIntyre weren’t ready? Okay, if those three situations are the case, replace them. I wouldn’t even say replace McIntyre or Escobar, just leave them on the apron for most of the main event. But replacing the entire team makes it look like the Blue Brand creative team is throwing shit against the wall and not even seeing if it has time to stick before tossing something else up. I know I railed a bit about Escobar last week and I stand by that, but they’re doing a lot more damage by this little bait-and-switch extraordinaire than they did by putting him in a match he wasn’t ready for. And don’t get me wrong, I think that Hardy, Finlay, Truth & the Hart Dynasty will make for a better match than the other guys would have, but this is a senseless swerve for the sake of being a swerve. And things like Lawler saying during the match, “This is the Who’s Who of Who Cares?” didn’t help one bit, either. The match itself was all right, but the end result and the booking…well, what do you think, Layla?

Yeah, me too.

From LOGIC:
Team Smackdown will win, via Big Show turning or Cena joining the team later on in the night (after he loses to Orton, of course) and pin HHH to get his loss back. Team RAW will not win as the members on each side may indicate, no matter what happens on Smackdown this week.

We’ll see, Logic. Don’t hold your breath, though.

From RAW build:
RAW was a great show that hyped up Bragging Rights to me. Smackdown has won most of the interbrand matches over the years, so why change it now?

Plus you have to figure they will be tied at one win/one loss leading into the main event, meaning RAW will win one and Smackdown will win one (Miz/Morrison and Divas Tag).

I agree, RB. It does make since that they will tie things up leading up to the main event, which will (in theory) add some tension and stakes to who’s going to win. I hope it doesn’t become an overbooked mess, but I wonder if that’s wishful thinking at this point.

From Heel:
Am I the only sensing Jericho’s losing streak is getting bad for the man? I mean, its one thing to be able to talk well and wrestle well, but if you can’t string together a bunch of wins, it hurts ur stock, doesn’t it? After some time, people won’t take him seriously, despite the whole “best in the world at wat i do” Schtick.

Jericho’s a guy who can afford some losses still. He’s still Unified Tag Team Champion and the losses certainly don’t hurt his head with the crowd. Yes, he needs to start winning a bit more, but I’m happy to see a main eventer who’s not afraid to lose a match or two.

From Loki:
I don’t like it when Raw has a great show – it perpetuates the WWE logic that the same guys should keep the top spots, and the HBK/HHH/Orton/Cena rectangle of dull is really good TV.

If it was Raw giving Raw shit, I wouldn’t mind. But Raw is giving SmackDown shit – surely if Raw is the A show, they should be encouraging people to watch SmackDown. How can the show with the larger audience saying ‘the other show is full of losers’ be good for business?

Oh, undoubtedly it’s not good for business. In this case, I think it’s a stupid decision but I can either keep ranting about it week after week, or I can let it go when they bring it on themselves like this. As for Raw having a great show–well, if the main eventers are putting on good stuff, then maybe they shouldn’t go just yet. I don’t think one good show alleviates months of ‘H/Orton boredom or other problems, but it’s a refreshing step in the right direction that they didn’t suck this time out.

From MDK:
“If I had to criticize anything, it would be that Ted slightly overplayed it” Kelly Kelly vs. Gail Kim: I have to admit that when I saw this match on the Superstars match listing, I wasn’t exactly optimistic. Kelly’s matches tend to vary in quality based on her opponent, and Gail hasn’t been as good in her WWE comeback as she was in TNA. However, Kelly looked pretty good and had the fans of her hometown behind her in a bit of an upset over the former Women’s Champion. Gail looked better in this match than she has in her previous efforts, and for once had a match without a spot that looked a bit too scary. I can get behind a face vs. face match with nobody cheating, and for those of you not liking that Kelly went over Gail, you can take solace in the fact that Gail only lost because she made two ill-advised moves that didn’t work out for her. Kelly’s new finisher works for her. I didn’t really get a good look at her family, so I can’t say whether there were some sisters I might have a chance with or not.

Something I never see people acknowledge is the fact that wrestlers are in the tough spot of having to convey emotion to both an enormous audience as well as a camera. When you play to a large audience, you have to play things bigger, but with a camera, you keep it realistic. Had DiBiase kept it completely realistic, much of the audience would not have noticed his reaction.

You know, you bring up a good point, and I retract my statement. Either way it certainly wasn’t as bad as ‘H when he overplayed the reaction to Steph’s RKO a while back, so good on Ted.

From The Great Capt. Smooth:
I loved the music they used during the “Technical Difficulties” part. For some reason, it reminded me of a denture commercial. Also, Orton is looking more and more like Lord Valdemort.

Yeah, I’ve always loved that music–they’ve used it in a few “Technical Difficulties” segments and it comes off nicely. As for Orton as Valdemort…you know, I had never seen that before now. And now I can’t get it out of my head. Great, now every time I’ll be looking at the guy I’ll be trying to picture what he would look like without a nose.

And we’re out of here!

~412~