Wrestling’s 4R’s Monday Edition 5.03.10: ROH, Superstars and SmackDown Reviewed!

In HD where available…

By: Aaron Hubbard

ROH on HDNet 04.26.10:

QUICK RESULTS:
Tyler Black def. Rhett Titus [**1/2]
Rasche Brown def. James Stone [DUD]
Television Tournament Final: Eddie Edwards def. Davey Richards [****1/2]

TV TITLE FINAL: Going into this match, I was skeptical because of the iffy booking of the tournament that saw Eddie Edwards beat Colt Cabana and Kevin Steen to get into the finals. Both of these wins were the result of a distraction because of the ongoing Cabana & Generico vs. Steen & Corino feud. Edwards basically wound up in the finals by sheer dumb luck. Knowing the results, I just wasn’t sure that these guys could put on a match that solidified Edwards. Well, I was proven wrong, and I was very happy to be proven wrong. In a year with Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels II, this would be my Match of the Year. Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards put on a stellar match.

It wasn’t just the in-ring action, which was outstanding and very well executed. It was the structure of the match. The early going saw them chain wrestle on a mostly even level before Davey took over, but Edwards fought back and really got to show off some of his best offense, including Chris Jericho’s old spot where both goes are standing on the top turnbuckle and one guy leaps up and frankensteiners the guy into the ring. I love that spot. But more important was the finish; Eddie could not win this by a fluke, or he would be a lame duck champion. He had to earn it. And he did, avoiding a kick from Davey on the apron that hit the post to set up his Achilles Lock finisher. Before that, Eddie survived the shooting star press and Kimura combo that has been finishing everyone off lately, which put him over huge, and then made Davey tap out clean as a whistle to the Achilles Lock.

These guys accomplished so much with this match. Because it was so hard fought, they made the TV Title important. Eddie Edwards looked like a star and Davey lost nothing. Everyone knows Richards is at the World Title level anyway, and having Edwards be champion gives him a chance to prove himself. He’s got a readymade feud with Kenny King in the works and plenty of challengers. With the exception of some minor and boring reasons, I have no complaints. This was gold.

GENERICO/CABANA VS. STEEN/CORINO: This feud recently hit another level with the brawl at the Big Bang, and the promo work from Cabana, Corino and Steen has improved with it. All three guys are knocking it out of the park. Generico doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t have to because his body language says so much. I hope they give us at least one decent length match on HDNet before settling the feud, but this blood feud is the hottest thing going in ROH, which has been on fire as a whole lately.

RAYNA VON TASH: Marry me Rayna. That is all.

DAIVARI PROMO: This wasn’t the blow away promo that Shawn Daivari gave in his last appearance, but it was still a good promo. The problem is that Daivari is so far above 95% of the ROH roster on the mic that I just don’t know who’s going to keep up with him.

IT’S NOT EASY BEING CHAMP: Tyler was the main focus of the early part of this show, cutting a promo about how it’s harder to stay champion than win it. You know, I might buy that if it didn’t take Tyler 47, 203 title shots to win the championship, but I digress. He had a match with Rhett Titus, and for two guys on the opposite end of the card, these two have stellar chemistry. Titus is a guy that is constantly improving and I’m eager to see where he could go in a bigger role. Black showed some new stuff, and that’s a good thing because he’s going to need new moves to stay fresh as champ. Unfortunately the match was just a set-up for Aries and King to interfere, and for Roddy Strong to make the save. Titus lost a bit of what he gained in the match by being unable to beat Black even with interference, but that’s how it goes. The post-match promo with Roddy and Tyler was okay, but neither guy is stellar on the mic. The pull-apart brawl was fine, except I never picture Black as a guy who straight out fight. Overall, this was fine, it was just kind of…there.

THE WHEELS ON THE BUS: I’ve officially stopped caring about Rasche Brown squashes. They’ve gone on too long. Get this guy a real match, some angle advancement, a promo, ANYTHING but don’t give me another bloody squash match for Rasche.

NOTHING OF NOTE.

By: Steve Cook

Superstars 04.29.10:

GAIL KIM vs. JILLIAN HALL: These two have shown great chemistry on previous episodes of Superstars, so it’s not surprising that they’d have another good match here. I only had one major complaint, that I’m sure people will overreact about and call your humble correspondent a negative Nellie, but what’s the deal with people basically no-selling top-rope hurracanranas? It’s a cool looking move that people have used as a finisher before, so it’s pretty ridiculous when Jillian takes it and makes her way back up quickly while holding her backside. I also wasn’t a big fan of Jerry Lawler re-using bad jokes from Raw, but since that had nothing to do with the match I won’t hold it against the ladies. I think the problem Gail & Jillian run into in matches with other Divas is that they are both good individually, but don’t have the ability to make a less than equal opponent look good. That’s why they do well with each other, but not with the Bellas & Rosas of the world.

ZACK RYDER vs. PRIMO: You really have to wonder how Mr. Ryder will function without his girlfriend Rosa around, especially since she was instrumental in helping him get the win over Primo this week. Both Colon brothers have struggled horribly since their split…Carlito’s struggles have been well-documented on this show, but Primo can’t even get booked half the time, so one could argue that he’s doing even worse. On the bright side, at least Primo has started wearing tights instead of those goofy pants he was rocking for awhile. This was a pretty good matchup between two guys that the announcers, as usual, couldn’t be bothered to care about. I guess Vince watched some WCW Nitro tapes and decided that their style of announcing was far superior to what WWE had been doing over the years.

HART DYNASTY vs. DUDEBUSTERS: I think I liked their previous Superstars match better, but this was still a fine outing with two young tag teams that have loads of potential. Enjoyed the story that Todd Grisham & Matt Striker told about the Dudebusters being left behind in Switzerland on the European trip because the other wrestlers hated them. I highly doubt that’s actually true, but it’s a great story to get them over as douches.

Nothing of note

Nothing of note

MATT HARDY TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE NEEDING A PERSONALITY: I know this was first on NXT, but since they showed it on Superstars as well I thought I’d point out the ridiculousness of Matt Hardy saying that Daniel Bryan needing a personality. Whether Bryan is charismatically challenged or not (I say not really, but that‘s the storyline they‘re going with), Matt’s probably the last guy that should be talking about it. I can only assume that’s exactly why they had him say it, for the comedic effect.

By: Jeremy Thomas

WWE SmackDown 04.30.10

QUICK RESULTS:
Kofi Kingston d. Chris Jericho [** ¼]
Cody Rhodes d. John Morrison [** ½]
Beth Phoenix & Kelly Kelly d. Team Lay-Cool [* ¼]
MVP & Rey Mysterio d. CM Punk & Luke Gallows [** ¾]

KOFI KINGSTON vs. CHRIS JERICHO: SmackDown started us off with the last Friday night match (for now) of Chris Jericho. Teddy Long came out first and talked about how the Draft was off the hizzle and SmackDown got the better of the Draft. I would say they broke even, but got the better? Okay, if you say so. First out was Kofi, still wearing Raw Red, and he was up against the guy he kicked in the head on Monday in Y2J. Now, some were complaining that the Raw draftees wrestling on SmackDown was a brand extension SNAFU, but I disagree. This was their last hurrah on SmackDown and I’m okay with getting them on the show in order to help the new Blue Brand talent get over. Before the match started, Jericho got on the mic and talked about how he’d done so much for SmackDown but he was moving on to become the face for Raw and we had to grow up. Kofi’s response was nice, short and sweet and got the crowd solidly behind him. It was a good little promo exchange to get the heat up before the match.

The match between these two started off slow, but it built nicely. Jericho had his good periods of control and led the match while Kofi got to fight back with the crowd cheering for him, which is exactly what he needed in order to get off to a good start on Friday. He got to break the Walls of Jericho and go right into a brief comeback, and he took the Codebreaker pretty well also. My only complaint is that the match seemed a bit too short, but it probably suffered by virtue of the promo so I’m fairly okay with that. I feel that we could have gotten more out of these guys but Kofi got the win and that gives him a strong start on his new brand, so it works for me.

SHOW KNOCKS BITCHES OUT: Okay, this was just great. They’re trying to turn Show face and Jericho is on his way to Raw where he’ll be over no matter what happens. Hell, Jericho would be enormously over even if he jobbed to Hornswoggle. So he talks about how he could have used the help to an unknown person, starts to berate him, and gets KO’d. Later, Edge is walking away and talks about how Christian wants none of him, and that leads into Show showing up. And another KO left Edge on the group. Those brief bits immediately solidified Show’s face turn and just like that, we had a big name face on SmackDown. And just in time, too….more on that later.

SHAD’S NEW LOOK: Shad had himself a short promo where he talked about how it was his time, not that of those moving from Raw to SmackDown. The promo was too short to really be worth much, but it did give us what I assume is Shad’s finalized new look:

Nice to see the dude got the number of Jericho’s tailor before Y2J split for Monday. I gotta say it’s a nice look for him and while I’ll have to see how it plays out, this is certainly a way to distinguish him from “Brooklyn, Brooklyn!”

JOHN MORRISON vs. CODY RHODES: Another match where we got a new talent put over at the expense of a departing one, this was a sad moment for Friday nights since we got the last SmackDown appearance of the greatest entrance in professional wrestling today. On the other hand, Cody had some very generic music that did nothing for him. In Cody’s first on-air match since ‘Mania, he performed fairly well here. This one played out somewhat similar to the Jericho/Kofi match, with the departing talent starting off the control until the new face fought back and took over. The difference was that Cody and Morrison got more time and they made the most of it. This was a slower match than I would have expected, but they had some good spots and worked well against each other. The only problems were the fact that the crowd didn’t seem to care about Cody—probably no great surprise—and the announcing wasn’t as good as it could have been. They spent a lot of time talking about crap like Cody not wearing kneepads and how he was fighting single-handedly (duh). They were also focusing on Cody’s lineage, which frankly reminds us that he’s the Legacy guy who was sent to the disabled list at ‘Mania. They need to reinvent him, not go off that whole thing. I appreciated Cody hitting the Alabama Slam as a touch to his old tag team partner, something we’ve seen before from him. He also beat Morrison cleanly, which did give him a bit of credibility; I don’t know how well they’ll follow up, but this was a good match for him.

SPEAR NO MORE…THANK THE GODS: Midway through the show, we got the appearance of Edge before he made his way to Raw. Edge was still getting the cheers from the crowd, who hadn’t totally decided if Rated-R was turning or not. Edge got on the mic and talked about how he didn’t want to go to Raw because SmackDown was his home and we were his family. Aww. He went over the top and told us that, from the bottom of his heart, he loved us. Yeah, I’m buying that. It wasn’t long before Christian’s music hit and he came down to the ring as people started praying for a one-night E&C reunion. Cue awesome points to Striker for the flash photography moment. Edge tried to play up the old times, and called Christian his best friend and wished him luck; Christian was having none of it. He talked about how they’ve known each other their whole lives, became seven-time Tag Team Champions. Thus, knowing him as well as he did, he could call Edge out. Edge tried to be all “wh-what are you talking about,” and Christian said that he used the crowd. Things progressed from there, and led into Edge finally admitting it, that he used us all. I loved the interplay between these two guys and thought it came off beautifully. He also, FANTASTICALLY, buried the “Spear” chant like it was Booker T and he was playing the Game. Christian then asked for a match against Edge, and that of course didn’t happen; instead we got the tease for when it does eventually happen and Christian came out looking damn good. He also got to send Edge off with the “Na na na na” bit, and you know what? I loved this, bar none.

MVP & REY MYSTERIO vs. CM PUNK & LUKE GALLOWS: Before the match, Punk and his posse came down so they could crow about Punk winning at Extreme Rules and keeping his hair. This was short but the usual nice promo from Punk, and got cut off before he could lapse too far into the usual Straight Edge stuff. Down to the ring came MVP to a very decent pop, and he got on the mic from the stage to pronounce how he was back. Punk was pissed because he was speaking, and Montel said that was the problem. He then apologized to all of us for Punk and said he was going to save us from Punk’s promos. Yeah, no need to do that buddy. He then attacked the Society and that didn’t last long in his favor until Rey Rey came down for the save. This turned into a match, and I thought that Porter and Rey Rey worked very well together. Punk and Rey worked the middle of the match together and of course they’ve been great; this was no different. Rey was a great face-in-peril as usual and MVP looked great off the hot tag on Gallows. MVP hit the 305, which is apparently his new finisher, and picked up the win. Post-match, Punk’s mystery dude showed up and nailed Rey Rey. Good stuff here, and it continues the Straight-Edge Society storyline of who he is well enough.

DID YOU KNOW?: This is the one and only time you’ll ever see this segment here. Instead of having the usual “Look at us! We’re cool!” it had Jack Swagger standing in front of the camera, letting us know that after winning the 2002 Rose Bowl, he got an invite to the White House by George W. Bush, who he called “the greatest president of all time.” That right there is about the best example of cheap heat ever. Later, he talked about how he led the Sooners to three national championships and had turned down numerous scholarships from Miami, Texas, Stanford & USC. Finally he talked about his GPA, his academic honors and how he spoke at the 2010 commencement at Oklahoma. I thought this was a way they could finally—FINALLY—use the “Did You Know?” idea for some good. Doesn’t redeem the whole thing but I thought Swagger doing them was a cute play on the whole thing and it made me chuckle a bit.

THE MANY TALES OF JACK SWAGGER: The main event segment had Jack Swagger making his way down to the ring. After all the “Did You Know” segments, the crowd was pretty sick of hearing about him and that did his crowd reaction a fair amount of good. It was even louder when he got on the microphone and continued to talk about…himself. Now, you can say “They only had him annoy us” and all that crap, but let’s face it; this isn’t X-Pac heat. This is because of his promo and not how poorly he delivered it. Did he antagonize them for cheap heat? Yes. But cheap heat isn’t always a bad thing. The crowd was giving him a hard time and that’s exactly what he should be inspiring. The heat wasn’t the unbelievable boos that some would make you believe, but it was undoubtedly impressive. Also, props to Jack from one Eagle Scout to another. He’s right about that…it really isn’t easy. Swagger delivered a great promo here that did a wonderful job in getting him over until Teddy came down and announced the new #1 Contender. The crowd was more than ready for this, and they popped huge when Show came down. This was the culmination of the entire show, with Show’s KO’s and Swagger’s brief segments. Show got in the mic and gave a nice promo about how Jack’s accomplishments still didn’t make him the World’s Largest Athlete. He made a comment about early retirement and then knocked Jack the hell out. Great segment to end the show and let us knowing the direction the new SmackDown was taking.

TEAM LAY-COOL vs. BETH PHOENIX & TRIPLE K: In yet another match designed to introduce us to a new face on SmackDown, we had the semi-continuation of the Beth/Lay-Cool match. I gotta say, after all the times of Beth and Kelly battling on Raw back in the days, it was weird to see them hugging pre-match. I will admit I liked Michelle’s “Bad move Kelly” shirt. The match was actually a bit better than I expected; Triple K looked less sloppy than she has in a while on Raw and it did seem to help the match, although there were still several sloppy moments from both Lay-Coolers and Kelly. Also, Striker’s commentary is at its worst with the Divas in there. He sounds like a young King, and that’s not a good thing. Beth came in and looked impressive, and then tagged in ‘K so she could get the win. This wasn’t a great match, but I can go with it since it somewhat exceeded expectations. Vickie needs to stop shrieking, by the way. It lessens the impact when she does it for big things. Jesus, lady, your team lost a simple tag match. Get over it.

CHAVO IS BACK (OR: WRESTLEMANIA 24 REWIND): We came back from commercial with Chavo Guerrero in the ring. About this point, I was expecting a Hornswoggle run-in. They decided not to go that route though (this time); instead they had Chavo talking himself up and celebrating the fact that there were two Guerreros on SmackDown now. That brought out Kane, who choke slammed Chavo and then grabbed a mic to say “Welcome back.” Well, it was nice to see Chavo earn a paycheck. This could have been worse and it gave Kane an appearance, but otherwise there wasn’t much at all to this and I was underwhelmed. When is this poor guy gonna catch a break?

ALL THE SUPER-SHORT PROMOS: Okay guys, I get that you’re trying to get all the new faces on SmackDown shown, and get some of the old ones shown so they’re not lost in the shuffle. But this was too much. We had teeny, tiny promos for Shad (as seen elsewhere), Dolph talking about sending ‘swoggle to Leprechaun Heaven, Matt getting a promo while he goes away to rest up and JTG saying he’s going for the gold. These were too short to mean anything, and they could have easily just saved some of these for next week. Instead, they piled them all together and they lost impact. I’m glad they want to give focus to some guys, but this wasn’t the way to do it.

DID YOU KNOW (NON-SWAGGER)?: Nope. And, as always, I don’t care.

CHRIS MASTERS’S PEC DANCE: You know I hate this, right? Let’s move on.

From Marky Mark:
I love the way Vince McMahon is keeping Christian and Edge apart (outside of Backlash 2009 and tomorrow night).

Gonne be epic when they finally are on the same show and clash on PPV!

I agree. They teased it nicely here, and this is one of those match-ups that the crowd is begging to see. So I’m glad they’re not wasting it without any build-up. The longer they can hold it off, the better.

From Dr. MagicPants
At least Hornswoggle isn’t coming to DX’s music…

Thank the gods for small favors.

From Nimesh S.:
I’ll admit, it was a pretty good Raw. It seems like both rosters won in different ways. Smackdown won because they can help groom talent for the future, such as Kofi Kingston and Cody Rhodes, while Raw has been restocked with big stars due to Triple H taking a sabbatical, HBK’s retirement, and Batista set to make his departure in the imminent future.

Another question: what type of match do you think could settle this once and for all? I was thinking of a two out of three falls match…

I think that they’re just going to have Batista get desperate here and when he loses, that will be it. Doing the Flair/Michaels thing with Big Dave would be a mistake because it’s still too fresh and would seem like the cheap knockoff it is. As for what match, I would say “I Quit” since Big Dave keeps talking about how Cena “can’t beat him” and this would be the final victory with Dave unable to deny it.

From Bobbay:
It’s sad to see Batista go NOW considering his improvements in character and wrestling have been showing up recently. He isn’t the best, but still he was delivering better in ring product lately which has made his matches more enjoyable.

I agree, but them’s the breaks. Dave’s gotta do what’s good for Dave, I suppose.

From Guest#0510:
My main concern about the draft is Morrison. He won’t be able to have the longer matches that the crowd get into on Smackdown. The best thing for Morrison would be a fued with The Miz, which could echo the Rock/HHH fued in 1998. A Miz/Morrison ladder match as Summerslam, perhaps?

Also, I know some people have moaned about the commentary on RAW, but, I think putting Striker with Lawler together might just CPR Lawler back to life. It seems quite clear Lawler doesn’t like Striker and it adds some much-needed spice. There hasn’t been any of that on the commentary team for fricking ages.

I agree on Striker, I think against Lawler he could really excel. I think he’s becoming a bit stale with T-Grish and they could have shaken it up. As for Morrison, I think that if handled right he will do just fine on Raw. He could easily get lost in the shuffle, but I don’t think he will be. We’ll have to see.

From jbardo:
People bitch about Smackdown been raped but i dont see how it has, Kofi & Christian are very close to been main event players, Big Show can easily slot in there when needed & they still have Rey & Punk, plus Swagger is doing well as champion, i really dont see the problem.

You took the words right out of my mouth, m’friend.

From Guest#8257:
It really is sad that Maryse and Eve are like sub bit part players on Raw yet they’re still more over than Michelle McCool, who is one of the most pushed wrestlers in all of Smackdown.

Raw was fantastic, some really good matches and I loved the draft picks. They’re trying to offer the best of both worlds, Raw has the all the star power while Smackdown will remain the real wrestling show with new guys getting a shot to main event. I can’t wait for Christian v Punk.

I agree, but one thing I will not deny is that Michelle has become a far better in-ring worker than Even and even Maryse. That is probably enough to justify her push. And the whole ‘Taker thing, of course.

From Guest#0099;
DOLPH ZIGGLER vs. HORNSWOGGLE should of been RIIIIIDDDDIICCCULLOOUSSS!!!!

I was tempted, but it was too short to earn that rating. Had it gone on longer, it certainly would have.

From Korsen:
It’s too bad that it looks like Bret Hart really is completely unable or unwilling to do anything at all in the ring because he is waaaay over. That crowd went nuts when The Hart Dynasty won the belts when they were getting no response at all before Bret showed up. I figured that big ovations he was getting when he first showed up would have gone away after a couple weeks but they haven’t. I don’t know if it’s cool that everyone still loves him so much after all these years or sad that a stroke victim who isn’t able to wrestle at all is arguably the third most over face in the company.

It’s unable, not unwilling. He’s a stroke/concussion victim; I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to embarrass himself in the ring so he does what he can to get his family over instead. Nothing wrong with that.

From The Great Capt. Smooth:
Next thing you know, the WWE will put out a “Sheamus” jar of mayo.

From someguy:
wrestling doesn’t provide many laugh-out-loud moments but Cena’s comment that Sheamus looked like a jar of mayo with eyeballs and a ketchup haircut was seriously one of the funniest things ever said on live tv.

WWE.com-brand Sheamus mayo? Eww. It was a funny comment from Cena, though.