The Friday Supplement: 12.23.11: Comments and News and Reviews, Oh My!

Welcome one, welcome all, welcome… y’all…

Everybody’s favourite Still Guest#8287 chimes in to start:

“Johnny Ace was entertaining this week, the look he had accepting Punk’s award. Hope he can keep that look and attitude, it is better than what he was doing before.

I would think Kane/Cena will be on the show, but would love to see 1 show without him on the card. I’m fine if he shows up and supports Ryder in his match, or fights with Kane during a promo, I just hope they have to guts to have him not wrestle on a show. I get he is “mr. WWE” but it would be a good test to see how good the show can be without him. I’m also shocked Sheamus is not on the show.”

You got your wish, as Cena was nowhere to be found. Was the idea that he was recovering from Kane’s attack? I mean come on, it was just a chokeslam. Sheamus did indeed get on the show, which actually kind of shows how Cena is more important than him (even though that’s a given). I don’t think they would ever just book Cena randomly in a match mid-PPV, but that happens to Sheamus and others like him (gingers?) on a somewhat regular basis. Hell, there were 3 unscheduled matches on the TLC show alone.

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Mark of Excellence ponders the WHC:

“Big Show should not pull it out. Henrys run has been great and a Big Show win would kill it. Orton, Sheamus, or Daniel Bryan are the only guys that should win it. And I hesitate w/ Bryan. They’ve been so up and down w/ him. No heat.”

I did call it and Show did indeed win the match and the title. Apparently this is because of Henry’s legitimate groin or other leg-type injury. I think the plan was definitely for Bryan to cash in and get the belt at TLC, but it was probably going to set up a short feud with Mark Henry. Instead, since Henry can’t compete, they’ll do a program with him and Show. Ideally I would have them do Show v. Bryan at the Rumble and Elimination Chamber (maybe a submissions match at the latter?) and then have Bryan defend the WHC against the SmackDown EC winner at WrestleMania.

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Double Standards (if that is his real name) has a problem with my Lita prostitution comment:

“So a woman cheats on a guy and shes automatically a whore? Yet if CM Punk did it you’d want to give him a high five.”

EXACTLY! Actually, no, sir and/or ma’am. It was a joke, which is kinda what we do around here. Plus, Lita’s character, might I add, was that of a complete whore for the last few years of her career. And CM Punk is a complete whore. And his unbelievably hot ex is now banging Mike Bennett. I’ll say that The Prodigy is a good looking dude, but he looks like he’s just constantly sweating and that he wears tons of Axe to cover up his man-smell and it still won’t go away. I’m sure that’s not true, but he does look like that guy. Just sayin’. I’m just a messenger.

(insert Just Joe picture here)

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Guest#3089 brings it around:

“Lita was smart to cheat on Matt all things considered.”

Hear! Hear! Reby Sky fell into a world of trouble getting caught up with the Hardy clan.

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A lesson in house show ads for Justinrotnluk:

“Henry’s probably gonna win at the PPV because he’s being advertised for a cage match at a house show with big show 3 days after Christmas at the 1st Niagara Center in Buffalo. The commercial says Mark Henry’s title is on the line.”

Henry got hurt long after the house show commercials were made and chances are they didn’t have plans laid out for Bryan to win the WHC when that ad was put together. The rule of thumb has always been “card is subject to change”. You can’t put much water in the local ads Easter basket. Or something like that.

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Guest#3401 makes a shameful point (lobster head):

“Also no Sheamus here…I was kind of expecting them to be put together in a ladder match with the winner getting a shot at their brands champion at the Rumble. Or maybe they are just phoning it in, and looking to find a way to blame Punk for the poor buy rate.”

The card was honestly too good for them to be accused of “phoning it in”, although with no Cena on the show it may end up hurting the buyrate. Or maybe it’ll help because people who wouldn’t usually have shelled out cash for the show will do so because there’s no “Super Cena” to deal with. Plus, even though Punk was in the main event for the WWE Title, the PPV also featured Triple H’s big return to action after a few months off. If the buyrate is low, Punk and his indy crew are not to blame. What would be the cause? I couldn’t tell you. Let’s see what numbers the show does and come back to this topic in a few weeks.

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My pal and yours, Dr. Wiki, responds to the comments of the jerk I referenced above:

“So if a chick is scared she’s a lesbian?”

If that’s the case, I am SO going to start wearing scary masks all year long. That would be AWESOME.

Cue the “you don’t need a mask” responses from the originality-loving haters out there in 411-land.

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Guest#1384 closes out the comments from the 12/14 column:

“Does anybody else think that Brock Lesnar’s opponent accidentally let slip that he’ll be sending Lesnar back to the WWE, and hence those ‘cryptic’ videos of the past several weeks are a sneaky return setup for Lesnar?

It’s a long shot though. I still hope the videos are about a surprise Matt Striker ring return.”

Maybe it can be Matt Striker returning with Michelle McCool as a manager. Remember when she was the sexy schoolteacher valet way back when?

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To the Doctor and the Captain: Rip Doff (working title) will be back in pre-production in 2012. Once the year-end stuff is over with we can make this more of a priority again. I’d have #FatBK take over for me, but he’s really just a silly incarnation of my own imagination and I have to write his material and do everything that I claim he’s doing.

I’m not sure if you guys were aware of that. #FatBK isn’t actually my intern. I just use pictures of him from WWE.com and put them into a funny context. Shocking, right? I figured if I didn’t tell you this I would be going into the new year with a lie in my pocket. That’s not my style.

Anyway…

WWE’s final pay-per-view of the year was quite a crowd-pleaser for most of us on this here internet. Let’s see what I think about it. Go!

This match is a testament to how a guy can get over if you just do it right. Ryder had to work his Long Island ass off to get a shot, and once he finally got so much support that they just had to listen, WWE built his title win up right, made the fans want it even more than they already did, and we get an atmosphere like the one in the opening contest of TLC. The match was definitely good, but it would not have been as good as it was if not for the crowd, which was hotter for this one than any match in recent memory. Ryder looked sharp and TZZM did what he does and made LIIZ look even sharper. The main story of this contest was The Zig Zag Man going from his original belief that Ryder was just an idiot that lucked/willed himself into the title shot to realizing that this guy was, as Cary Elwes’ Westley would say, not someone to be trifled with. Once he saw that Ryder wasn’t going to go down without a hell of a fight he went into survival mode and tried every trick he knew to pin Zack’s shoulder’s down to the mat, and he did it with perfect desperation. This match went exactly as it should have and nothing could have set the tone for the night better. And it looks like John Morrison’s number 1 fan is now finally a member of the Zack Pack. Zack Ryder’s dad (with his creepy mustache) and The Big O were elated to see their boy take it. So am I.

Rating: ***1/2

Unannouned Tag Team Championship match! Not bad. This, I believe, is Air Boom’s second match back as a team since Bourne’s suspension. Primo & Epico earned this shot by defeating the champs in a non-title match at the Tribute to the Troops show and then followed up by beating The Usos on SmackDown. In his first (and possibly only, we will wait and see) tolerable moment of the night, Michael Cole attempts to explain exactly what I just said and tries to introduce just who in the heck Primo & Epico actually are, only to have King talk over him and interrupt him over and over again to talk about Rosa. Damnit, King, enough already. Match was pretty good. The First & The Epic are a strong team — cousins and really good wrestlers. Did they just decide that the two of them just looked too nerdy to be teamed with Hunico? They really do. Oh, and why did nobody tell me that Hunico was Incognito? I know Cole and WWE.com told the story of Sin Cara stealing Hunico’s gimmick in Mexico, but I didn’t realize that it wasn’t just a BS story. I mean, I knew that Mistico (the original Sin Cara) was not the original Mistico, but I was not aware that Hunico was Incognito, who really was the original Mistico. My mind is blown. Incognito used to sell chocolate bars after indy shows. I bought one after his team won the 2008 CHIKARA King of Trios. It was a’ight.

Rating: **1/2

I know they’re trying to get this over as a fierce rivalry, but nothing that’s being done is telling me that these guys hate each other. It strikes me as Barrett wants to use Orton as a stepping stone and Orton sees Barrett as another upstart to take down. They want us to think there’s more to it than that but nothing is actually being done to make it believable. As a match this was certainly better than the one they had for Orton’s WWE Championship in 2010. Wade has certainly grown as a wrestler and Orton is balls out awesome this year so that helped. Barrett’s attempts to kick Orton off the apron and through the table below were some good spots and his forethought in moving the tables out of the way when they became more of a danger than an aid was something simple and smart, and King was quick to point that out a couple times. Wade overshot the final RKO spot but the table broke perfectly and all worked out well. After Barrett put Orton through a table on RAW this program is certain to continue — the question is whether or not they will step up and have Barrett use his promo abilities to take the feud to the next level and make it the “personal” fight that they claim it has been.

Rating: ***

What’s more fun than watching a couple of big lumbering dudes wallop each other with chairs? Not much, for my money. The psychology with Show’s hand should be done in every match, and it was good on Henry to stomp the chair onto his hand in this one. I would have liked them to do the spot where Show punches a chair out of somebody’s hand, except in this case the chair would actually win since his hand was damaged. The finish kinda sucked — was the idea that Big Show punched the chair back into Henry’s face or was he just able to dodge the chair and hit the WMD clean to the jaw? My sentiment about Daniel Bryan winning the belt is simple: fuck yes. Like I said on Wednesday, I will withhold judgment until more time passes and we see how the title reign begins to move along, but as of this moment we’ll just bask in happiness.

Rating: **

I was shocked to watch this match and see that it was actually enjoyable. Thanks almost in no part to Kevin Nash, who was pretty much just a body for Triple H to share a ring with. An overgrown, underprepared, unfit broken down body. Thankfully this may indeed be Nash’s final match — he can go out with one last good match to his name and Triple H proved that he can still, when he wants to, get at least three start out of a broom. Outside of a few moments this match was almost 18 minutes of Triple H beating up Kevin Nash and making it entertaining as it possibly could have been. He attacked the crap out of Nash’s knees, notably with an awesome figure four leglock in the ladder which I don’t remember ever having seen before. I assume that Triple H is going to take it easy leading up to WrestleMania. Maybe he’ll enter the Rumble.

Rating: ***1/2

Booker looked a little rusty in there but I’m looking forward to seeing what he can do in a longer match where he doesn’t have to sell getting beat up twice in the hour leading up to the match. I assume that’s why he acted so oddly before and after the spin-a-roonie. I wonder why Cody used the Beautiful Disaster instead of CrossRhodes to win the match though. Oh, and Booker’s punches were way better than Cody’s.

Rating: **1/2

Great, great, great way to close out 2011’s pay-per-view match lineup. All three men worked hard to put together a main event worthy of the WWE Championship and they included some darn good spots. They had two inventive ideas utilizing the handcuffs, the second of which saw the ring being broken another time by a wrestler. The crowd was hot all night, especially for Ryder in the first match and Punk in the main event. They chanted his name throughout his ENTIRE entrance from before his music hit until it was over. That’s uncanny, the kind of thing that only happens in a world where crowd chants are piped in over the PA system. Fuck anybody for thinking that CM Punk isn’t THE man. Kudos to Ricardo Rodriguez for taking one of the biggest and most dangerous bumps in the PG-era and kudos to all involved for this one being a really good match.

Rating: ****

That’s going to do it for this bite-sized miniature edition of the Friday Supplement. Coming up next week I’ll have my double-dipping year end extravaganza in special editions of both the WedWi and the Fripplement. Until then, I’m out.

Next week: SPECIAL EDITIONS!

– Nicholas A Marsico