So, with Raw having broken my will, I once again turn to Smackdown to salvage my remains. Once again, it does so, with quality wrestling and writing. Thank you, Smackdown .Thank you so damn much.
Our evening starts with a reminder that Cody Rhodes is awesome. Still wearing his hood, Cody comes out toting a cart full of paper bags. As per usual, he laments the loss of his facial perfection at the hands (knees?) of Rey Mysterio, and then, in a bit of a disappointing cliché, he comments how we all wear masks. But before I can get bored, he starts handing out the paper bags to the audience, telling them to start wearing them to hide their true ugliness. Classic. I also notice that the bags all have eye holes pre-cut into them, making me wonder how long that took. Of course, Cody has a bag specially made for Rey. That’s decent of him.
Rey and Cody have another match, and true to form, they are still incredibly entertaining and fun to watch. Their styles combine so well, and it’s good that Cody can battle someone so, well... small. He seems more of a technician, but given his smaller size, it’s harder to get that across with some of the bigger talents, whereas with Rey, he can execute his moves well and believably. I also really enjoy how they pace their matches, with both men being in the driver’s seat for equal periods of time. Usually with Rey’s matches, he gets beat up on through most of it, then makes a miraculous comeback at the end, but with Cody, he has moments where he is dominating, thus making the match more interesting and fun to watch. The ending comes a bit abruptly, with Mysterio getting the roll up pin, or at least I think it was a roll up. It was so fast that I actually didn’t get to see it. But I do like that they could end the match without a finisher move. Cody is shocked and dismayed, and as such takes the fight out of the ring, into the crowd, before hitting Cross Rhodes on Rey. It’s later announced that they will have one last match at Extreme Rules in a Falls Count Anywhere match. It’s not as extreme as I should like, but if its done well, it ought to be compelling.
We get another update as Michelle and Layla try to have counselling. It goes poorly, with Michelle beating the hell out of Layla. Ah, well.
The next match of the night is Jack Swagger vs. Trent Barretta. I’m always torn with matches that are so obviously aimed at killing a C lister in order to put over another guy. On the one hand, it does gives guys like Barretta screen time, and helps to get them into the public eye and hopefully pay off later. On the other hand, it’s so obvious who’s going to win that the match always feels like a waste of time. I mean, comparing this to Cody vs. Rey, where the suspense was kept up very well, here you just know that Swagger will own Trent, because otherwise, the match doesn’t even make sense within the plot line. Anyways, true to form, Jack wins, and it looks like he and Cole have made up from their last encounter. I really, really hope this is a work, in which Jack is trying to lull Cole into a false sense of security in order to get his own back at their Extreme Rules match with Lawler and JR. I mean, it’s the obvious plot line, but given that this storyline seems to be spinning its wheels, I would not be surprised to find the whole Cole-slapping-Swagger to be retconned entirely. Do the right thing, booking staff. Don’t screw this up like you did with Wrestlemania.
And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Kane and Big Show vs. Slater and Gabriel for the Tag Titles. I’ll spoil the suspense: Kane and Show win, and I’m ecstatic. First off, this gives the belts back some legitimacy. For most of the last year, they’ve been shuttled about in a helter skelter fashion, from the comic relief characters to the two stooges. Giving them to two established and famous stars means that they’re worth something, and thus treasured. Of course, if we had some more tag teams, they’d mean even more, but whatever. The point is, if you give the belts to two characters as famous and dominating as Show and Kane, then the belts look good; it’s a weird flip of traits where the wrestler is putting the belt over. But more, much more than this, it means that Slater and Gabriel lose. And this match shows why they shouldn’t have had the belts in the first place. They are just... bland. There’s nothing fun about them, they’re not good in the ring, and they just have nothing that makes me interested. Better than this, after the match, the two have a falling out, with Slater pushing Gabriel. Which is funny, because if there’s a guy who’s getting future-endeavoured out of this, it’s totally Slater. Good riddance, Heath.
Next match (ah, a good solid wrestling show: lot’s of matches. What a concept.) is Drew McIntyre and Chris Masters. See my comments on Swagger and Barretta. This one is a bit odder, though, because currently, Drew doesn’t have a story, yet they are really, really pushing him. And as they should, given that he’s near the top of my favourites list for this generation. Do the right thing, booking staff! Drew wins, and Masters... Masters is an odd cat. They keep trying to push him, but he can’t quite seem to get over. Frankly, the man doesn’t have a character, but he’s far better in the ring than he used to be. He is suffering from the same thing that sunk Dibiase’s boat: he has no personality. Don’t forget what the E stands for.
And now, Wade Barrett vs. Kofi Kingston for the Intercontinental Championship. This is a pretty good match, though for whatever reason, Wade seemed a bit slow. Sometimes, I wonder if Kofi’s style is /too/ quick, in that it makes other guys look plodding by comparison. However, the match is kind of the side story in all of this, as the focus is on Ezekiel Jackson at ring side, and how he and Wade keep exchanging glances. While I do like having these kinds of motivations and side plots during a match, they always run into danger of overshadowing the rest of what’s going on. Honestly, both Kofi and the threat of losing the IC Championship are almost a sideshow, because what we all really want to know is what’s Zeke going to do. As I said, it’s not terrible, and in the case of the rapidly dissolving Corre very potent, but I’m always ambivalent. At any rate, Wade has reason to worry, for as he’s grappling with Kofi outside of the ring, Zeke comes charging up, looks like he’s going to hit Kofi, and winds up decking Wade. The ambiguousness of this is nice, because it keeps you guessing as to exactly how things are going to go down: obviously we all know that Zeke is starting to turn on Wade, but he /might/ have really been going for Kofi, and it’s that sense of other options that makes for a deeper and more intriguing plotline. That way, you don’t know exactly when Zeke is truly going to knife Wade. Barrett wins by cheating (using the ropes for extra support while pinning Kofi) and has a stare down with Zeke. All right, Jackson, like I told Gabriel last week: make me care. Heath, you can just go hang out in the corner.
With the matches out of the way, we find that we are all invited to Edge’s retirement party, hosted by none other than Albert Del Rio! I love classic, dickish heel things like this. It’s made even the better by the amount of glee Del Rio brings with him: not only is he hosting a party for obvious evil purposes, he’s hosting it because he’s having fun. Del Rio’s pleasure in all the wrong that he does makes his character so delightfully hateable: only a true jerk would laugh at the prospect of retiring a guy like Edge, and that emphasis on what a jerk he is helps skirt around the “sexy” heel which we see so much of. Some guys can pull off semi likable heel status, like Drew and Punk (though we like Punk for all the wrong reasons; with Drew, just his strength of character is admirable in spite of how he abuses it), whereas Del Rio is content to make as many people hate him as possible, and I really like when guys go that extra mile, especially in a post Attitude Era world.
Del Rio claims that he has several gifts for Edge, such as his very own handicap parking licence plate, and a motorized scooter. I don’t know how I feel about this angle: because while, as we shall see later, Edge can still walk, and that the aim of this is to garner heat for Del Rio, the prospect of paralysis was a little too real in this situation, and to make light of it in such a fashion doesn’t really sit right. It’s just uncomfortable is all. But, in order to lighten the mood (or at least show that all is well), Edge does walk out from the back, commenting that he can’t understand why Del Rio is so shocked to see him, considering he RSVP’d the event on Facebook (is it any wonder why I’m going to miss Edge with lines like that?). Edge has a few choice words to say to Del Rio, which causes the aristocrat to send Clay to go beat up our fearless hero. But then, out of nowhere (seriously. I have no idea where he comes from) Christian appears to batter Clay with a ladder (also have no idea where the ladder came from), and then does the same to Del Rio. We end the show with Christian climbing the ladder and retrieving the World Heavyweight Champion ship, which had been dangling above the ring (had it been there all evening? I hadn’t noticed).
A good episode of Smackdown: A lot of the matches were kind of just throwaway matches, but there were none that were unwatchable, and all were of a decent length. Show and Kane are our new Tag Champions (it makes up for the brutal shafting Kane got this last Wrestlemania), the Corre is in its death throes, Rey and Cody continue to entertain, and Del Rio is a jerk. Only in wrestling could someone being a total jerk be considered a good thing.
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