Before we start, I’d like to comment that when the WWE officially stopped being an acronym of World Wrestling Entertainment and became just WWE (shouldn’t it be pronounced Weeeee then?), there was a huge scare that they were just going to drop wrestling altogether. Yet since this happened, we’ve actually had more wrestling on both shows (Raw and Smackdown) then we had before. Meanwhile, TNA is running a “Wrestling matters” program, in order to take a dig at the WWE’s transition, and they started their show this Thursday with a twenty minute promo prologue, with little wrestling to speak of.
Smackdown, on the other hand, starts right away with a match: Christian vs. Mark Henry. This is a good match, though the pacing seems off a bit. I’ve noticed with Mark Henry’s matches the last little while that their quality comes from his being able to merge his slower style with other people’s quickness, and working with it to create something of a waltz, but this time things seemed off key. That is, there wasn’t the neatness of transition from fast to slow that we had last week; the shift of tempos was a little more helter-skelter. But it was still a good match regardless, and I really liked how it moved in and out of the ringm as the extra movement of place gives the impression of action and narrative development, rather than two guys just standing in relatively the same place for ten minutes. I especially liked the ending, with Christian just hitting the Killswitch to win. It’s simple enough, yet given what a bitch Christian is being written out to be in the last little bit, it was nice to see him actually get a clean win, on his own strengths and merits, against the World’s Strongest Man. It gives him his credibility back, and makes him look good as a result.
Christian gets hold of a microphone, and as we review the events of last week’s match, with Orton screwing around in the #1 Contenders Match, Christian is irate that he had Sheamus pinned for no less than six seconds, yet the ref didn’t count as he was busy with Orton. And again, Christian is completely right. I’ve said before that I’m glad they’re going the route of making this heel turn more complicated and motivated by believable circumstance and plot points, but it still doesn’t make sense to have Christian be the bad guy here when it’s quite clearly Orton who’s acting in an antagonistic fashion. Christian still feels that he should be given another chance at the World Heavyweight Championship, when out comes Teddy Long. And guess what? He’s actually made a decision! Sadly, he’s decided that, shenanigans or no, Sheamus did earn the win last week, and still deserves to be the #1 Contender. Christian then lobbies for a Triple Threat Match, and just to bolster support, he says he’ll pull a Teddy Long and ask the audience to make some noise if that’s what they want. Not only is that an awesome moment of pointing out how stupid the democracy of making the Orton/Christian title match was, but lo and behold, the audience makes a fair amount of noise. Why, it’s almost as if... the audience /wants/ to see Christian as Champion! Teddy is not to have any of this, though, but does announce that Christian can be the guest referee for Sheamus vs. Orton. Whee.
Meanwhile back in struggling Divas land, we’re still trying to cope with the loss of Kharma, and our match tonight is a repeat of last week, with AJ and Kaitlyn vs. Tamina and Alicia Fox. This time, however, not only is Natalya at ringside for the good guys, we have Rosa in league with the bad guys. Apparently, much like Tamina, she had an off screen heel turn as well. I should say, though, it’s pretty neat how they managed to get nearly all the Smackdown Divas on screen at the same time. The match is better than last week’s, though Kaitlyn is still pretty lost out there. There’s more tagging and more action, and AJ gets in the ring longer. They’re writing her here as inexperienced and struggling, but having watched some of her stuff in NXT 3, she’s actually really solid, and I hope for good things. Regardless, she gets pinned by Tamina, and the bad girls walk off with another win to their names. Man, it’s been so long since we had a team that wasn’t Michelle and Layla pick up a win that this is almost shocking.
And what would Friday night be without a visit from our favourite psychopath, Cody Rhodes? He says that all the record books will claim that Daniel Bryan won their match last Friday, yet it’s hard to claim victory when he was laid out and beaten afterwards, and had a paper bag put over his head. I love how Cody goes to town on Daniel, with the line of the night being that Daniel Bryan “...oozes ordinary,” and that one day, he’ll be back in the crowd, watching as Cody becomes World Heavyweight Champion.
We go from interesting characters to Jinder Mahal and the Great Khali, which sucks the wind right out of the sails. Apparently, Jinder is not only a manager, he’s a wrestler too. Goody, now he can waste my time both in and out of the ring. His big debut match is against Yoshi Tatsu, and naturally, it’s a squash match. I’m always dubious about putting new guys over in squash matches: the idea, of course, is to make the new guy look ultra dominating, able to crush seasoned competitors, and thus legitimize their being in the WWE, but this is at the cost of not permitting us to actually see how they do in a real match. We know they can do things when they get to just punch for thirty seconds, but how do they do against legitimate opponents? If you compare this debut to Sin Cara’s match against Primo, the latter was far superior, because we got to see Sin Cara have a fantastic match right off the bat, rather than having him just flip around and show off. There was more substance to his debut, letting us know we were in good hands for a long period of time. Here, all we know is that Jinder can have matches that are thirty seconds long, and unless that’s all he’s going to have for the rest of his career, we don’t know much about him. Also, his ring work is boring and uninspired.
Speaking of uninspired, we get Ezekiel Jackson once more trying to snag the Intercontinental Championship from Wade Barrett. Zeke is still big and bland, I’m afraid, though I should say I was expecting more from this match, as Wade is generally a good worker with the bigger guys, and can help put on a decent show. It doesn’t help, of course, that we’re all just waiting for Slater and Gabriel to show, which they do, and the match again goes nowhere. I think that’s what bugs me about the Corre the most: nothing about them actually goes anywhere. They keep edging towards plot points, then back off and change direction, and then go back to where they started. Their matches don’t have satisfying conclusions, and they’ve yet to actually accomplish anything. Every match is the same, and as a result, they never get to develop a tangible plot line.
Luckily, this double whammy of lame is countered swiftly and efficiently by Daniel Bryan vs. Ted Dibiase. The moves and techniques in this are, of course, very well done by both men, though the narration is a little obvious: Bryan is on top for a while, hitting all of his moves for about five minutes, then Ted muscles back, hitting his moves for five minutes, then back to Daniel to wrap things up. There’s not a lot of back-and-forth or constant narration building to it, making it feel that one guy is fighting a sand bag that can’t defend itself until the Act is up, and then they change roles. Regardless, it’s still a good match, and I’m glad to see that Ted and Daniel are getting screen time to show off their skills, and that Ted isn’t jobbing anymore (that is to say, he’s still losing, but he no longer looks like a wimp for it). Alas, the dastardly Cody Rhodes appears halfway through the match, and stands at ringside, glaring at Bryan. I really love how they don’t cop out with Cody being here and just end the match in a DQ: Bryan gets to win, and then Cody attacks him, so we get a satisfying match while still having the necessary plot development. Ted gets in on the revenge action too, as he and Cody reunite to activate the fearsome Legacy Stomp! For five seconds, I’m almost nostalgic about Legacy, before I remember I hated them nearly as much as the Corre. But Daniel need not fear, for here comes Sin Cara to the rescue! I realize that out of these four, Ted is the biggest, and he’s not that big. I hope we can carry out this team vs. team thing for a bit, because Ted needs the screen time, Bryan needs a rivalry, Sin Cara needs a plot, and Cody needs to be more awesome. So everyone benefits from this.
Main event time, with Orton vs. Sheamus for the World Heavyweight Championship. Christian comes out first, wearing his official referee striped shirt (you can’t ref if you don’t have the shirt), and I like how he’s used in this match: too often with guest referees, they tend to take over the entire match, or at least over-shadow the people in the ring. Here, Christian’s presence is muted until the end. Yet, somehow, without having Christian playing with the emotions of the match, the whole things comes off as a little bland. It’s not terrible by any means, but we all know good and well that Orton is going to win, and without Christian manipulating narrative convention during the match, there’s not much to it. At any rate, Sheamus missed a tackle on Orton and winds up hitting Christian, who handles that sort of thing very poorly. As such, when Sheamus goes to pin Orton, Christian counts to two... before mysteriously developing a cramp in his wrist, and has to massage it before he can hit the mat a third time. Kind of a dick move, Christian, not gonna lie. Though, again, it seems that Christian is defending our supposed hero of Randy Orton, who certainly did no such thing last week to help Christian. Boy, it sure seems like Christian is definitely the better protagonist in all this, doesn’t it? Orton RKOs Sheamus and wins. Shocker.
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, in one of the most ill conceived turns of all time: Christian decks Orton with the Championship and walks away with the belt, earning boos from Orton fans. Yay, he’s a heel now, yippee skip, didn’t see that coming, blah blah blah. And yet, you can /still/ hear an audible “Let’s go Christian” chant from the crowd, who are obviously not as stunned or torn on this as the writers perceived. I’ve said everything that can be said about why this makes no sense, and how if anyone is a sympathetic, heroic character in this, it’s Christian, and to take his actions negatively is just silly, but whatever. It’s a dumb conclusion, but again, at least the writing to get to this point was good and believable.
Thus Smackdown, with a lot of wrestling and a lot of character development. Obviously, not a fan of the Christian turn, or of Jinder Mahal. Still, the opening match and Ted vs. Daniel were solid and fun, with good promise of future plotlines to come. I do appreciate that they’re panic-writing with the Divas and trying to come up with something, and aren’t completely ditching them.
And no matter what happens, I still consider Christian to be the hero of this show.
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