Smackdown starts in the only way possible this week, a ticker tape parade in celebration of Jeff Hardy’s WWE Title win. While I don’t think this works every time, for a guy like Jeff who, as he stated in his promo, has been on the main roster and waiting for this moment for a decade, it really works.

People genuinely have waited for Jeff to get his moment in the sun, and it’s good that they started the show in this way in order to let him enjoy it. However, WWE obviously don’t have the utmost confidence in Hardy to deliver those 20 minute opening promo segments that have been a staple of WWE television since the days of Stone Cold Steve Austin, so Edge interrupted and ranted at him, playing the flipped-out, title obsessed guy who can’t live without the belt. He announces that Vickie Guerrero has made two matches for tonight, Edge v. Matt Hardy and Vladimir Kozlov v. Jeff Hardy.

Hardy ended the segment by giving Edge the Twist Of Fate, which, much like when you knew Steve Austin’s long promo segments would end with the stunner, was totally the right thing to do even if it was predictable.

The opening match was a tag team bout pitting MVP and Shelton Benjamin against R-Truth and Hurricane Helms. Helms is still very shaky in the ring at the start of his comeback, and to be honest I don’t understand why as WWE should’ve waited to bring him back or if he knew far in advance, Helms should’ve worked a little harder at both getting into shape and sharpening his in-ring skills. They continued the MVP burial as Shelton would refuse to tag him in, and when MVP would run in to get involved in the match he’d screw things up bigtime. OK I get that his comments towards the drug-test guy were immature and not right, but seriously the WWE are throwing money away with constantly making MVP look so foolish, they are really getting to the stage where you can’t rehab the guy because fans will see him as a loser forever. Early in the match the announcers commented that Shelton will defend the US Title against Hurricane next week, so that seemed to telegraph the finish, and sure enough it did as Hurricane used an inverted neckbreaker on Shelton for the win.

The next match saw Festus take on John Morrison, and this was basically a showcase for Miz and Morrison to continue mocking the big man, as Morrison won when Jesse went to hit Miz with the ring bell on the outside, but hit the ringpost and that sent Festus back to his retard-state and Morrison won with the moonlight drive.

The next match was the main meat of the show as Edge beat Matt Hardy in a long match. Much like Helms, it seems like Edge is still very ring rusty, the spots they did don’t have the smoothness that they had back in 2005, and Edge relied on a five minute armbar at one point that really killed the crowd, and when Edge is getting silence rather than heat you know it’s bad. However, the longer the match went on the better it got, as they went for a series of nearfalls that brought the crowd to life. It’s a statement of how great a worker Matt Hardy is when he’s NEVER won a match with the Side Effect in the six years he’s been using that move, yet it still gets amazing heat as a nearfall, helped here by the fact that Edge broke the count at 2 by putting a foot on the ropes rather than kicking out. Edge won cleanly, which is surprising for a top heel in WWE these days, by throwing Hardy into the ringpost and then spearing him as he turned around.

Next up was Ezekiel Jackson working a singles match with Carlito that showed just why Ezekiel is mainly used as a bodyguard. For such a monster, his stuff looked like it had no impact, his basic stomps and punches either look weak as shit or clearly miss by a mile, and you can really tell you suck when Carlito looks like Shawn Michaels by comparison. Awful performance from Jackson, who got the win with a standing Rock Bottom (not called that by the announcers since some people in WWE are still pissed off at Rock for leaving, conveniently forgetting the fact that in 2005 it was WWE who let Rock’s contract expire without even as much as a single telephone call).

Maryse beat Maria in your basic WWE Divas match. Maryse may just be the only wrestler in the world where the fact that she’s so terrible somehow still makes her great to watch. I mean she just beats the SHIT out of Maria when she’s on offense, and when Maria made the comeback she sold fuck all, yet she looks like a star and has presence on screen that nobody else on the Smackdown divas even comes close too. That was proven even more in a postmatch moment with Michelle McCool playing serious respectful champion (what a joke that is), and staring Maryse down after the match.

The main event saw Jeff Hardy beat Vladimir Kozlov on a DQ when Edge ran in. The match itself was about as good as you’d expect from Kozlov, and to Hardy’s credit the ten minute match actually felt like ten minutes, unlike say Survivor Series where Kozlov/HHH went around 15 minutes yet when you watched it you thought you were sat there for about 9 hours watching that shit. They did a good job making Hardy look like he was about to beat the monster, as he had hit Kozlov with two Whisper In The Wind’s just before Edge ran in. Then, HHH was shown on the big screen walking backstage, which caused the heels to stop beating on Hardy for some reason. Then HHH’s music hit and he walked to the ring, pedigree’d Edge and brawled with Kozlov on the outside. With Edge still down, Hardy hit him with the swanton and celebrated with the title to close the show.

That was a very wrestling-heavy episode of Smackdown, which I would guess is by design, in order to make that the wrestling show especially on weeks where Raw is so angle-heavy, it makes a good contrast between the two brands. I liked the use of Hardy on this show, as I’m sure many people were in the same situation as me in that they saw the Armageddon PPV as something skippable, not thinking they’d do anything big like put the belt on Hardy, and this show did a really good job of establishing him as the champion while also getting over a few challengers.

Mark Bright
mark@ifight365.com