Well with the announcement made on RAW this week that the draft doesn’t come into effect after Backlash (In which case WHY FUCKING DO IT TWO WEEKS BEFORE BACKLASH AND NOT THE NIGHT AFTER) – my anger at this show being strewn full of RAW guys should be less than it was last week. And with Smackdown being the wrestling-heavy show, and it taking place in front of the usually hot UK crowd, I’m optimistic for a good show.

Edge comes to the ring to open the show, in his American Idiot cover rip-off t-shirt – nice to see the WWE are now only five years behind on pop culture. He gets in the ring and cuts a great promo, going over his history with John Cena and how Backlash is the culmination of a three year rivalry. This HAS to close the show on Sunday, not this stupid fucking McMahon family bollocks 6-man.

Edge and Cena have, in their recent promo work, made this match seem like the final chapter in a three year feud and built it up to the point where I as a fan think they will do something epic and tremendous. It’s classic pro wrestling storytelling to the point where I’m actually kinda worried that management might be angry at Edge for trying to sell a PPV in case they think its “too 1980s rasslin” or some such bullshit. He talked about how Cena was right to say that he always gets back up, and put him over as his toughest rival, but also showed clips of the angle from RAW to remind you that Edge is sadistic enough to keep attacking Cena and do just about anything to keep him down. Excellent interview.

Our opening match is a tag team bout pitting Matt Hardy and Kane (lucky WWE storylines aren’t in 2004 like their t-shirt department because that would be one weird team) taking on CM Punk and Jeff Hardy, in your standard “put two PPV singles matches into a tag match on the TV beforehand.” This was weird, unless you’ve been reading the stories about how Jeff is talking about leaving when his contract expires this summer.

They got the heat on Jeff forever, Jeff made the comeback with a Whisper In The Wind out of nowhere on Matt, Punk dived through the ropes onto Kane on the floor, then Punk somehow disappeared, Matt shoved Jeff onto Kane on the apron and Matt rolled Jeff up for the clean pin. Weird booking considering Jeff has lost every match and here he just looked like a total jobber, you’d think if Matt is getting the big decisive win to firmly establish himself as the better brother you’d build Jeff up a bit so it looks like he beat somebody worthwhile, and if Jeff is winning you’re almost burying him too much in the build-up for it to mean anything. It’s lucky that Jeff is Jeff and has that unique charisma like an RVD where he’s over no matter what, but you wonder if he’ll ever get back to the level he was at during his Randy Orton feud or if that was his moment and it passed.

In the UK, we got our weekly From The Vault segment, which was a 2005 Smackdown match between Randy Orton and Rey Mysterio that did nothing except remind me how great they were in the ring together and how it’s a giant fucking mistake that Rey just spent a year on RAW and never once (that I recall) wrestled Orton in a match given some time or high profile.

A video package was then shown on the Backlash main event, focusing on Orton needing one last step to destroy the McMahon Family, while all his opponents want to destroy him but can’t work together as a unit. That’d be intriguing without the title involved I think, but the fact that the WWE Champion can lose the title without being pinned makes it seem TNAriffic. Especially when that WWE Champion is Triple H and he’s against Randy Orton, who has lost (cleanly) all three of his World Titles to – you guessed it – Triple H, all at times when he really needed a solid win and HHH to put him over.

Big Show cuts a promo saying it’s his last night on Smackdown, and that means the SD guys can sleep easier since the monster isn’t going to knock them out anymore. He says he’s leaving making the big impression of knocking out Undertaker, which brings out The Phenom for their match. And the match was GODDAMN AWESOME. It’s a shame that in the better known online sites they’ll get little credit because it’s totally the kind of match that Bryan Alvarez and Wade Keller will give *1/2 but the attraction of two huge guys working a “Battle of the Giants” match has always been a major part of wrestling, and when you’ve got a monster as believable as The Big Show and a guy who has learned to sell as great as The Undertaker, with great timing of comebacks and comeback teases, and Show putting that over while still remaining the bigger and more dominant wrestler even against Taker showed real skill.

The ending was BRILLIANT, and did a superb job of getting Show over as a dominant and sadistic monster. Taker went for his rope walk forearm smash, but Show met him with a punch, knocking Taker down. As Taker milked this forever, and was staggering around trying to pull himself up on the ropes, the crowd were going crazy chanting for Taker, and Show looked around at the crowd, soaking up the atmosphere, before snapping and going for the kill, hitting Taker with another knockout punch to the back of the head a la Foreman/Frazier, at which point Taker was out so Charles Robinson stopped the match. GREAT stuff that really put Show over as a monster – that guy needs to wrestle John Cena on RAW and on PPVs for the next six months because given time they could come up with something really special.

Shawn Michaels needs a feud with Big Show too; he’s another guy who could work some fantastic matches with Show in this monster role.

Up next was a sad moment for me, as Maryse makes her final appearance on Smackdown, defending her Divas Championship against Gail Kim. Maryse has got heelish arrogant greatness down so well. Getting Gail in camel clutch position only to rub her face in the mat and slap her across the head is just a great touch that really showed how she gets her character unlike few others in WWE. Of course her athleticism leaves a lot to be desired, as when she took a huracanrana I thought she was going to break her neck. Maryse won clean with the DDT.

Jeff Hardy is backstage cutting a whacky promo talking about how he’s going to do whatever it takes to make Matt say I Quit, and send him to RAW knowing that he lost when it mattered most, because he knows how much that would eat away at Matt for the rest of his life.

Clips are shown of some people from what looks like the American version of Loose Women – so I’m automatically assuming it’s by far the worst show on television – talking about MVP, before he comes to the ring for his match with Chavo Guerrero. Before this match, JR announces that next week on Smackdown – AFTER the draft is supposed to “come into effect” they’re ALREADY breaking those rules by having RAW’s MVP defend the US Title against Dolph Ziggler, after Ziggler’s win last week. What – they couldn’t do that match this week? Or at Backlash?

Grisham makes himself look like an idiot by saying there’s nobody hotter in WWE than MVP right now. He had a GIGANTIC losing streak last year, and fucking lost clean to DOLPH ZIGGLER last week. MVP wins a short match with some finisher that just made me think he should change it up to the Ballin’ Elbow and stop using that as a mid match spot. Dolph Ziggler comes out afterwards to mock MVP, to chants of “Who are ya?” from the UK crowd, which is really clever for a wrestling crowd given his gimmick. Ziggler’s promo was AWFUL.

It always makes me laugh when WWE have Lillian Garcia do the “don’t try this at home” ad. Yeah, I will try to avoid serious injury saying people’s names or singing the national anthem.

We then get a replay of Cena’s promo from Superstars. I can’t believe there are still people on the internet who hate Cena as a promo guy. He is BY FAR the best in the business today at getting over the importance of a big match, and making me want to watch it. Really intense, passionate promo making me totally believe that Edge and Cena in one final match to end the rivalry will decide who the better man is will be something special that I just have to watch. Dusty Rhodes, one of the greatest if not THE greatest promo guy of all time, has often talked about how Cena will always come to him for advice about stuff, and even though Dusty might not have been directly involved in this promo you can totally see his influence on Cena both in terms of content and delivery.

Some people have forgotten that the point of a promo is to PROMOTE your matches, not to be funny or be smart or be crazy or put yourself over, but to make people think your PPV match is worth going out of your way to see. And Cena did that here.

The main event was a tag team match pitting Batista and Shane McMahon against Ted Dibiase and Cody Rhodes. The main problem of this feud has really been the booking of Shane as Superman, and here that really wasn’t evident, he only really did his dancing around and shit to distract his opponents or just escaped a beating to set up Batista mowing them down, which is the way it should be, and of course the heels get the heat on Shane, with good solid pro wrestling without being spectacular, which is kind of what they’re known for, and you just know that if not for their last names they’d be “mechanics” or “solid hands” as lower-midcarders used to fill out a card without ever being positioned as stars used to be called.

Batista eventually got pissed off and with the referee distracted he ran in and BLASTED Cody with a spinebuster, and Shane made the cover for the win. JR was putting over the teamwork of Shane and Batista far too much for one of them not to be turning on Sunday.

Mark Bright
mark@ifight365.com