After the debacle that was Monday Night RAW from Los Angeles with the basketball jersey main event and Vince McMahon’s horrifically bad “comedy” skit with the Stan Kroenke impersonator, I tuned into this weeks SmackDown fearing that the best show on television would suffer a severe lack in quality due to Vince McMahon’s huge ego making his latest grudge overshadow things. I needn’t have worried, because SmackDown delivered a great wrestling show once again.

The show starts with Rey Mysterio coming out to cut a promo, and being California he’s over as fuck. He talks about Chris Jericho, which brings Jericho out for the rebuttal. Rey points out that when Jericho promises to do stuff, like avoid the 619 at Judgement Day, or punch out Mickey Rourke at WrestleMania, he fails. This leads to Rourke being shown sat at ringside, and Jericho says he’s too much of a professional to go and punch. He points out that Rey wears a mask, and only dishonest people, cowards and criminals wear masks, then goes to sucker punch Rey, but Rey sees it coming, and gets the better of things before Jericho is able to escape the 619 and scurry up the ramp.

This was a decent opening segment as they continue to get over the mask aspect of Rey’s character and really play that up, so it should be interesting to see how far they go with that.

Up next was the greatest moment in history, as R-Truth raps along with his tag team partner THE GREAT KHALI and RANJIN SINGH, who dance along with him, and Khali even gets in a few “What’s Up?’s” on the mic before the match, which saw them take on Mike Knox and Dolph Ziggler. The story of the match was once again Ziggler doing anything he can to avoid Khali, a simple and basic storyline that works now, worked in the past, and will work again in the future because it’s something everyone can relate to, the coward who runs away from the consequences of his actions, even in a situation where you think he’s going to get payback. Eventually this leads to Ziggler walking out and Khali hitting the Khali Bomb on Knox to win, and the whacky face team danced together afterwards and it was great.

Then Melina won a non-title match against Alicia Fox, in a short match to build for her defending the title against Michelle McCool, and those two had a staredown afterwards to really hammer the point home.

Backstage, Shelton Benjamin and John Morrison had a confrontation, with Shelton saying they have unfinished business and Morrison just BURYING Shelton as a total loser geek, pointing out that he’d already beat Shelton twice, and his tag team partner twice as well.

Jeff Hardy came to the ring to cut a short promo about his history with Edge in ladder matches, and how it’s the perfect choice to climax their feud at Extreme Rules. Again, it’s like SmackDown is the show that knows what has worked in the past hundred years and applies that to it’s show, where RAW forgets everything. This was the babyface talking about his history with the heel, and vowing to win the World Title in an exciting match that he’s a master of. Pro Wrestling, ladies and gentleman.

Then Morrison took on Umaga in a really good monster heel v. bumping babyface match. Umaga, if he cut down the mid-match nerve holds, would be up there with the best workers in the company, he’s completely awesome in his wild and crazy Samoan role, and Morrison with his flashy bumps is the perfect guy to play off in a 12-minute TV match used to build hype for a PPV. This ended when Umaga used the Samoan strap on Morrison for the DQ, and continued whipping the shit out of him with it after the match before CM Punk made the save. We got another of wrestling’s quirks – Samoan’s having extra hard heads – as Punk nailed Umaga in the head twice with the Money In The Bank briefcase, and it just made Umaga wobbly, and took the running knee to the corner and a bulldog on the briefcase for Umaga to scurry to the back.

Let’s recap: Heel uses gimmick of the PPV match to beat down babyface, his opponent makes the save and clears the ring, but the heel is still walking out under his own power, if a little groggy. Don’t you love wrestling?

Afterwards, Todd Grisham interviews CM Punk, who says that although Umaga is bigger and stronger than him, he isn’t CM Punk, and Punk has made a career out of defying the odds and achieving things people never thought he would.

Up next was Team Angle against Cryme Tyme, and two boring tag teams who pretty much suck, and just by working basic tag team stuff in terms of getting the heat and building to a hot tag they happened to have a good match. Shelton hit the Pay Dirt on Shad for the win, and to be honest Team Angle really need strong wins if they, as the main heel tag team on the brand, are going to work with The Colons for the titles anytime soon.

Eve v. Layla was the next match, and they even got a video package of the last months worth of skits and pull-apart brawls to show that this is something they’ve built up, even though the match itself was guaranteed to suck, which it did. Eve got the win, because, like Torrie Wilson, if you’re doing meaningless T&A catfight type matches rather than serious women’s wrestling, the babyface ALWAYS wins.

Edge and Chris Jericho meet backstage, and Edge asks Jericho to follow his lead, so Jericho gets pissed off and walks away, saying Edge will have to wrestle the main event on his own. Then, in the ring, Edge cut a promo saying that although Hardy is always the star of ladder matches, and makes the highlight reel, Edge always wins.

During the entrances for the main event, Rey Mysterio was doing his usual deal where he will go up to masked fans and talk to them, and one of the masked fans whacked Rey’s face into the guardrail, before jumping over it and attacking him. He of course unmasked and it was Chris Jericho, who beat Rey down and started to rip at his mask before Jeff Hardy made the save. However, Rey was too injured to compete, so it was Jericho and Edge v. Hardy in a handicap match, and it went exactly as you’d expect. Hardy got beat down, he sold great, the fans went apeshit for his mini comebacks, and went mental for his highspots, particularly the Whisper In The Wind that took down both his opponents, and then just as it looked like Hardy could overcome the odds, he took down Jericho with a neckbreaker, but turned around into Edge’s spear for the win.

Mark Bright
mark@ifight365.com