Looking At A 'at Least It Was Two Good Hours Of Filler' Edition Of Smackdown

Smackdown this week was built up around a really cool series of matches to determine an opponent for The Undertaker at Judgment Day. Then, the whole "Championship Chase" was discarded as a waste of time, since Vickie Guerrero and Edge had already set up for him to get the match anyway. It really made you feel like the show, which was good up to that point, was suddenly pointless. Why couldn't General Manager Guerrero just put Edge and Undertaker in the match at the PPV? It's not like Vince McMahon is going to show up and stop her. They took the belt off of Undertaker, presumably so Edge has a shot at winning it in a decision match at Judgment Day by DQ if Undertaker uses the unnamed gogoplata (at least, I am guessing that is where this is going). So, what was the point of having this charade of a tournament? Because WWE needed a way to fill two hours, and then not have it matter?

So, this week's Smackdown was a good show with some solid matches, none of which mattered in the end, because you're getting Edge vs. Undertaker again at the PPV. I guess if you are going to have a show be all filler, it might as well be enjoyable filler.

Onto my thoughts on the show:

Plusses:

CM Punk vs. Matt Hardy was a good, short match and a fun bout to start the Championship Chase. I liked Mick Foley pointing out that if CM Punk were to win, he would have double duty at Judgment Day, and that wouldn't bode well for him against an angry Undertaker. As for the bout itself, I liked the subtle things like Punk trying to use his injured arm to block the sunset flip, only to have it fail on him. They did some great counter wrestling here, with Punk missing his jumping knee and Hardy missing the second rope elbow, but then scoring with the Side Effect for a two count. Punk blocked the Twist Of Fate, then hit his jumping knee and bulldog. Nice back and forth, leading to the finish of Punk going for the GTS, Hardy blocking and going for the Twist Of Fate, then Punk blocking and going for La Magistral, only for Hardy to pull the reversal for the three count. It'd be nice to see a rematch down the road.

I know it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I loved the mat wrestling of MVP vs. Finlay. Once again, the subtle stuff, like MVP going after Finlay's eyes and ears to try and break the headlock, is a lost art at times. Finlay hurts his arm, and MVP goes to work on it (with Foley even calling the Fujiwara armbar!). Then after going to commercial with Finlay trying to avoid submitting, we come back and it is Finlay's time to shine. The slams into the ropes to set up for the single leg crab was great, leading to the two injured wrestlers each going after the other's weak point. We then had the old Steve Williams-Terry Gordy finish (and I just call it that because they always did it the best) of a back suplex and all four shoulders down. Good bout, and WWE could do worse than have a prolonged feud with them. I also appreciated that after the initial tennis ball gag (which had no bearing on the match) Hornswoggle wasn't a factor and they let Finlay just wrestle. Later on, they announced both men would move on, which made sense (and also gave us an even number of wrestlers for the battle royale).

I feared the worst when I saw that Kelly Kelly was wrestling on the show, but she was a perfectly fine abuse taker in this glorified squash that allowed Natalya Neidhart to look strong without sacrificing Michelle McCool or Cherry. Natalya hit a cool spinning slam, then we had the great spot of Natalya turning the "looks pretty but is so ineffective" double handspring elbow attempt into a back suplex. Oh, and give Natalya credit for taking mercy on Kelly and not crushing her with a German suplex there! Natalya with the surfboard, then Kelly got her moment of offense, but she was obviously totally outclassed. Notice the pop (no surprise, they were in Canada) for the Sharpshooter, and a nice ending to the squash.

I liked Big Show acknowledging Nunzio backstage, playing off last week where Show came out and protected Nunzio from a post-match beating from Mark Henry. As for the Show-Dreamer match, honestly, did you expect a different result? Big Show, who has been on a monstrous roll, should destroy an injured Tommy Dreamer, who wasn't winning matches against lesser opponents while healthy. Show dominated, Dreamer gets a few shots in, chokeslam, pin. I liked the booking here, as it set up Show as the freshest wrestler in the battle royale, making him a big favorite.

Minuses:

Okay, I hate those "ask the fans" segments. They never fail to make wrestling fans look silly. A choke that cuts off your windpipe is going to damage your lungs? Your lungs are in your throat? Seriously, does WWE really think their predominantly young male audience wants to hear the opinion of a five year old?

Kane vs. Chavo again? We saw it on ECW a few days ago in a tag match, now we see it again? Kane dominates, then Chavo works on the leg. Kane mounts his comeback, Bam Neely is a non-factor, and then Kane drops down on a sunset flip attempt for his least dominant win over Chavo to date. At least the finish was different. The fans were into Kane, but did we really need to do this match again here?

I suppose I should be glad they filled in the TV viewers on Cherry being split off from Deuce & Domino. Of course, I imagine most viewers probably had a hard time remembering who Maryse was (that is, if they cared). Maryse and D&D are never on TV, while Cherry has been on every week. Honestly, they should just split D&D and repackage them into new characters at this point. Oh well. I can't say I really even care myself, although part of me thinks this was the least dramatic family breakup in wrestling history (that is, if you remember that Cherry and Domino are brother and sister).

When Michael Cole said "There's nothing exciting about Kozlov" he may have meant his no-frills entrance, but it could just as easily have been in reference to his match. After a more entertaining bout last week with Colin Delaney, it was back to the same old squash match this week. Yawn.

Did we really need a fan poll to tell us Vickie Guerrero was wrong to take the World Title off the Undertaker? Too bad Smackdown isn't live, they could have done a more interesting poll, like asking fans to pick a winner in the battle royale.

A Mixture Of Both:

As always, they started off Smackdown with a recap of what went down last week, in this case the unnamed Undertaker gogoplata being banned and him being stripped of the World Title by Vickie Guerrero, followed by Great Khali getting choked out, and then the Edgeheads grabbing the title belt. The problem is WWE decided to show all of it again later in the show. I don't buy the "what if people tuned in late" argument either. This just tells me WWE didn't want to bother coming up with more original material to fill in the time. An interview with a Championship Chase finalist would have worked fine, or maybe a quick recap of the five qualifying matches right before the battle royale instead of just slapping in what we saw at the top of the show twice.

So, suddenly Vickie Guerrero now cares about fairness? She bans Undertaker's finisher and takes the title from him, but then announces he gets to wrestle for the belt at Judgment Day, while his opponent (in theory) has to win two matches? If Vickie was really looking to punish Undertaker, why not make him participate in the Championship Chase too? Obviously, all of this doesn't matter at the end of the show, but for now, it was a big mess of contradictions. As we saw on Raw, it's not like Mr. McMahon is going to overturn his heel General Manager. However, I am a sucker for tournaments and the idea of someone earning a title opportunity. Plus, putting ten former champions (and how many of you remembered Tommy Dreamer's ECW Title reign?) in singles matches seemed a pretty good guarantee of a loaded show.

I don't want to make it sound like I didn't enjoy the John Morrison vs. Batista bout, because I thought the match was okay. However, the moment Morrison inexplicably told the Miz to stay in the back, you knew Batista was winning. Sorry, I'm just not going to buy that Morrison can beat Batista without some help from his partner. So, a good match, but I was just waiting for the finish. I liked Morrison making Batista chase him to set up the slingshot kick, and the story of Morrison trying to deal with Batista's strength advantage. Batista sold for Morrison, although I felt the match slowed down a bit too much on the chinlock spot. The finish, with Batista blocking the springboard kick with a spinebuster/spear and then hitting the Batista Bomb was well done.

As far as Battle Royales go, this wasn't an amazing one. MVP was the only heel in the match, which I think tempered some of the crowd reactions, and there just seemed to be a general lack of focus early in the match, with everyone just trading off partners in three separate brawls. As the match went on, the two stories of the bout were MVP avoiding everyone, and Big Show throwing everyone. Then the eliminations began, with MVP tossing Matt Hardy, which made sense given their feud and the fact that Hardy has gotten the better of him lately. Finlay was allowed to shillelagh a few people before getting booted out by Kane, and then MVP sailed over the top rope when Batista dodged his running kick. Surprisingly, Big Show made only one elimination after being dominant the whole match, clotheslining Kane out of the ring. So, after an initial slow start, the match picked up the pace and we now had Big Show and Batista left. Show being fresher, looked to dominate Batista, but then Batista gets an advantage and goes for the illogical (okay, downright insane) move of trying a Batista Bomb. This led to the finish, with Show trying to backdrop out of the move and eliminate Batista at the same time, only for Batista to grab a headscissors and pull Show over the top rope with him. Batista lands on the apron, Show goes over, and we've got Batista going to.... oh wait, here's the screwjob. Edge is medically cleared and added to the match, and one shoulderblock later, Batista is off the apron and on the floor, and we've got Edge vs. Undertaker at the PPV. So, the past two hours of matches and fighting was all just to set up Vickie & Edge arranging another title shot for Edge at Judgment Day. Then the case holding the World Title belt blows off, and Edge runs off scared of Undertaker's "powers". A cool visual, but not enough to make me feel like I hadn't just wasted two hours on a tournament that didn't matter a bit.


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I loved that SD! the only thing there that I realized I missed was Deuce and Domino breaking up with Cherry... oh well, nothing big. Anyway, I think the tournament was there to give viewers the chance to think a new contender would be in place, but still wonder what Edge was going to do as he was "injured" last week.

I liked it, you just knew Edge was going to do something but didn't know when.