Smackdown Workrate Report 5/31

What Worked

PAS: Opening tag was pretty great. MVP may be the guy getting your interweb (and to be fair it is hard to hate a guy who got into wrestling by watching Dean Malenko matches in jail) push, but it is pretty clear that the Miz is the better guy on that tag team. Miz's elbows to the back of the head were nasty, I saw Lauzon v. Miller I was buying Hardy's concussion selling. Hardy has been doing the head injury thing on Smackdown for a while (his head seems fine on RAW), he does it really well, but I question the wisdom of doing mid card Nowitski, when Micheals is doing main event Nowitski on the other brand.

TKG: Miz clearly the worker of the team but I still think it’s ridiculous to have the announcers really play up “Miz getting serious, no longer fun and games”. Miz actually has really hateable “life is all fun and games” charisma. Maybe they’re doing some type of accumulated concussion booking thing, where Matt is still young and so can take more blows to the head then a guy who was in the biz longer..

PAS: The midget match was actually a lot of fun, they really kept enough crazy shit going on, that you never were able to get bored. Midget Muta Mist was awesome, and I loved the role reversal with Finlay under the ring. Face Finlay with his rabid little buddy should really get a run with the belt.


TKG: The mic work by Finlay and Boogey setting this up was nice too. This was all about lots of spots and stuff going on, not a lot of wrestling. All the comedy spots and heat spots were legit funny. Made me want to see them do the wrestler/mini tag. Made me want to see WWE try to go all AAA with a wrestler/mini/woman/exotico eight person tag matches. Do they have anyone to play a female boogey and an exotico Boogey? I guess you could bring back Jackie Moore and OJ. Female Irishwomen, exotico Irish? Well there’s Kiley Mclean and I’ve seen early Mid South Irish Sean O’Michaels. Would Vince be willing to go all old man fey?

PAS: Duece and Domino are really the most embarrassing thing in the WWE. Utterly cornball gimmick done badly, and possibly the two shittiest in ring guys in the whole fed. In a fed full of ugly faced women Cherry may be the ugliest, she looks Trinity gruesome, and that is with a ton of pancake makeup, I don't want to see the horror below. Still they kept them out of the ring, and the other four have a really nice rhythm built up now. I assume this is Taylor's last televised match, and he went out on a nice note. This is a fed full of guys doing cravates, but Taylors is a true thing of beauty, and he took a big out of ring bump. You got to love the WWE for putting old ass Dave Taylor back on TV even for a while.

TKG: It wasn’t just the cravate but the set up to the cravate. Regal's rapid fire strikes to either Deuce or Domino in the corner were pretty cool two. But this was mostly about the Regal/Taylor vs. Kendrick/London stuff with Deuce and Domino just getting in the way. I assume that both teams will be broken up in the draft. I wish they could’ve had their last hurrah’s without Deuce/and Domino there.

PAS: I thought Kane v. Henry was perfectly fine. Kane can't do a ton and Henry seems to be working off ring rust a bit, but Henry has nice punches and a great looking powerslam. Constant Zybysco stalling is an amusing way to set up a lumberjack match, although I don't think it really fits his gimmick.

What Didn't Work

TKG: I was calling for more mid card guys to get mic work last week, and Finlay and Boogey got little bits encouraging their minis. But then there was Deuce and Domino doing really corny fake Eric Von Zipper and fuck that was bad. They’re worried about the draft sending them to Korea? Aw man they should draft away Domino and then feud Deuce and Jimmy Wang. Venis moves to Smackdown steals Deuce’s Cherry, turns her into his rollergirl and the combination of that with Domino being drafted away leaves Deuce distraught.

Deuce: “My best buddy was sent over to fight the gooks, and you get to stay here and party living the good life, pretending to be a cowboy. “
Yang: “Hey there buckaroo he was only drafted to RAW, not Korea. “
Deuce doesn't believe Yang since he can't get USA netork with his rabbit ears.

So they’re not just guys in some sort of Doo Wop revival retro-greaser scene but they are actually greasers from the fifties who were taken by time machine to Smackdown? The whole idea of doing a draft kind of makes no sense at this point. Matt Hardy wrestles as a singles on Smackdown and a tag wrestler on RAW. Lashley is on both Raw and ECW. Khali moved back and forth with no explanation. What’s the point of a draft? Draft used to be a good device to feed HHH new meat. RAW wasn’t very good at building faces, Smackdown was…you send top non-Undertaker face to RAW to feud with Helmsley and you send the guy Helmsley has already chewed up to Smackdown where he turns zombie heel and has a minor feud with Undertaker. Currently RAW is anchored by face Cena and Smackdown is more or less anchored by heel Edge (with Batista as top face). Cena needs heels, Edge needs faces. Does Smackdown really have heels to send over? I mean the reason they brought over Edge was because they didn’t have a top heel ready. Does RAW have faces to send over to feed Edge? Cena is your top face, DX was the secondary face. Both members of DX are injured, and fuck the reason Edge was stoked to be sent to Smackdown was to be away from DX. I guess I could see sending Henry to feud with Cena, and you can always turn Kane heel…I don’t know what you do with Batista post-Edge feud, maybe he can be turned heel and sent over. But I don’t see any real benefits of a roster shake up.

PAS: The Venis fantasy booking is a really great idea, maybe Venis could wreck his car too, and spray paint it “Now I busted both your cherries.”

PAS: Who decided to give that woman's match 6 minutes? It actually felt longer then the Lawler v. Race 60 minute match we watched the same day. When they describe Michelle McCool as an ex- Academic All-American who used to be a elementary school teacher it makes me sort of sad. I mean most of the Divas would have ended up doing catalogue modeling and soft core porn, they were pretty much doomed no matter what. You get the sense McCool might have ended up having a normal life, good job, husband who loves her, couple of kids. Instead she has a life threatening eating disorder, and is stuck in a dystopian hell whole performing teleplays based around the twisted sexual fantasies of a guy dreaming about impregnating his daughter, serial killers wacking off their three foot cocks, and jamming crushed leaves in passed out women.

TKG: Kane v Henry had some nice spots but never fully came together. The match was supposed to set up a lumberjack match and so was built around Henry continually rolling to the floor and Kane loosing by count out. That all makes sense, except their really are two reasons for the roll to floor spots. 1) To slow down match. Opponent has the momentum and so wrestler rolls to floor to slow down the match. 2) To rethink strategy. Rolling to the floor to slow down the high speed offense of Kane makes no sense, doing it to change strategy requires that when you come back into the ring you change your strategy. JBL and Cole keep on talking about how cerebral Henry is and how “the monkey is using his brain”, but Henry rolls to the floor regroups and comes back with the exact same strategy.

PAS: Man was that final promo spot stinky. Batista seems vaguely embarrassed to be there, and Edge "scared" faces are cringeworthy. JBL is usually real good at putting over people on commentary, buy him talking up Finlay, London/Kendrick, MVP, even turds like Kane, but he can't pull off Edge as an all time great. Hell Edge isn't Ric Flair hell he isn't even Christian at this point.