SmackDown Discussion Thread - November 20, 2009 from Philadelphia, PA (#535)

[TPIB]

Venue
Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, PA

(SmackDown was taped following ECW on November 17)

Confirmed Matches/Events

Non-Title:
The Brothers of Destruction Vs. Jeri-Show

Intercontinental Championship: 2-out-of-3 Falls:
John Morrison (c) Vs. Dolph Ziggler

Final Build To Survivor Series

[Springsteen]

Batista def. Matt Hardy. Main event for tonight is Kane & Undertaker vs. JeriShow. Backstage segment - Teddy Long talks with Vickie Guerrero & Eric Escobar about the main event. Vickie says he's crazy for reuniting the Brothers of Destruction. Teddy tells her it was Vince's idea, not his. Vince enters & tells Teddy he's still on probation, but he is appointing Vickie as his consultant. Vickie starts screaming & dancing from excitement. Drew McIntyre def. Finlay. CM Punk is on his way to the ring. Punk comes out and tells everyone he is staging a straight edge intervention. In the ring is a table with 3 buckets, under each bucket there is a different item - cigarettes, prescription pills & a bottle of whiskey. He goes thought each one explaining why it's bad for you & dumps each item into a trash can. R Truth comes out & tells Punk he thinks he's better than everyone. He attacks Punk and dumps the trash can over him, leaving Punk covered in cigarettes, pills & liquor. Best 2 out of 3 falls match for the IC Title - John Morrison gets the first pin, Dolph Ziggler gets the second pin, Morrison gets the third pin to retain the title. Backstage Josh Matthews interviews Batista. He says he will make Rey suffer at the PPV. Mickie James def Layla. After the match Layla tells Mickie to look at the tron, a video of Michelle McCool dressed like a farmer calling Mickie "Piggy James". She sings Old McDonald while a picture of a pig with Mickie's face on it appears. The video ends with another pig with Mickie's face on it on a Looney Tunes background with "That's all folks!" written on it. Mickie is shown crying in the ring & walks off. Batista comes out for commentary on the next match. Tyson Kidd def Rey Mysterio after Batista hit Kidd to get Rey disqualified. Batista goes after Rey but he kicks Batista & runs off. Backstage segment with Jerishow talking about the main tonight, how they need to work together or they might not make it to the ppv. Big Show accuses Jericho of being scared of the Undertaker. Big Show walks off & the lights go off, Jericho freaks out & Show turns them back on, telling Jericho he just proved his point. Main event - Jerishow vs. Taker and Kane ended in a no contest, end of show.

PWI.

[DC]

He attacks Punk and dumps the trash can over him, leaving Punk covered in cigarettes, pills & liquor.

Punk's facial expressions and overall reaction to this should be something to see.

[ShaolinHandLock]

And people call PG for kids, do they?

[Jimmy Redman]

VICKIE GUERRERO IS THE GREATEST PERSON IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Not even just the greatest woman anymore, the greatest human being. Her celebratory dance of absolute, unbridled joy was AMAZING. That segment was a trillion buys, Vickie was great, Teddy was great, Vince was FREAKING great, and they decided to put Vickie back in weekly segments. This is awesome.

OK, I loved the sh*t out of Finlay and Drew. They played this great video of their 2 week angle, Drew cut a decent promo, and Finlay came out and BEAT THE SH*T OUT OF HIM. My God, Finlay beat the utter sh*t out of him. It was fantastic. And then the finish. It was awesome. Drew's jab to the eye looked freaking spectacular. I'd normally be unhappy with a 2 minute match, but in this case it was perfectly fine because the angle here was so good. Loved all of this.

I'm going old-school and getting extremely repetitive here, but another awesome segment. I'm glad that since Punk has nothing to do now they at least gave him time to get the straight edge stuff over. I liked his segment, really good heat for it. I mean, the pop when he uncovered the bottle was...disturbing, actually. This went really, really long and without a payoff would have been disappointing, but it wasnt. Truth was cool, pouring the crap on Punk was a fantastic spot with a fantastic pop. Just, everything was good here.

Whatever cliff this show fell off in the past 6 weeks or so, it has certainly climbed back up. And I'm saying this not yet an hour in.

Dolph/Morrison was pretty damn good. 'Only' 10 minutes, which felt short for a three fall match, the first two were good but the third one was awesome. They busted out a lot of cool sh*t, Morrison did a springboard somersault senton outside, Dolph used Jamie Noble's finish, Dolph's own finish looked awesome and he looked great working the abs on the post. Really good stuff.

And we havent even had women yet!

Speaking of which, Mickie! Against Layla! I love wrestling. Mickie usually throws crappy punches, but she was throwing HARD forearms here. Huh, Layla stole a move from Mickie against Trish, the 'kick her knee, her head hits your knee' spot. This was good for the 60 seconds they had. Finish was weird, but made sense given Layla had to cut a promo afterwards. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! MICHELLE MCCOOL BITCHES! I really dont know if that was the worst video of all time or the best, but it was certainly the b*tchiest video of all time. I love Michelle so much. Mickie was actually crying quite a lot here. B*tches man, b*tches. That was like the wackiest angle ever, but I love wrestling.

OHSH*T, Rey v Tyson~! They'll only get 4 minutes, unfortunately, but it should rule nonetheless. This show gets better and better, unbelievable.

There you go, they did some good stuff, but they went 4 minutes and were overshadowed by Dave on commentary. Normally I dont mind that, but its annoying when its a match you actually want to see. Finish worked, and OH MY GOD THIS FIGHT. Dave looked legitimately murderous after the senton, I mean he was SPRINTING after Rey to bludgeon him to death, and Rey just ran rings around him, embarrassed him and got away. Awesome work here to build Rey as having a chance.

JeriShow comedy! Unlike the Raw bullsh*t, this was actually just a side note to the serious issue and didnt make a mockery out of their main event match. And was even slightly amusing. Imagine.

They really are good at making things seem like bigger deals than they are. They're pushing the sh*t out of Taker and Kane together. Apparently they havent teamed in "YEARS", which just CANNOT be true.

The match was fine before the break, but I need to say, Matt Striker is SO F*CKING WACKY. There is no other word for it, he is wacky. In good and bad ways. There's so much alliteration and nickname-creation (which is good), and he said the longest run-on sentence in commentary history during Dolph-Morrison, which was fascinating. But he's always speaking in this weird sound-bite speech, rattling off long phrases he's memorised. Its like he's on SDvsRaw. Sometimes it sounds bad, because he's saying these pre-fab phrases instead of actually having a conversation with Toddy, which makes him sound totally insincere. Also, like, his timing is off in the sense that he's busy with these fancy word-play lines when he should really be just marking out and putting the big picture over. Like, Taker got the hot tag and was RUNNING WILD on Jericho, and Striker was busy discussing in a too-calm voice how Taker extends his elbow back when he punches, when he really should have been more like "TAKER IS ROLLING~!" Little things like that. He needs to relax a little and try and converse more and just react to the action more, and not just recite these memorised lines so much.

Having said all that, I do love Striker and these are minor complaints. For all I know its not his fault since Vince loves to micro-manage his announcers so...helpfully.

Anywho, the main event was really good. I mean, considering 3/4 of this match, it was just impossibly good. Really fun stuff. Loved it breaking down outside, loved teasing the announce table, loved Jericho's comedic fear, loved him turning on Show (I thought it would be the other way around when he picked him up). Really good finish. This 3-way really isnt that much more interesting than the Raw one, in fact just as a match its far inferior, but just from that final angle it was totally greater than the Raw main event. Funny what happens when you actually, you know, build your main event.

So in conclusion, I'm back off the wagon of hyperbole and Smackdown loving. This was an awesomely great show, everything was good, nothing was bad. This show.

[DC]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Redman They really are good at making things seem like bigger deals than they are. They're pushing the sh*t out of Taker and Kane together. Apparently they havent teamed in "YEARS", which just CANNOT be true.

April 15th, 2008 (BoD v Miz & Morrison - ECW) was the last time they teamed up. Before that, the previous two time they teamed were October 12, 2007 and December 22, 2006, so while not as "mega-event-ish" as WWE were saying, only the fourth time in nearly three years still works as a special deal.

[Jimmy Redman]

Yeah, I wasnt questioning the 'big deal' part, more the 'havent teamed in years' bit. I wasted years of my life writing about Smackdown last year, I KNEW they had teamed up sometime recently, although I'd forgotten it was as far back as April.

[DC]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Redman Yeah, I wasnt questioning the 'big deal' part, more the 'havent teamed in years' bit. I wasted years of my life writing about Smackdown last year, I KNEW they had teamed up sometime recently, although I'd forgotten it was as far back as April.

April, 2008, which is over 18mths ago (even if WWE want us to think they haven't teamed together since 1978).

That's pretty good going considering they've been on the same brand for ages (not that being on different brands is that much of a barrier) and WWE can't seem to let go of recycling things with their main-eventers.

[Jimmy Redman]

No I knew it was 2008. I just said, I knew they teamed sometime last year.

They havent been on the same brand for that long though. Kane was on Raw (and before that, ECW) until this year's Draft, and he hadnt really been on TV in months until he came back for the Khali feud. And Undertaker only returned at Summerslam, which means they've only been together on Smackdown for like three months.

By the way, when the hell did Kane even turn babyface after the Khali feud? Its a running joke that he goes back-and-forth, but I legit cant even remember, and it must have only been a month or so ago. Or did he come straight back into the co-captain thing with no turn? Actually I think he did, and he just became a face by default by bullying Jericho.

So anyway, if I wanted to get snarky about it, they've only been on the same brand together and both faces for a matter of weeks.

[Dante Spears]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Redman By the way, when the hell did Kane even turn babyface after the Khali feud?

Last Week, when he came out to save Undertaker.

All those Cigarettes must've cost a lot. But this is the WWE where they smashed custom race cars and break expensive crap for angles.

Still would've been funny if Punk had brought out a bag of ganja instead of pills.