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By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

SMACKDOWN HITS

Benjamin vs. Kane: This was a nice follow up to their match on ECW last week. Shelton Benjamin and Kane are building a good feud. They work well together in the ring. Kane needs to be in the ring with athletic, agile performers. It is much better to see him wrestle a guy like Benjamin than guys like Big Daddy V, Mark Henry, or even Batista. This was a fun match that had good action. It built on their first match when Benjamin tried to walk away from the match, like last time, only to have Kane stop him this time. The count out ending worked well. This allows Benjamin to brag, while making it clear that he was lucky to get the win.

Polumbo vs. Noble: This was a decent match, which is getting a Hit mostly for what happened afterwards. Jamie Noble looked good in the match. He has defeated Chuck Polumbo in the past by barely squeaking out a victory. This time he got more offense despite ultimately taking the loss. They did a good job of playing up the fact that he had to use his quickness in order to beat the larger opponent, and that his attempt at a high flying move is what cost him the match. The post-match beat down was very good, but it went on too long. It helped Polumbo get over as a heel, while building sympathy for Noble. Polumbo was good playing the crazed character trying to destroy his enemy. WWE has been inconsistent as to when security does and does not come out to break up a fight. It seems they only break up a fair fight, but will sit back and let one guy destroy another. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. This would have been better if it had been shorter. Polumbo did a lot of damage to Noble in a short amount of time (ramming him multiple times into the ring post) that it didn’t have to keep going to get the point across. It started to get dull by the end, and started to call into question the logic of how security is used, which is a shame as the match and beating did make for a very good segment.

Cutting Edge: I enjoyed the Cutting Edge with special guest Vickie Guerrero. I liked Edge’s nicknames for Smackdown’s General Manager. Edge gave a nice tease for next week as to what his question to Vickie will be. Vickie’s slaps to Rey Mysterio were good also. Everyone played their parts well. The brawl between Edge and Mysterio was well done. It made me want to see them wrestle again (this time without Rey limping through most of the match). The final moment of the brawl with Mysterio jumping onto Edge and knocking him onto the announce table was a good move. I don’t recall seeing Mysterio do that quite that way before. I liked the end of the segment with Mysterio sarcastically apologizing to Vickie. It showed that hopefully Mysterio is done trying to reason with her.

SMACKDOWN MISSES

Opening Segment: This was a terrible remake of the very good segment from Raw with the Elimination Chamber participants talking. This was not a good way to start the show (two bad starts in a row for Smackdown). Unlike Raw where at the least we got a good promo from Shawn Michaels to kick things off, on Smackdown we had another bland Batista promo. I have not been a fan of his mic work as of late. Nobody else helped. MVP is a great talker, but he didn’t shine this week. Two of the other participants don’t even talk, and the guys they pay to talk for them didn’t add anything either. Nobody announced the Main Event (which was decent in the end, but not particularly good). This did not get me excited to watch the rest of the show. WWE is being less than creative in their build for the two Elimination Chambers. They should have done something different than what they did on Raw. I guess when you juxtapose the two segments you see that they will actually parallel the Elimination Chamber matches themselves. By that I mean that just like Raw’s talking segment was very good and Smackdown’s was very bad, Raw’s EC should be very good and Smackdown’s EC should be very bad.

Cole and Coach: I was going to give Michael Cole a Miss for two stupid statements, but I decided to throw Coach in as well. Part of his inclusion is for not being very good, but also because he and Cole don’t work well together. I don’t know if Coach would be o.k. with a better play by play guy, but he shouldn’t be working with Cole. The first of Cole’s idiotic statements came during a particularly idiotic conversation between him and Coach about Shelton Benjamin being undefeated on ECW. Coach claimed that he was also undefeated on Smackdown. Instead of putting Coach in his place, Cole claimed that of course Benjamin is undefeated on Smackdown since he’s never wrestled on Smackdown before. I know some of you will say I should let this stuff go, but I’m sorry, I expect accuracy from my announcers. Any fan who’s been watching for the last five years knows that Benjamin and Charlie Haas, first as Team Angle, then as The World’s Greatest Tag Team were long time Smackdown wrestlers. They were WWE Tag Team Champions on Smackdown. Benjamin was on Raw longer, but it is stupid to ignore his past on Smackdown. I am unwilling to buy into the fact that Cole would have forgotten all the matches he called involving Benjamin. His second stupid statement was when he claimed that the resident redneck Jimmy Wang Yang is rubbing off on the resident reject Shannon Moore as Moore is now wearing a cowboy hat. Pay attention! Moore has been wearing the hat for several weeks. Does he watch his own show? Coach made some stupid statements during that Benjamin conversation as well, but really got on my nerves when saying that Mysterio was trying to 6-1-9 Vickie. This is obviously a different case than Cole’s as this was a scripted line, but it was a stupid one. I am tired of the heel color commentator loosing all credibility (not that Coach had any to begin with) when coming out with such a biased line. Wrestling needs to evolve away from some of the old conventions including 100% heel color commentators who come out with such stupid statements.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's Hitlist Specialist, providing his point of view in the Torch's hitlist format for Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and TNA Impact each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

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