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SMACKDOWN HITS

Tag Title Match: The first of “three” Championship matches was a good Tag Team Title match of Miz & Morrison vs. Yang & Moore. This was a fun 8 minute match with good action throughout. There was a lot of energy as we are coming to expect from these four. Jimmy Wang Yang and Shannon Moore have been built up as pretty credible opponents for John Morrison and the Miz (particularly last week), so it was believable that they would be able to hang with the Tag Champs as well as they did. There was one really nice near fall at the end of the match when Moore did a backslide on Morrison. Many WWE matches have ended similarly as of late, which added to the believability of the near fall. In fact, if Moore & Yang were to win the Tag Titles, I was assuming they would win on some type of roll up as opposed to Yang’s moonsault. In then end, the right team won as Miz & Morrison have proven to be good Champs and I would love to see them move on to another good feud, although I don’t know who could challenge them next.

US Title Match: This was not a great match, and was a bit disappointing as it had a pretty methodical pace, but it was still a good intense match. The announcers even did a nice job of covering for the pace by talking about the strategy of Matt Hardy slowing the pace down from his usual matches. I did really like the intensity. I enjoyed some of the pounding that Montel Vontavious Porter did to Hardy’s head. The two running kicks, especially the one when MVP was on the outside of the ring, were very physical. It was interesting to watch MVP dominate much of the match. Hardy did a very good job of selling the effects of being dominated while attempting to make comebacks. He got in enough scattered and high impact offense to keep the match from getting too one-sided. WWE is doing a good job of building up the Twist of Fate as a killer finisher. That is part of why I liked this match, as Hardy hit the move out of nowhere for the win. That really helps to cement the move as something that an opponent must avoid. The slow pace took the match out of the very good range, but it was still a good US Title match.

Mick Foley: Foley had a pretty good first week as Smackdown’s color commentator. He wasn’t great, and you can tell that he needs some time to really feel his way through the new job and get some timing and chemistry with Michael Cole. But, he is a far improvement over Coach. He has instant credibility as a former WWE Champion. He has a great sense of humor. And, he knows how to talk. It will take a few weeks, but I suspect we will all look back on this as the start of a good period of color commentating on Friday nights.

SMACKDOWN MISSES

Big Show - Henry: I like Mark Henry. I am not a Henry hater the way I am a Great Khali or Big Daddy V hater. But, he is still very limited in what he can do in the ring. We saw him face The Big Show a few weeks ago, and it wasn’t pretty. Big Show had so much momentum after WrestleMania which was drained away by his recent feud with Khali. So, how does WWE plan on regaining that momentum? By having him feud with Henry, which isn’t a very good idea. Show played his part well, and they can have some very impressive face-offs. But, when the face-off is over, what happens next? A bad match. Both can deliver (Show more than Henry), but not really against each other.

End of the Show: Let me be clear right up front that I didn’t want to see Undertaker vs. Khali. When I heard the announcement that that was the World Championship match that Teddy Long had promised at the start of the show, I groaned. However, I would have rather seen that than the lame ending with Vickie Guerrero stripping the Title from Undertaker. WWE has done a good job of building up his new choke hold submission, and I found it very intriguing that Vickie would ban the move. There are some cool possibilities, that Undertaker wouldn’t be able to use it unless the match is no DQ for instance. And, as much as I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Undertaker vs. Khali, WWE promised all night long a World Championship match, and the bait and switch was disappointing. One of my problems with a heel General Manager is that we’ve seen this type of thing way too many times, from Vince McMahon, to Eric Bischoff, to Paul Heyman, etc. Vickie strips Undertaker of the title for no reason at all. It is frustrating that all the WWE writers can think to do is have her strip the Title to get heat on her. It is cheap heat. Can they not think of a good storyline with Undertaker as the Champion other than to feud with Edge? There was a lot of speculation coming out of Backlash as to who would challenge him next, and the answer is that the writers couldn’t think of anyone so they pulled this stupid stunt. WWE tried all week long to create buzz with surprise endings, and all three attempts were bad.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and TNA Impact each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

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