THE SPECIALISTS THE ABSURDITY OF IT ALL 11/21 WWE Smackdown: WWE Champ Pervs, MVP Swerves, And How WWE Turned The Casket Match Into Hokey Hell
Nov 22, 2008 - 6:41:53 AM
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By Shane McKinley, PWTorch Specialist
Matt Hardy sure does get around. Only thing worth mentioning here is that R-Truth looked good here, but seemingly everybody wanted to go back to their hotel rooms and sleep.
The only problem I have with Triple H staring at Eve's breasts is that it did not go sleazy enough. Triple H could have said, "Wow that is nice. If I could, I would give you a pearl necklace." The "pearl necklace" sexual reference would be great for the U.K. fans. But since Smackdown is a PG show fans get some lame "oh, he's talking about her necklace, not her breasts." If it was cleverly done I would have liked it more, but as it turns out this was hammier than a ham sandwich. Long gone are the days when Edge and Lita had a "sexcelebration," which I thought was one of the most controversial things WWE did. Sure, ECW doesn't have strip-offs or dance-offs anymore, but women in wrestling are unfortunately still potrayed as bimbos.
I remember years ago, WWE had an interview show hosted by Mean Gene. They had Trish Stratus and Trips on the program. During the time "Let The Bodies Hit The Floor" by Drowning Pool was a big song. Trips, being the thoughtful guy he was, leaned over to Trish and chanted, "Let the boobies hit the floor. Let the boobies hit the floor." Trish gave an awkward grimace/smile and thought about the good old days when she barked like a dog for Vinnie McMahon.
So maybe next week, Trips can be shown hanging outside a bowling alley and say lines like "I keep getting older while these chicks stay the same age." None of this is weird at all. Why, it's not absurd that a 27-year-old female is being perved on by a near-40-year-old man. Who happens to be married. And has children. It's all for comedic effect. Just like how it's not a bit odd that Hulk Hogan was rubbing suntan lotion on his grown daughter's butt in real life. Don't want to get sunburned!
Anyways, Kozlov comes in and said with utter badness "Say goodbye, Kings of Kings." The King goes back to staring at Eve's breasts.
Kozlov did look better tonight ("Oh yeah, he needs to look good before the PPV"). Later on in the evening, he crushes Trips and Jeffy.
Cue up JoMizzy and suddenly Smackdown becomes the boobies and sex show. "It's amazing what they can do with airbrushing these days." Nice heel bit by JoMizzy, but Tazz calling the Survivor Series matches "dangerous" is kind of stretching it. All matches are dangerous, but five-on-five elimination matches do not usually scream out blood and tremendous pain. Kind of like hokey casket matches.
Liked the finish of the JoMizzy vs. Festus and Little Buddy match. Nice way to portray JoMizzy as smart and get some heel heat.
Good psychology with the Trips vs. Jeff match. Trips was landing no offense, so at the first available moment Trips tried to end it quick. So he could go back to stare at Eve's breasts. The man has priorities.
The abdominal stretch is one of my favorite WWE submission moves, as it feels painful to look at. You know that Jeff getting a roll up victory over Trips will not come without a price. Good move in not having Kozlov cost Triple H the victory (thus Jeff himself gets the big win) and still portraying him as an unstoppable monster.
I am high up on Brian Kendrick's offense, and Zeke looked good here. Dragging Kendrick so that he could tag himself in makes me think that perhaps WWE won't turn him into a big dumb brute, like they did with Snitsky, Mike Knox, and many others.
They needed to hype up the Casket match, and they sure went into their bag of tricks to amp it up. But it is still a hokey type of scary. That being said, at this point of the show this video package was a nice move to hype up the PPV.
The Jeff promo was shot in the "Joker" way, meaning the cameraman focuses on the face, moves the camera a lot, and goes wild with the zoom in/zoom out button. Cool visual.
MVP vs. James Mason. The story of the match was that MVP had Mason beat. Then the music of Khali plays. Quick, dumbass! Make the pin! Khali takes a full minute to lumber to the ring! But he never does.
It was sort of WWE toying with MVP fans out there. I was expecting at any moment for MVP to turn his attention away from the slow moving Khali. Any moment now. But no, James Mason wins.
So WWE had this dumb "MVP needs one more win to win big bucks" storyline put into place weeks ago. The outcome? Khali "costs MVP millions of dollars." At no point did the fans ever really truly get the sense of how much MVP's life would change if he won a match. Instead, this was just said in passing.
WWE is firing people left and right. The last thing they need is wrestlers featured on the show regularly that nobody cares about because they don't win. Fans are supposed to care that Khali cost MVP millions of dollars? This is junk.
Hey, look! We have twins in our women's matches! I'll pass. Meanwhile backstage Trips is still staring at Eve's breasts. Eve is started to worry about what sort of man stares at cleavage for an hour. Stay tuned.
I apologize for my remarks about TNA's Crystal compared to these "garden-variety" bimbos.
Undertaker, in front of a draped casket, starts talking in his spooky voice: "Big Show. Somehow by the forces of evil and stupidity, our feud which was as hot as the fires of hell is now cooled by the winds of chumpiness. Heed my words, Show. Your fate is sealed. You will forever lay...in this casket!"
"You see, I am a member of the KISS Army! And this army of darkness will take your soul this Sunday at Survivor Series! Rest In Peace!" Then KISS and AC/DC can fight it out, live on PPV! (credit to kissonline.com for the picture)
Seriously, I've had my fill of casket matches and that damn casket itself. This feud is botched and hokey at best. So bring on KISS and the KISS casket. But WWE cannot afford it nowadays. Can't blame Taker for giving a half-hearted effort in his promo. He was probably thinking about UFC 91. That damn Brock Lesnar.
Hey, look. There's Chavo Guerro. Gee, he was involved in a Casket match. He lost! He got shoved inside the casket! Yet amazingly, he seems just fine!
What also didn't help matters is the useless "Christian's funeral" bit TNA had. Crowd goes wild for Vickie being placed in the casket, but there were two main problems with this bit. For one, Show and Vickie sold the casket in a pretty hokey and cheesy manner. And two, yet again Chavo gets locked inside the casket. I feel like I have already seen too much of casket matches in the span of one month, and urging me to buy the PPV to see yet another one is not going to happen.
If the writers of Smackdown maybe spent less time not creating "clever" bits of Trips perving on Eve, maybe they could actually make the Casket match at the PPV seem like a big deal. Up the ante. Fill the casket with snakes, bugs, or all of the baby lotion wrestlers use backstage. "No, not the lotion! Anything but that!" Something that would make smarky internet writers wet their diapers if they were placed inside it.
The show ends with Trips still perving on Eve. "Uh, aren't you concerned that you lost your match?"
"Huh? Oh yeah, that thing. Whatever. Fluke. Did you like my bit about your pearl necklace? You see how I worked that in? Hey, I thought this up: 'Triple H is the game, the rest is lame'. Yeah!"
POSITIVES
-- Way WWE handled JoMizzy this entire week
-- Trips vs. Jeff
-- Kozlov gets portrayed the right way
-- Kendrick and Ezekiel
-- Jeff's "Joker" promo
NEGATIVES
-- WWE thinks fans care about MVP vs. Khali, shoots down MVP's potential win
-- WWE also managing to destroy the allure of Casket matches by too much overexposure
-- Perving ain't easy to write
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