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Barrett Marvin of Tucson, Ariz. (3.0): Best Match: Edge vs. C.M. Punk. Worst Match: Cena vs. HBK. Not crowd to start, as Milwaukee usually is. No build on Finlay-JBL, instead a wasted match between Kennedy-Finlay. Undertaker-Mark Henry looked uninspiring and re-hashed spots between the two, who are bad opponents for each other anyway. Edge vs. C.M. Punk had some good spots but Edge gained zero momentum heading toward 'Mania. Maria is not in the league of Melina. Beth Phoenix's character doesn't mesh well with Melina. Bad combo to share an entrance with. Big Show-Mayweather Jr. had great potential, but died as soon as the crowd turned Mayweather to stone with "What?" Mayweather looks unsure of himself in the ring and again tripped while doing his promo. This whole thing could die before 'Mania. Cena looked uninspired against HBK and wasn't playing to the crowd much; could be a prelude to a heel turn. Randy Orton's interference was cheap and ended the show without a decision. Overall, a bad show. WWE looked as if they were saying "We're going to hold it all back until 'Mania and you'll pay us $50 for it." Confusing booking and match/spot/finish planning. Embarrassing for feud and story development. Who's booking this? Why did the wrestlers look so uninspired? Even Good Ol' J.R. sounded bored and lacked any emotion. This show is lucky it got three stars. I'm not a constant complainer about WWE. I just expect more for a three-hour "spectacular" three weeks away from WrestleMania XXIV.
Shane McKinley of Danville, Calif. (6.0): Best Match: Jehrico vs. Hardy, Mayweather goes airbourne. Worst Match: Women's. I know what you were thinking. Since WrestleMania Rewind was announced, visions of great matches danced through your head. "Get your popcorn ready!" taunted WWE. Not quite. HBK vs. Flair can very well steal the show. A match to look forward to on both ECW and Snoretown: incentive. I'm not sure what Undertaker vs. Henry accomplished. Raw Triple threat video packages had good psychology to it. Wondering why the Raw championship gets this attention and yet Edge vs. Undertaker is still missing that piece to it. Kennedy getting owned by Finlay... sigh. Play dumb, not question the logistics of the six-month Vince-Hornswoggle angle, and give into the revenge of Finlay. And they got rid of his horrible music. Heelish Y2J wins the title! I like to see this played out. Good Big Show video pacakge. Like that the wrestlers have history with each other (Kane vs Triple H), but the "I'm going to weaken Mr. X by placing him in a singles match, instead of a exploding barbed wire landmine match" logic is flawed. Kane had a solid match with Palumbo last week and this week it was just ugly. Women's match was just poor. They wrestled poorly and they shrieked and screamed unconvincly. Overselling is like yelling "UUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHH OH NO I AM SERIOUSLY WOUNDED!" after your little brother punches you. Nobody takes the women's division seriously because of crap matches, binkni dance-strips offs, and bunnymanias. Big ups for WWE having Big Show getting a posse and realizing that I will pay money to see Mayweather take flight. This feud is back on track. Mayweather was never going to be a face, Edge will get cheered and Cena will get booed. We ain't hard to figure out. Edge vs. C.M. Punk was good as well. HBK vs. Cena should have been another quality match, but it just was not there. To be honest, the hype for this night was akin to the Raw Roulette, in that it was a whole lot of nothing. Good thing about tonight is that more fans will buy WrestleMania and feuds are being paved out. The bad thing about tonight is that there were some very ugly and boring matches.
WWE SMACKDOWN REAX - 3/7
Terrie Neilson of Las Vegas, Nev. (7.0): Best: Batista vs. MVP Worst: WWE blowing another gem of a storyline You know something? Edge was right: WrestleMania is looking to be depressing. Some of it is due to predictability. But Smackdown was fairly depressing, too. The Cutting Edge was good, but lacked greatness due to what was to come later. It did well to sell the Edge-Undertaker match in that Flair imparted previous streak match experience. It tied in the Flair-Michaels match in that Edge played the heel that Shawn Michaels likely won't be. It set up two weeks of matches, though both are 3-on-1s against Edge and his EdgeHeads. I'm assuming that since it isn't a one-on-one match that the retirement edict isn't in play. It could be a telling thing about Shawn's role: if he doesn't appear, it could make him heel for sure. If he does, then what he does next (save or leave Flair) determines his alignment. A six-man match could be made for the go-home: Flair/Michaels/Undertaker vs. Edge/EdgeHeads. Major rub for the former Majors, and all kinds of possibilities for two Wrestlemania matches. Meanwhile, looks like Batista-MVP may be going on for a while. The countout finish works as a clean one wouldn't help Batista going into WrestleMania and would cause major backward steps for MVP. But the match made the title important after being sidelined for a while. March is said to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb; the same could be said of the Palumbo-Noble-McCool storyline. One end was tied in that Noble and McCool came to an amicable split, for what there was of a relationship. Vickie cut the legs out from under the rest of it, leaving Palumbo to be squashed by Kane (for reasons we still don't have), Noble destroyed by Big Show, and McCool in some kind of Diva contest. There was still plenty of things that could have been accomplished in the love triangle, but now we'll never know. I'm missing Matt Hardy right now, and there again was no MITB qualifiers. All is not right on Friday night.
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