4/11 WWE Smackdown TV Reax

Terrie Neilson of Las Vegas, Nev. (6.0): Best: Taker's 17-0 video; Cutting Edge. Worst: Gail vs. Michelle (and it was that bad). Triple H, aren't you a Smackdown superstar at least until Monday? Of the 14 wrestlers on Smackdown TV, five were from Raw. Of that same 14, six were in segments putting over the draft (two from Raw, four from Smackdown). Shouldn't this be important to everyone, if for no other reason than to camouflage any obvious moves? Big Show gets a squash win to get his heat back, but it left he door open long enough for Kofi to show off some terrific athleticism. Nice standing one-foot dropkick and Trouble In Paradise to someone of Show's size. Matt and Jeff are in a stretcher match which makes Matt 2-0 against Jeff. Is one of those two moving, and thus WWE is in a hurry to finish the feud? Stupid reason even if they are split up by the draft for what Matt vowed in his promo. Matt also did something that's been missing all week: put perspective on the Michaels-Taker match. True, he did it to put his own spin on his story, but to equate his moment of victory to being as memorable as the best match of the show was a nice touch. The announcers have a job of putting over the PPV and its matches regardless of how good or bad they are. With that in mind I take their put-overs with a grain of salt. I've been hearing about how good Michaels-Taker is, but not one of the three shows did enough to convince someone watching that it was. People would know that Undertaker defeated Shawn Michaels, and that the match was apparently the greatest ever seen. One thing we still don't know is whether they will go on with the story ("Was the score really settled?") or move on to other opponents, which none of the commentators even attempted to speculate about. Having either or both in a promo selling the aftermath of the match would have gone a long way to put over the importance of it to them. Orton and Legacy stood tall after beating on the Colons. Great way to kill the momentum of the unified tag champs, but at the same time doing this to heels Miz and Morrison wouldn't have been heat-worthy. This moment of standing tall should have happened on Sunday. The image I saw was too little and probably too late. Backlash could change it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one whose patience has run thin waiting.

***

4/9 TNA Impact TV Reax

Luke Fleeman of Visalia, Calif. (7.5): Best Match: Mick Foley vs. Motor City Machine Guns. Worst Match: Knockouts. I think that TNA is really hitting its stride going into Lockdown. The
Jeff Jarrett "will he or won't he?" storyline is one of the first times I have really been intrigued by him or what he is doing. The show was pretty light on wrestling, but there was a lot of development for all of the matches. Even though the Team 3D-Beer Money part was predictable, I am really enjoying their feud. Mick Foley and Sting's chaotic brawl turned their feud up a notch. The Beautiful People are just getting obnoxious, and boring, especially since they are really bad wrestlers. I like Kong as champion, but she can't do much with them.

***

4/7 ECW TV Reax

Torch VIP Kevin Wang of McKinney, Tex. (3.5): No sense in a best/worst match when there were only two on the card. There are things to liked about both of them. I agree with Terrie Nielson's complaint about Swagger not complaining about not defending his title at WrestleMania. As far as Tiffany being the interim GM, she can definitely hold her own on the mic, though she does not come across as someone who truly knows the product. If she's given the right lines, though, she should make a reliable authority figure. At least she starts out with more credibility than Vickie Guerrero has right now. The six-man tag match was solid, with all of the wrestlers contributing as they should. It's good to see that Tyson Kidd looks as great taking moves as he does giving them. And, though he was a tad too close to the corner before the SSP, it was neat to see Evan Bourne mentally calculate and perfectly land the move. The Elimination Chase is a solid concept, and I am fine with the finish, though there were two parts of it that I didn't like. First, after Mark Henry was taken out by the three other men, one of them should have just pinned him to get him out of the picture for next week. If they just incapacitate him, one of them could end up facing him one-on-one in two weeks. I don't think any of them would have wanted to stacked up against those odds. Thus, Dreamer turning on Christian and throwing him back into the ring made no sense if this was the first part in a real sporting competition. Second, how many times, not counting this match, has Mark Henry been hit in the head with the shillelagh? I wanted him to be eliminated, but I am so sick of seeing that spot. I expect he's not too happy with doing it so many timers, either. I predict that the final comes down to Christian and Dreamer in two weeks, but Swagger retains at Backlash. If they are going to put the belt on Dreamer, Backlash is too soon. Finally, the announce team was awkward. Striker hasn't treated Todd Grisham with kid gloves in the past, but he seemed to go out of his way to leave Josh Matthews hanging for no good reason. I wonder if Grisham ends up on Smackdown and eventually bumping Michael Cole off the WWE announcing roster after the draft? I can only hope.

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