WWE Smackdown HOLT report
October 17, 2008
Las Vegas, Nev. at the Thomas & Mack Center
Report by Terrie Neilson, Las Vegas, Nev., PWTorch.com reader

I was at the Thomas And Mack, and have already sent a ECW HOLT report. I decided to wait on doing a Smackdown one to see if the sweetening I've been hearing on past shows was going to carry over to tonight's show. The answer is unfortunately yes. I'm actually insulted as I write this and still debating my score as there was no reason whatsoever to sweeten the show. The crowd was just as loud and active during Smackdown as they were for ECW.

The Show demonstration started it. (The Helms pop-ups on TV didn't show up on our screen during any segment, for the record.) Show is getting booed through most of it by our crowd, but quite a bit of it is covered over by sweetening. The good thing here is the TV shows better that Chavo wants to be anywhere but in this segment; a complete 180 from working a well-done match earlier in the night. Don't trust WWE to follow up, but this is something worth paying attention to.

During the Colons-Hawkins/Ryder match, there is a noticeable "We Want Edge" chant, but TV doesn't pick up on it. There was also a dueling "MVP (sucks)" chant (our side was the "MVP" side) that barely got noticed. TV also did another sweetening number during MVP's promo and HHH's interview later, the crowd said "Ballin'!" and "that damn good" along with each one, respectively. Wonder what these two would have thought had they know they're more over than being allowed to be.

Sweetness happens during the Vickie-Show promo which featured Maryse; the boos seemed so fake. Granted, she wasn't very loud on TV, but I could not hear Vickie over the real boos in the arena. And for the carnival atmosphere of some places here, Kizarny is zero over in Vegas.

Kendrick did legit look and sound under the weather, but even so it was a good segue to fit his character and to introduce Ezekiel Jackson as a wrestler. Our group came to conclusion that Zeke was the love-child product of Bad News Brown and Ahmed Johnson. And the standing Rock Bottom came across as impressive on TV as it did live.

During the Khali-Taker match, the TV caught "You Can't Wrestle" and "Let's Go Taker" but they were much louder in the arena. That seems to officially mean the acoustics of the Thomas And Mack suck, doesn't it?

The Divas Las Vegas match was what it was, but crowd around me definitely wanted to Victoria to win (so did I). After that, and as that Cena video was playing, Brie was on her way out and came over to our section. If my friend hadn't gone over to greet her, no one would have really cared. Seriously. Dykstra/Braddock vs. Jesse/Festus match was a fun little match. What TV didn't catch was a biggie here: the guy in the row in front of us had a Festus sign with a hole cut out to fit his head. We were able to direct Jesse and Festus's attention to this guy, and they took a good long look at this guy, who did Festus's dormant and wild expressions with this sign. They stayed in character, but definitely took notice in a positive way. A commercial break quickly went on instead. During the commercial break, t-shirts were being shot into the nosebleeds.

The Maria-Michelle promo as seen in the arena was definitely redone or edited. Michelle had cut a much more condescending promo toward Maria before backing off. That's not what the TV-only crowd saw. And Festus got an "awww" reaction from the Vegas crowd when he gave Maria this single little flower, but it wasn't part of the promo.

Adding HHH to Hardy-Kozlov match actually lowered the quality. His voice seemed more monotone compared to other times he's been in the commentary scout position. And there is a clear indication that Kozlov is the intended vote here as the show stopped at the staredown with the belt.

The other HOLT report presumed that the show would stop with HHH hovering over Jeff's body after giving the payback Pedigree. The Las Vegas crowd wouldn't know it until tonight that we saw was nothing less that a complete burial of Jeff Hardy. Kozlov wins to continue his push (fine). The HHH gets his payback Pedigree just moments after the cameras faded out (fine to a degree, but would have made more sense keeping that on TV to add tension). Then Big Show comes out not long after that and chokeslams Hardy (the burial completion). When Undertaker came out again, it didn't feel like a save for Hardy, it was just a face coming out to take on SHow. Local commercials billed the Undertaker-Show match as a No DQ (after changing it from HHH/Undertaker vs. MVP/Khali), but there was no announcing to say if it was or not. There wasn't much in the match that would cause a DQ except the long-forgotten "outlawed" submission hold that Taker won with (crowd popped big for it also). There was a "boo-yay" punch exchange the crowd got behind.

The biggest pop all through the night was Jeff Hardy by far (didn't level off much each time he showed up or was mentioned), Austin when the Cyber Sunday vote was the topic, and HHH. Biggest heel heat would be Kozlov (consistent through the night), Big Show, and Mark Henry. But WWE really needs to lay off the sweetening button when it comes to Smackdown. Are they that insecure of Smackdown's progress?

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