Falls Count Anywhere

11-29-05

Anybody else feel bloated?

Here’s a brief look at SmackDown! on the Friday before Thanksgiving: depressing.

It wasn’t as impactful as the RAW tribute to Eddy, but it was an important show and they showed a lot of great footage of Eddy. The Benoit vs. HHH match was solid and the result shows that HHH is willing to do business when there’s a reason. I have to take back a lot of what I’ve said about H, as he’s showing more and more often that he’s a team player and this was good. Batista crying during his promo was very emotional. This show will also be important to the history of wrestling as I believe it was the first show to air after Vince McMahon announced his new drug policy.

OK, it’s not fair to call it a drug policy, becuase it’s more than that. The WWE will suspend, and likely fire, guys who are caught using steroids and recreational drugs. There wasn’t a solid outline of the types of punishments and the degrees, but they said that they’d help guys get clean, so I’d suspect that the first set of tests will be to establish who’s on what and who will need to get clean. Steroids will be the toughest, but they announced that they’ll use an independent group to do the actual testing.

In addition, and this I think is the most important thing, they’ll do regular testing for cardiovascular health. Most seem to think that Brian Pullman died of drugs, but he actually had a heart condition that was worsened by the drugs. Most will point to that as the reason for Eddie Guerrero’s death. They could have been prevented if the guys had undergone better heart examinations. That will be the most important part of Eddie’s legacy: his death may actually keep other wrestlers alive.

I didn’t see TNA, though I heard it was an OK show.

RAW
RAW was a weakish show, though coming from England, it did have some heat. Sadly, it didn’t end up building to Survivor Series much, which hurt the show over all. They started with the Survivor Series team coming out and that basically led to a parking lot brawl between the two teams. That was a cool brawl that reminded me of the NwO brawls with WCW in the late 1990s. That was a good piece that I enjoyed.

Nope. It's completely unrelated. But we owed you something for skipping a week.

Flair beat Trevor Murdoch, which was a replay of the Dusty Rhodes vs. Flair matches of the early 1980s. There wasn’t a lot to it, but it wasn’t bad.

Tajiri and Conway were wrestling when JBL came in. At that point, I was bored with the show.

John Cena was on MADtv and they showed some clips. He wasn’t half-bad, though the writing for MADtv isn’t exactly great.

Shelton Benjamin, whose push will come as the drug policy takes guys out of the roster, lost to Kurt Angle in a very good match. They did a bunch of reversals and Angle hit a nice Overhead Belly-to-Belly suplex. The crowd was really into this match, and that was nice to see. There was a great segment where Angle went for a Suplex off of the apron and ended up taking a DDT onto the apron from Shelton. Since Daivari was the ref, he refused to count one of Shelton’s pins, and when Angle managed to get him into position, Daivari fast-counted him and gave Kurt the win. Daivari then became Angle’s personal ref.

They had Cena go around and ask people what they thought about Kurt Angle. They had him go into the Woman’s locker room where Candace tried to seduce him. It would have worked on me. They also had him bust in on Snitsky giving Tomko a backrub and then came across the Boogeyman in the closet. That bit’s weird, but funny. He went into the crowd and everyone said that Kurt sucked. They’re trying to get Cena over as a face to all, not just to kids and women, and they came up with the way, but not until a week later.

They did a thing where Trish was abducted by MNM during the Mickey James vs. Candace Michelle match. Candace still isn’t a wrestler, but no one has ever looked as hot as she looked coming out for this match. Later, we discover Trish with Melina and she challenges her to a Survivor Series match before giving her a solid kick.

JBL and Shawn Michaels went to a very predictable No Contest in the Lumberjack Match. The SmackDown! vs. RAW feud isn’t as hot as it should be, but this was pretty good. The brawl after was OK, with Show hitting a huge Shoulder block, and Batista coming out all taped-up and hitting Kane with a Spinebuster.

Not a good show, since it had a lot of loose ends and weird booking, but it was OK in the ring.

Smackdown!

Survivor Series and RAW

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Chris Garcia