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Saturday, May 10, 2008

Smackdown

So last night's SD was actually respectable in its concept - and because it all sort of fed and flowed into one major storyline arc, it makes my analysis easier; I don't have to hit the cute little 'bullet point' button at the top! :)

Vicki Guerrero, having stripped Undertaker of the World Title, declared tonight to essentially be a tournament, the winners of each match being entered at the end of the night into a battle royal. The winner of said battle royal would face the most recent World Champion, the Undertaker, for the title - I'm assuming at the upcoming PPV next weekend.

This was a solid concept which led to some basically solid matches - Matt Hardy got his win back over CM Punk in a decent match, Finlay came back and did his usual brawling best, Kane got his bazillionth win over Chavo in probably the weakest match of the night ... Big Show got his prerequisite berth into the battle royal - a decent night of action which harkened back to the days of old where storyline and athleticism all converged in one place - that inconvenient square thing in the middle of the arena. What did the old-timers used to call that thing again? Oh right ... the ring.

The battle royal too was exactly what one would expect of a small-scale BR on free TV. Batista came out on top, before Vicki Guerrero came out to announce that her fiance, Edge - previously declared injured and unfit to wrestle earlier in the evening - had just been cleared by his doctors to be the 10th entrant in the battle. He spears Batista over the ropes to win the BR and get the title shot at UT next week.

All high praise and good stuff - builds Edge's heat as the sneaky ultimate opportunist; keeps Batista hot, and possibly injects him as a third man in a triple threat (seeing as Edge-UT has headlined the Smackdown side of any PPV for the last 2-3 months now), reinforces Vicki as the heel GM, and created a great night of action, something WWE has definitely lacked of late. My problem? None of it was really that logical in terms of the storyline.

What? Me demanding logic in terms of a WWE storyline? Well, yes. Particularly this one; they've played the Edge-UT feud beautifully in the last 6 months building up to Mania, and since at Backlash; and it's probably the hottest feud they have had going since Matt Hardy got sick and put his feud with MVP on hold. I can totally understand WWE wanting to keep it going, but they're jumping through some fairly improbable hoops to do so. Some rhetorical questions:

  1. If the ultimate goal of the Copeland-Guerrero regime was to give Edge another shot at the WWE championship, why go through all this trouble? He's hooked up with the General Manager of his brand - screw 'one rematch before going to the bottom of the barrel' clauses, she could have given him a 3rd rematch, and for the same reason as she stripped Taker of the title - he won with an illegal hold, thereby rendering the decision invalid and forcing a rematch. And while we're here anyway, why not just PUT the title on Edge if we want him as champion?
  2. And stepping out of the kayfabe world a moment - if WWE just wanted Edge to be champion again, why not have him win the title back at Backlash. Results would be the same: rubber match at this upcoming PPV, with 'Taker winning the belt. I think we'd have the same guy walking out next week as champ, the same main event, without the huge logical acrobatics we've needed to engage in.
  3. If all this was a means to add Batista to the match, well then fine - why not have like, HIM win a #1 contenders match/battle royal/tournament, just to have Edge re-inject himself to make it a triple threat? And it's not like Batista-Edge-UT is THAT new and different anyway. With Umaga being confirmed to be heading to SD by Vince McMahon earlier today, and MVP having unloaded the US title, presumably to free him up for a main event run, as much as I'm an Edge fan, I'm looking forward to some new blood at the main event level. And meanwhile ...
Anyone up for a reliving of the Edge-Matt Hardy feud for the US belt? Just a thought. And overall I will say this SL is not AWFUL given it HAS given us some good matches, character development, and intrigue - not to mention has eaten up two weeks of TV without seeming like filler ... just, irrational. I just feel the same things could have been accomplished in a much simpler and more direct manner. But since when does WWE ever do things the easy way?

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