New match added to Judgement Day

I'll post more on Smackdown tomorrow after I've had the opportunity to see it but for now I just wanted to mention, since Ari and I discussed Wednesday night on our podcast the possibility of their being one more match at Judgement Day, that Shelton Benjamin vs. John Morrison has been added to the card.

This match has very few direct repercussions, except reinforcing what we were speaking about on Wednesday in terms of the resurgence of strength in the midcard; Rey Mysterio is defending his Intercontinental title against Chris Jericho on Sunday night, and I think the winner of this match will go on to face the winner of that one. And on that score, Mysterio-Benjamin OR Jericho-Morrison could both be fun potential feuds. As I said - all of a sudden you have a hot 4-man race to the top of the midcard, which is kind of cool. And while I probably would have preferred a tag title defense with The Brian Kendrick finding a tag partner, or a women's title defense (or Diva's title), I think this makes sense; Kendrick now has some time to build his search for a partner instead of hotshotting it, and this match has the potential to be very good.

Judgement Day actually has a lot of potential as a PPV - as I said it sort of looks predictable on paper but the potential for great matches is high (Edge vs. Jeff Hardy; Randy Orton vs. Batista; Jericho vs. Mysterio), and even in terms of the predictability, once you get to really discussing the card you see most matches have the potential to go either way without being terribly shocking. In other words, I strongly predict both world champions (Orton and Edge) retaining, but it wouldn't be jaw-droppingly shocking to see a title switch, and either way, both should be good matches.

In sum a very potentially strong PPV - which probably means it will turn out sucking (WWE seems to perform better under lowered expectations). But either way, I'll be back tomorrow with a Smackdown review, and Sunday night/Monday during the day with my thoughts on Judgement Day. Meanwhile check back to Wednesday's ITVR podcast for Ari's and my predictions for the show, and enjoy your weekend (a long one here in Canada!).