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Friday, January 30, 2009

WWE Friday Night SmackDown International 30th Jan 09 reviewed

Well I found this weeks Smackdown and having already reviewed RAW & ECW this week I thought what the hell and decided to give it a go, it can't be any worse than they were.
This weeks show starts by recapping Edge vs Jeff Hardy without showing ANY action what so ever. Matt Hardy wastes around 8 minutes so the show has already been going for 12 minutes before we get to our 1st match.
Jimmy Wang Yang vs Umaga - dull and boring. Umaga was more entertaining in his 3 Minute Warning days and Yang is a much better wrestler than he showed here, sad that he had to job in just under 2 minutes and it goes to show you can have a short match that is also rubbish.
Elimination Chamber Qualifying Match - Mark Henry Vs The Undertaker. It seems their STILL calling Mark Henry "The Worlds Strongest Man"? I think 5 time holder Mariusz Pudzianowski might have something to say about that, its a good job he retired after winning last year and doesn't speak very good English as he always struck me as the kind of chap to get very angry about someone claiming to hold his title. Holding a Bench Press record doesn't equal Worlds Strongest Man (which Henry has never taken part in, let alone won) so I get quite annoyed when anyone incorrectly refers to him as such. A pretty average match, Undertaker took the win by making Henry tap out of a submission hold in just over 5 minutes.
Edge & Vickie bore us on the mic and waste around 5 minutes of air time before The Big Show comes down and I'm not sure if TNA are copying WWE or vice versa with their Superstar video packages after various items.
Elimination Chamber Qualifying Match - Festus vs The Big Show. Show wasn't sure how to deal with Festus but hit a nice DDT straight off, Festus made nice modified DDT of his own off the top turnbuckle and it was nice to see Show selling it. Festus ended up on his face after struggling out of an attempted Jack Knife Powerbomb by Show who took the eventual win off a punch (Aren't closed fist punches supposed to be banned?) in about 2 minutes 30. Not a bad match from the 2 big guys, decent camera work sold the punch though.
Video package for HHH.
Triple threat Elimination Chamber Qualifying Match - Triple H vs The Great Khali vs Vladimir Kozlov. I assume they made a triple threat match as Smackdown had an odd number of contestants for the Elimination Chamber Qualifiers. This one was never going to be much to watch as Kozlov is about as interesting as wet paint, Khali hasn't got an ounce of talent and poor old Trips was going to have to carry them both. Kozlov made a pretty crappy job of bumping out of the ring (even the worst Celebs on Hogans wrestling show learnt that very basic move easily) leaving Trips to work Khali as they took a badly timed break (they couldn't have had it before or after or instead of running that video package for Trips?) which was made even worse by the fact that not only did they not cut to commercial they actually ran a trailer advertising the No Way Out PPV. HHH eventually took the win off the worlds scrappiest Pedigree in just over 6 minutes.
Tonights show was made quite funny with JR's attempt to say debilitating and Tazz's attempt to say pectoral and both of them failed badly. We got 4 matches all with clean finishes and tonights actual in-ring wrestling action totalled roughly 15 and a half minutes which is actually only 1/3 of the entire air time of the whole show (a 1 hour show that had 15 minutes spent in commercials and was on air for just under 46 minutes). If WWE are struggling that badly to fill 3 shows why don't they stop airing one of them, it'd be kindest to kill off ECW as no-one really appreciates it in its current incarnation.

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