Mike Tedesco’s Smackdown Thoughts
December 5, 2014
By: Mike Tedesco of Wrestleview.com
I must say it’s always nice for a wrestling show to start off with a wrestling match. I actually like this match-up with Dolph Ziggler and Luke Harper. Of course, we all know how talented Ziggler is. It’s Harper that really makes it intriguing. Harper is a big dude. I’ve seen him perform in person a number of times now, and the guy is humungous. The way he moves around is unbelievable. I cannot wait to see him perform in a ladder match. The match this evening was good. I’ve made no secret that I’m sick and tired of disqualification endings, but at least they got creative with their endings. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a match end with a low blow DQ. It was a refreshing change of pace. Harper made it look like he absolutely kicked Ziggler’s testicles into his throat as well. It hurt me just watching it. The interactions with the ladder after that were great as well. Their match at TLC should be a hard-hitting affair, and I’m very much looking forward to it.
I thought the promo with Seth Rollins, Big Show, and Kane was pretty good. Rollins was playing classic heel when he talked about how much he hates Christmas, which made me chuckle. Harper did a good job running down John Cena and building up the tables match, but the whole line about picking splinters out of his butt and then doing that Dr. Evil laugh just didn’t need to happen. That took me right out of it and made me think I was watching some terrible B-movie from the 1980s.
Big Show made me laugh as he was slamming the stairs around ringside. I’m not sure that’s the reaction he was aiming for, but that’s what I got out of it. By the way, can someone tell me just what in the hell a Stairs match is? If you use anything but Stairs as a weapon, do you get disqualified? Kane didn’t say much before being interrupted by Santino Marella, who I think did a really good job in his role for the evening.
The New Day’s match against Cesaro and Tyson Kidd was ok. I didn’t like them being in the Tag Team Turmoil match on RAW because to me it’s dumb to job them out in a nothing match when it’s their big debut on the show. We’ve had vignettes for weeks about these guys, and they lose in their first RAW match to a tag team that just formed that night with a guy that Vince McMahon went on TV after the show and said doesn’t have “it”? It doesn’t make any sense to me. Put Los Matadores in the Turmoil match and let New Day have a regular match later in the show. They had a good showing here, but the Smackdown audience isn’t what the RAW audience is. I do like that they do the Freebird rules thing where you don’t know which combination of them you’ll face at the beginning of the match. The music and the energy are great as well. Hopefully Monday was just a creative hiccup (there have been a lot of those lately), and they’re handled better in the coming weeks.
I loved the promo Dean Ambrose cut tonight. It was straightforward and to the point. Ambrose said he’s done with the mind games and just wants to destroy Wyatt. Rusev got out of his match by Lana claiming he was injured by Swagger’s attack on RAW. That was what it was. One day I would like to see an Ambrose vs. Rusev match. The thing that was the big highlight for me was the brawl with Ambrose and Wyatt. Wyatt looked vicious and laid him out with the chair guillotine. They executed that really well and did the stretcher job with Ambrose. To me, this added the extra edge that this feud has been missing. Now Ambrose can do the big hero thing by ripping off the neck brace and declaring he’ll fight Wyatt no matter what. This should be a great match next Sunday.
I didn’t say it in my RAW Thoughts column on Tuesday, but Jimmy Uso slapping the ever-loving crap out of The Miz on Monday Night RAW was the best thing on the show. It had real emotion and feeling. It blew the rest of the show out of the water in my opinion. The fire is there, and it’s definitely adding a lot to what would just be another lame tag team feud.
I could try, but I don’t think I could possibly care any less about the feud between AJ and The Bella Twins. AJ is just there doing nothing, and The Bella Twins just don’t make any sense whatsoever. Are we ever going to hear why they got back together? Didn’t Nikki say just a few short months ago that she wished Brie died in the womb?
I really enjoyed the main event. It was your usual WWE tag team main event affair, but it was well done. The only thing I didn’t like was the ending. When someone is a heel, you shouldn’t book anything where they can be looked upon with sympathy. Rollins tagged in the Big Show, but the referee claimed he never saw it. Rowan then took out Big Show, and Rollins got pinned. I took away from that Rollins and Big Show got royally screwed by an incompetent referee. They’re the bad guys. They should be the ones doing the screwing, not the other way around. It’s small little things like this that aren’t being picked up anymore. Where is the attention to detail on things like that? It’s not a huge deal, but it is some sort of a deal.
Once again, this show completely blew RAW out of the water. Could it possibly be the fact that they don’t have to drag everything out to reach the three-hour quota, so things flow more organically? Maybe, but what do I know?
Bump of the Night: Ziggler throwing the ladder from the ring into Harper!
Match of the Night: Ryback and Rowan vs. Rollins and Big Show ** 1/4
Final Rating: ** 3/4
E-Mail – MikeyT817@gmail.com
Twitter – @MikeTedescoWV
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Thanks for reading!
Mike Tedesco is the official recapper of WWE RAW and Smackdown for Wrestleview.com.