The title itself should explain the theme of tonight’s Redux. This week’s edition of Friday night SmackDown truly was good, bad, and ugly. But before we jump to conclusions, lets take a minute to reflect on the week in wrestling in general. There was a horrific match at TNA Genesis (popular consensus, of course. I, myself, have not watched it). There was an axed Diva’s match from Raw and lets face it, that’s not always a bad thing. Superstars saw the underused and underrated Alicia Fox and Gail Kim square off in a match that many people are saying is one of the most enjoyable matches in awhile (again, I have not seen it). And to cap things off, SmackDown delivered.
And it delivered in a truly ridiculously wonderful way.
To kick us off this week, we’re going to launch right into the good. That’s the whole point of good, bad, and ugly right? Michelle McCool (with Layla at ringside) taking on Beth Phoenix looks damn good on paper. It certainly looked brilliant when I saw the spoilers earlier in the week. The question is, did it deliver?
Lay-Cool, aka the Dynamic Duo, make their way to the ring first. Layla is rocking a hot, blue mini-dress and boots, while Michelle is in her green ring attire that I don’t like very much. They’re still carrying their Slammys and they’re still delicious heels. They play to the crowd as only they can and they get inside the ring to wait for Michelle’s opponent, the one and only Glamazon. Beth walks out in a rather plain Glamasuit but the crowd doesn’t care because they’re in Birmingham. No offense to my fellow Alabamians, but the majority of the state isn’t really up to par fashion wise. I am the exception. Anyway, once Beth is inside the ring and her entrance dies down, the bell rings and the match begins. The two statue-esque blonds circle one another. Beth gains the early advantage when she breaks the lock-up and forces Michelle into the turnbuckle. She drives her shoulder repeatedly into Michelle’s mid-section and follows up with several nice punches to the former school teacher’s skull. Beth finally backs off and Michelle moves from the corner, but she’s still positioned by the ropes. Beth whips her across the ring and takes her down by clubbing her in the chest.
Michelle scrambles to the corner and picks herself up, but Beth is waiting. She charges her rival but Michelle manages to move and Beth slams face first into the turnbuckle. Michelle looks to capitalize but as she comes at Beth, the Glamazon is able to catch her with an elbow and Michelle goes stumbling back. Beth hopes onto the second rope and is looking to fly off, but Michelle hops up and catches her with one of those devastating kicks she’s starting to get a reputation for. Beth awkwardly falls down, getting her knee (the one with the brace) caught, and Michelle seems to have gained the advantage for the time being.
Beth grips her knee in pain and the referee checks on her. Michelle’s not really in the mood to let Beth recoperate so she begins kicking her in that injured limb despite Beth being in the ropes. The referee gets her to back off but Michelle is quick to go right back to work. She stalks Beth while the former champion tries to get back up. A kick to the side eventually sends Beth back down to her knees. Michelle pulls her hurting opponent to the center of the ring by the her hurt leg and drops an elbow to the inside of Beth’s knee. She does it a second time and then painfully stretches Beth’s leg out in a position it shouldn’t be in before slamming it to the mat. Michelle turns her attention to the crowd and taunts them, which gives Beth a chance to attempt to get up. She tries and when Michelle walks back over to her, she manages to kick her back with her good leg. Beth fights back with some forearm shots but Michelle flips through the offense and locks Beth’s injured leg into a submission. Beth finally gets her around the neck and forces Michelle to let go, but she doesn’t let go completely. Michelle twists that leg around and goes for a cover.
Two count.
The former co-champion patiently waits while Beth crawls to the ropes and tries to pull herself up. Michelle then cruelly takes out Beth’s knee which sends the Glamazon back down to the mat. On the outside, Layla is cheering on her bestie and Michelle makes the mistake of turning to Layla and celebrating with her. Beth is able to roll-up Michelle and nearly pick up a victory! An annoyed Michelle gets her back into the match and clotheslines Beth to her back. Beth curls up in pain and Michelle hooks the injured leg and goes for a pinfall.
Two count.
Michelle gets up, tells a fan to shut up, and goes back to work. She wears Beth down with a forearm and an elbow, then once again begins working on that leg. The Glamazon is definitely reeling now and this match is superb. Beth is able to get to the ropes again and this time Michelle uses that to her advantage. She places Beth’s ankle on the rope, steps on it, and atomic drops herself down onto Beth’s leg. Beth withers around in pain and a confident McCool goes for the move again. Beth slams her foot into Michelle’s derriere and sends the leggy Florida State alumni over the top rope. Michelle lands with a thud and it takes her a hot minute to get up and climb back into the ring. Beth is waiting and nails her with some stiff forearm shots, then uses the ropes to help suplex Michelle down. She hooks the leg and goes for a cover.
Two count.
Both women get up and the frustration is written all over Beth’s face. She grabs Michelle and tries to go for the Glam Slam. Michelle kicks out of the attempt and leans against the ropes to catch her breath. She waits for Beth to get to her feet and flies at her with a big boot attempt. Beth catches it and throws Michelle up into the Glam Slam. She goes for the big finish but Michelle shockingly rolls through it and goes for the win! The referee counts to two before Beth rolls through that, sits square on Michelle’s shoulders, and gets the one, two, three!
Amazing.
Beth celebrates and taunts Lay-Cool on her way out of the ring and Layla starts checking on Michelle as the match fades into a promo for the Cutting Edge later on tonight.
Wow what a match. Michelle and Beth were on tonight. I absolutely love the way Michelle focused on one body part and systematically tried to pick it apart throughout the entire contest. Beth is so good as a babyface, especially one who is trying to fight her way through adversity to try and pick up a win. Michelle’s ring skills are impressive and those you try to deny the fact she’s good inside the ring are truly delusional. Together, these two made SmackDown magic tonight and whether or not this is just the beginning or something random to give us a Diva match, it was a beautifully put together match. I don’t think I can say anything else without risking repetition. Solid work from both ladies. There’s truly nothing I didn’t enjoy about this.
But you know, SmackDown doesn’t stop there because with the good, always comes the bad. But like I eluded to earlier, thing’s aren’t always what they seem. Because this week the bad becomes the bad ASS. Vickie Guerrero is one of the best heels in the business today. Lets take a look at what went down during the critically Twitterly acclaimed Cutting Edge segment.
The World Heavyweight Champion, Edge, is the first to make his way to the ring and who can argue with that? It’s his show, his segment, and the real wrestling fan in me finds him so hot. Ahem, moving on. Edge gets in the ring and starts talking about his last man standing match with Kane from the previous. To be honest, I don’t really care about this and finally, he introduces his ex-wife Vickie and her boyfriend/new number one contender to the championship, Dolph Ziggler! The perfect couple walk out together with their arms around each other and both have sneers on their faces. Dolph helps Vickie into the ring and both grab microphones. Edge welcomes them to the show and says that he hopes all of them can be mature adults. He brings up the fact that Dolph’s victory from last week is slightly on the controversial side. Vickie is quick to reply that there was no controversy and that her boyfriend, Dolph, will become World Champion come Royal Rumble time. The crowd gives her a ridiculous amount of heat.
I love it.
Of course Dolph agrees with his woman, but Edge? Not so much. He stares at Vickie and makes a comment that this segment is reminding him of old times. He claims that he can feel the dynamic still flowing between them. Vickie just looks disgusted but that doesn’t stop Edge from telling her that the ship their love was built on had sailed. Dolph takes his beloved’s hand and tells Edge that if he is just going to insult his (as in Dolph’s) girlfriend, then they were just going to leave. He tells the camera man to cut and they go to leave the ring. Edge calls them back and tells Dolph to relax. He didn’t exactly call her a “man eating beast” or said that she “snores in her sleep.” Edge continues to defend himself by saying he did not say that you could go “para-sailing with a pair of her panties”, and Dolph calmly states that Vickie has lost weight. Edge starts to say something else about some kind of noise Vickie makes when she (insert expletive thought here) and Vickie is quick to stop Edge with a sharp “excuse me.”
Vickie turns to Dolph for support and he is there for her. Vickie turns to the crowd and says that she and Edge should just put all their garbage out there. She tells the crowd that once upon a time she was married to Edge, back when she was young, naive, and trying to discover who she was as a person inside. (I’m so using that line to justify my next bad relationship.) Vickie says that every day she lives with the regret that she was married to him. The camera gets up a close-up of Edge’s confused face. Edge wants to know when Vickie was ever young because she’s ten years older than he is and is wearing a necklace that says “cougar.” Dolph comes to Vickie’s defense again and says that Edge doesn’t need to be jealous that Vickie has gone from no class to first class. He praises Vickie as a godsend to his life and admits that he doesn’t know where he would be without her. He chastises Edge for not appreciating Vickie and everything she did for him back in the day. According to the gospel of Dolph, the people claimed that Edge would never be champion again and when Vickie took him like a little rescue puppy she gave him new life. She basically resuscitated the career of the Rated R Superstar and come the Royal Rumble, Dolph fully plans on pulling the plug and watching Edge’s entire title reign flat-line.
Vickie is so proud of those strong words and she turns to Dolph. She lets him know that the love between them is true and that they are true partners in every sense of the word. She turns to Edge and tells him that since this is his show, she has brought a clip to play. Edge raises an eyebrow and Vickie berates him further by saying that if she and Dolph ever got married that he would never do this to her.
Cue Alicia Fox circa Wedding Planner Era. Amazing.
Edge looks a little sheepish and looks at Vickie. He says he knows where all this hostility is coming from but before he can finish, Vickie shrieks…
“IT WAS OUR WEDDING DAY.”
Dolph comforts her and Edge takes a step back. He admits that perhaps Dolph is a better man than he is, but now he wants to play a little clip.
Cue AJ and Primo catching Dolph and Kaitlyn making out during an episode of NXT season three. Haaaaaay.
Vickie looks hurt having the past thrown in her face and Dolph looks ashamed. Edge, on the other hand, just looks smug. Edge taunts Dolph over the clip saying he wasn’t sure who the girl was since Dolph was doing a mighty fine job of blocking her face but he thinks it was Vickie’s very own NXT rookie Kaitlyn. Edge asks Vickie if that was Kaitlyn and the SmackDown consultant looks like she is on the verge of a breakdown. Dolph nails the living crap out of Edge (holy stiff shot, wow) and he begins beating down the champion. Dolph destroys the Cutting Edge set and turns to Vickie to make sure she is okay. Edge rebounds and nearly takes Dolph’s pretty blond head off with a big boot to the face, and the former IC champ goes down hard. Dolph rolls out of the ring which leaves Vickie alone with Edge and to say she’s unhappy would be an understatement. Vickie screams and goes off on Edge, slapping him not once, not twice, but three times and to his credit, Edge turns to walk off. Vickie isn’t done and she attempts to jump on his back. Edge picks her up and drags her to the other side of the ring where he walks off while Vickie is having a fit.
Before Edge makes his exit, he slowly turns around. And yes, he has that look in his eyes. He is going to spear Vickie. Vickie turns around and beings to push Edge’s buttons, and that stops him from leaving the ring. When he rips off his button down and starts messing with his hair, Vickie stops laughing at him. In fact, she turns a pretty unflattering shade of white. She looks sick as Edge gets ready to spear her straight to hell but thankfully Dolph comes up and pulls Edge out of the ring. He slams Edge back first into the guardrail and kicks him around, before pulling him up. He thinks for a minute and then slams the back of Edge’s head into the steel ring steps. Edge flops over and is out, and when Vickie walks towards Dolph, the crowd starts chanting “You Suck” over and over again. Vickie and Dolph meet over Edge’s fallen body and embrace one another. It doesn’t take long for them to start making out and SmackDown ends with Vickie Guerrero and Dolph Ziggler securing their statuses as one of the best heel couples wrestling has ever seen.
Seriously? That had to be the best ending to SmackDown in a long time. Vickie is everything a female heel should aspire to be and more. Male or female, she is the most over heel on the roster and you can not take that away from her. She draws Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley heat and it gives me goosebumps. Vickie is probably one of the best characters in the whole company right now and the more I watch her, the more I want to see more. I’m not even sure if that last sentence makes sense, but she was so on her game tonight. Vickie is amazing.
Wow!
And last, but certainly not least, with the good and the bad, there’s always the ugly. And to be honest, I feel bad calling this the ugly portion of SmackDown this week because it sorta wasn’t. Sure, Kelly Kelly still had that blank stare on her face and neither participant have suddenly learned how to act (though Kelly took a step in the right direction), but the emotion was there. The segment didn’t seem so forced. Before I get into this any further, lets take a look at what happened during this week’s episode of WWE Days of Our Lives.
Following his shocking, albeit impressive, win over Drew McIntyre, Trent Barretta is seen walking backstage. After thanking a random stagehand who congratulates him, the delicious Trent is suddenly mauled from the side. The angry Scottsman shoves the helpless Superstar into some covered fencing and begins beating on him simply because he’s angry that Trent has better hair than he does. Drew demands that Trent tell him if he feels like a winner, and while he’s choking him via forearm to the neck, he suddenly stops. Kelly Kelly walks up with a pissed off look on her face and Drew looks like a deer who’s caught in headlights. He drops Barretta like a bad habit and Kelly storms off in obvious disgust. Drew screams her name and walks after her, finally getting the blond to turn around. Drew says that he knows what she just walked up on must look horrible but he just wanted to ask Trent for a rematch. (Sure he did…)
Drew continues on by saying that Kelly knows he is super competitive and then he admits that he just lost his head. Kelly isn’t buying his explanation one bit. She makes the claim that she actually thought Drew had a shred of decency after he saved her last week but obviously she was wrong on that. She goes to walk away but Drew gets her to stop once again. He says that he cares about Kelly and he gets her to look in his eyes. He repeats that he does care about her and then tries to justify his actions once again. Kelly is still livid and says that she doesn’t want to be around anyone who takes pleasure in hurting other people. Drew goes to say something else but Kelly steps up in his face and screams at him to grow up. She shoots him an angry glare and storms off. Drew paces and then lets out a growl.
Such drama!
Is it bad that I noticed Drew McIntyre seems to have gotten a haircut and that Kelly Kelly rocked that little black dress for all it’s worth? I am a real wrestling fan, after all. In all seriousness, I can’t believe I’m about to say this…
The segment wasn’t that bad.
Kelly plays angry pretty well, I have to give her that. I remember on NXT when she took the microphone and stormed down to the ring to challenge Lay-Cool and Kaitlyn to a tag match against herself, Naomi, and AJ. She really shined in that promo and tonight, she shined in that segment. Call me crazy, but this girl could be a really good heel. She has the attitude and instead of this creepy/stalker/beater vibe I’m getting from this storyline, I hope it goes the route of Drew teaching Kelly it’s better to beat the hell out of people than to keep fake smiling and pretending everything is okay when it’s clearly not.
And that totally makes me sound like a sadist. As long as they don’t go beating people with belts everything should be okay. So in conclusion this was still ugly because well, it’s Kelly and Drew, and that’s awkward. But it wasn’t so ugly you need to put your beer goggles on this week. More attitude from Kelly… PLEASE!
I think it’s safe to say that this week’s edition of SmackDown worked on all levels. When it comes to all-around programming, SmackDown is just on a different level than Raw is, and that definitely rings true when it comes to the Divas!
