Ok. So I went last night with my girlfriend. She used to be a fan but gave up around the time Owen Hart died. So she knows the deal pretty well and has been to shows in the past. I hadn't been to a show in about 5 years because the last show I went to was so awful I just gave up. The arena was about 1/3 of the way full. The upper bowl was totally empty, the club level had a few people. The non-camera side of the arena was barely full. Kind of sad really, I remember when they used to fill Nationwide Arena no problem. So here we go...
Tommy Dreamer beat Eric Escobar with a DDT in a pretty shitty dark match.
ECW time as we start off with John Morrison and the Miz. They whine about losing to Evan Bourne which draws out Teddy Long. They talk about the Superstar Initiative and they taunt about Brayden Walker's illustrious WWE career. No Evan Bourne tonight... well fuck. Ricky Ortiz comes out and wants a match with one of the guys. Miz and Morrison brag about being unbeatable so Long wants to know who's better and makes our ECW main event the Miz vs. Morrison and the winner will have to face Ricky Ortiz tonight too. Decent opening promo. They got some decent heat. The girlfriend really liked John Morrison.
Finley beat Bam Neely in a quick and boring match. Afterwards they grab a couple of kids and they run around the ring with Hornswoggle. Cute. I honestly don't get the point of Bam Neely though. He seems useless as a bodyguard and he's not a good enough wrestler to justify having on the roster if you ask me.
Maryse beat Michelle McCool in a non-title match. Surprisingly not as terrible as I was thinking. I honestly have no idea why this was on ECW or who Maryse is though.
Mark Henry cut a short promo about how Matt Hardy didn't pin him for the title.
Mike Knox beat Chase Stevens in a short match. Now this was fucking hilarious. The crowd didn't react at all to Mike Knox. I mean, literally no one in the crowd booed the guy or cared. I almost felt bad for him. After the match Jack Swagger comes out and powerbombs Stevens. Dreamer comes out for the save but gets beaten up too. Swagger almost dropped both guys on the powerbombs. He looked awkward and terrible.
Main event time. The Miz and Morrison fought to a double count out. No one really knew who to cheer for here. Miz was sort of the defacto face since he was from Cleveland. Anyways after the match Ricky Ortiz runs out and gives them both the big splash and that's your ECW for the week. Pretty weak show if you ask me. No Evan Bourne or Matt Hardy. Thumbs down from me for that.
Smackdown time...
Vickie and Chavo are backstage. Chavo is paranoid and afraid of the Undertaker. Hardy stops in and wants Kozlov but Vickie tells him to focus on his match instead. She then tells Chavo to go get the Big Show to protect her.
HHH and Jeff Hardy beat MVP and THE Brian Kendrick in a solid tag team bout. Typical formula here. I would say it was too long but that's my worst complaint about it. MVP took the fall to my surprise here. My girlfriend commented that she had a hard time buying into anything MVP did in the ring. I have to say I really dig THE Brian Kendrick in his new role. I'm glad to see they're pushing the guy.
Shelton Benjamin came out and cut a pretty shitty promo. This lead to R-Truth coming out. R-Truth is surprisingly over here. The crowd was giving him the "what's up" and they seemed to really like him.
Maria and Bre Bella beat Natalya and Victoria. Bre Bella did her little twin under the ring thing which no one in the crowd really seemed to understand. The girlfriend commented that Natalya seemed to be out of everyone's league as far as wrestling ability.
Kozlov and Great Kahli was a no contest. HHH came out and got double teamed. Hardy tried to make the save but got the double team too. HHH finally grabbed the hammer and cleared the ring. Yeah... boring... NEXT!!!
Backstage again as Chavo is scared and freaking out. Big Show tells him to settle down. Chavo is wrestling next.
Chavo Guerrero beat Jimmy Wang Yang in a solid match. Yang seemed solidly over with the kids. After the match the lights went out for a second and scared Chavo.
Carlito and Primo Colon beat Curt Hawkins and Zach Ryder to become your NEW WWE Tag Team Champions. I missed about 90% of this match because the real entertainment was going on in the crowd. Security was acting really weird which caught our attention. This drama ended up with police showing up and some guy getting arrested or thrown out of the arena on the floor. After the match Jesse and Fetus come out and the bell rings and Fetus clears Hawkins and Ryder out of the ring. They take some stuff to a moving van where Kenny Dykstra and some other guy was tied up.
Vickie, Chavo and Big Show are out. Vickie's heat is off the charts compared to everyone else that was here tonight. They show the Big Show beating the Undertaker down at Unforgiven. The lights go out and Chavo is missing. We see that Taker has him backstage and is tossing him around the GM's office. Big Show runs to the back to make the save. The screen goes black and the Taker's music hits in the arena. Lights back on and he's behind Vickie. Vickie gets the Tombstone and they do a stretcher job to end the show.
Dark Match main event saw a no contest between Undertaker and Big Show in a NO DQ match. Hawkins, Ryder and Neely ran down and did a 3 on 1 beatdown. Taker sat up and fought them all off. Big Show decided he had enough and left the arena. Solid main event considering who was involved. Good energy from the Undertaker.
Overall I'd say this was an interesting experience. It was a fun show live but I think it will be pretty bad on tv. This was probably the best WWE show I've ever been to though. WWE shows had typically led to me not seeing a show for several years due to disappointment but I can say this time has me wanting to go the next time they come to town. So like I said. Probably both shows will suck this week but it was a fun time live.
Just some thoughts...
-Maryse spent about a year just being filmed hanging out in lingerie on a bed in segments after commercials. She'd speak in a heavy French accent and usually just say "You're watching Friday Night Smackdown." It always made it seem like I was watching porn, so I found her to be very irritable. In the last few months she's been promoted to actually appearing on the show in the arenas. Initially she was paired up with Deuce and Domino, when they were ditching Cherry to the curve. Obviously that angle fell through, so now she's being built into Michelle's primary rival to the Divas Championship, which seems absurd to me because it means that Nattie Neidhart and Victoria are on the backburner. I'm pretty sure Maryse came from one of the Diva Search contests, so she's not bad considering that.
-Generally, I find that Michelle McCool tries really hard to work entertaining matches for the crowds. She does a lot of little things during her matches that I don't see other divas doing, so I give her a tip of the hat for trying hard. She has a long way to go before I'd take her even as seriously as Candice Michelle (who has sucked hard since coming back, but was developing into a worthy talent in 2007).
-Absolute silence for Mike Knox? Sounds about right. He managed to get some heat when I saw him at an ECW house show two years ago, but that seems to be expected when you are attacking Tommy Dreamer and the Sandman in front of a crowd of 500 old ECW fans.
-That sucks that you were robbed of Bourne and Hardy. I'll admit that I miss seeing Bourne on the ROH shows in Boston, but I'm thrilled that he's having such great success working for Vince.
-It's amazing how much The Miz has improved. I definitely see him being the defacto babyface if things were to sour with Morrison. Those two are incredibly entertaining and are both hopefully heading into future main event roles.
-I am also thrilled about what Brian Kendrick has been doing these past couple of months. Before I had basically lost hope that he was ever going to amount to anything significant and now he's looking like a fast rising star.
-MVP hasn't done anything worth a damn this year. It's a shame.
-People seem to like R-Truth and I can't figure out why. He's playing the same shit rapper gimmick that always seems to fizzle out before long.
-Cool, you got to see a title change. Gotta love crazy happenings during a match as well. I'm also pretty sure that was Hawkin and Ryder's first (and only) title defense, and since they won those belts two months ago, that says a lot of sad things about the current state of tag team wrestling.
It's great that you had a good time at the show.