wrestling / Columns
Wrestling’s 4Rs: The Right, Wrong and Ridiculous of TNA Impact & WWE Smackdown
How the 4Rs of wRestling Work!
Here is a quick explanation of the 4R’s. The column will run TWO times a week. We will group our feelings on the shows in various categories: The Right, the wRong and the Ridiculous. The Right is stuff that worked very well: a great promo, a great match and so on. PuRgatoRy is a section between the right and wrong. It shows equal traits from both sides that cannot be ignored and needs discussed. It is not a bad place per say, as things can get remedied or go the wrong way the very next week. The wRong is what it sounds like: bad matches, bad or boring promos and so on. The Ridiculous is stuff that had no right on TV: Stupid angles and so on. And there is always a possibility of a 5th R, which is as bad as they come. This column is supposed to be analytical, and at the right time very critical of the shows, it was the whole reason it was created. This is not a “mark” column, nor a “smark” column, our goal is to analyze the show from many different fronts, reward the good and call out the bad. We will not apologize for our opinions, they are as they are, whether positive or negative.
By: Jericho Ricardi
IMPACT 9.10.14:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
THE RIGHT:
The guys in costume in the bleachers: I was at this show in person, and those guys were hilarious. Especially the guy dressed as Warrior who had a completely blank look on his face for half the show. The four of them got into some kind of feud with some guy in a Hogan outfit in the balcony that probably escalated into a post-show fight outside.
Pier-Six Brawl: The three-on-three match between The Good Guys and Team MVP was a fun bout that the crowd was hugely into. The promo beforehand also did a lot to hype up next week’s title match. It’s pretty clear that Roode is the fan-favorite to challenge Lashley at No Surrender, and the match will be off the chain.
EC3 is on the verge of frenzy: For the umpteenth consecutive week, Ethan was the star of the show. For a heel, he has a way of making a lot of sense, and the fans are already treating him like a face half the time. His street fight with Rhino was pretty awesome, too, with the right outcome.
Chris Melendez: I’ve probably said it before that the company needs to tread very carefully with how they handle Chris Melendez. He’s such a sympathetic figure that if he ends up on the wrong side of a heel beatdown, it’s likely to make a lot of viewers uncomfortable in a bad way. This match was about as good as it could be and Melendez has a lot of charisma. So far so good.
Gail F’n Kim: I’m enjoying Gail’s ferocity and lack of fear when dealing with Havok. While the rest of the roster is likely to steer clear of the Dubstep Death Lady, Gail is more than willing to take the fight right to her. The Knockouts division continues to be very well-booked and a lot of that has to do with them having the best female champion in years. Not since the heyday of Trish and Lita have we had such a consistently strong (both physically and in personality) female champion.
Dubstep Death Lady: The Havok situation is awesome so far, with her just demolishing who she wants, when she wants. It was so serious that Taryn Terrell actually stopped grinning. Unfortunately, Taz was there to ruin the moment by mentioning that Havok looked like a man, or something along those lines. More on that below, but suffice to say that Havok is in a Mankind-esque role of being someone that a subsection of fans can look up to as a role model. That being girls who don’t fit the image of your traditional Knockout. Let them have their role model without having her looks disparaged by the announcers, please.
Tag Team Series Continues: Another great match from these three teams. Good booking, too, with The Wolves being put in a position of having to battle back from a deficit on both sides. What happens next will make or break the team. BONUS RIGHT: I like that if someone from one team breaks a table by themselves, without it being off of an offensive move from another team, it doesn’t count as a loss. In other wrestling promotions, I’ve seen table matches end with someone accidentally stepping on a table or otherwise slightly putting themselves through it, and it always seemed like an incredibly stupid match ending. Good on TNA for getting rid of that rule.
Bromen and Broladies: This pairing of BroMans and Beautiful People has a ton of potential. The best part is how happy the BroMans look to be in a TBP sandwich. We need more happy, fun things like this on our wrestling shows.
puRgatoRy:
Pier-Six Brawl II: The actual match between the BroMen and the Menagerie didn’t really work. It was somewhat of a mess and nowhere near as cohesive as the other three-on-three match that happened right before it.
James Storm’s Torture Shack: Still waiting to see where this whole “revolution” thing is going. In the meantime, it’s just a bunch of creepy vignettes in hillbilly-land. Storm deserves better.
Aries and Tajiri Vs. Storm and Sanada: This was a perfectly passable match, but it wasn’t anywhere near as exciting or memorable as one would expect from the combination of guys in the ring. Aries and Storm are both great wrestlers and the match was good when they paired off, but any other combination didn’t really flow as well for whatever reason.
THE wRong:
Rebel and Velvet: I don’t really put wrestlers into The Wrong out of respect for the performers, instead putting the mistakes of the company/booking/writing/commentary/production there. However, this was one instance where, regardless of respect, I need to acknowledge that the performers were awful. Rebel looked like it was her first time wrestling in a ring, and for a ten-year veteran, Velvet wasn’t much better. Constant mis-timing and mis-cues, and overall their entire square-off was what Jim Ross would call bowling shoe ugly.
The Commentary: Taz and Tenay continued to stink up the joint this week, with gems like Taz saying that Havok isn’t a woman. Tenay continues to never know when to be silent and let the crowd speak for itself. The crowd at the Manhattan Center was insanely loud and outspoken with chants (I know, I was there) and it would have made for more memorable moments if the announcers would just shut up from time to time and let the audience noise speak for the events in the ring. Case in point: Dixie going through a table, the resulting audience insanity, and Tenay talking over all of it. Same thing happened this week, with the announcers never giving the show any breathing room.
THE RIDICULOUS:
The Kefka Creeper Hour: Crazzy Steve forced a kiss on Velvet Sky. I’m not going to put up rape statistics and claim TNA is the root of all evil, but I wouldn’t mind if the “face male forces a kiss on heel female” trope disappeared from wrestling entirely. It really doesn’t do anything to help fight the rape epidemic in this country. That said, I’m not gonna stand here and say TNA condones criminal behavior or whatever because it’s a wrestling show and should not be taken seriously. I know Crazzy Steve is just a wacky creeper clown, but the fact remains that this is a wrestling trope that needs to go away. That’s all, thanks.
The 411:
Good show this week. Nothing extraordinary, but good. They’re saving most of the big guns for next week’s No Surrender show, which is, quite frankly, better-built than Bound For Glory at this point. This company confuses me; they’ve got a major PPV in a month that they haven’t even started building towards. The PPV is taking place in Japan, so it can’t in any way be live. Are they really going to tape their biggest PPV of the year? Also, what’s the deal with taping four episodes of Impact next week, when there are only three episodes between No Surrender and BFG? Maybe they’ll mix and match segments from those four tapings to create three episodes.But I digress. Aside from the confusing chronology and long-term planning seeming to be in complete flux, the company continues to put on good shows. It’ll be interesting to see how things look after Bound For Glory.
Cheap plug time; support this site and this column by sharing it with your homies. Also, support my site Coronajumper.com by reading my recent posts on wrestling videogames, including TNA Impact. Featuring gratuitous Rebel.
Show Rating: 8.2
As a reminder, I will be going by the 411 scale…
0 – 0.9: Torture
1 – 1.9: Extremely Horrendous
2 – 2.9: Very Bad
3 – 3.9: Bad
4 – 4.9: Poor
5 – 5.9: Not So Good
6 – 6.9: Average
7 – 7.9: Good
8 – 8.9:Very Good
9 – 9.9: Amazing
10: Virtually Perfect
By Daniel Clark
Smackdown 9.12.14
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
THE RIGHT:
Bo Dallas vs. Justin Gabriel: I’m surprised that it has taken this long for Bo Dallas to start cutting promos during his matches and it exactly the kind of arrogant thing that he needs to be doing, but Zeb Coulter had a nice comeback to this by telling Bo that he is a scam artist and namedropping Arianne Grande in his promo, which sort of just seems so out of character and yet perfect for the segment. The match between Bo and Justin when a bit longer than perhaps expected but was a decent little match and another good win for Bo ahead of his battle to see who is the American hero against Jack Swagger.
Paige vs. Summer Rae: Obviously, the next step for this feud between Paige and AJ where they have been trying to one-up each other is to start to steal each other’s moves, so Paige got the win here with the Black Widow, and then AJ used the Paige Turner after the match. And then later, they interrupt Nikki Bella’s promo to basically tell her not to bother turning up for their title match as it doesn’t concern her and continue with the faux-jabs at each other. Nikki by saying that this might be easy for her at the end might be some foreshadowing of her winning the belt after AJ and Paige take each other out, which given her association with Stephanie McMahon might be the best option. Not because Nikki deserves the belt but because it gives the feud some more legs. It brings Brie Bella back into the picture as her taking the belt off Nikki looks like being the logical ending to the feud, while it gives some fresh legs to the AJ/Paige story as they both want the belt and might have to team up to get it back.
The Miz/Damien Mizdow vs. Dolph Ziggler/R-Ziggler: Sandow as the Miz’s stunt-double is at present a great pay-off to the angle of Sandow dressing up as different people even week with it combining with the Miz’s Hollywood gimmick and would it would fit his character to have a stunt-double and someone to do all the dangerous work for him. It also sets up an easy face turn for Sandow and some point is they choose to with him turning on the Miz with him tired of doing all the work for him. Ziggler getting his own double was fun and exactly the kind of thing that he would do, and they had a pretty decent and length match. Ziggler gets the win and continues to enjoy himself in the ring, but he still hasn’t got in that one shot to the Miz that he is looking for, while the Miz continues to be up for his rematch. Nice and simple way to keep this feud going.
Chris Jericho promo: Jericho’s backstage promo before his tag-team match showed him having some of the fun and fire that seemed to be missing from his feud with Bray Wyatt that had lots of potential in theory but never really got going on screen. It was the kind of promo that Jericho would have cut a decade or so ago, which given that in this short run he is playing Y2J, is not necessarily a bad thing. Sets up the main event for tonight well and lets you know that Jericho wants his revenge on Orton.
puRgatoRy:
The Usos/Mark Henry/Big Show vs. Goldust/Stardust/Wyatt Family: It was good to see something like this get a decent amount of time with it nearly going ten minutes, but they did not really make the most of the chance that they had. The whole match was a bit messy and scrappy at times and it seemed to lack a real degree of focus in it. The Usos got the win and got some revenge on Goldust and Stardust which was okay, but it seems that Jey Uso’s injury appears to be healing enough for him to wrestle, which is a strange move and surely the story going into the match should have been can Jey even wrestle rather than is he 100% fit – that is a much stronger story. The Wyatts continue to go nowhere, and Bray Wyatt, having beaten Jericho on Raw to build up some momentum, goes back to being scared of the Big Show.
Chris Jericho/Roman Reigns vs. Randy Orton/Seth Rollins: In a sense watching this match felt like they skipped to the end and that it was the last half of a 20 minute match rather than a 10 minute match of its own accord, which was not necessarily a bad thing as it enabled the match to be full of action. But the outcome and the way that the match went was in contrast to how Raw ended. Roman Reigns was beaten down and left lying in the ring at the end of Raw but did not seem to be suffering the effects of that beatdown at all. Randy Orton recovered some of the heat that he has recently lost by the beatdown that he put on Reigns, but by losing to Jericho, loses some of it again. This would have been absolutely fine to set up the two matches at Night of Champions if the closing segment of Raw had not happened, but unfortunately it did, and by having the match go like this, it makes the end of Raw seem so much more less effective.
THE WRONG:
Rusev vs. Mark Henry: This was straight from wrestling 101 in which the face beats the heel fairly, the heel demands a rematch, cheats, and then attacks the face. And that is exactly what we got here. The problem is, this is usually used for when the heel is supposed to be a cowardly and sneaky type who needs to use dirty tactics to win matches, and this is not Rusev. Rusev is the kind of heel who is just a dominant ass-kicker who just doesn’t care about hurting people or not, and thus, these kinds of dirty tricks with Lana throwing chalk in Henry’s eyes and not what he is about, and by losing the arm wrestling match to Henry he loses some of his mystique. It does the job in setting up their match at Night of Champions but sort of diminishes the supposed threat that Rusev has.
THE RIDICULOUS:
NOTHING
The 411:
The recent trend of Smackdown episodes has been to have a theme running through it but this was the first time in a while that this didn’t happen, and that left the show feeling a little bit disjointed and not entirely knitted together, but still, the episode was reasonably solid without ever really hitting the heights it could have done.The main event was a decent tag team match but totally glossed over the ending of Raw by almost forgetting the beatdown that was put on Roman Reigns and by the loss that Randy Orton suffered, it neuters some of the momentum that he gained on Raw. The tag match was absolutely fine for building to the two singles matches at Night of Champions if the closing segment of Raw had not happened.
The divas feud continues to get plenty of time and although the addition of the Bella twins is not what everyone wants to see, it does appear to begin to make some sense and is adding some new life to the AJ/Paige feud that although still entertaining is becoming a little bit samey and there is not a lot for them left to go, so adding a new person into the feud keeps it fresh.
The Miz and Dolph Ziggler continue to make the most of the time that they have been given and this stunt-double angle is something new and different that has not been seen for a while, and although Ziggler is at the moment getting the better of the Miz, he still has not got that one shot into the moneymaker that he really wants.
The Rusev and Mark Henry arm wrestling match was a very effective segment is Rusev was supposed to be a cowardly heel rather than the dominant heel that he is and it did seem slightly out of place, although in recent weeks, there has been a case of taking a step back with Rusev and not pushing him to the same degree that they were.
Overall, this was by no means the greatest Smackdown episode but there was also nothing really bad on the show either. It sort of was just there, but there was some decent matches and it did move along the stories nicely, although not in any way that really makes a huge difference or will not be advanced on Raw.
Show Rating: 7.3
As a reminder, I will be going by the 411 scale…
0 – 0.9: Torture
1 – 1.9: Extremely Horrendous
2 – 2.9: Very Bad
3 – 3.9: Bad
4 – 4.9: Poor
5 – 5.9: Not So Good
6 – 6.9: Average
7 – 7.9: Good
8 – 8.9:Very Good
9 – 9.9: Amazing
10: Virtually Perfect
~THE NIGHT WAR GAMES JUMPED THE SHARK~
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