The SmarK RAW Rant – April 29 2002

The SmarK RAW Rant – April 29, 2002

– Live from Buffalo , NY. True story: There really is a town here in Alberta called “Buffalo Jump Head Smashed In”. Perhaps the two are related, we’ll never know.

– Your hosts are JR & King.

– Opening match, Intercontinental title: Eddy Guerrero v. Jeff Hardy. Eddy needs a valet, and MAN does Jeff look horrible. I mean, beyond his usual freakish appearance he’s looking scary thin these days. Plus he’s wearing a wife-beater that looks like he spilled orange juice down the front. I have no idea what fashion statement that’s supposed to be making. Eddy grabs a headlock and gets a one-count. Jeff goes for the arm, and gets a lariat for two. Headscissors and Eddy bails. Back in, Eddy pulls a Muto, dropkicking the knee and pounding away. Dropkick and backdrop suplex set up the slingshot senton, but it misses. Jeff’s legdrop gets two, but Eddy knocks him down and gets a brainbuster. Eddy goes up, but gets knocked off by Jeff, and he gets a fisherman’s superplex and comes back. Jawjacker and flying forearm, but Eddy sends him to the corner. Jeff legdrops him low again and goes up, but gets crotched. Eddy’s superplex is blocked, but Jeff misses a swanton. Jeff recovers with a corkscrew, but the ref is bumped in a totally unneeded spot for the opener on RAW. Eddy grabs the belt, nails Jeff, and finishes with the frog splash at 6:48. Jeff just looked completely disinterested in being there. And didn’t he just get the bejesus kicked out of him by Brock Lesnar a week ago? Geez, take a week off or something and sell the injury. Eddy was game to carry him, but I liked the D’Lo match from Heat loads better. **

– Meanwhile, Austin harasses a production guy and wants Flair to know that he’s calling him out.

– In the ring, Austin is true to his word, as he comes out to call out Flair. Austin reviews the same events covered by a video package we just saw. It’s little stuff like that that makes viewers change the channel. Either do a video package or have the guy recap it himself, but not both. Austin wants Big Show TONIGHT, but Flair doesn’t appreciate Austin’s tone. Crowd completely turns on Flair, which is pretty much the intention. He apologizes again, which only serves to make him a bigger heel, and then he passes the guilt card to Big Show, who is in India doing PR work (I’ll let you fill in your own punchlines) so no match. But he’ll “make it up” to the fans by booking the exact same tag match as was promised last week – Austin & Bradshaw v. Hall & X-Pac. Austin (and the fans) are less than impressed. Oh, and Flair will be reffing. Big heel reaction for that. Austin gives the “Swerve me and I’ll leave you for dead” speech ala Sting in 1995, and we all know how THAT ended up. Flair & Austin are awesome as always in building the storyline, but there’s just nothing in the ring that can pay it off.

– Meanwhile, Goldust is hurt by Booker’s refusal to accept them as a tag team. He leaves his wig for luck, anyway. Booker calls him the love-child of Big Bird and Spider-Man. If you ever wanted to experience what dealing with Scotsman is like, watch this skit about 20 times. Funny stuff here.

– Rob Van Dam v. Booker T. Booker pounds him in the corner, but Rob gets a spinkick. Leg lariat gets two. Rana is blocked by a powerbomb, and they brawl out. Booker wins that round, and back in gets a back kick for two. He hits the chinlock, but Rob escapes and gets a bodypress for two. Rolling Thunder gets two. Booker gets two in the corner with the ropes, but Goldust makes an ill-fated attempt to interfere and nails Booker by mistake, giving Rob the win with the frog splash at 3:15. Decent match, but the crowd didn’t care. ѕ*

– Meanwhile, Bradshaw reveals that Big Show was the mystery assailant last week. If they’re gonna push him as a top guy, they need to ditch the APA gimmick for good and go back to dressing him like Stan Hansen. Or at least give him some sort of makeover to establish that in fact this is no longer a midcard tag wrestler. Even though he is.

– Meanwhile, Molly think Jazz is crazy to challenge Bubba Ray, while Planet Stasiak is READY for Lesnar. I agree with the first, and disagree with the second.

– BROCK v. Planet Stasiak. Where’s Perry Saturn when you need him? Stasiak actually gets a takedown before the carnage begins. He eats post a few times, gets speared in the corner a few times, suplex, suplex, gutwrench, TKO, rotation powerbomb and it’s history at 1:49. This was what it was. DUD

– Meanwhile, Flair asks Debra to vouch for him with Austin. She slaps him, courtesy Austin.

– Meanwhile, Undertaker gets in Sgt. Slaughter’s face. I’m just shocked that Vince hasn’t tried repackaging him as Sarge Bin Laden and starting a feud with Bradshaw yet.

– Steve Austin & Bradshaw v. X-Pac & Scott Hall. Bradshaw hammers X-Pac to start and gets a big boot and corner clothesline. Hall comes in, but gets pounded and elbowed for two. Austin stomps away and gives X-Pac some more on the side, then gets two on Hall. Bradshaw suplex gets two. Corner clothesline and neckbreaker get two. X-Pac comes in and gets suplexed out of his boots, as Austin pounds him to take out his frustrations. I’m all for that. In fact, I think they should legalize human cloning, make 500,000 copies of X-Pac, and then sell them on the open market as punching bags for stress relief. Completely unrelated story that I feel the need to relate for some reason: My Psych professor in university always liked to play up the power of suggestion in willing minds, thus explaining nightclub hypnotists who could convince normal people to do weird things. To back this up, he showed a study from a few years before where test subjects were given suggestions that Bobo Dolls (inflatable clowns used for punching bags by kids) were inherantly evil and should be destroyed. Thus I was forever left with the image in my mind from the videotape of grown adults frantically attacking inflatable clowns while yelling “Die, Bobo Doll!” like lunatics. This of course has nothing to do with anything, but I just think it’s funny, and it’s my recap. Bradshaw tries a superplex, but changes his mind and gets a blockbuster slam instead. X-Pac finally dropkicks the knee to turn the tide. Hall gets his own blockbuster for two. X-Pac goes to work on the leg, but gets slammed. Hot tag Austin, and the housecleaning commences. JR loses a little more respect with me by calling the Thesz Press without even stopping for HALF A SECOND to mention that Thesz just died not 24 hours before. I mean, c’mon, no one’s expecting a 10-bell salute or anything, but your biggest star is using a move named after Lou Thesz, the least you can do is at least acknowledge the guy’s DEATH. But I know – it’s just the same carny bullshit that’s been ingrained into Vince’s mind since birth, and it’s not gonna change with this generation or any other. Spinebusters for all, and a double clothesline sets up KICK WHAM STUNNER on X-Pac for the pin at 7:33, and this time Flair no-sells the heel’s foot on the ropes. Boring match that just sucked the life out of the crowd. Ѕ* Again, the Flair-Austin buildup has been fine, but the actual matches have nothing to offer.

– Meanwhile, the nWo meakly takes issue with Flair’s refereeing, as X-Pac protests the count as though he was just gonna pop right up from that Stunner.

– Undertaker comes out to have words with Hogan. He reminsces about the good old days when he used to scare children, and beat Hogan. He drones and on and ON, putting the crowd to sleep. Hogan finally interrupts, but Taker keeps talking. Apparently, and I don’t have official confirmation from the WWF PR department on this, he’s going to beat Hogan down like the bitch he is.

– Dark Angel promo hyping Lita’s appearance. JR’s tasteless promo line tops his earlier effort for selling his soul, as he happily encourages us to check out the episode where Lita breaks her neck in three places! Ah, wrestling, gotta love it.

– By the way, at some point tonight they were showing an ad for the Divas special on PPV. Who the hell would pay $10 to watch a show that was already shown for free on UPN and bombed?

– Hardcore title: Bubba Ray Dudley v. Jazz. I guess the idea here is to get Jazz over as someone tough enough to go against men, but they should just leave the women’s division alone as is and work on getting the people already in it over. Jazz attacks and gets shrugged off. Bubba turns a wristlock into a waltz, and dances. Fat guys dancing = RATINGS. She goes low to end that, and loads up the plunder. Dropkick and legdrop get two. Bubba bites her ass and gets a sideslam to set up the Flip Flop and Fly (#4 on my all-time list of “Signature Moves I Never Wanted To See Again” last I checked), then tells himself to get the tables. Former Smarks Excess guy Eliot Olshansky recommends making a mirror part of the standard plunder, so that Bubba can look at himself when he says that. Steven Richards does the Government Mandated Run-In, hitting Bubba with a guitar to win the title at 4:09. Have I mentioned how much I REALLY REALLY hate that finish? And why not just make it Richards v. Dudley instead of wasting our time with the Jazz comedy routine? Hey, great, build up the badass women’s champ and then crush her to get a funny visual. Brilliant. -*

– Meanwhile, William Regal is surrounded by cheesy Hulkamania merchandise, and cuts a funny promo deriding Hulkamaniacs in general. He thinks we’d be better off worshipping someone who didn’t end every sentence with “brother”. Had they actually delivered the main event, this would have been funny and good. But…

– Meanwhile, the Texans drink beer and shoot the shit. Flair wants to know if things are okay now. It’s not, so he makes yet another Austin v. nWo tag match next week, with himself and the Texans against the lads in black. 10 points for building next week’s show, minus several million for style.

-European title: Spike Dudley v. Goldust. Goldust stomps him down and gets a clothesline, but Spike facejams him, only to run into a knee. Goldust knees him and sets up Shattered Nuts, at which point Booker was supposed to run in, but he doesn’t, so Goldust stalls forever, then finally balks at doing the move before Booker runs in to sidekick Goldust and allow Spike to finish at 1:43. Whoopee. DUD

– Hulk Hogan v. William Regal. No match, as Regal offers him tea (complete with tea-set at ringside), only to get it spit back in his face. SPORTSMANSHIP~! Undertaker hobbles in and beats down Hogan forever, with Hogan unable to take even a simple bump. They HAVE to get that belt off him, one way or another. When you can’t even work a simple 2-minute TV match, you can’t be World champion.

The Bottom Line: A good start with an entertaining first hour, but it just totally fell apart with that brutal Austin match and never recovered. RAW is actually doing a better job of week-to-week storytelling than Smackdown is (which probably explains the ratings difference) but they just don’t have the in-ring talent to deliver on the angles, and that’s going to bite them in the ass sooner or later. Especially if they actually go through with Undertaker v. Hogan as a serious PPV main event with Flair v. Austin as a semi-main.

Until next week, that’s the show, and I’m outta here…