wrestling / Columns
Wrestling’s 4Rs: The Right, Wrong and Ridiculous of Impact & 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 Jack McGee
Smackdown 1.29.15
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* Roman Reigns defeated The Big Show via pin (13:00)
* Tyson Kidd defeated Jey Uso via pin (3:00)
* The Ascension defeated Goldust and Stardust via pin (4:00)
* CASKET MATCH: Daniel Bryan defeated Kane (24:00)
THE RIGHT:
Rollins Continues to Antagonize Others: I have really been enjoying Seth Rollins as of late. Sure he was having great matches, but I feel he’s really getting the entire package put together and is becoming a really good antagonist. His promo was fun, and works into the issues that he has with Ziggler, Ryback and Rowan going back to the build to the Survivor Series. It was far from spectacular, but it was simple and made sense and they can hopefully follow up on the show’s this week. Also, you have to appreciate the way that Rollins can weasel his way out of situations. Remember; run away today so that you can run away another day.
Tyson Kidd defeated Jey Uso: Tyson Kidd defeated Jey Uso in a short, but fun little match. Cesaro and Kidd won on the Rumble pre-show and have been positioned as the top contenders for the tag team titles. The Usos always deliver, Kidd and Cesaro are great and working very well together, so I am excited for their matches. Also, it’s a fresh match up, which I appreciate. Kidd and Cesaro need rehab as far as wins and losses go, so scoring a win on Smackdown was a nice way to do that. I hate the overuse of the distraction finish, but overall I felt that this worked. These two teams could really tear the house down if given the time.
puRgatoRy:
Arnold Schwarzenegger Inductee for WWE Hall of Fame: It’s fine, the WWE Hall of Fame is pretty much the who Vince likes this year club, and I personally don’t hold it in the same regard as legit halls of fame. Although I will say that they have made strides with Bruno, Backlund and Savage going in. Also, very convenient that Hunter goes into the 2015 International Sports Hall of Fame during ARNIE-FEST, and then, well this.
SYFY Cross Promotion: They had a magician on the show from Wizard Wars. He did a trick, and then smashed an egg in Miz’s face. Miz humiliation is a positive, forced cross promotion with poor acting is bad. Purgatory.
Roman Reigns defeated The Big Show: Michael Cole actually said something good here and added to the product with actual commentary. Cole noted that, “the way for Reigns to silence his critics is to win matches.” Not that I 100% believe that, but addressing that there are critics and actually putting over VICTORIES as important in WWE (for once) was appreciated. And that actually makes sense. Unfortunately the thing that hurt this was that the match was just TOO LONG. Had they trimmed this down, I feel that it would have come off way better. And do not get me wrong; I feel that Reigns needs to work longer matches to truly improve. But not against the Big Show. It just felt so long towards the end. It was the right result, and I didn’t feel the match was bad, but having it go on this long was a mistake. None of the Show vs. Reigns matches have been what I would classify as good, but thankfully they gave Reigns the clean and definitive victory here.
CASKET MATCH: Daniel Bryan defeated Kane: Daniel Bryan defeated Kane in what was hyped as their final encounter. While corporate Kane in a casket match just feels odd, I appreciate them trying to add importance to the feud-ending match with some form of established, but not overly important stipulation. They give those away all too often. In many ways it was a very good casket match, although that’s easy to say because there haven’t been a ton of great casket matches. As I have previously said, Bryan tends to work very well with Kane, they worked hard and at the end of the day we got the right result. But much like the Show vs. Reigns match, this was simply too long. I like long TV matches, when they are good. Unfortunately this went on so long I started to lose interest, which is never a good thing.
THE wRong:
Show Opening Promo: Dear Triple H,
I know I’m not your friend Mark, but I hope it’s cool if I speak right to you. You sir are a heel, please remember that when you come out to the ring to cut a promo. Please stop pandering to the audience and straddling the line. You can’t be both, you’re character is not supposed to be both, so basically know your role and do it better. Next up, stop knocking the NFL; you have enough issues of your own. Sure it’s topical but it’s not funny, you come off as pathetic. Also, with the ball jokes, I mean what a great way to write to the lowest common denominator. Finally, could you talk to Vince and the 12 Monkeys writing the shows for me? I know that you’re in a comfort zone by starting 99% of your programming with talking, but if we could mix that up a bit and occasionally make the shows feel fresh and not completely formulaic, I’d appreciate that.
Give my love to Steph and the kids,
Jack
The Ascension defeated Goldust and Stardust: Goldust and Stardust have been a great tag team, but overall this was just not a good match. They did not mesh well together, and it felt way longer than it was. It just was stuff happening. Also, the story SHOULD have been The Ascension scoring another win over another established team, another set of tag team champions. Instead, it felt like that The Ascension only won because Goldust and Stardust messed up and are having issues. The focus was completely the opposite of what it should have been, and the commentary did not help out either. They should have done everything they could to sell The Ascension’s victory, with the issues of the brothers being a footnote at most.
THE Ridiculous:
Cena Meets Lana & Rusev – Has Bad Jokes: This. This was completely infuriating. I actually liked what Rusev did on the mic, it was simple and got the point across. I also liked how he would talk and then walk around, mumbling furiously before talking again. This was fine, and then John Cena came out. I HATE 99% OF JOHN CENA PROMOS. The scripting of Jena’s promos, the verbiage selected and the general nature absolutely killed any interest I had in the match. The gist of Cena’s promo was joking around, calling Lana a ho, discussing pubes and boobs and using the phrase “69-ho”. Fuck off with this shit, people aren’t sick of Cena because he’s on top, and it’s not even the Superman act at times, it’s the fact that he has become a complete caricature, he is beyond a cartoon character at this point and I am actually happy when he keeps his mouth shut.
Overall I was not a fan of the show. We had the horrible John Cena promo; the usual lazy booking and we didn’t get any really good wrestling. This show was one you could easily skip and you’d be better off for it.
Show Rating: 4.5
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 Jericho Ricardi
Impact 1.30.15
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
Taryn Terrell def. Gail Kim and Madison Rayne via pin at 7:00 to retain the Knockouts Title (Diamond Cutter to Madison Rayne)
Jeff Hardy def. Abyss via pin at 10:00 (Swanton Bomb with tack-assistance)
Rockstar Spud and Mandrews def. The BroMans via pin at 2:00 (Shooting Star Press to Robbie E)
Lashley def. Bobby Roode, MVP, and Austin Aries via pin at 14:00 to retain the World Title (Spear to Austin Aries)
THE RIGHT:
Lashley Challenges Everybody: Good opening segment, though I wonder why the hell Lashley let Roode carry his belt around for a week. I’m sure that in storyline something else happened, but without clarification it’s an awkward situation. In any case, Lashley putting the title on the line against his two top challengers (…and MVP) was a good segment that played up the characters of all four guys. Roode was unhappy about the match not being one-on-one, MVP was thrilled to have a shot at all, and Aries just went along with it. For his part, Lashley seems like he’s tired of all the bullshit and just wants to defend his title. Good character development all around.
Knockouts Title Match: This was a solid match and I liked that it was allowed to be as good as it was. Seems like lately all of the Knockouts matches are just vehicles for Havok or Kong to come out and have staredowns. Supplemental Right to the commentary, which handled this match very well. In particular, Taz managed to not make a total ass of himself the way he used to during women’s matches. Maybe Tenay was a negative influence on Taz, who knows. Supplemental Wrong to the crowd for chanting “we want puppies” after a fairly awesome highspot with the stairs. Shut the fuck up, crowd.
And My Suggestion for Taryn’s Finisher Name Is…: Cajun Cutter. Since she’s from New Orleans. It’s probably the best finisher in mainstream women’s wrestling, and it’s pretty cool that they’re letting fans suggest a name for it. Let’s give a Right to that while we’re at it. Good usage of social media.
EY Goes Berserk: Tommy Dreamer’s faceoff with Eric Young was quick and to the point. I thought maybe they’d use this to build a match between the two at Lockdown, but instead it existed only to further the EY/Roode feud. Good call. I respect Dreamer as much as anybody, but I’d rather see the young guys go at it. Having EY randomly take out TNA staff and crew members as he walks by is something they should really keep going with, because I guarantee it’ll get over.
Gunner Does Something: I’ve been waiting for the company to remember that Gunner is there and make some use of him, so this is good. He was ascending rapidly until they put him with Sam Shaw last year, which was a mistake in retrospect. As things stand, he’s one of the few real beasts in TNA, and has improved greatly as a wrestler. He also has much more of a connection with the audience than he used to, and it’s up to the company to start actually using him consistently. We’ll see if they do that after Lethal Lockdown, but for now, it’s good to see Gunner actually involved with a main event storyline.
Magnus and Bram: On one hand, this didn’t go the way I figured it would go. I wrote last week that while Bram sees Magnus as a brother, Magnus is all about Magnus. This week, Bram’s kinship with Magnus did a 180, with Magnus playing the face and trying to mend fences while Bram totally lost his mind. While I’m finding this storyline a bit confusing (in terms of heel/face alignment) at the moment, the bar scene in and of itself was well-done and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.
Monster’s Ball: This was a gratuitously violent match. Welcome to TNA, Josh Matthews! Regardless, Jeff Hardy and Abyss left it all out there and put on a clinic, as far as hardcore matches go. This served to build up the tag match at Lockdown, where they’ll no doubt try to top this match in extreme-ness. Speaking of Lockdown, it was well-promoted throughout the show as far as the setup for the matches that we’ll be getting. It looks more like a PPV than Bound for Glory did, and it’ll be on free TV.
Main Event: Another great match, and I like that it ended cleanly rather than a predictable schmozz. Kurt Angle seized the opportunity to finish his Lethal Lockdown team lineup, only to be rebuffed by Lashley the lone wolf. Good character development all around, just like the opening segment, and rubbing elbows with Angle and Aries will be good for Gunner. Who will the fourth man be?
puRgatoRy:
The Top Five: This is a great concept and gives things a “real sport” feel. They did something like this in the past with a Top Ten back in 2010, but it got abandoned fairly quickly. Hopefully they stick with this one and make it consistently logical. This goes in Purgatory because they haven’t really done anything with it yet. We shall see.
BroMans Vs. Brits: This was a somewhat nothing match, which is unfortunate considering it was Spud’s first major in-ring action in a while. Having Robbie E get pinned right after his amazing FoF performance is also pretty dumb. This is the time to start pushing him. However, this match gets bonus points for having the best camera angle of a Shooting Star Press that I’ve ever seen. Got vertigo from that. Also, EC3 showing up makes everything better.
THE wRong:
The Lockdown advertisements: On one hand, the promotion of Lockdown inside of the show was great. The wrestlers did a great job hyping up their Lockdown matches and the announcers did a decent enough job giving us the non-PPV rundown. However, the commercials for Lockdown that ran between segments (and at the end) were a misfire. They gave away too much (in terms of what was shown) and destroyed any notion that Lockdown isn’t already taped. Some might also have a problem with their exploitation of a really awful bump that Jeff Hardy took; I personally have no issue with it because Jeff knows what he’s doing when he takes insane bumps. He has been doing that on national television for 15 years now. Regardless, these advertisements had a number of issues.
They Forgot Velvet: Angelina Love seems totally fine with Robbie E considering that he totally screwed over her BFF. That doesn’t make any logical sense. The women should be characters, not props, and having Angelina not at least say something nasty to Robbie backstage puts her more into the latter category.
THE Ridiculous:
The Knockouts champion took a basketball to the face! LOL!: Staying with the women here, it’s cool that Taryn Terrell got to be in a movie. She demonstrated her toughness yet again by taking a bump on a basketball court, and pointing that out is fine. Taz went overboard though, basically saying it was awesome that Taryn got whacked in the face with a basketball. It was just awkward as hell.
Fairly un-memorable show this week that existed solely to set up Lockdown. The women’s match is worth checking out (especially considering the Knockouts title doesn’t have a presence at Lockdown) and storyline progression was solid as usual. Allowing Lashley to stand alone as the battle lines were drawn was a good call; he continues to be one of the most-improved wrestlers in the game today. Un-memorable as it was, there wasn’t really anything strikingly bad about this show aside from a couple of misfires with the company’s treatment of Knockouts.
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Show Rating: 7.0
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
“I’m not saying I’ve been everywhere and I’ve done everything. But I do know this is a pretty amazing planet we live on here. And a man would have to be some kind of fool to think we’re all alone in this universe.”
