The Redman Report: WWE Smackdown 20/1/12: “ALL DAY LONG!”

Well. What a show indeed. The Raw Roulette wheel. Vickie rapping. Regal dancing. Booker T playing with dolls. Comedy. A collection of sprints, and some brutal brawls. The SAGA. We’ve got it all here on Fridee Night Smack Down.

Bryan’s opening promo was pretty great. Best part was “She loves me…and I have a lot of admiration for her too.” He needs to find new ways to avoid reciprocating her love week after week until the end of time. The final “you should just QUIT!” at the end was cool too. Bryan has so come into his own here, just really tops character work.

The Raw Roulette wheel! Check it for C,O,N,Spiracies! Anyway, I’m totally fine with this being Smackdown Roulette. The comedy bit they did here with Cody pointing at his opponent, Zeke…no, Santino…no, Hornswoggle was EXCELLENT. Top stuff.

Cody was such a dick not even waiting for the bell to kick the crap out of Horny. Gabes saves! Pick on someone your own size! Gabes vs Cody was a HELL of a sprint, Gabes got a lot of offense and looked good, I liked the nearfalls before Cody got the pin. I was hoping for a flash pin to set up a mini-IC Title feud, and I’m still holding out hope because this was really fun.

BOOKER T PLAYING WITH ACTION FIGURES!

That happened. He was sitting there, playing with action figures in the new wrestling ring contraption. They need to make time EVERY WEEK for Booker to shill WWEShop.com by playing with the latest dolls. I LOVE BOOKER.

Also, a tag match! This was another fun sprint of a match, a Tornado tag actually, so they just went crazy with double teams for a minute before the pin. Rosa Mendes is a hell of a tag team.

I love Mark Henry. He was so badass just spinning the wheel and talking smack to Teddy Long.

I was hoping for a Pillow Fight, but Lumberjacks will do I guess.

THE FUNKASAURUS!

HOOOOLY GOD. BEST SEGMENT EVER.

A dance contest! VICKIE GUERRERO RAPPNG. The Elaine dance. Naomi. Brodus dancing. Regal’s gentleman save. VICKIE BLOWING HER NOSE ON REGAL’S HANKY. REGAL’S FACE. The FUNKY CHICKEN DANCE. Regal dancing. Brodus crossbodying him to death and going “My bad! Somebody call his momma!”

EPIC FREAKING WIN.

I love this show already.

And now Barrett vs Sheamus! This was a HELL of a war. These two guys just went balls out for ten minutes and BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF EACH OTHER. Really awesome brawling, and some cool table teases as well. F*CK a Jinder Mahal, but at least Sheamus DRILLED him into the table in the end anyway. Great, great work. This show is too much fun.

I liked the touch of having the Flag match announced and the ring crew having to come out and set it up, because this sh*t is real. I liked that.

Also, Ted vs Hunico was an even sprintier sprint than all of the sprints so far. It was basically just a collection of big bombs, and the bumps were good and Ted in particular sold them really well, especially limping on the finish.

Drew! My love! Dont take him from me! This segment was actually hilarious. “Drew McIntosh”, all of his terrible puns, and closing his eyes and crashing into something. Santino rules, giving him comedy time on SD every week is an excellent notion.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH COMEDY!!!

Seriously. Enjoy this or GTFO. I lost it at Santino putting a tiny hood on his cobra so it wouldnt cheat. The “blindfolded” spots were good. Drew f*cking SMASHED his hand into the ringpost, Jesus. And him taking a peek and running at Santino only to miss and spill outside was AWESOME heel tomfoolery. Way to be a worker all the way out the door. Also, Santino using the crowd to tell him where Drew was, leading to finally hitting him for the win was fun. This really does feel like them using Drew for TV time until they get bored and finally get rid of him, which makes me weep, but nonetheless this was too much fun for me to hate.

I like how Bryan is becoming such a douche that Henry is sort of the babyface by default, without changing himself in any way. And I absolutely love that Bryan’s strategy for this match is to piss off all the lumberjacks. Heel Genius. “Dont you touch me!” and Barrett just goes “or what?” was great. Anyway, this match consisted ENTIRELY of Henry tossing Bryan around and beating the crap out of him. And it RULED. “All day long!” What an unbelievably great man. He’s not losing his title without a fight!

There’s a point where Bryan gets tossed outside (again) in front of a group of heels, and they just have this epic staredown as Bryan slowly realises what he’s in for and gets back into the ring. He then runs headfirst into DEATH. I have no idea what it even was (A lariat? A tackle?) but he got seriously BEHEADED by it. A SUPER bump. And like a minute later he runs into a gnarly LARIAT-OH as well. Henry is in total BEAST MODE once again. His FACE when Bryan kicked out of that ruled. I feared for Bryan’s safety. Wow, Henry is Tenryu.

Anyway, he tosses Bryan outside, again, and this time things boil over and this GIANT brawl breaks out with the Lumberjacks. Suddenly everyone is going at it, Bryan is BURIED under a pile, Henry goes outside and gets buried under a pile as well before he ROARS, he tries to continue the match but by this point the mob cannot be stopped – they maul Bryan, they maul Henry, they maul each other. It is CHAOS. (By the way, the Royal Rumble match is in two weeks!) In the midst of it all, Bryan quietly rolls out of the ring and crawls away from the wreckage, grabs his title and gets the f*ck out of dodge. HE SURVIVES AGAIN.

This was another awesome non-finish. The storytelling at play is just immense right now. You were told at the start of the match that Bryan’s new attitude had pissed off the entire locker room, we see that at ringside as nobody seems to like him at all, and Bryan makes it worse by mouthing off at all of them and hitting them unprovoked. And its heels and faces equally; that Bryan’s biggest antagonist is Barrett was a cool way of demonstrating that it was Bryan vs the World. You can see throughout the match how things are escalating, tension is rising, and finally it all tips over and CHAOS erupts. Its all so well built, and then, right at the end, you see Bryan slinking away with the title and you realise that he orchestrated the whole entire thing. He is an Evil Heel Genius, and he escapes his fate for another week.

At least until the Rumble, and the three-way cage match. The triple threat cage is tough to pull off but I really just love the idea of Bryan finally being trapped inside a cage with these two giant monsters who are trying to MURDER him after all of his scheming. And there’s every chance that he sneaks out another back door and survives again. This angle is SO FREAKING AWESOME. I love you so much SD.