Starting off this week, like every other week for the last couple months, with Rey and Batista. I do enjoy Batista's current heel gimmick. He pulls off the elitist arrogance really well, and it's different enough from Chris Jericho's particular brand that it doesn't get too overexposed. One would think Batista and Jericho might have an issue at some point, but I think that juxtaposition would result in one of them taking a premature face turn, and WWE (and Smackdown in particular) really needs the bad guys right now. Anyway... Batista and Rey tonight... again... to face the Undertaker at Royal Rumble... which is pretty clearly going to become a triple threat anyway... which will bring the feud full circle, and hopefully put it to bed. Hopefully.
Ziggler and Kane was more interesting than I expected, simply because Ziggler has gotten a lot better than he used to be. Kane is experienced enough to work with any style, and Ziggler's little-aggressive thing plays off the monster angle well. Every once in awhile, WWE will use a countout well - I remember Evan Bourne vs. Mark Henry, which made Bourne look smart and accentuated the quickness. Same payoff for Ziggler here. Not sure if they're trying to push a feud with the two of them, but if they are, someone needs to get on a microphone quick. Right now, there's really no emotion here, just a couple pretty decent matches.
The Beth-Michelle-Layla stuff is pretty funny. I don't care about the Piggy James stuff, but the way they're using Beth Phoenix is fun - in that she just gets annoyed with the stupidity of it all, but doesn't really care who lands on their feet. It's a clear transition to a face push, but hopefully it'll end up with her taking the women's title off of Michelle (cause an injured champion is a useless champion), and they've give a decent amount of time to a face vs. face diva feud, which they haven't had in quite awhile.
The push for the Hart Dynasty is nice, but wouldn't have happened without Bret's return. They should feel all kinds of lucky.
The six-man tag was fine, except that it seems like Jericho is the only one here who ever gets any legitimate direction. Cryme Tyme and the Hart Dynasty have always just been used as guys you plug in when you need to fill out a tag team match - which is well below either team's charismatic ability - and R-Truth... no one knows what to do with him. They used him as a stepping stone for Drew McIntyre, and now that Drew has the US title, Truth doesn't go anywhere near him? And yet I'm supposed to believe that Truth had a snowball's chance in hell of beating Batista to earn a world title shot last week? No way. Anyway, the match ends precisely how it should, with Jericho getting the win. Now that he's been banned from RAW, they need to reestablish him on the blue brand so that he can get back into the title conversation quickly. Edge can't come back soon enough.
Punk's heel gimmick continues to be awesome, but I feel like he's a little directionless right now. Especially now that Jeff Hardy mentions on air are somewhat verboten, he doesn't really have a target (or a built-in simmering feud with Jeff's brother). I've heard they might try to build him toward a mask vs. hair match as Wrestlemania with Rey, which would also serve to get Rey away from Batista, but until they give him a decent program, he'll just keep coming out and running down whatever crowd he's in front of - which is actually working pretty well, it just doesn't translate great to in-ring momentum. The ECW title might actually help him prove his point, even if it's just a quick reign to get the belt off of Christian and onto one of the other top ECW faces without Christian needing a loss to Yoshi or Shelton. It would give Punk something to parade around for a week or four, and give a little more focus to the "I'm better than you" rants.
The Gallows-Matt Hardy match after the Punk promo was typical. Not bad, not great, but serviceable. Good heel win to drive home the point of the previous promo.
The divas match was negligible, but Mickie's eye-for-an-eye kick to Beth was a nice touch. There's a tag-team match coming, I'm sure, followed by a triple threat for the women's title, but by then Beth's full face turn will be done, and it'll bring a different dynamic to the whole thing. It's good that they're still letting Beth maintain some of her edge, since she is still the scariest woman on the roster.
McIntyre I could give two shits about. Morrison is getting better on the mic, though, which is only going to help him climb. Morrison probably won't get the IC title back yet, if at all, but he'll probably come out of the feud looking a lot stronger than McIntyre, because they're going to need Morrison in the world title picture sooner rather than later. That is if he doesn't end up on RAW. I think he's done all he can with the IC belt, so I wouldn't be shocked if he ends up switching brands to go after the Miz and the US belt, basically to give him all possible mid-level exposure before the main event jump (see Kofi Kingston's US, IC and tag team title reigns).
Aaaaaaand of course there's still no #1 contender for Royal Rumble. We can assume that the only fair thing to do this week is to make it a triple threat match. Which (again) is how the whole mess started in the first place. Spice it up by putting it in a cell, maybe?
They either need to elevate some more heels (Jericho, most likely), or they need to get the belt off the Undertaker so they can create some more interesting pairs. There are very few people that can stand in the ring with the Taker and be believable as having a shot to win. As nice as it is to have the title on someone as long-tenured as Taker, it doesn't make for interesting feuds, especially since the only two heels that are built enough right now and Batista and Punk, and we've seen both of them against the Undertaker. Likely, we only need to have this issue through Wrestlemania, when the Undertaker will probably take another well-deserved break and disappear for a few months, hopefully after another fantastic match with Shawn Michaels. After that, they need to elevate some talent on Smackdown, or else they'll run into the same Orton-Cena-Triple H issue they had on RAW. Get Jericho back up to that level, maybe bring over Christian from ECW, bring Edge back... hell, send Orton to Smackdown. Let Orton beat up on Jericho and Rey for awhile. Same tune he usually plays, but new partners always make things more interesting.
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