I’ve long been a defender of the brand split and multiple World Championships. I always thought merging the belts and unifying the rosters would lead to too many guys losing their gig and their card placement, but after watching the last two WWE PPVs, I just don’t see the need for it anymore.

During the Elimination Chamber, we saw a Raw Superstar defend the US Title against a Smackdown guy and Santino Marella challenge for the World Championship … in a match that also had to feature the Great Khali. And the Royal Rumble, while incredibly fun, struggled to fill the ring with 30 big-name Superstars. When Epico, Primo and an Uso made it in, on top of the fact they had several gimmicky entries like Road Dogg, Hacksaw and Kharma, you know the roster isn’t as loaded as it was ten years ago.

And that’s okay! WWE’s been getting back to basics and we no longer have the star overload that the remnants of the Attitude Era left us with. Right now, the only true HUGE name WWE has is John Cena; Triple H is part-time at best, Undertaker works once a year, Jericho is in Roddy Piper mode, and Rey Mysterio is shelved at least three months out of the year. The Rock could pop in and out now and then, Batista might return and who knows, we may still get one last Stone Cold match, but let’s face facts: the 1998-2005 WWE is long gone.

In its place, we have CM Punk, who is on the cusp of something big, and then a bunch of guys who are kinda big, but not really. And that’s all they’ll ever be as long as WWE oversaturates their programming with too many titles and too many brands. It worked when the Attitude Era overlapped the Cena era, but we’re in the beginning of something new now and there has never been a better opportunity to get back to basics.

Yes, it may mean some guys will get shunted down the card, but what difference does it make when the World Championship match is the fourth most important match at WrestleMania? And that’s assuming they don’t come up with some kind of big special attraction like the rumored Big Show vs. Shaquille O’Neal match. Simply keeping the World Title around and Smackdown as a separate show doesn’t make Sheamus and Bryan bigger deals, it just makes the World Title and Smackdown look lesser. Bryan and Sheamus will no doubt tear it up at Mania, but do you think the Miami crowd is going to be as into it as Rock vs. Cena, Triple H vs. Undertaker or even Punk vs. Jericho? Of course not, and that’s okay, let’s just stop pretending it needs to have a World Title involved to make it a great match. 

So let’s just get on with it and merge the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships and US and Intercontinental Championships. I don’t care when they do it — Night of Champions, SummerSlam, or WrestleMania 29 — let’s just make it happen. It’ll instantly increase the value of the WWE and IC Championships, guys in contention for them will seem like bigger deals and WWE will have to come up with new reasons and stories for guys to feud other than “it’s my turn to get a shot at the title.”

I can’t think of a better way to shake up the program, get people talking and make wrestlers feel like Superstars again.

Razor is a regular contributor to Fair to Flair and the founder of Kick-Out!! Wrestling. It’s pretty difficult to miss him on Twitter, trying to be clever in 140 characters or less. You can also check out Kick-Out’s Facebook and Tumblr pages, because there just aren’t enough social networking sites out there.

Edited by Jason Mann.

Welcome to Sunday Afternoon Smackdown!  Since nothing happened on February 10th edition, I decided to hold off and include the next episode as well as some TNA fun as well.  However this will not include the latest episode of Impact because, well, I don’t want to hurt you like that.  

Sunday Afternoon Smackdown Twists your Fate in our traditional WOO! vs BOO! format.  Everything WOO! was better than Bully Ray’s calves.  Everything BOO! deserves to be breathed on heavily as well as drooled upon by The Big Show.

WOO!

THE EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF TALENT RELATIONS AND THE INTERIM GENERAL MANAGER OF RAW MAKING APPEARENCES ON FRIDAY NIGHT SMACKDOWN

Having Mister Excitement on the phone for Smackdown was brilliant.  Somehow, his voice sounds even better over the phone.  WWE.com could make a killing selling Johnny Ace recording personalized outgoing messages for people.  Just 5 minutes of boring before the beep. 

Then he shows up again next week, bringing Otunga’s Thermos with him and shows Teddy Long how a real general manager works.  You never see people destroying Mr. Laurinaitis’ office, do you?  You never see him getting run over in videogames, do you?  I didn’t think so.

RANDY ORTON: MAKING PEACE WITH THE INTERNET

Randy Orton used to be loved by the internet back when he was a terrible shitty wrestler.  It was pretty much based on three things: 1) cutters are cool, 2) large gesturing taunts are cool 3)getting thrown in thumbtacks is cool.  Then he started winning matches and everybody got super jaded about him.  In the last year or so, Randy has been having good to great matches with internet darlings like Christian, The Artist Formally Known As CM Punk and now Daniel Brian Danielson Bryantson.  Their match on Smackdown was certainly an example of that. 

And sure, it looked like Danielson was really pulling his punches in that match, and understandably so because Randy Orton was born with glass bones and paper skin.  But Randy actually let Danielson look like  a legitimate contender.  Even being dominated in certain parts, which makes perfect sense if it was their first match.  Then the toss to the apron into the DDT was smart, instead of having the dude just wait out there for an eon, and finally Randy attacks Big Show by jumping a table like Randy Savage while Danielson lays in the ring dead like Ric Flair.  Everything worked, and now with Randy being taken out of the match, I only want to see them wrestle again that much more.

THREE WORDS: “CALVES AND ABS”

TNA, be smart and put that on a shirt.  Bully Ray and Bobby Roode are far and away the two best things in TNA right now, and putting them together, even for such a brief time, is something I will always cherish, like Bully cherishes his calves.  Everything about them.  From Roode screwing Bully time and time again, only to try to reform the alliance with promises of title shots, to Roode slapping Bully on the chest lightly saying “you follow my lead okay?” only to have the Bully responds with slightly harder chest slaps saying “stop hitting me”.  Natural villainous chemistry, and I hope they are given a lot more time to screw each other over. 

“Brothers don’t shake hands, brothers gotta hug”—Bobby Roode

SAMOA JOE: CHAMPION

Our boy has gold again!  After Magnus cut a pretty good promo about England on Impact, and weeks of Joe and Magnus trying to look legitimate over the dual brick shit houses, it is really great to finally be rewarded and see something kind of new happen in the tag scene in TNA that isn’t racist or Shannon Moore.  Between that and the X Division matches kicking ass, there was actually a fair amount to like on Against All Odds.  Except Gunner.

A TNA MAIN EVENT TO LIKE

I know, it’s insane.  But TNA actually put on a compelling main event match.  Bully Ray abstaining for the first portion while the good guys gave us catharsis at the expense of Roode was nothing but logical.  The teased Beer Money taunt, Bully Ray popping up from Hardy’s messed up Twist of Fate Stunner like he was the reincarnation of Scott Fucking Hall, (don’t email me saying Scott Hall is alive, we both know that’s barely true). 

And then finally, Roode  got under Sting’s skin.  He made Sting lose control.  Anytime anyone gets spit on in wrestling, I love it.  And while it was sort of telegraphed with Hardy stumbling in the background briefly, it was still cool.  And the placement was perfect, where Sting couldn’t see Storm getting to his feet in the back ground, and screaming at Jeff to get up.  I thought it was going to be Business As Usual after the ref got bumped twice, but then Sting had to have his moral crisis and it was actually really compelling.  Certainly more compelling than whatever Champ vs Authority Figure they have over in the WWE right now.  Sting made a mistake unintentionally and couldn’t do the wrong thing intentionally.  It was the perfect tone to strike for a clusterfuck TNA ending.  And sure, it could all end in Hardy winning the title at Victory Road where he stumbled through all of his 30 second match just a year before, but still.

Honorable mention: AJ Styles travels with a Nintendo 3DS

I guess Steiner’s taunts about AJ sleeping in a race car bed with Winnie the Pooh sheets actually held some water.  He plays Zelda to get over the hurt of Kaz and beats the hell out of his kids in Mario Kart.

BOO!

SHEAMUS: IN GENERAL

I can’t remember the last time I forgot somebody won the Royal Rumble within a month.  How am I supposed to remember?  He comes into the Rumble with only months of beating up Muhammad Hassan and his only narrative in the match is “OYM GONNA WIN THE ROYAL RUMBLE…MATCH”, which is a far cry from the Ric Flairs and Shawn Michaelses before him.  Then he wins it, and all he does after is say “OY WON THE ROYAL RUMBLE…MATCH!” and goes back to beating up dudes like he’s the general manager’s hired gun. 

Not to mention his Great Shite shirt makes me uncomfortable, aside from it being washed out and terrible.

Then he cuts this promo, which I guess is supposed to be his Hate Me Now thing.  Is it just me, or does it seem like Sheamus learned a fair amount of his moveset from beating up his childhood bullies?  Also, was it JBL that told him his skin was too pale?  Did they haze him?  Did Bradshaw hog tie him in the shower and let Randy Orton rub tanning oil all over him?  I hope we get all these answers and more in his autobiography It’s Not Easy Being White…It’s Not Easy Being Red.

TED DIBIASE IS A CLASSIST JERK

Seriously, if he would have just gotten over his hate for his gardeners, we wouldn’t have to watch the same kind of boring match every week.  All bullies really just want to be loved and accepted, not beaten up and made to look like fools covered in silly string, (or poop if you’re bullying DX or Eddie Guerrero).

On a side note, Ted wears his tights way too tightly.  I can see his bank rolls.

But bless Hunico for trying to turn shit into Shinola.  He came in as Earth 3 Sin Cara and now is trying to tell Ted that he has an evil plan to ruin his bbqs by breaking his wrist.  “NO MORE BURGER FLIPPIN FOR YOU ESE, YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO HOLD SOLID FOOD AGAIN”

ERIC BISCHOFF IS STILL NOT IN THE ELIMINATION CHAMBER VIDEOS

This has been bothering me for awhile, and is almost as big a travesty as nixing “THE WORLD IS WATHCHING” and trying to retcon Jim Ross out of continuity. 

But seriously, the soundbyte of him saying “THE ELIMINATION CHAYMBURRRRR” has to be in the top ten best things that Easy E ever did.  Right before getting on his knees to propose to Hulk Hogan and right after getting on his knees to blow Hulk Hogan.

SPEAKING OF HULK HOGAN: HULK HOGAN SPEAKING

I’m only going to provide a part of the exhaustion infused quote that Hogan gave during one of the U.K. events.

“If I gotta be the hood ornament that you put on front of the ship to bust through the ice cubes, to see through the fog, to feel through the darkness of the night.  I can be the guy because I smell the greatness already.  And if they don’t smell it, I’m going to take everybody in TNA and stuff their heads in it because greatness is their destiny.”

I expect Garrett Bischoff to have the Hall of Fame ring by this summer.  I guess that’s what “Hulkamania stroke” really is: lateral nepotism.  Or at least that’s what it will be until Hogan has his first stroke.  Damn that Jeff Jarrett!  New Blood 4 Life!

By the way, who is even in Immortal now?  Horrace Hogan?

JEFF HARDY IS CLEARLY STILL ON DRUGS

There is no way a person can possibly be this delusional.  How can he stand there with his Worst Birthday Ever facepaint and say that the odds are always against him?

I don’t even have to say it do I?  On no less than 3 separate occasions have you been on a meteoric path of stardom, chance after chance to “GO FOR THE GOLD KID” and “MAKE YOURSELF FAMOUS” and you squandered it to smoke and make horrible videos with your Never Was brother. 

Also, stop calling your fans enigmas, I know exactly who they are, from their kid size chewing tobacco to their hot topic rewards cards.

WWE’S OBSESSION WITH SMELL

Natalya cost herself a match last Friday because she apparently farted in the ring and the ref couldn’t make the count because his eyes were screaming or something.  Just when I thought we were past this.  What is with the writers these days, it’s all bad breath and bad farts and lawyer stink. 

TEDDY LONG IS A RACIST, DREW MAC GOT SCREWED, AND SOMEBODY SHOULD START A PETITION TO SUSPEND BIG SHOW

So let me get this straight:

Mark Henry is taken out of the Chamber match because he wrinkled Teddy Long’s tie, and then is replaced with The Great Kahli off screen because they have to keep up a weight/chamber ratio, then Randy Orton gets taken out because he’s FRAGILE, so they need a replacement, then Mark Henry shows up despite being suspended indefinitely, so Big Show kills him after killing Kahli and destroys Teddy’s office and somehow DOESN’T get suspended OR taken out of the chamber, so then they have a battle royal featuring the J.O.B. Squad and Mark Henry is still not in it, I guess because he’s seeing little Big Shows flying around his head.   They eliminate Drew Mac and David Otunga, the only two people who could go into the chamber with some semblance of a story and put Santino in it, who has only been jobbing to farts in the last few weeks, am I getting this?  Am I understanding this correctly?

I just don’t see how this isn’t the worst chamber match ever.  That is, unless the Cobra gets caught in the chains while Daniel and Cody take turns kicking Santino in the kidneys until he vomits on the front row.

Honorable Mention: Wade Barrett’s music sucks because it sounds like the first song some garage band wrote, and then they got big somehow and decided to give it a proper recording because their girlfriends liked it.

Logan Stallings (also known as Garcian Smith) is a Psychology student at the University of Florida.  He’s working on an English minor.  In his spare time he likes writing prose and poetry, as well as fantasizing about wrestling Chris Jericho and stealing all of Raven’s gimmicks.

Welcome to Sunday Afternoon Smackdown on Sunday After Friday!  It’s our two week anniversary, and like a psychotic romantic partner, I ask you where is my present? Say you love me!

Sunday Afternoon Smackdown downs the smack in our trademark WOO! vs BOO! format.  Everything “WOO!” made me hear voices in my head in the voice of Ric Flair, while everything “BOO!” filled my head with the sound of WRESTLER DELETED reciting poetry to Raven.  

WOO!

SHEAMUS EXERCISES HIS BULLY DEMONS/THE NEAR ASSASSINATION OF THEODORE LONG BY THE COWARD MARK HENRY

Bully demons is a fun concept all on it’s own.  It sounds like what Kane would be if he stalked Zack Ryder to stuff him into various lockers instead of trying to fist his mouth.

Sheamus certainly has a score to settle with Mark Henry, and like Triple H before him, he wrapped up months of history with one finisher. He didn’t talk too much, he didn’t break out a bunch of green blarney stones, he just kicked that dude in the face.  Those are the best Sheamus moments. When I saw Sheamus kick Lucky Cannon in the face.  When he kicked John Cena in the face.  When he kicked Hornswoggle in the face.  

My only regret is that Mark Henry didn’t eat Teddy right there in the ring.  Seriously, it needed to rain pain.  Not only can he not understand mathematics, keeping him on par with Scott Steiner, but he’s out of the Elimination Chamber!  

Sheamus looks like a beast right now.  Henry exploded on that kick, I thought stuffing was going to burst from his face.  

Stuffing is blood in the PGverse.

So who is going to be in the Chamber Match now?  The Great Kahli.  That’s the best Smackdown can do right now.  Seriously.  The next guy on the rung would be Ted DiBiase.  Can Christian come back from injury and take his spot please?  ONE MORE MATCH!

I had to take a look at the roster pages to make sure I was right on about the problem on Smackdown.  Also, looking at RAW, it seems we’re still paying Mason Ryan money.  He should really be moved to Smackdown to confuse Booker T.  Or maybe…ugh, you know, it’s easier to just say Mason Ryan sucks.

In all seriousness, Sheamus is going to have to become an actually interesting and likable character outside of bicycle kicks and lifting Finlay’s moveset, (celtic cross now!), because I just watched Edge/Jericho Mania 26 again, and there aren’t many ways to build a good program around a finishing move.

Also, I’m pretty sure most people don’t know what Brogue means.

TEDDY LONG DOESN’T WATCH HIS OWN SHOW

This is a minor WOO! for Teddy, because he mentioned to Drew Mac that predictable television is no good.

I feel like this is a low hanging fruit, but I’ll take a shot anyway.  Let’s try to work through all the predictable things in WWE right now and maybe we’ll have a clear understanding of how The Character Teddy Long feels about WWE TV.

• John Cena: Winning
• (4 Superstars + Opening Segment) X Teddy Long = TAG MATCH PLAYA
• KEVIN NASH is going to EXPLAIN HIS ACTIONS and BE OLD and TAKE THE PROGRAM NOWHERE
• People wrestling
• YOU PEOPLE
• Longest Running Weekly Episodic
• Something racist
• Something sexist
• Sugar
• Spice
• Everything Nice
• These are the ingredients to create the perfect little girls

Seriously, you can make a bingo board.  It gets so repetitive, it tampers with your memory.  2002/2003, in my head, feels like Groundhog Day, where I wake up every day expecting Triple H to lose the title only to see that he’s in the ring again talking about his dick and genes for thirty minutes.

EPICO Y PRIMO LLEVAN PONCHOS

Those ponchos are awesome.  Like, not really, because they have their names in Bad Tattoo Font, but the fact that they would rather people see their names and merch over those science museum souvenir belts says a lot for their characters.  Which is great, they should do more things like that, because their spokesperson is Rosa Mendes, who can’t say anything.  I mean, her hips always tell the truth, but it’s nothing I can understand.

Also, that backstabber variant is sick.  I really hope Primo has a nice, tidy little career.  And you know, doesn’t get on drugs or hire a guy to stab John Cena.  

Also, Rosa should blow more kisses.  In a Maryse-free world, I am missing the one taunt that causes me to say uncomfortably perverted things outloud to people reading me on the internet.

BIG IS A FAILURE WHO RAN OVER DANIELSON’S MEAT FLAVORED GIRLFRIEND

It’s really hard to do SD reviews because nothing happens.  You can literally never watch Smackdown ever and never miss anything except Randy Orton doing jumping splits and making weirder faces than Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and if you’re on tumblr you don’t even miss that.  Cody Rhodes and Wade Barrett are spinning wheels and everyone else is just sort of punching each other.

So in a world of nothing, Daniel Bryan has finally made himself out to be a something.  He makes Smackdown, at least his parts, must see TV.  And sure, nothing is still happening, but it’s like Austin Aries on WCW Thunder, he just says amazing things and then has a great match sometimes.  Danielson has been so on fire that for once his wrestling is secondary.  He’s almost at a point now where if he wanted to, he could just get beat up the whole match like a Flair/Hennig fusion monster and not lose a step.  He just keeps poking the bear, he knows he’s right, and he doesn’t care what happens to him as long as he has the strap.  

The other best part is that Danielson made it more than clear that Big Show is the only person he’s really concerned about right now.   And then, to top it all off, AJ came out.  Now I have this really great feeling that AJ can become Daniel’s villainous hench-wife.  We can dress her up like Talia al Ghul and she can drop kick people in the balls.  

BOO!

IN ADDITION TO BEING BAD AT HIS JOB, BOOKER T IS ALSO SEXIST

I’m tired of all this nonsense about Michael Cole being eliminated “by a girl”.  Kong is a female, yes, but she’s also bigger than most guys.  Bigger than me at least.  She mashes her own potatoes with her fist.  She can stop speeding bullets with a headbutt.  She was in a match a month after giving birth to a baby that will probably be choking snake’s to death in it’s crib like god damn Hercules and all you guys can do is sit behind your desk and go “lol women”.  

Also, major kudos go to Ziggler for making the effort to make everyone look good, including a “Diva”.  Probably because Ziggler does business.  I was going to call him professional, but he models his life after pornstars and makes obnoxious twitter posts.  Still, he never called anybody by any slurs on Twitter like a certain person who is undefeated at WrestleMania.

Not Taker of course.  Taker’s in character twitter feed would probably be a lot of ellipsis.   It will read like the script of a brooding Final Fantasy character.

PHYSICAL COMEDY IS RUINING MY LIFE

I’m not sure why this is happening with Nattie.   It’s telegraphed now.  She says that she feels it in her gut, and then boom.  Fart.  I’m not sure if this is actually a gimmick.  I guess it could be in the same why “eye twitching” and “lisping” and “murdering fetuses” is a gimmick.  You have to understand, I already said that like 4 things happen on Smackdown, and when one of those things is farting, it leaves me with little else to work with.  The RAW review wasn’t up, so I posted unopposed, and I still lose in quality comparison.  

I’m not against physical comedy, but there is no precedent in the character or appearance of Nattie for it to be happening.  Chris Farley was fat and oafish, so he would fall on tables.  Unless I’m missing something about Nattie’s connection to her father, there is no reason we should be having 90 second diva matches, farting capable wrestlers and women who think it’s cool to wear a whole fox carcass on their head.

This is the Special 1^st Edition Edition with Holofoil  FairToFlair Trading Card featuring Mitch and KSP riding a Pikachu themed roller coaster together.

This feature will normally appear on Sundays.

Sunday Night Smackdown smacks you down in our trademark WOO! Vs BOO! format.  Everything “WOO!” was froot and reeked of awesomeness, while everything “BOO!” was teamed up with Santino to do racial humor on Martin Luther King Day.

WOO!

NAME DROPPING WHEN IT IS HISTORICALLY RELEVENT

A lot of great things were happening.  Daniel Bryan has been having great appreciation for his girlfriend and Big Show was outed as a sinning freak.  Great things were really happening when Daniel Bryan was smacking The Bully Show in the face with a arguments and philosophy textbook.  He was saying everything short of “you should just kill yourself you big ugly jerk, nobody will go to prom with you” because I guess he has to Be A Star or whatever. 

In the mist of crocodile tears and offhanded references to “genetic freaks”, which could mean The Hulk but I prefer to think of Scott Steiner, Bryan name dropped Andre The Giant.  Now that’s certainly something that Big Show invites as a comparison, because how many other giants are there on the planet Earth?   There have to be more than there are Funkasauruses.  Bryan told Big Show to his face that he will never be Andre.  Which is a fair thing to say.

1. Big Show and Andre the Giant are different people, and can’t be the same person until science catches up with our language.
2. Andre only needed to be in one really good movie to be remembered fondly by the whole world, where as only a few people on tumblr and whatever fans 10 years from now who were young now and like to blog about nostalgia on whatever site they’ll have then about the really tall guy that went poo poo on da bus. 
3. Andre transcended championships.

It’s that last one that is the most important for Daniel’s character arch.  When Andre won the WWE championship, he pawned it off to The Million Dollar Man in like 6 seconds like it was Ric Flair’s Hall of Fame watch.  He didn’t need it.  It wouldn’t fit, it was a trinket and he just liked beating up people and grinding their bones to make his bread. 

Daniel Bryan clearly doesn’t subscribe to this idea.  Neither does Henry.  Neither does Show.  They all need that big gold hunk of implied intrinsic value in order to validate all of the torment they’ve put themselves through.  Yes, I am equating Daniel Bryan losing most of the vision in his eye to Mark Henry having to cover Mae Young’s fake deflated-blimp boobs.  They all did what they had to do and no struggle is any more valid than the other.  The Big Show of course double teamed Hogan with a mummy while Jimmy Heart acted as the voyeur. They aren’t like Andre, they need this belt.

It’s a cleaver way to get us to associate Bryan with guys like Show and Henry.  Clearly the belt isn’t enough because it still has lingering Swagger stink on it, but now he seems like them in motive.  Daniel Bryan isn’t like Andre because he wasn’t given the same gifts.  Big Show has some of those gifts, but squanders them to high five The WWE Universe and kill 95 pound girls. 

Honorable Mention: Mark Henry going full Scorpion and barking at Daniel Bryan to “GET OVER HERE”.  How in the hell is Mark Henry the strongest actor on the roster right now?  He’s so fleshed out, especially last week when he was getting upset over silly things in wrestling despite being a silly thing in wrestling.

GOOD MATCHES ON TELEVISION FOR YOU

Smackdown has a bad habit of being on Fridays, (it’s like, every week or something with these guys) so I generally have to watch it later.  Despite being someone who writes about wrestling, I actually have a pretty full life, (how do ya like thatLawlernerds, huh? ) so I have to watch it later.  This affords me the luxury of having the option to fast forward or skip things all together if it’s too much farting and RAW rebounds.  It’s nice not to move up to 1.5 speed because I actually sort of like what’s happening in the ring.

Specifically, Justin Gabriel and Cody Rhodes having a fun few minutes of jumping and rolling.  It was great, somebody would roll, then somebody would jump.   It was like Mario and the barrels in Donkey Kong manifested their properties into people, which is oddly appropriate because the beginning of Justin Gabriel’s theme sounds like a menu screen in Ape Escape.  I’m not really a fan of J-Gabe outside of That One Match He Had With John Cena, but I have been missing a time when Smackdown was a strong wrestling show in lieu of RAW trying to shove all these verbal narratives down our throats, or alternatively up our (candy/monkey) asses if the Rock is there.

They bounced around, Justin made one mistake and it was in line with Justin being over eager and a risk taker to Cody’s calculating serial killer style, eventually leading Cody to say “Aww Funk It” and leave Justin at the crossroads.  Bonus WOO! For the way Cody backs off his opponents almost immediately as if he can’t stand to touch them for more than the 3 seconds he’s pinning them for.  I can’t say I blame him, Justin looks like a goof in those Kid Icarus boots he was wearing.

As much fun as I had with that match, I still would love to see these two in a Vegas Showgirls Match.

THE UNEARTHING OF THE FUNKASAURUS HAS BROUGHT OUT THE REST OF EARTH 2

Brodus Clay sheeplexing WWE’s C-Team has been a great way to remind us that these people are still employed.  Sure, we have to deal with seeing Alex Riley’s goofy living-in-the-past-erman jacket, but we also got to see Yoshi Tatsu come out and cut people in half with his hands.  Sure, he was sans Kabuki and risks becoming a permanent half of Racial Team 2k12 ver 1.0, but he’s still better than Koslov.  His chops sound like shotgun blasts.  He hands are scaled down Kenta Kobashis.   And yeah, Trent Barreta had to deal with Randy Orton working through his backed up of voices, but we still see them, and maybe, just maybe it will lead to Drew McIntyre winning a freaking match.  Speaking of which.

BOO!

LET DREW MAC HAVE ONE

Okay, well, we’ve been doing this for awhile now.  Drew MacIntyre is wrestling every week, Randy Orton doesn’t even do that, and at this point it just seems like Terry Long is still mad about Drew running his MLK picture party.

Think about it.  Drew takes one for the team, he stays down for the cobra, when did we stop living in the world of “Pin Me Pay Me?”  What about all those goofs that Randy Orton Randall Keith Orton’d in the ring.  How does he afford those guys?  Do they get paid in Fleer trading cards? 

And then you put him against Sheamus?  Why?  So I can be reminded how much better these guys deserve?  Sheamus has almost completely assimilated Fit Finlay’s moveset and is one Actual Celtic Cross away from pile driving Regal on top of a car.

And how does it make sense for Teddy to care anyway?  Does he know that everyone can’t be winners all the time?  That was the hardest part of GM Mode in SvR, making sure everyone was happy and didn’t have broken necks and stuff.    If Drew’s stock lowers, doesn’t somebody else’s rise?  KSP and I still want to believe that wrestlers that win matches get a sack of money from Mr. McMahon, complete with hokey dollar sign on the bag.

What is Drew even worried about?  Do “Cena Things” not happen on Smackdown?   Can people not just pull an Office Space and show up for work anyway and still get paid? 

I hope this leads to Drew Being Something and doesn’t backfire on him.  If he goes psycho killer with an ax Braveheart on everybody, then great, I take it back, but I feel like we’re on a one way path to Christian Cry Baby jobber.  WWE doesn’t do losing streak stories differently too often.

Also, why laugh at his job being in jeopardy Booker?  This guy has rent to pay.  Speaking of Booker.

BOOKER T’S COMMENTARY DAWG RIGHT THERE MAN YEAH BABY

Booker T gave me one good moment where he repeated Batista’s name in a way that made me wonder if he still thought Batista was down. 

And does Booker not understand basic merit based contendership?  He seemed so shocked and appalled that Cody doesn’t just hand out title shots.  The guy wrestles every week, he can’t go full 100% every week, that’s insanity and it’s how you get injuries in real sports. 

Is he still trapped mentally in WCW?  You either just demanded a title shot from The Powers That Be and got it, but it might have been the 3^rd match for that particular title that night, or you have to beat Miss Elizabeth multiple times in a 67 person tournament that will be invalidated by a title vacation the next night anyway.

Also, it’s not a pterodactyl.  Pick up a children’s book.

HAW HAW WHO FARTED WAS THAT AKSANA’S SAX?

Seriously, why did Nattie have to fart in a way that nobody does?  What does that add to her character?  Are we going to make fun of her now?  Will she see the error of her bully ways and start crying when we call her terrible names?  Here are a few for reference.

• Nattie Neidfart

That’s all you need.

At least Santino isn’t a hypocrite who wont sell smell when he expect others to sell getting touched in the throat by his fingertips +/- sock snake.

JOHN CENA IS GOING TO ROCK YOUR ROCKS OFF

This has gone too far.

Honorable Mention: Michael Cole said “Shiggy Diggy Wiggy”.  God, it’s like when your parents pretend to like Pokémon.

Logan Stallings (better known by his ring name, Garcian Smith) is a psych student at the University of Florida who has dreams of writing, wrestling and writing about wrestling. In his spare time, he performs spoken word and catches Pokémon.

As always, this week’s Smackdown review will be brought to you in Fair to Flair’s ”WOO!/BOO!” format … also, by the letter “J” and the number “13.”

WOO!

Alberto Del Rio vs. Sin Cara Azul was a hell of an opening match, but FFS, that German Suplex Del Rio hit was NASTY!!!! I believe I screamed “HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT!” and then pressed rewind on the DVR so my wife could see. Her reaction: “Why would you show me that?” Little too short for my tastes and perhaps a bit too decisive, but Del Rio is the WWE Champion after all. Sin Cara Negro attack after the match was a bit formulaic, something I’d expect in a WWE video game, but it did what it needed to do.

YAY! The Big Show is back! And there’s logical storyline progression, to boot! We didn’t see a lot of that on this show (more on that in the BOO!) and I’m genuinely stoked to see Show vs. Mark Henry. If you would’ve told me a year ago that the thing I’d be most excited for in late 2011 would be a World Heavyweight Title feud between Mark Henry and Big Show, I would’ve fallen out of my chair like Annie on last week’s episode of Community. 

Mark Henry was great here as well, asking Show what he’s done to deserve a World Title match when all he’s done is sit at home on a vacation that Henry gave him. Henry taking it under advisement and promising a response on “Mark Henry time” got a legitimate LOL out of me, and Big Show’s promising to induct Henry in the Hall of Pain if he didn’t get a response by the end of the night was great as well. 

Randy Orton & Sheamus vs. Christian & Cody Rhodes was a fun, Raw-style main event tag match. Of course, that means Orton & Sheamus won, but the match was rock solid (if predictable) and it’s nice to see Cody continue to mix it up with the big boys. 

Mark Henry tried to decline Big Show’s challenge and yeah … he got inducted into his own Hall of Pain. Big Show is one of the few guys who can legitimately overpower Mark Henry, so it all worked when Show started swatting security guards like flies, spearing Henry and of course, chokeslamming the World Champion through the announce table. Glorious and honestly, the only really good thing on this entire show.

BOO!

A huge BOO! to WWE conveniently working around The Walking Out (Sundays on AMC) without having to do major storyline advancement. Teddy Long told Zack Ryder at the start of the show that Triple H wasn’t going to be on Smackdown to avoid another walkout. Granted, David Otunga explained that handing over control to Teddy Long for a night brought them to Smackdown, but they’ll walk out if Triple H doesn’t resign on Monday, and that would be fine if it was just Christian, Otunga, Jack Swagger, Cody Rhodes, Dolph Ziggler, Vickie Guerrero and Alberto Del Rio. But the entire company walked out on Monday, you can’t do something that dramatic and just push pause. I knew they would, but it’s still a bummer … how fun would an anarchist Smackdown have been?

WWE, this is YOUR storyline, you’re writing it, Triple H isn’t just the GM of Raw, he’s the COO of the entire company. What makes Smackdown any different? Other than the fact it’s the show you don’t want to do any major storyline advancement on?

Case in point, Air Boom being wishy-washy and saying Raw’s just too chaotic, but they’ll be on Smackdown every week… then they get attacked from behind during their entrance byJack Swagger & Dolph Ziggler. It’s fine that Ziggler & Swagger are hypocrites, they’re bad guys, they’re supposed to be disingenuous and selfish, but the rest of the story is just confused at best and lazy at worst. 

I still have no idea why Alicia Fox is a face. 

Jinder Mahal vs. Ezekiel Jackson? Really? Poor Big Zeke.

A Hornswoggle filler segment? Really²?

Overall

Just a bad show. The Walkout lost its oomph, there was tons of meaningless filler, loads of contradictions and the only time Teddy Long gained some semblance of control was during Big Show’s assault on Henry, and that story is completely separate from the Walkout. Obviously the Walkout is all building to something, most likely Survivor Series, but it’s become such a mess early on that I’m mighty skeptical. But once WWE dangles that shiny object named Dwayne in front of us, we’re all gonna melt like butter and call our cable or satellite provider to order anyway.

Razor is a regular contributor to Fair to Flair and the founder of Kick-Out!! Wrestling. It’s pretty difficult to miss him on Twitter, trying to be clever in 140 characters or less. You can also check out Kick-Out’s Facebook and Tumblr pages, because there just aren’t enough social networking sites out there.

Edited by Jason Mann.