WWE SMACKDOWN WORKRATE REPORT- 7/25/2002

[Guest DEAN RASMUSSEN]

I've watched 3000 hours of Joshi Puroresu this week so my tolerance for crap is pretty low this fine night. Imagine my smacked down hell. Just bear with me this week. Jiminy Fuck, is this show four hours long now. This was eternal...

 

WHAT WORKED-

- Mark Henry isn't affected by Professional Wrestling and that sucks. They need to hip these guys that it's a work and that Kurt Angle could actually pin him in 10 seconds if he wanted to. Angle bumps all over the ring for the World's Crappiest Ken Patera- throwing some hysterical punches before absorbing a batch of Hercules Hernandez style offense. Lesnar has the shittiest looking finisher I've seen in a while.

 

- Valbowski and D-Von was perfectly fine mediocre US wrestling. Why isn't Valbowski with the Evil Canadians? It would be far more productive than spinning his wheels in these kinda heatless affairs. This all sets up a perfectly adequate tag match, I'm assuming...

 

- Lance and Christian are fun talking about Americans. They didn't say "aboot" at any point and that was PROMISE MISSED! Christian was fun as the goofball conning Stephanie into thinking that he wasn't turning on her. HEAR! HEAR! sons of the True North! Learn to punch! The countdown clock in the corner taunts me with how much longer i must endure....

 

- Hey, Steve Harvey comes on twice a day here. I should watch that, shouldn't I?

 

- Rikishi is fixing to wrestle but instead RUMORS OF ANGLE JUMPING TO RAW! WOW! Albert comes out and I am wondering if all these folks leave if the big Smackdown fued will be Albert vs Valbowski in a quart of vanilla on a pole match. Can-O-Crowd was popping like freaks for this. This was perfectly fine three minute wrestling. It looks like Vince McMahon is trying to prove to ME that people won't give a fuck if you have two guys in the ring wrestling in their underwear. My fever dream:

 

VMcM: Hello Dean.

DR: Hello Vince.

VMcM:"See! SEE! No issue, no fued! You don't give a shit about these matches, do you, DEAN?!?!"

DR:"No, you were right, Mr McMahon. I don't give a shit about these matches."

 

- Lance Storm and Christian take on Hogan and the Rock. The thing I'm trying to figure out is: WHO throws shittier punches- Lance or Hogan? FINALLY, head-to-head, Hogan's punches are lamer than any mere Canadian could EVER foist upon us! U-S-A~! U-S-A~! Rock takes the toned-down heel offense of Lance and Christian and I'm wishing that they had actually pushed Billy and Chuck because they are faaaar more fun on offense than these milksops. Rock bumps big inexplicably again and you have to appreciate his love for his craft. The match is fine from the face side- as Rock sells well and both he and Hogan generate a mountain of heat, but the heels would have to REALLY pull out some moves to look like any semblance of a threat. Here they kinda use their shitty punches and shitty kicks until Rock gets to a comeback and they cut him off. Hogan goes out of his way to help generate heat for the Rock heat segment but one could only wonder what kinda pop they get if the Evil Canadians were more than the Dungeon Of Doom 2002. Luckily, there was a supershitty run-in by Brock Lesnar to make it all moot and this is looking more and more like that episode of Nitro where Sid ran-in every match and THE RATINGS WENT THROUGH THE ROOF!!!! WOW!!! THEY SHOULD DEFINATELY DO THAT AGAIN! !!! Maybe Lesnar can run in on the Rey vs Chavo match! One can't trust this American Wrestling shit!

 

- John Cena was funny giving the Canadians some good natured ribbing. Test smacking him was the most I've cared about Test ever.

 

- Hey, why is Rey Misterio Jr wearing a mask? He lost that to Lex Luger three years ago. Like to see him try to wear that in Mexico. Oh right, they actually give a shit about wrestling in Mexico. I forgot. My bad. Match itself was good. Not as good as Rey's match against Eddy Colon in Puerto Rico six months ago or his great great great matches in IWA Mid-South but perfectly fine Cruiserweight action. Rey psychology has gotten deeper since he lost his knees and it made him a smarter wrestler. His time in the indies and PR gave him a different idea about how to work a match and it should pay off in this run, one would hope. His last comeback was really nice with the toehold into the turnbuckle then the MORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-TAL~! into a dropkick, right into the toprope Frankensteiner. Very Silver King-esque in intensity of execution.

 

- The cage match was fine other than Jericho not actually selling the spear while tied-up in the ropes. Edge spews plasma so it is a legitimate cage match. There were some big spots, Edge makes a good face being beaten to death,there was a nice chairshot. The toprope bulldog was big looking. The Electric Chair finish was truly nasty looking. Plus the postmatch beatdown was nice- as it seemed to set-up a really fun Wargames match if they wanted to. Fuck, that Wargames match I would go to a sportsbar to see. Yessirree...

 

WHAT DIDN'T WORK-

- Well, the beginning where Stephanie McMahon gives the rundown of the line-up was really annoying. Just SAY IT already.

 

- Ah, Test is the blandest wrestler on the face of the earth. John Cena isn't gonna bring the excitement to this with his All Japan Women Rookie Offense. The finish was nice eventhough this burgeoning fued could make cakes fall, crops fail, me fall completely asleep....

 

- Brock and Angle in the Larry Saunders Hallway Moment was very Eudy-esque in the rambling Brock Lesnar-assuming-the-role-of-the-roided-out-freak line recitation. They should try to build angles through hatred portrayed in the ring- as opposed to guys remembering shitty bits of dialogue in the back. See, the problem is that there is never a point where two folks ever just punch each other in the face and make it look like they hate each other. Go watch Lyger and Kikuchi punch each other in the face and they do more in four punches than 12,000 skits on Smerkdurn ever could. It's a Memphis thing- FEEL the hate, don't talk it to death...

 

- This has promise. Stacy is gonna start fucking Stephanie?!?! How was this a bad thing? Force of habit, maybe? Actually, there isn't gonna be any John Waters-style directed white-trash-turned-lezbeeen rugmunching on camera so fuck all this kinda shit. It's like watching Porky's on TBS- all the good shit is cut out and all you are left this is shitty actresses who were hired because of their big milk wagons not showing said milk wagons. If that's not the hollow work of Satan, I don't know what is.

 

- Stephanie looking to keep her wrestlers was really time-consuming, but it didn't move this motherfucking turd of a show along any faster. That makes this kinda like Chinese Water Torture. Actually, I'm reminded of AVENGING ANGEL- a film by Luis Bunuel- where a group of people are at a dinner party and can't ever get around to leaving to the point where days pass and they start starving to death and cook a dog. I am a fool who is not leaving this craptacular dinner party serving heaping mounds of mind-numbing sports entertainment.

 

- Gee... a lot of limos backstage... More Nitro touches... maybe my Odyssey is coming to an end sooner than I thought...

 

- Ah, Test vs Rey will be pivotal like TAKA tagging with Bradshaw. That angle was the beginning of the kind of push that got TAKA so over and made him the household name that he is today.

 

 

THERE YOU HAVE IT.

 

DEAN.