AFC1986
01-27-2007, 12:17 PM
CONTEXT: As is often the case, it's a great time to be a mark for the Undertaker. The booking crew have obviously slated in 'Taker vs Batista for Wrestlemania, and are building steadily towards that. Kennedy is in the way of that dream match. Since February's "No Way Out" is a Smackdown PPV, it may well be that Kennedy is going to achieve a shock win at the Rumble. Everything else is as-you-were - hardly a surprise for this show.
- Pre-introductory clip: A lengthy (and I mean lengthy) recap of this month's Kennedy-Taker-Batista storyline - starting with the Sprint and ending with the Undertaker being screwed over again. Effective stuff. Usual graphics follow.
- Hit Batista's music. He's ready to wrestle. He;s bouncing. He's patting his chest. He's bouncing, he starts to do the girly spin and blow me down if they don't edit that out, cutting a few seconds and covering it with a cutaway to the crowd, before return to truckloads of pyro. So who's he facing?
Helms. Well, I suppose getting squashed by Batista is better than getting chased by the Boogeyman. Helms comes out with a mic so that this matchup has some backstory to it. "You're the heavyweight champion, everybody knows that. I'm the longest-reigning champion in Smackdown history ... it ain't the size of the dog in the fight, it's size of the fight in the dog."
1 - - BATISTA vs. GREGORY HELMS
Helms gets most of the offence in but the emphasis in the matchup is Batista's awesome power. At least it isn't a total squash, which makes you wonder why they didn't at least build it up as a legit main event to the show. Helms, in fact, carries most of the match, grounding Batista early and slugging away. JBL predicts that Helms will make the transition to heavyweight. Eventually Batista makes the comeback with some power moves (including a crappy spear) and he finishes things with a Batista bomb.
WINNER: BATISTA via pinfall in 3:10.
[Commercial break. Well, at least the champ has now had a match in 2007. The story of Helms trying to make it as a heavyweight could be an interesting slow-burner in 2007 if they persist with it.]
- JBL and Cole hype the mini-rumble tonight: Kane vs. Booker vs. Benoit vs. Finlay vs. MVP vs. Miz. Not only that, all participants have to wrestle singles matches beforehand. I smell a rat.
2 - CHRIS BENOIT vs. THE MIZ
As Benoit enters, we view the finish of the 2004 Royal Rumble, as Benoit picked up an improbable win over Big Show. So, can Miz work a match with Benoit? They start out steadily, and Miz is working well, playing the chicken but showing some mat-based ability (including the ability to work with Benoit's offense). He clearly has a bit of potential. Miz gets a few pinfall attempts, including one from a neat neckbreaker. Side suplex from Miz for 2. Now this is how you get a guy over as a legit worker. Resthold time at 3 minutes, as Miz works a series of chinlocks. This is decent stuff. Benoit fights out and begins to dominate. Rolling Germans as we approach the five minute mark. Flying headbutt, but Miz makes the ropes. Benoit makes a crossface attempt but struggles early on because Miz fights desperately to clasp his hands together, so that Benoit cannot separate the arms. My goodness, I'm starting to mark out for Miz. Eventually Benoit locks it in.
WINNER: BENOIT in 6:00. Good, good, good. The Miz just took his first legitimate steps to showing he has potential.
- Backstage, the greaseballs and Cherry are using Italian accents and bad-mouthing some skinny backstage assistant for touching the car and looking at Cherry. They're starting to warm into their gimmick. If only they could tone down the Happy Days element just a bit.
[Commercial break. So far so good. Miz's effort was a pleasant surprise.]
- Maryse is sipping champagne by the fire. She's too nice for me.
- Cadillac time, as Deuce 'n Domino make their way to the ring to a largely apathetic reaction. Cherry's panty-exposing backflip into the ring gets a pop though. Wow, this really is old-time booking as another pair of meaningless jobbers await them. I'm all for meaningless jobbers - let's have more of them, maybe even to give the heels a chance to show what they've got. This will be a squash of course, so I'll just pick out the patented moves for you. Next week, I'll dictate their doo-wop intro lyrics for you.
3 -- DEUCE 'N DOMINO (w/ Cherry) vs. ADAM EVANS & J. ROBINSON
Domino's patented move seems to be trash-talking, basically. Deuce's favourite spot is "you're looking at my girl". The offence is actually really basic, which is okay for now. Knees to the head, elbows to the head, boots to the face. Deuce hits a sweet jumping heel kick at 2 minutes. Poor old Evans is your jobber in peril.
Winners: DEUCE 'N DOMINO in 2:30. Crowd is still pretty mild for all of this. It's just not a gimmick you can care about easily yet. Smackdown's bookers will give them time, of course, and a feud would help. Their song is about turning back the hands of time to the 1950s.
- Backstage MVP ain't happy with Teddy, and is telling him nose-to-nose all about it. He's still upset about the burns, and he ain't fighting Kane tonight (oh lord, not another one of those). Long says if he doesn't wrestle tonight, he can't participate at the Royal Rumble, and "that's tabernacle, MVP!". Mazeltov.
- The mini-rumble is plugged again. That's okay if it's actually going to be a legit main event worth watching, but with nothing at stake and everybody in other matches anyway, I am seriously smelling an Undertaker-involved rat.
[Commercial break.]
- Booker is in mid-entrance, and the Little Bastard is gleering at him from under the ring apron, caught briefly on camera. Cole freaks out like he's seen the gunman at the grassy knoll, or a weapon of mass destruction in Iraq, or something like that. The queen joins the callers at ringside. Will Cole tell her what he's seen?
4 -- KING BOOKER vs. FINLAY
As they go through their usual stuff, I think about how the show can really build new acts like, say, The Miz. Setting a storyline where he has to partner the Undertaker as a tag team, maybe. Or some weird setup whereby Miz has to win a match against Finlay in order for a face to main event Wrestlemania. Finlay is hitting his basic stuff in this heel vs heel matchup. I'd say at at least this gives us the chance for a clean win for one of them, but there's a leprechaun and a queen who have something to say about that, and I'm not talking about Rumpelstiltskin. Booker T hits a sidekick out of nowhere at the fifth minute. Leprachaun time ... but this time he's chasing Sharmell, dragging her under the ring screaming. This is like late night German television. Finlay gets involved and he and Booker fight on the entranceway and, way before any ten count could have expired, the referee calls for the bell.
Winner: NO RESULT, but Finlay's music is played in 6:10. And you don't get those minutes of your life back.
- Up next mixed tag action (see below). Fine, but this seems like yet another reason-less match tonight.
[Commercial break. There's an awful lot of matches tonight, and Undertaker hasn't been plugged as appearing in a contest. I don't think that mini-rumble is going to amount to much.]
5 - - MELINA & NITRO & MERCURY vs. ASHLEY & LONDON & KENDRICK
We recap Nitro and Mercury's post-match beat-down on Matt Hardy. All the more reason for Jillian, with her obsession with destroying Ashley's face, to get involved. Faces start out on top to get the crowd into it, as Nitro gets double-teamed for a while. High paced stuff, but Melina equals the odds by side-kicking London when he had was trying one top-rope move too many. And so we enter the heel beatdown phase of the match, with London the face in peril (is it just me or is it always him, before Kendrick gets the hot tag but loses because London got distracted?). Hot tag to Kendrick. Heel kicks for all! Heel kicks for all again! Melina comes in, and Ashley takes her down for a cat fight. They're not legal men (of course) and it's up to Mercury to stagger back into the ring, and Kendrick to head up top to try to finish him. Sunset flip almost works, and London reappears with a kick to help it out but, ah, but Melina is back in to break up the pin and distract the referee as we hit five minutes. Behind his back, Nitro enters to help Mercury Snapshot Kendrick (with London out of the ring as usual ... d'oh!)
Winners: MELINA, NITRO & MERCURY in 5:20. Is it just me or do these long-running champs lose a hell of a lot of the time? Cole tries to link this result to the PPV, but the match is against the Hardys so who knows whos is in charge of logic here.
- They plug the mini-Rumble again, so I have to confess that I might be wrong in predicting a schmozzle finish, because they're giving it the works, promo-wise.
[Commercial break]
- "Kennedy!" He's on his way out and we non-USA viewers get ...er ... the same recap I saw at the start of this show. Can that be right? Either way, he calls for his mic, soaks up the boos, and promises to beat Batista. The crowd tells him he sucks. Even little kids must realize by now that when a wrestler does this they always get interrupted. He tells us he's defeated six world champions and announces his name again.
- Batista interrupts, and my bet with the guys watching with me that Undertaker will interrupt the mini-rumble lives! Batista challenges Kennedy to slap him. (Slap?) "Come on! Slap me right now!!!" Batista slaps himself. Is he going through some mental issues? Did I miss the "You can't touch Batista before the fight" stipulation? Kennedy's got the mic in the hand, and the knowledge that not even the all-powerful Undertaker could fight back against the mic ... so ... he ...
- GONG. LIGHTS GO OUT.
- GONG. LIGHTS GO ON. The Undertaker! He's in the ring! (damnit, there goes $10)
- Undertaker charges and delivers a big boot ... Kennedy ducks ... and it hits Batista! Undertaker follows Kennedy. (Why not just use his supernatural powers to turn the lights out again and appear behind him? Or just use his supernatural powers to make blood rain on Kennedy, or make his mic explode? Or his head? Meh. Staredown ensues.
[Commercial break. Ten bucks down the drain. Either you love him or hate him, I guess.]
- Another recap airs. Cole just treats the whole lights/Taker thing like it was a neat move, rather than a supernatural occurrence, or a conspiracy with the lighting crew.
- Maryse welcome us back, even though we're already back.
- Cole is with Vladimir Kozlov, whose Crazy Russian act sucked me in completely about a month ago. Cole wants to know when he'll decide on a show to wrestle for. He loves "double-double-E" he gets booed, and doesn't interrupt Coles outro this time. I dunno what they're doing with that.
- Kristal flirts with Long in his office and then walks away. Vickie Guerrero knocks and enters. "I see that you've been busy, so I'll come back later." Must be the invisible camera this week, because she didn't notice it. Either way, Vickie is much more manageable in small doses.
- Cole and JBL had access to that footage, though. They plug the six man mini-rumble AGAIN, and for the life of me I can't imagine what possible storyline they can advance now that Taker is out of the way. Cole hypes Kane's track record of eliminating guys in a Rumble (plus a recap). His match with MVP next.
[Commercial break. Going to be a short mini-Rumble at this rate.]
6 - - KANE vs MVP
MVP is in full bodysuit this time. I'm having flashbacks to last year as JBL sets this up as an unfair matchup and MVP looks like he's been asked to wrestle Satan. Kane is laughing as the match starts, and MVP is appealing to Kane about the unfairness of it all. Kane throws MVP around a bit and hits the kind of offence you could see at any local show. It's hard to tell if he's even interested in trying, but MVP works his ass off to make it look like he's in pain. The crowd is silent, and Kane rips off MVP's upper ring-gear to attack the exposed bandaging with , er, really pathetic kicks. MVP's bandages have been gimmicked to "expose" leaking burns. MVP bails. Kane follows. 75% of the crowd doesn't care. MVP hits some offence at the fourth minute and the crowd still don't care. Kane is just an increasingly overweight bald ex-dentist character whose gimmick deserted him years ago, and has only a ring entrance left. The crowd makes a bigger noise when MVP slings him into the steps than when he hits anything.
Kane goes up top and that gets a reaction. He hits his lame elbowish clothesline and then signals for the chokeslam. He dropkicks MVP off the arpron and the crowd just dies. They only pop for entrances and finishers for guys like you, Yankem. They tease a chokeslam on the table spot but MVP fights it off and introduces the steel chair to a DQ (that would nullify every man event of a PPV between 1999 and 2003). Kane is prone under the ring and MVP finds a gallon of petrol under the ring. Cole and JBL enter, laughably, serious mode. "Get somebody down here now. Stop this!" Zombie situp. He boots MVP to the face and grabs the can. MVP bails.
Winner: KANE (well, his music got played) by disqualification in 8:3)
- They hype the mini-rumble.
[Commercial break with 20 minutes to go (enough for a very decent mini-rumble). Interested to see what story they tell with it.]
- Cole hypes the huge news concerning the title match from Raw at this week's Rumble, and narrates Umaga's ambush on Cena, along with the other main events.
- Kane and Benoit enter together with the Smackdown theme as entrance music.
[Commercial break. Presumably they're saving time for a decent rumble by entering the faces so quickly and entering the heels in the break.]
7 - - SMACKDOWN SIX MAN OVER THE TOP CHALLENGE
All men are in the ring and within seconds of returning from the break, we're on. Kane, of course, is upset with MVP. In a funny moment, the over-eager Miz sells a back elbow that Kane didn't actually deliver, then has to get up and sell it again. Booker and Benoit end up outside but not 'top-rope'-eliminated, and re-enter soon after. KANE is legit eliminated after two minutes. Finlay, Miz and MVP remain in the ring. Still not sure what this match is designed to achieve. At four minutes we still have all five men in the ring. Six minutes, and it's watchable. Miz is eliminated by Finlay. He finally beat someone clean.
- GONG. LIGHTS OUT.
- GONG. LIGHTS ON.
Undertaker is in the ring. He kicks Finlay. He punches down Miz, Booker, Benoit, MVP, Miz (again), Booker (again). He then kinda just pushes MVP against the ropes (he's already there) for momentum and heads across the ring to clothesline Finlay. He then turns around and heads back to the opposite corner and clotheslines MVP. He then turns around and, clearly out of gas, jogs to Finlay, who catches him with a boot which he no-sells. Chokeslam Finlay. Benoit attacks, with knife-edge chops. They wouldn't sacrifice him, would they? Benoit has him in the corner, kicking and chopping away. But his Irish whip is reversed and Taker demolishes him with a snake-eyes and a big boot. Time for MVP to attack from behind, in order to gain some credibility from being in the ring with him supposedly. Taker no-sells and clotheslines him down. Now King Booker tries his finisher, but eats a chokeslam. Most of the crowd pops happily for it. Then MVP walks into a chokeslam. Then Benoit, is clotheslined out of the ring. Finlay staggers into a tombstone. The closeup reveals that Mark Caloway has man-boobs. Miz staggers up. Taker chokeslams the guy who Benoit gave so much to earlier tonight. Finlay is back up. Undertaker throws him over the top. Cole, who previously tonight had been a guardian of fair play, calls it an elimination. Undertaker then throws MVP over the top.
Miz is back up. Taker powerbombs him. He looks around for another victim. The crowd cheers.
- Undertaker assumes his patented position and the blue lights come on
.Credit: PWTorch.com
- Pre-introductory clip: A lengthy (and I mean lengthy) recap of this month's Kennedy-Taker-Batista storyline - starting with the Sprint and ending with the Undertaker being screwed over again. Effective stuff. Usual graphics follow.
- Hit Batista's music. He's ready to wrestle. He;s bouncing. He's patting his chest. He's bouncing, he starts to do the girly spin and blow me down if they don't edit that out, cutting a few seconds and covering it with a cutaway to the crowd, before return to truckloads of pyro. So who's he facing?
Helms. Well, I suppose getting squashed by Batista is better than getting chased by the Boogeyman. Helms comes out with a mic so that this matchup has some backstory to it. "You're the heavyweight champion, everybody knows that. I'm the longest-reigning champion in Smackdown history ... it ain't the size of the dog in the fight, it's size of the fight in the dog."
1 - - BATISTA vs. GREGORY HELMS
Helms gets most of the offence in but the emphasis in the matchup is Batista's awesome power. At least it isn't a total squash, which makes you wonder why they didn't at least build it up as a legit main event to the show. Helms, in fact, carries most of the match, grounding Batista early and slugging away. JBL predicts that Helms will make the transition to heavyweight. Eventually Batista makes the comeback with some power moves (including a crappy spear) and he finishes things with a Batista bomb.
WINNER: BATISTA via pinfall in 3:10.
[Commercial break. Well, at least the champ has now had a match in 2007. The story of Helms trying to make it as a heavyweight could be an interesting slow-burner in 2007 if they persist with it.]
- JBL and Cole hype the mini-rumble tonight: Kane vs. Booker vs. Benoit vs. Finlay vs. MVP vs. Miz. Not only that, all participants have to wrestle singles matches beforehand. I smell a rat.
2 - CHRIS BENOIT vs. THE MIZ
As Benoit enters, we view the finish of the 2004 Royal Rumble, as Benoit picked up an improbable win over Big Show. So, can Miz work a match with Benoit? They start out steadily, and Miz is working well, playing the chicken but showing some mat-based ability (including the ability to work with Benoit's offense). He clearly has a bit of potential. Miz gets a few pinfall attempts, including one from a neat neckbreaker. Side suplex from Miz for 2. Now this is how you get a guy over as a legit worker. Resthold time at 3 minutes, as Miz works a series of chinlocks. This is decent stuff. Benoit fights out and begins to dominate. Rolling Germans as we approach the five minute mark. Flying headbutt, but Miz makes the ropes. Benoit makes a crossface attempt but struggles early on because Miz fights desperately to clasp his hands together, so that Benoit cannot separate the arms. My goodness, I'm starting to mark out for Miz. Eventually Benoit locks it in.
WINNER: BENOIT in 6:00. Good, good, good. The Miz just took his first legitimate steps to showing he has potential.
- Backstage, the greaseballs and Cherry are using Italian accents and bad-mouthing some skinny backstage assistant for touching the car and looking at Cherry. They're starting to warm into their gimmick. If only they could tone down the Happy Days element just a bit.
[Commercial break. So far so good. Miz's effort was a pleasant surprise.]
- Maryse is sipping champagne by the fire. She's too nice for me.
- Cadillac time, as Deuce 'n Domino make their way to the ring to a largely apathetic reaction. Cherry's panty-exposing backflip into the ring gets a pop though. Wow, this really is old-time booking as another pair of meaningless jobbers await them. I'm all for meaningless jobbers - let's have more of them, maybe even to give the heels a chance to show what they've got. This will be a squash of course, so I'll just pick out the patented moves for you. Next week, I'll dictate their doo-wop intro lyrics for you.
3 -- DEUCE 'N DOMINO (w/ Cherry) vs. ADAM EVANS & J. ROBINSON
Domino's patented move seems to be trash-talking, basically. Deuce's favourite spot is "you're looking at my girl". The offence is actually really basic, which is okay for now. Knees to the head, elbows to the head, boots to the face. Deuce hits a sweet jumping heel kick at 2 minutes. Poor old Evans is your jobber in peril.
Winners: DEUCE 'N DOMINO in 2:30. Crowd is still pretty mild for all of this. It's just not a gimmick you can care about easily yet. Smackdown's bookers will give them time, of course, and a feud would help. Their song is about turning back the hands of time to the 1950s.
- Backstage MVP ain't happy with Teddy, and is telling him nose-to-nose all about it. He's still upset about the burns, and he ain't fighting Kane tonight (oh lord, not another one of those). Long says if he doesn't wrestle tonight, he can't participate at the Royal Rumble, and "that's tabernacle, MVP!". Mazeltov.
- The mini-rumble is plugged again. That's okay if it's actually going to be a legit main event worth watching, but with nothing at stake and everybody in other matches anyway, I am seriously smelling an Undertaker-involved rat.
[Commercial break.]
- Booker is in mid-entrance, and the Little Bastard is gleering at him from under the ring apron, caught briefly on camera. Cole freaks out like he's seen the gunman at the grassy knoll, or a weapon of mass destruction in Iraq, or something like that. The queen joins the callers at ringside. Will Cole tell her what he's seen?
4 -- KING BOOKER vs. FINLAY
As they go through their usual stuff, I think about how the show can really build new acts like, say, The Miz. Setting a storyline where he has to partner the Undertaker as a tag team, maybe. Or some weird setup whereby Miz has to win a match against Finlay in order for a face to main event Wrestlemania. Finlay is hitting his basic stuff in this heel vs heel matchup. I'd say at at least this gives us the chance for a clean win for one of them, but there's a leprechaun and a queen who have something to say about that, and I'm not talking about Rumpelstiltskin. Booker T hits a sidekick out of nowhere at the fifth minute. Leprachaun time ... but this time he's chasing Sharmell, dragging her under the ring screaming. This is like late night German television. Finlay gets involved and he and Booker fight on the entranceway and, way before any ten count could have expired, the referee calls for the bell.
Winner: NO RESULT, but Finlay's music is played in 6:10. And you don't get those minutes of your life back.
- Up next mixed tag action (see below). Fine, but this seems like yet another reason-less match tonight.
[Commercial break. There's an awful lot of matches tonight, and Undertaker hasn't been plugged as appearing in a contest. I don't think that mini-rumble is going to amount to much.]
5 - - MELINA & NITRO & MERCURY vs. ASHLEY & LONDON & KENDRICK
We recap Nitro and Mercury's post-match beat-down on Matt Hardy. All the more reason for Jillian, with her obsession with destroying Ashley's face, to get involved. Faces start out on top to get the crowd into it, as Nitro gets double-teamed for a while. High paced stuff, but Melina equals the odds by side-kicking London when he had was trying one top-rope move too many. And so we enter the heel beatdown phase of the match, with London the face in peril (is it just me or is it always him, before Kendrick gets the hot tag but loses because London got distracted?). Hot tag to Kendrick. Heel kicks for all! Heel kicks for all again! Melina comes in, and Ashley takes her down for a cat fight. They're not legal men (of course) and it's up to Mercury to stagger back into the ring, and Kendrick to head up top to try to finish him. Sunset flip almost works, and London reappears with a kick to help it out but, ah, but Melina is back in to break up the pin and distract the referee as we hit five minutes. Behind his back, Nitro enters to help Mercury Snapshot Kendrick (with London out of the ring as usual ... d'oh!)
Winners: MELINA, NITRO & MERCURY in 5:20. Is it just me or do these long-running champs lose a hell of a lot of the time? Cole tries to link this result to the PPV, but the match is against the Hardys so who knows whos is in charge of logic here.
- They plug the mini-Rumble again, so I have to confess that I might be wrong in predicting a schmozzle finish, because they're giving it the works, promo-wise.
[Commercial break]
- "Kennedy!" He's on his way out and we non-USA viewers get ...er ... the same recap I saw at the start of this show. Can that be right? Either way, he calls for his mic, soaks up the boos, and promises to beat Batista. The crowd tells him he sucks. Even little kids must realize by now that when a wrestler does this they always get interrupted. He tells us he's defeated six world champions and announces his name again.
- Batista interrupts, and my bet with the guys watching with me that Undertaker will interrupt the mini-rumble lives! Batista challenges Kennedy to slap him. (Slap?) "Come on! Slap me right now!!!" Batista slaps himself. Is he going through some mental issues? Did I miss the "You can't touch Batista before the fight" stipulation? Kennedy's got the mic in the hand, and the knowledge that not even the all-powerful Undertaker could fight back against the mic ... so ... he ...
- GONG. LIGHTS GO OUT.
- GONG. LIGHTS GO ON. The Undertaker! He's in the ring! (damnit, there goes $10)
- Undertaker charges and delivers a big boot ... Kennedy ducks ... and it hits Batista! Undertaker follows Kennedy. (Why not just use his supernatural powers to turn the lights out again and appear behind him? Or just use his supernatural powers to make blood rain on Kennedy, or make his mic explode? Or his head? Meh. Staredown ensues.
[Commercial break. Ten bucks down the drain. Either you love him or hate him, I guess.]
- Another recap airs. Cole just treats the whole lights/Taker thing like it was a neat move, rather than a supernatural occurrence, or a conspiracy with the lighting crew.
- Maryse welcome us back, even though we're already back.
- Cole is with Vladimir Kozlov, whose Crazy Russian act sucked me in completely about a month ago. Cole wants to know when he'll decide on a show to wrestle for. He loves "double-double-E" he gets booed, and doesn't interrupt Coles outro this time. I dunno what they're doing with that.
- Kristal flirts with Long in his office and then walks away. Vickie Guerrero knocks and enters. "I see that you've been busy, so I'll come back later." Must be the invisible camera this week, because she didn't notice it. Either way, Vickie is much more manageable in small doses.
- Cole and JBL had access to that footage, though. They plug the six man mini-rumble AGAIN, and for the life of me I can't imagine what possible storyline they can advance now that Taker is out of the way. Cole hypes Kane's track record of eliminating guys in a Rumble (plus a recap). His match with MVP next.
[Commercial break. Going to be a short mini-Rumble at this rate.]
6 - - KANE vs MVP
MVP is in full bodysuit this time. I'm having flashbacks to last year as JBL sets this up as an unfair matchup and MVP looks like he's been asked to wrestle Satan. Kane is laughing as the match starts, and MVP is appealing to Kane about the unfairness of it all. Kane throws MVP around a bit and hits the kind of offence you could see at any local show. It's hard to tell if he's even interested in trying, but MVP works his ass off to make it look like he's in pain. The crowd is silent, and Kane rips off MVP's upper ring-gear to attack the exposed bandaging with , er, really pathetic kicks. MVP's bandages have been gimmicked to "expose" leaking burns. MVP bails. Kane follows. 75% of the crowd doesn't care. MVP hits some offence at the fourth minute and the crowd still don't care. Kane is just an increasingly overweight bald ex-dentist character whose gimmick deserted him years ago, and has only a ring entrance left. The crowd makes a bigger noise when MVP slings him into the steps than when he hits anything.
Kane goes up top and that gets a reaction. He hits his lame elbowish clothesline and then signals for the chokeslam. He dropkicks MVP off the arpron and the crowd just dies. They only pop for entrances and finishers for guys like you, Yankem. They tease a chokeslam on the table spot but MVP fights it off and introduces the steel chair to a DQ (that would nullify every man event of a PPV between 1999 and 2003). Kane is prone under the ring and MVP finds a gallon of petrol under the ring. Cole and JBL enter, laughably, serious mode. "Get somebody down here now. Stop this!" Zombie situp. He boots MVP to the face and grabs the can. MVP bails.
Winner: KANE (well, his music got played) by disqualification in 8:3)
- They hype the mini-rumble.
[Commercial break with 20 minutes to go (enough for a very decent mini-rumble). Interested to see what story they tell with it.]
- Cole hypes the huge news concerning the title match from Raw at this week's Rumble, and narrates Umaga's ambush on Cena, along with the other main events.
- Kane and Benoit enter together with the Smackdown theme as entrance music.
[Commercial break. Presumably they're saving time for a decent rumble by entering the faces so quickly and entering the heels in the break.]
7 - - SMACKDOWN SIX MAN OVER THE TOP CHALLENGE
All men are in the ring and within seconds of returning from the break, we're on. Kane, of course, is upset with MVP. In a funny moment, the over-eager Miz sells a back elbow that Kane didn't actually deliver, then has to get up and sell it again. Booker and Benoit end up outside but not 'top-rope'-eliminated, and re-enter soon after. KANE is legit eliminated after two minutes. Finlay, Miz and MVP remain in the ring. Still not sure what this match is designed to achieve. At four minutes we still have all five men in the ring. Six minutes, and it's watchable. Miz is eliminated by Finlay. He finally beat someone clean.
- GONG. LIGHTS OUT.
- GONG. LIGHTS ON.
Undertaker is in the ring. He kicks Finlay. He punches down Miz, Booker, Benoit, MVP, Miz (again), Booker (again). He then kinda just pushes MVP against the ropes (he's already there) for momentum and heads across the ring to clothesline Finlay. He then turns around and heads back to the opposite corner and clotheslines MVP. He then turns around and, clearly out of gas, jogs to Finlay, who catches him with a boot which he no-sells. Chokeslam Finlay. Benoit attacks, with knife-edge chops. They wouldn't sacrifice him, would they? Benoit has him in the corner, kicking and chopping away. But his Irish whip is reversed and Taker demolishes him with a snake-eyes and a big boot. Time for MVP to attack from behind, in order to gain some credibility from being in the ring with him supposedly. Taker no-sells and clotheslines him down. Now King Booker tries his finisher, but eats a chokeslam. Most of the crowd pops happily for it. Then MVP walks into a chokeslam. Then Benoit, is clotheslined out of the ring. Finlay staggers into a tombstone. The closeup reveals that Mark Caloway has man-boobs. Miz staggers up. Taker chokeslams the guy who Benoit gave so much to earlier tonight. Finlay is back up. Undertaker throws him over the top. Cole, who previously tonight had been a guardian of fair play, calls it an elimination. Undertaker then throws MVP over the top.
Miz is back up. Taker powerbombs him. He looks around for another victim. The crowd cheers.
- Undertaker assumes his patented position and the blue lights come on
.Credit: PWTorch.com