My cat is dying again. At least it’s not right at Christmas this time. Oh, and it’s not the same cat as before. That would be weird.
Last week…er, two weeks ago, Trump used pronouns poorly. Last week, Photoshop Phun. This week, Trump chooses Bobby Lashl…uh, a mystery man as his representative. Hey, they released publicity materials showing Lashley vs Umaga, screw them. It’s like they’re trying to put internet snoops out of business by being intentionally obvious.
We start this week’s show with OMG WRESTLEMANIA OPPONENTS TEAMING TOGETHER THIS IS MADNESS getting separate, full-length entrances before RATED BAIT-AND-SWITCH appear on the Stupidtron to tell us there won’t be a tag title match until later tonight. So it’s not really a bait-and-switch, but I’m not changing the nickname. The challengers are totally allowed to just rewrite the match schedules, you know. Instead of wrestling, they would like to use this time to show us a montage of Shawn Michaels betraying people. Barber Shop Hijinks. We also get him betraying Nash at some point or other, betraying DX to the Corporation in one of those Russoriffic storylines where everyone shifted allegiances like five times for no reason, killing Booker T because Booker T is Black, and betraying Hulk Hogan. It’s actually a pretty well done montage. Edge: “Shawn, you’re a liar! Liar liar liar liar!” Pants on fire. With gay sexuality. Now Cena and Shawn stare sexfully at each other.
Commercials. I feel a little guilty about enjoying the ad for whichever XBOX game has a Latino dude telling kids “They threw a dumpster on my brother’s head at his own birthday party! AND blew up his house!”
Shut up, Mick Foley.
DIAL “H” FOR MONKEY monkeys about on his way to the ring. How apropos, for this is a Monkey in the Bank qualifying match. Jeff’s opponent is BLACK PEOPLE ARE NOT MONKEYS, CRYME TYME/HBK. Seriously, that montage featured HBK, Booker T, and a bunch of white dudes in the ring, and HBK said something like “one of these things is not like the others” and just fucking killed Booker with a surprise superkick. Awesome and horrible at the same time. They totally should have dressed up as Klansmen after that. Here’s footage of Shelton Benjamin being insane and flying around flipping and trying to kill himself at some previous Monkey in the Bank match. Lillian announces the Monkey Rules and the competitors’ names to get across that this is really important, which…I kind of dig. It’s nice to see a match featuring two guys who have never been in DX being treated to in-ring introductions. Jeff and Shelton do some matt-stuff, pin reversals and the like. Shelton gets 2 off a jackknife cover. Shelton sends Benjamin to the ropes, but Papa Shangos and gets kicked. Jeff with a double-leg takedown and a legdrop to Shelton’s Carolina Black Snake. Jeff does…something while I’m distracted by stolen jokes about Shelton’s penis. Dropkick to the back of Shelton’s head, but he comes back with brawling. Some fan yells like an Injun. Possibly Tatanka. Shit, my spellchecker doesn’t mind “Injun?” Jeff sends Shelton to the floor with a ELUM Kick, and this match deserves my attention even if it isn’t getting it. Jeff runs the rails and does his flying clothesline…thing. Back inside, Benjamin punches his way back as JR talks about Golden Gophers. Shelton whips Hardy into the corner because he totally wants to eat Whyspyr yn thy Wynd. He does. Jeff goes up for the Swanton, but Shelton has Crazy Black Man Jumping Powar and makes the top turnbuckle in one go to belly2belly superplex Jeff to death. Let’s go to break.
Commercials. They blew up Super Porky, AND his ham!
We’re back, and Shelton has a rear-naked choke applied. Shades of Team Angle. Jeff escapes and runs around, but gets back body dropped for 2. Shelton scoops Jeff up on his shoulder and…walks around and…eventually backdrops him. Modified ninja chokeout by Shelton. Jeff does his stupid jawbreaker to escape. Jeff runs around and does clotheslines. Flying neckbreaker sort of…thing. Jeff sends Shelton to the ropes, Shelton flips over the ropes to the apron, Jeff turns around, Shelton with a springboard…shit. He completely lost his footing and landed right on his head, ouch. He should form a three-man stable with Elix Skipper and Bobby Walker after that one. Jeff quickly covers, for 2. Lawler goes on and on about how it was 3 because the ref’s hand hit the mat 3 times (though Shelton’s shoulder was clearly up before then) and because Lawler hates Black people almost as much as HBK does. Shelton whips Jeff into the corner and tries the Stingar Splash, but Jeff evades and Twists his Fate. Jeff goes up top and gets the Swanton Bomb. All of this happens in a tiny screen in the corner as Lawler’s complaining has forced the director to do a replay of that 2-count off the botched spot. So we miss the entire finishing sequence, great job, shades of ECW on TNN. So, yeah, Jeff wins. Lawler continues to talk about the 2 count, Christ. Lawler goes on to declare Jeff an “early favorite” due to the ladder rules, despite Jeff losing like every ladder match ever. WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA is Vince McMahon, who appears on the Stupidtron and yells just that. He disses Jeff briefly before Jeff (who has been off-camera the entire time) goes to the Farplane and we move on to the important business of seeing the Photoshopped Trumps again.
Commercials. Tomorrow night on ECW, “for the first time ever” a cage match gets extreme. Did the old ECW not have enough money for cages? I could swear I’ve seen either Raven or Dreamer handcuffed to a cage while either Raven or Dreamer (whichever one wasn’t handcuffed) murdered him with a steel chair.
Ashley is still going to be in the next Playboy issue. This has not changed.
BITCHLINA is bitching about things to JOHNNY NITRO, THE SENSITIVE TEEN. Because he, uh, listens to his girlfriend, I guess. Melina bitches about Ashley. Then she bitches about the return of her arch-rival Mick Foley. Now she bitches about Mickie getting a Falls Count Anywhere rematch for the title. Then she bitches about Maria for some reason. Nitro: “SHUT UP!” Whoa. Nitro: “Just shut up! I lost my Money in the Bank qualifier match last week! Do you know how huge that was? I am out of Wrestlemania! You should understand how important that is!
And now, I have nothing!” His music hits. Nitro: “I don’t have time for this right now!” He takes off for the ring. Melina seriously looks like she’s about to cry. Dude, totally. I don’t know where this is going, but that was sort of awesome.
Did Nitro just turn face? Nah, in Wrestling Land, that would involve slapping Melina. I AM SUPER, I AM CRAZY, I AM…OH SHIT gets jumped by Nitro on his way to the ring. Via baseball slide dropkick. Nitro just starts beating the shit out of Supes on the floor. Which looks ridiculous with his shiny pants with pink velvet…flare things over the ankles. Now he rams Crazy into the apron, into the stairs, FUCK, he does this sweet-ass over-the-shoulder facebuster on the floor. I may learn to love insane badass Nitro. It’s reminiscent of the Heartthrobs after putting on their game faces. Nitro walks up the aisle because he cares exactly as much as Mark Jindrak does. The ref checks on Super Crazy. His push may have been injured there.
Here’s another “Bald Donald” graphic which causes Lawler to squeal like an idiot.
Commercials. More quasi-celebrities join the RAW Fan Nation.
Our Skittle of the Skittle is Melina beating Mickie for the title last week. Mercifully, we don’t get Lawler perving out.
MELINA JUST GOT A NICKNAME is Melina, who…well, she seems to be over what happened, as she looks neither mad nor sad nor worried, just sort of…slutty. Sadly, she does not follow MNM tradition by pretending her title belt is a penis. LUSTED AFTER BY SHITTY TEEN BOP BANDS is Maria, whose “my boner lasts for days and daaaaaays” theme music is insipidly catchy. She’s wearing this odd outfit that consists of a leopard print single except that it was tails (like coattails, not cat tails) so it sort of looks like wrestling formalwear. Wait, the two coattails are both coming from one buttcheek cover. Melina attacks to start with hairpulling and stuff. Kick to the face. Maria tries to fight back, but goes for one of those magical dropkicks that hurt you if it misses, and misses. Melina stomps her face some more. Corner boot-choking. Melina does this…weird, rope-assisted Boston Crab, and breaks before the five-count. Melina covers for 2. More stomping. Hair-pull beal. Melina fluffs her own hair as JR talks about how evil Melina is. JR: “She has…jezebel quality.” Melina with a camel clutch. JR: “She thinks she’s the Iron Sheik.” How dare a mere girl do a real wrestling move. Maria gets out with a snap mare, but runs into a kick to the gut. But now Melina charges a boot, so Maria runs up to her and…pulls her hair. Hair-pull takedown. Now she does a hair-pull beal, with tons of dragging Melina by the air looking for enough space to beal her action. Maria is sort of awful. Bulldog, and Maria looks like she just about broke her tailbone on the landing. She covers Melina for 2. Maria gets whipped into the corner and clotheslined down. Maria does a “I am going to Bronco Buster you” dance, but runs right into…a boot to the pussy? Would that even hurt that much? The designers of Mortal Kombat took more care in making the effects of low-blows gender specific. Anyway, Maria sells being kicked in the crotch as devastating, and gets rolled up for 3. Lawler: “If Maria needs a massage, I’ll…” Die horribly, I hope?
Here’s a graphic of Donald Trump and Giovanne.
Commercials. Don’t care.
LA PARKA isn’t really here, it’s just Vince being referred to loudly by JR as “the chairman.” Fan sign: “GOT HAIR.” It’s stupid enough with a question mark, but without one? I just opened an Internet Explorer window to surf the web while Vince talks with no conscious effort to do so. I just instinctively opened a browser window. After a lot of, ahem, talking, Vince introduces footage of Umaga killing Rey on Smackdown. For some reason, they loop JBL saying “this is a message to Donald Trump” flatly like a million times. I’M TOTALLY GOING TO WIN IF TRUMP CHOOSES DUSTY RHODES OR “ROWDY” RODDY PIPER (w/YES) is summoned. Lawler: “Look at Estrada.” Trying to matter. Vince makes some weak joke about Trump divorcing and remarrying a lot. JR and King act like this is really, really edgy. DON “THE SNAKE” PRUDHOMME appears on the Stupidtron, and is as always, really hard to listen to because he rambles on like a complete idiot. Trump: “Are you done Vince, are you finally done? You’re wrong about that.” Haha, the last thing Vince had said was “My name is Vincent Kennedy McMahon.” Trump: “I can do you one better, all the time. I’ll always beat you Vince. I’m impressed with your man Umaga, but he’s an animal. You know it, I know it, everybody knows that Umaga is an animal. And that’s what the appropriate thing is to do with animals, you know what it is, it’s called tame them. You tame them Vince, it’s very simple, little children know that, you have animals, you tame ‘em. And the only way that I know how to really tame an animal is to find someone or something that’s superior, like I said Vince, I can do one better than you all the time, so, allow me to introduce to you the man who will be directly responsible for me shaving your head nice and bald at Wrestlemania, my man, the ECW World Champion, the great Bobby Lashley, come on Bobby.” THE GREAT LASHLI is out. They started his music on “the great Bobby Lashley” in the hopes that Trump would understand the basic wrestling concept of saying someone’s name dramatically and instantly hitting their music, but Donald put the shitty cherry on his crap sundae by saying “Come on Lashley” in an impossibly flat and disinterred tone and drowning out the beginning of Lashley’s theme. I should also note that I am only guessing where the periods and commas were in Trump’s speech, because it was all basically one run-on sentence the way he said it. Only Booker T can go longer without pausing to take a breath/think of something to say next. And if Trump spoke at about half-speed, his sentence structure would make him sound exactly like Randy Orton. Anyway, enough bitching about Trump’s horrible delivery, as the meat and potatoes of this segment is Umaga and Lashley having one of those ultra-dramatic and tense brawls where security pulls them apart, and they break free and fight anyway, and then they get pulled apart, and they break free and fight anyway a million times. Didn’t they do the exact same thing with Umaga and Cena a few weeks ago?
Commercials. Monk has a nosebleed, which is inherently funny, I guess.
Moments ago, Umaga and Cena Lawler fought at ringside. Hahaha, IRS IS HERE TO LAY DOWN THE LAW ON THESE TAX CHEATS.
THIS IS A MASTERLOCK CHALLENGE starts this segment in the ring, and his introduction consists of Lillian just saying “this is a Masterlock challenge.” Then I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL KHALI, PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN invades. The timing was completely wrong, we had no time to wonder who it would be as the music hit right after Lillian said “challenge,” and what should have been an awesome moment of Masters shitting his pants was just completely ruined. Man. I was fully prepared to mark out for them doing the exact same thing with Big Show as the challenger like, eight months ago. JR: “Khali at seven feet three, 420 (woowhoo!) is a different breed of Indian cat if you will for Lashley to lock on his Master, excuse me, Masters to lock on his Masterlock.” Depending on how you hear that, it sort of sounded like JR called Lawler “Master.” Khali sits down peaceably. Masters acts like Khali’s arms and chest are so long that he can’t even apply the hold. IT’S KANE! KANE IS HERE! WOOOOO! invades. Chokeslam for Masters, and Khali gets the chair, but Kane big boots it into his face. Another big boot knock Khali into the ropes, and Kane clotheslines him out. Masters is up, so Kane clobbers him with a chair. Khali poses in the aisle to show that he’s not hurt, but Kane gets his music played anyway by activating pyro.
Vince is backstage with Jonathan “No Nickname” Coachman. Vince…gets the silent bleep treatment for something. He takes a cell phone call from the “sons and bitches board of directors,” who is going to suggest to the board that the McMahon/Trump stand-ins match needs a special guest referee. McMahon is all pissed at first, but then Coach agrees with him and Vince instantly wonders if there’s a bright side. Vince won’t end up a “bald-headed freak,” and Coach is offended, har har.
Commercials. The Wii guys get some funk soul brutha to play a Zelda game.
Some WWE guys will be on Deal or No Deal at…some point. Jason doesn’t really recap that sort of stuff anymore. We need the old The Next Mideon back, King! You know, to recap this. Then he can go back to being Jason.
Lillian Garcia is announcing the next Hall of Fame dude, so it can’t be that important. Oh, it’s just THE LEGEND OF PERVERT…DA. Like Zelda? Eh. It’s Jerry Lawler, in case I’ve confused you. The announcer dude in his montage tells us Lawler is “often hilarious” as color commentator, but also wrestled and stuff. We hear about Andy Kaufmann and winning the AWA Title, but NOTHING about his feud with Doink the Clown! Boo.
Team RKO talk, but JR is speaking over them as it’s just an excuse to show “earlier tonight” footage of them planting seeds of dissention. We get the “Shawn Michaels is a treacherous asshole” montage again. Oh, he actually didn’t say “one of these things is not like the other” of Booker T, he just said he’d watched the nWo and one thing stood out. Not quite as racist as I thought, but still pretty racist.
HAVING A HEART IS COOL (w/I LIKE YOUR COOL PENIS) are out. Sorry about the Torrie nickname, I just can’t bear to spend more that like three seconds trying to think of Torrie nicknames. And…we go to break.
Commercials. I’m tired but I want to play video games before I have to go to bed. Life can be so unfair.
We’re back, and the match has started. The match with MR. KENNY…KENNY that is. We get a little “during the break” window to reveal that Kenny got a mic and asked Carlito: “Seriously, tell me, how cool is it to be Ric Flair’s flunky?” Carlito proceeded to spit apple at him. What the fuck is going on tonight with the timing issues? Shouldn’t that have happened while they were on the air? Anyway, I’ve been missing stuff. Carlito gets 2 off an in-ring Asai moonsault. Torrie is wearing WAY too much eye shadow. It looks like Carlito has been telling her things he already told her twice if you get my drift. I miss more stuff as my word processor flips out and decides to make me retype that last sentence. Carlito gets sent outside at some point, and Kenny follows him out. Kenny rams Carlito into the apron a few times, then rolls him back in. Cover for 2. Kicks. Punches. Working the ribs, which I probably missed getting devastated. Carlito tries to chop back, but Kenny does more attax. Kenny covers for 2. Off of punches and stuff. Kenny busts out the old gourdbuster for 2. Modified ninja chokeout, and Kenny even has a hand free for rib clubbering. Carlito fights out, but runs into a knee to…the ribs. Kenny stomps the ribs a bit and covers for 2 again. Abdominal Stretch. Inspired by IRS helping the horde o’ officials to fail utterly in breaking up that brawl earlier. After an eternity, Carlito tries to hiptoss out, but Kenny lands on his feet and tries the same thing, but Calito landed on his feet, and then Carlito hiptosses Kenny onto the apron, where Kenny lands on his feet. It looks really stupid. Carlito ends up slingshotting Kenny in and taking over with spastic babyface offence. Clotheslines, “Million Dollar Kneelift.” JR: “Carlito seems to have gotten an adrenaline rush here, maybe an injection of passion!” Gross. He’s gonna give Torrie one of those later ahchacha. Carlito does a springboard whatever for 2. More attax. He tries a hurricanrana, but Kenny counters with a sit-out powerbomb, sweet. It only gets 2. Kenny sends Carlito to the corner and charges in, but Carlito evades and Kenny ends up crotching himself in the corner. Carlito gives him the Arch Deluxe for the win. GOOD JOB, MY FLUNKY comes out and applauds.
Backstage, Vince tells Coach he’s traveling to wherever ECW came from this week to “make Lashley’s life a living Hell.” Coachman says “travel safe, sir” and for some reason it really cracked me up the first time.
Commercials. No.
The WWE Rewind is last week’s Cena/HBK/Edge/Orton stuff. Ok, I’m in the middle of a really busy week at school, and I granted myself permission to skip one match in this rebeak. Considering that I’ve rebeaked Team RKO vs HBK and either Cena or Trips about a dozen times, I decided to skip the main event, WE HATE DX GRR vs TECHNICALLY NOT DX. I did see it live, though. Perfectly decent tag team RAW main event. Pretty decent when Edge or HBK were on offense, less so when Orton or Cena were. After about fifteen minutes split over two segments, HBK ends up hitting Orton with a chair while the ref is out, then tossing the chair to Orton when Edge recovered. Edge is totally fooled because Orton is too stupid to lose the false evidence, and Edge walks out. This should probably not be the end of Team RKO since they’ve already had teased break-ups that were way more dramatic. Orton ends up eating the superkick and the FU in order to lose. HBK and Cena eye each other warily to take us out. Oh yeah, and both guys got full entrances even though they got entrances for no real reason at the beginning.
Final Thoughts: They really have three options with HBK/Cena. They could turn Cena heel, which might actually be interesting but it would be paramount to admitting that tons of normally markish fans have been resisting babyface Superman Cena all along and they won’t do that. Though it does seem he’s getting fewer boos since feuding with personality-free Umaga than he did when feuding with guys like Edge and Jericho that you could sort of like as heels. Maybe they’re just picking their towns with care…it seems like forever since they’ve been to Canada. Well, I can’t blame them, since the top Canadian in the promotion is likely going to be losing a Monkey in the Bank match to Finlay or whoever soon. Sorry, got off-track. Ok, firstly they could turn Cena. Secondly, they can turn HBK heel, but the fact that they’ve been hinting at this possibility takes the omg swerve out of that option and they’d rather be shocking than make sense. It would also be yet another feud where the irritating wigger champion is feuding with a heel who has a lot of die-hard supporters in the markish community. The third option is to turn no one, which really doesn’t work for me because neither guy is iconic enough for a big match atmosphere to carry this as a Wrestlemania main with no bitterness or hatred. So in conclusion, all of the options sort of suck. Much like this paragraph, which I intended to make funny but forgot to actually make funny.
