Usually, I would break these up, but this is one of the most perfect hours of WWE television they’ve put together in nearly sixty years of existence and it flows together so perfectly that it all belongs in one post together.
It’s a nice Friday after Thanksgiving on Smackdown. It doesn’t matter. You’re at home, after fighting your way through a Best Buy to get a deal on a PS3, perhaps buying what you don’t know is the last ever edition of NCAA Football that will ever be released, along with GTA5. Perhaps you’ve come back to your dorm room early, and are lounging at your desk and watching this on the television for which you rigged up a cable hook up across the ceiling to the cable hook up on your roommate’s side of the room. He’s not back yet from whatever weird stuff he and his pervert family get up to. You crank it up, crack a beer. Make a leftover sandwich.
It’s a breezy show, even if it doesn’t matter. Some stuff’s happened for sure. Titus O’Neil has thrown up on JBL. Classic pro wrestling. For some reason, the scheduled main event opens the second hour. Some bullshit might happen. Ah well.
We begin with a simple tag, the third iteration of one of the great tag team rivalries of the year.
CODY RHODES/GOLDUST VS. THE SHIELD (ROMAN REIGNS & SETH ROLLINS)
This was for the Rhodes Brothers’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
It doesn’t quite live up to the title change from October 14th, but it’s just about as good as the more famous Battleground match. Now, OBVIOUSLY it doesn’t have the big emotional payoff. But for the same sort of pure formula match, this gets more time to breathe and develop itself, and I think they do a better job with it overall. The big title change has the fireworks show at the end with all these great payoffs, but in terms of just a pure execution and refinement of the formula, this is it. With close to twenty minutes to work with, they’re allowed to stretch out a little more and create a real lived in sort of a match on their third two on two shot at it. There’s some restraint for reasons tht become apparent at the end, but it doesn’t really hurt this much at all. The environment helps them out too, because if Smackdown is a house show (and it is), it means they’re a little freer here to riff it out and see what happens.
What happens mainly is that Goldust, once again, is on fire.
Goldust and Roman once again are dynamite together. Roman gets a little cut under his eye, so you know this one’s not bullshit. The usual great hot tag work after yet another quality piece of Shield control on Cody, with an all-time little hoot and holler and applaud in your private domicile moment when he actually manages to hit the big Crossbody off the ropes. The transition comes in another way, and it’s so good. To have him succeed where he usually fails makes it seem like the end is coming up, only to get cut off once again, leading into an even better piece of Shield control. The comeback there is also a delight. The more I watch of this run, the more I start to lose grip on the “maybe” part of the “Goldust is maybe best tag worker of all time” statement I’m always throwing out here. If nothing else, I’m pretty sure he’s the best pure babyface tag team worker that there’s ever been.
Cody’s hot tag isn’t all that bad either!
If not for his partner being Dustin Rhodes, I’d be over the moon about it. Even still, it’s another entry here for the best and most consistent period of Cody’s entire career. He and Rollins have surprisingly great chemistry, and manage to do that classic Shield thing where there’s always just some slight difference. Counters to things from the previous match they had on Raw four days earlier, counters to stuff from earlier in this rivalry. Cody manages a new way into the Cross Rhodes after breaking out a super rare La Escalera to take Roman out, and they’ve finally got The Shield dead to rights.
Until they don’t, because Ambrose hits the ring for the save.
A really great match, even before any of the nonsense, and there’s still a solid forty minutes of show time left!
***1/4
The Shield sticks with the gang attack, only for CM Punk to then come out to make things fair. This all winds up leading to one of the five or six different authority figures Vickie Guerrero making and impromptu six man, because Teddy Long’s DNA is woven into the material of Smackdown still all these years later.
CM PUNK/CODY RHODES/GOLDUST VS. THE SHIELD
It’s the one of the three that isn’t quite great.
This is the bridge match.
Not as airtight and fleshed out as the Tag Title match and not as out of control, frenetic, and wild as the one to follow. But a way to get from Point A to Point B in a neat and tidy fashion. Keep the engine running.
Still, a lot of fun to be had, because there’s very few people who I’d trust as much to keep the engine running as these guys (and also Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes). As the fresh guys, this leans on CM Punk and Dean Ambrose a little more than the other four. The reason it isn’t quite great isn’t because of Punk though, because he’s pretty good here. We’re never getting 1000% effort bump freak CM Punk ever again, but he does a lot of little things that brought a lot to this. He was clearly directing traffic for the team, in a way that helped the match, and explained why they wound up controlling Rollins for longer than The Shield controlled any of them in this segment. Again, Smackdown is a house show and someone as experienced and jaded as Punk is at this point knows that, but he still brings a certain presence and lightness to everything that helps a lot, like the other half of what a house show can be. There’s a certain joy in watching people have fun while they’re doing what they’re doing.
Ambrose doesn’t quite have that going for him, but he’s the bump freak in this match up, and takes a bunch of great stuff. He gets another great little run against Cody in this, before Punk gets back in and some bullshit happens.
There’s a Wyatt flash, and the Wyatt Family shows up to attack Our Heroes in response to Cody & Goldust beating them the previous week to keep the titles and to CM Punk and Daniel Bryan’s victory over them at the Survivor Series.
Rey Mysterio and The Usos come to save and to make it even once again, and we have our second impromptu continuation, now in a twelve man tag team main event.
CM PUNK/REY MYSTERIO/CODY RHODES/GOLDUST/THE USOS VS. THE SHIELD/THE WYATT FAMILY
This one’s short too, but real breezy, and it’s when you get the payoffs and the big fireworks show. Like the last match leaned on the newer entrants into this big wonderful mess, this one leans on the Wyatts, Rey, and The Usos a lot. And for a moment, do you know what that means?
LUKE HARPER VS. REY MYSTERIO.
Not for nearly long enough, but given that it happens a few more times in more cut down tag matches in early 2014, it’s hard to be too bummed about it. Granted, we never got that slam dunk obvious singles match between the best pure little man underdog babyface in wrestling history and the best big man of a generation, but we get a taste here, and it is exceptional. That’s not all though, because Rey does his best to try and match Goldust’s in-peril work earlier in the hour by getting career work to this point out of Erick Rowan too! He’s great against Ambrose and Bray when called for too, just a wonderful performance. There’s also yet another nice little Shield/Wyatts touch, as they get along better now after having previously tagged up, but still have these little moments of discontent.
Punker gets the hot tag to send it home. Not the best choice, but being the biggest star in the ring and probably like the #3 or 4 guy in the company at this point, hey, it is what it is. It’s not offensive. He’s helped out by the others for your big fireworks show. The discord between the two bad guy factions rears its head at the end in a cute little way. The Wyatts all clearly hold back at the end and let The Shield eat all the big bullets like the Usos dive, most of Punk’s hot tag, etc., before trying to vulture the match. It doesn’t work though, because Rey bails Punk out and keeps it even. Rowan eats the 619 to feed him into the Go To Sleep, and we’re all sent home full and happy to end the show.
It’s a shorter final match, but it’s fun enough and good enough to coast on the goodwill from the preceding fifty minutes and stick the landing.
three boy
Things like this don’t ever really happen and it’s why I still remember it so fondly seven years and change later.
One of the most exceedingly and enduringly fun episodes of WWE television in some time, as a result of one of the more memorable little ideas in recent memory. Not each of the three matches is great, the first is the best of them, but it’s something so unique and so fun and so just entirely unimpeded by any sort of WWE Bullshit at all. It’s pure pro wrestling, the sort of stuff designed to put a smile on your face. It’s a very Heyman-ish booking idea, flowing all these matches into each other, but doing it doing all the same guys and the match just gradually building up and up is so cool and different. It stands out for WWE but it stands out for just regular wrestling too. It’s a genuinely novel idea, executed with the sort of energy and joy needed to stick the landing as perfectly as they did.
“Smackdown is a house show” is usually a license for people to not care about matches being good or for writers to not put anything into it, but for once, it meant that the WWE got to loosen the reigns and let people get loose and relaxed and a little goofy. This, for once, manages to capture the fun of a good house show on live television, a thing that very few other matches ever have been able to do. One of the all time WWE 2013-2014 examples of how good and enjoyable this dumb shit can be when you just let people breathe and work some stuff out and get out of the way. It’s genuinely one of my favorite things in wrestling history, one of my favorite non-major viewing experiences in wrestling history, and if you wind up checking this out, I’m really happy that you do and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did at the time and again here.
An all-time greater than the sum of its parts total package, creating one of the great episodes of wrestling television this decade.
HANDWERK 