The John Report: Talking Smack for 03/26/10

Welcome to the Talking Smack column where I offer up a quick rundown of WWE's Friday broadcast, Smackdown. I'll have an explanation about the whole internet hacker situation involving my accounts (and Facebook, where I now have a new account) at the bottom of this. Also explains why the Shawn Michaels column won't be until next week. I assume some of you don't care, though, so I'll put it at the end. This recap is short since Smackdown was about an hour long this week with Axxess footage and video packages filling the show out.

For those that have asked I'll be having a running commentary up on thejohnreport.net during WrestleMania tomorrow night. I won't be doing play by play, but I will update during matches, after matches and whenever I feel the need. You'll have to hit refresh to get the updates. I will be doing the updates all night, though. I can confirm that. Now for Smackdown.

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Taped from San Jose, California let's talk some smack…

Team Smackdown (McIntyre, Kane, Hardy, Benjamin & Ziggler) d. Team Raw (Christian, MVP, Jack Swagger, Evan Bourne & Kofi Kingston) (***1/2)
This was a very good ten man tag that went about 18 minutes with two commercial breaks. When you have multi man matches and you give them time they almost always turn out well. The announcers did a great job of pointing out that Kane is the only one of these guys to be a World Champion (for one whole day), so it's a big match for all of them due to the fact that that they've never been to the top before. Of course there are multiple ECW title holders in the match. Let's just forget that ever happened, I guess. The big spot in the match came when Evan Bourne was on the top rope and Shelton Benjamin was able to hop up to the top, then throw him off with a beautiful belly to belly suplex all the way across the ring. It was a beautiful spot. I'm predicting something insane from those two off a ladder at WM. That's why they're in the match. The finishing sequence was good with everybody coming in and hitting big moves. They weren't just finishers, but some set up moves. The finish saw McIntyre get a blind tag and pin Christian with his Future Shock DDT. Post match, he took out a ladder and went to climb it only for all the other guys to come out and knock him off. My pick to win the match is still McIntyre although if it's Christian I'd be much happier.

Lots of video packages and clips of Cole & Lawler talking from Axxess were shown. I'm not recapping recaps.

Backstage, Josh Mathews talked to Miz & Big Show. They basically said they're ready for WM and are the better team compared. Then it ended with Big Show's fist being shown beside Josh's head as a way to get over how strong his fist is.

Vickie Guerrero & Friends d. Beth Phoenix (*)
It was supposed to be Vickie vs. Beth, but Vicke changed it to a 5 on 1 match with Michelle McCool, Layla, Maryse & Alicia Fox joining her. Beth was able to dominate them for a while until the vintage "numbers game" caught up to her and she ate a Michelle McCool kick for the loss. Vickie pinned her of course. Post match, Michelle actually did a "frog splash" motion by walking around like a frog, so Vickie went up to the middle rope…until the babyface divas came out. In that group was Kelly Kelly, Gail Kim, Eve Eve and the returning Mickie James-Canton. Mickie hit a Thesz press while the others cleaned house and it was just Beth in the ring with Vickie. Vickie tried to run away, but Beth pantsed her and we got to see Vickie in the ring in pink panties with "Excuse Me" written on them. This was one of those "holy shit I wish I didn't have HD" moments. Not a welcome sight although it was funny. The angle worked because people really hate Vickie.

After the show, they added a 5 on 5 divas match at WrestleMania. My understanding is that it will be during the 4 hour broadcast. The match is Beth, Mickie, Kelly, Gail & Eve vs. Vickie, Michelle, Layla, Maryse & Alicia in a 5 on 5 match that probably won't last more than five minutes. I expect Beth to pin Michelle to set up a title feud between them.

I still don't understand how "Be Yourself" by Audioslave, a band no longer together, is a WM theme song.

Promo time with Jericho. He spoke about Edge having weak DNA, which is why he keeps getting injured while Jericho doesn't get injured. He said when Edge loses at WM he can blame it on his weak DNA. Edge ran out, gave Jericho a kick and went for a spear. Jericho bailed, but he left the title behind. Edge was able to pose with the belt. I'm picking Jericho in that match. I think Edge will win at Extreme Rules in the rematch.

Lots of hype promos followed this.

Morrison & R-Truth each cut promos before the main event because frankly they needed stuff to kill time. It was pretty bad for the most part. I really hate babyface promos in the PG era because they are so lame it makes me want to punch the person saying them. Except Shawn Michaels.

Big Show d. R-Truth via DQ (*)
They only got about three minutes here. Show had control and then missed a big elbow off the middle rope (has he ever hit anything off the middle rope?) to set up the finish. Morrison threw Miz into the ring steps and then got in the ring to go after show. They were able to double team him and knock him down with their usual offense. The show ended with Morrison & Truth staring at the WM logo while Miz & Show were out of it.

Not a great ending to the show. This made me very sure that Miz & Show were winning on Sunday too. I figured so already, but the fact that they got owned on this show cements it for me.

Three Stars of the Show
1. Shelton Benjamin – I loved the belly to belly.
2. Chris Jericho – Strong promo.
3. Video production team – They are good.

5.5 out of 10
Last week: 5

The show was fine as a hype machine for WrestleMania. I don't think anybody's going to remember any of it after WrestleMania, but what they did mostly worked. It's hard to rate it since half the show felt like video packages. The opening match was really great, though.

Since WWE hyped WM so much, time for me to hype my WrestleMania Preview from Monday. I'm sticking by all my picks. And you can follow that link to see how the fans are picking the results of the matches after over 2000 votes for each match. Some of them are nearly 50/50 while others are very one-sided. Check it out.

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To wrap this up, a quick apology about not posting the Shawn Michaels column on Thursday. I had planned to, but when I woke up that day I found out my email address was hacked into. Actually it was a couple of my emails and spam messages were sent out to people in my address book. As a result, I spent the whole day checking everything I had to make sure nothing more was compromised. It's two days later and I got everything back although my contacts are gone from my email addresses that were broken into by "cybercriminals" (this is the term that was used to me). So now the HBK column will be post WM. It might be better this way. Also gone is my facebook account. They hacked into that and it got shut down. Not sure if I'll get it back, so I set up a temporary one at Facebook.com/thejohnreportnet meaning if you want to talk to me on there you'll have to add that one. If I get the old one back, which had nearly 2000 friends, I'll delete this one. There's even more info on the Facebook situation here.

Basically I'm pretty pissed off. With that said, it happens. What can you do? I've been on the internet for fifteen years. Been writing online on and off for ten years. Never had a problem or issues before Thursday. Maybe I was due? I don't know. I'm trying to not let it bug me, but it does. Let it be a warning to all of you, though. It happens.

Check out my blog at thejohnreport.net for live coverage of WrestleMania 26 on Sunday night starting at 7pmET.

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend.

John Canton - thejohnreport@hotmail.com - Temporary new email.
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