Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Taped 5/29/09
Original Air Date 6/20/09

There’s no denying how late this writeup is. I had a busy weekend attending the tapings for Episodes 19-24 and doing some DVD reviews with Steve, plus I’ve made it a point to catch Smackdown every weekend since it started being great again (Chris Jericho continues to amaze me, and I’m waiting for CM Punk to tell the story of the old man and the snake) and there was Saturday night’s Ultimate Fighter Finale featuring pro wrestling antics better than anyone between Diego Sanchez and Clay Guida. I also slept most of Sunday morning away, and I like to watch “True Blood.” Not that this all really matters, as the results of the matches can all be found in audio form on the site, but there were plenty of other extracurriculars going down that we weren’t privy to.

Right off the bat, we were presented a graphic saying this episode was dedicated to Misawa’s memory (very fitting, and eerily convenient, given KENTA’s involvement in the main event) and were told by the announcers that Austin Aries won the World Title. Once again, the show has to deal with the real-time event of a new champion while still having a match with the former champion left to air. A recap after the first match of last week’s belt shot by Aries on Jerry Lynn is followed by a graphic of Aries sporting the title, fulfilling his prophecy from last week’s episode. In addition, we were asked to stay tuned for… photos of the World Title match from last Saturday in the Hammerstein Ballroom. Not as strong a hook as video footage.

Other extra content includes clips of Ric Flair’s farewell promo from the last set of tapings with mentions of WWE cut out (this was promoted with clips of his classic Naitch promo he cut at the April tapings; wish that was shown again), a promo by Jimmy Jacobs and previous clips from live events to promote his Fight Without Honor with Delirious next week (nice to see the match get some hype), and an odd but amusing segment called “The Art of Pro Wrestling.” Colt Cabana was standing behind a table with t-shirts and DVDs, Brent Albright was his mostly silent straight man (both men had clip-on mics, but Albright was shirtless and had his taped to his chest), and both men shilled recent DVD releases. Albright was proud to be on the cover to Caged Collision, and Cabana was pretty much gold, though I imagine he would be a far better huckster in real life. What I found odd is that the site StuntGranny.com (friends of ours) presents a similarly-themed regular article called “The Art of Wrestling,” going in-depth on the designs of various wrestling apparel. What it lacks in Cabana, it makes up for in insight.

This was probably one of the best episodes wrestling-wise, as it featured not one, but two really good matches. KENTA scored the main event victory in his HDNet debut, defeating Roderick Strong in a match just as good and crazy as I remembered. I was looking forward to how Mike Hogewood would react to this while calling it. He pretty much called it with the same enthusiasm as previous main events, but you could kind of tell he was enjoying himself, and he put it over as a really good match when it concluded. One great call he did was him saying, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the do-OOOOHHH!” as KENTA gave a seated Strong a running kick to the chest.

The other in-ring highlight was Kenny Omega and Kenny King tearing it up, with Rhett Titus hamming it up at ringside and some lovely random broads popping up during the heels’ entrance before disappearing (they were apparently escorted to the back by Aries, but this was never shown). Really fun action all-around, culminating with Omega getting the win with Croyt’s Wrath, Titus beating him down right afterward, Erick Stevens running out to make the save, and Titus doing running away in the funniest manner imaginable to escape. Both this match and the main event are definitely worth checking out.

The other matches aren’t much to worry about. Claudio Castagnoli defeated Necro Butcher thanks to a meddlesome Jimmy Rave and a kick to the balls, with Albright coming out afterward to continue that feud. A little bit of comedy chain wrestling by Necro here, the beginnings of the kids chanting “USA!” there. MsChif defeated Nevaeh thanks to an equally meddlesome Jimmy Jacobs and a face full of green mist, which for all I know just leads to a women’s tag in a couple weeks. Not all that good, and Steve’s assertion that Nevaeh looks like a female AJ Styles continues to worry me. What was really kind of odd is that both Jimmys in both of these matches literally spat in the faces of the good guys to distract them. Running out of ideas maybe? As a bonus, from the tapings on May 30th (especially evident from a different looking crowd), we’re treated to Eddie Kingston decimating Andy Ridge, keeping the Last of a Dying Breed in viewer’s memory as Kingston’s issue with Hero continues.

So there was a lot of stuff going down in this episode, and it seemed like a lot of it, including Aries’ title win and Flair’s farewell, was treated a bit too flippantly to make an impact. I would have preferred one long segment talking about Aries winning the World Title as opposed to three short ones spread throughout the show. They continue to do a good job of promoting big matches on upcoming weeks, as not only was the Fight Without Honor hyped, but the next episode’s main event of The American Wolves defending the World Tag Team Titles against Bryan Danielson & Tyler Black was mentioned twice. And as I said before, the top two matches are definitely worth checking out, though they’d probably fare even better with die-hard wrestling fans if Smackdown wasn’t as strong as it is now. I can’t be too down on this week’s episode despite some misgivings.