So, for the third time, I got tickets to see the Smackdown / ECW house show in Cardiff, persuaded the good lady wife to come too and crossed the border into Wales.
the night opened somewhat surprisingly with CM Punk vs Undertaker in a casket match. This was a bit of a shock, I fully expected Taker to be in the main event and only found why he opened the show this morning. Punk kicked it all off with one of his standard straight-edge heel promos. It started well, but went a little flat when he started banging on about prescription pain medication, which isn't as popular in the UK as the US. He did seemt o be enjoying berating the crowd though, and was laughing quite a lot. The match itself was pretty good, went 18 minutes which is longer than I thought it would. the end was pretty unusual, Punk took a punch, spat his gum in the air, caught it, put it back in his mouth, turned around and got Tombstoned. Taker took the win, which seeing as the match was for the world title, was as predictable as Rafa Benitez being a twat.
Next up, a Diva's battle royal, involving Mickie, Beth Phoenix, Layla, Katie-lea, Rosa Mendes and Natyla. Mickie won, but all in all, a terrible match. All I'll say is Rosa is borderline anorexic, Beth Phoenix had the most impressive biceps of the night, and Mickie is awful. Truly awful, but more on that later.
An ECW tag match followed, Finlay and Yoshi against Ezekiel Jackson and Zack Ryder. This was a decent match, but I was distracted by Big Zeke the whole way through. He's got one hell of a physique, looks evil as fuck, but just doesn't look like a wrestler. I think it's his costume, his red trunks just don't suit him, in my opinion he needs a new costume to really look the part.
Matt Hardy faced Drew McIntyre, which featurted my favourite promo of the night. Drew walked into the ring, grabbed a mike and opened with 'So, this is Wales... you know, I didn;t think this place actually existed...' which lead to loud boos and the English present to give him a standing ovation (myself included). The delivery was brilliant, and the guy is huge! Very impressed with him, he played the heel role perfectly and took the win with a pin with his feet on the ropes. Of the guys I'd neer seen before, he was the most impressive.
Cryme Tyme faced the Hart Dynasty, and again, I was very impressed with 3 wrestlers - DH Smith, tyson Kidd and JTG. Shad, in the company of 3 guys who know what they're doing, looked average. Standout moment was Smith's superplex off the top on JTG, made all the better by him tagging out, standing on the apron and shouting to the crowd 'That superplex was dynamite!'. This lead to chant of 'Bulldog! Bulldog!' by 5 members of the crowd (myself included) which he seemed genuinely surprised by and gave us a big thumbs up. I also applauded the Dynamite pun, and have now decided that DH Smith is great, and will hereby be bigging him up at every opportunity.
I also saw an ECW match with Christian facing Goldust. Was an okay match, that was hampered by it's positioning on the card. there was an intermission for 10 minutes, followed by Mickie vs Michelle McCool which basically killed the atmosphere. Christian and Goldust spent the first few minutes trying to warm the crowd up, to varying effect. A face vs face clash wasn't really a good idea, especially as a lot of the crowd really couldn;t give a flying crap about Dustin Rhodes. Personally, putting Regal or even Kozlov would have been a better idea, but still, Christian won to the surprise of no-one.
Warning: rant impending!
Straight after the intermission, Michelle McCool faced Mickie James, as James' reward for winning the battle royal earlier. I've seen 3 house-shows now, and this match was by quite some distance the worst match I've ever seen. Mickie clearly could not give a shit, McCool was her usual self - her moves were technically fine, but she exhibited all the charisma and personality as a badger that's just been run over. They somehow managed to blow a back-slide into pin combination when James slid over McCool's ribs and to the canvas rather than go straight down her back. I used to think Mickie was one of WWE's better diva's, she was motivated, talented... and now she's gone completely to shit. McCool, let's face it, is only being pushed as she's banging the Undertaker. A shocking match. Luckily, I did manage to avoid watching too much of this by having a wee and buying a t-shirt.
Luckily, the main event saved the show. It pitched Rey against Batista. Batista's entrance was a bit of a mix, in all honesty. He got a Cena-style entrance, cheers with a fair number of boos. bearing in mind, he's now a heel, this was a bit of a surprise. However, Rey came out to a huge pop (arguably bigger than Undertakers...), and they had a pretty good match. The biggest compliment I can pay Rey is that the old chap in front of us had sat for the entire show, looking bored and not moving while his kid watched. However, even he started clapping when Rey started pulling off some moves, the stand-out moment being a west-coast pop off the top turnbuckle to the arena floor. The end was a bit of a let-down, we had a DQ finish when Batista hit him with a chair. He carried on a beat-down, until Matt Hardy appeared to give Batista a Twist of Fate. Matt was followed by drew McIntyre, then various members of Cryme Tyme and the Hart Dynasty all ran in, one at a time to see off one another. Bit of a confusing ending, but it gave Rey another chance to do a 619 on Tyson Kidd, a move when seen in person is simply breath-taking.
Minor gripes? the show was missing a few big names, Kane, Shelton, Regal, Jericho, Big Show, R-Truth, the security staff were a bunch of wankers checking cameras to make sure no-one had been recording anything, 2 Diva's matches was 1 too many (especially as it gave Mickie 2 matches on the show, and she was shite in both). On the whole though, thoroughly enjoyed the night, saw some guys I'd not seen, and I got to mark out for the Undertaker's entrance again.
the final point I'd make is this - the 2 previous shows had a lot of kids in the audience. this time, it did seem to ne a mainly adult audience. I'm not sure how much of that was the Monday night factor and kids having school the next day, it just got me wondering about whether the whole PG rating is actually a factor in the slightest.
