Raw In The UK, Smackdown, & More - April 20, 2009

Welcome to the “are the new draft picks ever going to their own shows?” edition of The Wrestling List. Fun Raw tonight from the UK and I’ll get to it momentarily.

Friday Night Smackdown saw a mix of the newly drafted talent and the previous talent that were having their last Smackdown matches. Nothing really must see on the show but there was good action. Big Show faced Jeff Hardy in the opener. Matt Hardy got involved at the end with Jeff taking a swing at him on the apron. Jeff then dove out on to Matt on the floor. Jeff went for the whisper in the wind but Show caught him and nailed the knockout punch for the win. After the match, Matt walked in the ring and slapped Jeff. He then nailed a series of legdrops on to Jeff. Triple H and Randy Orton had a segment where they trash talked one another and Triple H informed him that their match on Raw would have no rules. Batista defeated Ted Dibiase with the Batista bomb. Dolph Ziggler defeated MVP with a rollup and pulled the tights. Wow, not sure what that says for either of them. Is that a sign of good things to come for Ziggler or bad things to come for MVP? I tend to think it is good things for Ziggler and they may push him. Undertaker defeated Shelton Benjamin with the tombstone. John Morrision defeated R Truth with the moonlight drive. Gail Kim got a clean win on Divas champion Maryse. There was a Khali kiss cam which I didn’t watch at all so I can’t tell you a thing about it. Solid show of action but nothing can’t miss.

Tonight’s Raw was taped earlier today in the UK. Fun show and a really hot crowd. A definite heel crowd too for the most part which is always fun. The main event was the No DQ match between Triple H and Randy Orton. They used the steps, chairs, table, and whatever else. I thought it was more entertaining that their WrestleMania match and it even had a run in. Legacy got involved near the end attacking Triple H. Shane ran out to help. However, Legacy still had control until Batista arrived. He was in control until Cody raked his eyes. Batista then speared Shane as he couldn’t see. They had been teasing earlier in the night about how Shane and Batista hadn’t gotten along last week along with Triple H. Triple H questioned Batista on the spear who explained that he couldn’t see. Batista got knocked out of the ring by Legacy and the battle continued. Triple H then got hit with a RKO and Orton got the win. Chris Jericho opened the show giving his Raw farewell talking of how he was going on to bigger things on Smackdown. He talked of how no one gave him any appreciation for what he has done on Raw. Ricky Steamboat walked out and gave him a thank you. His thank you was for reminding him how much he loved to perform for the fans and being proud of his accomplishments. Jericho ended up claiming that Steamboat was just out there to get the spotlight from the fans one last time. Jericho challenged him for a match at Backlash. Before Steamboat could answer, John Cena made his way to the ring. Jericho then left the ring not even wanting to acknowledge Cena. Cena said he had a message from Vickie that Jericho would be facing himself later in the night. As Jericho went on to leave, Steamboat accepted the Backlash match. The Cena/Jericho match was a fun one. Crowd was very into it and the crowd was mostly anti-Cena. Lots of counters in this one that made it fun. Jericho countered the adjustment into a codebreaker. Then, Cena was able to roll the walls into a STF. The two battled into the corner. Edge arrived to a big pop and knocked both of them off of the turnbuckle. Edge pounded on Cena and hit him with a spear. Edge then nailed Cena with a con-chair-to. He grabbed the mic and counted to ten as a way to preview their Backlash Last Man Standing match. Batista won a squash match on Chavo Guerrero that resulted in one move in the match, Batista bomb. CM Punk was able to counter a chokeslam attempt by Kane into a pin to win their match. Big Show defeated Rey Mysterio when Show caught Rey’s 619 attempt and then hit him with the knockout punch for the pin. Very fun segment with Santino and Santina. He introduced Santina who appeared on the screen. It was really funny as the video started fast forwarding and Santino tried to cover it up saying that his sister likes the red bull. Beth and Rosa interrupted the poem reading by Santino to his sister. Continuing with the funny of the video thing, Santina later reacted to the poem reading as if it had just finished but Beth had been having words with Santino for a bit at that point. Beth said that she had gotten the Khali kiss cam for Santina approved for Backlash. Beth had a women’s title match against Melina at that moment. Beth ended up nailing Rosa by accident. Melina then nailed a stunned Beth with her sunset flip slam for the win to retain the women’s title.

Other notes from Raw. Great crowd tonight. I always love the “boo” “yeah” chants when there is a punch exchange such as tonight with Cena and Jericho. The fans would boo every Cena punch and cheer the Jericho punches. Don’t you just crack up at WWE always working on protecting Cena whenever he gets booed? It is just funny how they go into damage control such as Cole saying that he always gets a big response from the WWE Universe and start using words like “controversial”. There are just some places that they go to where the fans don’t like him and you just can’t cover that. Fans are going to cheer and boo whoever they want. Huge Y2J chants tonight. Orton had a good group of fans tonight too. I always do laugh when there is a heel crowd and WWE panics on how to cover it on TV. I’m talking about how whenever they are in Canada, Lawler always goes into his “this is bizarro world in Canada” stuff which gets annoying after a while. How nasty would that spot have been if Orton had hit that DDT off the apron on to the steps? I was already trying to figure out how you protect that thing but it was countered. How funny was that Santino segment??!! That was great stuff. Did you see the “ask him” sign when Jericho had Cena in the walls? Cracked me up. I love that move by Beth where she bends a flexible Melina to where she kicks Melina with her own foot. Well, Mickie James has been taken out of the Raw opening all together and I find that annoying.

I was hoping to get the first episode of Superstars watched before tonight’s Wrestling List but I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet. I’ll watch the premiere and this week’s episode and review it next week.

I haven’t commented on this but Undertaker is ok after his dive out of the ring at WrestleMania. He was shaken up but was fine.

TNA held their Lockdown PPV last night and there were some big happenings coming out of it. One of those was Bobby Lashley joining TNA. The TNA title changed hands as Mick Foley was able to defeat Sting. TNA also teased another arrival to the company which if you saw the clues by Samoa Joe, you will get who it likely is.

Trish Stratus commented to Slam Wrestling about why she didn’t take part in the women’s battle royal at WrestleMania. I definitely agree with her comments as the women that they did bring back ended up hardly getting any kind of attention. When I say any kind of attention, I’m talking that we barely even saw them on camera and no intros. Here is what Trish had to say: "Simply, there were no finishes, no 'What's going to happen? Will I win?' discussed. It was just, 'Would you like to be in this 25-woman battle royal at Wrestlemania,' and I said, 'Thank you but I’m going to decline.' I’ve always said to come out of retirement is a big deal to me – so if I was to come out it is for something special. To be honest, I feel Wrestlemania is a place to create memorable moments in one’s career and frankly, with 25 women in the ring, I was just not sure how anyone could come out having their 'Wrestlemania moment,' maybe if it was a little clearer that could be accomplished for someone, I would have been a part of it. If I were to go back, I would like to do something that is new and fresh, there are so many girls right now that can work, I’d want to be able to mix it up with someone I hadn’t gotten the chance to before I left."
http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2009/04/13/9103456.html

If you haven’t seen the movie, The Wrestler, like myself, it will be released on DVD tomorrow. I am going to pick it up and watch it soon. I hear great things about it!!

I had forgotten just how fun of a tag team that Ricky Steamboat and Shane Douglas were back in the early 90’s. I was watching WWE 24/7 over the weekend and watched some of the matches in the shorties section. The match wasn’t a classic by any means with them facing Vinnie Vegas and Big Sky. The run in at the end was very nice as Austin and Pillman made an attack on Steamboat and Douglas leading up to their series of matches for the tag team titles. They had some great matches against each other in that time period. Ahh, memories.

WWE Backlash is this Sunday on PPV and here is the lineup. The WWE championship is on the line when Triple H, Shane McMahon, and Batista take on Legacy. World Champion John Cena takes on Edge in a Last Man Standing Match. Jeff Hardy vs. Matt Hardy in an I Quit match. ECW Champion Jack Swagger defends against Christian. Chris Jericho takes on Ricky The Dragon Steamboat. I think this will be a solid show but I’m not crazy about the main event. The rest of the show looks good.

That is it for this week. Wishing all of you a great week!! Take care and God bless!!