Million Dollar Man Returns, Raw/Smackdown Thoughts, & More - July 6, 2009

Welcome to the “Million Dollar Man returns!!” edition of The Wrestling List.

Smackdown continued to tell the story of the Jeff Hardy/CM Punk feud. Fun stuff in this one. Punk was introduced at the beginning of the show where he gave his side of the story on the Bash match. Punk talked about how he was actually the one that was almost robbed due to his foot being under the ropes with the ref not seeing it. He pointed out that everyone makes mistakes and that the ref caught it. Punk said that his eye was clearly damaged and that he couldn’t see which is why he nailed the referee. Punk pointed out that he doesn’t take short cuts inside or outside of the ring but said that nothing excused Hardy for his actions after the match. Punk had heard that Jeff wanted a rematch which was fine with him but he wanted an apology for what happened after the match. Teddy Long made his way to the ring saying that he didn’t know if Punk took the cheap way out or not but announced a rematch for Night Of Champions between the two. Punk was quick to say that was fine with him and no problem but he wanted his apology. Long then made the match for the main event of Smackdown with Hardy and Punk taking on new Unified tag champs, Edge and Jericho. Jeff arrived and immediately started off with Punk saying that he didn’t want to hear any more excuses. Hardy said that he knew Punk was clear on what he was doing at the PPV and did apologize….for what he was going to do to him at Night Of Champions. Shoving started and Long got between them. Punk then told Hardy that they needed to be on the same page for their match later on. That match took place and Hardy and Punk teamed well for a while. Then, Punk started holding his eye as the match went along and would walk down the apron every time that Hardy would go to tag. It was very reminiscent for me of Martel walking off from Santana at WrestleMania 5 as far as the style of it. Hardy eventually ran and tagged Punk in with a hard slap. Punk would later go for a tag and Hardy pulled up just at the last moment grabbing his eye and fell onto the floor. It was one of the biggest oversells that you’ve ever seen. Ha ha. Punk went for the GTS but Edge made a blind tag in. He hit the spear on Punk and made the pin. It was very much like the tag title finish at the Bash. Hardy then went to Punk complaining about his eye and that was why he couldn’t tag in. The story was that Hardy was of course faking and getting even with Punk which he revealed on his way up the ramp. Solid match. In other action, Kane defeated Rey Mysterio. Rey hit the 619 but Kane caught the springboard attempt and finished him off with a chokeslam. As Kane went to do more damage after the match, Khali arrived with a chair. Kane took off through the crowd to get away from Khali.. Cryme Tyme defeated The Hart Dynasty when Shad pinned Smith. The finish had JTG interfering from the outside helping his team get the win with the ref’s back turned. Melina and Maria defeated Michelle McCool and Layla when Melina pinned Layla with the split legdrop. Melina looked really strong on offense when she got the hot tag at the end. Michelle continued to taunt Melina with the Women’s title. Dolph Ziggler defeated R Truth. Finlay defeated Ricky Ortiz with the celtic cross. This week’s Smackdown will be an Intercontinental championship rematch with Rey Mysterio defending against Chris Jericho.

Fun episode of Raw tonight which centered around the “guest host” for the week which was The Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase. The whole story seemed to be that Legacy would be in good shape this week with Dibiase Jr’s dad in charge. Well, that didn’t turn out to be true. Dibiase opened the show with Priceless with him. He said that he had been told that there could be no title defenses before Night Of Champions but that he was going to have some fun tonight. Priceless vs. Edge and Jericho for the tag team titles was set for Night Of Champions. Dibiase talked to Cody Rhodes about how they all agreed that Mark Henry should be taught a lesson about what happened last week. However, Dibiase informed Cody that he would be the one to do it setting a match tonight with Cody and Henry. Yeah, Cody wasn’t thrilled about that one. Dibiase then turned and talked to his son. Dibiase talked of the history between Orton and his son and how he felt that Orton was holding him back. He said that he knew that his son could beat Orton and set the match for tonight as well. Yeah, Jr. was stunned and not happy either. Orton later talked to Priceless as they were all frustrated. Orton said something to the effects of that Dibiase Jr. losing to Orton wouldn’t accomplish anything which Dibiase Jr. took offense to. Cody went to Dibiase later and tried to buy his way out of the match with Henry. Dibiase said that he had the right idea but not the right amount of money. Ha ha. He went on to talk about how much that he couldn’t stand Cody’s dad, Dusty Rhodes. Dibiase said that he was everything that he couldn’t stand in life with being the common man. He threatened Cody with having to wear polka dots if he lost. The match with Henry and Cody took place with Henry dominating. The match didn’t go long as Henry hit the slam and then Cody bailed. Cody took the countout loss. The match with Orton and Dibiase Jr. took place and was a solid one. Orton was frustrated asking Jr. over and over why he was doing this match. Jr. started getting in some offense and had Orton reeling. Jr. countered the RKO into a backslide and got a close count. The finish had Jr. going for the dreamstreet only for it to be countered into a RKO. Orton gets the win. He gave a nod to Jr. which seemed to be respect as that was what the announcers were putting over. However, Jr. had a look of anger on his face. Back in the locker room, Jr. went to confront his dad. Dibiase talked to his son about how he gained a lot of respect but Jr. said that his dad had set him up to fail while adding that his dad had to have the spotlight again. Jr. ended up slapping his dad really hard and left while saying “thanks dad”. The tournament final to decide who would face Orton at Night Of Champions took place with Cena vs. Triple H. Crowd was split on this one and the finish had Priceless getting involved. They attacked both Cena and Triple H. When the bell rang, they bailed. Orton got on the mic knowing that it was a double DQ. The plan was that the attack would lead to the DQ causing him not to have an opponent for Night Of Champions. Dibiase returned and stood on the stage to say something different. Dibiase said that it was true that there was no winner but there was also no loser. Night Of Champions is now a triple threat with Orton having to defend against Cena and Triple H for the WWE title. In other action, Edge and Jericho took on The Colons. The finish had Carlito getting knocked off of the apron after Primo moved to avoid his opponent but the opponent caught Carlito. So, Carlito tried to get back in the ring. That caused the distraction and Jericho hit the codebreaker on Primo followed by an Edge spear for the win. After the match, Carlito attacked Primo throwing him into the post. He then threw him around ringside including firing him over the announce table. There goes that tag team. Mickie James and Gail Kim teamed up to take on the team of Maryse and Alicia Fox. Solid match. Gail Kim looked really good on offense. The back and forth one upping that Maryse and Mickie were doing with each other was fun. Finish had Gail Kim pinning the Divas champion clean in the middle of the ring. Mickie and Maryse continued to have words after the match with Maryse mocking her with the championship. The VIP Lounge segment was MVP hosting Jack Swagger. The whole story of this thing was MVP getting on his case for not being a man last week. Swagger commented on MVP’s troubled past. MVP stood up to him and then Swagger backed down saying that he didn’t fight people below him or criminals. MVP then had a good line of saying that Swagger didn’t fight anyone since getting to Raw. Evan Bourne defeated Kofi Kingston in a quick match hitting the airbourne for the win. Big Show then made his way to the ring to attack Kofi. Bourne tried to help Kofi but Show destroyed both of them.

Other notes from Raw. How great was The Million Dollar Man tonight??!! He seemed like he was having the most fun that he has had in years on TV. Just how stiff was that slap from son to dad anyway? WOW. I loved hearing Dibiase talk about how he wrote a check to get the guest host duty while also carrying the Million Dollar Belt.  I figured that the Colons were about to split up and it just seemed like a matter of time before they would feud with one another. Gail Kim looked really strong in her Raw debut. I still love the trash talking going on between Mickie James and Maryse. It’s fun. Did anyone not see that Night Of Champions match becoming a triple threat match?

Matt Hardy has written a My Space blog on his injury and it is a nasty one. You can read all about it here at this link: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=152686889&blogId=498850621

I did laugh at the editing that WWE did with that video package of the Raw main event from last week which aired on Smackdown. You might remember that both Cole and Lawler called the RKO off the turnbuckle on to Bourne a “running bulldog”. In the video package, they added them saying RKO to it. I thought that was funny. How did both of them miss that being a RKO? They even repeated running bulldog when they called the replays.

I’m into watching the second disc of the Randy Savage DVD set. I am having a fun time watching this DVD. I’ll have a full review of it when I finish it. I’ll say already that if you’re a Savage fan, you won’t be disappointed with it.

If you watched ECW last week, you saw a lot of new talent. It was talent being moved up to the main roster from FCW.

WWE has changed the name to two of their PPV’s later this year. No Mercy appears to be gone and it has been changed to what appears to be a Cell themed PPV. The Cyber Sunday name is also gone for the PPV later that month in October and is now called WWE Annihilation.

Torrie Wilson commented on the disappointment of her return at WrestleMania. I completely agree with her comments as I thought it was done really poorly. They didn’t even get introduced so you didn’t even get a clear look at the returning women. That could have been a lot of fun and ended up being a huge disappointment. Here is the link to the interview that The Baltimore Sun did: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/sports/wrestling/blog/2009/07/qa_with_torrie_wilson_3.html

I watched the 2009 Royal Rumble over the weekend on WWE 24/7 Classics On Demand. I really enjoyed this show. The Rumble match was a lot of fun as it always is. Lots of good action in it and it was fast paced. I just liked the booking for it all around. Great to see Rob Van Dam’s surprise appearance and the crowd went nuts for it. Randy Orton got the win of course and I thought it was well done at the end with how his win happened. I was ready for sure to see the Matt Hardy heel turn and the crowd was just standing stunned. Loved how JR and Tazz just stepped out and didn’t say much instead letting the picture tell the story. It really was funny to hear the crowd chanting “we want Christian” at the beginning of the match cause that’s what we all thought on where the story of the feud was going. I was one of them but loved the idea of a Matt heel turn. Cena and JBL was just kind of there for me. JBL matches just mostly bore me so the real story of the match was to watch for Shawn Michaels’ involvement. When the ref went down, all eyes went to Shawn. He climbed up on the apron and the crowd went nuts. Big pop on the superkick to JBL and then the pop was louder on the superkick to Cena. I really liked the women’s title match with Melina and Beth Phoenix. This was the much talked about spot where Beth bent Melina back kicking her in the head with her own foot. What a cool spot. Matt Hardy and Swagger opened the show and was a solid match. Like I said, this was a fun show and I’d recommend it to anyone wondering whether to check it out. You can never go wrong with the Rumble match and it didn’t disappoint.

Have a great week!! Hope everyone had a great and safe 4th of July. Take care and God bless!!