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| THAT'S WHAT HE DO Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Roughly, it goes like this: the WWE uses this as a dumping ground adjacent where the biggest names get to ply their wares. I do things like stop drinking early and hanging out with friends to make sure a BCB goes up in a timely fashion for you, the Wrestling Blogite! (thumbs up) ((cheap pop))
In this week's instance, I would've been fine continuing to drink. Actually, that's not a retelling of the entire story--the show actively had me looking for a double IPA. Or maybe a quintuple.
It started off hopeful, as JBL called Michael Cole names and brought out Mark Henry. "Here comes Mark Henry," I said. "So this is gonna be fun," I said. "Some fool is going to get their wig split directly," I said.
Through a combination of thin skin and mostly justified arrogance in short order through interacting/threatening JBL, Henry now had a four man gauntlet on his hands. A regular Barrett Barrage for the other 13 people who watch this regularly. It started off fine, as well. I learned how to tell Jimmy and Jey Uso apart, for example: Jimmy is the one stupid enough to charge at Mark and goes SPLUT in about a minute, Jey is the one who gets in a sliver of offense before going SPLUT.
We now pause for a moment of levity as Santino came out, looking nervous and making the signs of the cross. Is that the proper response to have when one summons Levithan? Maybe a Catholic can help me out on this. Santino did some of his SMMA feints to nothing, then let out the manliest of yelps when Henry threatened to hit him.
"Hey, Bradshaw! (forearms Santino at full strength in the chest) You see that?"
"I think it's great, Mark."
Sadly, that would be the high point OF THE SHOW. The Cobra actually hit (?) but the kickout sent Santino out of the ring; when he flew off the top it was into the evening's third World Strongest Slam.
And now to end this run, the actual challenge in this sort of setup...the Great Khali. If a dude had thrown me over the announce table with such force and venom it's in his TitanTron, I would've kindly rebuffed any future match advances. If a man had broken my leg and had a disposition as disagreeable as his theme music was awesome, I'd also relent my spot and make it available to the next warm corp...body. This is why people in our part of the world complain about things, because we're the idiots with a fully functioning long-term memory. I suppose things could be worse, they could be referring to the babyface unit in this iteration as Nakhaliya. (If that becomes a thing, a hundred apologies on my end.) Khali hit the judo chop and Henry teetered but was still upright so a second one post-shrug dropped him, but only for two. It wasn't Eddie's shrug after Rhinocerous Gored Lord Voldemort at that Vengeance, but it was quite the homeless man's gratifying moment. Henry powers out of a Plunge attempt, and SPLUTs Khali--
--and then he got his foot on the rope and the show inexorably hit the skids from there. Khali hit Henry with an admittedly impressive boot and another Judo Chop that sent Henry out of the ring. Once out there, Mark thought about, decided he liked the view, and walked. Yes, again. Yes, on Main Event, again. If Henry ends up eating JBL and spitting out a 10-gallon in the next five days, this is why.
Where's the JBL that I want to eat? We've seen Henry beat Khali before; hell, we've seen the architect of destruction put Khali in the Hall. The last I checked, this Wednesday night programme wasn't Bombay exclusive. What in every analogue of the four-letter F-bomb was that!? Khali doesn't need to be protected, he can barely move. He's not on the PPV, Henry is in a match against Sheamus you're trying to get people into because, y'know, HOSS FIGHT. What made this even more galling is that he actually hit the Slam on him. There is a plutocracy in WWE, another way a bunch of men playing out a script in their underwear resembles America at its core, and in it Mark Henry is either a king or something close and Khali is the well-meaning but slow commoner who tries really hard to plow the fields. And that happened anyway.
Somewhere on the Internet I assure you Captain Picard is complaining.
Indefensible endings, a reheated Zeb Coulter promo in which he wasn't merely missing his fastball, but his split-finger, his sinker, his spitter and his eephus, then ten minutes of recaps to close the show, a show so bad that I almost named this BCB "Roger Ebert Was Originally Going To Review This But He Took The Easy Way Out".
That's what they do, apparently.