Michael McGillicutty d. Trent Barretta
Dark Match

NXT TAPINGS

Maryse and Striker introduced the show and ran down the current scores which have O’Neal with a huge lead over Darren Young and Derrick Bateman (who’s still sitting at zero after rejoining).

Dummy Bag Challenge

This week’s challenge is to show off your wrestling moves on a punching dummy with a picture of Michael Cole taped to it. Bateman apologized to the dummy and proceeded to do a few generic slams on the dummy. Darren Young refused to compete on the grounds that this challenge was stupid, just like him being in NXT is stupid because he’s already been on WWE TV a number of times. Titus O’Neal throws the bag at Young, which is

enough, apparently, to win him the challenge.

Backstage, Hornswoggle keeps getting presents including candy and a doll delivered to them, but Maryse swears that they’re not from her and pushes him down.

Vladamir Kozlov d. JTG

JTG did some OK mic work to get his character of the man with ultimate swag. I think Jack Swagger might have something to say about that though. Kozlov won after a short match with a head butt. Standard stuff.

In the back, someone has dismantled Yoshi Tatsu’s zen garden and destroyed his action figure. He is out for vengeance. His Twitter will never be the same.

Titus O’Neal d. Darren Young

O’Neal wins after Bateman’s distraction actually prevents Young from hitting a dropkick. I like Titus O’Neal the person as a face, but a lot of his ringwork (especially the longish restholds) seem better suited to working heel. I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t like abdominal stretches. After the match he paraded Hornswoggle around to some light cheers.

During the intermission, Charles Robinson and one other ref (Rod Zapata, I think?) help change over the ring for Superstars. The hardest working men in showbiz, folks.

SUPERSTARS TAPINGS

Poor Jack Korpela doesn’t even get his own entrance.

Justin Gabriel d. Tyson Kidd

Gabriel’s the face coming out of the Slater/Gabriel split if you’re scoring at home. Not as fast paced as you’d expect out of these two. A lot of grind it out offense from both guys before Gabriel hit the 450 for the win. Crowd wasn’t sure how to take Gabriel because his new character isn’t really established yet, but he got some cheers after the match.

Alicia Fox d. Natalya

Natalya got the “already in the ring” treatment. This week’s stolen item is Alicia Fox’s belt, which wasn’t as funny as her hair, but still pretty amusing. Not as good as their match a few weeks ago, but still one of the better Divas matches in the last few months. Alicia rolled through a Sharpshooter attempt for the pin.

SMACKDOWN TAPINGS

Booker got a huge pop coming out and Cole got showered with boos. Poor Josh Mathews just came out. At least he got his own entrance though! The live crowd got a rather longish clip of the ending of the Christian/Orton match at Money in the Bank which will probably be pared down or still frames for TV.

Orton opens the show sitting in the ring. He realizes with the WWE Title in limbo and Vince McMahon getting pushed out of his job that WWE’s brass might be ignoring him right now, but he’s not going to take losing the title on a DQ, so he calls Christian out (or he’ll go backstage to find him).

Christian does come out, but says that there won’t be a rematch, because nobody respects whiners like Orton. It’s just the universe resolving itself after Christian got screwed out of the title a few months ago. Orton’s heard enough so he dashes up the stage to attack Christian, but he gets interrupted by Teddy Long’s music and a cavalcade of referees.

Long hears what Randy’s saying, but he’ll have to wait on his rematch because he’s already booked for tonight, but it’s only fair that Christian have a match tonight too, his against Ezekial Jackson. Christian is not thrilled with this, and he’s even less thrilled when Randy breaks through the refs and starts slapping Christian on the head.

Christian d. Ezekial Jackson

Fans are split about 50/50 for the majority of this match with “Let’s Go Christian” chants getting a little more footing than “Zeke” chants. I will say that somehow, Jackson’s even bigger live than he is on TV. He gets quite a bit of offense, but in the end, Tian’s able to stun Zeke just long enough to hit the Killswitch and pick up the win. Kind of slow getting going, but the ending sequence was well done.

Michael Cole calls Daniel Bryan out to the ring, and proceeds to berate him for being lucky winning Money in the Bank, and asks if he feels he really deserves a shot at the World Title, especially if he’s just going to sneak in and steal one like almost every other Money in the Bank winner.

Not only does Bryan think he deserves it, he’s earned it. Because for as many times as Cole calls him “nerd” everybody knows he won Money in the Bank fair and square, and everybody knows that he’s wrestled everywhere in the world, losing his hearing in one ear, braking so many bones that his mother begged him to quit, but now he’s just a step away from fulfilling his only dream cashing in on a World Title shot. And he will cash the Money in the Bank in…At Wrestlemania.

Heath Slater comes out and mocks Bryan for playing his hand, saying that just like he couldn’t win NXT or hang with The Nexus, he wouldn’t win the World Title either, Money in the Bank or not.

Daniel Bryan d. Heath Slater

Some good back and forth mat wrestling between the two, though the match had some awkward transitions as they felt each other out. Slater attempted to block a tornado DDT, but Bryan latched on and turned it into a chokehold for the win out of nowhere.

Backstage, Mark Henry tells Matt Stiker that he has no remorse for putting Big Show on the shelf, because he should’ve known better than to get in the ring with Mark Henry. In fact, nobody in the world should get in the ring with Mark Henry. Well, I agree with him there. Zing.

Sheamus drew with Wade Barrett (Count Out)

This after Barrett kicked Sheamus in the head last week on Smackdown. Both guys are heels, but Sheamus got a huge pop coming out and was playing to the crowd between spots, so this might be the start of a turn for him. Both guys got caught up outside and counted out. Barrett set him up for Wasteland, but Sheamus slid out and loaded up the Bicycle Kick (The Finisher of Champions!) for the moral victory.

There was a Cody Rhodes hype package here, but no new content, so I’m not sure if it’ll be on the show or not.

Backstage, Kane tells the camera that he used to be a monster feared by everyone in the locker room, but now he’s being haunted by his own humanity, so he’s going to destroy Randy Orton tonight to rebuild his own image.

Randy Orton d. Kane
In a Street Fight

A lot of fun early 2000s garbage wrestling to start with kendo sticks and stairs flying everywhere. Orton went for a spot where he was going to jump off of the announce table onto Kane, but the table tipped over and landed awkwardly on Orton’s leg. He got up and smirked to the crowd to downplay the spot and threw Kane into the stairs to buy himself some time to recover. They actually stopped the match at that point and had a trainer and Jack Doan look him over (and John Lauranitas came down to check on him as well), but eventually things got restarted with Orton limping around and Kane doing most of the legwork for the remainder of the spots. They traded near falls after finishers in the ring, but Kane eventually gave up and got a chair which he used to take Orton down and set up a Tombstone onto the chair, however, a couple of quick reversals after that, and Kane had eaten an RKO on the chair for the win.

After the match, Orton hobbled backstage while Kane sat in the ring looking disgusted with himself. He went to leave, but he got stopped by Mark Henry, who proceeded to destroy him with a couple World’s Strongest Slams and splashes. Then he grabbed a chair and Pilmanized Kane just like he did to Show on Sunday. Referees dragged Henry out of the ring, and Kane got picked up and moved off by some medics.

Dark Match II: Electric Ortonloo

Tony Chimel announced that things had changed and that Orton would indeed be getting his rematch in a street fight tonight. Christian came out with a mic and said that, while he wanted no part of this, he was sure he’d be leaving with the World Title here tonight.

Christian d. Randy Orton

I can’t believe that, if Orton were really hurt, he’d work the bonus match like this, but he was massaging his quad during every little break in the match. Maybe he just bruised it. Christian tried a kendo stick and one of the protective mats from the barrier (!) but to no avail, as Orton just kept powering back into the match. While Christian laid prone, Ted DiBiase and Cody Rhodes ran out from the back and started circling Orton. The distraction was just enough for Christian to roll Orton up for the pinfall. Afterwards, DiBiase and Rhodes started laying into their former legacy leader while Christian escaped, but a miscommunication between the two led to RKOs for both. Christian ran back into the ring, but ate another RKO. Then Orton posed to the crowd and the lights went off.

Not a bad show by any means, though sort of paint-by-numbers feeling considering what has been going on over on RAW. No appearances by Triple H to expand that storyline into Friday nights. A lot of weird heel/face dynamics, particularly in the Sheamus/Barrett and Kane/Orton matchups, where there was no real clear storyline reason to cheer for one or the other of them, leaving everybody sort of flat. Still, good promo work by Kane and Christian and a couple solid matches in Bryan/Slater and Orton/Kane worth checking out on Friday.

Even being there, I’m not sure what to make of Orton’s injury, the table collapsing clearly wasn’t planned and he really did seem to struggle to stay mobile after that spot, but if he was injured badly he wouldn’t have worked that dark match. I’d probably guess that he’s got a deep bruise on that leg, and it shouldn’t keep him out of action too long.