The alternative would be to find some Capable Canuck who would be willing to be a full-time SD! Recapper (since you'll still get the show on Thursday nights), and thus, get an OO Recap done before the weekend. Any volunteers oot there? 
  

I'm not sure what this'll mean for last week's not-at-all-monumental Last Thursday Night SD! Ever, but I guess if anybody out there is interested in a one-shot gig (and

For this week, what it means is that I have to try to fake *my* way through a mini-recap of SD!. Why? Because, I'm currently in the middle of asking you folks to chip in and donate a few bucks to help out with our Annual Pledge Drive (remember PayPal is preferred, but Amazon is OK, too; and the Pledge Drive link has info on reaching me via the US Mails). So this isn't exactly a time when I can go half-assing it otherwise screwing you Fine (and generous, I'm sure) Readers on content.

Thus: today is a Column In Two Parts. First, a toned down Recap of SD! (sorry, but as I watched my recording of the show late last night, I didn't know I was gonna have to do this, and thus, wasn't paying as close attention as I do during RAW). Then, a quick bit of news and other goodies to tide you over till the weekend.

We ride....

SMACKDOWN! RECAP: Network News

Video Package: SummerSlam stuff. If you weren't up to speed on SummerSlam by Thursday, though, you're pretty hopeless as a wrestling fan...

Opening Theme/Pyro/Etc., and we're most-certainly-not-live from somewhere in North Carolina. Tazz and Cole promise us a huge six man tag match for our main event, and then shoot it down to the ring.

Randy Orton vs. Bob Holly

Cowboy Bob Orton handles the introduction duties here, first pausing to remind us of how he and His Boy took out the Undertaker at SummerSlam, and to tell us what a Proud Papa he is. He finally calls out Young Randall, and I'm thinking this might be a promo segment or an angle to set up a match later on... but nope, Randy's just here to get in the ring and await his opponent: Bob Holly? Oh christ, what have I done to deserve this? Get Chris Masters in here for a three-way, and you'd probably have the Ultimate "The Rick Could Not Possibly Care Any Less About These Men In The Ring" Match.

Pretty simple stuff early, as Bob plays the Bitter Old Man Who Just Wants To Whomp Some Little Whippersnapper To Learn Him A Lesson. And Randy plays the chickenshit. Hey, if "douchey wussbag" is what comes natural, then play to it, Randall! Thanks to Daddy, Randy did eventually gain an advantage, and stuck with it for a few minutes. Do I even have to mention Randall's mastery of The Chinlock at this point? Didn't think so.

Bob comes back, and they actually head into a final few minutes that were (if I put my own personal tastes aside and look at this impartially) very solid. There's more interference from Cowboy Bob, but at first Hardcore Bob is on such a tear that it doesn't work. But perseverance is in the Orton Family Blood, so Cowboy Bob keeps on trying and finally distracts Holly long enough for Randy to sneak up from behind and hit an RKO.

Your Winner: Randy Orton, via pinfall. The match was probably only around 8 minutes in reality, but to me it sure as hell FELT like 10-12 or more. You really can't find two guys I care any less about, and although they built to a very strong final few minutes, the rest of the match left me cold.

Backstage: Teddy Long enters his office to find... Some Guy. "Some Guy" introduces himself as "Palmer Cannon, from the Network." Oh lord. For one: this guy looks like a gassed-up, water-retaining, babyfaced high school lineman, NOT like an intelligent/conniving/capable "Network Executive." For two: Heyman and ECW already did about as much with this gimmick as there is to do, so why bother recycling? And third: "Palmer Cannon"? So we're supposed to hate him because he had dickweed parents who gave him a "trendy" first name, and in so doing, assured him a lifetime of getting beat up by guys who know full well that the only name more fagotty than "Palmer" is "Cassidy"? But I digress: Palmer, despite looking more like another one of Johnny Ace's Gay-Porno-Ready Developmental Wrestlers than a guy who worked his way up the Network Ladder, is here to fill Teddy Long in on a few things. (1) SmackDown! is moving to Fridays in two weeks. And (2) "The Network" thinks that they need a big main event for that show, so he's picking Batista vs. JBL, in a SummerSlam rematch. Oy: so his gimmick is that he's a RETARDED Network Executive if he thinks signing a re-rematch of a match that has already sucked twice and failed to draw fans in twice is gonna be a "big" TV main event? I get it...

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The Peep Show

Christian is apparently back to being a heel again this week, as he puts himself over and gets booed for it. Then he introduces his guest, Booker T, and commences to doing some light mocking of Booker. See, Booker might be a 5-time WCW champ, and that's impressive, but since coming to WWE... ummm.... hmmmm... what exactly HAS Booker done since coming to WWE?

Booker's about to get all up in XTian's face when his wife, Sharmell, chimes in. She thinks Christian might raise a valid point. Because Booker really hasn't been himself lately. He needs to get focused and get back to being the man, and the wrestler, that she knows he can be. Booker doesn't take kindly to having his own wife take up sides with Captain Charisma... but before things get too prickly, we are interrupted by...

The Mexicools. They go right after Christian again, and in the melee, one of them nudges Sharmell. Oh no you di'n't! So Booker decides to join in, and he and Christian fend off the Mexicools, and then share an uneasy stare. Interesting....

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Heidenreich vs. M or Possibly N (I honestly don't remember)

Jillian Hall, like Cowboy Bob Orton before her, does a bit of introductioning. Unlike Cowboy Bob, I cannot discern what the hell the point of her being there was. Out come MNM, and one of M or N is going to wrestle, while Melina's just gonna stand around making sure that nobody ever bothers to figure out which one is M and which one is N. Then out comes Heidenreich (accompanied by Animal), and it's on.

Pretty basic match (which is the most you can hope for out of Heidenreich), with a bit of heelish cheating short-circuiting Heidenreich's power advantage. Heidenreich then made his comeback and seemed ready to win, but that's when Jillian and Melina started causing a distraction (which tied up not just the ref, but also Animal, who came over to try to break things up). This allowed the other of M or N to grab a steel chair and go into the ring to whack Heidenreich. Magically: the ref heard it and turned around and called for the DQ. After the match: MNM continued the assault, and also took out Animal. 

Your Winner: Heidenreich, via DQ, in 3-4 minutes. Not good. But the "Heidenreich wins the battle, but MNM wins the war" aspect of the story here means that FINALLY we might be getting rid of Heidenreich and Animal's boring-ass "nostalgia reign" as tag champs.

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Backstage: WWE Diva Josh Mathews interviewed Chris Benoit about his US Title win. In fact, Josh said that they were just going to replay the ENTIRE MATCH, and wanted Benoit to walk him through how he got Jordan to tap out in 26 seconds. Benoit, instead, says he loves competition, even if its with himself. And there aren't a whole lot of things you can do in 26 seconds. So maybe what he'll try is.... hmmmm.... you roll the footage, Josh, and Benoit will try to fix a cup of coffee before it's over. So we go split-screen, and Benoit finally finishes creaming his coffee and takes a sip of it about one second before Orlando Jordan taps out. "I win again" deadpans Benoit, in what probably counts as the first time Benoit's been downright hilarious in a promo....

Elsewhere Backstage: JBL is browbeating Orlando Jordan about the 26 second loss. Because JBL needs Orlando tonight in the big six-man main event. OJ tries to offer lame excuses for his loss, but JBL's having none of it. JBL reiterates that OJ better bring his a-game tonight, and then leaves. OJ doesn't look happy; I wouldn't either if I was pretty much getting ready for a Face Turn to Nowheresville.

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Booker T/Christian vs. the Super Crazy/Psicosis

Good back-and-forth action early... but then, in the battle of the two women at ringside (Sharmell, and the remarkably effete Juvi), the Mexicools got the better of it, and thanks to Juvi, cheated their way to the advantage. They isolated on Christian, who took a wicked beating for about 3-4 minutes.

Then he made the hot tag to Booker, who was a House Afire for all of about 30 seconds before the numbers game caught up with him. Outside the ring, Sharmell was now giving Christian a talking-to about how he should get in the ring and help his partner. Christian, however, was licking his wounds, and didn't want any part of that noise. Booker staged one last rally, and came over to see why Christian was shouting at his wife. Big mistake: from behind, Super Crazy and Psicosis hit with a double brainbuster. That was enough to finish Booker off. Christian just smirked as he left the scene of the crime, so I guess this ain't a face turn, afterall.

Your Winners: Super Crazy and Psicosis, via pinfall, in about 5-6 minutes. Didn't strike me as the best these four could do, not by a long shot. But again, I guess this was a match that was less about the match, and more about getting to the story elements at the end. Mission accomplished there... now just to see if whatever they have in mind really will help to boost Booker and/or Christian back up to where they belong on the card. I'd rather have just seen Christian re-invent himself as a contender to Benoit's US Title, probably, but we'll see.... [maybe we'll get to Benoit/Christian in a month or so, and in the interim, we can get a few Benoit/Regal matches, since Regal's freshly turned heel? I'd be able to deal with that!]

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Backstage: it's interview time with Randall Orton. And with Cowboy Bob Orton, who makes me laugh every time he speaks and manages to come off about a billion times more charismatic and personable than His Boy. Which only makes me laugh HARDER when I remember there was a reason why Cowboy Bob was the mute enforcer for Roddy Piper instead of the guy who cut the promos. This whole thing amounts to "We Killed the Legend of the Undertaker," except it takes 3 minutes to get there. Orton doesn't fumble any lines (viva la being on the Taped Thursday Night Show!), but does just seem to drone on and on with a flaccid dumb guy delivery that is anything but riveting. But if Randall must speak slowly to get all his ideas out in grammatically-acceptable English, I guess we better get used to that. Adding to the annoyance factor here: the "punchline" of the bit is that Orton and Dad have signed a copy of the new Undertaker DVD, which is up for auction on WWE.com. With the proceeds going to the Undertaker Retirement Fund. Ouch: my sides, they are splitting. 

Elsewhere Backstage: the Network's Palmer Cannon is shadowing Teddy Long and announces that he loves that Randy Orton (that makes one of you), and thinks SD! needs more of him. Teddy says (and I remember this line with clarity), "I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket, playa." Which I chose to interpret as "last time somebody tried to make Orton the brand's top star, he flopped harder and faster than just about anybody in wrestling history." But which was presented on TV as meaning that the Undertaker usually comes back and finishes his business, so Orton better beware. And then, Teddy said, he had to go to the ring for a Major Announcement. Palmer wanted to know what it was, but Teddy said he could sit back, relax, and find out at the same time as everybody else. Palmer no likey.

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Teddy Long vs. Standards and Practices Theatre

We come back to find Teddy Long in a ring that has been filled with a bed and lots of pillows. So if Palmer Cannon doesn't know what Long's going to announce, he's the only one. Sure enough: Teddy thinks that a Lingerie Pillow Fight might spice things up around here. And so he'd like to introduce his 2 newest additions to the SD! roster.... Stacy Keibler and Christy Hemme.

But before the two can start the TV-G catfighting, Palmer Cannon interrupts and declares that this display is unsuitable for The Network and simply won't appeal to the demographic that they are trying to reach. Oh, the irony: Palmer gets booed for insinuating that these fans don't know what's best for them when it comes to their wrestling show. And at the exact same time when WWE's spent the last 18 months pretty much saying the same exact thing to us, but expecting us to LIKE it when they force feed us.

Anyway, no lingerie pillow fight for us. So we just cut to...

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Ken Kennedy vs. Funaki

Kennedy is the former Ken Anderson (a promising member of the OVW developmental roster). And his shtick? Giving himself PROPER ring announcements (with added running commentary, taunts of his opponent, and a tinge of OOld Tymey Boxing Style Announcing), since Tony Chimel is incompetent. Heh. To help you get a handle on this (since just repeating the ring announcements would NOT play on the written page): If Joel Gertner were physically fit and trained to wrestle, he'd be not unlike Ken Kennedy. Pretty funny stuff.

Match was very basic from a "workrate" perspective, but Kennedy was bringing the charisma and personality by interacting with fans and in general seeming more "in the moment" than pretty much all the non-Carlito automatons that WWE's called up in the last year. Funaki got the expected late-match rally, but that was snuffed out when Kennedy caught him on the top rope, and turned that into The Move Of The Week: a second-rope roll-through slam that you pretty much just have to see to believe. I wonder if that'll really be his finisher against non-cruiserweights? Because it looks like one where if he misses it by even an inch, he'll break his own neck.

Your Winner: Mister KEN NEH DEE (kennedy), via pinfall, in 3 or 4 minutes. Match was about Kennedy establishing a character and interacting with the audience more than blowing us away with his moveset. And then, by the end of the match, he DID blow us away with that finisher. So I consider that a pretty effective debut. Only gripe: why'd they change his name from "Anderson"? I've got an attachment to that name; specifically, in this case, to the fact that "Ken Anderson" is the first football player I really remember (he QB'ed the Bengals to the Super Bowl when I was like 5 and had just moved to Ohio a few months before). And today, Ken Anderson runs an Adult Beverage Distributor here in Dayton. What was wrong with "Ken Anderson," WWE? 

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Batista, Chris Benoit, and Rey Mysterio vs. Eddie Guerrero, JBL, and Orlando Jordan

The match spans 2 commercial breaks, but this being a shorter mini-recap, I won't have NEARLY enough detail to bother putting those in where they belong.

Instead, I'll just report that after a 3-4 minute long back-and-forthy segment to start (where JBL pussed out against Batista, where Eddie and Rey did a few nice little spots, and where OJ nearly got punked out in record time by Benoit again), Benoit got in the ring for the Good Guys, and promptly became your Face In Peril. This was the formula for pretty much the middle 6-8 minutes of the match. And that formula was swell when Eddie was in the ring with Benoit... but with JBL and Jordan? Meh. Those dudes did stuff like bust out the Abominable Stretch, which (as you well know) is NOT one of my favorite holds.

Benoit finally fired up and got the hot tag to Batista. He cleaned house, and just when it looked like JBL and Eddie might have something to say about Batista decimating OJ, both Benoit and Rey got into the swing of things. Six-way brawling, and JBL and Eddie both took a powder. And then: the Ritual Humiliation of Orlando Jordan began. Rey hit the (619), Benoit hit a swandive headbutt, and then Batista looked back and forth to Rey and Benoit, and together, all three did the "Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down" thingie, signifying The End Was Near. One BatistaBomb later, and OJ was done. Probably overdone, since he took three finishers. The "Dream Team" celebrate together to end the show.

Your Winners: Batista, Benoit, and Rey, via pinfall, in about 20 minutes. Good match, best of the show. But not anywhere near as good as RAW's two top matches from Monday, if you're looking for comparisons. A "slightly above average" match, and thus, a fitting way to cap off a SD! that was probably a tinch less-offensive than it's been lately, but which was also still light years away from being memorably good.

WEEKEND NEWSBITES: Ratings, Jericho, and More

• Last night's SD! did a 3.1 broadcast rating. I believe that's pretty much the same as the week before, and falls well short of the 3.5 that the show did 2 weeks ago. So: no boost from SummerSlam, and no real forward momentum building up to the timeslot change to Fridays (where I figure another 10-15 percent of the audience might get lost, just because of overall TV viewership being much lower on Fridays versus Thursdays).
   
  I did mention preemptions as a possible reason for last week's low rating, and so just for the sake of completion: that MIGHT be an issue again this week. At least 2 TV markets in Florida preempted SD! to do local programming related to Hurricane Kwhatever. But this really shouldn't have had as big an impact as losing the Philly market the week before was.
   
  Methinks the explanation, again, is just that statistically significant numbers of viewers decided against watching SD! this week... and it's got nothing to do with preemptions.
   
  
• While the announcement of another Rematch Demanded by No One between Batista and JBL as the main event of the first Friday SD! won't exactly set the world on fire, WWE really is planning to load that show up as if it were a PPV. Well, a SD!-only PPV, but still: isn't it the thought that counts?
   
  As it stands now, we should also see MNM vs. Heidenreich/Animal in a match that'll finally get the tag titles onto a team that can use them. And then: Chapter Eight in the Rey vs. Eddie saga, as they'll have another singles match (hopefully, one devoid of any lameness).
   
  That would also be a wise time to set the wheels in motion for whoever will be Batista's next real challenger. My guess continues to be Orton, but who knows for sure at this point?
   
  
• The Jericho Plot Thickens.... kind of.
   
  For a while yesterday, I gather there was a TNA logo on Jericho's official website. No explanation accompanied the logo, but with internet jackoffs and indie wrestling wankers being as predictable as they are, the logo itself was more than enough to generate the desired response.
   
  Even as Jericho was OK'ing the "tease" of the 'net fans, he was still featured prominently in the "RAW Rewind" on SD!, and the general consensus REMAINS that Jericho and WWE will be back in business again around the New Year.
   
  That was the consensus 2 months ago when "OMG~! Jericho's retiring" was the Red Hot News Flash that bunched so many panties. Instead, the real deal is that Jericho had (around that time) finalized his plans to take time off from WWE to do some things with Fozzy (including tours of Australia next month and Europe in October). This coincided, roughly, with the expiration of his current contract. Chaos ensued, but even then, the level-headed were confident Jericho and WWE would get a new deal done. What they wound up doing was kind of a quick "band-aid" job, as Jericho's "contract extension" (as reported on WWE.com) was just to take him up through August. Then Jericho's Fozzy commitments pretty much kick in next weekend, and he'd already arranged with the office to have no wrestling commitments at that point.
   
  Again: Jericho has given everybody the impression that he'll work out his WWE deal here during a little 3-4 month hiatus. Certainly the attitude of WWE is that they assume Jericho will be back.
   
  And yet: now Jericho with a TNA tease? I dunno... I guess it's a cute way to generate a little bit of buzz with some tiny percentage of the wrestling audience who would get fired up by such a thing. But even among internet-reading fans, it's not like TNA is taken as seriously as a competitor to WWE as WCW or ECW were back in the day. Just look at how little was accomplished by Matt Hardy pimping ROH on RAW: yeah, the show that weekend had a moderately strong walk-up, but Hardy still got booed out of the building (which was NOT the intention and would not have happened if ROH had really drawn in a lot of casual WWE fans).
   
  I guess what I'm saying is that I just don't think this is something to get all fired up about. For one: it kinda does fit into Jericho's proclivities towards screwing with hardcore internet fans a bit... and for two: all signs really do point to Jericho ending up back in WWE when all is said and done. I mean: the enthusiasm with which Jericho played the putz on Monday night sure seemed like a guy who felt like he'd come back to get his heat back... not like a guy who knew that was his honest swan song from wrestling before heading to the minor leagues to bounce around for a while.
   
  That said: the one possibility I mentioned on Wednesday can't be totally counted out.... maybe Jericho's just "working" WWE by making this situation sound like a hiatus, and maybe he will take a liking to a new, relaxed schedule, and maybe he will end up deciding to take a chance on TNA. If that's the case, though, he'll almost certainly end up burning bridges with WWE, which might not be an entirely wise move given that the future of TNA is far from rock solid. WWE might flounder, but it will still be here in 3 years; if TNA goes belly-up, would Jericho really want to have made enemies of them?
   
  We'll see... but for now, you can classify Jericho as a "free agent," albeit one who everybody assumes is little more than a few crossed-T's and dotted-I's away from resuming a WWE relationship come January.
   
  
• The guy who played "Palmer Cannon" last night on SD! is developmental wrestler Brian Black. He's a kid who's seemed very green in what I've seen of him, but with the kind of body-builder look that seems all the rage these days. I had seen nothing out of him that made me feel like he had any particular strength as a mainly-speaking character (which is what "Palmer Cannon" will be to start with), and I saw nothing last night to change my mind.
   
  He reminded me a lot of Chris Nowinski in his look/delivery.... except only if Nowinski was about one-third as personable and one-quarter the actor. His bits with Teddy Long were a bit stilted, and a lot of that is Cannon delivering lines as if they are off the written page (instead of having a genesis in his own brain). The other part is: I really think this is a bit of miscasting. Just like hiring "police officers" to guard Kurt Angle's medals who look like total indie-wrestler tools, WWE has now created a "network executive" who lacks anything resembling the gravitas to pull it off... somebody a little older, a little slicker on the stick is what you want. And preferably, somebody who isn't conveniently 6'3" and 250 lbs. so that it's clear he's a wrestler to even the densest fan.
   
  Did Cyrus really piss off THAT many people when he was in WWE that they wouldn't just give him the callback for the role he freaking invented?
   
  
• The Jim Ross Report is back on WWE.com as of today. It's more of a "Nice to be back" column this week, without a whole lot in terms of newsworthy items... but it was also good to have the sense that JR was shooting straight (which is more than you can say for a lot of WWE.com crap).
   
  The only real odd little tease: a mention of the next WWE Diva appearing in Playboy, and how we'd be surprised at her identity. Huh. To be honest, I don't think (with the current roster being what it is and made up of who it is) that I'd be surprised by any of them appearing. Well, except for Trish, as she's been very forthright about not wanting to do that on the grounds that it would be counter-productive to the kind of career she's trying to have as a wrestler. So I don't know if I'm necessarily intrigued by the news item itself... but I'm curious to know who I'm SUPPOSED to be surprised to hear might be posing in Playboy.
   
  Also: JR confirmed what we talked about weeks ago... that Trish is medically cleared to return to action. He doesn't say it, but that means her return is in the hands of the creative team. I feel sorry for her already....
   
  Another interesting twist: JR's column will be a bit more interactive than it was in previous iterations. He's answering emails. I bet he'd enjoy some non-retarded ones, so feel free to see if you can sneak any in there, OO Nation! 
   
  You can check out the column by clicking here. 
   
  
• I think that's about all for today. Remember: the Pledge Drive is on, and it'd be nice if donation levels would rise at the same rate as readership levels have, so put a few pennies in the basket, why don't you?
   
  And on that note, I'll wish everybody a Happy Weekend. I'll see you again on Monday.