Well, hopefully with the time change and the fact that the sun is out longer, things will go better for me. In the meantime, I finished up a review for IGN and now I’m down to two guides I’m doing at the same time. MLB 11 The Show is a blast, and is definitely recommended for any gamer baseball fans. [Ed. Note: just to be difficult -- and to help get past the ad box -- I will opine that Out of the Park 2010 is the only baseball videogame one needs. ONLY~!]
  

…And that’s about the extent of the excitement in my life, as usual. I hope I’m past the ad box, because I’ve got no more to talk about. Let’s get to wrestling.

Segment 1: We cold-open to a photo of The Rock. And then a moment later, we here Rock’s voice… and from there we go to an over-produced video segment of Rock talking to someone on the phone. He starts by saying that everyone watched Cena’s comments from last week, which were supposed to be Cena’s “final knockout” of The Rock, and yet the comments were underwhelming and not funny.

Then Cena’s music starts up, and Rock looks off-camera to stage right. Rock hangs up with whoever he’s talking to, then proceeds to supposedly talk to John Cena himself, who has supposedly shown up at Rock’s house. Except it’s some little kid dressed in Cena’s attire, and he just says Rock can’t see him.

Rock tells “John Cena” to talk to him like a man, and the kid responds with a one-stanza rap and orders him to come get some. So Rock sits back down and wants to have a man-to-man talk, and basically recaps the fact that Cena is so totally over now with “two-to-five year olds.” And then we hit the first amusing line of the segment:

Rock: “But do you know why you’ll never be as good as The Rock?”

Kid: “Because… I’m… not that talented?”

Rock: [sage nod] “That’s correct, John Cena. Because you’re not that talented.”

…And Rock’s tone was beautifully patronizing. Now THAT is funny. And Rock follows up by making the kid cry with an “It doesn’t matter!” line, then says that John shouldn’t cry about it since, after all, none of us cried after watching the atrocities that were The Marine and Legendary. So Rock encourages the kid to blow his nose on one of Cena’s T-shirts since it’s the closest thing to toilet paper he’s got in the house.

Things get stupider from there, and nothing worth recapping… until mini-Cena leaves, and then Rock wants to know where he was.

He faces the camera with retarded slow music over it, something that would be more at-home with an Undertaker promo. Rock simply addresses The Miz, saying that Miz is right from last week, that they weren’t properly introduced. So Rock introduces himself, calls bullshit on Miz hitting the People’s Elbow, and concludes that clearly Miz wants Rock to deliver “the single biggest ass-whooping of all time” unto him.

Rock says that he, Cena, and Miz can all agree that the time for talking is over. Rock promises that he and Cena will see each other, face-to-face, live on RAW at some point before WrestleMania. Though, obviously not tonight. Anyway, Rock says that the only thing Cena and Miz need to worry about is how badly they’re going to get their asses beat. From there, he hits his sign off line, and we’re done.

Post-Segment 1: We see that Snooki is indeed in the house, and she’s chatting with Trish Stratus. I’m happy to see Trish, but Snooki’s mere presence hurts my IQ.

Also, Michael Cole is in the “Cole Mine”: he’s at a special desk at ringside that is surrounded by, oh, let’s say it’s Lexan glass, like the blast chamber from MythBusters. He’s in this magical shield of protection so Jerry Lawler can’t attack him, but I notice there’s no roof on the thing. I wonder if that’ll matter.

Segment 2: And here comes Miz, and no commercials! Miz points out that Rock’s T-shirt said “I Bring It.” And Miz actually agrees with him: “You bring out-of-date catchphrases, you bring bad tattoos, you bring horrific movies, you bring empty promises, and pointless 20-minute diatribes that only a has-been can bring!” BURN!!!

Miz starts to cut a promo against Rock’s dad and grandfather, but the crowd fires up “You suck! You suck!” Miz stops his promo, hits his smirk, and dances along to the beat of the chant. Finally as the crowd peters out, he says, “You done?” Boos. “All right then, back to what I was saying!” And without missing a beat, he resumes his promo, even though the crowd is now booing him fifty times harder. Goddamn, Miz makes it look easy.

Miz goes on that Rocky Johnson and Peter Miavia were good… but they were never WWE Champion, so Miz is obviously better than both of them, so he can say whatever he wants about Rock’s family. And clearly, Rock just wants to make six-year-olds cry, so he encourages Rock to step in the ring so Miz can make him cry. And besides, Rock only talks about beating up Cena, whereas Miz has done it three weeks in a row! So no, Rock doesn’t own John Cena; Miz himself does.

This brings up another “You suck! You suck!” chant, which Miz starts conducting along with. Miz gets back to it, that Rock keeps talking from his remote location, but never does. Miz is praying that Rock does bring it, hopefully as soon as tonight… because it will show that Rock will be overshadowed by the most must-see WWE Champion ever, because HE’S THE MIZ… AND HE’S… AWESOME!

Miz, good lord man… You made a believer out of me months ago, but you’re just making me like you more and more every week.

And then General Manager Windows Vista pings the arena. Cole leaves the Cole Mine, which is retarded, since he should have seen this coming and set up the computer in his Lexan shield. Cole walks over to the GM computer, but Jerry cuts him off and handles the honors as Cole pouts. Seems the GM is making two first-time-ever matches: Cena vs. Alberto Del Rio. Miz dismisses that and doesn’t care, and wants to know who he’s going to face since he’s already beaten everyone. Lawler says no, Miz apparently has never faced… this guy…!

Khali.

Well. That was overwhelming.

Segment 3 [Singles Match]: Khali (w/Translator) squashes The Miz by disqualification. So, after some offense, Khali slapped on the Greco-Roman Head Squish of Doom. That’s when Alex Riley appeared from the crowd and hit Khali a couple times to no effect, but he still drew the DQ.

Khali quickly dispatched Alex, but the distraction allowed Miz the time to grab a chair and beat the holy hell out of Khali’s back. He hit him so many times that the chair leg actually broke off, but Miz wasn’t done. He hit a DDT on Khali, planting Khali’s face into the broken chair. Khali ended up with a pencil-diameter’s bloody leak in his back, which the cameraman zoomed in on in case we didn’t get the point.

Segment 4: John Morrison is on the back, and is sadly talking to Snooki. She invites him to Jersey Shore, but Vickie Guerrero and Dolph Ziggler appear before he can answer. Snooki calls her fat, so Vickie tries to slap her; Snooki blocks and slaps back, connecting, then runs off with JoMo beside her. Vickie screams and cries into Dolph’s shoulder, and the left hemisphere of my brain continues to rot.

Pre-Segment 5: Time for the US Title Match. Justin Roberts says, “As Sheamus stated last week, if he doesn’t win the US Title, he will quit from WWE.” As always, my WWE radar detection goes off here: Roberts didn’t say “win the match,” he said “win the US Title.” So Sheamus can still win by DQ or countout and have to be fired. Hm…

Segment 5 [Singles Match for the US Title]: Sheamus defeats Daniel Bryan by pin, and is the NEW US Champion! Seems my fears were unfounded. Good match, nothing exceptionally noteworthy other than the ending sequence. Good match all around though, with DB doing a nice suicide dive, and several good teases with Sheamus losing.

The ending sequence was a little long for standard matches, but that’s a compliment rather than a complaint. It started with Sheamus being flung out of the ring and, like last week, selling the ankle. But Sheamus got himself back in the ring, and went for a Blarney Boot. DB ducked it and managed to slap on the Labelle Lock, but Sheamus grabbed the ropes after about fifteen intense seconds in the hold.

From there, DB did his “kick the shit out of the chest” spot, finishing with a stiff roundhouse to Sheamus’s face, but Sheamus managed to avoid the pin. He shortly had DB ready for the Celtic Powerbomb or whatever it’s called, but DB got out of that too. From there, DB climbed the ropes and wanted to do a top rope double axe handle, but Sheamus was able to do the Blarney Boot in midair to put DB down for good.

My only complaint with the match is that Sheamus never sold the ankle after getting back in the ring. Unless we want to assume that Sheamus was faking it to put DB off-balance, then it was a ticky-tack misstep that could have made things even more suspenseful… like if Sheamus had sold the ankle after delivering the final Blarney Boot, then taken an overly long time to make the pin, making it more dramatic (and ultimately more devastating) for DB to be overcome and unable to kick out. But I’m not an IWC wanker, and that’s merely an observation, not a critique. Damn fine match all around, regardless.

Also, Gail Kim walked out with DB, but she wasn’t around at the end. I literally have no idea where she went, if she even accompanied him all the way out to the ring. That should tell you how good the match was: I had completely forgotten to ogle my #2!

Post-Segment 5: Cole announces over the arena system that he’s going to “commit the verbal equivalent of regicide,” and he’s going to bring out a guest to bitch out Lawler and prove that Lawler is so totally a jerk. Unless it’s Stacy “The Kat” Carter, I don’t care.

Ah, the memories of her… her flash on that one WWE pay-per-view was practically my first witness of boobs as a kid. How sad is that, that that’s what my memories are tied to?

Segment 6: Back from commercial, Cole is sad because they just showed the replay of Steve Austin’s shenanigans from last week. But Cole says that Austin will have a “minimal effect” at WrestleMania, and switches subjects.

See, Cole knows that Lawler gets defensive when people talk about his family… but he’s not going to talk about his family, because now his family is going to talk about him. So the guest star…? Grand Master Sexay himself, Brian Christopher!

We even get the old-school kickass music as Christopher hits the ring, and… good god, time has not been kind to the man. He’s still got his intentionally retarded dance moves, but it just looks weird coming from a guy with short bleached spikes, a bright blue silk shirt, and jeans. And he’s got a good twenty or thirty pounds more weight than he used to have in the past. I used to think Christopher’s entrance was always fun and intentionally cheesy, but now… now it’s just sad.

Cole starts off saying that while Christopher has gone with many names in his past, “Brian Lawler” was never one of them, and why was that? Christopher, who is completely out of breath at this point which just adds to the sadness, says that he never used Jerry’s last name because growing up, he “never felt like he had a father.” See, while Jerry was being “The King” all around the world, he neglected Christopher at home. Jerry never really wanted a child, and…

…Well, and Christopher gets out of the ring and stands right before the desk, an act that forces Christopher to take three deep, gasping breaths into the mic. Christopher goes on that Jerry never wanted anyone or anything to get in his spotlight. That’s why, when Christopher got to WWE, Jerry never even acknowledged he was his son.

Jerry responds that Christopher isn’t the only one he never used the Lawler name, because he’s “a bigger screw-up than Charlie Sheen.” Jerry says that the mere fact Christopher is attached to Cole proves what kind of asshole he is.

Christopher counters that he managed to compete at WrestleMania before Jerry, that with Scottie 2 Hottie he was one of the biggest WWE stars ever! So how does that make you feel? And Christopher punctuates it by giving Jerry a little shove in the shoulder. Jerry ignores him, so Christopher shoves him in the face. Several times.

Lawler continues to give the stare of death to Christopher, who concludes that he never used the name “Lawler” because he is ashamed of Jerry. This sends Cole into gales of laughter as Christopher heads to the back.

Cole says that, just like he thought, Lawler doesn’t care about his family and vice versa, so everyone will be happy to see Lawler put in his place at WrestleMania. Then we get a bunch of drum beats for music, which I don’t immediately recognize, so who’s coming out to— HOLY CRAP, IT’S JIM ROSS!!!

JR gets in the ring to some massive cheers as Cole tries to save some face from this surprise. JR tries to be reasonable, asking if this hasn’t gone far enough. Cole responds that JR needs to just go away, that JR is done, and that he is the voice of WWE.

JR has a specific response to that point, actually. JR says that for years, he was proud and happy to be the play-by-play commentator for RAW and was even more proud to be in the WWE Hall of Fame, but that he was never the voice of WWE. No, the voice of the WWE is collectively the fans, who cheer as Cole dances around like he needs to poo and is having trouble holding it in.

JR says that Jerry has protected Cole, and has even carried him. JR gives a nonsensical, but very JR-worthy, analogy that Cole is like a baby kangaroo, and Jerry carried him in his pouch like an overprotective kangaroo mother. But Cole is not huggable, like a baby kangaroo, and is instead more like a rat bastard.

Cole doesn’t care: he’s the bigger man here, and JR has started to leave anyway, and it’s Cole’s ring. So JR changes his mind about leaving, and instead takes off his hat… and suit jacket… and tie. Cole does the same as the crowd fires up a huge “JR! JR!” chant.

But as they get ready to fight, Jack Swagger comes out of the crowd and assaults Jerry, slamming his face into the table. Jack then locks eyes to JR, who now starts to beg off. Cole orders Jack to make JR show respect, so Jack boots JR in the gut and slaps on the ankle lock as Cole bitches JR out.

But Jerry is then back up and makes the save for a few seconds, though he is quickly put down by Jack as well. Jack gives him the ankle lock as well, then releases it and points to JR. Cole looks around, shrugs, and slaps the ankle lock on JR. Jack is pleased with the results, as apparently JR passed out from the pain of it all. Jack and Cole are left standing over the corpses of Lawler and JR, and the boos rain down like a spring Seattle storm.

Segment 7 [Singles Match]: Randy Orton defeats Mason Ryan (w/ CM Punk) by pin. Below average match, only because it was typical Orton crap. Mason Ryan was competent enough but didn’t do anything amazing. He held control for most of the match until Orton hit an RKO out of nowhere.

With this win, Orton swept the New Nexus roster, meaning none of them get to help Punk out for the Punk/Orton match at WrestleMania.

Post-Segment 7: Orton leaves the ring and stares up at Punk, who is on the stage. After a pregnant pause, Orton gets back in the ring and hits the Punt Kick of Doom to Mason. Punk slides in the ring, too late, and Orton then starts humping and punching the ring in front of him. Punk thinks better about it and slides out of the ring, backing away and giving Orton his moment. Mason does the whole stretcher job, and we’re done with this segment.

Cut Scene: The next inductee into the WWE Hall of Fame is now announced… Drew Carey. Ugh. I like Drew, I thought his entry into the Royal Rumble a decade ago was pretty sweet, but… this? No. Just… just, no.

Segment 8: From his Lexan shield, Cole cuts a promo that he’s so totally going to use the Cole Ankle Lock against Jerry at WrestleMania. Oh, and he insults JR by using a few JR-isms about it, so whatever.

Pre-Segment 9: Snooki gets announced, and a bit of my faith in humanity is restored because most the crowd doesn’t give a shit. About the only thing that fascinates me about Snooki is how amazingly short she is: the top of her head barely comes to the top rope.

When Snooki says hi to the crowd, she gets about 50/50 boos… which quickly turns to almost unanimous boos when she starts talking. She basically says she’s happy to be here, but will be happier to see Trish beat the shit out of Vickie, and then says “Ok, that’s it!” Well, at least it was short.

Vickie then hits the ring as Justin announces the match will be no-DQ. All sorts of stupidity will come to pass, I’m sure.

Vickie cuts a promo to put herself over, then she bitches out Snooki, who is sitting at ringside and mockingly blowing her kisses. I’m not going to recap this shit in detail.

Segment 9 [Singles No-Disqualifications Match]: Vickie Guerrero defeats Trish Stratus by shenanigans. So, for a comedy match, I guess it wasn’t bad. Once Trish decided to stop screwing around and actually fight, Dolph Ziggler appeared to get between them. John Morrison arrived to put an end to that, but then Laycool appeared. While Layla held Trish’s ankle to force her to stand, Michelle hit her with the roundhouse kick. Vickie made the pin with Layla sitting on her back, and Trish couldn’t kick out.

Post-Segment 9: Michelle and Vickie posed with Trish’s corpse while Layla took a picture with her iPhone. Trish then rolled out of the ring, and Laycool noticed Snooki at ringside. They mocked her height while Snooki herself looked around like she didn’t quite know where she was.

Finally Michelle got a bit more personal, getting in Snooki’s face and saying something that the mics weren’t picking up, as the crowd hurt my brain by starting up a “Snooki! Snooki!” chant. Snooki got in Michelle’s face—which really means she got eye-to-nipple—and Michelle shoved her.

Michelle went back to the ring, but Snooki hopped up and yanked her off the apron, then slid in the ring and did an admittedly picture-perfect Lou Thesz Press on Layla. Then Trish recovered and did one to Michelle. Then the guys got involved again, but only long enough for all the heels to bail.

Snooki, JoMo, and Trish celebrated their moral victory in the ring as Vickie found a mic. She made some generic threats to Snooki, and… oh god… she laid down a challenge: John Morrison, Trish Stratus, and Snooki vs. Laycool and Dolph at WrestleMania. Snooki accepts, the crowd cheers, and I start to honestly wonder if I should just skip it this year. Sure, Rock and Austin will be there, but… Fucking Snooki. Ugh. Cole then adds that it’s become “SnookiMania,” proving that any time I think WWE can’t psychologically damage me anymore than they already have, they find a way to make it worse.

Segment 10 [Singles Match]: John Cena defeats Alberto Del Rio (w/ Brodus Clay) by disqualification. Standard Cena match, with Cena getting his ass kicked, then doing his comeback and setting ADR up for the FU… which is when Brodus came in and punched him in the face.

Post-Segment 10: The heels continued beating Cena, then The Rock’s music fired up. Crowd goes nuts, a particular hottie they zoomed in on was all “OH MY GOD!!!” and snapping pictures… but surprise, it’s Miz wearing a bald cap.

Miz gets in the ring and helps the heels, even doing a Rock Bottom to Cena. After a couple other moves, ADR and Brodus leave, and the fight spills outside. Miz slams Cena spine-first into the steel post, then smacks him with a mic. He tells Cena that he’s owned him for the last three weeks, and now will own him for the next three, all to WrestleMania. Another smack with the mic, and Miz takes off the “I Bring It!” shirt. He pulls Cena up, then does a suplex to smash Cena’s back into the steel of the ramp.

Miz isn’t done, but Cena starts to fight back. Cena even wants to do an FU, but Miz wiggles out and hits Cena with a DDT on the steel of the stage. Miz has now lost his sense of humor since he’s been punched, so he picks Cena up by the face, and throws him head-first into the WWE logo at the top of the stage. Cena takes tremendous effort to get himself up, and Miz immediately grabs him and does a Skull Crushing Finale on the same little logo stand.

Miz stalks Cena and looks at him with bedroom eyes as Miz’s music plays them out.

Final Thoughts: Well, the show started strong, and ended strong, but there was a bunch of crap in the middle. The less said about Snooki the better, especially given that this means JoMo is relegated to a throwaway match instead of something that might make use of his talents. Orton/Punk takes a predictable turn, and Cole/Lawler advances okay. Sheamus winning the US Title is the only possible way that story could go, but I’m pleased with it. Anything to give Sheamus a bit of a push after the mess they’ve put him in the past few months.

But Miz, my goodness… Miz is stealing the show every week at this point. There was enough other stupidity—Snooki, Drew Carey, yet another video package of Shawn Michaels talking about Taker/Trips—that Miz alone wasn’t able to rescue this episode, but at least the episode didn’t feel quite as bad as it’s been in the past few weeks.

I don’t think I’ve got anything left, so I’m going to call it a night. I’m going to take a sleeping pill tonight, hopefully to get myself back on some semblance of a schedule this week. I’ll see you all tomorrow for the NXT recap, as usual. Have a good night, guys!

Grade: C