the guy who IS in charge to come down and declare him the champion.

Kenzo Suzuki’s music hits, and he comes to the ring with his geisha. Booker says he meant he wanted the guy in charge of Smackdown!, not the guy in charge of the sushi bar of the Tokyo Inn. Suzuki speaks Japanese, which is translated into that he loves the US and should be the champion. Booker retorts, and Suzuki replies by saying that Booker’s breath smells like a herd of dead wildebeests. Booker is all “Tell me you did not just say that,” and then we get another entrance theme for our ears: Rob Van Dam.

Although RVD gets to the ring, he doesn’t get a word in, and Luther Reign’s music hits. He too comes to the ring, but he gets interrupted by René Duprée. But then he gets interrupted, this time by the Doctor. Yes, John Cena’s music practically gets drowned out by the pop of the fans, which is all good.

Cena’s all about the yo-yo’s, gives love to Cincy, then says the REAL champ is in the house. He keeps his rap to under 30 seconds, and just basically says “I’ll beat you all down” with narry a sexual or bodily function joke, then runs in. Now, at some point, Billy Gunn and Charlie Haas get involved, and I’m not sure if I just missed their entrances with the others prior to Cena’s, or they came after Cena.

But their timing doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we’ve got eight guys beating the hell out of each other, and then we hear “No Chance…” Vinny Mac hits the ring, manages to restore order, and says that we don’t need any shenanigans happening. He announces that the man to sort this out will be SmackDown!’s new general manager… Theodore R. Long!

Mixed reactions from the crowd, but mostly cheers. Long gets in the ring and thanks Vince, who casually leaves. Long says he’s going to be making his first ruling tonight as far as the US belt is concerned. Booker starts thanking him for it, and Long is all “I don’t think so, playa.” Long says he sees eight guys who want the belt, so we’re going to have a first-ever eight man elimination match to determine the US Champion!

(Note: I’m not sure if I was losing my mind, but the way it came across, I thought we were having a King of the Ring-like tournament, which I knew couldn’t be true considering they couldn’t cram seven matches into a two-hour show unless they entirely ignored every other storyline. I don’t know, maybe Long actually said what he meant and I just wasn’t paying attention.)

8:53 – A video is played showing what happened last week, with Spike winning first contender rights for the Cruiserweight title in a triple threat match. Now is the championship match. First out is Rey Mysterio Jr., to a big pop. Next out is the challenger, to about the same level of pop, although during the match the crowd was clearly on Rey’s side.

The match begins as most cruiserweight matches do, with a lot of quick moves and short submission moves. At 9:00, Rey goes fully on the offense as we enter the end game. At 9:02, Rey’s got Spike set up for the 619, and D-Von comes out from the back. He distracts the ref and Rey to allow Bubba to come in from the crowd. He trips up Rey, which no one sees, and Spike nails the Dudley Dog. Spike pins Rey, one-two-three, and Spike is your NEW Cruiserweight champion!

After the match, Spike sees his bros heading back to the back, applauding and congratulating him. Spike puts two and two together and starts looking quite displeased. He helps up Rey from the mat, the two talk probably about how fair the match was, and we’re out to what will probably be commercials.

9:13 – We get a recap of last week, when the Taker put JBL in his place, the New York bastard.

9:15 – Long is walking along in the back, and is getting nothin’ but cheers now. He sees the four divas, says that he’s happy they’re back and reinstated, and as long as he’s around, nothing will happen to them. Long goes to the GM’s office, which is empty except for a desk and chair. Kurt Angle is there, and says he was just there to get his stuff, but Luther Reigns apparently got it all. He says Long will do a good job as the first black GM in SmackDown! history. Long plays up a little comedy (“Woah! You mean all this time… I’m black?!”), then says Vinny didn’t make him GM because of his color, but because he’s the best one for the job. And tonight, since Angle is part of the active roster now, he’s going to have a match, and it’ll next! Kurt chickens out, says he’s afraid of the Cincy crowd and doesn’t want to hear the “You Suck” chant or get booed out of the building. Long persists, but then Angle says he doesn’t have his gear. Long says that’s fine, fines Angle a grand for not being prepared for work, and says he WILL have a match next week, no excuses. Angle leaves the office, slamming the door behind him.

(Please forgive my smarkiness, but this is bothering me. If the WWE is in a different location in each show, why would Angle have bothered unpacking his stuff this week when he knew he wasn’t going to be in the GM role? It’s not like his stuff is still there from the last time SmackDown! was in Cincinnati, whenever that was.)

9:21 – Paul Heyman puts over Heidenrich a couple dozen times.

9:22 – We’ve got a tag team title match up next. Billy Kidman and Paul London enter together, and are followed by the Dudley Boyz. The Dudleys are on offense for most of the match, which was probably good, but I don’t know. See, I’m not sure if the rest of the arena was as distracted, but there were a few people getting ejected from the building at this time, as well as about three or so signs getting taken away. We also noticed a WWE official sitting nearby, with an earpiece and everything, so we knew someone was going to come out of the crowd. Everyone agreed that it would be Spike.

Anyway, ten minutes into the match, London was in and getting pounded, but he did a hot tag to Kidman. The WWE official sitting near us leaves through the tunnel nearby. Back and forthy, and the Duds setup for the Whazzup or however in the hell it’s spelled. Rey comes out of the tunnel and sneaks closer to the ring. London pushes D-Von, so he lands nuts-first into the turnbuckle. Somehow (and my memory is failing here) people end up outside, and London is against the barrier ready to be nailed by a chair carried by Bubba. Rey jumps in, does a kick, and nails Bubba with said chair. Inside the ring, Kidman finishes off D-Von, and a clean pinfall later, we have retaining champs at 8:35.

(I really wish I had more details of this match, so it’s practically going to be a new match for me when I watch it on TV, but… as I said, between signs taken away, fans getting thrown out, and on-the-fly rumors about who’s coming out of the near tunnel, I couldn’t pay attention to the match itself.)

8:36 – Ivory and Mick Foley are doing the voting thing and asking us to do it too. Viva peer pressure!

8:37 – Eddie Guerrero is found backstage checking out his low rider. He jumps in, starts the engine, then hits the accelerator.

8:40 – From the end of the cutscene to now, we’ve got nothing. We’ve still really got nothing but an advertisement for Summer Slam, but I wanted to note something really quick. In this commercial, the men’s freestyle floor exercise is the event, and a guy does his thing. The announcer says that Sven somebody is up, and that dude is shoulder-checked by Batista, who does a break dance routine. Anyway, the guy who plays the Sven guy is Harley Kalou or whoever from the Velocity dark match. So if you wanted to see the face and hair of the guy Hardcore Holly smacked around, there you go.

8:42 – Viva La Rasa!, and here comes Eddie. He parks his blue low rider by the ring, then jumps between the ropes and grabs a stick. Eddie insults Kurt Angle a bit, then says why wait for Summer Slam, let’s have a match HERE AND NOW. The crowd’s all hell yeah, but Angle’s a no show. Eddie’s cool with that, says he knew Angle wouldn’t show, and says he brought a little incentive. Some stagehands unload the car, including a cardboard box.

Eddie says he was just walking by Angle’s former office and saw boxes of his stuff, so Eddie jacked it without hesitation. And if Angle wouldn’t come down to reclaim it, he would start auctioning it off online… for charity, of course, because Angle too has a good heart, just like Eddie.

First out of the grab bag is a fake cast. “Pretend you’re hurt and make your friends’ lives a living hell!” advertises Eddie, who then, for some ungodly reason, sniffs the cast. He says he’ll give away a free can of Lysol for the thing too.

What’s next… How about a plaque? Yep, a title belt, with a picture of Angle and Heyman, perfect for the living room. Well, not the living room, Eddie says. The bathroom would be a better place, since he feels like vomiting when he looks at it!

Now, who wouldn’t love to own Angle’s red, white, and blue wheelchair? Eddie sits in it, says how great it would have to have around. And hey, for the buyer, he’s got a special offer. He’ll call up his brother and they’d put hydraulics on it! Huge pop… and tell me, wouldn’t you LOVE to have a pimped-out wheelchair? I certainly would!

Anyway, next in the fun box is a large picture of Kurt Angle himself. It’s worthless, Eddie says, but decides he’ll make it better. He grabs a Sharpie from someone at ringside, then proceeds to draw on it. Mark my words, the TV show will have cut a couple seconds from that part, because Eddie took a little too long and slightly killed the crowd. Anyway, he gave Kurt a mustache, a slab of hair, and a word balloon with “I suck.” Who wouldn’t like their very own “I suck” Kurt Angle picture? Who?

One more thing in the box of stuff, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s Angle’s gold medals. Eddie knows he’d fetch a good price for them, but he doesn’t want to bother auctioning them online. He’ll just auction it off right here, in Cincinnati! How much for the medals? 25 cents? 50 cents? A dollar? All right, a dollar! Going once, going twice…

Angle appears. He and Eddie exchange unexciting words, until Angle decides to get even. Eddie steals Angle’s stuff, so Angle is going to go all Grand Theft Auto and take Eddie’s low rider. Eddie warns Angle of an anti-theft device, but Kurt doesn’t listen and tries to start the car. He gets a face full of baby powder, or powdered sugar, or cocaine, something. Angle stumbles out of the car and blindly heads to the back. Eddie decides it’s almost the most embarrassing day of Kurt’s life, but he’ll make it THE most embarrassing day, and asks the monkeys in the truck to his Angle’s music. The crowd is ready, and Angle hangs around long enough to get eight “You Suck’s” out of the fans.

Great segment. The momentum was killed a bit when Eddie did the Picasso thing, but Angle got it going again.

9:53 – The WWE is making a video of Hall of Famers, and they want us to buy it.

10:00 – A match for what I assume to be next week is made: Rey Rey and Spike against the Duds. Woo-freakin’-hoo, that one should be good!

10:01 – Just when you thought SmackDown! would be JBL-free, we get an overlong video putting him over as a heel. It did the job, but it was boring. Cut it in half, and it would have been more effective.

10:05 – Who doesn’t want to see an eight-man match? The entrances are, in order: RVD, Dr. Thuganomics Phd., Charlie Haas, Billy Gunn, René “I can’t dance straight” Duprée, Kenzo Suzuki, Luther Reigns, and Booker T.

At 10:10, the match gets underway, with RVD and Haas, and everyone else on the apron ready for tags. Haas is on major offense. René tags himself in the place of RVD, but is also beaten down. René gets the advantage after awhile, but is tagged out by Billy Gunn. Gunn applies the Fame-Ass-Er or whatever it’s called now on Haas and pins him for three.

René never quite got out of the ring after Gunn tagged him, so Gunn goes after him. Luther Reigns tags himself in through Billy after a little while, and then finishes off René for a clean pin. The crowd starts chanting “Cena, Cena,” who obliges and gets in the ring at around 10:17.

Cena gets beaten down, and Kenzo Suzuki tags Luther Reigns out. Suzuki goes on the offense, and the action spills outside. My memory fails again, and I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I believe Reigns tried something and got floored for it. John Cena finds Suzuki’s geisha and plants a kiss on her, and walks away white makeup on his lips. Suzuki steals the US belt and nails Cena on the back of the head, getting DQed for his efforts.

That all happened within one minute. At 10:18, Booker comes in and ends up tagging out to Billy. Gunn comes in and takes the worst-looking DDT I can remember in recent years by Cena (and I don’t pretend to be expert enough to know who messed it up, but to me it looked like the fault lies on Gunn because he never attempted leave his standing position when he got planted). Cena gets to his feet, lands the Five Knuckle Shuffle, and pins Billy, who oddly kicks out. Gunn gets in some offense until Cena goes all F-U on him, and finally gets the three.

Luther comes in at 10:22. He gets only the smallest offense in when Cena flips him an F-U too, and Luther gets pinned for the three.

In comes Booker at 10:24. He manages a Book End on Cena, but can’t finish him. RVD comes in, and let me tell you, the action between RVD and Cena is worth a crappy overlong vid of JBL any day. It climaxes with Cena limp on the far end of the ring, when RVD goes upstairs and nails the Five-Star Frogsplash. As always, it hurts RVD as much as Cena, and Booker takes advantage by coming in and pinning Cena for the three. RVD gets to his feet but is the victim of Booker’s scissors kick, and gets pinned as well. Your winner and new US champion is Booker T!

After the match, Booker celebrates along the entrance ramp/concrete while Cena looks on angry. I assume the show will end there. After that, once Booker goes completely backstage, Cena and RVD make up, shake hands, and leave the ring together.

Final Thoughts:

I’m totally biased here for two reasons. First, I haven’t watched SmackDown! for the past month or two since I switched to satellite and stopped getting UPN. And second, this is the very first live WWE event I’ve been to in my life.

Did I feel the show lived up to what I wanted it to be? Not by a long shot. The Undertaker is my favorite active wrestler, and he was a no-show, which disappointed me along with the group of guys I was sitting with. And Cena, my second-favorite active wrestler on SmackDown!, didn’t win, which is a disappointment too, but at least he didn’t lose because of any extracurricular activities.

Was the show good? Hell yes. As the cliché goes, no matter how much you love wrestling, ain’t nothing better than seeing it live. My girlfriend went with me, and we spent way too much money there, including getting her an overpriced John Cena teddy bear, but what the hell, right? Out of all places I’d like to spend a date, a WWE event has to be among the top five, and trust me, this was not a crappy show by any stretch. And the main event, aside from that god-awful DDT that Billy took, was great. Four matches total (nine including the dark match and Velocity), but everything was high quality. Money and time well spent.

Thumbs up, WWE. This almost convinces me to upgrade my satellite package and get UPN.