You’re going to have some serious competition for that position, Paige.
Pre-show Notes:
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Hit the next page for your Main Event of the evening (er, afternoon)…
A Note Before We Begin: The central irony of this show is that they call it Main Event despite the fact that the show is obviously the modern incarnation of Jakked. So, just to add a little extra interest to these reports, I thought I’d keep track of how close all the matches on the show, combined, come to equalling one legit main event. You’ll see how it works as we progress.
Best: Bizarro Land South
Apparently Bizarro Land has expanded sunnier climes. This week’s Main Event kicked off with Alberto Del Rio proudly waving the Mexican flag and cutting a fiery (and relatively lengthy) Spanish promo to the cheers and adulation of the Laredo, Texas audience. Then Zeb and Swagger came out, once again full-on Mexican hating xenophobes, and were booed out of the place. It made sense given where they were, but WWE almost never just goes with shit like this — nine times out of ten Alberto would have just ignored the cheers and blithely went about his business, or worse, tried to turn the crowd against him with YOU PEOPLEs and local sports references. I also totally expected Zeb to show some stock image of a Mexican construction worker or something and be totally okay with Alberto now.
Points for character consistency! Of course if this same confrontation had happened on Raw, it probably wouldn’t have gone down like this, so once again, hooray for Main Event being irrelevant. I’d rather watch guys with real personalities doing things that don’t matter than automatons robotically carrying out their important tasks.
Best: He’s From Florida! He’s A Gata!
Thanks for the explanation Heath — I was unclear on the Slater Gator origin story.
So yeah, holy shit, the Dust Bros. fighting somebody other than Rybaxel! Who thought we’d ever see the day? Shockingly the match was actually more competitive than Monday’s match against Rybaxel — Slater Gator is totally making the Rhodes boys earn this win! Because they’re totally going to win, right? Right?
Worst: Guess The Cosmic Key Doesn’t Open The Pay Winda
I suppose you can’t spend a month locked in a dark closet without developing some ring rust. Hell, I’m surprised they didn’t emerge as gold painted blind cave salamanders.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for any fleeting Heath Slater success, but Jesus. Between the Rhodes losing streak, Cody’s initial transition to Stardust and the endless backstage promos, this is four months of storylines flushed for the sake of a Heath Slater push you know they’re going to forget about in two weeks. Here’s an idea — instead of having Slater Gator beat the Rhodeses, just have Rybaxel lose again. Then you have two teams that look good instead of one. Simple f*cking math.
Main Event Status: Speaking of math — well, Heath Slater used to be the lowest guy on the card, but apparently the Dust Bros. now are. Or maybe they’re both on the rise and will propel each other to the top by trading losses! Anyways, I’ll give this a 5%.
Best: Vag Tap
To the commentators — a whiplash injury is just called whiplash, okay? Thanks.
I was kind of excited for AJ vs. Summer Rae, but apparently WWE is afraid to let an AJ match go over two minutes, so it was over quick. The match was notable for Summer’s, uh, unique tap-out style though.
If Summer had just put a little more heart into that tap, it might have turned into the best reversal ever.
After the match Paige skipped out, and I have to ask — what benefit is Paige supposed to be deriving from this frenemies thing? I mean, it made sense up until the initial turn, but why continue it? For this to work, Paige would have to be subtly undermining AJ, but this is the most violent, least subtle divas storyline WWE has done in years. Sometimes less is more, guys.
Main Event Status: Hmmm, well, the match involved one half of SummerLay, the Divas champ and, based on the audience response, the ghost of CM Punk. On the other hand, it was basically 30-seconds of wrestling followed by an attempted fingerbang, which, I dunno — does that help or hurt? Eh, I’ll give a .2 on the Main Event scale.
Best: Bizarro Land South Part II
The weirdness continues. Despite playing face in the opening segment, Alberto was still the arm-working heel in this match — except he was also playing to the crowd a bit and getting cheered? I dunno.
Oddness aside, the match was pretty good. Alberto’s been on a bit of an upswing the last couple weeks, and it’s strange and refreshing to see Jack Swagger take damage and not immediately curl into a ball and roll onto his back in defeat. The last couple minutes of the match, with Swagger pulling off one ballin’ out of nowhere ankle-lock after another was good stuff, and then, lo and behold, he actually won the match with one of those ankle locks. Like it was an actual effective finisher or something!
Main Event Status: I suppose this was a battle of two former world champs…technically…sort of. I’ll be generous and give it a 40%.
Final Main Event Tally: Okay, so, 5% + 20% + 40% means this episode was 2/3 of the way towards adding up to a legit main event. WWE really needs to start doing four matches per episode again if they want a shot at this thing.
