Sunday Afternoon Smackdown 1/27/11 (Special Monday Entry!)
This is the Special 1st Edition Edition with Holofoil FairToFlair Trading Card featuring Mitch and KSP riding a Pikachu themed roller coaster together.
This feature will normally appear on Sundays.
Sunday Night Smackdown smacks you down in our trademark WOO! Vs BOO! format. Everything âWOO!â was froot and reeked of awesomeness, while everything âBOO!â was teamed up with Santino to do racial humor on Martin Luther King Day.
NAME DROPPING WHEN IT IS HISTORICALLY RELEVENT
A lot of great things were happening.  Daniel Bryan has been having great appreciation for his girlfriend and Big Show was outed as a sinning freak.  Great things were really happening when Daniel Bryan was smacking The Bully Show in the face with a arguments and philosophy textbook. He was saying everything short of âyou should just kill yourself you big ugly jerk, nobody will go to prom with youâ because I guess he has to Be A Star or whatever.Â
In the mist of crocodile tears and offhanded references to âgenetic freaksâ, which could mean The Hulk but I prefer to think of Scott Steiner, Bryan name dropped Andre The Giant. Now thatâs certainly something that Big Show invites as a comparison, because how many other giants are there on the planet Earth?  There have to be more than there are Funkasauruses. Bryan told Big Show to his face that he will never be Andre. Which is a fair thing to say.
Big Show and Andre the Giant are different people, and canât be the same person until science catches up with our language.
Andre only needed to be in one really good movie to be remembered fondly by the whole world, where as only a few people on tumblr and whatever fans 10 years from now who were young now and like to blog about nostalgia on whatever site theyâll have then about the really tall guy that went poo poo on da bus.Â
Andre transcended championships.
Itâs that last one that is the most important for Danielâs character arch. When Andre won the WWE championship, he pawned it off to The Million Dollar Man in like 6 seconds like it was Ric Flairâs Hall of Fame watch. He didnât need it. It wouldnât fit, it was a trinket and he just liked beating up people and grinding their bones to make his bread.Â
Daniel Bryan clearly doesnât subscribe to this idea. Neither does Henry. Neither does Show. They all need that big gold hunk of implied intrinsic value in order to validate all of the torment theyâve put themselves through. Yes, I am equating Daniel Bryan losing most of the vision in his eye to Mark Henry having to cover Mae Youngâs fake deflated-blimp boobs. They all did what they had to do and no struggle is any more valid than the other. The Big Show of course double teamed Hogan with a mummy while Jimmy Heart acted as the voyeur. They arenât like Andre, they need this belt.
Itâs a cleaver way to get us to associate Bryan with guys like Show and Henry. Clearly the belt isnât enough because it still has lingering Swagger stink on it, but now he seems like them in motive. Daniel Bryan isnât like Andre because he wasnât given the same gifts. Big Show has some of those gifts, but squanders them to high five The WWE Universe and kill 95 pound girls.Â
Honorable Mention: Mark Henry going full Scorpion and barking at Daniel Bryan to âGET OVER HEREâ. How in the hell is Mark Henry the strongest actor on the roster right now?  He's so fleshed out, especially last week when he was getting upset over silly things in wrestling despite being a silly thing in wrestling.
GOOD MATCHES ON TELEVISION FOR YOU
Smackdown has a bad habit of being on Fridays, (itâs like, every week or something with these guys) so I generally have to watch it later. Despite being someone who writes about wrestling, I actually have a pretty full life, (how do ya like thatLawlernerds, huh? ) so I have to watch it later. This affords me the luxury of having the option to fast forward or skip things all together if itâs too much farting and RAW rebounds. Itâs nice not to move up to 1.5 speed because I actually sort of like whatâs happening in the ring.
Specifically, Justin Gabriel and Cody Rhodes having a fun few minutes of jumping and rolling. It was great, somebody would roll, then somebody would jump.   It was like Mario and the barrels in Donkey Kong manifested their properties into people, which is oddly appropriate because the beginning of Justin Gabrielâs theme sounds like a menu screen in Ape Escape. Iâm not really a fan of J-Gabe outside of That One Match He Had With John Cena, but I have been missing a time when Smackdown was a strong wrestling show in lieu of RAW trying to shove all these verbal narratives down our throats, or alternatively up our (candy/monkey) asses if the Rock is there.
They bounced around, Justin made one mistake and it was in line with Justin being over eager and a risk taker to Codyâs calculating serial killer style, eventually leading Cody to say âAww Funk Itâ and leave Justin at the crossroads. Bonus WOO! For the way Cody backs off his opponents almost immediately as if he canât stand to touch them for more than the 3 seconds heâs pinning them for. I canât say I blame him, Justin looks like a goof in those Kid Icarus boots he was wearing.
As much fun as I had with that match, I still would love to see these two in a Vegas Showgirls Match.
THE UNEARTHING OF THE FUNKASAURUS HAS BROUGHT OUT THE REST OF EARTH 2
Brodus Clay sheeplexing WWEâs C-Team has been a great way to remind us that these people are still employed. Sure, we have to deal with seeing Alex Rileyâs goofy living-in-the-past-erman jacket, but we also got to see Yoshi Tatsu come out and cut people in half with his hands. Sure, he was sans Kabuki and risks becoming a permanent half of Racial Team 2k12 ver 1.0, but heâs still better than Koslov. His chops sound like shotgun blasts. He hands are scaled down Kenta Kobashis.  And yeah, Trent Barreta had to deal with Randy Orton working through his backed up of voices, but we still see them, and maybe, just maybe it will lead to Drew McIntyre winning a freaking match. Speaking of which.
Okay, well, weâve been doing this for awhile now. Drew MacIntyre is wrestling every week, Randy Orton doesnât even do that, and at this point it just seems like Terry Long is still mad about Drew running his MLK picture party.
Think about it. Drew takes one for the team, he stays down for the cobra, when did we stop living in the world of âPin Me Pay Me?â What about all those goofs that Randy Orton Randall Keith Ortonâd in the ring. How does he afford those guys? Do they get paid in Fleer trading cards?Â
And then you put him against Sheamus? Why? So I can be reminded how much better these guys deserve? Sheamus has almost completely assimilated Fit Finlayâs moveset and is one Actual Celtic Cross away from pile driving Regal on top of a car.
And how does it make sense for Teddy to care anyway? Does he know that everyone canât be winners all the time? That was the hardest part of GM Mode in SvR, making sure everyone was happy and didnât have broken necks and stuff.   If Drewâs stock lowers, doesnât somebody elseâs rise? KSP and I still want to believe that wrestlers that win matches get a sack of money from Mr. McMahon, complete with hokey dollar sign on the bag.
What is Drew even worried about? Do "Cena Things" not happen on Smackdown?  Can people not just pull an Office Space and show up for work anyway and still get paid?Â
I hope this leads to Drew Being Something and doesnât backfire on him. If he goes psycho killer with an ax Braveheart on everybody, then great, I take it back, but I feel like weâre on a one way path to Christian Cry Baby jobber. WWE doesnât do losing streak stories differently too often.
Also, why laugh at his job being in jeopardy Booker? This guy has rent to pay. Speaking of Booker.
BOOKER TâS COMMENTARY DAWG RIGHT THERE MAN YEAH BABY
Booker T gave me one good moment where he repeated Batistaâs name in a way that made me wonder if he still thought Batista was down.Â
And does Booker not understand basic merit based contendership? He seemed so shocked and appalled that Cody doesnât just hand out title shots. The guy wrestles every week, he canât go full 100% every week, thatâs insanity and itâs how you get injuries in real sports.Â
Is he still trapped mentally in WCW? You either just demanded a title shot from The Powers That Be and got it, but it might have been the 3rd match for that particular title that night, or you have to beat Miss Elizabeth multiple times in a 67 person tournament that will be invalidated by a title vacation the next night anyway.
Also, itâs not a pterodactyl. Pick up a childrenâs book.
HAW HAW WHO FARTED WAS THAT AKSANAâS SAX?
Seriously, why did Nattie have to fart in a way that nobody does? What does that add to her character? Are we going to make fun of her now? Will she see the error of her bully ways and start crying when we call her terrible names? Here are a few for reference.
At least Santino isnât a hypocrite who wont sell smell when he expect others to sell getting touched in the throat by his fingertips +/- sock snake.
JOHN CENA IS GOING TO ROCK YOUR ROCKS OFF
Honorable Mention: Michael Cole said âShiggy Diggy Wiggyâ. God, itâs like when your parents pretend to like PokĂŠmon.
Logan Stallings (better known by his ring name, Garcian Smith) is a psych student at the University of Florida who has dreams of writing, wrestling and writing about wrestling. In his spare time, he performs spoken word and catches PokÊmon.
