WEEKLY THUMBS
By Joel C Croyle on 3/8/2008 10:02 AM
With TNA headed for one of their major PPV’s this weekend and WWE headed for their biggest PPV event of each year in three weeks, I’m sure that they gave us HUGE shows to get us to buy into all of the matches at those events, right? Wrong. I thought that this week was extremely lackluster…especially in the execution of angles…welcome back to weekly thumbs friends…here goes.
Smackdown:
Of all the shows I actually liked Smackdown the best this week but on this week that wasn’t saying much. The highlight (as he is pretty much every week at this point) was Jamie Noble. Both of his backstage cuts with Vickie and with McCool were absolutely, doubling over in pain from laughing so hard, funny. And then he goes out and helps Big Show get his Mania match even more over. I actually enjoyed the bikini contest and like this idea. They need to build the women on this brand and with no title to go after; this is a good way to do it. The main event was okay for what it was but it felt really slow and drawn out, that goes for Batista/MVP as well. My question with the MVP match is, why would Batista, a former world champion, and a man who is in an angle with Umaga be worrying about the US Title. At least we could have gotten Cole saying “Batista isn’t currently in the World Title picture and everyone knows the US Title is a stepping stone to the World Championship…thus Batista would want it. Overall Smackdown was good and better than the last few episodes.
Smackdown: Thumbs Up
Raw:
Raw was looking very tired this week. They put a little more juice on Finlay/JBL and Michaels/Flair but boy did they ever hurt the Boxer/Wrestler dream match at mania. Floyd and Show were really hurting out there. When they recapped this stuff on Smackdown they did a good job though. No memorable matches really on this week’s edition of Raw except Kennedy and Cena, which has been a long time coming, was pretty good. I liked the banter between Y2J and Hardy as well.
Raw: Thumbs in the middle
TNA
I usually enjoy TNA but this week was not one of those weeks. The only thing I really dug on the program this week was Styles vs. Nash. Cage’s promo was okay. I liked the idea of the battle royal and their were a couple cool spots but “curry man” gets the win…that I don’t get. And Black Reign cut the worst promo I have ever seen him cut in his entire career. Another cool spot was Kip and BG James’ new reality vignette.
TNA: Thumbs down
ECW
There isn’t much to talk about where ECW is concerned. It doesn’t seem that they are even a part of the Wrestlemania picture (with the exception of Benjamin who’s in the MITB match). It makes no sense really. The show has nothing to build towards so they just keep making the same matches and also Chavo, Punk and the Tag Champs are great in the ring, why not use them. This episode did nothing for me.
ECW: Thumbs down
Weekly Thumbs Awards:
Thumbs up male performer of the week – Finlay
Thumbs up tag team of the week – Miz and Morrison
Thumbs up match of the week – Kennedy/Cena
Thumbs up Promo/Angle of the week – Jamie Noble
Thumbs up female performer of the week – Michelle McCool
Weekly Thumbs Overall Performance List
#1 – Finlay
#2 –Kennedy
#3 – Ric Flair
#4 – Christian Cage
#5 – Jamie Noble
#7 – AJ Styles
#8 – Michelle McCool
#9 – Miz and Morrison
#10 – Kevin Nash
