Best: Evan Bourne Talking

Evan Bourne delivering the “Sgt. Slaughter is here because the Fourth of July” exposition with the panache of season 2 Jan Brady was hilarious to me for some reason. I don’t know what cracks me up so hard about listening to this guy talk. He’s just so little, it’s like Sgt. Slaugther was being greeted by a Squirtle. Seriously, Bourne could’ve just say “Hey Sarge, squirtle squirtle” and put on some sunglasses and it would’ve been the same.

Sarge’s “everybody makes mistakes” comments were also funny, because he used Evan as an example. “I make mistakes, Evan makes mistakes” and Bourne is just standing there nodding his head like “yeah man, I wrestled Delirious in Cleveland one time, we just did finishers to each other for like 40 minutes, it was the f**king worst”.

Worst: Sgt. Slaughter Forgot All His Other Moves

Fun fact (okay, not really fun, but a fact): At 1:36, the backstage segment featuring Slaughter, Evan Bourne and Jack Swagger discussing pledging and mistakes lasted 18 seconds longer than the Slaughter vs. Swagger match.

If you’ve seen any Sgt. Slaughter Legends match, you’ve seen this one. He just sorta walks up and puts the cobra clutch on somebody, they reverse it and he immediately loses. I’ve got to go back and make sure every Slaughter match ever isn’t like this. I’m gonna pop in the Boot Camp Match against Colonel DeBeers and it’s gonna be forty seconds long. I’ll watch an episode of G.I. Joe and Slaughter will waddle up and put the cobra clutch on Cobra Commander before he’s even done explaining things to the Dreadnaughts.

Worst: McGillicutty, Your Tag Team Match, Woof

I want to be more positive about this show, I really do, but there is a string of Worsts coming up that I can control, and I think it has something to do with the New Nexus vs. Santino and Vladimir Kozlov tag team match.

It’s not that McGillicutty (god I hate typing that name all the way out) and Otunga are bad, because yeah, they aren’t great, but if you go to your local church or armory and compare/contrast them with teams like The Texas Hitmen they aren’t that bad. It’s hard to articulate. The match was just … it felt like a waste of time, because no possible part of it could matter. Santino and Kozlov aren’t going anywhere. If they won the tag team titles, they’d do the same trombone celebration and get put in a tag team match eight weeks later with Otunga and McGillicutty, or at best, the Usos. Otunga and McGillicutty aren’t going anywhere, they have the Batman’s Penny title belts because the only other tag team is Santino and Kozlov. Win or lose, they’re just going through the same motions next month.

That’s the worst feeling you can get from wrestling, the feeling that nothing you’re watching matters. Even Wrestling Society X shouted at you until you though the exploding piranha match was gonna be the end of the goddamn world. Tag team wrestling is the easiest thing in the world to make compelling, I just get to feeling like nobody wants it that way.

Worst: #ryderor … Whatever That Was

I’d like Zack Ryder to be a part of the show as much as the next guy, but having him walk out onto the stage, say his catchphrase and smile at the ring until they fade out was not really “part of the show”. He was basically his own Zack Ryder sign. They could’ve cut backstage to a framed picture of him on the wall and it would’ve accomplished the same thing.

Ryder is cool and all, but if you let this momentum pool up and get stagnant before you do anything, we’re going to stand somewhere else, and all you’re gonna have is some dirty ass water.