ADR_Tighty_Whities

Worst: Tuxedo Matches Are Almost As Bad As Blindfold Matches

When Michael Cole made the “this Tuxedo Match will join the ranks of OTHER great Tuxedo Matches like Tony Chimmel and Howard Finkel” joke at the beginning of this match, I feel like everyone involved should’ve just sorta sighed and went “yeah, okay, sorry” and Vince could stomp out and yell SHUT IT DOWN, SHUT IT ALL DOWN DAMMIT

I want to enjoy comedy matches, but like I said last week, comedy in wrestling only works well when wrestling is the comedy. When the comedy is “look at his underwear”, not so much. I’m pretty sure looking at the funny guy in his underpants isn’t aimed at my demographic, so I can only complain about it so much, but Jesus. Two guys slowly taking off each others’ clothes while fussing at each other in exaggerated accents isn’t particularly fun or funny, even if the climax is Santino revealing that he can do the Cobra with his leg. That was pretty good. He should get a WWE title match on Raw and come out in nothing but trunks with snakes on both of his arms and legs. Just Ultimate Punch the shit out of people with his snake body. Wear a snake on his head, too, like some f**ked up Medusa Howie Mandell and just tumble at people until they die.

But hey, real talk: I would wear those Alberto Del Rio underpants. Not gonna front.

Best: A Wild Tag Team Match Appears!

I was making notes as the show went on, and right here on a piece of notebook paper I’ve written “Abraham Washington – What is his job? Dopiest dope that ever doped” because of that pre-show thing where he revealed he’d accidentally let PERM’s tag title rematch clause expire. Of course, that ended up being a part of the story (which we’ll talk about later, in all caps) so I’ll give a random best to a fatal fourway tag team match featuring 8 guys who never get to be on television in non-squash, non-”police officer” roles getting a showcase match on a pay-per-view out of the blue.

Best: The Intercontinental Championship, AKA The Easiest Thing To Make Important In Wrestling History

It is. The WWE Championship has been held for 40 years by the standard-bearers or whatever, but the IC title has been held by guys we love so much they had to get a belt. Guys like Macho Man Randy Savage, the WWF version of Ricky Steamboat, Owen Hart, Mr. Perfect and post-Crisis, pre-Zero Hour Chris Jericho. And sure, since the Attitude Era it’s fallen into a weird, inconsistent funk and ended up around the waist of dudes like Carlito and goddamn Test, but it doesn’t matter — the second someone gives hope to the Intercontinental Championship, we buy it. We desperately want to buy it. It’s the easiest thing to make important in wrestling history.

So even though the story for the last year has been “Cody Rhdoes has the old version of the IC title but never defends it, lost to the Big Show, whoops wait beat the Big Show again, now Christian won a battle royal and ?”, I’m happy to see two talented young wrestlers of import having a 12 minute pay-per-view match because they both want the Intercontinental Championship. How easy is that, nerds? Cody didn’t even need to create any embarrassing Christian video packages.

Best: Christian, The Little Brother Of Wrestling

Christian_Spear_Cody_RhodesChristian, as many people have pointed out, is the “little brother” of wrestling.

That’s not to say he’s bad at wrestling. He’s great at it, and at the risk of becoming the 2010s version of Diamond Dallas Page, he can put together a good-to-great match with almost anyone. The problem is that everything he does seems like a lamer version of someone else. When he does the spear, it’s because Edge did the spear. Edge was TERRIBLE (f**king TERRRRIBLE) at the spear, but Christian’s isn’t any better. When Christian does the frog splash, it’s decidedly more Chavo than Eddie Guerrero. When he does the Tomikaze, it takes him the length of a Divas match to set it up. I guess the question is this — is it more important to be great at what you do, or good at having done it?

It’s not exciting for most, but I like WWE putting belts on people they want to keep as champions. CM Punk’s title reign aside, they seem to be sticking to their guns with Sheamus as World Heavyweight Champion and now Christian as IC Champ. If you let them be champion for a while, it means something when the titles change. Now if we could just get those Gotham Museum Pennies to matter, we’d be set.

Worst: Triple H Said Some Stuff

He sure did.

Here’s what he said: “Brock Lesnar, we should have a match at SummerSlam instead of you suing me, unless you’re a weenus”. He said “this business” about five words in. I hope Lesnar’s response is, “What? No, I quit. Stop being stupid. Give me your money.”