The Best And Worst Of WWE Smackdown Live-Blog 12/9

Written by Brandon Stroud / 12.09.11
Best and Worst of Smackdown

Photo credit: WWE.com

Believe it or not, A.J. wrestles professionally in addition to standing still for photos!

The Best And Worst Of WWE Smackdown live-blog adventure experiment returns to Friday nights this week, and aside from a few choice moments of people going OH MAN YOU AREN’T GONNA LIKE THIS to me on Twitter I’ve managed to avoid spoilers. Be sure to click through and set up a reminder through CoverItLive so you can be here for the jokes, the mild-recapping, the heartbreaking inevitability of tag team stories in World Wrestling Entertainment and more. Destiny returns as my co-host this week, and if all goes well we’ll also have Progressive Boink and SB Nation’s Bill Hanstock hanging around. Be here at 7:45 EST tonight!

Also, probably a sh*tload of Chocolate Wonderfall commercials.

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The Best And Worst Of WWE Smackdown 11/29 Live-Blog

Written by Brandon Stroud / 11.29.11

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Wait, already?

It seems like just yesterday we were wasting two hours making jokes about the Golden Corral Chocolate Wonderfall and here we are again. WWE is switching up their normal “tape Tuesday, let everybody read what happened Wednesday and Thursday, air the show Friday” schedule and airing Smackdown live on Tuesday night. Man, we haven’t even gotten to Raw yet.

Anyway, Destiny will be at school while this is on so my good friend Justin O’Connor of Progressive Boink fame will be sitting in as my co-host. That guarantees 100% less Chocolate Wonderfall discussion and 100% more of me letting him type whatever he wants because he’s hilarious. If you’re watching the show, have to miss it and want to keep tabs on what’s going on or just want to shoot the sh*t with some folks that love pro graps, be sure to give yourself the little CoverItLive e-mail reminder and be back here Tuesday night at 8 PM EST for the festivities.

And in case you were wondering, yes, you can stick anything into the Chocolate Wonderfall.

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The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 11/21

Written by Brandon Stroud / 11.22.11

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Pre-show notes:

WWE's AJ is a NERD, KING, a NERD~!- As a prerequisite for this column, make sure you’ve read The Best And Worst Of WWE Survivor Series ’11. It’ll explain a lot of the obvious stuff from last night (CM Punk is champion? Big Show came off the top rope?) without me having to cobble together a video editor and post a bunch of JVC Kaboom Box Kabooms Of The Night.

- Don’t forget, we’re trying to get a regular Smackdown live-blog going, too, so smark that on your calendar for Friday and go back and read the first one.

- Also, be sure to check out my appearance on The Masked Man’s first wrestling podcast for Grantland. I’m pretty honored to show up on the first ever episode, even if I spent most of it talking about D’Lo Brown buying feminine hygiene products.

- If you like pro wrestling, you’ll LOVE Twitter: Follow us on Twitter @withleather, follow me personally @MrBrandonStroud and like us on Facebook. It’s the best and easiest way to know when these columns go up, and it helps me sell you on the rest of the site (hopefully).

- If you read the column or watched the show and have some thoughts to share, don’t hesitate to leave a comment. I’m especially interested in hearing what you thought of every segment of the show in the order they occured, relating in no way to anything I’ve typed. But no, if you’re a regular reader I want you to be a part of this every week. Don’t make me start a mailbag.

- For further Raw reading, be sure to check out UGO’s WWE Raw: The Good The Bad And The Ugly and John Canton’s Raw Deal (when it goes up).

- Neither A.J. nor Kaitlyn appeared on this week’s show (Kelly Kelly barely even showed up), so I’m including the picture to the right to guarantee my first 18 comments are “oh my god that picture of a.j. are you serious”.

The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw for November 11 is after the jump. There are some pretty good wrestling matches in here, so pay attention.

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The Best And Worst Of WWE Vengeance 2011

Written by Brandon Stroud / 10.24.11

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It’s like somebody photoshopped out Brock Lesnar. Pre-report notes:

- We’ve got a fresh new commenting system, so if you read and/or flip through the report to read the boldface, make sure to leave us a comment to let us know what you liked or didn’t like about Vengeance, and which shoehorned-in Dragonball Z references in the report you thought were the least unfunny.

- Speaking of comments, With Leather offered a $250 Amazon gift card to the person who could accurately predict Vengeance. Thanks in part to that image up top, nobody could. We still want to give away money, though, so I’m opening it up to you, the participants. Do we award the prize to a random commenter, organize a Raw contest or push the giveaway to Survivor Series and see if anybody takes it home?

- Full disclosure: I didn’t watch this show live. I spent my Sunday night at Mohawk on Red River in downtown Austin watching Anarchy Championship Wrestling’s Beyond Good & Evil, a show that included Rachel Summerlyn dressed as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, ACH and Matt Palmer almost chickenfighting on the ledge of a building, Davey Vega taking one of the sickest German suplexes I’ve ever seen to the bottom turnbuckle and Robert Evans (who looks a heck of a lot like CHIKARA’s Archibald Peck) sitting quietly in the crowd in a Halloween costume for five hours to do a run-in at the end. I’m watching Vengeance this morning and writing about it as I go, so if the Cena/Alberto Del Rio match write-up turns into “heh, so here’s ten paragraphs about ChrisTrew.biz” I apologize.

- This is the third pay-per-view in six weeks. Just wanted to remind you.

Please click through to enjoy the Best And Worst Of WWE Vengeance.

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The Best And Worst Of WWE Hell In A Cell 2011

Written by Brandon Stroud / 10.03.11

miz-truth-hell-in-a-cell

Welcome to the second pay-per-view in two weeks! I actually got to see this one, so before we begin:

- If you give his a read, please share it with everyone you have ever met. I’m not kidding. Show it to your ex-girlfriends, your high school teachers, people you see wandering around out front of the community college, homeless people. I’m looking to spread the word about these reports and can use every Facebook share and Retweet and Spotify Spotification you can muster. And no, I don’t have any idea what Spotify is or how it works.

- Also, I’d really appreciate it if you’d leave a comment after you’re done to let us know what you thought of the show or the report. If I can become enough of a voice for the voiceless, Jim Rome will start thinking I’m real and let me on his show.

- If you aren’t familiar with the Hell In A Cell concept, be sure to check out The Masked Man’s excellent Hell In A Cell preview over at Grantland. Also, bug him on the Internet so he’ll fill in for me on one of these reports one day. I can return the favor to him by filling in for Chuck Klosterman and remembering Ninja Turtles.

The Best and Worst of WWE Hell In A Cell is after the jump. Enjoy.

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The Best And Worst Of WWE Super Smackdown Live 8/30

Written by Brandon Stroud / 08.31.11

Randy Orton Best and Worst of Smackdown

A few questions before we start.

- Do you know the enemy? You know your enemy?

- Are you familiar with the Best And Worst Of Raw? This is going to work just like that, only for the super special live edition of Smackdown. I don’t normally do these recaps for Smackdown because 1) I am a cool guy in real life who is probably busy on Friday nights and 2) With Leather doesn’t update on the weekends, and if I put it up on Saturday afternoon it will get four hits, and three of those will be from Upstate Underdog. If you like this write-up and share it around and leave me a comment, I’ll try to make a point to work it out somehow.

- If you haven’t read yesterday’s column, please do so before clicking through.

Enjoy our inaugural edition of The Best and Worst of Smackdown by clicking through, and stay tuned for our loosely-related slideshow, The 16 Most Outrabulous Teddy Long Jackets.

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