Went to today's WWE house show in Sioux Falls with my son, who's 7 and at the age where he's actually liking this stuff. Took him even though my wife thought it was a bad idea.
Jimmy Hart was the "guest host". Got interrupted by Jack Swagger, so Hart made a match (I thought hosts couldn't make matches) between Swagger and Chris Masters. That's right, an A1 dream match. And let me tell you something, kids, it was pretty damn good. It really struck me that the last time I saw Chris Masters live, he had probably the worst match on the show. This match was probably no worse that the second-best match, and Masters dumped his ass off for Swagger to make it that good.
To top it all off, Masters won with the Masterlock after Jimmy Hart distracted Swagger. Match had a ton of heat and really got the show off to a good start.
And then it went downhill after that.
Next up was Zack Ryder vs. Percy Watson. I hate to break it to all the geeks who love Ryder's you tube shit, but the guy isn't over in the slighest. He didn't get a face reaction, didn't get a heel reaction. He got NO reaction. Percy Watson didn't get much more of a reaction, and to make matters worse isn't wearing the funky glasses or doing the goofy dance anymore. He just looks like another guy. I got up during this match so I didn't see much of it, but the ending was ok and Watson won clean. Mason Ryan then attacked Percy Watson in the aisle afterwards, for some weird reason.
Ryan then fought Primo. Who, last I checked, was a face. And this was NOT good, although Primo tried really hard to make it not suck. But on the plus side, if they're trying to do something with Mason Ryan, having him work six-minute matches with Primo on house shows isn't the worst idea in the world. Better than sticking him in six-man or eight-man tags. Ryan won, of course.
Divas had a match. Bellas vs. Beth & Kelly. By divas standards, this was passable - as in nothing was overtly fucked up and nobody got seriously hurt. Kelly pinned a Bella with a wonky looking top-rope bodypress. Mostly comedy but the fans didn't shit all over it.
Dolph vs. Kofi for the U.S. title was next. Weird promo by Dolph talking about how he'd win the title for his lovely princess Vickie Guerrero. I thought they'd broken up in storyline and were now just business partners. Whatever. Anyway, Kofi comes out and gets the first legitimate big-time babyface reaction of anyone on the show. Match was just there until the last 3-4 minutes, when it got pretty good, but not as good as Swagger/Masters.
They did a stupid finish here, though, where Dolph pinned Kofi with the zigzag, but Kofi got his foot on the ropes although the ref didn't see it. So they announced Dolph as champ only to have another ref come down and reverse the decision. Restart the match, Kofi wins with TIP. I hate goofy finishes like that on house shows, because nobody in the world's buying the finish anyway. And this crowd didn't.
After intermission, Nexus vs. Santino/Kozlov for the tag belts. As bad as you'd expect it to be, the biggest pop for anything in the match was the tease of the cobra. Nexus won when Otunga - yes, David Otunga is a tag champ - pinned Kozlov clean with his crappy slam thing. Still don't see what the WWE sees in David Otunga.
Then we had Alberto Del Rio vs. Rey Mysterio, which almost saved the entire fucking show in one fell swoop. Because Del Rio was unbelievably awesome as a heel here, doing every old school heel trick in the book. Stealing a kid's sign, doing the old heel handshake bit - Del Rio did it all and the crowd ate it up like nobody's business. I was in awe of how brilliant he was, and Mysterio's the perfect sympathetic face to play off of. Match was just ok, typical Rey Mysterio "setup for the 619" fest, so that part was disappointing. My son loves Rey Mysterio, though, so he was happy when he won.
Main was Truth vs. Miz vs. Cena for WWE title. Miz came out and cut a crazy awesome heel promo. Yeah, I know he's booked like a pussy on TV and will never be taken seriously as a tippy top main-event guy if he's booked that way long-term. But my god, the Miz can get heel heat like nobody's business. It might be third-from-the-top heat instead of main-event heat, but it's still fucking heat. Truth cut a promo after Miz, and it was fine "insult the crowd" shit, but it was like one-fifth as good as the Miz's promo. What it did do was pretty much turn the crowd pro-Cena.
Match itself was basically Truth and Miz beating up Cena for the entire match, working together. At the end, there was a spot where Miz had the chair and was about to waffle Cena with it when out came Alex Riley. That's right, Alex Riley. And that motherfucker got the third biggest babyface pop of the night behind Rey Mysterio and Cena for running off Miz. Amazing. I don't know if Riley's a long-term babyface after he's done with the Miz, but right now if you're the WWE you've got to run with this guy, because the fans LOVE him right now. Anyway, Cena gave Truth the F-U for the pin, cue the lights, end of show.
Overall, not a great show, probably the weakest WWE house show I've been to in a long time. Place was about half full, maybe a little more than half, with the largest percentage of kids I've ever seen. Merchandise stand was jammed, tons of Cena merchandise in the crowd. Compared to shows even 4-5 years ago, it's a significantly different audience demographically.
