This Week in WWE (updated 08/14/04)

 

There Ain’t No Cure for the SummerSlam Blues….

 

Intro:

                This Sunday both RAW and SmackDown present their version of the summer games, as SummerSlam 2004 makes its way to PPV.   Rating for both RAW and SmackDown have been disappointingly low over the past several weeks leading to this event.  This coupled with the fact that the Athens Summer Games will be in progress may bode trouble for the PPV buy rate for the summer spectacular known as SummerSlam.   Nevertheless, this week’s shows were a valiant effort to spark interest in this annual late August tradition and were also very much worth watching..

 

Raw Wrap-Up:

                This week’ RAW from Cleveland was chock full of Divas and Evolution.   The show kicked off with the Coach in the ring eliminating Chandra from the $250K RAW diva challenge.   Next up Stacey Keibler, Victoria, and Nidia defeated Molly Holly, Jazz and Gail Kim in a decent 6-women tag team match.  Trish Stratus met up with the ladies after the match and it was later revealed that a new Match for SummerSlam will be a Diva Dodgeball Challenge between the 7 RAW Divas the 7 Diva search hopefuls. 

                In a hard fought non-title match, Y2J beat IC champion Edge with help from the ropes.  The night wasn’t over for Edge as Batista came out and clobbered the IC champ with two spinebusters and a clothesline, sending the champ a message for the Triple Threat Match on Sunday.

                In other action, the up-start team of Rhyno and Tajiri came up short in their match against two local workers, thus losing their shot for the World Tag Team Titles at SummerSlam.  This was all complements of La Resistance who distracted the referee while the 2-minute time limit expired as Rhyno had his opponent covered.

                Matt Hardy knocked out Kane with a table and metal briefcase.   It was a tough night for Matt, as he discovered Kane is the father of Lita’s child.  Matt also signed the match for SummerSlam where Lita would be forced to marry Kane if Matt loses and if Matt wins Kane would be obliged to leave Matt and Lita alone.  Either way Matt loses…

                Earlier in the night Chris Benoit had interrupted a promo by Randy Orton and made him tap to the Crossface in the center of the ring.  The two will meet in a one-on-one match at SummerSlam for the World Heavyweight Title, but on Monday night, it’s Benoit and Eugene facing Triple H and Randy Orton.  Eugene, however, was absent since he was attending to William Regal, who was bloodied by Triple H in his hotel room earlier in the night.  Benoit, though wrestling without a partner was able to remain in control of the match.  With victory in Benoit’s grasp, Evolution’s Ric Flair jumped into the ring giving Benoit a DQ victory over Orton and Trips.  During a post-match three-on-one attach by Evolution, Eugene rushed to the ring and cleaning house.  RAW ended as Eugene gave Flair a stunner.

 

Smackdown! Wrap-Up:

                The Joe Louis Arena is Detroit was the last stop for the Smackdown crew until SummerSlam.   The show kicked off with JBL and his new chief of staff Orlando Jordan.  JBL set up a match between Jordan and JBL for later in the evening.  In that match Orlando held is own, but the Unertaker was too much for him.   The Dead Man won the match by DQ when JBL jumped into the ring and knocked Undertaker momentarily senseless with a Clothesline from Hell.

Cruiserweight champion Spike Dudley managed to pull off another win this week, this time against Paul London, with the help of his bigger brothers, Bubba and D-Von.  In other cruiserweight action, Nunzio beat Chavo Guerrero, with a distraction from Johnny “The Bull” Stamboli as assistance.    

                GM Teddy Long was joined in the ring by Eddie Guerrero and Kurt Angle.  In the spirit of sportsmanship, Teddy asked the two SummerSlam opponents to shake hands.  After the handshake, there is no doubt that this match will be the show-stealer come Sunday night.

                Smackdown was capped off with a Summer Games Relay Team Challenge between Team Cena (John Cena, Charlie Haas and RVD) vs. Team Booker T (Booker T, Luther Reigns and Rene Dupree).  The match-ups were as follows: RVD begins the match with Booker T, after 5 minutes Reigns replaces Booker,   then Haas replaces RVD, followed by Dupree subbing in for Reigns, then Cena takes Haas’ place,  finally we go back to the top of the order where Booker T replaces Dupree.  We now have a SummerSlam preview of Booker vs. Cena.  Cena quickly rolls up Booker to snatch the win for his team.  Time will tell if this momentum will help Cena in his SummerSlam match, which will begin their best of  series….

 

Next week: 

                The fallout from SummerSlam will be center stage for next week’s shows.

 

Odds and Ends:

                This weeks WWE pink slip goes to Sable.  Apparently Rena Mero wanted a reduced schedule wand WWE won’t allow it, so now she has more time to spend with her Fiancé Brock Lesnar…The WWE and Marvel Entertainment Group will go to court in October to once and for all settle ownership rights to the name “Hulk Hogan.”  Let’s just hope the production crew won’t have to video edit all “Hulk” images from the vast WWE video library…

 

 

Thanks for reading and have a nice week,

J.P. ---The Newsletter Guy

 

 

 

Sources:

http://www.wwe.com/

http://www.wrestlingobserver.com/