Capital Punishment Review

By Chad Smart
WWE’s newly titled June pay per view is in the books. Personally, I’m glad WWE ditched the Fatal 4-Way concept pay per view as I’m not a fan of themed pay per views since they often lead to matches booked more for fitting the theme instead of having a legitimate reason for happening. How did the new pay per view fare? Here are my thoughts.

First off, the set was probably the most impressive looking pay per view stage outside of Wrestlemania. The Titantron was flanked by a replica White House set up which played into the Capital aspect as well as being held in Washington D.C.

Photo courtesy: WWE.com

Before I get into thoughts on the actual matches, I have to mention the segments with "President Obama." I didn’t think these types of segments worked back in the ‘90s with President Clinton and I wasn’t a fan of the segments on this show. I understand they were tongue in cheek segments, but having members of the WWE roster treat the imposter as if he was the actual President is just as bad as when TNA had Daffney portraying The Governor "Sarah Palin" and the Beautiful People acted like she was the real deal. Another issue I have with the segments is fans paid $44.99 for the show. The price is a bit steep for lame comedy, in my opinion. Though by now I should expect such segments on all WWE programming.

Photo courtsey: WWE.com

Two new mid-card champions were crowned. Dolph Ziggler won the US Title while Ezekiel Jackson on the Intercontinental title. Hopefully their reigns will be more memorable than the champions they beat. Remember when Kofi Kingston was feuding with Randy Orton and it looked like he was about to break through to upper mid-card status? How about when Wade Barrett was part of the hottest angle of the past few years? Both Kofi and Wade have fallen in the eyes of the fans. The Wade/Zeke match was so void of interest a "We want Zack" chant broke out midway through the match. Wade’s pre-match anti-America promo couldn’t even incite the audience enough to boo him. Something drastic needs to be done with Wade to rebuild the character and it needs to happen soon.

Courtesy: WWE.com

Alex Riley scored the upset of the night beating his former mentor The Miz. While I like to see new talent getting the chance to shine and feel wrestling companies tend to wait too long before pushing potential stars, the elevation of A-RY baffles me. How Riley goes from John Cena whipping boy to beating a former World Champion in the span of four weeks doesn’t make sense. The live fans seem to be behind Alex though, so who am I to criticize the lack of character development.

Mark Henry attacked the Big Show before his match. Henry slammed Show through the Spanish announce table reinjuring Show’s leg. Once the match started, I was once again shaking my head at wrestling logic, or the lack thereof. Big Show backed Alberto Del Rio into the corner to start the match, why Show didn’t throw his knockout punch to end the match is baffling. Del Rio kept attacking the leg eventually leading to Show being unable to stand and the referee stopping the match. With video surfacing of Del Rio at the E3 convention challenging John Cena to a match at SummerSlam, I figured this was step one in rebuilding Del Rio as a credible contender. Del Rio gets the victory, Big Show doesn’t suffer a pin fall, so neither guy looks weak. Besides the logic questioning, I was also bewildered by the use of Mark Henry. Is this the start of making Henry look like a monster again, or was it simply a way to get Big Show to sell the leg injury?

CM Punk and Rey Mysterio had another solid match that saw Punk turn a 619 attempt into Go To Sleep for the pin fall. During the match, Michael Cole started slipping back into obnoxious announcer mode. The announcing really distracted from the match. Before the match, Punk said after he beat Mysterio, he would do something shocking. Punk didn’t do anything after the match, so the shock may come on Raw or in the next few weeks.

Photo courtsey: WWE.com

Randy Orton defended his World Championship after being cleared to wrestle following a concussion. With the way the announcers played up the concussion, and the number of punches, kicks, slaps, and other moves putting impact on Randy’s head during the match, I got the feeling the concussion was more story line than real. Christian tried to finish of Randy with a spear to no avail. I don’t know how I feel about Christian using the spear. On one hand I can appreciate Christian paying tribute to his friend, Edge. On the other hand, taking Edge’s finishing move makes Christian look weak by needing someone else’s move to win matches. Randy hit an RKO for the victory after Christian leaped off the top rope jumping over Orton. Christian’s leg was under the bottom rope during the pin and the referee wasn’t even looking in the direction of Randy and Christian when making the three count. I’m expecting this to be mentioned on Smackdown and another match between Randy and Christian to take place at Money in the Bank pay per view.

Jack Swagger vs. Evan Bourne was a bonus added attraction. I’m not a fan of unannounced matches being put on pay per views unless they’re the result of events that happen on the show. The original ECW was good at creating matches during their pay per views. While announcing the match beforehand probably wouldn’t have led to a measurable about of added buys, just throwing guys out there screams, filler. During the match the Bella twins and Keystone mascot, Keith Stone were at ringside. The history between Michael Cole and Jack Swagger wasn’t brought up during the match. Can I say how I hate when events are forgotten simply because they don’t fit into the current story being told. It’s one thing if the events happened months or years ago, but when they happened weeks ago, it’s very annoying. This match was Swagger tossing Bourne around for the most part until Bourne made a comeback and got a roll up for the victory. Basically a lengthier Raw match.

John Cena and R-Truth had a match. That’s about all I have to say about it. I didn’t expect Truth to win the title and there was nothing during the match to make me feel I could be wrong. The ending with a kid throwing his soda on Truth leading to Cena throwing Truth back into the ring and delivering an Attitude Adjustment was very anti-climatic.

Overall Capital Punishment wasn’t a bad show. At the same time there was nothing on the show I’d recommend going out of your way to see. With the exception of new mid-card champions everything is the same in the WWE Universe and will probably continue during the upcoming weeks leading to the next pay per view.

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Why I Can't Care

By Chad Smart

Before I get into the Lockdown pseudo review, lets see how I did with my predictions.  I’m going to say I picked Sting to retain, even though I joked about Jeff Hardy winning the match, which makes my final standing 2-6 for the show. I don’t know if that means TNA did a good job of booking an unpredictable show or if a lot of their outcomes didn’t make sense in the grand scheme of things.

I watched the show on a delay due to attending a Rod Stewart/Stevie Nicks concert at the time Lockdown was live. Maybe the late viewing led me to be less interested in the show.  As with most of my TNA rants, I don’t want to bash the show or company for the sake of bashing them. I want to see the company succeed. There’s just something missing that prevents me from getting emotionally invested in any TNA show.

I should state at the start that Lockdown is one of my least favorite pay per view concepts. The idea of all matches being held inside a steel cage is ridiculous. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but cage matches should be the end to a heated feud not the basis for guys being thrown into a match for the sake of having a match.  Not to mention last year’s show featured a Street Fight Falls Count Anywhere match. So it’s a cage match, yet falls could happen anywhere in the building. Seriously, it’s not bad enough someone comes up with these inane ideas, but the fact no one stops them from being put on air.

Anyway. Onto the Show.  Overall I don’t think the show was terrible. It was more a show that was just there. The only real negative comments I can make are as follows.

If Mickie James is injured and can’t wrestle, why put her in a match? Do an injury angle backstage and either add another match to make up for not having a Knockout Title match, or have Madison Rayne fight someone else, retain the title and try to do the match with Mickie at the next pay per view. What happens now if Mickie isn’t healed by the next pay per view? Will she be stripped of the title, or will she lose in another non-match? This is where TNA’s schedule of taping a month worth of shows in a few days hurts the overall product.

After the Matt Morgan/Hernandez match, Sarita and Rosita insulted the crowd leading to Velvet Sky coming in and running them out of the cage. Why couldn’t the Knockout Tag Champions have handled one person? I don’t get it. The whole segment felt forced and was just an excuse to get Velvet Sky on the show. Couldn’t they have done something to further the story with Angelina Love and Winter? Or, I don’t know, booked Velvet into a match?

The ending of the Kurt Angle and Jeff Jarrett match was trademark TNA overbooking at it’s finest.  I’ve been following TNA since day one and I have yet to figure out the reasoning as to why 95% of their main event levels matches have to end with interference, foreign objects or other shenanigans. What’s wrong with one guy simply beating the other guy?

Why does every Lethal Lockdown match have people on top of the cage? It’s like TNA saw the Hell in the Cell matches and figured because WWE has Superstars escape the cage and climb to the top their wrestlers need to do the same thing. That annoys me for two reasons. One, as a fan of the Wargames match, there was never a Wargames where guys ended up on top of the cage so it is possible to have a good match without resorting to unnecessary dangerous stunts. Two, TNA needs to stop emulating WWE. Forge your own identity. 

Outside of those criticisms, I found the show to be uninteresting. Samoa Joe/Pope, Hernandez/Morgan, the 4-way tag, and the X-Scape match didn’t have the build ups to make me care about the matches. Angle/Jarrett was good and Angle was his crazy insane self, but the ending makes me think the feud isn’t over with and I don’t care about the stupid love triangle. Until I typed the period in the last sentence I had forgotten about the Anderson/RVD/Sting match. That match was for the TNA title. I don’t know if that says more about my faulty memory or the interest in the title scene given the current participants. Lethal Lockdown was fine for what it was. Overall, not a terrible show by any means, but also not a show worth going out of your way to see.

Someone help me out here. Am I the only person who feels there are no stand out personalities in TNA? They have a roster full of entertaining wrestlers who, when given the chance, can put on an entertaining match. However when I watch Impact or a PPV, I don’t care about any of the stories being told and therefore I don’t care about the matches. Then when matches are short or loaded with outside interference, I really don’t care about them. It has more to do with the booking than the actual participants. At the recent PWG show, there was a match between Willie Mack and Roderick Strong. I’d only seen Willie once before so didn’t have an opinion of him. In my opinion, Roderick Strong makes Dean Malenko look like The Rock when it comes to charisma. Needless to say at the start of the match I didn’t have high hopes of enjoyment. By the end of the match I told my friend that was match of the night. Two guys who got to go out showcase their talents and have a straight forward match that got the crowd involved. TNA really needs to learn how to get talent over with the audience. More importantly, TNA needs to get talent not named Hulk Hogan or Eric Bischoff over.

There’s my in depth, highly informative review of TNA Lockdown. Why don’t I get paid for this? Seriously though, follow us on Twitter @my123cents, Like us on Facebook, watch Kevin’s videos on YouTube and remember, No catchphrases needed.