by Rick Scaia
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

These tapings reports have been compiled from e-mail reports:

Sunday Night Heat
(Taped Monday, Airs Sunday)

• Val Venis beat Test
• Christian defeated Lance Storm (good, but short-ish)
• Garrison Cade and Mark Jindrak beat Hurricane and Rosey
• Booker T beat Matt Hardy (very good match)

Velocity
(Taped Tuesday, Airs Saturday)

• The FBI (Palumbo/Stamboli) beat Two Guys in what was a dark match on one report and a Velocity match on another
• Funaki beat Akio (good match)
• Ultimo Dragon beat Shannon Moore (good match)
• Sakoda beat Scotty 2 Hotty (another pretty good match, and overall a good bounce-back Velocity compared to last week's)

SmackDown!
(Taped Tuesday, Airs Thursday)

• Paul Heyman opens the show, already in the ring, and launches directly into the matter of Chris Benoit showing up on RAW.  In short: Paul no likey.  But that's just the beginning, because Vince McMahon shows up, and he REALLY no likey Benoit going to RAW, and says it reflects on Heyman's poor management of SmackDown!.  Heyman, struggling to defend himself, manages to sneak in a reference to Vince screwing with another certain Canadian ring technician, and eventually decides, "Screw Chris Benoit, too."  Heyman's brain is going a million miles a minute, and he proposes a fix: tonight, in this very ring, a 15 man Royal Rumble to determine the #1 Contender to the SD! WWE Title.  The same 15 guys that were at the PPV get to enter this Rumble, except that Eddie Guerrero replaces Benoit, and Bob Holly replaces the injured Matt Morgan.  Vince thinks this sounds perfectly reasonable, and agrees.
• Backstage and throughout the night: wrestlers go in and pick their number for the Rumble out of a hopper being (wo)manned by Dawn Marie.  Insert many bad "balls" jokes here.
• The Basham Brothers successfully defended the WWE Tag Titles against Paul London and his new tag partner, Billy Kidman.  Good match here, with the Bashams eventually scoring the clean pinfall win.  Welcome back to Velocity, Paul....
• Backstage: Eddie Guerrero has been attacked by somebody, and is laid out.  Chavo Guerrero is in the vicinity when Rey Mysterio shows up to ask what's going on.  Chavo says he didn't do it, and actually does seem sincere.  But Rey's doubtful, and the words escalate to blows until officials can pull them apart.
• Rey Mysterio defeated Jamie Noble via pinfall in a PPV rematch to retain his Cruiserweight Title.  Apparently, this match was everything the PPV wasn't, including "Longer than 2 minutes."  Very good 10 minute contest, but it did end about the same way, with Noble getting "accidentally" tripped up by Nidia, allowing Rey to catch the fall.  After the match, Noble again laid into Nidia with the verbal abuse, but this time, she revealed she had her vision back, and slapped Noble for mistreating her these past several weeks.  And we have a face turn.
• Backstage: Brock Lesnar calls Goldberg a "wannabe Lesnar," and apparently doesn't sweat Da Man.  And also: Lesnar issued an open challenge to anyone to come to the ring and face him in a non-title match NEXT.
• Lesnar basically squashed Orlando Jordan, winning via submission with the Brock Lock.  Crowd had the air let out of them here and didn't buy into this match much, apparently because Lesnar's promo (with the NON-TITLE challenge thrown out) led them to think Goldberg might show up tonight.  He didn't.  Just a squash, that's all.
• Backstage: Kurt Angle again promised to win the Rumble and get the WWE Title back, and again dedicated his win to the Troops.  As a byline: because of the earlier attack, Eddie Guerrero is questionable for the Rumble, as he was taken to the hospital, but has not returned yet (or something along those lines).  
• For reasons that'll take some 'splainin', SD! aired a RAW video package of recent Kane highlights, and how the Taker has screwed with him twice, now.
• Eddie Guerrero won the 15 Man Royal Rumble to earn a shot at Brock Lesnar (at the February No Way Out PPV).  Kurt Angle and Rhyno were the first two in, and they clearly wanted to reprise a few themes from the PPV edition of the Rumble.  Angle lasting the whole match was one theme.  Another was Big Show getting into it with Cena, and eliminating Cena (Cena came back and helped with the team effort elimination of Show).  Yet another was the Cat coming in during a fallow period, dancing like a moron, and getting immediately tossed for his troubles.  Eddie entered the match late, and got a big pop for his semi-unexpected appearance.  They eventually got it down to Eddie and Angle, who, in another fine counter-point to the PPV Rumble, did an outstanding 10-15 minute post-final-entry segment that featured the night's best action.  Finally, Eddie managed a sneaky reversal near the ropes, and tossed Angle out over the top to win.  Huge pop.  Angle was clearly frustrated, but let Eddie have his moment as the show came to a close.

Sounds like a winner on Thursday night, so check it out.  Otherwise, come on back to OO on Friday for the full recap and analysis....

E-MAIL RICK SCAIA
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Rick Scaia is a wrestling fan from Dayton, OH.  He's been doing this since 1995, but enjoyed it best when the suckers from SportsLine were actually PAYING him to be a fan.

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