My thanks go out to OO’s own ArsonMonkey, who again covered my feathery rectum twice over the last week on All You Need To Know recaps! He’s so totally mysterious, and has earned the Flaming Banana award for being the Best Short-Notice Substitute Recapper Ever.

Yeah, this last week has been an absolute mess. It started innocently seeming enough with me being tired last Thursday. Nothing to worry about, right? Who here ISN’T tired now and then, especially with rapidly changing weather patterns, you know? Then comes Friday, when I’ve got an assignment due, and my computer (as Rick likes to say) goes tits up at the mere realization that it, indeed, is over a couple years old.
 

 
But that has to wait because I have to support my old department at Wal-Mart, mostly because the lead there was struck and killed by a car, leading to all kinds of chaos both professionally and personally for all the workers there. I was glad to have helped – and am still helping – them through the shock of the loss and the transition to get the department somewhat normalized.

Then there’s this week, and the fatigue continues, even to the point where I, with a near-perfect attendance at work, had to call in sick Thursday (and felt like I should have Friday). Lord knows what I’ve got, and I’m not silly enough to be alarmist and think I really have the Swine Flu. But when I sleep 14 hours straight and still feel tired after not doing ANYTHING unusual, and when I’m told by everyone at work I look like and sound like shit, then there’s obviously something amiss. It also doesn’t help that I pretty much single-handedly opened the figurative mouth of my relationship and crammed an M67 into its mouth, standing well within the killzone for the detonation. This has more than likely contributed to my loss of appetite and restless nights, further compounding the aforementioned fatigue.

Wrapping up this shitty week was a string of movies that were, well, horrendous. The best of the bunch was “Live Free or Die Hard,” the fourth of course in the Die Hard series. It was absolutely ridiculous and over-the-top, but considering that was its intention and no one was taking it seriously, it was a good bit of fun. McClane frickin’ outdrove a FIGHTER JET in an 18-wheeler! How badass is THAT??? I gave the movie three stars out of five.

Then there was “He Got Game,” which was all right and had plenty of naked boobs (always gives bonus points), but was otherwise a little too, uh, heavy on symbolism for my taste. The characters didn’t seem to really grow, they changed their personalities for no apparent reason. Still, I was at least partially entertained: two starts out of five.

“Get Smart” meanwhile was incredibly disappointing. I was a huge fan of the original series with Don Adams, though I was too young to watch it live: I caught it in syndication on Nick at Nite. Steve Carell is still a comic genius, and the Rock Dwayne Johnson is still quite entertaining and funny, but you can only rise so far above the script. And this script sucked giant monkey balls. I give it two stars out of five, only because Netflix doesn’t let me give half-stars.

Finally there was a teenage coming-of-age drama that my dad recommended called “Keith,” and… well… the less said about it, the better. If he hadn’t recommended it I would have turned it off within 35 minutes, but I gutted through the whole thing only to roll my eyes at the ending. It was like “Twilight,” actually: girl is sorta normal, falls for this guy who is weird, revelations come to pass, girl decides to hell with society and wants to be with the guy. Except “Keith” had no action or girls getting their arms broken, so who cares? One star out of five, only because Netflix forces me to give at least one.

Now that I’ve written a precap that will probably be longer than the recap itself, let’s get to the action. It’s good to be writing again; maybe this is the sign that things will start improving for me.

Hey, at least I’m not dead! Optimism FTW.

Segment 1: After a video package detailing the goings-on of Jeff Hardy last week, we cut to Theodore Long in the ring. He’s here to introduce us to someone who wants to be the new face of SmackDown: Rey Mysterio!

Rey hits the ring, says it’s great to be on SmackDown; he regrets losing last week to be #1 contender to the World Championship, but it’s all good that Jeff won because he did so fairly. He tells us not to worry, that he’ll keep digging and get that #1 contendership and the title one of the these days. In the meantime, he’ll so totally kick ass with his Intercontinental Championship against anyone.

This summons Chris Jericho, and immediately I wet myself with excitement (and not the same kind of excitement as Firewoman, who would give Jericho any number of bottles of water he wanted). Once in the ring, Jericho tells T-Long to introduce him, because he’s the true face of SD! T-Long says no, to which Jericho said he’s not surprised because T-Long is, uh, racist? Something like that.

Jericho runs down his resume, calls us “titworms,” and continues on his “disrespect” rhetoric that he totally isn’t respected by anyone, especially not “fly-by-night GMs.” This sets off T-Long, but Jericho cuts him off and demands an apology for being DQed in last week’s fatal four-way match (which, according to Jericho, has never happened before).

Rey tells Jericho to stuff it, which Jericho doesn’t like. Jericho asks him to repeat himself, which Rey does, followed by a shove. Rey then goes on a tangent, saying that Jericho’s problem is that he’s a big baby for losing, and that none of us need to listen to him anymore. Rey then leaves. Nice.

Jericho starts to bitch out Rey for leaving, and then Jeff Hardy appears and heads to the ring. Jeff rhetorically asks if Jericho wants respect, and then— and then cuts himself off, actually, as the crowd starts up a “Hardy! Hardy!” chant. It works well with the topic, as Jeff uses it to say that without the fans, Jericho would be nothing; and rather than us being liars and hypocrites, Jericho is the biggest liar and hypocrite ever in the history of forever.

Jeff comes up with a great idea here: Jeff and Jericho already are one-on-one tonight. Jeff says if Jericho wins, he’s added to the title match at the next PPV, making it a Triple Threat. I guess T-Long doesn’t have a problem with this. Jeff doesn’t give Jericho a chance to respond, because he slaps the shit out of him. Jericho bails, and as he retreats, T-Long concurs with Jeff.

Jim Ross has an interesting take: “What’s this? Jericho just got rewarded for whining!” Good point, JR.
 
Segment 2 [Singles Match]: Mike Knox defeats R-Truth by pin. This was sort of a reverse squash, with Truth doing all the offense until the very end. Truth’s last move was to do a top rope missile dropkick, but the resulting pin failed. Truth drove Knox into the corner, but the ref pulled him off. As he did so, Knox recovered himself to give Truth a jumping big boot (sorta like Steve Blackman used to do but with less air). As Truth stood, Knox finished it with a twisting faceplant.

Segment 3 [Singles Match]: Michelle McCool (w/ Alicia Fox) defeats Gail Kim by pin. Good lord, Gail Kim is doing to the divas what Shelton Benjamin does for the guys (last week excepted): she makes everyone around her look better. Michelle started things off looking like a total badass with the way Gail sold her, rather vanilla, moves.

That’s not to say there weren’t some inventive spots. Halfway through the match, Gail went off the ropes toward Michelle, who was standing in the middle of the ring. Gail jumped backwards against Michelle, going for one of those Rey Mysterio-caliber DDTs. Michelle had it scouted and caught Gail, but didn’t go for one of your run-of-the-mill facebusters; instead, Michelle walked Gail over to the ropes while still holding her up in that awkward position, then dropped her throat-first on the top rope.

Gail got some revenge a bit later. After throwing Michelle into the corner, Gail ran from the opposite corner and did a flying crossbody… but only at like stomach-height. The reason is because in mid-flight, Gail flew not only into Michelle, she rebounded through the ropes to the apron. From here, she quickly climbed to the top, and did a forward flip neckbreaker off the top rope. Why the fuck did WWE let her go in the first place, again?

The match ended not in my girl’s favor though… After failing the pin from the last spot, Gail hit the ropes and went for a huracanrana. Michelle again caught her, and despite Gail’s flailing, Michelle basically did a belly flop from that position (squishing Gail against the canvas and Michelle herself), which apparently is her finisher. Todd Grisham called it the “Faith Breaker.” Alrighty.

Segment 4: Josh Mathews interviews Jeff Hardy in the back, who says that he’s totally focused with his title match, and that Jericho is just a distraction. Jeff is confident that he’ll brush his hands of Jericho now, and that after the next PPV, the only thing anyone will talk about is how Jeff got the title.

Segment 5: T-Long, Maria, and some guy who I don’t immediately know (whose catchphrase is “Rally up!”) are blathering when Edge walks in. Edge, because he loves me, immediately makes fun of the guy’s catchphrase, and ejects them both from the office to talk to T-Long alone. Edge is here to bitch out T-Long for the added stip of the Jeff/Jericho match.

T-Long tells him to slow his roll, and reminds him that he came this close to losing his title last week with CM Punk almost cashing in the Money in the Bank shot. Further, tonight, we’ve got a rematch: Punk vs. Edge. Non-title. Unless… history repeats itself. Mwa ha ha ha!

Segment 6 [Singles Match]: John Morrison defeats Charlie Haas (w/ Shelton Benjamin). This match was surprisingly good. JM did enough flippy stuff to keep things interesting but he still actually wrestled Charlie Haas. I’m sad to see Haas’s impersonations go and sadder still at the prospect that seems like the first step to turning JM face, but so it goes.

JM had a couple nifty spots but they’re pretty vanilla for him (even though they’d be absolutely amazing coming from 90% of the roster). This includes a moment where JM was on the apron and vaulted to the top rope, then did a springboard off that to deliver a stiff dropkick. Nice!

Things ended on an amazing single move. Haas got floored and JM dragged him over near the corner. JM then faced the corner, and did another vault, but his legs out. This made him do the Rob Van Dam-like springboard where JM looks like he’s sitting, but his calves are hitting the rope so he bounces backward. But rather than JM doing a springboard splash, he actually did a springboard corkscrew splash. I still don’t comprehend how the hell he was able to change direction that fucking fast in midair. JR’s official name for the move is a springboard stiff-legged corkscrew moonsault. Whatever you call it, it was friggin’ awesome.

Shelton Benjamin, to his credit, sat at ringside rather than pacing around the ring. Every time they showed SB, his face expressions and body language made me think he was sitting there watching porn. I suppose this may qualify, actually.

After the match, JM beckons SB to come into the ring. SB acts like he’s game unbuttoning his shirt… but SB decides against it and just leaves.

Segment 7 [Singles Match]: CM Punk defeats Edge by countout. Decent match but a bit short. The match was going all CM Punk’s way, so Edge eventually just gave up and left.

After the match, Punk beckoned Edge anyway. Edge teased that he’d come back, but Umaga came out of nowhere to assault Punk. A little bit of a beatdown later, we’re left with more questions than answers, made more difficult by the fact that Umaga doesn’t speak English to tell us what the hell he’s doing.

Segment 8: We get a shot of an arm wrestling table in the ring. Now, thankfully we haven’t had to deal with it in awhile… I’m not sure if Firewoman or ArsonMonkey concurs, but for any PyroFalkon-flavored recap, anytime an arm wrestling segment is shown, I go into Less Than You Need To Know, in list-with-commas form!

Cryme Tyme hits the ring, they blather like idiots, Layla hits ring, Eve hits the ring, they start the contest, Layla pretends she gets hurt, they restart, Eve wins, Layla kicks her ass.

…There. I just condensed six minutes into one sentence. You can thank me the e-mail way, baby.

Pre-Segment 9: Dolph Ziggler hits the ring and tells us that he’s going to show us all what a real winner is. “A real winner is ME, Dolph Ziggler!” Douche. He gives an open challenge to show just how much of a man he is. You know how this goes…

Segment 9 [Singles Match]: Khali defeats Dolph Ziggler by disqualification. Almost a squash, but then Dolph jumped out the ring, grabbed a chair, and beat the shit out of Khali’s leg… then his back. Wow. That certainly is a way to get his name out there, I guess.

Segment 10 [Singles Match]: Jeff Hardy defeats Chris Jericho by pin. If this match was on PPV, it might be good enough to main event. At worst, it would be the third match from the top.

There were few insane spots, really. An early one saw Jeff using the stairs to try doing his springboard side kick against Jericho on the outside, though Jericho dodged. One spot later on was blown, as Jeff tried a Whisper in the Wind and slipped on the ropes. Jericho actually broke character here and ran forward, holding Jeff up by placing his hands on his back, so Jeff didn’t fall off the ropes backwards. To sell it a bit, Jericho shoved Jeff like that, which I’m sure helped Jeff regain his balance and sell a bit of aggression. They audibled and fought a bit on the top rope, then Jeff hit a for-real Whisper in the Wind.

Other than that, the beauty of the match was the drama. Edge came out to watch on guest commentary, and they made it a point that Edge was actually cheering for Jeff, as if Jeff lost, the title defense would be a triple threat. Edge was in fact quite a vocal cheerleader, telling Jeff to be brave to fight through the Walls of Jericho and to grab those ropes.

Edge didn’t get involved directly, but toward the end Jericho threw Jeff into him. Edge hopped up on the apron to bitch out Jericho; Jeff did a quick roll up, but Jericho kicked out. At that point, Edge took his belt and started going up the ramp to leave.

Now, Rey got involved too from the beginning, and was a cheerleader too, but the standard kind where he paced the ring and cheered on Jeff off any microphones. That is, until Edge left, at which point Jericho did some triple reversey stuff and ended with doing his signature corner pin where he uses the ropes as leverage. Rey verbally pointed this out to the ref, who stopped his count; Jericho turned his newfound ire on Rey. While that was going on, Jeff recovered. Jericho turned back around, ate a Twist of Fate, followed by a Swanton, and that was it.

This is not to say there wasn’t more fun in the match. Between the story spots, Jericho and Jeff both wrestled like crazy. It was a technically brilliant match, and let me end SD with a smile on my face.

Oh, and after the match, Rey did a top rope sit down splash on Jericho for no reason. That certainly didn’t hurt.

Recommendation: Must watch. The main event was awesome, Gail continues to turn divas into actual wrestlers, Morrison whipped out some technical goodness, and Knox/Truth was pretty entertaining. The rest can be fast-forwarded through, and you won’t be disappointed.

Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker.