WWE SUNDAY NIGHT HEAT WORKRATE REPORT – 1/11/04 (by PHIL RIPPA)
I had hoped to get this out before the Raw report showed up but I be lazy. It’s a weird show in that one match took up an ENORMOUS amount of time.
WHAT WORKED It really is 1999 all over again as Matt Hardy is going to work every Heat show that I do a Workrate Report for – isn’t he? This match gets onto this side of the column with no help from Lance Storm. Holy Christ. Does he actually watch tapes of himself? Can he not see how his strikes look? Can he not see how mind-boggling horrific his “clothesline” (if you want to call that weird “I push my armpit into your eye socket” a clothesline) is? His pescada was the only tolerable part of his offense that entire match. Hardy through good looking punches and did a good job in selling Storm’s loose ass shit, despite Storm not returning the favor. Big dick my ass.
Randy Orton vs. Val Venis was way more enjoyable than I thought it was going to be. Venis > Rob Van Dam and this worked a lot more than that pile on Raw that I fell asleep during. Plus, Venis is on a little spurt where he tries to get me to over inflate his ranking on the 500 (if we ever actually get around to doing that.) I will admit it, Venis is another guy who does some spots that I like as wrestling holds (ex: the Blue Thunder Power Bomb) but not as a worker (execution not as crisp, etc..) so I tend to probably overcredit his body of work just because he is doing moves I like to see in a match. I am so rambling at this moment. I liked the opening with Orton being “stunned” by the challenge his was getting from V Squared. Orton is the best “Delta Chi drink spiker who I wanted to crush their face in with a shovel in college” in all of professional wrestling. I also dug the whole TRANSITION~! via untie bootlace. I had spotted it when the match started and was thinking “Awww Fuck. That’s going to bug me the entire match.” and it turned out to be part of the lay out. The double knockout collision out of the corner came off great but the comical WWE editing botched the split over the commercial break as it was really awkward when you came back from the 8732 John Henson Project spot and Venis is fighting out of a headlock. The bow and arrow was nifty but I truly appreciated it after Venis then sold not being able to do the suplex moments later. He forgot to sell the back the rest of the match but this is Heat and the Raw roster so I am not going to be that overly critical. I think the finish would have been better if Orton had gotten a foot on the ropes at 2 and 15/16ths off of the money shot instead of getting the knees up but I would have much rather watched this that almost anything on Raw.
WHAT DIDN’T WORK Coach and Snow still suck and they do their best to make any sane man consider exploding a cherry bomb in their own ear canal.
Lordy, did I not like Jindrak/Cade vs. the TE III kids. Reading Tom and Phil’s workrate reports before without watching the actual WWE programming, I thought there were exaggerating about the body oiling for the sake of some laughs. Nope, totally wrong. That is some creepy ass Johnson’s Baby Oil Action there. For some reason, Hennigan thought it was a good idea to be a 58th rate Rukkus when being a first rate Rukkus sucks just as much.
They recapped a ton of stuff that none of you bothered with the first time it was on Raw. Which is probably a good thing lest you all start to really wonder if Teddy Long actually started saying “Them’s not my people. You’s my people.” Fucking racist WWE.
No, Commissioner Richards. That would have worked more than the Nantucket Regatta or whatever it was that happened when Michaels and HHH started into each other’s eyes.