A true show of No Mercy

They're doing a Punjabi Prison Match at No Mercy? I guess we can always hope that they replace Khali with Big Show in this one, too. Isn't it bizarre that we live in a world where you could actually imagine someone saying "We have to change the booking, because Big Show will make this match better"? And yet here we are.

Anyway, even if they can't coax Paul Wight out of retirement and Khali has to wrestle in his own gimmick match, maybe Dave will swing from a rope. That will make it all better. That's all I remember anyone saying about the first match, between Show and the Undertaker, other than how awful it was; that 'Taker did his Tarzan impression. And with chair shots (hopefully) on their way out, maybe bamboo will be the new steel. This sets up a lot of possibilities for panda intereference, which could only liven things up. I could definitely see them making a Panda ECW Champion, provided it wasn't on the 'roids.

This match being on the card makes me wonder if Rey Mysterio's already lost in the shuffle in the main event scene. Dave's got another transitional championship run going here, and you have to believe either the triumphantly returned Undertaker or the soon to return (unless he has to serve a suspension) Edge will be winning the belt from him to set up that excessively obvious match at Wrestlemania.Between those four, the now-and-forever a world champion Khali as a threat to get another main event push, Hardy and MVP on the cusp of really breaking out as singles stars, and Kane and Finlay ready to fill in at a moment's notice, Smackdown has a real log jam developing in the main event scene, something unfathomable when they were running with a skeleton crew over the last couple years. I guess barely scraping by is ECW's place in the food chain now. But, keeping the suspensions (and possible further burial of Umaga and Kennedy) in mind, they have a deeper roster of main eventers than Raw, and more interesting prospects coming down the pipe. I mean, who are they going to elevate, Snitsky? Jeff Hardy? Carlito? Sure, Lashley and Shawn Michaels (and possibly Chris Jericho) have returns in the near future lined up, but I'm just mainly impressed that Smackdown has a good upper card (aside from one glaring, 7'3, 400-some odd pound exception), and want to bask in that for a minute.

Coming up later, I'll review some ROH matches from Youtube, just as a change of pace.