Velocity – hey, you know what would be great for Orlando Jordan? A challenger for his title. The problem is this is the list of faces on SmackDown!
Big Show – otherwise busy
Booker T – otherwise busy
Charlie Haas – otherwise busy (did you notice the Hardcore Holly style trunks?)
Hardcore Holly – otherwise busy
Heidenreich – awful awful match
John Cena – otherwise busy
Mark Jindrak – awful awful match
Paul London – otherwise busy
Rey Mysterio – otherwise busy
the Undertaker – out of his league
(who am I forgetting?)
If cruiserweights besides Rey weren’t strictly prohibited from challenging for singles titles, you could throw in Funaki, Nunzio, Scotty 2 Hotty, Shannon Moore plus heels like Akio, Kidman, who’d all be better than nothing. OJ feuding with a cruiserweight would be the best possible solution for him – he’d have a solid worker as an opponent, and it wouldn’t be implausible for him to get the win. It wouldn’t be particularly heated, but there’s no option where that’s going to happen.
(He’ll do a six man tag with the Bashams against Jindrak, Nunzio and Funaki, at Judgment Day, I’m sure.)
The larger problem is the SmackDown! writers are handicapping themselves by dq-ing all the cruiserweights from feuds with a heavyweight (with the previous noted exception of Rey.) WCW could afford to do that because they had a billion people signed. The split brand rosters are much smaller, and things getting mighty repetitive if you’re cutting out a third of the roster on size issues. It’s going to get worse if they’re bringing in the lucha guys to using them the same way.
Heat – the CM Punk stuff was definitely odd. The Heart Throbs doing a serious promo (or half of one) was definitely odd. Either Maria would already be with Romeo and Antonio on a permanent basis if they weren’t doing the same exact bit with MNM, or she’ll be with them anyway in the next few weeks.
Hey, if you can stand good dramatic cartoons, Cartoon Network is reairing the first 20-whatever episodes of Full Metal Alchemist, Monday thru Wednesday overnight at 1am E/P, starting with the first episode tomorrow. (This is one of those ‘anyone who might care already knows’ bit, I’m sure.) Skip Stand Alone Complex – anything you saw gets reversed the next week, and is really annoying on the way.
Couldn’t they just squash Orlando and put the belt on … oh right, same list, same problems.
When Josh said he was Heidenreich’s friend, did anyone else think back to the time Heidenreich got pissed at Josh during an in-ring interview and KILLED his ass? Next we’ll have JR and Kane swapping BBQ recipies.