As you probably know, I attended the Smackdown tapings this past Tuesday and watched it as you most probably did this past Friday when it aired on television. It was to surprise that I noticed that WWE had been editing its footage from Tuesday. Now I know that editing happens all the time and don’t think I’m having a moan here but it was something that came to my attention.
During Alberto Del Rio’s entrance we were treated on television to Ricardo Rodriguez’s announcing Del Rio’s to the ring, however in person at the arena Ricardo was nowhere to be seen.
Granted this is something that is not essential to the quality of the product and did not affect my enjoyment of the show but I find it annoying that WWE felt the need to edit video footage from a previous Smackdown of Ricardo announcing and put it into the Manchester footage. If you look at Ricardo when he is announcing you can even tell that the arena in the background is not the M.E.N. Arena.
I remember in a previous Smackdown from over 3 years ago noticing a similar thing with a Batista entrance. Batista came out for his match and his knee pads were round his boots and hadn’t been pulled up yet, when he did his pyro spot his knee pads were up over his knee’s, upon entering the ring his knee pads were back down his ankles and he pulled them up in the ring. Now obviously it was a Smackdown double taping and they had already used his Pyro spot once in the night and just used older footage to make it look like the pyro had gone off again, cost cutting, I get it, but sometimes it can appear silly.
Another instance was the main event of Wrestlemania 23 between John Cena and HBK for the WWE Championship. Just as the match was about to begin a fan wearing nothing but his Union Jack underwear (You know who you are and you should be ashamed young man!) jumped the rail and tried to get into the ring before security drag him into the shadows. Obviously this was edited out of the live broadcast and done quite well considering the time lapse on a live event but these are the instances you expect editing to be used.
Would anyone have noticed if the Alberto’s ring announcer wasn’t at ringside for one episode of Smackdown? It just felt like an awful lot of effort for such a small result. Either way it’s not a major thing, I just wondered if anyone else had noticed strange editing flaws in the past?
My recent catch up with TNA has now brought me up to Bound for Glory, I will give my opinions on TNA soon enough when I’ve fully got up to date but when I heard about TNA having a new Heavyweight Championship Belt I had to check it out.
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!? It looks like a cross between the Diva’s Championship and the Alien strangling data from Independence Day!! (God I hope people know what I mean!)
Titles have quickly become a novelty within the Wrestling industry and now look more and more like kids toys. The WWE Championship has looked terrible since it’s unveiling and now TNA make something that looks worse. I actually liked the TNA Championship from previous and especially since it was a hard job to create a title they could use once they stopped using the NWA design.
I’m glad to hear that WWE are considering unifying a lot of the championships come Wrestlemania time and I hope they lose the brands to create a bit of stability and value to these championships but if WWE consider unifying these belts then I hope they look at the mess that TNA have created and use it as a template to avoid.
I get that they have created a title that is in line with Jeff Hardy’s character but I think they have taken it too far. Austin’s Smoking Skull Belt still looked like a Heavyweight Championship at the end of the day and was suitable for purpose.
Time has come to try and make this industry look like a sport again, give me realistic storylines relating to competition and give me titles that I would dream of holding that actually mean something!
Do you agree? Or do you like Jeff Hardy’s new Immortal Championship?
Email me at beansontoastuk@msn.com or get in touch at www.twitter.com/beansontoastuk
Martyn.
