A special SmackDown took place yesterday, which was a revival of The Great American Bash.
It featured a party that was attended by random WWE Superstars and Divas, but it also featured a 20-man Battle Royal*.
Image credit: Bleacher Report
The asterisk has to do with the fact that Sheamus was removed from the Battle Royal after having his head slammed on the hood of one of Alberto Del Rio’s cars by ADR himself.
This came after Del Rio was threatening people in the crowd, in Corpus Christi, Texas, to show their immigration papers. I found this inappropriate given the setting, but it is nothing compared to some of the stuff done by the WWE in the past. (See a certain in-ring celebration by Edge and Lita for an example).
The Battle Royal featured stars of both SmackDown and Raw, including the likes of John Cena, CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Big Show, and of course Zack Ryder.
John Cena was on a roll before ultimately being eliminated by Big Show, which left five men in the ring: Big Show, Zack Ryder, Christian, Dolph Ziggler, and Kane. Big Show threw Christian out of the ring after catching him out of mid-air.
This left four men in the ring, and led to Ziggler jumping on Show to give him a sleeper hold. Ziggler had Big Show leaning on the ropes when Kane kicked him in the back and knocked both Ziggler and Show out of the ring. This left Zack Ryder as the only man in the ring with Kane.
The winner of this match was to be named General Manager of next Friday’s SmackDown, so it seemed unlikely that Kane would be victorious. However, as I said before, crazier things have happened in the WWE.
The fans in attendance began chanting for Ryder once they realized that it was just him and Kane in the ring, and being with Kane was only fitting for Ryder.
It was Kane who had put Ryder out of action back in the winter when he continually attacked Ryder and eventually pushed him off the stage in a wheelchair. This seemed to bury Ryder, who went from being a United States champion to simply a rag doll to Kane.
At the same time, Eve had just betrayed Ryder by admitting that she used him and kissing John Cena right in front of Ryder’s face. This led to Eve’s heel turn, which was cemented as she an “executive assistant” to John Laurinaitis in the recently ended era of “People Power”.
Fast forward to last night when Teddy Long was the interim GM, and Eve was present after missing time to film a reality show. He gave her a name tag, as she had done to Teddy just a few months ago, which added to the fun Teddy was having at Eve’s expense.
Later on at the backstage party, Damien Sandow came to ruin the fun.
Zack Ryder told Sandow to leave, which led to the two fighting. Ryder grabbed a bowl of punch and tried to dump it on Sandow. It ended up all over Eve after Sandow moved out of the way, which gave Ryder some revenge for her actions towards him at the beginning of the year.
Now that he got revenge on Eve, it was time for Ryder to get revenge on Kane. It seemed odd that Ryder had made it to this point in the Battle Royal, considering he has mainly been relegated to the untelevised WWE Superstars throughout the past few months.
He took control of Kane and gave him the “Broski Boot,” which saw myself and I’m sure many others marking out, even if only for a few seconds. Just as Ryder went to finish off Kane, Kane held Ryder in position for a chokeslam. He surprisingly got out of Kane’s grasp and went to the ropes. Kane ran towards him and Ryder pulled down the ropes which led to Kane diving right over the top rope and down to the floor below.
This means that next Friday’s SmackDown will be run by Zack Ryder. Just like that he went from being seen on YouTube more than television to being next week’s interim GM.
There are many things that he could do, but I would love to see himself place himself in the World Heavyweight Championship Money in the Bank match. This may not happen, but next Friday will surely be a fun episode.
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