WWE Smackdown house show results
July 6, 2011
Cape Town, South Africa at Grand Arena, Grand West Casino
Rpeort by David Kruse, PWTorch reader

The Smackdown team is running a five-event show in South Africa. The first Smackdown live show took place at the Grand Arena, Grand West Casino in Cape Town. They’ll be running another show the following day on Thursday.

(1) Intercontinental champion Ezekiel Jackson & Kane beat Wade Barrett & Sheamus. The crowd was pretty pumped up for the first match. Kane got a good reaction, but Jackson got quite a rapturous amount of applause and cheers. Barrett was booed big time. The match was solid and quite physical. Kane won with a chokeslam to Sheamus while Ezekiel was doing his torture rack to Barrett at the 15-minute mark.

(2) Jinder Mahal beat Daniel Bryan. Also a solid match. Bryan hit all his signature spots perfectly and made Mahal look like a star. The crowd desperately wanted Bryan to win, but Mahal finished him off with his Full-Nelson slam for the win in ten minutes. Damn.

(3) Mark Henry beat Yoshi Tatsu. Shortest match of the night. Henry caught and finished Yoshi with the World’s Strongest Slam when he attempted his flying spinning heel kick. The match was done in under six minutes.

(4) Sin Cara beat Justin Gabriel via DQ. HUGE applause for the hometown hero, Gabriel. Sin Cara also got a good response from the crowd. The match was very good while it lasted. On a side note, these two have good chemistry and should maybe have a series of singles matches. After five minutes, Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase interrupted and caused a DQ. Gabriel took the mic and said he doesn’t want to disappoint his home fans, so they changed it to a tag-team match.

(5) Justin Gabriel & Sin Cara beat Cody Rhodes & Ted DiBias.e
DiBiase and Rhodes hardly seemed to be featured while Sin Cara and Gabriel stole the spotlight. On another side note, Sin Cara and Gabriel would probably make a great tag team if given some more time. Gabriel won with his 450 splash after ten minutes while the crown went wild.

[Intermission]

(6) Natalya beat Alicia Fox via submission. The audience was fairly quiet after intermission, but popped when the Divas match was announced, but soon went quiet for the rest of the match. Natalya is a great athletic female wrestler, and she won after seven minutes with the Sharpshooter. I thought Divas matches were supposed to be bad?

(7) Big Show beat Alberto Del Rio in a Raw Challenge match. Del Rio came out and talked some heel talk to the crowd. The crowd booed. Big Show came out and looked ready to do some damage to Del Rio. Big Show won with a chokeslam six minutes in. Show left without much fanfare looking a bit peeved, probably because his luggage was broken into at the airport. What was the point of this match?

Next was the World Title main event. Christian came out and the audience was confused whether to boo or cheer him, mainly because he just recently turned heel on our slightly outdated TV episodes. He cut a good promo telling the audience that he was indeed a bad-guy. He mentioned his luggage was stolen and the crowd cheered. He asked if that was the “South African way” and the crowd cheered again, to my horror. Orton eventually came out to possibly the biggest reaction.

(8) World Hvt. champion Randy Orton beat Christian to retain the World Title with Bret Hart as special match enforcer. The match itself was excellent and on par with the previous matches these two have been having. At one point, Christian tried taking off the turnbuckle and Bret intervened. The match finish came when Christian tried a Edge-style spear, but Orton jumped over, Christian then climbed straight onto the turnbuckle, and attempted a flying sunset flip, but was met with an explosive RKO. Nice one!

After the match, Orton attacked Christian and Bret applied the Sharpshooter. Christian tapped out immediately to close the show. Nice ending to a great house show, overall.

[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

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