By Shane McKinley, PWTorch Absurdity specialist

“Come, today is another day
Come, your hairs are no longer grey
Come, we’re clearing the runway
There’s no turning back from the path for the chosen ones”
- “Forget Me Knot” by Serj Tankian

“Hey, have you seen 'The Expendables' yet?”

“Yeah, I just saw JTG and Santino a minute ago.”

WWE Summerslam comes to you loud and...sorta proud. The big fat mainstream headliner is Brock Lesnar vs. Triple H, but whatta bout the rest of the card? They even announced most of it this time! Let’s run through a preview of the hottest show of the wrestling year.

United States Championship Match: Santino Marella vs. Antonio Cesaro

The absurd back-story: You can sell a throwback action movie featuring old stars (see "Expendables 2"), but you can’t sell it forever. Case in point: both Santino and Christian, who reside in WWE’s old mid-carder camp, have both eaten a loss to young hooligan Antonio Cesaro. Santino can lose, sure, but Christian can’t eat losses like Jericho does.

The absurd prediction: In calling out his finishing move, Antonio breaks his own neck and lies twitching on the ground. Santino lays Antonio on top of him and the greatest United States championship reign ends. Santino's sock leaves him for a winner, namely Kobe Bryant.




Tag Team Championship Match: Kofi Kingston & R-Truth vs. Primetime Players

The absurd back-story: You know someone is truly fired from WWE when his or her name never gets mentioned again. Heck, TNA can't even mention him any more. The Prime Time Players aren’t looking so prime time. Thank goodness they’re got swag by wearing t-shirts with their names on them, a look I pulled off in '89 when I was five. The contenders have been beaten by Primo and Epico. This tag team championship match feud has included the team of Primo and Epico defeating said contenders while the tag team champions amuse themselves with playing with an invisible kid. Far out, man.

The absurd prediction: R-Truth throws LSD-laced water into the face of Titus O’Neil, freaking him out so badly that he goes back into his past life of selling tires. Black John Cena manages to beat the odds and wins.

And then, Creative decides that the best thing for the tag team division is for Curt Hawkins and Tyler Reks is to stop losing to Ryback, get serious, and become The American Males 2012 cuz they saw “Magic Mike.”

Wait, that already happened? For real. Hey ladies, instead of pelting them with panties, I suggest batteries instead.

Surprise Tag Team Match: Ryback & Brodus Clay vs. Jinder Mahal & Damien Sandow

The absurd back-story: Ryback decides to piledrive a tiger in the Staples Center. One thing leads to another and we get this little dandy.

The absurd prediction: Ryback’s pus-filled eye finally explodes and Vince yells to staple that damn thing shut. The match is ruled a No Contest.




Surprise Divas Match: “Not A.J.” vs. Layla vs. Eve vs. “Not A.J.”

The absurd back-story: Not much of a story to tell. It looks like the only way for female wrestlers to be interesting nowdays is having referee Earl Hebner make out with them.

The absurd prediction: Eve wins. “We Want Ryder” chants. And, a Layla butt move that goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Intercontinental Championship: Miz vs. Rey Mysterio

The absurd back-story: Miz hasn’t looked all that impressive as the new IC champion, but being involved in two great matches this week on Raw and Smackdown makes me more intrigued for this match-up. You could say that Miz's haircut is more impressive than Miz himself. This bout is along the same lines as Jericho vs. Ziggler, but with considerably less buzz built into it.

Meanwhile, former IC champion Cody Rhodes is casually getting erased from existence.

The absurd prediction: At one point in the match, The Miz goes ringside and verbally bashes the Los Angeles Lakers for their new hire, Dwight Howard, and gets the pimp hand from Steve Nash. Rey Mysterio takes advantage and wins.

Kane vs. Daniel Bryan

The absurd back-story: Former ROH dude Daniel Bryan has gotten mega-over with mainstream wrestling fans by screaming one word, over and over. See, it's not that hard. At least he's not punching fans.

Kane has done quick cameos of kicking Bryan’s ass. It’s almost like Kane is a one-gag character on a sitcom. Hmm.

The absurd prediction: Who needs more love: Daniel Bryan, Kane, or Charlie Sheen? Let’s go with Bryan picking up the win. I wouldn’t mind a bit where Charlie tells Kane he has some women of questionable virtue in the parking lot and Kane gets that familiar glint in his eyes.

Chris Jericho vs. Dolph Ziggler

The absurd back-story: The classic tale of a young show-off wanting to defeat an old show-off.

The absurd prediction: Young show-off wins. Yeah, Jericho could win and Ziggy could get his heat back on a Raw, but I feel that the right move is to give the win to the younger blonde bimbo. One guy is Mr. Money In The Bank and the other is leaving to rock Grobhadern, ja.

Sheamus vs. Del Rio: World Heavyweight Championship Match

The absurd back-story: New general manager Booker doesn’t like Del Rio so much, thanks to Del Rio not having a firm grasp on the English language (now you know how we all felt when you were announcing). Sheamus pleaded with The Book to book the match at the PPV, because Sheamus likes to live dangerously: defending titles, stealing cars, and risking the world’s worst case of sunburn by going into direct sunlight.

The absurd prediction: Hard to say. “Pushing your luck” works for Austin Aries, but you can see this thing totally biting Sheamus on his arse. However, Del Rio losing back-to-back on PPVs? I’ll chance it and say Del Rio wins.

WWE Championship Triple Threat Match: C.M. Punk vs. The Big Show vs. John Cena

The absurd back-story: Cena didn’t shake hands with C.M. Punk. Punk feels disrespected. And, Big Show is big. There you go.

The absurd prediction: Not sure you want to give the fans the notion that even if John Cena “blows” his Money In The Bank opportunity, that’s okay, because he’ll quickly regain the WWE championship. The goalline is C.M. Punk vs. The Rock at Rumble. I’ll say that Punk retains. Cena can pre-occupy himself by joining Scooby Doo to meet the Harlem Globetrotters. I'll go ahead and give this match three-and-a-half Scooby snacks.

Triple H vs. Brock Lesnar

The absurd back-story: Here’s a synopsis:

Brock breaks Trips's arm. “It didn’t hurt, let’s fight." Oh, it’s Paul Heyman! Lengthy video packages. Oh, it’s Paul Heyman. Brock threatens to do harm to HBK. “Hey, I’m HBK. I’ll play 'Slenderman,' and I’m just going to go in circles, waiting for the monster to attack me.” Brockman breaks Shawn's arm. Fin.




Funny, I don’t have a real rooting interest in either man. I love me some badass Brock Lesnar, sure. But, I liked him better when he was facing Cena, where he was trying to prove a point about how much of a fruity pebble Cena is. Despite Lesnar being heel, you could understand where he was coming from.

Cheering for Brock Lesnar is strange: he’s an amazing talent, but he’s not “really” part of the team. He shows up to get paid. He's not the type to put Alex Riley over on commentary.

Yup, the back-story could be greatly be improved, if, ya know, he didn’t have that “40 dates” rules. WWE tried to go around it with Paul Heyman being Brock’s voice, and you could tell when that bit ran out of gas.

The character of Triple H is a totally different beast from John Cena. It’s not unique to seeing Triple H busted up and bloodied up.

What I’m opening for is that Triple H works that magic of his and convinces the fans to believe how much of a monster Brock Lesnar is. Lesnar winning over Triple H at Summerslam I don’t see happening.

People would be crowing about that for years, and frankly, it just doesn’t make much sense, given Brock’s shaky history with WWE. I believe they’ll go the route of hyping up much of a destroyer Lesnar is and not hype up how much of a (cough) winner he is.

Conceivably, how many dates does Brock Lesnar have left? I count three more PPV appearances, with some TV appearances to do PPV hype. I’m guessing we’ll see Brock next time at Survivor Series.

Will Brock Lesnar be as big as a PPV draw as Rock? Safe bet is big tall glass of no.

That’s it for me. Stay chido out there with your Scooby snacks.

Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com

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