Match Of The Week: 11.25.06.

December 1st, 2006.
WWE Friday Night Smack Down!
MNM vs. The HooliganZ (non-title match)

RAW continued to slip this week. Other than sending away the Spirit Squad (That damn DX!) and a main event featuring The Hardyz vs. Rated RKO, the show only really had a rather distasteful segment involving Cryme Tyme. Word of advice fellas- Trying to poke fun at someone allegedly being racist is not best done by glorifying every stereotype of one particular race. Seriously, it's getting old.

ECW on Sci-Fi didn't do as badly. Rob Van Dam fought Sabu, but it was just all right. Big Show main-evented against Lashley. The Hardyz defeated Sylvester Terkay and Elijah Burke in a rather pointless match (Way to build up Burke & Terkay!). And C.M. Punk and Test battled to a count out, which would have won this spot had it been a clean finish and, you know, not involved Test. It was basically their go-home show to a poorly planned pay-per-view, so you can just imagine the results.

TNA Impact! actually did all right. Their matches were there, but still kind of missing the mark. LAX vs. Kurt Angle (With Samoa Joe coming out to help) was pretty decent. Alex Shelley and Austin Aries against Ron Killings and Lance Hoyt would have won, had Shelley and Aries not lost. And even Chris Sabin picked up a win. But, again, nothing just really stood out.

Smack Down! on a whole wasn't that great. Pointless diva matches, Undertaker vs. MVP, Benoit vs. Chavo, and Batista vs. Booker T vs. Finlay... Yeah. It just kind of was there. This match was the one bright spot though. The HooliganZ actually took the tag titles off of MNM earlier on this year. This was their first time meeting in the ring again since. And since MNM had accepted the open challenge by The Hardyz at December 2 Dismember, you knew they couldn't lose this match. But a simple squash over The Hooliganz would have hurt the tag team champions. So what happens? William Regal (Who holds singles victories over both London and Kendrick) comes out and attacks with Dave Taylor. Seeing more than two tag teams on a WWE show these days (And I mean real tag teams) is a refreshing change of pace from the typical WWE not knowing what tag team wrestling really is stance.

So for the history behind it and the fact that it generates more of a tag team division, I think this definitely deserves this spot this week. And, well, I mean, the history is there, right, but the alternative would have been The HooliganZ against The Hardyz. Now, if that happened, that'd be a match of the year candidate.