Reported by Adam Martin of WrestleView.com
On Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 3:55 AM EST

Cory Wiatrek of worstofwrestling.cjb.net sent in the following live notes from the January 30th Smackdown and ECW shows:

First thing first, the show was a near sell out! The non tv side was lacking, but the rest of the arena looked packed head to toe!

Sho Funaki was the first wrestler out to open the show in front of his native Texans. Chuck Palumbo was his opponent for this evening. Palumbo is sporting a "Willy Wonka" type top hat. Palumbo also wears all black. Both men put on a great opening dark match. Palumbo won the match with an awesome modified fall away slam. In all truth though, instead of letting Funaki fall away Chuck holds on to him, but thats what makes the move look devastating. The Houston crowd is already hot!

Next up we had "The Pit Bull" Jamie Noble taking on a Russian newcomer whos last name escapes me at the moment. His first name was Boris and he did a lot of rest holds. The crowd was not too into the match. Interesting to note, his titan tron was Vladimir Kozlov's titan tron video so myself along with many others were confused at first thinking that Oleg Prudis was coming out. This match was not the best, but interesting none the less to see a possible future star.

After this Tony Chimmel prepared the crowd for Smackdown. After this, WWE showed a video on the screen and turned down the lights really dark. During this time about 15 men in black clothes brought down Fit Finaly's "Little Bastard". They made it look like they were working on the ring and snuck the little guy under the apron. It cracks me up seeing them do this live each time because I know Little Bastard must feel horrible going down to the ring in ring equipment.

As soon as the guys went backstage the video went off and the lights turned back on. Ironic? Think again, the next match was Fit Finaly vs. Chris Benoit. Benoit won the match when Boogeyman came out to distract Finaly and Little Bastard. Funny stuff. Little Bastard was stuck under there till later on.

Brian Kendrick and Paul London lost what seemed to be a non title tag match to Duece and Domino. No real notes in this one, you will see an entertaining match Friday night.

Next up we had Booker T receiving the key to Houston. This was very funny. The men presenting the key were Booker T's wrestling academy students. The black gentlemen's name is V.I.P. The bigger white guy's name is Chris Adams, and I think the smaller white guy's wrestling name is Gabe Hollier, but please, no one quote me on the last guy. Funny segment here. The only note is we knew Kane would mess the segment up for Booker T because they set up all his pyro before this happened.

Next up Ken Kennedy squashed Vito in no time. The only live note is that Ken Kennedy missed catching his microphone. Everyone laughed at him for this. It swung really far away from him and you may watch Friday to see if they edit it out or not. It wasn't that huge a deal, but they might edit it to make him seem cooler. Kennedy was really selling how mad he is that he lost to Batista at the Rumble.

During the Diva Contest the woman sitting next to me introduced herself. I think she heard my friend and I talking wrestling carny, so she knew I used to work in the independents. She is Jeremy Young's wife. You can catch him on WWE dot com right now jobbing to Val Venis on HEAT. She received a phone call at this time from him letting her know his match with Monty Brown had been pulled from later on in the ECW show. I can confirm that this was really Jeremy Young because while on the phone he waved to us from backstage. Pretty interesting. I also found out that WWE is wanting Cassidy Riley to drop just a few pounds so he can compete as a cruiserweight. I think his weight is fine, but looks like he could end up on Smackdown. So remember that. Other than that we had a great time chatting about her husband's trainer and good friend Dr. Death Steve Williams. I alos learned he has a book coming out soon, so stay tuned to that!

Matt Hardy vs. The Miz was next. Miz got some good heat in the match. Joey Murcury came out of the crowd and smacked Matt Hardy with his face protector. Miz got the pin after this and won. Good match by the Miz and Hardy! Very good.

Next up was the McMahon segment with him making the No Way Out match between Smackdown and Raw. HBK and Cena will take on Undertaker and Batista at No Way Out. The only note is after Smackdown finished with this segment Tony Chimmel announced that Vince McMahon had signed a bonus match for the end of the night. The match would be MVP, Finaly, Booker T and Mr. Kennedy vs. Cena, HBK, Undertaker and Batista.

Funniest night of the moment was watching Little Bastard run from under the apron and haul butt to the backstage area hoping no one would see him as they switched sets!

ECW came on and the bodies litterally did hit the floor... from boredom. Smackdown was by far the better show tonight and for the whole ECW hour the fans were bored. I will only note live notes here as you probably already caught the show tonight or read about it.

-Vince McMahon's body guards also appear to be Booker T students. Again, do not quote me on this one, but they look familiar to some of the wrestlers on the student section of his webpage.

-C.M Punk lost to Matt Striker, then RVD lost to Hardcore Holly. No live notes here. Just bad booking in my personal opinion. During the C.M Punk intro is when my new buddy's husband, Jeremy Young waved to us from backstage. He was motioning his girlfriend that they needed to get back on the road. I found it interesting that they still keep kayfabe that strict to this day that she had to be in the arena while he was backstage.

-Vince inturupting the Kelly expose was a sign of relief. The ECW guys came in and beat up Elijah Burke. They did the typical ECW originals camera shot of them all hanging on the ropes. After commercial break they all left and Tommy Dreamer went into the crowd to party with fans!

-Bobby Lashley vs. Test in another rematch was the second worst match of the night right behind the Jamie Noble/Boris dark match. But that was a dark match and this was a main event. The crowd was dead, and boring chants ensued the arena. ECW was really hot when I went to see it a few months ago, but right now I and the rest of Houston didn't know what was going on, and that is why a lot of the crowd left during this match. At least 25 percent of the crowd too. Lashley won with the running powerslam... again. Undertaker came down and scared Lashley off. That was the only good part of the whole ECW portion of the show.

Lashley left and right as the cameras went off the air MVP, Booker T, Ken Kennedy and Finaly all attacked Undertaker. This promted his team to come out and start our bonus match of the night.

Finally our bonus match was able to bring what was left of the crowd back to life! Batista, HBK, Cena and Undertaker pretty much squashed Booker T, Finaly, MVP and Kennedy. MVP was the work-horse in this match. He did most of the bumps for his team. A great comedy spot involved Shawn Michaels reversing Kennedy for a pin. In the pin HBK exposed Mr. Kennedy's bare butt. Instead of pinning him he popped up from the pin and sold Ken Kennedy's butt like it was a Batista bomb! Very funny and I guess very stinky as well. Mr. Kennedy did the old Ravishing Rick Rude spot where he ran around awhile not realizing his bare bottom was showing while Michael's still waved his hands in front of his nose.

After the babyfaces won the match Undertaker picked up both championships and threw them by Batista and John Cena's feet. This was a tense moment I feel should be used in a future episode of Smackdown, Raw or even ECW. Taker and Batista then got near one another and the RAW guys got near one another with almost a gangland feel to it. No one knew who to trust. Very tense.

Undertaker then left. HBK followed but then started acting silly again motioning that he was watching them with his fingers. He was being very funny about it too, and kept turning around to let Batista and Cena know he was watching them. Crowd ate it up. Michaels was very funny tonight.

Cena then went on to talk about how Texas has been so great to WWE in the past few days. Not even 30 seconds into his goodbye speech, HBK did an unplanned run in to the ring during Cena's speech. Cena did not notice him (literally) at first and was still talking and once he saw him, HBK motioned that he was still watching the both of them, then Shawn ran backstage really fast again. So funny!

Cena was in the middle of his speech thanking us and then thanked Micheals spontaneously by saying and I want to thank 185 pound Shawn Michaels for running in on the spot! Something to that effect. Funny again. Cena then did the typical Dallas and San Antonio were louder than Houston spot to get us to scream. It worked.

The show ended with Cena and Batista leaving together, posing, and signing autographs for kids. Very good show. I enjoyed it for the most part. I don't regret going at all. I will be fixed on my wrestling for now until WWE comes back for another Texas tour. Thanks for reading everyone!

- Cory Wiatrek