RIP Kanyon

I never really saw this guy much, but it's sad that another wrestler has gone to the stone garden. Rest In Peace!

In other news, Jack Swagger did the capitalize-on-the-beaten-down-champ thing and is our new world champ on Smackdown. His mic skills aren't the best because he's not very forceful, vocally, but reading directly from his notes and making people backstage look at his new belt were both pretty dick-like (that's good). Also, when he beat Jericho and was announced the winner: no smiles. Finally, his brief interaction with Shelton backstage was interesting: "Maybe they should start calling ME the Gold Standard!"

I like that WWE is starting to mix shit up with putting the belt on younger guys, even though I may not necessarily agree with their choices. At least they seem to be trying. With Michaels out of the picture and Undertaker doing satan-knows-what, there's some room at the top for fresh faces.

Meanwhile, Cena is champ again over on Raw. Who cares?! They should have let Batista retain and have someone new challenge him for the belt, as Sheamus is preoccupied with beating down HHH every chance he gets. Whatever.

NXT continues to make it up as they go along: we got our first taste of the rankings this past week (Bryan on top, Darren Young at number eight), and it's been revealed that after the next vote, whoever is number eight is getting let go. So . . . when's the next vote? Is there a non-elimination vote in between every elimination one? We've been trained to not think about what's going on for so long, and now there's a show that NEEDS some sort of structure (even if it's pre-determined) to make sense.

We also had a battle royale to determine next week's guest-host of Raw. It's David Otunga. This dude was ranked number five, which is pleasantly surprising. He's got a lot of big connections in real life, but he hasn't impressed me one bit in the ring or on the mic. He looks good, but . . . I guess we'll see how he does as a main character on Raw this week.