Smackdown Live Results
SmackDown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair defeated Liv Morgan via submission with the Figure Eight in a non-title match.
Grade: C
The Bludgeon Brothers defeated Two Guys when Erick Rowan pinned A Guy after a Double Crucifix Bomb.
Grade: D+
U.S. Champion Bobby Roode pinned Rusev following a Glorious DDT.
Grade: B
Chad Gable and Shelton Benjamin beat The Ascension when Shelton Benjamin pinned Viktor following a top-rope reverse-bulldog/powerbomb combination.
Grade: C+
Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens wrestled to a no-contest when guest commentator and WWE Champion AJ Styles belted them individually. Both Zayn and Owens advance to a triple-threat WWE Championship match against Styles at WWE Fastlane.
Grade: A-
Thoughts
– The Daniel Bryan / Shane McMahon business relationship remains fraught in this week’s opening segment. If past experience tells us anything, their boss/employee tiff will end when the McMahon terminates the subordinate’s employment in the most emasculating way possible. Also, it’s a poor sign for this interminable authority feud when Shane’s 19th consecutive weekly tangent about Bryan giving Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn too many opportunities is interrupted by a “Rusev Day” chant.
– Shane McMahon explains how wrestlers receive title shots. Spoiler: it’s not by winning matches, like in a real sport.
Quotable: “When you guys all feel that a superstar deserves an opportunity, it is up to us to take that and give he or she that opportunity.” – Shane McMahon
Could that logic be applied to real sporting events, like the Super Bowl? Because American sports fans would have gladly scratched the New England Patriots and inserted … well, any other team in the big game.
– AJ Styles cut a great promo after interrupting the Shane/Bryan saga. His claim about traveling 10,000 miles already this year in defending the WWE title brought a dose of realism to the proceedings. His remarks about braving travel issues, physical pain, and missing his family to wrestle at the highest level showcased him as both a phenomenal champion and a common man enduring the daily grind. Telling management to just stay out of his way was the perfect ending to AJ’s remarks.
– The New Day’s pancake predilection needs to cease. Their successful comedy act does lend them the ability to reference a prospective Corey Graves / Booker T fight on air, which is funny. Booker will be missed on Raw. His total ignorance of what color commentary is supposed to accomplish was never not funny.
– Graves should lay off Byron Saxton for the most part. Saxton makes some cogent points in his color commentary (such as noting that Charlotte Flair may have gotten headstrong in fighting Liv Morgan on-on-one with no back-up and the Riott Squad allowed at ringside). Those remarks don’t come off as well when Graves routinely mocks him as a dork, or implies that he’d be a prison bitch traded for snack food in the Uso Penitentiary. Which he did imply 50 minutes into this broadcast.
– Has a referee tossing heel accomplices from ringside during a match ever failed to pop a crowd? Especially when the heels (like Ruby Riott and Sarah Logan) respond like they’ve just been fired and sentenced to six months in jail.
– His wife’s current employer being placed aside for now, Vince McMahon deserves credit for airing a segment focused on the Memphis, Tennessee sanitation workers who went on strike for better working conditions in 1968. When even bigots can (and do) appropriate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s most famous words for their own purposes, WWE made a welcome choice to spotlight the labor issues on which King stood tall.
– Impressed by Erick Rowan’s transition from guy who loses lots of matches to invulnerable monster. Curt Hawkins should request that gimmick.
– It’s upsetting, however, to see the Bludgeon Brothers’ opponents not get introduced before their matches. No legitimate sporting event fails to mention who is going to compete before the competition. Even the squash-match shows that WWE televised in the 1980s and 1990s made a point of introducing their jobbers by name with graphics.
– SmackDown got good mileage out of the Bludgeon Brothers and the Usos merely walking past each other the past two weeks. Those teams could stand to go a few more weeks with no physical contact as they continue to build this feud slowly.
– It was uncomfortable to watch the Usos spout their Uso Penitentiary “lockdown” remarks about getting locked down, booked, and fingerprinted after Jey’s arrest for DWI last month. I’m guessing it was more uncomfortable for them to deliver. At least this promo didn’t feature any corny graphics like last week’s jail-cell door slamming shut.
– The SmackDown Live Top 10 List was pointless and did no one any favors. Why incorporate tag teams and mix the men’s and women’s divisions? Why was the U.S. Champion ranked below Naomi, and why was the New Day ranked over the tag-team champion Usos? How did Tye Dillinger make the cut instead of Baron Corbin, the wrestler who beat him last week? Hopefully, the Top 10 List can spark competition and perhaps give life to new feuds. If it’s still around in three weeks.
– The old WCW Top 10 List showed viewers which wrestlers were riding hot streaks and would contend for championships. WWE chose not to copy that idea, which would necessitate convincing viewers that wins and losses matter. There was a small benefit in the ranked wrestlers bragging about their inclusion on Twitter, then vowing to rise to the #1 spot.
– Aiden English bashed Kansas City like a heel should do. Then he conducted the Kansas City crowd’s chant of “Rusev Day” while Rusev pumped his arms to the beat. Figure out whether you’re playing for cheers or boos, then act accordingly. It isn’t sensible to have fans cheering for a “dastardly” heel challenger fighting a “heroic” face champion, although Rusev and Bobby Roode could both benefit from trading sides over the line between good and evil.
– Roode scored a significant clean victory over a hot Rusev. But I guess we needed to watch Randy Orton beat up everyone to bigfoot the momentum from this match, then fail on his attempt to throw his hoodie over the top rope. English getting pulled into the center of the ring by Orton prior to eating an RKO made him look like a manager, not a formidable wrestler.
– Chad Gable and Shelton Benjamin cut a strong promo on Breezango and the Ascension. Their intimidation factor was lessened by the word “Punchlines” being shown onscreen as Gable said it. WWE is calling attention to these promos being scripted. The show is live, so Gable’s words must have been predetermined by someone, right? It’s almost like they want us to be impressed by their writing staff coming up with those nifty phrases. While putting the word graphics onscreen is lame and cartoonish, at least this promo wasn’t shot on a handheld camera.
– Quotable: “Hopefully they ‘Fight Forever.’” “In traffic.” – The New Day on Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens. The trio responding to questions posed over social media was a fresh way to incorporate them into the show.
– So Dolph Ziggler relinquishes the U.S. championship in the middle of the ring, leaves the company in a badass way, and … nothing?? He gets brought back with little fanfare to face Baron Corbin next week. After Ziggler commits an audacious act that vacated a singles title, WWE follows up by acting like nothing happened. Dolph really may want to take that sabbatical the next time his contract is up.
– Sami Zayn’s gorilla position promo reminded us that he’s never won a title on the WWE main roster. That feels odd for a superstar seemingly engineered to hold a secondary singles championship.
– I attended the purported “final match” between Zayn and Owens at Battleground 2016. Guess that promise didn’t take. WWE is lucky to be able to pull out this match-up on a week’s notice whenever they need, especially with a different heel-face dynamic than we’ve seen in this promotion. Zayn and Owens wrestled a fun match that exhibited how well they work together. With Zayn piefacing Owens and KO boasting to Zayn that he’s the superstar who wins championships, the fight built strongly upon their shared history and competitive drive to outdo the other man.
– Styles’ frustration continuously drives him to take actions that backfire and put his title in jeopardy. Fortunately, he comes off less like a dolt who always sabotages himself and more like a man fed up with the perpetual nonsense that envelops him. His triple threat bout against Owens and Zayn at Fastlane should be much more fluid than his Royal Rumble championship defense, which was hampered by a clunky handicap-match format. And this match also furthers the McMahon vs. Bryan feud, which is going to end disappointingly without a physical payoff of some kind.
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