I had to put a splint on one of my middle fingers due to trigger finger so typing is a real pain right now. I’m supposed to have two splints on both of them but it would make using my computer close to impossible. That said, I’m going to do my best to write up a quick review for Smackdown. I think this might be the last leg of their European tour as I saw them advertise next week’s show for America. But the positive is we won’t have to deal with the annoying crowds anymore with their terrible chants.
Cody Rhodes / Randy Orton in Ring Segment
Cody barely talked as Randy Orton had come out to put this guy over. The main point of this segment was for Randy to go about in a very winding manner that he wanted to challenge Cody after WM in an honorable manner. Afterwards, Drew McIntyre came out to interrupt and mostly go on about being a truthsayer and got in the ring. Cody gave Drew an upper cut and Randy almost RKO’d Drew but Drew slipped out which sets up an actually interesting match for later.
Street Profits vs Pretty Deadly
Tag team title match. Since Pretty Deadly are Europeans they were over out here. However, in my eyes neither team are watchable. Just boring. Legolas’ clones lost and though this was a tag team title match, it felt like filler again.
Bret Hart vs Steve Austin WM 13 for New Hall of Fame Category
The WWE is truly out of ideas at this stage for candidates to go into the Hall of Fame. Not that I disagree with the choice here, but they’re digging hard in trying to come up with more candidates that deserve to qualify at this stage in normal people selection. At this rate, we will finally see Jim Powers in the Hall of Fame?
Kayden Carter and Katana Chance vs Piper Niven and Alba Fyre
Horribly bland match. Crowd couldn’t give a shit for Carter and Katana and mostly were pro-Piper with people liking Chelsea because she’s the only one in this group with a personality. Piper has the most talent of the five. The other four are mediocre to god awful. Seeing Alba Fyre with the tie as part of her outfit it makes me wish Bobby Heenan was still around doing color because he would’ve suggested grabbing that tie and swinging it around.
Post match beat down continues and Zelina Vega runs out to no pop. The WWE was really tone deaf in London when it came to who would be over in these segments. I’m guessing Zelina gets to challenge Chelsea down the line. It’s not a match I want to see in particular but I’m guessing that there’s a chance Chelsea will put Zelina over since Zelina has been trying to rally everyone to help give her a chance (i.e. title). It won’t matter though because no one really cares about her at this stage and the WWE is focused on others at the top.
LA Knight vs. Braun Strowman
The unfortunate promise of the US title match after Braun “won” his match last week. Braun wasn’t over at all and LA Knight would get pops for his signature stuff. But Braun is pretty bad. There was one weird redo spot where LA Knight tried to do something like a baseball slide kick against Braun but missed with only one foot touching Braun then doing it a second time for better effect. Something like that makes me suspicious about how truthful Drew McIntyre was regarding the “gets his stuff in comment” about LA Knight.
At any rate, Jacob Fatu comes in disguised to cause a DQ win for LA Knight this time and gets a monstrous pop. He’s more over than the other two in this match by far because Jacob is excitement personified. He leaves to a big pop too and it’s clear that he’ll go face very soon. More than likely this match will setup yet another three between LA Knight, Braun and Jacob for the US Title at WM. I’m willing to bet that Jacob will win in pinning Braun which leaves LA Knight semi-protected. The only way Jacob will lose is if Solo fucks him over, which might be a possibility. But it would make more sense for Jacob to win the title then go on to feud with Solo given their earlier backstage segment.
I ignored the Naomi segment. I’m guessing this is more “I need to break into acting audition” thing but I simply wasn’t interested.
Michin, Jade and B-Fab Segment
Mostly, Michin and B-suck telling Jade they support Jade and something about Naomi whatever. Maybe the only remarkable thing is Jade’s Kill Bill costume in this segment. Afterwards, Michin and B-Suck go to the ring. When Michin and B-Suck are in the ring, Naomi attacks despite not being seen all day. She takes B-Suck out (thank god) and Jade comes out to pursue Naomi who jets out through the crowd. Michin is supposed to have a match with Charlotte so she’s left in the ring as Jade and officials try to help B-Suck back. Then Charlotte comes out and Jade stares back at Charlotte. The unfortunate part is that we still need to suffer Jade vs Naomi to get to Charlotte but I have some theories on Jade vs Charlotte.
Anyway, long ass entrance for Charlotte, Crowd hates Charlotte telling her, “Fuck you Charlotte!” Charlotte looks really bored right now. Michin got no response but she’s bland and you can’t expect her to be over when she hasn’t been involved in anything meaningful nor winning anything meaningful. That transitions into her WM opponent….
Tiffany Stratton Backstage Interview
Tiffany gets to counter Charlotte’s side by side interview from last week. She’s better prepared here but I think this is either taped or she had better cues. She did sound better overall here in making a retort and the crowd was with her. But her intonation still makes her come off as arrogant. Her final line of “too-da-loo” was typical Tiffy cringe. But I expect Tiffany to lose unless her promo game improves. The real match that I think will happen is going to be Charlotte vs Jade for the women’s title. While I think that match ought to occur at a WM, it might happen more likely at Summerslam depending on Charlotte and Jade’s trajectory. But I think that’s the only match Charlotte would find motivation in at this stage of her career.
Randy Orton vs. Drew McIntyre
Match of the night easily. Obviously, both guys have history and it shows. But I haven’t seen them wrestle so this was fresh for me. I wish there were more matches like this on both shows. The audience cared about these guys, the match felt like traditional pro-wrestling, both guys knew their roles, the pacing was good, they reacted well and got the crowd involved. Matches like this stand out to me more these days than that horrendous tag team title match from earlier that had more flashy moves but a dead crowd and soft movement with no flow.
Drew won when Kevin Owens distracted Randy allowing Drew to hit his Claymore. Drew left quietly while Kevin took advantage of the situation and tried a package pile driver on the desk until Randy slipped out and Kevin escaped.
Rey Fenix Package
They say he’s debuting next week. I have to be blunt here and say that my feelings haven’t changed about the Lucha Bros. Penta has done okay in trying to adapt to the WWE style but his matches aren’t Rey Mysterio Jr great. Rey Fenix was sloppy as hell and injury prone in AEW so unless someone is course correcting Rey in the WWE (which in all likelihood will happen), I can’t say that his stuff will be that much better. He won’t have to wrestle a retard like Luchasaurus and get powerbombed or chokeslammed through a table to break his arm but Rey’s moves still are high risk and silly. So they’ll remove the absolute most absurd aspects and force him to sell but his style still won’t be anything mind blowing.
Jimmy Uso vs Miz
Sadly, I preferred the little segment with Jimmy and the Miz earlier than this match. Jimmy won so that he can go onto face Gunter next week. But we all know how that’ll go.
Drew Backstage Segment
Interviewer catches Drew as he’s about to leave and hit up a pub. The interesting bit here to me was hearing how he managed to beat Randy fair and square when no one else was trying to screw him and more importantly how he stayed out of Kevin’s business. That little detail to me is why I love watching Drew right now. He’s one of the most consistent wrestlers around right now.
Then of course you knew what was coming hit poor Drew with Damien showing up behind a door, obviously knowing the precise moment Drew would exit that particular door to jump the poor guy. Damien through poor Drew into the window and fucking apologized to the officials. What? Why are you saying you’re sorry about getting revenge? It’s so fucking stupid. Drew sold his eye though where possibly a shard got caught but I like Drew far more in this and Damien just comes off as a one dimensional prick.
Roman Reigns / Seth Rollins / CM Punk 3-way Contract Signing
I’m going to cut to the chase since this was a fucking long ass segment where only the tiniest two developments happened. Roman gets acknowledged, Seth complains and says the same damn thing and Punk comes out to examine the contract with Roman trying to urge Punk to hurry it up because you know he’s probably getting paid per word. Heyman finally speaks up after Roman tells him to help his bud and Heyman mentions that Punk is getting what he wanted which is the main event for Wrestlemania (meaning night one). So Heyman and Punk get to share a moment where Punk tears up and he’s still going through the contract as Roman tells him to close up the show. Finally, Punk thanks everyone and even acknowledges Roman Reigns and thanks him while Seth is going ballistic but he mentions, “That’s not what the favor is” as the show goes off the air.
So let’s talk about a few things. I think it became obvious this match was going to be the real main event for night one because people have been doubting Jey Uso as the real main event against Gunther. Now, that this match is official and will be the main event, we need to look at what’s going to happen with Jey Uso and Gunther since it really can’t be deemed the thing people would want to buy. Whether you like Jey or not, that whole thing has been cooled off. Gunther hasn’t been wrestling top caliber people and it’s Jimmy Uso who has been getting more of a push on the shows than Jey at this rate. So I’m guessing Jey won’t win against Gunther at this rate. Not at Wrestlemania.
However, we haven’t really seen the stakes for this match between Roman Reigns / Seth / Punk. I saw someone mention on Reddit that there really isn’t anything involved for the people in this match except possibly Seth getting a modicum of revenge. Both Reigns and Punk seem to be treating this match as a business type of deal but it feels that at least with Punk it’s just a waste of time for him to get what he really wants. Now, he managed to get a WM main event spot. But he still wants more. What can that more be? There’s only one thing that could make him happy: the world title.
Which one though might you ask? Let’s say Gunther beats Jey to retain the title. Gunther would have tons of heat depending on the aftermath. Gunther and Punk have been having a series of matches on house shows. Could we see Gunther vs Punk as the actual main event for night 1? My guess is that they add a stipulation for the winner of this triple threat to get a title shot of their choosing. While Jey vs Gunther adds little to Gunther, Gunther vs Punk would be huge, even if Gunther loses. But it would free Gunther to pursue something else down the road (like say Cody Rhodes). I could see Gunther (being the wrestling machine that he is) get a follow up match with Punk on Night One, Jey coming down to screw Gunther and help Punk win the title. That way, Gunther keeps his heat, Jey stays over, Punk gets his world title on the grandest stage of them all and stay babyface.
The other scenario is that Punk still wins this match but doesn’t get the favor cashed in immediately. So Cody will probably beat Cena on Night 2. That’s where Punk can finally “front stab” Cody as he promised before and challenge the beat down Cody to get a quick, cheap win over Cody on Night 2. There’s more story lines that can result from such a win like Cena helping Punk and maybe the Rock getting involved. I don’t think that last part might be true just because of that red hot promo Punk did after Elimination Chamber on Cena and the Rock. But the killer story they could present in having Punk be the guy to dethrone Cody is that the old guard of people like Cena, Punk and the Rock hate the disrespect that young kids like Cody aren’t showing to their elders and that they must teach them a lesson or two. If that happens, then Seth Rollins’ whole, “Punk is here to destroy the WWE” spiel becomes true and you could get a super red hot feud since the key pieces would be in place (not to mention that the WWE is in desperate need of a hot story line right now).
The slightly less heated scenario would be for Cody to lose to Cena so Cena can get his 17th championship but have Punk come in to cash in the favor. But that makes Cody look like a piece of shit since he’s just cast to the side so Punk can have his spotlight. Or another one is that we take the first proposed scenario with Punk beating Gunther and Cody beating Cena and Punk showing up to face off with Cody to want a title vs title match down the line (Summerslam?). But what do you do with Cena and the Rock since Cena is still on his retirement tour. At least, with the 2nd proposal, Cena stays in the loop and you have a red hot set of stories where the end result is the younger talent eventually winning.
Final Thoughts
Unfortunately, the most intriguing thing is just the Punk / Roman / Seth portions because the unanswered question is Punk’s favor. Outside of the Randy vs Drew match, the rest of the show dragged badly. I’m tired of the crowd milking and sing alongs that prolong segments. But one key thing is that not everyone got a reaction. People like Michin and Zelina received nothing on this show when they appeared. And I think a lot of it is due to the fact that these shows are treated as glorified house shows. Seeing. Zelina try to save Katana/Chance is like seeing Alex Porteau make the save for Los Boriquas in the 90s.
With the WWE coming back home to the US, I’m hoping that the final shows leading to WM are far better than what we’re seeing. It just feels like pure marketing death with nothing but repeat segments, talking that says nothing and almost no story line developments. Heck, I would’ve loved seeing say Drew help Kevin kick Randy’s head in simply to suggest a temporary alignment. But for the most part these shows are stagnant as fuck.