The Best And Worst Of Smackdown 11/21/14: Feed Him To Me

“Man, you’ve got some nasty plaque build-up. Do you ever brush between feedings?”

Pre-show Notes:

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Best: A Verbal Pedigreeing

With rare exception, I can’t stand when WWE wrestlers do guest commentary — not because the guys and girls aren’t well spoken, most are these days, but because Michael Cole will take any opportunity to bully the talent. A dweeb like Cole should be respectful and maybe even a little afraid of the muscle beasts that populate WWE, but instead it’s always a litany of interruptions, snide comments and insulting questions.

But hey, at least Cole doesn’t just pick on those he feels are beneath him – based on this Smackdown opening segment he’s willing to be a condescending dickbag to Triple H himself. I mean, Cole kicks off his in-ring interview with The Game by just straight-up asking, “Hey, did you know everyone loathes you? Didja? Didja?” Jesus, I’ve never seen a guy begging so hard to be flattened by a Pedigree. John Cena totally would have AAed Cole for that bullshit. You go up to your boss at Arby’s and say that and you’re fired.

But nope, Triple H, reasonable, level-headed businessman that he is, just calmly dismantles whatever wordbarf Cole spews out, accurately pointing out there isn’t anybody else who can run WWE. Triple H is the smartest, most resilient warrior from WWE’s most successful era and Stephanie is the granite-jawed female clone of Vince McMahon – who the hell else are you going to entrust the company to? John Cena? John Cena doesn’t give a hot piss about the company as long as they never stop giving him title shots. For the past 15-years WWE has almost exclusively put incompetent boobs in charge, so it’s not like there’s a deep pool of candidates with management experience waiting in the wings. The next most qualified person after Triple H and Stephanie is Teddy f*cking Long. As your resident Smackdown reviewer, let me assure you, you don’t want the entire company to be Smackdown.

Triple H is right – everyone will be begging The Authority to come back. A few months from now I hope John Cena breaks down in the middle of the 20th consecutive six-man tag for control of the company Raw main event and admits he made a horrible, horrible mistake.

Worst: The Thing That Matters That Happened on This Show

One of the more dispiriting aspects of reviewing Smackdown is that if anything important happens on the show, it’s generally already been discussed to death by the time the program airs on Friday. Hell, we have a regular feature on this site dedicated to discussing Smackdown to death in advance.

So yeah, as you’ve already heard, Triple H announced Cena’s team will all be fired if they lose at Survivor Series, and yes, that actually makes the match more predictable and less interesting. Also, it makes no sense – if you’re willing to fire these guys without cause, then why not fire them before the big match to decide your fate?

Oh, and of course Cena’s head isn’t on the chopping block, because come on, don’t be ridiculous. So, if The Authority loses they’re out of power, and if Team Cena loses they’re all out of jobs, except Cena himself, whose punishment will be uh, a slight twinge or remorse in between buying a new 100-thousand dollar car and having sex with his full-bootied girlfriend in his immaculate mansion? Seems fair.

Best: A Surprisingly Effective Pairing

Dolph Ziggler vs. Rusev shouldn’t work. It’s a guy with some of the most legit offense in the company against the guy with the wimpiest – it shouldn’t be believable, and really it isn’t, but for whatever reason I still always end up enjoying these two wrestling. I suppose it helps that Ziggler beat Rusev that one time in NXT. Sure, Ziggler was a main roster guy and Rusev was still a board-toting rookie at the time, but still, it can be done!

Like all Ziggler/Rusev matches this was fun, and they even managed to wring a bit of genuine drama out of Dolph hitting the Zig-Zag. I also liked that the match ended with Rusev just hitting his thrust kick and going for the pin. Rusev would make an example out of anyone else with the Accolade, but he remembers that loss to Ziggler and almost got put down by the Zig-Zag again a minute earlier, so he wasn’t about to mess around. So, in other words, a very large portion of my enjoyment of this match came from stuff I just made up in my own head, but whatever, I likes what I likes.

Best: Last Second Sandow Save

Ugh, the current tag team division. Do I really have to elaborate? This was basically the same set-up as on Main Event – two teams in the ring, and two on commentary, except thankfully Los Matadores were in the ring this time and not making me feel all white guilt-ish by saying words. I mean, I guess they’re supposed to be from Spain, so I shouldn’t have to be, be ehhhh…I’d rather just not deal with it.

You want in-depth analysis? Sure — this sucked. It also stank and blew. So why am I giving it a Best? Because near the end of the match Miz got tossed into The Usos at ringside, and then Sandow did this…

If Team Cena loses at Survivor Series can the entire tag division aside from Miz and Mizdow be fired too?

Best: The Survival Kit

At the top of Smackdown we were promised Dean Ambrose would be revealing his survival kit on the show and, given some of Ambrose’s recent antics, my mind immediately leapt to giant buzzard-catching butterfly nets and a bearded mannequin in a dress labeled “Sister Abigail”. Thankfully Wacky Dean has, apparently, been put back in storage for this feud, because he revealed that his survival kit was actually his fists, feet and ect he’s going to use to pummel Bray Wyatt, then he launched into a story about his mom giving him brass knuckles to defend the family’s cigarettes and lottery ticket money that was classic Jon Moxley-type material.

Then Bray popped up on the screen to cut a promo that was his typical stuff, but hey, I’ll give him credit – Bray himself may not be blowing me away, but he seems to be bringing the best out of Ambose.

Worst: Not Pulling it Off

I think Brandon perhaps went a bit overboard when he declared Brie a better AJ than AJ on Raw, but I’ll certainly admit, Brie made the look work. On Smackdown AJ dressed up as Nikki Bella and, oh dear. It takes a lot of woman to fill that inexplicably baseball-themed gear, and AJ didn’t make it happen. It didn’t help that they made AJ wear a prosthetic butt as part of the costume, because comic book-bodied Nikki Bella is fat. Or maybe they were making fun of AJ for being skinny? As long as WWE got to make one (or hopefully both) of these very attractive women feel bad about themselves, I guess that’s what matters.

The match was about what you’d expect out of Brie Bella vs. AJ Lee wearing a fake ass I suppose. Sadly AJ never ended up taking out her ass-padding to use as a weapon (which wouldn’t hurt, but it’s not like that’s ever mattered in wrestling) but she did hit Brie with a falsie, so there’s that. Man, I just can’t imagine why AJ might want to quit doing this.

Best: Cesaro vs. Rowan

I can’t say I’m terribly excited about Erick Rowan’s big babyface push, but I certainly can’t find any fault with this particular match. Of course Cesaro deserves most of the credit and things are sure to get ugly/boring once Rowan has to face off against Kane or Seth Rollins, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, this was perfectly fine.

Things kicked off with Cesaro slapping the sheep mask off Rowan then laying into him with uppercuts. Later on in the match, Cesaro would throw in some nice beard-grab-assisted headbutts. I don’t know if I’m crazy about the torture rack as a finisher in 2014, but Rowan managed to make it look almost, sort of painful – at least he isn’t using his double noogie as a finisher.

Of course I have absolutely no idea why I should be cheering Rowan and booing Luke Harper. I know this face/heel stuff is murky at the best of times in WWE, but they’ve done absolutely nothing to identify either guy as good or bad. Rowan paws girls’ hair and interrupts Adam Rose matches and Harper cuts eye-themed promos and has a new vest. Clearly, sides need to be taken!

Best: Freedom

The above image is definitely one of WWE’s best “Renee Young is a tiny Smurf” tableaus in a while. The white dress helps. Also, what’s up with Rowan’s Rubik’s Cube? Is this how they’re trying to establish him as a face? With fad toys from the 70s? Because it’s kind of working. Oh, and I guess these guys all said some words. Words about FREEDOM. Hopefully Survivor Series ends in Cena being drawn and quartered.

Worst: Killing Time

Ryback and Big Show vs. Rollins and Kane – yeesh, not exactly a recipe for excitement right there. Unless someone’s in there pushing them, all these guys are perfectly content to fall back on routine, and that’s exactly what happened here. Granted, Ryback hurling Seth Rollins around like a bag of leaves had its moments, but it was probably a little much. You maybe shouldn’t have the guy on doomed push number three or four toss around the guy who’s going to be your world champ within the next six-months or so. Just sayin’.

Oh, and the entire Authority was standing at ringside, so there wasn’t even a faint illusion that this meant anything. The bullshitty finish was coming, and everyone was just burning TV time until it arrived, and lo and behold, after the allotted 10-minutes of WWE Action a bullshitty finish was delivered unto us.

Best: The Authority Deserves to Win

They do. It’s The Authority that actually has a passion for WWE. Cena’s team mope around looking hangdog backstage and give halfhearted speeches about how a change needs to come darnit, but they don’t care about the company as a whole. They’re part of Team Cena because they’ve burned too many bridges – because the current set up isn’t working for them or, in Erick Rowan’s case, maybe they’re just lost.

Once the main event was thrown out, things quickly devolved into a parade of finishers, which The Authority won because Team Cena was a man short. Gee, who was missing? Triple H was on Smackdown emotionally pleading his case and desperately scrounging for every last-minute advantage, while Mr. “I’m Always Here” Cena could be bothered to show. I’ll give Cena the benefit of the doubt and assume he was busy whipping up some Photophunnies of Ryback in a tutu and, uh, Luke Harper with a banana for a head or something. Y’know, to rally his team’s spirits.

Triple H, on the other hand, decided to rally his team with a steel chair. Triple H has been the Best for Business, selling for Brie Bella guy for so long now, it was kind of refreshing to see him go ham on four dudes at once with an international object. He had a crazed look in his eye, his voice cracked and he started screaming like Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds…

…why? Because he gives a shit. He’s truly invested in the fate of the Tri-Lambs house, er, I mean the WWE. Good luck Team Authority, hopefully actual passion is a match for t-shirt slogans.

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