The Best And Worst Of WWE Smackdown Live 9/6/16: USO Bad


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Hey, Blue Team.

After a few good weeks, Smackdown Live unfortunately took a turn for the worst this week. The tag team division is the only thing I would consider to be great on the entire show. The rest ranges from bad to lazy. It feels like it was written on the plane after Raw.

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And now without further ado, here is The Best and Worst of Smackdown Live for September 6, 2016.

Worst: The Last Train To Backlash

Smackdown Live opens with its general manager, Daniel Bryan, standing in the ring with the Smackdown Women’s Championship. The crowd is erupting all around him in “Yes!” chants, once again showing that Daniel Bryan is the most over face on Smackdown. Bryan says that this Sunday at Backlash … wait … Backlash is this Sunday!? That doesn’t seem right. SummerSlam was like, two weeks ago.

I totally forgot that Backlash was this coming weekend until Bryan mentioned it. It’s not a good sign when I’m forgetting about pay-per-views, because all I care about is wrestling. I think I’m going to have to set an alarm for Sunday to remind me that the event is on.

Anyway, Bryan reminds us about Backlash and runs down the rules of the Women’s Title match before telling us that tonight he’s going to hold a Women’s Championship Forum. Bryan can try to cover it up with a fancy name, but we can all hear the promo train coming a mile away.

The promo train is one of my least favorite WWE segments. It consists of all the competitors in a three or more person match coming out to ringside one by one and spewing out nonsense. WWE cannot do a Six Pack Challenge, a Fatal Fourway, or Money in the Bank without running one of these segments. And to make matters worse, this one was written particularly bad.

Becky Lynch leads the train and isn’t bad at all. But she would be the last of the Superstars to speak like a human being. Natalya, Alexa Bliss, and Carmella are all looking at people and saying things toward them, but the words are nonsensical. I can understand the adults in Peanuts better.

From what I can understand, Nattie is upset Becky is on Smackdown because her hair’s orange? Carmella can’t say the word “Polly” and may not know what a Polly Pocket is. And Bliss seems to have some sort of problem with Daniel Bryan even though he drafted her to Smackdown and put her in this championship match. No one is acting like a person that exists.

I could make a joke here about the Smackdown writers not being able to write dialogue for women, because they’ve never talked to a woman before, but that’s the kind of hacky joke a WWE writer would write for one of the Superstars. You know a segment is poorly written when the most naturally sounding piece of dialogue is a promo for Total Bellas.

They’re eventually all joined by Nikki Bella and Naomi. Physicality breaks out, and the good guys remove the bad guys from the ring. The women’s storylines had so much steam, but have really hit a wall the past few weeks. They have nothing left for these women to do before crowning a champion on Sunday, so they’re just killing time. It’s fascinating how the women’s storyline progression came to a dead halt as the tag team division gets more and more interesting. It’s like the writing team can only focus on one division at a time.

To makes matters worse, they follow up the women’s segment with a backstage piece featuring the sketch comedy stylings of wacky Dean Ambrose, who pours a bunch of sugar in someone’s coffee. Can someone please wrestle someone else already?

Worst: If You Don’t Care, Why Should I?

The Miz vs. Apollo Crews was a good match. But to enjoy it, I had to go back and watch it a second time, because the first time I was too distracted by the commentary. Dolph Ziggler, The Miz’s opponent for the Intercontinental Championship at Backlash this Sunday, was sitting in on commentary and he seemed to be more of a distraction to the other commentators than he was to The Miz.

Their focus for the majority of the match was making small talk with Ziggler. Its was like he was in a backstage segment instead of out there while a match was going on. It’s a shame, too, because like I said, the match was good. Well, it was good up until the finish, which was just another example of the writers being lazy after a long holiday weekend.

Even if you didn’t see Smackdown, the mere mention of Dolph Ziggler being on commentary must have alerted you to the fact that he would be interfering in this match, or at least causing a distraction. The Miz is on the outside of the ring when he hears Dolph mention his name. Ziggler stands up, Miz slaps him, Apollo Crews slides out of the ring and Miz pushes him into Ziggler. Miz throws Crews back into the ring, delivers the Skull Crushing Finale, and pins him.

After the match there’s an odd piece of business when Ziggler comes into the ring and takes the Intercontinental Championship. He taunts The Miz to come in and take it back from him, but instead The Miz sends Maryse in to get it. This is of course played up and some sort of “The Miz has to hide behind his wife” thing, even though The Miz just wrestled a very competitive match and won without needing his wife’s help.

It’s amazing that WWE has the ability to take someone like The Miz, who had so much heat coming off of the exciting incident with Daniel Bryan on Talking Smack two weeks ago, and grinds them down into the same old same old boring angles we’ve seen a thousand times.

Worst: Bray Wyatt’s Fireside Chat

This would have been great if it had been thirty seconds long.

Best: The Women Are Back, Now In Wrestling Form

Since WWE only knows how to do the same storylines for the same types of matches over and over and over again, our next match is Becky Lynch, Nikki Bella, and Naomi vs. Natalya, Alexa Bliss, and Carmella. Much like the promo train from earlier, since the women are having a Six Pack Challenge this Sunday, the women have to have a six-person tag on Smackdown Live. It’s like the writers are just filling in coloring books at this point.

Fortunately for us, no matter how bad the writing is outside the ring, it considers to be strong inside of it. Becky Lynch was kept in the ring for the majority of the match, which is great from a storytelling point of view. Becky is the biggest threat in Sunday’s match, so you would try to keep her in there to wear her down. And it’s just good for the match itself to have Becky in there most of the time. I also really liked the end with Carmella once again getting the best of Nikki Bella. I really hope they find a way to make this division interesting again after a champion is crowned on Sunday.

Best: Business Picks Up

How can this segment be on the same episode of Smackdown Live as everything we’ve seen in the first twenty minutes? How can a show do so wrong and then do so right? The Usos vs. American Alpha in the semi-finals of the Smackdown Tag Team Championship Tournament was literally exactly what I’d hoped it would be.

As the match was beginning. I thought to myself that it would be great if American Alpha squashed The Usos and then The Usos turned on them. And that is exactly what happened.

I don’t want to be one of those people that only enjoys WWE’s product if it does exactly what I want them to do, but it’s nice to have that happen every now and then. I’ve been waiting for an Uso heel turn for a long time now. It’s really the only thing that could possibly make them interesting. But I also feel like it’s only going to work if you go all the way with it. It can’t be any more neon colors. You can’t say “UCE” anymore and we can’t say “O.” Let’s go all the way with this and really make a change.

A long feud between heel Usos and American Alpha could be really good. We’ll have to wait and see. After the match, The Usos cemented the potential of their heel run with an interview backstage with Renee.

Worst: Eight Foot Randy Orton

Thanks to the height difference between Randy Orton and Charly Caruso, plus the weird camera lenses WWE uses to exaggerate the size of their Superstars, Randy Orton looks like a giant in this backstage interview. And that’s literally the only thing interesting about this segment. The answer to “how do we follow American Alpha?” should never be a man telling a slow, monotone, boring story.

To summarize Randy’s story, there’s a snake and it’s cold out and the snake’s trying to eat a dead rabbit a man shot, but the man also wanted the rabbit. Then the snake ate the man and the rabbit, so therefore Randy Orton will beat Bray Wyatt at Backlash. You can’t argue with that kind of logic.

Worst: Why Is Any Of This Happening?

Somehow WWE also managed the feat of getting me to dislike Fandango this week. That’s not easy; I love Fandango. It started off perfectly fine. Fandango explains that his tag partner, Tyler Breeze, isn’t in this week because he’s in Dubai looking for silks, and then says he’s bringing somebody into the ring to tango with. At this point, I’m thinking the idea of him pulling someone out of the audience to dance with could be fun.

But instead, he brings into the ring an over-actor, who could be Heath Slater’s sister-in-law. She dances and Fandango gets mad and nothing makes sense. She tells him that her hips are the truth and he can’t handle the truth. Yet some more classic WWE dialogue.

This all ends up being a set-up for Kane to come out and chokeslam Fandango. I’m starting to miss Smackdown replaying twenty minutes of Raw each week.

Best: A Boy And His Rhyno

Your last semi-final tag team match is Heath Slater and Rhyno vs. The Hype Bros. As much as I disliked the weird sketch last week at Heath Slater’s home, Heath Slater’s kids are at ringside tonight and it’s an awesome touch. Not since Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania XXX have I wanted someone to win a match as badly as I wanted Rhyno and Heath Slater to win this one. And not just because I’m confused by the very existence of The Hype Bros, but also because I’ve completely fallen for Slater and Rhyno as a team.

Despite the existence of The Hype Bros, I really enjoyed this match. In fact, it was my favorite match on this week’s Smackdown Live. I love how over Rhyno and Slater are with the fans. It was nice to see the audience get so happy when Rhyno and Slater won. Even if they don’t win the belts on Sunday, I hope Slater and Rhyno stay together as a team for a while.

Best: Jon Moxley, Is That You?

The main event of this week’s Smackdown was Dean Ambrose and AJ Styles in a conversation. I was greatly concerned when I saw Ambrose had a bag slung over his shoulder. I cringed at the idea of what wacky props would be inside. Luckily the reveal of it being a bowling trophy that Ambrose was giving Styles didn’t take anything away from the rest of the promo.

AJ does some great work on the mic here. That’s no surprise; he’s been on a roll since beating John Cena at SummerSlam. The big surprise is when Ambrose flips the switch and delivers the heat for the first time in what seems like forever. Sure he takes the low road to get there, doing the bit with the bowling trophy and then calling Styles a soccer mom. But the show ends with Ambrose going off on Styles with an intensity that we haven’t seen in a long time.

It’s a reminder of why I used to love Dean Ambrose. Before the hotdog carts and mannequins, even before The Shield. This reminds me of the Dean Ambrose I loved back when he was in developmental. The one I always wanted to see on the main roster. It made me want to root for Ambrose, and that hasn’t happened in a while. And I didn’t think that was going to happen against AJ Styles. I’ve been leaning toward wanting to see Styles beat Ambrose on Sunday to win the belt, but now I’m starting to want to see Ambrose retain just in case we get to see more of this.

AJ Styles’ response was also perfect. He simply low-blowed Dean and took him to his knees. Maybe I won’t forget about the pay-per-view this Sunday after all.

Best: The Winner And Still Champion

This is starting to get ridiculous. Once again this week Talking Smack is the most interesting show WWE produced. If you’re watching Smackdown Live and not watching Talking Smack, you need to change that immediately.

Amongst the highlights this week were Daniel Bryan’s endorsement of Jill Stein, Shane McMahon revealing that he doesn’t watch Raw (and I get the feeling he’s not watching Smackdown either), and Bryan trashing Sasha Banks’ fake retirement segment from Monday’s Raw. There’s also a great interview with Ziggler that shows you just how good Dolph can be on a microphone without the typical WWE restraints.

Please watch this show. My hope is that if enough people start watching, WWE will realize they’d be in a much better place if Smackdown Live felt a little more like Talking Smack.

Until next week, I’m Justin Donaldson and now I want to see Rhyno’s family.

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