Hey, Blue Team.
Here we are. Another era of SmackDown ends. Next Tuesday, SmackDown transforms into ‘SmackDown Live.’ I’m assuming it will be everything you’ve always wanted out of a sports entertainment show. Or it will at least continue to be perfectly okay. There’s really no way to tell. But before things change, WWE’s writer’s room has one last SmackDown to barely put any effort into. This week’s show has all the classic tropes of the era: Raw Rebounds, pointless but good matches, and a singles match that somehow turns into a tag team match. I know it’s hard to remember now, but SmackDown was once referred to as “the good show.”
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And now without further ado, here is The Best and Worst of SmackDown for July 14, 2016.
Best: The Best SmackDown Opening Ever
This week’s SmackDown once again opens up with what I’m referring to as “Earlier Today” vignettes. It’s a series of wrestlers in short little vignettes shot earlier in the day that have to do with their current feud or their match on the show that night. If you haven’t seen them, they’re worth checking out. Unfortunately I can’t share the video with you because WWE didn’t upload it to its YouTube channel, which is absolutely bonkers. This week’s first vignette is Kevin Owens wearing a Finn Balor t-shirt, showing off a birthday card Sami Zayn had given him for his son’s birthday. He tells us that he never gave his son the card because the present inside was twenty Canadian dollars. You want to watch that right now, right? It’s immediately followed by a pretty clunky Charlotte promo where she puts the punctuation in all the wrong places and seems to forget Dana Brooke’s name at one point. So some of these are better than others, but they’ve overall been getting better each week.
Best: Fierce Roll-Ups
The first match of the night is a very enjoyable encounter between Sasha Banks and Dana Brooke. It may be Sasha’s best match since re-materializing about a month ago. I especially enjoyed the opening of the match. Instead of doing your typical side headlock or something like that to get the match started, the bell rings and Sasha Banks immediately rolls up Dana to try to get the quick win. Dana gets out of it after the one count and attempts a clothesline, but Sasha catches her and backslides her into another quick pin attempt. I love how in-character that is of Sasha.
The whole match is good, but another standout moment comes at the end. After a series of back and forth pinfall attempts and some interference from Charlotte, Dana rolls up Sasha, but Sasha kicks out at two and immediately slaps the Bank Statement on Dana. It was a perfect fluid motion from the roll up to the Bank Statement. It looked so legit. Sasha didn’t do some elaborate set up to pull off her finishing maneuver. She simple took advantage of Dana Brooke being in the right position and slapped it on her.
Dana ends up tapping out and is immediately attacked by Charlotte with a Big Boot. It was perfect. Charlotte came off as so desperate. She knows she can’t beat Sasha fair and square, so she’s trying to do whatever she can to injure her. Charlotte throws Sasha across the announce table and then gets on top of the table to taunt Banks with the belt. Stop forcing Charlotte to recite scripts and just let her keep doing this stuff.
Later in the night we meet up with everyone backstage so Charlotte can inform Sasha that they’ll be wrestling each other at WWE Battleground, but not in a one-on-one title match. Sasha has to find a partner to team with her against Charlotte and Dana Brooke in a tag match. This is an excellent opportunity for WWE to bring everything full circle and have Sasha Banks reach out to her arch enemy, Bayley, bringing the very woman who beat her for the NXT title to the main roster. It would be the final step in the Women’s Revolution, one year after it began. If done well, it could be beautiful, poignant storytelling. So my money is on her partner being Nia Jax.
Worst: Rusev Roll-Up
Rusev vs. Dolph Ziggler is a sign that things are already starting to change around here, because SmackDown logic dictates this match should have been Sheamus and Rusev vs. Dolph Ziggler and Zack Ryder. Usually I love continuity, but for once I applaud WWE for not acknowledging these men’s history together. Let’s all just pretend that it never happened. Let’s leave it in the past with Lana’s attempts to do a Russian accent. Rusev and Ziggler are having a perfectly fine match until Zack Ryder’s new rock n roll music hits and Zack comes out looking like 1990s Miami with a beard. Rusev is of course extremely distracted by this. Rusev tosses Ziggler out of the ring then rolls out and throws Ziggler into Ryder. It’s a valiant effort, but even the mighty Rusev cannot overcome WWE’s most powerful finishing maneuver: The Distraction. Rusev throws Ziggler back into the ring, but then also throws Ryder into the ring? But Ryder rolls out so Rusev tries to follow him, allowing Ziggler to pin him with the distraction roll up. Did you follow all that? I tried to make the most sense out of it for you as possible, but watching it was just as ridiculous as it sounds.
Supplemental Best: Rusev rips off two turnbuckle pads and throws TV monitors.
Best: Teamwork!
I say it a lot, but I love tag team wrestling. Even at three segments long, I didn’t get tired of watching Enzo & Cass out there with The Club. This week’s chapter of the feud featured one segment of top notch Enzo & Cass mic work followed by a two segment match; the Realest Guys in the Room vs. Karl Anderson and AJ Styles. This match is all about tag team wrestling, and I know that should seem obvious — it’s a tag team match — but I’ve sat through a lot of SmackDown tag team matches over the years and a lot of them have nothing to do with tag team wrestling.
The match also features another attribute that you don’t find in a lot of WWE programming these days — actual progression. The Club has figured out Enzo & Cass’ weakness. They know that to stop Enzo & Cass you have to stop the hot tag. Your average Enzo & Cass match is all about building to that hot tag. But this match was all about The Club stopping that tag from taking place, whether it’s Anderson leaping across the ring to catch Enzo mid air and mid tag with a high knee, or Gallows running around the outside, pulling Big Cass off the apron when he’s inches away from Enzo. They shut down the hot tag and they won the match. Teamwork!
Worst: The Cruiserweight Not-So-Classic
Kalisto should always wrestle Tyler Breeze. Or at least someone like Tyler Breeze. You know, somebody similar in size to Kalisto, someone with speed and agility. Kalisto is always best when he’s with someone who can keep up with him. That’s why his U.S. Title run was so lackluster. It felt like every match he had was against Haystacks Calhoun. This is a good little match. They’re both good wrestlers who have both worked hard to make it to WWE’s main roster. But the whole time I was thinking of what both these guys could do in a twelve minute match against literally anyone in the Cruiserweight Classic. It kind of feels like both of these guys are getting the short end of the stick (no Jerry Lawler pun intended). I don’t think we’re going to see a legitimate cruiserweight division on a WWE show that’s aired on USA, but boy is it needed.
Worst: Bob Blah Blah
Miz TV with guests Darren Young and Bob Backlund did an excellent job of building toward the Miz vs. Bob Backlund fantasy match I will be dreaming about as I fall asleep tonight. Can’t you just imagine the look on Miz’ face when Backlund sneaks up behind him and locks in the Chicken Wing? Now that I think about it, if you catch Bob before he hits the ground, you could reverse that Chicken Wing into a Skull Crushing Finale pretty easily. Miz could put the figure four on Backlund and Darren Young could throw in the towel. Seriously, I bet Bob Backlund could have a better match with The Miz today than almost anyone on SmackDown‘s 2007 roster.
Even if it’s not my Backlund/Miz dream match, I’m still interested in what a Miz/Darren Young IC match on pay-per-view looks like. It’s at least something new. This Battleground card is gearing up to be something very interesting. Unfortunately, this segment didn’t do much for me. I’ve been enjoying the pairing of Darren Young and Bob Backlund more since they’ve broken out of the little boxes that contained them during their vignettes. But this was a major step back in my opinion. I like Darren Young in the ring, but Backlund definitely hasn’t helped Darren improve outside of it. Darren Young still has no character. He has no point of view. So in a segment like Miz TV there’s just nothing for him to say, other than the generic wrestler “I’m going to beat you up” talk. Isn’t the whole point of you having a manager (or in this case, “life coach”) is so that you can have someone do the talking for you? A key component to making Darren Young great again might be keeping the microphone in Bob Backlund’s hands.
Best? Worst? SmackDown!
The last SmackDown of the Content Fulfillment Era ends the most SmackDown way possible. Dean Ambrose is scheduled to go one-on-one with Kevin Owens, a match we’ve seen a thousand times this year. That’s already sooo SmackDown. But to make things even more SmackDown, Seth Rollins comes out for commentary. It takes literally less than a minute for the next SmackDown achievement to be unlocked as Dean Ambrose is distracted by Seth Rollins! Gasp! Rollins jumps Ambrose and out comes Sami Zayn. We come back from a commercial break and this is now a Tag Team match. Omega SmackDown: Achieved. Honestly, I wouldn’t want it any other way.
The new SmackDown main event is Sami Zayn and Dean Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins and Kevin Owens, and it’s the epitome of what SmackDown has been over the last few years — great but forgettable wrestling. Nothing happens. What does happen, happens for no reason. You won’t remember it next week. But it sure is great to watch at the time. If this truly is the last pointless SmackDown, this was a great pointless match to go out on.
It really is a shame they wasted Teddy Long’s cameo on Raw a couple of weeks ago. If he had shown up out of nowhere to tag these guys up, I would have been ecstatic. I don’t want to undersell this match because it was great. Especially everything involving Rollins and Zayn at the end. I mean, how could it not be great with all these guys? But in the end, it is what it is. So what happens now? What becomes of SmackDown? Is it a brand that can be repaired? Or is it too firmly associated with the vortex of nothingness it’s been for years? I guess NXT did go from a reality show to having the greatest wrestling on American television, so anything’s possible. Still, I just can’t see it becoming appointment television for the first time in twelve years. Will a brand split really fix this? Most people don’t seem to remember this, but nothing happened on SmackDown toward the end of the last brand split. I remember years of my friends and I hoping that WWE would end the stupid brand split and put everyone back on the same roster so we could have a larger variety of matches. But we got our wish and it didn’t help at all. I’m sure next Tuesday’s SmackDown will matter. I’m just not sure about the SmackDown the week after that.
Until then, I’m Justin Donaldson and you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.
