Hey, Blue Team!
If you’re reading this, you probably don’t watch Raw. I know you’ve chosen sides in this blood feud, and by reading this it’s clear you have sided with all that is blue. But still you may have heard, The Undertaker showed up on Raw this week to announce he will be in the Royal Rumble match. WTF Undertaker! I thought you were all true blue? What was that pre-Survivor Series pep talk all about? Team Smackdown won that match for you. And you repay us by showing up on Raw? Oh no, did Daniel Bryan trade you in one of his concussed stupors? Oh my god, did he send you to Raw for Jack Swagger? I know you’re both former World Champions, but still …
I clearly don’t know the rules of the brand split, but then again WWE doesn’t either so I guess I’m ok. Not only does The Undertaker not appear on this week’s Smackdown Live, but nothing else happens either. I guess too much stuff happened last week for anything of significance to go down this week. It feels like the WWE writing team only has enough time for things to happen on one show every week, so they switch back and forth. Last week, stuff happened on Smackdown, so this week stuff happened on Raw.
Oh, and JBL shows that he definitely doesn’t know how to Be a STAR when he spends an entire segment body-shaming a woman. Good times!
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And now without further ado, here is The Best and Worst of Smackdown Live for January 10th, 2017.
Worst: Mizdirection
This week’s Smackdown Live starts out awfully similar to last week’s show, with The Miz and Dean Ambrose in the ring yapping at each other. But this week, there’s a carpet, an easel, and a stool, so we’ve been transported to the Ambrose Asylum (for branding purposes, I guess). We’re lucky that Ambrose and The Miz both have on-screen significant others that this feud can be about, because if not, I’m sure they would be feuding over which is better, Miz TV or The Ambrose Asylum. I can’t live through another feud over fictional WWE talk shows any time soon. I need at least a year between each one.
The Miz and Ambrose catch us up on everything that’s happened in their feud so far, and each proclaim their entry into the Royal Rumble match. The WWE’s been doing a good job with these Rumble announcements across the board this year. The Rumble seems a little more important this year than it has in recent years. I feel like that has a little bit to do not only with the participants but the way they’ve been announced.
Outside of the Rumble participation announcements, this segment falls pretty flat. I haven’t said that about a segment with Miz on the mic in quite a long time. The Miz is a hell of a performer, but this week he wasn’t given much to perform with. He asks Ambrose to hand the Intercontinental Title back over to him, which in and of itself is not bad. It could have been some fun chicken heel stuff, but they ruin it by making The Miz act as though he actually believes Ambrose is going to hand him the belt. They’ve been writing The Miz at the top of his intelligence for months, and now he’s all of a sudden he’s dumb enough to believe Dean’s going to hand him the belt back?
The whole thing is just a set-up for Ambrose to return the Participation Award that Miz gave him last month. There’s about a dozen ways they could have gotten to that payoff without The Miz looking like an idiot in the process.
Miz ends up throwing the award in Ambrose’s face and then attacking him. This leads to Miz pinning Ambrose’s arms behind him so Maryse can slap him in the face. Ambrose ducks, Maryse slaps The Miz in the face, and Ambrose follows it up with Dirty Deeds to The Miz.
Who will slap who next week?
In fairness, I may not have given this segment a chance. I was immediately turned off before Ambrose got to the ring by our horrible announce team. JBL is irrationally upset that Dean Ambrose is now the Intercontinental Champion. He started this week’s show at Yosemite Sam levels of cartoon anger. Equally weird is David Otunga’s emotionless support of Ambrose. So by the time Ambrose was welcoming us to The Asylum, I was already searching for a way to escape.
Best: A Little Less Talk, And A Lot More Hitting From Behind
The scheduled Natalya/Nikki Bella match never takes place due to Natalya jumping Nikki from behind, leading to a brawl before the bell. We see this kind of segment a lot, especially in the Women’s Division, and especially with Natalya. The only thing Nattie loves more than her cat is jumping people from behind. But this week’s version was a step above the others. It felt like slightly more attention to detail was put into it.
Prior to the backstage attack, there’s a very well-done video package recapping Natalya and Nikki’s feud. It’s a good bate and switch; it helped make it feel like the match was actually supposed to happen. And if that was WWE’s intention, then it was a nice touch.
I’m mainly giving this a best due to how much more I enjoyed it over their segment last week. Anything would have been better than them yelling at each other again about being John Cena’s girlfriend and Bret Hart’s niece. They battle around the ring for a while and eventually end up the way all of these segments end up; in a Sharpshooter on the outside. Little known fact, the most effective Sharpshooter is one executed exactly where the entrance ramp opens up to the ringside area. That’s why Natalya always does it there.
Worst: Who Can You Turn To?
Congratulations, face Smackdown Live mid-carders! Dolph Ziggler has turned heel so your win/loss records can start going up. If you weren’t with us last week, let me catch you up. Dolph Ziggler has snapped. He’s sick and tired of coming up on the losing end of every match he’s wrestled against every WWE heel so far. So now he’s going to be WWE’s face for a while. HE SNAPPED!
Have they screwed up the Dolph Ziggler heel turn already? It wasn’t going to be easy to get the fans to boo Ziggler again. But a good start would have been feuding him with someone the crowd wants to cheer for. When Ziggler superkicked Kalisto last week and turned, a fair amount of the crowd was “Yes!” chanting it.
At the time, I kind of thought the audience was showing their support for Ziggler’s heel turn, or just enjoying a surprise moment, but they may have actually been cheering the act of Ziggler attacking Kalisto. Because this week when Ziggler attacks Kalisto with a chair after a clean loss to him, a good portion of the crowd had a similar reaction. I’m not saying the fans dislike Kalisto, I don’t think that’s true. But he’s nowhere near as well-liked as Ziggler.
Things don’t get any better when Apollo Crews shows up either. Here’s a guy that fans care even less about than Kalisto. And why should they? WWE has given fans no reason to care about Apollo Crews. At least Kalisto has that thing where you point in the air and repeat a word. Crews doesn’t even have one of those. You gotta get Ziggler away from these guys quick, or Dolph’s going to keep getting cheered. Worst case scenario, the crowd becomes confused and indifferent.
The problem is, who do you feud a heel Ziggler with? That question opens up a can of worms that is a big problem with Smackdown in general. Who are the fan favorites of Smackdown? John Cena, Dean Ambrose, Mojo Rawley? Seriously, who’s in that number three spot now that Ziggler’s a heel? That’s who Dolph should be feuding against, but that person doesn’t exist.
Best: I’m Still Ready And Willing
Speaking of mid-card faces the crowd doesn’t care about, American Alpha is up next, defending the Smackdown Tag Team Championship against former champs, The Wyatt Family. This week’s Family combo is Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton, and it’s another strong match between these two teams. In my opinion, not as good as their last encounter, and that solely has to do with the lack of Luke Harper in the match. As good as these matches have been, it’s the combo we haven’t seen of Bray and Harper that could give American Alpha their best main roster match yet.
I don’t know why American Alpha still seems to not be connecting with the Smackdown audience. But week after week, the Smackdown Live audience just doesn’t seem to care that much about Jordan and Gable. I don’t know what more these guys have to do. Are they going to have to give Gable a wacky redneck wife and twelve kids? Does Jordan have to come up with some sort of wacky catch phrase, or at least do something that will allow the audience to poke their fingers in the air rhythmically?
The saddest thing on Smackdown right now is when Jordan pulls down the straps and the crowds reaction is “meh.”
Hey, I don’t care how they feel anyway. I enjoyed it.
Best: For A Little Bit
I’ve been a big proponent of putting women in specialty matches that historically have been performed by men only. So you can imagine how happy I was to hear Daniel Bryan’s announcement that next week Becky Lynch and Alexa Bliss will face each other in a steel cage match. I wrote this big thing that was supposed to go here about women’s equality and moving forward, WWE doing the right thing, being on the right side of history, etc etc etc …
And then I watched the next segment and came here and deleted all that.
THE Worst: The Women’s Revolution Is Rolling Over In Its Grave
I haven’t seen every episode of Smackdown, so I’m going to say this is the worst segment since Smackdown moved to the USA Network, and know that is a pretty safe statement. Every single thing about this was bad. Not only did everyone in the match look bad, but so did the announcers, the writers, the production people … pretty much anyone that’s ever been involved in the business of wrestling. If you didn’t see it, good for you.
If a commentator in any professional sport ever said even one of the things JBL said about this woman, they would be at least made to publicly apologize, if not immediately terminated. And the worst thing was, it could maybe be justified if it was part of a storyline. But this was just flat out a segment of television where JBL verbally hazes a woman for no reason.
Oh and everything else about the segment is horrible too. The match was extremely awkward and had some real rough moments. There were long awkward pauses in the commentary, which I can only assume was Vince McMahon yelling at JBL to be meaner.
Everything was bad. Everything.
It’s going to take a long time for Smackdown to have a segment this bad again.
Or maybe not …
Best: Everything Is Right In The Universe
I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the finish of the John Cena/Baron Corbin match that main-evented this week’s Smackdown Live. Seems a lot of people figured AJ was going to get involved or Corbin was going to get disqualified. They weren’t expecting Cena to go over clean. But I can’t imagine thinking this match was going to end any other way than the way it did. In fact, I’ll go you one better, I think this match was booked perfectly.
Not only was it the outcome I expected, I feel like it was the right thing to do. You need matches like this to keep John Cena “John Cena.” And Corbin is the right person for the job. The fact that so many people feel like Corbin shouldn’t have lost clean just cements to me that he was the right guy to do so. No shame in losing a match to John Cena. At least, not yet.
Until next week, I’m Justin Donaldson and I’m announcing that I’m officially entering the Royal Rumble match. My television taught me that’s how that works.
