Hey, Blue Team.
There is no reason for this week’s SmackDown to exist. Once again, there is some good wrestling, but literally nothing happens. This is some paint-by-numbers SmackDown. It’s a good thing that WWE’s current roster is so good, because with a different set of performers, these shows would be unwatchable. Imagine the same booking of tonight’s six-man tag-team main event, but with guys like Mark Jindrak, Snitsky, and Luther Reigns. I guess what I’m saying is, I’ve seen darker days.
If you’re in Southern California, Dolph Ziggler and I will once again be doing comedy together this Saturday night, midnight, at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre in Hollywood. The show is called Tournament of Nerds, it’s only $5 and it’s always a fun time.
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And now without further ado, here is The Best and Worst of SmackDown for June 16, 2016.
Worst: All Aboard The Promooooooooo Train!
This week’s SmackDown opens with Chris Jericho standing in the middle of the ring looking quite good as he is about to host The Highlight Reel. Jericho begins by pointing out that The Highlight Reel has some upgrades. A new Jeri-Tron television monitor and a $20,000 Serengeti yak hair carpet. Chris doesn’t have to announce his first guest, because as soon as he stated how expensive the rug was I knew his guest would be Dean Ambrose, and I knew he’d have something with him to spill on it. If this were the Attitude Era, Vince Russo would have had him poop on it, but we have slightly progressed over the past 16 years. Lo and behold, Dean Ambrose arrives with a cup of coffee and someone’s version of hilarity ensues. Ambrose acts like he’s going to spill the coffee on the carpet and Jericho reacts. As lame, uninspired, and predictable as it is, Jericho actually does a really good job with it, doing his best to elevate the material and keeping it entertaining.
The highlight of this week’s Highlight Reel is Jericho having enough of Ambrose’s tomfoolery and taking away his Jeri-Tron privileges. He has the Jeri-Tron raised up above the ring so Ambrose can’t throw him through it like Shawn Michaels did. Points for continuity. This may be the first time outside of a match that a WWE character has learned something from an event from their past and made an active change to prevent it from happening again. But that’s the last time this segment shows any innovation. Because it’s time for another Xerox copy of a page from the book WWE Writing for Beginners.
They could have left well enough alone and had a formulaic but good segment between Jericho and Ambrose, adding another step to their one-on-one feud while still building to the Money in the Bank Ladder Match. But instead, went full generic and turned this into yet another boring WWE trope. All four men in a Fatal Fourway, a bunch of random dudes in an upcoming Battle Royale, and all the participants in a Money in the Bank Ladder Match must have a segment on RAW or Smackdown (or both) where each participant comes out one at a time and interrupts everyone else. It has to happen; it’s been written in stone by Vince McMahon and passed down through the generations.
Kevin Owens’ music hits, out comes Owens. But wait! Now there’s music playing with more of a Latin flavor. It’s Alberto Del Rio to interrupt Owens. Swiss siren and here’s Cesaro. Before he can even get his jacket off, it’s ska time. Same old, same old, same old, same old. I could have written this week’s Best and Worst of Smackdown without having watched the show. Just the knowledge that Sunday is the Money in the Bank pay-per-view allows me to fill in the blanks of what Smackdown’s going to be the Thursday before. Maybe the brand split is going to fix this, or maybe we’ll just end up with two distinct rosters doing the same storylines year after year instead of just one.
And Ambrose spills the coffee.
Best: Just Enough
The first match of the evening is a Fatal Fourway with Big Cass vs. Aiden English vs. Luke Gallows vs. Kofi Kingston and at least 50 people on commentary. I liked this match a lot. It was just enough of a preview of Sunday’s tag title match without giving too much of it away. Five more minutes and a little more interference and we would have seen a good chunk of Sunday’s match. But this left me wanting more. I like Kofi Kingston as the winner too. He’s a veteran and one third of the tag champs. Wrestling math definitely has him being able to pin Aiden English; it makes sense and it enables the announce team to have something to say other than “if that happens on Sunday, we’ll have new tag champs.”
Sunday’s card is pretty stacked. I hope they give these four teams the time they deserve to tell a great story and put on a fantastic match. I don’t think it’s going to steal the show from AJ and Cena, but it could get up there.
Worst: Groundhog’s Day
The next segment is Baron Corbin vs. Zack Ryder with Dolph Ziggler on commentary and it’s a whoooooole lot of stuff we’ve seen before, but with the littlest effort put in to slightly tweak it. The only thing is new is Zack Ryder’s T-shirt. The following is what I’m assuming the conversation between two WWE “Creative” Team Members sounded like when booking this match.
Writer 1: Have we done Baron Corbin vs. Zack Ryder with Corbin winning, building to a match with Dolph Ziggler?
Writer 2: Yes.
Writer 1: Have we had a Baron Corbin match with Dolph Ziggler on commentary?
Writer 2: Yes.
Writer 1: Have we had a Baron Corbin match with Dolph on commentary where Ziggler’s mere presence caused Corbin to get distracted, almost losing his match, but still winning?
Writer 2: Yes.
Writer 1: Have we had all those things happen at once?
Writer 2: No.
Writer 1: Well, that’s 10 minutes of this week’s SmackDown finished.
They have given these guys so little to work with for so many months. I like both of these guys and the matches have been good, but if you’re not going to do anything new with them, then it’s time to move on.
Best: Saved By The Bulgarian
Rusev vs. Kalisto was scheduled to be the next match and I was scheduled to be unhappy about it. I love both of these guys and they have great chemistry together, but we’ve seen it. I’m done. Luckily, Rusev decides to crush before the match can ever happen.
Rusev’s waiting in the ring while Kalisto is making his way toward it. Kalisto hits the trampoline to spring inside when Rusev grabs him in mid air, pulls him into the ring, and launches him with a belly to belly before the match can begin. He then follows it up with a kick, then locks in the new and improved Super Accolade. Out comes Sin Cara, who suffers a similar fate. Before too long, the whistle blows and out comes buzzkill Titus O’Neil to break up the Accolade party.
Titus goes after Rusev hard, displaying a new side of him we haven’t seen before. I haven’t been looking forward to Rusev and Titus’ match this coming Sunday, but after this encounter, my interest is definitely piqued. If both these men bring the intensity to Money in the Bank, we could have something here.
Best: With The Greatest of Ease
AJ Styles vs. Xavier Woods was by far the best match on this week’s Smackdown. I’m still not completely sold on AJ’s heel mic work, but his heel work in the ring is spot on. His style has changed dramatically while keeping the same move set. He’s slowed things down and become more methodical. Instead of pulling out all the stops from the beginning of the match on, AJ saves his Phenomenal Forearms and Calf Crushers until he really needs them, seeming almost angry when he has to use them. Being able to switch his styles like that is just another testament to how great AJ Styles really is.
Speaking of in-ring talent, Xavier Woods is so outstanding outside the ring that it’s majorly overshadowed how good he is in the ring. He’s developed a really fun offense that you don’t get to see much of in the New Day tag team matches. I would like to see more one-on-one matches for Xavier. There’s a lot of guys on that Cruiserweight Classic lineup that I bet he could have some very entertaining matches with.
After his victory, Styles gets on the mic to talk about his match with Cena on Sunday at Money in the Bank. He keeps it short and sweet, just the way it should be. I may not have been anxiously waiting 15 years for AJ Styles vs. John Cena, but I sure am interested right now in seeing what these two can do together.
I still don’t know…
Worst: I Think I’ve Seen This Somewhere Before
The absolute epitome of a match I don’t need to see again is this one. It is Charlotte vs. Natalya. This match seems like it has happened a ridiculous amount of times. Is there a Slammy Award for Most Matches? If so, Charlotte and Natalya have got to be up there with Alberto Del Rio and Kalisto. Out of all the Natalya/Charlotte matches, this is another one. That last joke is as old as these Charlotte and Natalya matches are getting. These two have nothing left to say together. It’s all been done. Now I feel bad for complaining about Baron Corbin and Dolph Ziggler earlier. Their feud feels like it’s going to get cut off too soon compared to this.
There are so many interesting things they could be doing with the Women’s Division right now, but they keep doing the one thing over and over again that has lost my interest. They could have done a Women’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match, they could have had Charlotte defend her belt against literally anyone other than Natalya. Instead, at this Sunday’s Money in the Bank, we get yet another incarnation of Charlotte and Natalya, this time with tag team partners. When will it end? This is not a rhetorical question. Can someone at WWE please let me know when this is going to end?
Best: The Best There Is At What They Do
If it was any other six guys, I would say there is nothing left to see on Sunday. Chris Jericho, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, Dean Ambrose, Alberto Del Rio, and Cesaro have all wrestled each other over and over again on every USA Network WWE show since they were announced as the six participants in this year’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match. The outcomes of those matches were all inconsequential. Every match blends together. I can’t remember what combination of who wrestled when. But all of the matches have been good. Some have been great. And in spite of the overkill and the cliche segments like the one that opened the show, I’m still looking forward to seeing what these six men can do together in that match on Sunday.
No matter how lazy and uninspired the WWE writing can be, these six men haven’t let it stop them from performing at the top of their intelligence every time they get into the ring. This week’s six-man tag-team match was more of the same and that is perfectly fine by me. It is another great but forgettable match. Fantastically wrestled, but the outcome holds no consequence. I’m never going to complain about watching good wrestlers having good wrestling matches. As we begin to wrap up this era of pointless SmackDowns on our way to the brand extension, I can’t help but think about how lucky I am that these pointless matches at least contain fantastic talent.
Until next week, I’m Justin Donaldson, and I once sat through a SmackDown main evented by Matt Hardy vs. The Great Khali.
