Roman Reigns knows the power of positive reinforcement when training his Dean Ambrose.
Pre-show Notes:
– It’s your last chance to share a Friday Night Smackdown B&W! You’ll kick yourself if you miss out on this one-of-a-kind experience. Here’s the buttons…
– Join the cool kids’ wrestling club by following With Spandex on Twitter and Facebook. Follow yours truly on Twitter too!
Hit the next page to continue smacking down…
Worst: 10 Seconds of Silence for the Smackdown Special
So, Smackdown is moving to Thursday next week, which is the 2015 event I’m anticipating above all others. Well, okay, I suppose I’m getting married in May, so that’s number one, but my God, no more writing about Usos matches at three o’clock on Saturday morning. I AM PLEASED. Even better, it seems like WWE may be planning to make the show at least passingly important again. Daniel Bryan is returning to the ring on Smackdown next week! And Jerry Lawler’s patented email forward yukz are now a Thursday exclusive! Uh, oh boy! And hey, maybe Smackdown promos might get some actual content and become something other than completely useless.
Yeah, I’m probably being over-optimistic with that last point, but what the hell, until WWE dashes my hopes I’m going to stick my head in the sand and pretend like this is the last week I have to put up with a waste of time Smackdown Special. And what a Smackdown Special we got this week. Rollins comes out as usual, dryly recaps Raw, then calls for silence and a 10-bell salute for the careers of Ryback, Rowan and Ziggler. Yup, that’s right, the final Friday Night Smackdown kicked off with a guy standing silently in the ring and literally just letting the clock run out. Ballsy WWE, ballsy.
Of course Roman Reigns had to interrupt the 10-bell salute like a butthole and before long I was yearning for the silence again. Apparently somebody decided badass Roman Reigns wasn’t connecting, so tonight they were trying out sassypants Roman Reigns, and wow, this may have been the worst stuff to ever come out of Roman’s mouth. Yes, I’m including his TLC promo in that statement. You could tell Roman knew he had some rotten material, so he was just sprinting through the set-ups and punchlines as quickly as possible — “Sorry didn’t mean to interrupt but no I’m not sorry cuz yer stupid ha ha ha, next joke now.” At one point he said Seth Rollins had donkey dung for brains. Donkey dung for brains. What professional writer commits that to the page and doesn’t immediately quit out of shame?
Worst: Befalling the Disfavor of the Authority
Thankfully Roman’s interruption of Rollins was eventually interrupted by Kane, who grabbed the shitty promo baton from Roman and ran with it, letting a seemingly random assortment of words tumble out of his mouth. Eventually Kane managed to stumble his way around to booking Rollins and Big Show vs. Reigns and a partner of his choosing, which was supposed to be a punishment, because, for some reason, Kane was totally confident nobody would want to be Roman’s partner. Yeah, sure, the coolest, toughest, most popular guy in the company isn’t going to be able to find a partner – that’s how things work in WWE, right?
Worst: Falling in With the Wrong Crowd
Oh, Cesaro, no – you’re better than this. Just because you and Tyson dressed up as Rosebuds that one time to attack The New Day for, uh, some reason, doesn’t mean you have to keep hanging out with Adam Rose. In fact I’d very strongly advise against it.
The match between Big E and Adam Rose was exactly what you’d expect. I can’t stand Big E’s big goofy body blows any more – it’s the only way he ever hits a guy. Filling all your “striking” slots with the same move is lazy character creating my friend. Oh, and not to pile on, but Big E also revived a classic and somehow made poor Adam Rose bleed from the mouth during the match. Least Big E could have done is let Rose borrow the washrag he keeps in his singlet.
Worst: What About the Warlord and Barbarian?
Welp, making hollow comparisons to the Road Warriors is officially part of The Ascension’s entrance now I guess. The Chode Warriors came out, cut the promo they cut on Raw word-for-word, then inexplicably also compared themselves to Warlord and Barbarian. On Raw they should say they’re better than Power & Glory – even JBL couldn’t couldn’t get offended about that one. Ehhh, on second though, maybe they should play it even safer and say they’re better than Gymini.
Anyways, yeah, the match was exactly the same as the one on Raw too. A 30-second squash accompanied by JBL yelling about how The Ascension is garbage and their opponents are dirty Mexicans or whatever. This is the worst, the dirt f*cking worst. So glad these guys were NXT tag champs for a year.
Worst: Fired Up Naomi
Man, Naomi’s straight hair is the worst hair-related thing to befall WWE since Layla’s straight hair. Also, Naomi did an insert promo before this match, saying she and Alicia have been friends for years, which isn’t even close to true. I don’t recall them ever exchanging words before Raw. Not all black people are friends, WWE. Stop making me type that at least monthly.
Naomi and her sad-making straight hair also had a crappy match. The poor girl is kind of sloppy and out of control on her best days, and having to play “fired up” doesn’t help the situation. Naomi blasted right out of the cannon with a one-legged dropkick, moved onto some wonky monkey flips and a crappy hurricanrana, then of course got rolled up for the pin. Girl, take a breath, slow down try to be a little more UCE-SO CHILL. It’ll help.
Worst: Somebody Get Bray’s Promo Closet Some Ventilation
Why is Bray Wyatt’s promo hole full of smoke now? Is something on fire in there? Did Harper and Rowan leave the family because they were afraid of second-hand smoke? Anyways, Bray said some words about Dean Ambrose and LA LA LA, noooot listening – this Bray Wyatt/Dean Ambrose thing is over. No Martin Luther King Day Melee, I’m begging you.
Worst: Stop Trying to Disguise Usos/Rhodes Matches
Do you think I don’t see what you’re doing, WWE? An Usos vs. Dust Bros. match with a third party thrown in is still an Usos vs. Dust Bros. match. I’m onto you. Stop doing this. Sticking Miz and/or Sandow into Usos/Rhodes matches is hurting my enjoyment of Miz and Sandow, and that’s an unforgivable crime.
Worst: Damien Mizslow
Speaking of my enjoyment of Miz and Sandow being damaged, sigh, it’s not quite what it used to be. You can tell the powers that be have started tampering with the act – what made it funny, what made it really work, was how quick Sandow was. Miz would do something, and Sandow would copy him on no more than a half-second delay. It was impossible to catch every brilliant little thing Sandow was doing, but that was okay.
Now WWE has slowed the whole thing down for the rubes. Miz gets tossed out of the ring and Mizdow gets into the ring 30-seconds later and dramatically throws himself out of the ring. It’s a spot now, a easy-to-recognize punchline, but that sharp timing, that in the moment brilliance is being lost. That said, I don’t want to be too mean to Sandow – him doing a whole pin-reversal sequence on the apron was classic stuff. You can’t “improve” this thing WWE, so please stop trying.
Worst: Have I Died? Is This Hell?
Bad News Barrett won the Intercontinental Championship on Raw, so guess what happened on Smackdown? Yup, he lost a non-title match! TO SIN F*CKING CARA. What have I done to deserve this show? Did I step on a bug and Butterfly Effect some Pacific Island off the map or something?
This wasn’t a hard-fought upset by Sin Cara or anything – everything about this segment was solely designed to make Barrett look bad. The announcers spend the entire match talking about how Barrett is in the Royal Rumble and boy, imagine if he headlined Wrestlemania, and then he just randomly loses to weak-ass kick and senton. The message was pretty clear – it doesn’t matter what version of NXT you came from, you are f*cked.
Best: This House Show Main Event Was Okay I Guess
Guys, you’ll never guess what happened – just when things looked bleak, rebellious, Authority-hating former Shield member Dean Ambrose came down to tag with Roman Reigns! It’s okay Kane, there’s no way you could have seen that coming.
This was a total house show match, with nobody trying particularly hard and going for the easiest, most crowd-pleasing stuff as often as possible. Ambrose started the match wrestling completely normally, then when we returned from a commercial break, he was suddenly cartoonishly selling the serious knee injury he suffered in Monday’s ambulance match. In the interest of not having an all-Worsts report, I’ll say Roman was, as usual, much more entertaining in a tag team setting, as he let Ambrose do all the meat and potatoes and just tagged in to barrel around and hit Noble and Mercury with double Superman punches. And hey, it felt nice to see two-thirds of The Shield teaming up to win a match again.
And so that’s the end of Friday Night Smackdown – I suppose it’s appropriate that it ended on such a lazy, grindingly rote note. But Thursday Smackdown is going to be great, right? RIGHT?
