The Best And Worst Of WWE Smackdown 11/12/15: Lightning In A Bottle

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown: Between last week’s episode and this week’s, Seth Rollins blew out his knee and necessitated a change in the entirety of the WWE main-event scene. Whoops! Now we’re in the middle of round one of a WWE World Heavyweight Championship title tournament, culminating at Survivor Series. Roman Reigns is winning, but we’re having fun going through the motions.

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown for Nov. 12, 2015.

Best: BRAYCIER IS COMING

“You see, this is the way the world works! The Wyatts show up, and BLOOD RUNS COLD!”

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When Bray stole Kane and the Undertaker’s souls, he should’ve combined them to become a ninja skeleton. What’s James Vandenberg up to? Can we bring him in as Bray Wyatt’s weird dad?

Worst: A Few Notes

1. Maybe I’m just not 6 years old, but I can’t believe anything Bray Wyatt’s saying. What has he ever actually done? He kidnapped Kane back in the long long ago, and then Kane just kinda forgot about it and came back totally fine. Now, he’s kidnapped Kane and the Undertaker and “devoured their souls,” which gives him lightning powers. That kept The Brothers of Destruction on the shelf for about a week. Now he’s saying he took “pieces of them” they can never get back? You mean their souls? Going from “I ATE YOUR SOUL TO TAKE YOUR MYSTICAL POWERS” to “I might’ve made them feel bad for a while” is a hell of a downgrade. That’s like going from “murdered by a train” to “emotionally disturbed.” Bray’s promo should just be, “welp, nothing I do matters,” followed by him hitting play on a Halloween sound effects CD.

2. Is Braun Strowman the wettest person of all time? I’ve seen Phoebe Cates climb out of swimming pools looking drier than him. The rest of the Wyatts should lick him to stay hydrated.

3. At Survivor Series, “any two” of Bray’s choosing will face Kane and The Undertaker, which is a little less thrilling now that we’ve seen Kane and Undertaker beat up all four of them at once without breaking a sweat. Maybe Braun broke everyone’s sweats for them? Anyway, you’d think that his top two draft picks would be “Bray Wyatt” and “Murderous Ray Jackson,” but can he pick ANYONE? Can Bray choose that cool gas-station-attendant version of Daniel Bryan that was in the group for a hot minute? Can he just pick, like, John Cena and Randy Orton? He should pick Luke Gallows and “Prime Time” Brian Lee and make Kane and Undertaker wrestle themselves.

Best: The Day The Music Died

Playing the role of the Krustyburglar this week is ♫ Fandango ♫, getting a 5-minute break from the purgatory they send him to whenever they don’t have any jealous girlfriend valet angles.

I don’t know why, but I love Strowman’s finish. It’s literally, “I’M GOING TO PICK YOU UP AND HOLD YOU UNTIL YOU DIE.” It’s like an inspirational Pinterest quote in submission form. He’s the kind of wrestler I’d have lived in fear of as a little kid, and pro wrestling always needs a really big guy who can’t really do much, but can’t fall down. He’s the Super Smash Bros. version of Ganondorf. He’s slow as hell and his axe kick takes forever to prep, but if he hits it, your ass is flying offscreen.

I eagerly await Fandango’s next appearance, which I’ll assume is a quick loss to Kevin Owens to make up for Owens losing a bigger match to somebody important the night before.

Best: King Eat-A-Loss Eats A Loss

We’ve seen a ton (sorry, a “tonne”) of Neville vs. Barrett matches, but I think this was far and away the best of them. This is not to be confused with Neville vs. Sheamus, which was Far And Away the best.

Anyway, what I loved about this is how legit Barrett seemed. He’s taken so many losses and been so hilariously neutered as both Intercontinental Champion and King of the Ring that it’s hard to take him seriously as a threat, even when he’s acting tough. He usually just bounces around taking offense, does a cheap thing or two, turns his elbowpad inside out and either wins (lol) or loses. Here, he’s motherf*cking Wade Barrett. He’s the can’t-miss future WWE Champion who won the first season of NXT. He’s dragging Neville around by the hair, slamming him down on his face and squatting over him to taunt him while they look at the World Championship. He’s got VIGOR, man. I firmly believe that Barrett could be one of the very best performers and characters in the company if he could just stay healthy enough to make it through somebody saying, “hey, Wade Barrett’s good.” He usually dislocates his shoulder by the “Wade.”

And of course he loses, because that’s what King Barretts do. Neville will be a great round-two opponent for Owens, and I wish the disconnect between NXT and the main roster wasn’t too massive for us to connect their character histories. If we pretend this goober WWE version of Alberto Del Rio doesn’t exist, round two of that tournament is looking amazing.

Worst: Speaking Of Goobers

The problem with MexAmerica is that there are no stakes. What are they trying to accomplish? If they win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, do they gain control over the actual nations? Being U.S. Champ hasn’t done sh*t to advance the territorial claim of MexAmerica, as they’re about a month in and their citizenship has plateaued at 2. Now they’re in the United Kingdom saying it’s more like the Divided Kingdom. Del Rio’s entrance should be Bray Wyatt’s Fireflies, but instead of lights it’s people making wanking motions.

Like, what even is this? Alberto vs. Stardust could be a killer match, but nobody seems to know what’s going on. The crowd is absolutely motionless (despite what the sudden boos and cheers would have you believe), they’re both kinda working tweener without committing to any specific alignment, and Stardust has to mindlessly set himself up for Del Rio’s convoluted corner finisher when the action stops. I want Del Rio to wrestle Mark Henry, and for Henry to suddenly be like, “time to try this Phoenix Splash I’ve been working on.”

I don’t want to just throw in with popular wrestling opinion all the time, but there’s not a more flatline-friendly combination of terms than “Alberto Del Rio” and “WWE Champion.” Dude makes Sheamus hoarding the Money in the Bank briefcase feel like Steve Austin at WrestleMania 14.

Best: LOO CHA LOO CHA

So, back to the good stuff.

Every good tournament needs a 12th seed beating a 5th, and that’s what Kalisto vs. Ryback is. Spoiler reports I read complained about it being too botchy, but the TV version we got is GREAT, and I continue to love Ryback when he’s able to wrestle someone quick and dynamic. When he’s in the ring with someone like Daniel Bryan, the gears start spinning in his head and he sorta realizes what he’s supposed to be and what he’s supposed to be doing.

Kalisto is money. He’s not Rey Mysterio in 1996 (or 2002), but he could be if you wanted it. You could make him that. Pairing him with Sin Cara and making them the “Lucha” team in a company without other luchadores isn’t the best idea I’ve ever heard, but having him re-up the “biggest little man” act and hang with/occasionally defeat guys like Ryback could turn him into something special. The “yeah but” of this paragraph is that Kalisto kinda-sorta only won this so Alberto Del Rio could murk a Hispanic guy in round two, but I hope that doesn’t end up being true. How great would it be if Kalisto could make it to the semi-finals? Imagine if Kalisto made it and Cesaro managed to beat Roman Reigns, and we got a 20-minute Cesaro/Kalisto match at Survivor Series.

WWE should create a What If show on the Network that runs alternate-reality wrestling shows with matches and results we’d like. Just put the pink Saved by the Bell dream filter around it, it’d be fine.

Anyway, this is more of what I want from a WWE show. A fresh match where the wrestlers and characters interact with each other in fresh, exciting ways, and there’s both an established consequence and a clean finish. It doesn’t always have to be clean, but it shouldn’t ALWAYS be dirty. Dirty is the exception. That’s why we get mad about it. It corrupts the norm. Great stuff, and let’s try to keep from throwing ourselves through a window between rounds 2 and 3.

Worst: The Big Bang Theory Audience Loves Roman Reigns

Shout-out to the WWE production guy in charge of the canned boos and cheers who has completely given up.

Roman Reigns is backstage with Renee Young and cutting a promo in dead silence. When he finishes a point, the crowd suddenly goes YAAAAAAAAY and then stops cold so he can keep talking. More silence. “Believe that!” YAAAAAAAAYstop. It’s starting to sound like nWo Saturday Night in here.

Best/Worst: Wins Schmins!

You know that thing I said about the Wyatt Family never accomplishing anything? It might be okay if they were, you know, pro wrestlers who had chosen this profession with pro wrestling-related goals in mind. Even on shows like Lucha Underground when they have characters that are reincarnated dragons or zombified personifications of death, they want to win matches and championships. The Wyatts have made it clear that wins and losses don’t matter and don’t have a larger established goal, so what’s the point? Why is any of this happening? Why, when they finally do something, does it keep everything the same?

That’s this week’s main event. Luke Harper and Erick Rowan wrestle The Usos and it’s pretty fun (especially if you like the one Usos match), but it ends when Bray decides they’ve had enough and orders a Family-wide beatdown. That’s Bray Wyatt in a nutshell. He’s an evil chaotic mastermind who can harvest mens’ souls, but he gets so upset that the Usos are getting offense in a throwaway tag match that he’ll throw the entire thing in the garbage to beat them up. I don’t know. I don’t know what he wants or what he’s trying to do.

After the beatdown, Wyatt is threatened by spooky lighting and fire pyro, which … were the “pieces” of Kane and Undertaker Bray took, right? So now he doesn’t even control that? What’d he do, punch them in a parking lot a few weeks ago and assume that made him the devil?

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