The Best And Worst Of WWE Smackdown Live 6/13/17: Lana! Danger Zone!


Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Lana got a Smackdown Women’s Championship match on pay-per-view despite having never wrestled on TV, Mojo Rawley failed in his attempt to defeat the leveled-up Jinder Mahal and get into the Money in the Bank ladder match, and Fandango expressed his extreme distaste for male rompers.

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for June 13, 2017.

The Best And Worst Kinds Of Parades In The Same Segment

This week’s episode begins with New Orleans’ own The Soul Rebels playing The New day to the ring with a live jazz cover of their entrance theme. It’s honestly remarkable how quickly stale Raw acts can go from caught in a Groundhog Day time loop scenario of beating a dead horse with a stick made out of lowest common denominators to feeling relatively fresh on Smackdown. I’ve enjoyed New Day more in the past few weeks than I have since … I don’t know, they thought it’d be funny to build a time machine? I think that’s when I officially turned on them.

Of course, New Day is still cornier than Jim Cornette listening to Korn in a fucking cornfield, but they’ve got a lot of talent backing them up here. I love how funny they thought calling the Usos an “off, off, off, off-Broadway production of Straight Outta Compton” was — Straight Outta Compton is not on Broadway, guys — and how instantly nuked they were when Uce and Uce called them “Drumline.” The Usos are my forever home right now.

Smackdown devoted the first fourth of the show to the tag team division, which is a good call, and set up a predictable as hail but still enjoyable New Day and Breezango vs. the Usos and the Colons 8-man tag. The problem is that instead of going straight from New Day’s cool entrance to the match, they felt the need to do the Promo Parade. If you’ve never watched … any WWE program of any kind, honestly, the promo parade is when someone cuts a promo, only to be interrupted in the middle by someone else, who then gets interrupted by someone else, and on and on until they’ve got everyone they want for a tag match to do a tag match. It’s a tired-ass way of setting up matches to begin with, and becomes insanely illogical and hacky when the match is already set up.

That’s what happens here. They announce the 8-man tag, and then we have to watch the four teams involved look shocked when they’re interrupted by each other. Just go to the match, man. Otherwise you’re wasting time, and everybody sees you doing it.

Once we get to the match, the fire’s kinda gone out for everyone. Even on a good wrestling show, so much of the crowd’s response is related to seeing the wrestlers. If you want people to pop for the match, you don’t have guys come out and stand in the ring for 15 minutes. You’re putting 14 minutes between the thrill of seeing your favorite stars live and seeing them actually do anything. And maybe kids today are more into watching these dudes stand around and talk, I don’t know. But then you do a 15 minute match, putting another 14 between the start of the match and the excitement of the finish. So you’re putting 29 minutes between the pop of seeing the wrestlers and seeing the wrestlers win or lose, and you’ve wasted at least half of those to nobody doing anything.

Also, and let’s be honest here, nobody’s going to care about ANYTHING with the Colons in it right now. New Day pinning them to get some momentum heading into Money in the Bank is absolutely the right choice, though, as it allows the tag challengers to get a strong win over the champions without actually beating the champions (which Raw would do 5-6 times in this cycle), and it gives a little bit of a rub to Breeze and Fandango.

Still hoping the Usos wreck every single one of these dudes, though.

John Cena Returns As A ‘Free Agent,’ Because Raw Desperately Needs Help

Best: Tye Dillinger Is Missing

Don’t feel bad for Tye, I think they’re giving out members of American Alpha in this month’s Slam Crate.

Best: A Women’s Champion Winning Matches

I was starting to think that didn’t happen anymore without interference or a handful of tights! But here we are, watching Naomi get a strong win over Tamina Snuka in about five minutes. I actually like the finish a lot, with Tamina going up top for her Terribly Executed Splash, Naomi using her agility to jump and kick Tamina in the side of the head, and Tamina being strong enough to hold on and stay in position but being groggy enough for Naomi to grab her again and dump her to the mat. One split-legged moonsault, and it’s over. And yeah, Tamina makes Carmella look like Manami Toyota most days, but aside from being hella low energy she didn’t do anything notably bad, so five stars for effort. Well, two and a quarter.

After the match, Lana jumps Noami from behind and debuts her new finisher from the Byron Saxton Collection®, a hammerlock, sit-out spinebuster.

Two things I enjoyed here:

1. The move is a little much — just hit a spinebuster, you know? Are you gonna lock in a Kimura after slamming Naomi down on that arm? — but Lana hit it strong and with a lot of impact. Maybe Lana will turn out to be a super worker and usher in the golden age of women’s wrestling WWE balked on by deciding Charlotte and Sasha were the only ones who could do it.

2. When Lana was standing around at ringside, the crowd chanted, “WE WANT RUSEV.” Usually it’s the other way around. YES, WE WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO HAVE RUSEV, PLEASE AND THANK YOU.

Best: WWE’s Best Babyface Is … Mojo Rawley? Really?

It’s true. Watch this promo. The guy gets asked about losing to Jinder Mahal last week, and in the span of a minute:

  • shows he’s a good dude by owning up to a loss instead of making excuses, breaking kayfabe to say he’s a good wrestler anyway or saying something about the WWE Universe
  • thanks Shane McMahon for giving him the opportunity he asked for, even though it didn’t turn out the way he wanted
  • says that he’ll use the loss as motivation to work harder next time
  • puts over Jinder Mahal, explaining that he’s not the same athlete he beat two months ago
  • is legitimately happy to see his friend, Zack Ryder, instead of seeming like he’s fishily up to something
  • wears a hat that looks like someone cut a watermelon in half and stuck it on his head like a humorous cat

And to top it off? Mojo Rawley is suddenly a really good actor. I don’t know if it’s what he’s saying or how he’s saying it, but he feels like he really means what he says, and the calm realism leading into him having to like, talk himself into his continued hypeness is wonderful. Mojo freakin’ Rowley. Who knew?

By the way, Ryder is totally going to resent you and turn on you, sweet Mojo, watch your back.

Worst: Enough With The Randy Orton

Jinder Mahal is trying his best as WWE Champion, but he’s not going to entertain anybody or prove anything as long as he’s locked in this feud with Randy Orton. This week’s Jinder segment is him speaking in a foreign language so people boo him until Orton’s music hits, the Singh Brothers do that stupid heel thing where they crowd together in the ramp waiting for nothing, and never figure out that sneaky snake Randy Orton’s going to attack Jinder from behind.

It’s so by the numbers the Count from Sesame Street could’ve agented it. Next.

Best: Little JJ

If you haven’t seen Jarrius Robertson interviewing WWE guys, you need to remedy that right now. His interview with The Miz is one of my favorite videos, and him getting business advice from Triple H and pressing him about being “the next Hornswoggle” is adorable. He’s like a little Bob Backlund. Give him all the awards.

Best: Charlotte Vs. Natalya, But

Worst: We Need To Talk About Natural Selection

The better of the two women’s matches on the night is Charlotte Flair vs. Natalya … I wanna say Hart? We’ve seen them wrestle a lot, and aside from those random match segments where they forget how figure-fours are supposed to work, they’re always pretty good.

We need to talk about Natural Selection, though. The move is always kinda dumb, but it really doesn’t work in matches like these, where Natalya sets up to take it by staying on all fours and looking at the ground. When Charlotte goes up and over to “cutter” her, Natalya’s head goes from six inches off the ground to zero. She just like, tucks her chin and touches the top of her head to the mat, then falls over unconscious. You’ve at least gotta come up on your knees and lean back a little so it looks like Charlotte’s doing something to you. Unless Natalya’s anterior fontanelle never hardened and you can kill her by like, aggressively putting a hat on her head.

Best: The Fashion Files, As Always

Fandango is forced to stop his inner monologue mid-compliment when he realizes Tyler Breeze isn’t around, then rushes to the locker room to find Breeze the victim of an attack. Breeze can’t remember who attacked him, but he says they had greasy hair, dry skin, and either one or two arms. So it’s definitely Big Cass, right? Dango does a police sketch, which ends up being stick figures. Breeze says THAT’S THEM. So did WWE finally sign Zack Sabre Jr. or what?

Be sure not to miss the wonderful Sami Zayn easter egg in the background:

He could also stand to use a little Oil of Olay.

Best-ish: The Main Event

Money in the Bank has six competitors on Sunday — three heels and three faces — so it’s been written in stone since the beginning of recorded history that they’d have to have a six-man tag on the go-home show. It is what it is.

Before the match, we get two conflicting backstage segments that I love when watched together. First, Sami Zayn approaches New Japan Pro Wrestling buddies AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura about “strategy” for the night’s match, and Styles is just like, “it’s fine, we’re good.” Even the guys in the match don’t really care about it. Sami says they’re three of the best wrestlers in the world, and Styles brutally side-eyes him.

Meanwhile, Kevin Owens interrupts a tense sit between Dolph Ziggler and Baron Corbin to explain that he’s thought about the night’s match, and they have one of two options: they cant beat each other up like idiots a few days before Money in the Bank, or they can put aside their differences for a second, maul the babyfaces and improve their chances of winning. The heels seem uneasy about it, but they consider it.

Not only is is great and extremely telling that the heels will at least consider a logical point of view and the babyfaces can’t even handle mild politeness without shitting all over each other, but I love how it reinforces that Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn really should still be best friends. They’re each annoying in their own way, but at the end of the day they truly, sincerely give a shit about being successful pro wrestlers, and put way more thought into what they’re gonna do and why than their co-workers. God, all I want is for them to get individually fed up with the world and realize the only people they can rely on are each other, whether they like it or not. Even at their worst, they’re forever connected.

The match is fine, again, because it’s a night of Perfectly Fine Matches. The finish is Zayn getting another surprise pin on Corbin with a flash Helluva Kick, which telegraphs the Money in the Bank match pretty hard. There’s nothing WWE loves more than having a guy lose non-stop for two months to set up him winning a championship. They LOVE IT. They think it’s “unexpected,” and to WWE, “unexpected” trumps “a good idea” almost every time. Not that I think Corbin winning Money in the Bank’s a bad idea, I love Baron Corbin, I just wish they’d try to make people look good for a while before saying they’re the top star of the company.

They also telegraphed Nakamura not winning by having him end the night on top of a ladder, holding the Money in the Bank briefcase. If that was the image they were gonna give us at Money in the Bank, they wouldn’t have given it to us here, right?

Unless they think it’d be “unexpected” now.

All in all, not much of a show this week. There’s some good character work going on, but everyone’s in a holding pattern until the pay-per-view. Onward to Money in the Bank, and to July 4, which I still really hope Jinder Mahal has asked off for.

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