Hey, Blue Team.
Is it just me, or has it felt like SummerSlam is taking forever to get here? I may be looking forward to all the main events less now than when they were announced. The feuds on the Smackdown end of the card continue to be less than inspiring this week. Ambrose/Ziggler remains weird, Cena/Styles remains bad, and the IC Title match seems nonexistent. In spite of it all, I’m still looking forward to SummerSlam. I just want it to hurry up and get here.
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And now without further ado, here is The Best and Worst of Smackdown Live for August 16, 2016.
Best: Here’s What
After detouring through Wyatt Country for a few weeks, Dean Ambrose and Dolph Ziggler’s WWE Heavyweight Championship feud seems to be back on track. This week’s opening segment sees the two men as guests on Miz TV. Miz is quickly silenced so that Ambrose and Ziggler can get serious. Well, so Ziggler can get serious at least.
We’re days away from SummerSlam, yet even after tagging together and watching Ziggler handily defeat Bray Wyatt one-on-one, Ambrose still doesn’t seem to feel like Dolph Ziggler is much of a challenge, and is very nonchalant about the whole thing. Why should I be excited for this match if Dean isn’t? Maybe this will turn out to be one of those storylines where Ambrose gains respect for Ziggler through a hard fought pay-per-view match, but I want Dean to have respect for Ziggler now.
The thing that bothers me most about all of this is that it’s not even coming from a place where Ambrose is talking about how much better of a wrestler he is than Ziggler. It’s coming from a place where Dean believes he’s going to beat him because Ziggler just doesn’t have what it takes. I’m not sure what WWE is going for, but by about the halfway point of the segment I was starting to feel like seeing Ambrose lose that belt.
Ambrose seems pretty apathetic, especially next to Ziggler who once again brought the heat. A really great performance by Ziggler all around here. Not only did he pull me back into wanting to see their upcoming match after Ambrose turned me off from it, but he also did a great job of silencing the audience’s “What?” chants (though I was a little worried about how red he was turning). Ziggler wraps things up with a superkick from out of nowhere that was perfectly timed and truly unexpected by that point. I can’t see an outcome on Sunday other than Ambrose retaining, but Dolph is doing his best to try to make me think otherwise.
A supplemental worst goes out to the “go home” segment for The Miz and Apollo Crews’ Intercontinental Title match at Summerslam. It happened during a commercial break. They show highlights of Crews coming out to confront The Miz after he wrapped up with Ziggler and Ambrose. And that’s it. That’s what these guys get on the show tonight. I kind of feel bad complaining about the Ambrose/Ziggler feud when these guys haven’t had a feud at all. I’m still looking forward to their match at Summerslam, but c’mon, WWE. Give these guys something to do on the way to it. It’ll be a shame if Miz’s IC Title reign comes to an end without a buildup to it.
Worst: Directionless Division
Can you really call something a “division” if you can fit all the members of that division into one match? They’re doing it with all of Smackdown’s women at SummerSlam, and they did it with all of Smackdown’s tag teams on this week’s show. Whereas the Women’s Division has been able to hold my interest with interesting storylines and solid builds for the new talent, Smackdown’s tag team division has left me completely uninterested and feels totally directionless.
This week’s six team tag match featuring American Alpha, The Usos, and The Hype Brothers vs. The Vaudevillains, The Ascension, and Breezango didn’t do anything to help matters. It felt like a placeholder. It felt like a simple way to get all of these teams on television to kill time until they figure out what they’re doing with them. It really should have been American Alpha alone against the three heel teams, because The Usos and the Hype Bros just felt like dead weight compared to Jordan and Gable.
I don’t want to believe that the division is dead on arrival. I mean, they have American Alpha. You shouldn’t need more than that. Plus, The Vaudevillains are still a great team, they just need some heat back. And there’s a lot of potential in Breezango. You could do something with all these guys. But first you have to, you know, do something with these guys. This is barely something.
Best: Less Is More
Eva Marie and Naomi not wrestling each other accomplished so much more than every tag team wrestling each other did. Once again this week, Eva Marie could not compete. She apparently had some traffic issues on her way to the arena. It continues to be the smartest booking on Smackdown. An extra bonus this week was changing up her scheduled opponent. The last two week’s it’s been Becky Lynch. This week it was the debut of Glow-in-the-Dark Naomi.
Naomi’s back, and yes, she glows in the dark now. I’m totally fine with that. I was starting to enjoy her as a heel, but I’ll take her glowing in the dark instead. When Naomi came out, my wife yelled, “Yeah girl! You got yourself a gimmick!” So it looks like glowing Naomi is already working for some people. Hey Smackdown tag division, call me once the Hype Brothers glow in the dark.
Best: I Guess
So, I guess Curt Hawkins is coming back. I really don’t have any feelings on this one way or another. I’m always happy for someone when they find full time employment, and this will bring Smackdown Live’s mid-card up to a whopping five wrestlers, so for those reasons alone I’ll give this a best.
Worst: Sending A Message
Way back at the beginning of the show in the cold open, Heath Slater interrupted a backstage segment between Randy Orton and Shaniel Bryan as he tried to deliver a possibly stolen fruit basket to Bryan and Shane-O-Mac. The outcome of that segment is this match between Orton and Heath Slater, where if Slater wins he gets a Smackdown Live contract. The cold open was great. Tonally it was perfect, keeping the levity of the Heath Slater storyline and working it into a match against Orton.
Unfortunately that levity was lost when it came time for the actual match. This should have been a fun squash match, but was no fun at all. The match barely starts before the ref stops it due to Randy not letting Heath out of the corner as he continuously punches him in the head. What follows is your typical “sending a message” beatdown. Orton throws Slater across the announce table, DDTs him on the concrete, etc.
This is so lame. I’m pretty sure Brock Lesnar knew Orton could manhandle Slater before this message was sent. This does nothing to make Orton look strong; it kind of just makes him look petty. There’s no reason for him to do this to Slater. A quick clean victory would have shown that Orton is focused and confident heading into Sunday. The way this segment went down, it just made it seem like he’s frustrated and taking it out on Slater.
Worst: Why Is Any Of This Happening?
Why are Shaniel Bryan such vindictive assholes? Who thought this was funny? Top to bottom, what is funny about this? In case you didn’t see Smackdown, here’s what happened: Hard working family man Heath Slater has been doing whatever he can for weeks to get a job with Raw or Smackdown, since neither of them drafted him during the brand split. No matter what has been thrown in front of him, Heath Slater has stepped up to the challenge, from Rhyno to Randy Orton, and even Brock Lesnar. In spite of beatdown after beatdown, he keeps coming back.
Tonight, he finally got that contract when Randy Orton was disqualified for severely beating him. Post-match, while attempting to sign the contract that he rightfully won and while obviously suffering from symptoms of a concussion (or possibly worse, who knows), Slater’s concussed brain accidentally mistakes Shane McMahon for Stephanie McMahon, an obvious sign that Slater should be immediately taken to the hospital. Daniel Bryan watches this and does nothing but laugh at Slater. Then Shane McMahon, with a smug look on his face, takes the contract away from Heath Slater. They then walk away, leaving Slater babbling incoherently.
If this isn’t the beginning of a storyline where Shaniel Bryan has gone mad with power, then this is just hot garbage. They’re supposed to be good guys, right? Not psychopaths? Be a STAR, Shaniel Bryan.
Best: The Rockin’ Years
A lot of old favorites are returning to Smackdown — Curt Hawkins, Rhyno — but tonight had my favorite return of all. During tonight’s match between Dean Ambrose and Erick Rowan, the world got to witness the return of Bray Wyatt’s rocking chair. It’s good to have you back, Rocky.
The rocking chair was one of my favorite parts about OG Bray Wyatt. I’m so happy to see it back. If you’re not going to move forward with Bray Wyatt as the amazing face we saw hints of months ago before his last injury, I guess why not move backwards with him to the original smooth Southern cult leader who knew how to relax. They should also bring back the Hawaiian shirts and forget the last three years have ever happened.
The match was fine.
Oh, and I guess they teased a Wyatt Family breakup at the end of the match. Does anybody care? There really isn’t a Wyatt Family anymore, right? Why would they do this now when they just brought back the rocking chair!?
Best: All Red Eventually
In a great bookend to the earlier women’s segment, the tag team match featuring Becky Lynch and Carmella vs. Alexa Bliss and Natalya is interrupted by Eva Marie finally making it to the arena. She’s followed out by Naomi, who chases Eva into the ring. Nattie tries to use the distraction to roll up Becky, but Becky kicks out and locks in the Dis-Arm-Her, which makes Natalya tap.
I like that Becky learned from her mistakes last week and didn’t let the reappearance of Eva distract her enough to cost the match. Eva Marie is now causing chaos in the entire Smackdown Women’s Division. I’m very interested to see where this goes.
And now we take you to Baron Corbin beating down Kalisto, already in progress…
Worst: Not This Again
I never wanted to see John Cena vs. Alberto Del Rio again, but I guess I have no choice. Who else is Cena going to wrestle? You don’t want him pinning The Miz right before he’s about to defend the Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam. It’s too soon for him to bury Baron Corbin. I guess you could have gone the route that Raw did this week and have Cena pin AJ Styles to build to their match on Sunday. Take those three options away and that just leaves Bray Wyatt, and I don’t think anybody wants to see that again either. So John Cena’s pre-SummerSlam opponent kind of has to be Alberto Del Rio.
It’s of course not a bad match, but it was paint by numbers. And boring. Not a fun match to watch by any means. I don’t know what they could have done to spruce this thing up, but they should have tried something.
I’m not even a John Cena hater. I like him, even as a wrestler, and I’m sure we’ll get a great match from him on Sunday, but this was far from great. Del Rio and Cena looked more like they were dancing than fighting. Just walking each other from place to place around the ring. Passionless. This makes me long for the months of Smackdown main events that featured some combination of Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Jericho, and whoever in pointless random tag matches. They may have been pointless, but they were damn fun to watch. This is just tiresome.
Until next week, I’m Justin Donaldson and I wish all of Smackdown was glow in the dark.
