Hey, Blue Team.
It’s that time of year again. The one time of the year where WWE goes to the extreme. They hang buckets from cages and make matches where you must beat your opponent by using the same submission hold you always beat your opponents with. It’s crazy! Extreme Rules is this Sunday and the only thing standing in the way between RAW and the time for the Superstars to get extreme is another episode of SmackDown. And it is just that: another episode of SmackDown. A lot of good wrestling this week. Nothing exceptionally great, but there’s a whole lot of good.
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And now without further ado, here is The Best and Worst of SmackDown for May 19, 2016.
Best: Cut To The Chase
SmackDown opens with a video package getting us up to date with the goings on of the Intercontinental Title Division. We were scheduled to have a Miz TV segment this week with all his IC Champion buddies as his guests. But for the second week in a row, things got changed up from what was announced on RAW, and Miz TV is now a one-on-one match between Kevin Owens and Cesaro. I’ve loved Miz TV lately, but I’m not complaining. Lately SmackDown has been opening up with a Miz TV segment that then turns into a match. This week this seemingly smooshed the two things together and had them both happen at once.
Before the match begins, we see SmackDown is getting one of its new favorite things in early. If you haven’t been watching lately, they now have to have a match with two special guests on commentary. This week they upped the ante and added a third. Joining the announce team are Sami Zayn, The Miz, and Maryse. Get your bets in now on which one of them causes the distraction that ends up costing someone the match. I’m going to predict Maryse interferes, causing Cesaro to win. Feel free to jump to the fourth paragraph to see if I’m correct. But come right back — I get lonely.
Kevin Owens vs. Cesaro opens with both men trading blows until Owens rolls to the outside, where he exchanges words with The Miz. Once back inside the ring, Cesaro hits a fantastic second rope elbow drop from between the ring posts. I would tell you what happened next but I have no idea. Because the camera’s focus turns to the announce table where Sami and The Miz are arguing about something. Once the camera cuts back to the ring, Cesaro and Owens trade suplex attempts before Cesaro hits a vertical. Soon after, Owens retreats to the outside again. But this time Cesaro comes out and hits Kevin with a European Uppercut against the barricade. Cesaro is getting Owens back into the ring when um, Maryse gets up from her chair and distracts Cesaro long enough for Owens to send him off the ring apron and into the announce table. I’m not going to claim total victory just yet. I’ll wait to see if Cesaro loses due to injuries sustained here. Owens throws Cesaro into the ring steps, then once back in the ring, controls a long portion of the match. Cesaro kept trying to get the advantage back, but as soon as he would mount a comeback, Owens would shoot it down. Finally the Swiss Superman catches KO on the top rope with an uppercut, then follows it up with an absolutely gorgeous standing dropkick that hits Owens square in the face even though he was sitting on the top rope. Cesaro capitalizes and climbs up to the middle rope to send Owens crashing to the mat with a Gut Wrench Suplex off the top rope. Once back to their feet, Cesaro has the advantage until Owens rolls out of the ring for the third time.
It’s shenanigans time! Kevin punches Sami, Cesaro takes out Owens then shoves The Miz. Owens and Cesaro get back in the ring and they tease a distraction finish with the Miz interfering, but ultimately it’s Sami Zayn who distracts Cesaro by going after Owens, allowing Kevin to roll up Cesaro with a handful of tights for the win. OK. I got this one wrong. The correct answer was: everybody. It seems pretty obvious now in retrospect. After the match, we get a little twist on the ending of last week’s SmackDown. Cesaro hits The Miz with an uppercut, Sami hits the heluva kick on Cesaro, and The Miz hits the Skull Crushing Finale on Sami. The whole time, Kevin Owens claps as he watches from the outside. Very solid match, not their best not their worst; I enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed a lot of this four way feud, and I’m looking forward to the match this Sunday. But I’m also ready to get back to Sami and Owens feuding one-on-one. Their Payback match left me wanting more, and I don’t feel like waiting much longer. I love all four of these guys, but no combination of them works as well for me and Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens one-on-one.
Worst: The Emmalution Won’t Be Televised
Match two is the Emma-less Dana Brooke vs. Paige, and because they just can’t trust Renallo, Saxton, and Lawler out there on their own, Becky Lynch has joined them on commentary. Not much to say about the match itself. It’s good. Not as good as Dana Brooke’s first two main roster matches, but that’s to be expected. Those matches were against Becky, and Becky is so much more exciting in the ring right now than Paige. Becky does a solid job on commentary here too, as she watches Dana Brooke beat Paige clean with a Sitout Slam. The segment definitely had me thinking about a few things. It is such a shame that Emma has gone down with a back injury. She’s been fantastic in the ring since returning to the main roster, and I foresaw big things for her and Dana Brooke together in the months to come. I’m starting to get worried that without Emma to play off of, Dana’s quirkiness that we fell in love with in NXT is not going to shine through on the main roster and she’s just going to be portrayed as another fitness model. I may have nothing to worry about, but I also haven’t seen her pat anybody on the head since her main roster debut. Lastly, I really wish they would add Becky vs. Dana in some sort of stipulation match to Extreme Rules. I was disappointed that Becky vs. Emma didn’t happen at Payback, and I’m going to be disappointed again on Sunday. The Women’s Division has come a long way, so why can we still only have one woman’s match per non-WrestleMania pay-per-view? Also, maybe this is just me, but I’m way more into Dana and Becky right now than I am Nattie and Charlotte.
Best: Nothin’ To Do But Wrestle Good Matches
When the League of Nations broke up, I asked the question, “What do you do with Sheamus?” It’s been about a month since then, and WWE has answered, “We don’t know.” While they try to figure that out, Sheamus faces Dolph Ziggler this week in WWE’s new upper lower card division. The most surprising thing about this match is that Baron Corbin is not on commentary. This is yet another good match on this week’s show. In spite of getting kind of lost in the shuffle lately, these guys are of course still great wrestlers. This was a great match for Ziggler right now. He looked fantastic. Dolph starts off with some mat wrestling, controlling the opening moments of the match. But Sheamus gets in the driver’s seat before long and stays in control through the commercial break and for most of the rest of the match. Eventually Ziggler gets out of a headlock by throwing Sheamus to the outside. When Sheamus gets back in the ring, Dolph hits a famouser and gets some nice air on a stinger splash. Sheamus once again gains the advantage when he catches Dolph with a powerful backbreaker, then follows it up with a very nice-looking front powerslam. The end of the match is cool too. Ziggler fights off Sheamus with a headbutt out of desperation, then goes for the Zig Zag, but Sheamus holds onto the ropes. Ziggler slides off Sheamus, then comes running back at him, only to have Sheamus catch him and launch him into the air over his shoulder. Dolph bounces off the ropes, then hits Sheamus with a superkick from out of nowhere and falls on top of him for the pin and the win. It’s a great finish. Another case of two guys doing the best with what they’re given, even though they aren’t being given much.
Worst: The Loony Bin
I give Byron Saxton all the credit in the world for being able to say, “The Asylum looks scary” without laughing. What were they thinking with this thing? It’s ridiculous. On the scale of wacky steel cages, this ends up somewhere between The Lion’s Den and The Chamber of Horrors. One of the weapons is a mop and a bucket. Sure, the barbed wire two-by-four is up there, but after WrestleMania do you really think it’s going to get used? Jericho does a great job in this segment of trying to make this thing sound dangerous and not like it’s going to lead to a match that looks more like a Home Alone sequel than something on a pay-per-view called Extreme Rules. As Jericho stands in the middle of the ring, somehow selling the brutality of using a mop as a weapon, the Asylum lowers down around him and the ring crew helps get it into position. One of the ring crew members has a big fake beard and definitely it not Dean Ambrose. Definitely not. Ambrose probably has the night off and that’s just a regular ring crew member who just happens to have a big fake beard. Oh wait, actually this is Dean Ambrose. In a disguise that wouldn’t have fooled Scooby Doo and Shaggy, Ambrose comes up behind Jericho, removes the fake beard and mustache, and attacks him. Dean climbs up the cage and grabs a kendo stick, but Jericho escapes out the cage door.
Look. I applaud WWE for trying something new. New is good. I don’t want WWE to ever think it’s not. But I also don’t want to see them keep putting Dean Ambrose in Wile E. Coyote type scenarios that keep making him look wackier and wackier. I want to take Ambrose seriously. I want him to be a real threat. This thing is not going to do that. The Ambrose Asylum is just another red wagon. Over on NXT, the upcoming match between Samoa Joe and Finn Balor in a regular cage seems so much more dangerous without the weapons.
Still not sure how I feel about this.
Best: When The Champs Don’t Lose Non-Title Matches
Knowing there would have to be some kind of match between The New Day and The Vaudevillains this week, I was really hoping we would see something new, like a singles match between Simon Gotch and Big E. Instead, New Day used their time machine to go back to RAW from a few week’s ago and once again team with Big Cass to face the pairing of The Vaudevillains and The Dudley Boyz. It’s another good match, but not as good as the RAW match and does little to add to what so far has been a good feud between New Day and The Vaudevillains. There’s nothing to dislike about the match. It’s full of good stuff, but it’s also kind of forgettable. It has a heavy feeling of “killing time before the pay-per-view.” But I really appreciated that the finish didn’t have anything to do with New Day or The Vaudevillains facing each other. They could have easily had Woods take a pinfall with Aiden English on top of him, then have the announce team drag out the tired “if this happens on Sunday” line. Thankfully the match comes down to Colin Cassady and The Dudley Boyz in the ring. The Dudleys go for 3D, but Big Cass takes out D-Von with a big boot, then lifts up Bubba Ray for the East River Crossing and follows it up with the Empire Elbow for the win.
Best: All’s Well That End’s Well
Last week, Roman Reigns was scheduled to face Luke Gallows in a one-on-one match. Instead, the match got switched to yet another Gallows & Anderson vs. Usos match. I was disappointed because I thought Roman Reigns and Luke Gallows could have a really good match together. And I still think they could, because this match was not that. It wasn’t really even a one-on-one match. The whole thing was built around the inevitable interference from The Family Bloodline and The Clubbity Club. Not only did Gallows not get his own entrance (he came down with Anderson), but AJ did, even making his entrance after Gallows. No matter what the match is between members of these two factions, whether it’s one-on-one match-ups or two-on-two, they’re all really three-on-three because everybody gets involved. Even if the match wasn’t anything special, it served its purpose setting up the post-match events that ended the show on a high note. Unlike the other segments on tonight’s show that were all good but didn’t really do anything to get me any more or less excited for their matches, the end of SmackDown reminded me that I should be looking forward to the AJ Styles/Roman Reigns rematch. I’ve been so uninterested in the interactions between The Usos and Gallows & Anderson, that it’s started to tarnish my excitement for Roman Reigns and AJ Styles. The end of this week’s SmackDown did an excellent job of stripping Gallows, Anderson, and The Usos away and getting back to the core beef of Reigns and Styles. AJ looked downright vicious. This is not a man that needs the two bald guys. He kills The Usos and is left one-on-one with Roman. He kicks him out of the ring with a baseball slide and then goes outside and starts preparing the announce table, but before he can put Roman through it, Reigns comes to and sends Styles flying up into the air and crashing down onto the table. There’s a little distraction by the two tag teams, but we quickly get back to our main eventers as AJ flies off the table and is caught by Roman. The two then roll around, beating each other until SmackDown fades to black. AJ Styles shows more passion in those two minutes than everyone on the show in the last hour combined. And Roman’s not half-bad himself.
Some week’s SmackDown is the anti-WWE Raw. It’s full of fun unique match-ups with wrestlers who don’t always get a chance to shine on Raw. It can have the better in-ring promos, the better matches, it always has the better announce team. Overall it can be a great show. Then you have the week’s where they just do Raw over again. None of the matches have endings, Roman Reigns talks… shows where I’m left shaking my head in frustration. But this week’s episode wasn’t either of those shows. It’s the weird third option. There wasn’t a bad segment on the show. There was not a bad match. Wall-to-wall good solid wrestling. But at the same time, nothing is overly fun or exciting. It just kind of feels like they’re killing time before Extreme Rules. I guess if you’re going to kill time with something, there are worse things to do it with than good wrestling. That end though, that was exciting. Huh. The most exciting part of the show to me was Roman Reigns. I guess it truly was a unique SmackDown.
Until next week, I’m Justin Donaldson and I really wish Ric had bladed after Stephanie slapped him on RAW.
