Hey look, John Cena on Smackdown! Okay, now make him go away.
Pre-show Notes:
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Worst: John Cena Pretending He Drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon
Sure John, sure. Everyone knows the only thing you drink these days is Cristal from a champagne flute wedged between Nikki Bella’s buttcheeks.
The temporary “Make Smackdown seem important leading up to the anniversary show!” campaign continued this week, with Cap’n Cutoffs himself making an appearance. And what an appearance it was! John kicked it off with the aforementioned PBR patronizing, then did that annoying thing he does where he recaps his own life like it’s a movie trailer.
Eventually Cena worked his way around to real reason he was out there — to convince everyone that he deserved to beat up Seth Rollins before Dean Ambrose, but he had no leg to stand on. Cena’s big justification for needing to get his hands on Rollins is that he totally had Brock Lesnar beat, but Rollins cost him the match, and that hurt him so very deeply because he needed to prove he still had it after losing at SummerSlam. Okay John, a couple things about that…
a) You can’t know for sure you were about to beat Brock. Hounding somebody to the ends of the earth for stealing something you’re not even sure you had in the first place is the mark of somebody who needs to be separated from the rest of society.
b) You lost one match. And after losing that one match you spent a month violently humiliating every other heel on the roster. Nobody thinks you’ve lost it. And if you have, who cares? You’ve already won 15 world championships. Kick up your Adidas, marry your full-bootied girlfriend and pump out some superbabies.
Dean Ambrose put it best when he came out — he (Ambrose) was betrayed by a brother who later tried to murder him on live TV and John Cena lost a match. Whoopity-freakin’-doo. John, if you need something to do, go throw Bray Wyatt around for another month until Rollins’ schedule clears up.
Best: Randy Orton Making Me Laugh For The First Time Since He Did That Toe Touch
Randy Orton was the best part of this show’s opening talky segment. There’s a sentence you don’t see every day. Orton and Kane were trying to sew dissention in the most ham-handed manner possible, claiming they just happened to overhear Cena and Ambrose secretly insulting each other backstage, but the insults themselves were pretty choice. Orton seemed downright giddy that he and Kane got to call Cena an action figure who couldn’t wrestle his way out of a box of cereal, and Ambrose a wannabe trying to get over by pretending to be crazy. Orton’s delivery of the word “crazy”, replete with crazy fingers was fantastic.
Then they left the camera on Seth Rollins for a solid 30-seconds as he tried not to sneeze. Can’t win ’em all.
Worst: Damien Mizdow Actually Doing His Job
The Miz and Damien Mizdown wrestled Sheamus and Dolph Ziggler again, and it was fine, but nothing particularly special. Not enough Miz/Sandow comedy spots for my tastes. I’m Worsting the segment for what came after the match — Miz attacked Sheamus with a chair on the outside, then hightailed it and instead of going after Miz, Sheamus whacked Sandow with the chair instead. This sets a bad precedent.
So far they haven’t been doing the expected thing with this stunt double gimmick. You’d think the stunt double would get beaten up in Miz’s place every match, but they haven’t really done much of that, which is good, because a) I like Damien Sandow and don’t want to see Sheamus pummeling him to death every show and b) the stunt-double never actually doing his job is a good gag.
Yeah, I know, two lettered lists in one B&W — sue me.
Worst: Naomi’s No Good
Sorry guys, she’s really not. She’s athletic and gorgeous and she was the one of the most promising girls in WWE circa 2010, but a lot has changed since then, and Naomi hasn’t kept up. Really, eliminating absolute no-hopers like Rosa Mendes and Eva Marie, Naomi is one of the worst female wrestlers on the roster.
The opening moments of her match with Paige really brought it home — within the first 30-seconds Naomi had hit two terrible one-legged dropkicks, a sloppy hurricanrana, and that ridiculous move where she headscissors her opponent into a DDT. A minute later she she almost killed herself and poor Alicia Fox with a dangerously out of control dive.
It pains me to be harsh, but the poor girl’s never going to get any better if we keep up the “Naomi’s totally good and underrated!” facade. That’s how a Kofi Kingston is created. At least she ditched the highlighter green gear this week.
Best: Cowboy Paige
Hmmm, pale girls in cowboy hats. You discover a new fetish every day.
I like that Paige apparently copies all the tics and trademarks of whoever she happens to be best friends with at the moment. When she was friends with AJ she was suddenly into skipping, and now that she’s besties with Alicia she’s compelled to steal JBL’s hat. Hopefully she keeps swapping out her friends until, by this time next year, she’s skipping down to the ring in JBL’s hat while doing Emma arms to cuckold Tyson Kidd.
Worst: The Proud, the Home of the Free and the Brave
What in the hot f*ck was Big Show even talking about here? A brief snippet of his speech…
“In some situations some people holds us accountable for our actions. But ultimate…ultimately it replies, it relies, it relies on ourselves to hold ourselves accountable for our actions. Y’know? It relies on us.
Maybe my sense of nationalistic pride got the better of me, however…perhaps my actions were somewhat overzealous by pulling down the Russian flag.”
I’d go on, but Word grammar check just crashed. Clippy shot himself in the head. This was the worst promo I’ve seen make WWE TV since, well, Hulk Hogan’s breast cancer thing on Raw, but make no mistake it was awful, awful stuff.
I don’t get what WWE’s playing at here. If the company was truly afraid of offending Russians, which I doubt, they could have just quietly issued an apology on the website. They’re trying to achieve something by addressing this flag thing repeatedly on TV, but for the life of me I have no idea what that could be.
Best: America Sucks!
Rusev’s promo was every bit as bad as Big Show’s, but Rusev gets a Best for his, because Rusev is basically this video…
…as filtered through an angry Bulgarian ogre. When Rusev barely makes sense it’s cute, when a guy who’s been speaking English his entire life can’t string two words together, it’s sad.
Best: The Bunny Ankles Adam Rose
Between the oddly adorable mini gator and their awesome combined entrance music, do Slater Gator now have the best entrance in WWE? Yes, yes they do.
I’ve been pretty down on the Bunny lately, but tonight he hopped down to interfere in Slater Gator vs. The Usos without the rest of the entourage in tow, and I realized it isn’t the Bunny I have a beef with, it’s Adam f*cking Rose. When it was just the Bunny out there, screwing around with Hornswoggle and hitting triple splashes on Slater Gator things were just fine. Fun even! As soon as Adam Rose came out to siphon some of the Bunny’s heat, everything went to hell. You are the worst Adam Rose. The absolute worst.
Best: What’s Up
I believe your teeth in the 10th row is what’s up. If I could GIF-ify this entire match, I would. Oh, what the hell.
Okay, I admit, I might have dome some light trimming to the “R-Truth does things” section of the match.
Worst: This Dork Almost Beat Brock Lesnar?
Considering how obsessed WWE is with pushing John Cena above all others and making sure he forever remains an unconquerable superhero, they sure are bad at making him not look like a total doofus.
Cena and Ambros vs. Kane and Orton was proceeding as your standard-issue WWE tag team main event does, when suddenly Rollins showed up and Cena got so excited he revived his 2012 awkward boner run and chased Rollins to the back, leaving Ambrose on his own. So Ambrose valliantly tries to fight off two men, but gets double teamed and beat down, and just as Orton and Kane get done picking the bones, Cena comes running back like it just dawned on him leaving his partner high and dry was a bad idea. Then, moments later, Rollins saunters back out, completely unscathed, to laugh at the chumps in the ring. What the hell? Cena was an inch behind Rollins when they both went through the curtain — how did he manage to lose him?
We talk a lot around here about what a childish bully John Cena is, and how tiresome his invulnerability can be, but there’s another less-discussed reason not to root for Cena — a good portion of the time the guy acts like a complete dummy. Maybe it’s time to add “occasionally thinking things through” to hustle, loyalty and respect.
