Hey, Blue Team!
This week’s Smackdown Live was up against the Vice Presidential Debate. No need for me to watch it, as I’ve decided I’m voting for whichever presidential candidate can guarantee me they will end the Bray Wyatt/Randy Orton feud. That is the number one threat to my way of life right now.
This week’s show is not good. I’m sorry if I come off as complainy, but there’s a lot to complain about. Save for a wonderful Dolph Ziggler/Miz segment, this week’s Smackdown Live was at best boring and completely uneventful. But the Ziggler stuff was so good that it all kind of evens out.
I know that not-so-ringing endorsement may not get you hyped for this week’s Smackdown, so here’s a video that took place before this week’s Smackdown Live that should.
I completely get these guys now.
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And now without further ado, here is The Best and Worst of Smackdown Live for October 4, 2016.
Worst: The Hunted Becomes The Hunter Or Some Bullsh*t Like That
Just like last week, Smackdown Live tricked me. I once again thought we were going to get the Orton/Wyatt stuff out of the way early. I was so relieved when I saw that Smackdown opened with a Bray Wyatt match and not a Bray Wyatt backstage segment that I couldn’t care less that it was against Kane for the millionth time. This meant Bray could get revenge from his loss from Backlash against the middle-aged out of shape monster. I thought we would probably get a Randy Orton run-in at the end, then we would be done with this trash until Sunday.
Nope!
Turns out, Wyatt loses and this is just the beginning. I can forgive Bray losing the match; after all, that is his defining character trait. But I’m a f*cking idiot for thinking he could even beat Kane on an episode of Smackdown. But what I can’t forgive is this being the beginning of another runner that we would see throughout the night like last week.
But this time it’s Randy Orton who’s leading Bray on a wild goose chase. Except a literal wild goose chase would be a thousand times more exciting than this. Orton appears upside down on the TitanTron during the match, and this causes Bray to be counted out as he heads back to find Orton.
What looks like it’s going to be another methodical game of hide and seek ends rather abruptly. But quickly we find out Orton has lured Bray to the back so he can give him a time out. Orton tricks Bray into what looks like a storage locker by placing Wyatt’s chair, light, and smoke machine in there. Once Bray’s inside, Randy closes the door and locks it.
Orton then asks Wyatt, “How does it feel that the hunter is now the hunted?” But he’s not hunting him, he has him trapped. And he also didn’t like, hunt Wyatt down. And shouldn’t Orton have always been the hunter? He is the Apex Predator after all.
Anyway, I bet the writers room thought that sounded pretty cool.
The old GTV camera shows up to give us footage of Wyatt trapped inside the storage locker. He pounds on the door for a while, but eventually calms down and is soon visited by Sister Abigail, who had apparently returned though I was unaware she had left.
Have I completely forgotten a storyline where Sister Abigail abandoned Bray Wyatt or vice versa? I honestly can’t remember and 80% of my brain is taken up by WWE continuity. So I should remember if that happened. Did it? That’s how uninterested WWE “Creative” has made me in Bray Wyatt’s story. And at one point he was my favorite character on the show.
Anyway, so Sister Abigail shows up (or at least Bray thinks she does), and Wyatt tells her that he wants to go home. Which has to be a shoot, because if I were Bray Wyatt I’d want to go home every time the WWE writers hand me a script. The whole thing ends with the most anticlimactic episode of Storage Wars ever.
Randy comes back to see if Bray has thought about what he’s done. When he opens the locker, Bray and his smoke machine are nowhere to be found. Orton picks up Bray’s rocking chair and throws it because Anger Issues. He then walks off on his way to No Mercy, where hopefully this whole thing comes to a conclusion.
I will say this: It wasn’t as bad as last week.
Worst: From Bad To Lazy
The WWE writers didn’t just use one lazy trope in this week’s women’s segment. They used three:
- Champion being pinned in a non-title match.
- Guest commentator distraction and/or interference.
- Teddy Long Memorial Team-‘Em-Up During The Commercial Break.
That’s two matches in a row where WWE pulls a bait and switch on me. We start out with a one-on-one match between Nikki Bella and Alexa Bliss, a match I was happy to see. Sure I knew it wasn’t going to be Savage/Steamboat, but it’s at least a fresh match up we’ve never seen before. Plus it feels like forever since there’s been a one-on-one women’s match-up.
Nope!
Nikki is distracted by Carmella on commentary and she throws Alexa Bliss into her. Becky runs down, the tag match is made, and it ends with Alexa Bliss pinning Becky Lynch. I don’t know if you know this or not, but if she does that on Sunday, we will have a new champion.
I feel like I’ve seen this stuff somewhere before. You know, like on every episode of Smackdown ever.
Four people who deserve championship belts more than Roman Reigns.
Best: When Grading On A Curve
Smackdown Live’s Tag Team Division gets two matches this week, and they’re both perfectly fine and accomplish what they set out to do.
The Hype Bros vs. Local Talent (The Vaudevillains), was an acceptable match. The Ascension got lost and wandered out during it, but that’s about all that happened. In spite of how sad the current state of The Vaudevillains makes me, I’m giving it a best because it didn’t make me physically ill like the rest of the show had up to this point.
Later on in the show we get a one-on-one match with Jason Jordan and an Uso, another one for the “Good For What It Was” category.
Oops! This match was supposed to take place on the go-home Smackdown Live for Survivor Series, not No Mercy. It ends rather quickly with Jordan pinning Uso, and if Jason Jordan can do that on Sunday, we will have new Tag Team Champions.
Or maybe this match should have taken place while Gable was on the shelf. I don’t know, it just feels oddly timed here when we’re building to The Usos vs. Slater and Rhyno this Sunday. I’m not even sure WWE knows what pay-per-view cycles we’re between anymore. How can you, when it’s just the same things that happen over and over again?
Best: A Legitimate Best
With so much of this week’s show being a close of previous episodes, I was concerned at the start of this week’s MizTV that it was going to be identical to what we saw last week. And in some ways it was, but it was also so much more than that. They pulled out all the stops to make sure this week heightened from last, starting with a great video package highlighting the lowlights of Dolph Ziggler’s career.
It’s extremely well done and would be super funny if it wasn’t at the same time excruciating and accurately sad. They cram as many humiliating Dolph Ziggler moments as they can into a two minute video package, yet they barely scratched the surface of how WWE has treated him. I don’t know if this was meant to make me want to see Ziggler win on Sunday or just another opportunity for WWE to humiliate him, but after watching it I’ve never wanted to see Dolph Ziggler win more.
Knowing WWE, it could have been both.
When the video ends, we get some more great promo work from both men. And then the highlight of Smackdown:
THE SPIRIT SQUAD RETURNS!
Well uh … two of them, anyway. Kenny and Mikey I think …
Look, I’ll take what I can get. I’m going to be honest with you people. I loved The Spirit Squad. I felt like it was one of the best gimmicks on WWE TV at the time. It would have been great to see all five of them in the ring together at the same time, but I guess that will have to wait for their Hall of Fame induction.
The Spirit Squad do their schtick and then attack Ziggler, who is eventually able to fight them off. I could have used a lot more of this. Ideally it’d be a full match where Ziggler takes on all four members of the Squad, but I would have settled for a two-on-one against Kenny and Mikey.
The Miz and Dolph Ziggler once agin leave me wondering why the rest of the show can’t be this good.
I’m happier to see the return of The Spirit Squad than I am the return of Curt Hawkins. But happier about Curt Hawkins’ return than Goldberg’s.
Spirit Squad > Curt Hawkins > Goldberg
Worst: The Phantom Tap-Out
Okay. I know I give WWE a lot of crap for never doing anything new or different, so I will give them credit. The end of this Jack Swagger vs. Baron Corbin match was certainly different. In WWE and professional wrestling in general, there’s a lot of suspension of disbelief, especially when it comes to what the referees don’t or (in this case) do see. It’s barely believable when the ref doesn’t hear someone getting hit with a foreign object when his back is turned, or not seeing a tag between partners.
But the call the ref makes at the end of this match is outright ludicrous. Swagger has Corbin in the Ankle Lock. Corbin is reaching for the ropes when the referee calls for the bell, because he mistakes the motion of Baron reaching for the ropes as him tapping out. There is no possible way one of these things could be confused for the other. Dave Hebner’s call during the Montreal Screwjob was more believable than this.
I don’t think this was Baron’s fault either. I don’t think anyone could have made this look believable. Did they not rehearse this beforehand? Did they not see how unbelievable this was going to look?
Even more unbelievable to me was the reaction Jack Swagger got. The crowd was going nuts for him, chanting along to “we the people” and jumping to their feet when he put on the Ankle Lock. What is that all about? They have been given zero reasons to cheer this man. It’s not like they were in his hometown. Smackdown Live was in San Diego. The 619. Home of Rey Mysterio. And they’re going nuts for Jack Swagger? Has Trump already won? And if so, will he put an end to Orton and Wyatt?
Best: Take Us Home, Boys
The road to No Mercy ends the same way it began. With AJ Styles, Dean Ambrose, and John Cena standing in the ring, talking to each other. I’m typically not a fan of the main event of my wrestling shows being guys talking to each other, but I enjoyed this. AJ Styles is doing next-level mic work. The Dean Ambrose we’ve been wanting to see for years is finally peeking out. And Old Man Cena is possibly the best character on the show right now.
They hit all the bullet points they needed to hit, but kept it at the perfect length. I especially liked the false finishes at the end. Multiple times it looked like they were about to off the air with one of these guys holding the belt up high, only to have them get jumped by somebody else.
I also took fanboyish pleasure in AJ Styles talking about Ric Flair. I know this isn’t true, but my brain wants to think this is the first step in them folding TNA’s continuity into WWE’s. Then to make me think twice about that, Daniel Bryan mentions that Styles is a former TNA Champion shortly after this on Talking Smack.
What’s the Impactful Zone doing in The Smackdown Place!?
(Is that how you do one of those jokes?)
Until next time, I’m Justin Donaldson and I’d rather see the return of Gillberg.
