Hey, Blue Team!
To quote the faceless voiceover guy from the opening video package, “The Road to WrestleMania rolls through Seattle.” We’re halfway between The Royal Rumble and The Elimination Chamber, and the Mania feuds are starting to peek their heads out.
This week’s Smackdown Live went to the extreme. But not the Tommy Dreamer kind. The kind where each segment of the show is either extremely bad or extremely good, but there was no middle ground. Overall, the good stuff was good enough to make up for the bad and lead to a pretty enjoyable show.
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And now without further ado, here is The Best and Worst of Smackdown Live for February 7th, 2017.
Best: The Impending Family Feud
The week’s Smackdown Live opens with a rousing home state welcome for the most over face on the show, Daniel Bryan. With “Yes!” chants swallowing the arena like it was 2014. God, do I wish it was 2014. Bryan talks about the things he’s grateful for, until he’s interrupted by his verbal arch enemy, The Miz (along with Maryse).
The Miz mocks Daniel’s forced retirement and wonders out loud what Daniel Bryan’s still even doing in the WWE. The whole time, they both have the entire crowd on their feet and in the palm of their hands. I’m at home eating it up as much as they are, loving every moment of The Miz yelling at the audience that Daniel Bryan can’t wrestle, but he can. They spend the next two minutes making the crowd pop for everything. It was right about then that I realized just how much potential there is in the rumored match that the WWE has planned for The Miz and Maryse at WrestleMania.
If you get dirty in the sheets like me, then you’ve probably read by now the cut-and-pasted text of Dave Meltzer claiming that this year’s WrestleMania will feature a mixed tag match pitting The Miz and Maryse against John Cena and Nikki Bella. The initial idea of this match did not get me as riled up as some of my fat bearded black t-shirt-wearing brethren. But after this promo and one by John Cena later in the night on Talking Smack, my eyes have really opened to the potential this storyline has.
After months of trying to figure out who would be Daniel Bryan’s avatar in the ring against The Miz, there’s really nobody better than his quasi-brother-in-law. It makes perfect sense. And there’s already so much interesting history between The Miz and John Cena. The Miz holds a WrestleMania victory over him. Cena practically has to pin The Miz at Mania before he goes off to host award shows full time. Add on top of all of that the Bellas and Maryse and you have an awfully good foundation to build off of. Yes, the cynical side of me assumes this is just a way to get a high profile Total Divas match on the card, but that can be forgiven depending on how it plays out.
I’m envisioning Maryse interfering in Nikki’s match on Sunday. Nattie and Maryse could double-team Nikki afterwards, do something to her neck, then send Nikki out of the building on a stretcher with a neck brace on her like the one she had after her surgery.
They could follow it up with The Miz mocking Nikki to John Cena’s face while he’s trapped in one of the Chamber pods. The whole thing causes Cena to let his emotions get the best of him and ends up costing him the match and the belt. After that, the rest of the Tuesdays from here to Mania would pretty much write themselves. It still won’t quench my thirst for one last match between The Miz and Daniel Bryan, but I’ll take it.
Best: Oh Yeah, And The Rest Of This Is Great Too
The Miz and Daniel Bryan stuff was so good that I completely forgot we are less than a week away from the Elimination Chamber. Meaning smack-talking Daniel Bryan wasn’t the only reason Miz was out here; he was also the engine of a promo train.
Coming down the tracks next would be Baron Corbin, followed by Dean Ambrose, and lastly AJ Styles, all pleading their case for victory on Sunday. But only AJ Styles manages to do this while using the phrase, “Are you done playing Tickle Butt?”
If this were the Attitude Era, Tickle Butt would be on a t-shirt in the Shopzone tomorrow. I hope this catches on like a modern day Slap Nuts. From the look on Daniel Bryan’s face, I’m positive Tickle Butt wasn’t in the script, but instead an AJ Styles original. Is Tickle Butt some sort of Southern phrase I’m unaware of? After googling Tickle Butt and finding the definition in Urban Dictionary, I’m going to go ahead and assume this is some sort of Bullet Club hazing ritual. And possibly something we’ll witness on an upcoming episode of Ride Along.
But I digress. We are in fact done playing Tickle Butt, because Daniel Bryan books these men in a fatal fourway match that starts … right now.
The Miz vs. Dean Ambrose vs. Baron Corbin vs. AJ Styles was the match of the night, and a perfectly executed build to the Chamber match for all four men. It’s a very fun and fast-paced match, where all four got their shit in while progressing their individual storylines just far enough. All four have been doing fantastic in-ring work on the show lately, and this week was no exception.
Though all four men left the match looking great, Baron Corbin left as the winner, getting a fairly clean pin on AJ Styles. I like that outcome. Styles can afford to take that pin. He’s the best wrestler in the world who would clearly defeat Corbin in a fair one-on-one match. It saves the Intercontinental Champion from being pinned and keeps The Miz looking strong headed into ‘Mania, while at the same time giving Baron Corbin the extra push he needs to look like he belongs with these guys. It’s all great.
Speaking of The Lone Wolf, possibly my favorite part of the match was right at the beginning before anybody locked up. The Miz is trying to convince Corbin to team up with him in the match, and Corbin just looks at him and shakes his head “no.” The look on his face says so much while being subtle. It’s like the Opposite Day Roman Reigns.
Worst: Building A Wall
The best part of the Nikki Bella/Natalya feud … I’m sorry, did I say best? I meant the only good part of the Nikki Bella/Natalya feud has been the physicality. The pull-aparts around ringside, the merchandise booth brawl, etc. So this week, WWE removes that element completely by separating them in different rooms for a split screen interview, where they just spewed Total Divas-esque dialogue directly into the lens of the camera.
The whole thing could have been saved if it had led to one of them popping into the other’s room and beating them up at the end. But instead they saved the attack for Talking Smack and left SmackDown proper with the gabbing gossip.
Worst: Crews Control
Lately, Dolph Ziggler’s matches are as short as his opponents … is a thing Jerry Lawler would say if he were still alive today.
This Ziggler heel turn is off the rails. I don’t know what is happening here. He’s winning, he’s losing, he’s hitting people with chairs. None of it seems to matter, and now he’s headed into a handicap match at The Elimination Chamber pay-per-view against both Kalisto and Apollo Crews.
It’s an absolute mess. He would have been better off being taken off TV for a couple of months after superkicking Lawler if they didn’t have anything of any substance planned for him. It is nice to see Crews win a match again, and I have to admit, the audience was on their feet by the end of the segment. So something about this is obviously working for some people. But nothing about this is working for me.
Worst: At Least They’re Not “Remembering Cryme Tyme?”
So at this point in the show, Smackdown stops so a montage of WWE Superstars could read a fourth grader’s book report on Rosa Parks. I’m all about the idea of WWE celebrating Black History Month, but the execution of it needs at least an ounce of genuineness behind it. Right now these look court-ordered, like they were produced as part of a settlement with the ACLU over something Michael Hayes did.
Best: Double The Laziness
Allowing two contract signings to take place at the same time seems like a major mistake by Ashley in Human Resources, but this is the same person who thought Kane was competent enough to hold a middle management job after having literally tried to kill people on television. So I guess her track record backs up this decision.
The Women’s Revolution broke more ground this week by having the first ever Dual Contract Signing, an in-ring contract signing segment where contracts for two separate matches are being signed at the same time. Groundbreaking stuff.
Some people (like me) have accused the WWE Creative team of being lazy. But whoever on the writing team spoke up with, “I’ve got it! We’ll do TWO contract signings at the same time!” is some kind of lazy genius. Once you get over how convoluted the premises is, the rest of it plays out pretty well. It’s one of Alexa’s best promos, and Mickie James does a much better job explaining why she has beef with Becky than she did the last time she tried to.
Who will be the brave soul who takes the next step forward and books the even more groundbreaking three-match contract signing?
Worst: Re-Ascension
The miracle under the Space Needle. In their first win since … I think they beat the New Age Outlaws once? Have they won a match since that? The Ascension came up victorious on this week’s Smackdown Live. Well, at least The Ascension winning was the narrative the announce team was going with. The truth is even stranger: the Vaudevillains also won this match. Shocking, I know. You see, it was a twelve-team tag team match, pitting the teams of The Ascension, The Vaudevillains, and The Usos vs. American Alpha, Heath Slater and Rhyno, and Breezango.
When Victor somehow got the pin on Rhyno after hitting with a knee from the middle rope, he didn’t just win the match for The Ascension, all those other guys on his team won the match too. I know the WWE has mostly forgotten how tag team wrestling is supposed to work, but “when one guy wins, the whole team wins” is a pretty basic principle.
The match itself was not great. And I’m not going to get my hopes up that The Ascension winning is going to lead anywhere. It just seems like another pointless segment with all the teams thrown in there. How many times have we seen some combination of these guys all teamed up or thrown in a Battle Royale? Or whatever that thing was last week; segments that exist to kill time.
I’m done with just being “happy to see these guys on television.” I want the WWE to actually do something with them. Pick two teams and have them feud with each other. It may seem simple, but it’s a great place to start. Two teams with a personal issue between them, fighting to settle said issue in an actual storyline. Any two teams. Just give it a try and see if it works.
Best: But Harper And Wyatt Though
This week’s episode opened up with another great video package from WWE’s amazing production team. It set up tonight’s main event match between John Cena and Randy Orton, quickly highlighting the storied history of the biggest feud from the worst era. As crazy as this sounds, it’s been almost ten years since the height of the Cena/Orton feud. So I bet you there are kids out there and maybe even some newer adult fans who may have to be told that these guys have as much history as they do.
I wasn’t happy at all to see Cena and Orton reunite against each other in their “it’s 2014, you’ve got to be kidding me with this Hell in a Cell match” classic, but something about the timing of this rematch made it much more appealing going in. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, or something like that?
As it turns out, the 2017 version of Cena/Orton was not as good of a match as I had hoped for. It wasn’t a bad match, it was just very Orton/Cena. It reminded me of a short version of all their 2009 pay-per-view matches. I was looking for something just a bit different after all these years.
Ok, it wasn’t all the same. This was the first John Cena/Randy Orton match to take place on Smackdown Live, to take place in front of a man watching in a rocking chair at ringside, and the first while Randy was possibly under the mind control of a cult leader of swamp people.
Business picked up once the ref bumped out, allowing Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper to get involved, building even more upon the amazing energy between the two of them that we saw last week. The more I see Harper and Wyatt in the ring face to face, the more I want to see that match. The live crowd seemed to feel the same way.
I want to see Harper vs. Wyatt at Mania this year. It’s the right time. You can still do it, WWE. It’s not written in stone. You could have AJ win back the belt in the Chamber. You could give us two potentially classic matches between four active professional wrestlers at ‘Mania. Randy Orton vs. AJ Styles and Bray Wyatt vs. Luke Harper gets me one step closer to buying a place ticket to Orlando. As of now, I’m one step closer to watching WrestleMania alone in my living room with all the lights out like I did last year. Sad!
Until next time, I’m Justin Donaldson and I’m not ready to stop playing Tickle Butt just yet.
