Hey, Blue Team!
The WWE writing staff is on the Road to WrestleMania, and they accidentally left the script for Smackdown Live back at the office. That’s one possible reason why nothing happened on this week’s Smackdown Live. Well, I shouldn’t say nothing happened. John Cena did debut new merch.
Other than that though, they could have just gone straight from last week’s episode to The Royal Rumble without missing a beat. It continues their new pattern of every other Smackdown episode being good. Still, we get a great main event and a solid opener that made the show worth watching. I may have also enjoyed Carmella and James Ellsworth going shopping; I’m still not entirely sure though. It did make me feel … something.
If complaining about Smackdown isn’t enough of me talking about wrestling for one week, lucky for you, I’m the guest on this week’s episode of the You Should Love Wrestling podcast, where I talk about why you should love Wrestling with Shadows.
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And now without further ado, here is The Best and Worst of Smackdown Live for January 24th, 2017.
Worst: Bad Apple
This week’s Smackdown Live opens up with a backstage skit involving Daniel Bryan preparing to enjoy a delicious red apple, when he is interrupted by The Miz. A Lumberjack Match is scheduled for later in the night, The Miz leaves, and Bryan enjoys a big bite of his apple.
As boring as it sounds, it’s a thousand times more interesting than whatever is going on with the Wyatt Family. After quickly resolving the will he/won’t he of Daniel’s apple-eating, we’re out to the arena for the first match of the night, which is Luke Harper and Randy Orton. The match itself was really enjoyable, though I don’t know if I would have opened the show with it.
Even though he would end up losing the match, Harper looks stronger than he has since he was back in the IC Title mix. It would have easily been believable if Harper had won the match, if it weren’t for that pesky RKO Out Of Nowhere. Harper could use the rub if he’s really going out on his own again. But that leads to the whole problem with this segment.
There’s supposed to be all this drama in whether or not The Wyatt Family is falling apart; who’s in, who’s out? But at this point, Wyatt Family members have come and gone at the speed of Big Show turns. It’s just hard to care anymore. Nothing has the emotional weight I’m being told it should. Wasn’t it just a month ago that I was starting to buy into The Wyatts again? How did they lose me so fast? I keep wanting to care about The Wyatt Family and the WWE keeps telling me not to bother.
As much as I still have fond memories for Wyatt Family Classic and still feel like there’s a lot of mileage in Harper, Rowan, and Bray done right, maybe at this point getting Luke Harper as far away from The Family as possible wouldn’t be a bad idea. That way he won’t be around the next time someone tricks Bray into thinking they’ve become a member of The Wyatt Family just to turn on him.
Best: You Must Remember This
Hey Mickie James, welcome back to WWE! Here’s four pages of dialogue to remember. Mickie James is out next for an in-ring interview with Renee Young. She’s here to explain why she returned to WWE, aligned with Alexa Bliss, and attacked Becky Lynch. The only problem is, she seems to be having a hard time remember exactly why. She was really taking her time with each word, buying herself time to remember what word came after each, then speeding through the parts she seemed to not be quite sure of.
From what I could decipher, the women of the revolution pretend like they are the first real women’s athletes, but she beat Trish at WrestleMania. So Alexa Bliss has brought Mickie James back to fight them? The essence of it made sense. And it will be good to have Mickie James back in matches. So I’ll take it.
Eventually Becky Lynch comes down to shut her up. They brawl to the outside until Mickie escapes over the guard rail. Becky takes chase, but gets caught on her way over the barricade with a forearm by a surprise Alexa Bliss. I don’t know how well Mickie James came off looking in this segment, but Alexa Bliss looked great. And in the end, I guess that’s the whole point of Mickie James being here. So, good job Mickie James!
Best: I Guess?
The Carmella/James Ellsworth shopping sketch that we were promised last week finally materialized, and I wanted to hate it and probably should have because it’s horrible. But there was just something about it that I didn’t hate. I can’t really describe it. Maybe I was charmed by it’s nineties cable access production values. Or the restraint with which they used the the gay-stereotyped store clerk. Some of the jokes weren’t even that bad. At the very least, it kept my attention and it was slightly more memorable than anything else on the show.
Worst: The Tag Team Division Memorial Battle Royale
Even when a battle royale is bad, they’re usually at least fun. But there was not an ounce of enjoyment to squeeze out of the not-so-royal battle that took place on this week’s Smackdown Live. We found a whopping ten men competing in a battle royale, the winner receiving a slot in the Royal Rumble. Nine of those ten men were part of the now dead Smackdown Live Tag Team Division. The match played out less like who was going to the Royal Rumble and more like who was making it out of the post apocalyptic wasteland that is the Smackdown Tag Team Division alive.
The first eliminations in the match are the Vaudevillains accidentally eliminating themselves because of course. And then like, a minute later Mojo Rawley wins.
It’s one of the worst battle royales I’ve ever seen. But the biggest travesty of the match of the condition of the Smackdown Live Tag Team Division. Oof. How did they take it from having so much potential to this? I understand WWE giving up on The Vaudevillains. I wouldn’t have, but I understand WWE doing it. I also understand them not being able to dig The Ascension out of the hole they dug them into.
But what I don’t get is them not doing anything with Breezango. And the real mind-blower is where Heath Slater and Rhyno are right now. It’s mind boggling, especially regarding Slater. After the brand split, he was over huge. He still regularly gets some of the biggest pops on the show … when he’s on the show. Now it looks like he may not even be in the Royal Rumble. The whole thing’s starting to smell of Mizdow. How’s he going to feed those kids? Or have the WWE writers already forgotten he has them?
Worst: New Merch, Same Crap
The middle of Smackdown is fifteen minutes of the WWE champion complaining and a narcissistic sentient pile of new merch yelling at him. You know what sucks? Real life. Much like you, when I am not watching wrestling I’m dealing with real life. And all that stuff sucks. That’s why one of my favorite pastimes is escaping real life and getting lost in the unreal world of professional wrestling. But for years now, too many WWE storylines have been reality based.
When we’re not spending way too much time watching backstage segments about middle management putting these shows together on the spot, we’re watching the wrestlers themselves in the ring whining about their placement on promotional material. They’ve taken the boring off-camera stuff and put it onscreen. I’m tired of seeing wrestling feuds about politicking to get on the souvenir cup. I want to see a man steal another man’s snake. Or something crazy. I don’t know. I just know I don’t want to see any more of this.
Even more cringeworthy to me than the minutiae of backstage politicking of sports entertainment is when WWE dips down into the dirt sheets for inspiration. I never need to hear John Cena talk about the “indie scene” or somebody’s “heat.” Breaking wrestling’s fourth wall stopped being edgy years ago, and now just reeks of desperation and laziness.
With all this comes the further devaluing of the WWE Championship. If you didn’t know that this Sunday’s match at the Royal Rumble between AJ Styles and John Cena is for the WWE Championship, you’d be hard pressed to take that information away from this nearly fifteen minute promo. Everything in this segment left a bad taste in my mouth, but nothing as much as the clips they aired from The Today Show.
Can we make a deal with Cena? Can he please no longer speak of WWE outside of WWE? It’s humiliating. I think it’s great that Cena makes all these media appearances, but can you please leave the rest of us out of it? Non-wrestling fans just aren’t capable of talking about wrestling without having a tone that’s at best camp and at worst condescending. Cena laughing about wrestling on The Today Show feels a little like your mom showing your naked baby pictures to your friends. John Cena, you’ve betrayed my trust and humiliated me.
Best: Dolph Ziggler, Winner
Dolph Ziggler may have had a difficult time getting past Kalisto a few weeks ago during the early stages of his heel turn, but now that he has kicked an elderly man wearing a crown, beating Kalisto is easy peasy. WWE logic, working overtime. Here’s a best for Ziggler winning and little else.
Worst: The Diva Dump
The beginning of the Nikki Belle and Natalya feud was rocky, but the last few weeks had featured some good brawls and a solid build to their eventual match. And once again this week, Nattie and Nikki need to be pulled apart. It seems like the perfect time for these two to have a big one-on-one blowout match at The Royal Rumble. But instead, the two of them are being thrown together with four other women and into a pointless six-woman tag match. I guess Mickie James isn’t the only thing from women’s wrestling to make a return from 2007.
So to make it seem like this thrown together match makes any kind of sense, they try to tie a little bit of it together in the go-home women’s segment. A scheduled match between Natalya and the returning Naomi never takes place due to the aforementioned backstage brawl between Nattie and Nikki Bella. Naomi doesn’t want to be left without a match for her big return, so she gets on the mic and demands an opponent.
Alexa Bliss comes down to the ring, but instead of accepting the challenge, she just verbally runs Naomi down. See, it all comes together in the end and this match makes complete sense now. This is one of the those Women’s Revolution things that haven’t quite evolved yet.
Best: Run Miz Run
An overall lackluster show comes to a close with a great match. It’s a a Lumberjack Match for the Intercontinental Championship between Dean Ambrose once again and The Miz. The Lumberjack stipulation works great for both of these guys. Ambrose is always good when he has a bunch of guys to brawl with and jump onto. And Miz is a master at the art of running away and being dragged back. It’s a really fun, fast-paced, and well put together match, and some really well done false finishes toward the end really made me believe it was anyone’s match.
I’ve been down on Ambrose for a long time, especially outside the ring. Then toward the fall of last year I was starting to get down on his in-ring stuff as well. But these Miz matches have been slowly making me a fan again. Having the lumberjacks also enabled them to pull off an uncontrived version of the over twenty guys in the ring rumbling trope that you have to have on every Royal Rumble go home show. It’s much more believable to have a bunch of lumberjacks out there who spill into the ring than doing a locker room emptying or something like that. Even if that was the only reason behind having a lumberjack match, it still worked out for everyone at the end.
Until next week, I’m Justin Donaldson and I wasn’t made for the independent scene, either.
