Hey, Blue Team.
This week’s Smackdown was once again a solid show. I’d say overall it was once again better than Raw. But I do have to warn you, a bit of the brand split shine is starting to wear off, with a lot of the show starting to feel pretty stale. With the exception of the women’s tag team match (which really wasn’t a match at all), we’ve seen all the matches on this week’s show before. Most we’ve even seen within the last few weeks.
It’s not impossible to keep these retread matches feeling fresh, but you need to put in the work and have compelling storylines that drive them. Or at the very least, some sort of new spin on them. On a week that saw a whole new fresh division debut on Raw, Smackdown countered with another Miz/Dolph Ziggler match, another Baron Corbin/Apollo Crews match, and another Randy Orton/Erick Rowan match.
Smackdown is going to need an influx of talent if they’re ever going to go from Jack Swagger calling it the “A” show to everyone calling it the “A” show.
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And now without further ado, here is The Best and Worst of Smackdown Live for September 20, 2016.
Best: Becky Lynch Is Going To Rip Heads Off
To open up this week’s Smackdown Live, the WWE writers decided to go with generic wrestling TV segment No. 3: the contract signing. Daniel Bryan is overseeing the signing of the first Smackdown Women’s Title defense coming up at No Mercy between Becky Lynch and Alexa Bliss. It’s very uninspired and goes down exactly how these segments always go down; bad guy smack talks to good guy, good guy defends themselves, bad guy hits or stabs good guy with foreign object, table is flipped over.
The segment goes from generic to just plain bad when Alexa gets on the mic, because the dialogue they’ve written for her is just so bad. But I’m giving this a best because when Becky got the mic, she was on fire. Becky’s promos can be a bit hit or miss; she has a sense of humor that doesn’t always connect with the WWE Universe. And when they try to write her as the eccentric one it doesn’t really work either.
But the Becky Balboa bit works. The “scrappy underdog that’s here to fight and win” is something Becky can really sink her teeth into, and she knocks it out of the park this week. It’s the best promo performance I’ve ever seen out of Becky Lynch. It hits its high point when she tells Bliss that if she thinks she’s going to take the belt from her at No Mercy, she’s going to rip her head off. It’s great.
After the inevitable table flip, Becky gets back up and attacks Bliss, running her off before going back to the ring and signing the contract. Becky Lynch feels like a real champion. She exudes power and confidence when she holds up that belt. You get a real sense like she feels like she deserves this. You know she’s earned this, and she’s going to fight as hard as she can to keep it. It’s one of the big things that’s been missing from the WWE babyface champs for years. I definitely never felt any of that from Roman Reigns.
Best: Tag Team Wrestling
I really enjoyed American Alpha vs. The Usos. It was simply a very good tag team match. I haven’t enjoyed The Usos this much since their series of matches against Harper and Rowan. But where those matches were mainly spot-fests, their match this week against American Alpha was centered around good tag team wrestling storytelling.
Chad Gable is medically cleared to return to the ring from the leg injury The Usos caused him a few weeks ago, but he’s still not one hundred percent. The Usos know that and take full advantage,
The best part of the match for me is how both teams wrestle it exactly how they should storyline-wise at this point in their careers. The Usos are now the crafty heel veterans. They’re wrestling like they’ve stopped trying to win over the fans and are now one hundred percent focused on winning matches. American Alpha may be the most gifted tag team in WWE right now, but they’re still young and inexperienced.
You put all those things together and it all starts working so well. It may all seem like pretty basic wrestling psychology, but it’s the type of thing we don’t see enough of in WWE these days. So it really stands out when it’s being done well.
The Usos outsmart American Alpha and pick up the victory to become the new number one contenders for the Smackdown Tag Team Title.
Supplemental Best: We’ll Do It Live
After the match, The Usos go backstage to confront Heath Slater and Rhyno who have been watching their match on a backstage monitor and eating cheese and crackers. The segment would have been pretty good if The Usos hadn’t been completely blown up. They were having a real hard time getting out their dialogue while sucking air.
It’s actually pretty funny, especially because they’re trying their best to be intimidating while not being able to breathe. I know this wasn’t supposed to be intentionally funny, but that’s always when WWE is at its funniest. Thank you, live television.
Supplemental Worst: David Otunga
Since Smackdown transformed into Smackdown Live a few months ago, I’ve been avoiding the three elephants in the room: The Smackdown Live announce team. The main reason I haven’t said much about them is because at first I thought they just needed some time to gel as a team. But it’s been a few months now and they don’t seem to be getting much better. It’s actually possible that they’re getting worse.
For the past few weeks, David Otunga has actually been trying to say things, and he has failed miserably at it. Before, during, and after The Usos/American Alpha match, David Otunga mentions that he is filming a movie with Adam Sandler and ran into The Usos’ father, Rikishi, on set. Otunga says he asked Rikishi, “What’s up with The Usos’ recent attitude change?” But Otunga never tells us Rikishi’s answer. He just repeats over and over again that he’s filming an Adam Sandler movie and ran into Rikishi on set. Jerry Lawler’s jokes may have been lame and slightly racist/sexist at times, but at least they had punchlines.
What did Rikishi tell you, Otunga? WHAT DID HE TELL YOU!?
Worst: The Three-Man Midcard
Apollo Crews vs. Baron Corbin was not a bad match. I was really enjoying it while it lasted. But unfortunately it did not last long. I’m not sure how smart it is having Corbin defeat Apollo so quickly when there aren’t that many opponents for these guys to wrestle. Right now your Smackdown mid card has three wrestlers: Apollo Crews, Baron Corbin, and Jack Swagger (who was also in this segment on commentary). I guess technically you could count Erick Rowan, and sooner or later we’ll have Curt Hawkins. But that’s still a whole lotta nothing.
Bringing Swagger over from Raw was a good start, but a few other Raw Superstars contracts are going to have to magically come up for negotiations in order to maintain these parts of the show.
Worst: Miz’ed Opportunities
Just like David Otunga, sometimes the WWE writers forget how storytelling works. Last week on Smackdown Live, The Miz threw down the gauntlet to Daniel Bryan, holding Bryan’s beloved Intercontinental Championship hostage as leverage in his heated Smackdown Live contract negotiations. Surely this was setting up months of compelling storylines where Daniel Bryan does everything in his power to make The Miz lose the Intercontinental Championship so Bryan doesn’t have to cave to The Miz’ outrageous contract demands, with months and months of increasingly more difficult challenges that The Miz somehow finds a way to overcome.
Nope.
WWE decided to wrap up that whole storyline offscreen in between last week’s Smackdown Live and this week’s. We find out in a backstage segment earlier in tonight’s show that The Miz re-signed his Smackdown Live contract, stopping that storyline dead in its tracks before it could even really get started. On top of that, The Miz didn’t even bother to read the fine print of the contract and Daniel Bryan apparently now has him right where he wants him.
The result of all of this is The Miz having another match with Dolph Ziggler, and once again The Intercontinental Championship is on the line. But even though Bryan now holds all the power, he doesn’t do anything to right the wrong from Backlash of Maryse cheating so The Miz could win. Why wouldn’t Bryan ban Maryse from ringside?
Despite of, or possibly even in spite of WWE’s poor writing, The Miz and Ziggler have another bang-up match. Maryse once again tries to spray Ziggler in the eyes with the hairspray just like she did at Backlash. Why wouldn’t she, since there were no consequences for her doing it the first time? This time the ref catches her and bars her from ringside, only to have The Miz spray Ziggler with the hairspray himself.
It’s a good ending and a good match, but I don’t know how many more good Miz/Dolph Ziggler matches I’m going to enjoy sitting through. Much like a lot of other things on the show tonight, their rivalry is starting to get stale. Is there anybody else that Dolph Ziggler and The Miz could be wrestling? Oh yeah, I guess we figured that out in the last segment, “no.”
Worst: From Stale To Moldy
Brock Lesnar gave Randy Orton a concussion and we’re the ones who are having to pay for it. There must only be one way to build to a Bray Wyatt/Randy Orton match, because everything they did leading up to their Backlash match (that didn’t happen) is being done again leading up to their match at No Mercy. It’s not any better this time around.
Worst: This Definitely Doesn’t Glow
If there was ever a time I wanted the crowd to chant “what,” it would have been at the end of this match. Carmella and Natalya vs. Naomi and Nikki Bella ends shortly after it starts. Nattie has Nikki Bella in the Sharpshooter when Carmella pulls Nikki out of it and to the outside where she throws Nikki into the barricade. The result of this is a disqualification. You read that right. Carmella got DQ’d for doing something we see done in most matches.
I don’t know what to say about this. It’s so bad. The only thing I can think is that someone messed something up here, because if this played out the way it was supposed to, then this is some really horrible booking. It may have worked if the announce team would have questioned the ref’s call, but who has the time to do that with all the pop culture references and name dropping they have to do? Perhaps the bell was just rung prematurely and Carmella was about to give Nikki a real beatdown deserving of a DQ. But that’s not what happened. The Smackdown Live Women’s Division has been handled so well so far, let’s not ruin it, okay?
Glow: Glow Glow Glow, Glow
Let me try to forget about the match for a minute and get back to my happy place. Earlier in the night, Naomi and Nikki did a backstage interview and in it, Naomi used the word “glow” that way The Smurfs use the word “smurf.” “It’s glow time in the Women’s Division.” “Nikki has the glow.” “Natalya lost the glow, but Naomi’s going to make her feel the glow again.” This ended up being better than the match.
Best: My Time Is Up, Your Time Is Now
Some matches are all about the finishes, and this week’s Smackdown Live main event (John Cena vs. Dean Ambrose) is the epitome of being all about the finish. Dean Ambrose reverses John Cena’s attempt at an Attitude Adjustment into a sunset flip, and pins Cena clean in the middle of the ring. No, Cena wasn’t attacked by AJ Styles before the match. No, Ambrose didn’t low blow him when the ref wasn’t looking. Cena wasn’t even nursing an injury from a previous match.
That last one was a joke; Cena’s never appeared injured from a previous match. You could drop a brick wall on him during a pay-per-view, and he would appear fine on Smackdown the following Tuesday. That’s why the nonchalantness of this victory seems so weird to me.
It’s been almost seven years since Cena has lost clean to a pinfall or submission on Smackdown or Raw. Let that sink in a little bit. Seven years without a clean pinfall or submission loss that wasn’t on a pay-per-view. That’s nuts. The last time Cena lost clean on TV was to Triple H in 2009. And keep in mind that between 2003 and 2010, everyone was contractually obligated to lose clean to Triple H. So I don’t know if that last loss even counts. Yet the announce team (ugh, not those guys again) wouldn’t even refer to this as an upset.
I’m sorry, but when did John Cena losing any match stop being an upset? John Cena sure recognized the significance of this. He gave one of his trademark post-loss looks of bewilderment. I guess maybe this isn’t a big deal after all. Maybe part of the reality of “part-time John” is that Old Man Cena can lose. Or maybe he just hasn’t been the same since he “gave up” and removed his armband.
Either way, I like the clean loss to Ambrose a lot. It keeps me asking questions like those, and it’s possibly the biggest clean win Ambrose has ever had. I’m usually not a big fan of two members of a triple threat wrestling each other in the build-up to said triple threat, but it really worked for me here. It furthers both Cena and Ambrose’s storylines nicely. And a post-match attack by AJ Styles kept Styles looking like he’s one step ahead of both of them.
Smackdown goes off the air with Daniel Bryan coming out to book next week’s main event where AJ Styles is going to have to defend the WWE Championship against Dean Ambrose. Like I just said, I’m not a fan of these guys meeting up pre-triple threat, but if it worked this week with Cena and Ambrose, it just might work next week with Ambrose and AJ.
Until next week, I’m Justin Donaldson and I’ve never supported anything stronger than I support #releasethebear.
