Hey, Blue Team.
I’ve spent more time with WWE the past four days than I’ve spent with my family this entire year. Between SummerSlam, TakeOver, the pre-shows, post-shows, reality shows, that show where JBL made Sting feel bad about his career choices … Yet somehow, Smackdown managed to feel fresh and even a little exciting. That’s a real feat, even if anything would feel exciting after watching the end of this week’s Raw.
The pace of this week’s Smackdown Live was perfect. It moved along in a way that nothing got boring. If something wasn’t working for me, it was over so fast that I couldn’t get too frustrated with it. It was a much much better show than Raw, and the Talking Smack post-show was better than most Raws in the past fifteen years. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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And now without further ado, here is The Best and Worst of Smackdown Live for August 23, 2016.
Best: It’s The Muppet Show, With Your Host AJ Styles!
This week’s Smackdown Live opens strong with a really fun cold open. We’re in the locker room where Baron Corbin, Erick Rowan, Apollo Crews, and Rhyno are making small talk. It only lasts for a few seconds, but I would have been perfectly happy if it had gone on for the entire first half of the show.
AJ Styles shows up to gloat about his SummerSlam victory over John Cena. He tells the locker room that he’s now the face that runs the place, and reveals that he took Cena’s “Never Give Up” arm band after the match. He puts it on his head like a headband, then starts picking on Ziggler for being a sad face. AJ gets in Ziggler’s face until Dolph head butts him, and they’re pulled apart by the rest of the locker room.
Smackdown has been experimenting with cold opens like this for months, and now they’ve finally figured out what to do with them. This was great. It right away felt different from Raw and within about 90 seconds set up tonight’s main event.
As great as AJ Styles is here, my favorite thing to watch in this segment was the background work of master thespian, Rhyno. At the beginning of the segment, he’s going on and on to Apollo Crews about how much he deserves this spot. Then he does an excellent job of trying to calm down Dolph Ziggler, telling him that the locker room is not the place to fight Styles. What can’t Rhyno do?
Best: Belts Belts Belts
We go out to the arena and the entire Smackdown Live Women’s and Tag Team Divisions are in the ring, along with some brand new championship title belts: The Smackdown Women’s Championship and the American Alpha Tag Team Championship. Since the draft, I’ve given WWE a hard time about how small these two divisions are. But after recent injuries, suspensions, and retirements, now Smackdown Live has the same number of women as Raw and more true tag teams (no, I’m not counting Y2KO or Zeville). So why not get some titles, huh?
Speaking of the belts, since everyone in the WWE Universe has suddenly become fashion critics caring more about what the title looks like than who’s fighting for it, I’ll throw in my two cents. I think the tag belts look amazing. And the Smackdown Women’s Title is perfectly fine. Hell, I don’t mind the Universal Championship belt either. I don’t love it. I’m not out buying a replica or anything like that, but I’m still so happy that the spinner belt is gone that I’ll take what I can get.
This segment kind of reminded me of the way Heyman used to build segments on ECW. Starting with one planned segment, then gradually adding other elements until half the roster is involved. Everything felt very innate. It’s the opposite of those horrible promo trains where one person after another’s music hits and they say a few words. The appearance of Heath Slater demanding to enter the Tag Team Tournament and the eventual appearance of AJ Styles with still-brawling Dolph Ziggler all felt very natural.
Well, with one glaring exception: how is Daniel Bryan’s six team tag team tournament going to work? Is it going to use some sort of point system over a series of weeks? Or was the final going to be a triple threat? Now that the overall segments are working, it’s time for me to start nit-picking the small details.
Best: Continually Evolving
Okay, maybe this wasn’t a best, but it’s definitely not a worst. Becky Lynch vs. Alexa Bliss was a little botchy and Nattie and Naomi left a bit to be desired on commentary, but I still really enjoyed the segment. The sloppiness of match didn’t bother me at all. Becky and Alexa are still feeling each other out. I think the two of them are eventually going to have great matches together.
The best part of all of this is seeing the core of this Women’s Division become all about winning that title and not about things like men or what happened on their reality show. In a division with Nikki Bella and Eva Marie, it would be easy to go after the low-hanging fruit.
Best: I’m Not Hating This
The Ascension got in more offense during this match with The Usos than they’ve gotten all year. This wasn’t a bad match at all. At least not as bad as The Ascension vs. The Usos sounds. It’s a reminder of the potential this tag team division has.
Storyline-wise, there’s still a lot you could do with The Usos and The Ascension. Especially if they’re going to keep having matches like these. They just need something to spice them up. Like a heel turn for The Usos, or a manager for The Ascension. Something to bring attention back to them. Imagine if somebody like Raven was managing The Ascension. You’d start watching those Ascension matches instead of fast-forwarding through them.
Best: One Line
When I first heard AJ Styles’ music hit, I was afraid we were about to get the 20-minute promo that I was so glad the show didn’t start with. But I was wrong. We got the perfect amount of AJ boasting about his John Cena victory before Dolph Ziggler comes out to confront him and Daniel Bryan comes out to calm everything down. The show continues to move at a very nice pace, stopping when it needs to, but for the most part clipping forward.
Daniel Bryan announces that AJ Styles will face Dolph Ziggler tonight. I think we all saw that coming. But the stipulation that Bryan adds to the match is a very nice twist. It’s not your regular “winner faces the champ at the next pay-per-view” stipulation. Instead, Bryan announces that if AJ wins, he’ll face Dean Ambrose at Backlash. But if Ziggler wins, it’ll be a triple threat with both Dolph and AJ vs. Ambrose.
Instantly, that adds a little more mystery to who’s going to win tonight’s main event. If it was just winner faces the champ, I would have automatically assumed that AJ was winning. There’s no way AJ’s not in the main event of the next pay-per-view. But by simply adding the triple threat stipulation, I’m now thinking there’s a chance that Ziggler could win this. Not clean, but maybe by Ambrose interference or something. Just that one line of dialogue has me second guessing how tonight’s main event is going to turn out.
One line. That’s all you need sometimes.
Also, points for a Billy Kidman appearance.
Best: No, That’s Not A Typo
Somehow we’ve made it to about halfway through the show and I’ve enjoyed everything. If that’s not weird enough, now I’m enjoying a segment that primarily features a Bella. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Nikki Bella’s return to Smackdown was a highlight on an episode of Smackdown that didn’t have a lot of lowlights.
Nikki is scheduled to take on Carmella, but prior to the match Renee Young is in the ring to talk to Nikki about her return. When WHAM! Carmella hits her from behind, slams Nikki’s head to the mat, and beats her down. It came out of nowhere and immediately made both of these characters more interesting. As long as they can keep this from being about Carmella being jealous of the Bellas and steer it more in the direction of the New Era sending a message to the Cena Era.
Carmella’s a lot better in the heel role, and even though it’s not easy to like a Bella, it’s easy to get behind Nikki right now due to how impressive her comeback is. Is Smackdown getting smarter?
Worst: One Bad Apple
This isn’t even that bad. There’s just nothing about it that excites me at all. I’m sure these guys will have a series of good matches that all see Randy Orton victorious. But it’s just another pointless Bray Wyatt feud. We knew Orton was going to feud with Wyatt after Lesnar, and here it is.
Best: From Background Actor To Co-Starring Role
Another MVP of tonight’s show was Heath Slater. I mentioned briefly how Slater showed up in the opening segment, asking to be put in the tag team tournament. Daniel Bryan told him that if he could find a partner, they could enter the tournament. And if they win the whole thing and become the tag team champions, Heath Slater will be awarded a Smackdown Live contract. So Slater sets out to find himself a partner in a few vignettes over the course of the show, culminating with the nicest guy in the Smackdown locker room, Rhyno, offering to be his partner. He wants Heath to be able to buy that above-ground pool.
We get another A-list performance from Rhyno while Heath Slater continues the incredible roll he’s been on. My favorite part of this week’s Raw were the Slater chants. WWE very well may have another Mizdow on their hands here; a fun throwaway C story that suddenly all the fans are getting behind. Hopefully they’ll treat this one better than the last one.
Best: The Real Tournament Finals
American Alpha vs. Breezango was my favorite part of the show. A solid tag team match and the perfect last piece in what was a giant step forward tonight for Smackdown Live’s Tag Team Division. Tonight’s show took away most of the concerns I had about the future of the tag division. After a better than usual Ascension match, the creation of the tag tournament, the partnership of Slater and Rhyno… now we have a real good showing between two teams with extremely bright futures. My only wish is that these are the two tag teams the tournament had come down to.
Okay. I have two wishes. I wish Breezango had won the tournament. Cheated, by hook or by crook. Outsmarted American Alpha. I’d love a couple of months of Jordan and Gable chasing the champions Breezango. I can’t believe I was still able to find something about this to complain about. I really enjoyed this match; what’s wrong with me? The show’s been too good — I need something to complain about.
Best: What A Difference A Week Makes
I wasn’t a huge fan of the storylines for Dolph Ziggler vs. Dean Ambrose or John Cena vs. AJ Styles in the weeks leading up to SummerSlam. Styles and Cena just seemed like a copy of a copy of a copy, and Ziggler/Ambrose was just kind of weird. But now that Summerslam has come and gone, things have become way more interesting for three of those four men.
Dolph Ziggler vs. AJ Styles with Dean Ambrose on commentary was a great main event. It was by far the best thing Ziggler and Ambrose did the past four days, and the perfect next step forward for AJ Styles. Styles kind of wrestled this match like a guy who beat John Cena. He is absolutely on fire. Sorry Dean, I know you worked hard to get that belt, but the best way to keep the legitimacy of that title just may be to put it on the best wrestler Smackdown Live has. There’s no better main event for Smackdown Live’s first solo pay-per-view than AJ Styles vs. Dean Ambrose.
By the beginning of Roman Reigns/Chris Jericho, I was feeling major SummerSlam weekend fatigue. But somehow less than 24 hours later, Smackdown has me looking forward to the next pay-per-view. Touché Smackdown Live, touché.
The Absolute F***in’ Best
By now I’m sure the entire internet has seen The Miz go nuts on Talking Smack, Smackdown Live’s WWE network post-show. If you haven’t seen this yet, you are a sad sad person. Watch it immediately. And if you’ve seen it already, watch it again.
I wanted to take a second to tell you that if you’re not watching Talking Smack, you need to now. Every episode’s been pretty good, but this week was fantastic. And not just because of this amazing moment between The Miz and Daniel Bryan. Earlier in the show, they made me care about Nikki Bella for the first time in my life. Then Carmella jumped her again and continued the beatdown. The second guests were The Usos, who were allowed to act like human beings for the first time on WWE television. Then The Miz shows up and wow. The Miz.
Until next week, I’m Justin Donaldson and oh my god, there’s two more hours of wrestling on tomorrow night.
