Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Nothing really happened. Carmella almost cashed in her Money in the Bank contract, but the referee was allergic to suddenly falling down.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for February 6, 2018.
Worst: This Should’ve Aired On February 2 Because I Feel Like I’m Watching Groundhog Day
… and I have to somehow get a job with WWE today and fix the booking on Smackdown before I can escape the loop. At this point I feel like the Road Dogg is just mad at me personally for all the mean things I’ve said about him in the vintage TNA column and is booking Smackdown to gaslight me into quitting.
It’s frustrating enough that the “authority figures meddle in the WWE Championship scene” is still going on without taking into consideration that the story somehow moves forward without going anywhere. This week we open with Shane McMahon cutting another passive aggressive promo about Daniel Bryan and looking like there was a wedding next door and one of the groomsmen got drunk and wandered onto Smackdown. Bryan doesn’t have a lot to say about his point of view because I’m not sure even he understands what his character’s going for, and then AJ Styles shows up to cut another promo about how he’s AJ Styles and is good at wrestling and builds houses.
The main event is Kevin Owens vs. Samuel ‘Screech’ Zayn for a shot at Styles’ WWE Championship at Fastlane. You know, even though he just beat them both in a 2-on-1 handicap match. You’d think like, most people on the roster were more deserving of a title shot at this point. Surprisingly they have most of an actual match before — get this — AJ Styles leaves the commentary table and interferes, causing Daniel Bryan to announce that Styles will — GET THIS, YOU GUYS — defend against BOTH SAMI ZAYN AND KEVIN OWENS AT THE PAY-PER-VIEW. I can’t even write jokes about it, I just have to type it in capital letters with this Krusty-the-Clown-ass look on my face.
Again, everything about this is fine except for the this. Everyone’s doing fine with their promos. The matches are as good as they can be weighed down by these constant, brutal modifiers. There’s just nothing you can do, even with the greatest talent in the world, when your story is chapter one, then chapter two, then chapter three 35 times. Then chapter two again!
I’ve tried to explain it before, but imagine WWE is Game of Thrones for a second. They’re both TV shows and WWE’s been insisting they aren’t a sport for the past 20 years, so just work with me here. Gonna be some spoilers for season 7 in this example, but it ended in August so if you care enough to be upset by spoilers there’s no way you’re on the Internet eight months later trying to avoid reading about it.
But yeah, season 7 ends with the Night King on the back of a dragon, destroying a section of The Wall so the army of the dead can march on Westeros. Imagine if the first episode of season 8 begins with the Night King still there, destroying the next section of the wall directly to the right. Now imagine that episode two of season 8 shows him move down another couple hundred feet and destroy another section. Episode three, four, and five are the exact same thing, and then the show creators are like, “TUNE IN TO EPISODE SEVEN TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE NIGHT KING FINALLY FIGURES OUT HOW TO DESTROY PART OF THE WALL!” And then you tune in to the final episode to see the Night King sitting on this dragon’s back like, “uh oh, what do I do?” Even though you’ve seen him destroy six 700-foot blocks of ice in the past two months. So, all confused, he lands the dragon on the wall and Tormund runs up and kicks him in the dick and throws him off the edge. And then the dragon flies up and destroys that section of wall anyway, and the stinger is like, “next season on Game of Thrones, what’s gonna happen to this wall?” That’s Smackdown right now.
If you don’t watch Game of Thrones … uh, imagine if every episode of King of Queens was exactly the same. Wait, you like that?
Worst: By The Way, That Smackdown Top 10 Is Meaningless
It turns out the Smackdown Top 10 list compiled by asking the locker room about “locker room leadership” or whatever is just a popularity contest for people get mad about in backstage segments, and has no bearing on the show or who does or doesn’t get opportunities. The whole idea was for the roster to give their opinion on who deserves opportunities, right? So why are they ranking the champions at #1 and #2? Is this a PWI Top 10 or just a list of people we should be clapping for? Are we gonna do a bunch of angles about people being upset about their rankings on this arbitrary-ass Burn Book and having matches about it, even though there’s no point or reward? It’s the “building settlements in Fallout 4” of wrestling segments. ANOTHER TOP 10 LIST IS IN TROUBLE, I’LL MARK IT ON YOUR MAP.
The announcer exchange at the end of the video tells you everything you need to know.
Graves: “Where was Rusev?”
Saxton: “Forget about Rusev!”
I wish the NFL was booked like Smackdown. “Hey NFL fans, who do you like the most? The winner of the popularity contest gets to play in the Super Bowl! At #1 in a list built totally without you we have the New England Patriots, they win, don’t think about it!” … actually maybe that is how it’s booked.
And while we’re talking about commentary, my favorite bit of the night is when Graves and Saxton have spent the entire main event talking about how Zayn and Owens know each other like brothers because they’ve been teaming up or feuding for the past 15 years, and then Owens reverses the exploder and Tom Phillips chimes in with, “Kevin Owens has done his homework on Zayn!”
Best/Worst: Ahem, Spotlight Please
Bobby Roode vs. Rusev for the United States Championship is the simplest illustration of why Smackdown’s so frustrating for me right now. The characters aren’t even characters anymore, they’re action figures. They’re operating based on Smackdown’s idea of them, independent of the crowd response or any logical storytelling. For example, Rusev is so popular right now that his calendar is doubling predicted order numbers and “Rusev Day” chants are drowning out the opening GM promo. Shane says it’s “noted,” but it isn’t, because Rusev is nowhere to be found on that top 10. But FORGET ABOUT RUSEV! You’ve got Bobby Roode, a guy who is better than almost anyone on the planet right now at being an uptight, self-obsessed a-hole, playing a scrappy babyface. Instead of playing with that dynamic or doing anything surprising, you turn off the crowd noise and have Rusev cheating trying to win and then taking a clean pin to Roode. And all of this is to set up an appearance from Randy Orton, who has spent the past 15 years pretending it’s HIM that’s over and not his finish*.
That moment — Orton sliding in “from outta nowhere” again to RKO Bobby Roode in his own glorious celebration spotlight … then sticking around to RKO everyone else, because sure, why not — is fun. It’s also one of those things WWE does when they don’t have a story to tell or anything to do, so they’re just like, “Orton RKOs everyone, because HE IS VIPER.” It’s like building a zoo in Sim City. It’s in there because you have it and you’re like, “well, might as well make one of these zoos.”
Without any cornball similes, it’s Smackdown again. None of this is going to matter and you’re going to spoil a big chunk of one of the most talented rosters in history by having them rework and rework one badly written scene.
(*Seriously, if Orton still used the Overdrive he’d be Ted DiBiase Jr. in the WWE history books at best)
Oh No, Do I Just Not Like Smackdown
I’m so sorry. I know you don’t want to read a column that just says, “heh, aren’t we all stupid for watching this,” over and over. I’m gonna stop noticing trends and patterns and point out some stuff I liked. It’s the Best AND Worst of Smackdown, after all.
I thought the Shelton Benjamin and Chad Gable (who really need an official team name) vs. Ascension tag was fun while it lasted. The Ascension loses about three and a half minutes in to Gable and Benjamin’s Ultimate Slam Combination that I’m gonna start calling the Grander Amplitude if they don’t come up with something. It’s weird to remember back when the Ascension was the most dominant team in the history of NXT and not the jobbers WWE books when Breezango’s already lost too many matches, but I guess you can only go so far when your “dominance” is exclusively jobber squashes.
In a completely unrelated story, the Bludgeon Brothers continued their dominance by defeating local talent.
(If you’re wondering, this week’s enhancement talent that should AT LEAST get names on the show were Gateway Elite Wrestling’s own Kenny Alfonso and ‘The Dirty Rook’ Mat Fitchett, who you may have seen in AAW, St. Louis Anarchy and pretty much everywhere between the east and west coast.)
SAY THINGS YOU THINK WERE BEST, BRANDON
Sorry, sorry. The Usos cut a great promo about how to take care of a house cat. [checks notes] About how to take care of a house cat.
I’ve been hard on the Usos promos lately because they’ve been a little too babyface for the updated version of the characters, but I thought this one encapsulated their whole arc nicely, and reestablished that the Uso Penitentiary is more about mentally and physically controlling their opponents, and not so much “lol you dropped the soap Uce!” The closer the Usos stay to ass-kickers, the better. Smackdown already has the world’s leading insincere goofball babyface squad with The New Day, the last thing the show needs is Additional New Days. Good stuff.
Best: A Better Figure-Eight
Charlotte Flair vs. Liv Morgan was fine, but I wanted to give it a Best for the slightly improved version of the Figure-Eight Charlotte used.
You see, in a normal figure-four, locking the legs allows you to place downward pressure on your opponent’s crossed-over ankle, which allows you to use the pressure to also injure the straight leg. That’s how the “four” part of it works. You make a four with their legs, and create downward pressure in two painful areas. When Charlotte bridges into the figure-eight it LOOKS great, but it physically takes the pressure off both of the move’s pressure points. Instead of giving Flair the benefit of leverage and gravity, it asks you to assume the pressure comes from … a back-bend? It’s a bullshit move, but yes, it looks awesome.
By applying the hold at a slight angle (pictured) instead of straight-on like she normally does, Charlotte gave the Figure-Eight new life … now the hold can at least simulate the same pressure as a figure-four because her body position causes some uncomfortable torque to the ankle and leg. It’s causing the legs to be bent unnaturally, instead of saying “lying on your back and crossing your legs HURTS.” It’s such an improvement, and I hope she did it on purpose. It was probably just one or both of them trying to work to the hard cam, but shut up, I’m Gordon Solie.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
Baron Von Raschke
Daniel Bryan: I have another announcement…Due to AJ Styles screwing up this match…Charlotte Flair is now the #1 Superstar on SmackDown.
Mr. Bliss
“Just get it over with already!” Is AJ talking about this match or this entire storyline?
Nippopotamus
That child asking if Owens was ok is a future With Spandex commenter in the making
Ja Gi Kyung-Moon
I will be disappointed if New Day doesn’t come out shouting, “FIGHT FOREVER!” while throwing flapjacks in the ring.
I can’t tell you guys how much I like that they keep overlaying ClipArt graphics onto the camera feed during the show, because the name “Smackdown Live!” doesn’t have to mean that the promos feel spontaneous and organic. Although I think I got some of those words wrong in that last sentence.
pdragon619
I was suspicious of Randy getting any votes, but I imagine everyone’s suspiciously poop free bags might have something to do with it.
Clay Quartermain
Scrooge: “You there, boy! What day is this?”
Drake Maverick: “Why sir, it’s Rusev Day!”
Scrooge “Then it’s not too late! SDL can still change!”
The Real Birdman
“And #1 is Brie Bella. Like I said, no nepotism at all. See you next week!”
Sinclair
Liv Morgan has grown tremendously since she joined the main roster. She started as a terrible wrestler that everyone thought shouldn’t be called up and now she’s a terrible wrestler that everyone knows shouldn’t have been called up.
FeltLuke
So this match ends with Ruby pointing at Charlotte while Liv and Sarah beat her down, right?
That’s it for this week. Thank you for reading about WWE’s third best show on Tuesday nights, behind the Mixed Match Challenge and the new version of 205 Live.
Drop us a comment in the comments section below and share the column on social media if you can. And hey, don’t forget to vote for us for Best Wrestling Media in the RSPW Awards! It’s a really nice way to say thank you to us for watching 104 hours of Smackdown a year!
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