The Best And Worst Of WWE Smackdown Live 5/1/18: Sacklash

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: The Greatest Royal Rumble happened, featuring a stunning zero title changes and a Raw guy winning the rumble match. Smackdown, y’all!

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for May 1, 2018.

Best: When A Great Crowd Makes Wrestling Work

We wrote about it in this week’s Raw report, but the Montreal crowd being so into the WWE product that the announcers have to call them “bizarro land” — because they aren’t used to fans actually enjoying the shows and reacting to them — elevated the quality of the weekly shows and made what is EXTREMELY by-the-numbers booking seem like it’s fun, and like it works. Because it does sometimes, I guess!

You’ve seen all of this before. A lot.

• The Miz has two babyfaces on Miz TV and tries to get them to argue with each other
• It doesn’t go the way Miz plans, and he might get beaten up!
• another heel is here to take exception with what one or both of the babyfaces said
• the general manager has decided that this should be a TAG TEAM MATCH
• the faces win
• Miz loses
• Randy Orton “unexpectedly” turns on his own partner, because it’ll be every man for himself at Whatever Pay-Per-View’s coming up!
• the babyface is shocked and totally didn’t see WWE’s single most predictable thing happening

It’s not quite “Jinder Mahal arguing with Roman Reigns to set up a promo parade to set up a match,” but it’s about as Smackdown an opening as your imagination could conjure. Because the crowd digs it, though, the wrestlers get to have fun with the performance, and the whole thing becomes less stilted and awkward. Not that I’m saying Randy Orton should be this exact type of “I have a vest now” boring and that fans are expected to react to it like it’s their jobs and not the other way around. I’m just saying that a crowd being into total bullshit makes that bullshit watchable. That was Hulk Hogan’s big key to success. If you hit the mute button, Hogan didn’t have a good match between like 1984 and now.

Anyway, I hope the co-branded pay-per-views gimmick means we can still continue pushing together the Hardys “Broken” Universe and the Universal Dark Universe of Randy Orton demon possessions and haunted house matches.

Worst: The WrestleMania X-8 Crowd Couldn’t Have Made This Cass Segment Better

While it still had a way to go before joining the ranks of Bayley This Is Your Life and Sonny Boy, there are few segment ideas with their heads jammed as firmly up 1998’s ass as “heel brings out a little person dressed as his opponent.” It was already pretty tired by the time Chris Jericho was beating up Greenberg and that was 20 years ago.

The point, in case you missed it, is that Big Cass is very tall and Daniel Bryan is not as tall and therefore bingo halls and Cass — who has clearly forgotten everything he wasn’t able to be taught — will win! Because he’s very tall. Daniel Bryan is not as tall! It’s a perfectly fine stop-gap between reintroducing Daniel Bryan to the main roster and the important Bryan vs. Miz feud, and it should help Cass TREMENDOUSLY in the ring, but it’s also boring as a shit’s actual balls to watch a non-threatening 7-foot adult man do his best to jam together promo styles he isn’t good at yet. And they named the little person after one of the Yukon Lumberjacks because old folks is in charge.

There Were Only Three Matches On The Show So Let’s Knock Out The Other Two

The better of the two was the night’s main event, another “sorry about Saudi Arabia guyssss” six-woman tag teaming Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch with Asuka Last Name against Bill Kaye, God’s gift to the world Peyton Royce, and Carmella Also Last Name. It’s anchored by a great move dump finishing sequence (we like those) and a lot of great character work from the IIconics, including every bit where they want to fight but then ASUKA IS THERE and they super don’t. Plus, Peyton Royce’s Renee Young impersonation forever. I hope her eventual Hall of Fame induction video features a solid minute of her being pro wrestling’s Rich Little. He does a million impressions! Only like two of them are good, but he does A MILLION.

ABC wins with an easy 1-2-3 — they don’t, they won by submission, but jokes — and we’ve successfully filled time between the pay-per-view women aren’t allowed to be at and the pay-per-view where Charlotte’s somehow not beating the shit out of Carmella.

The other match (because there were seriously only three) was Xavier Woods getting a distraction roll-up win on Sheamus to let us know that yes, wrestling fans, The New Day and The Bar are feuding. That’s all it was. The result of this match could’ve been “Woods and Sheamus ride bikes for a few hours and then go home when it gets dark” and the story wouldn’t have changed. We knew they were feuding from The Bar being like, “we don’t like pancakes,” and now we have confirmation. I don’t know if they’re gonna do something on the Backlash pre-show or just save the feud for the Money in the Bank, but it should be fun once we’re actually there.

Important note: The Bar should a billion percent not be a joke team.

Speaking Of ‘Not A Team’

One of Smackdown’s big goals this week is remembering that teams exist, and then breaking them up. Up first you’ve got Rusev, who is now being convinced by Lana that teaming with Aiden English is holding him back and not actually helping him be super popular. It’s true, kind of, if that broad WWE booking sense, but it’s also a shame to see them prep to toss a suddenly popular undercard act in the garbage to keep people from liking something. See also Fandango getting his music taken away, Bad News Barrett losing everything people liked about the character, and so on.

On the positive side, I would like to see Rusev be an important character again, and pairing him up with Lana again is a good start, if not a several-years step backwards. You’re too over with Lana! Lana’s too over! Break up! Now you’re too over without Lana! Aiden English is getting over! Break up! I’m sure when Rusev loses a United States Championship match at SummerSlam or whatever they’ll split them up again, team him with Ascension Viktor or whoever and say “okay try it NOW.”

We also got Smackdown General Manager Paige Here officially breaking up Absolution without even telling the other members of Absolution. They’re over here on Smackdown using Paige’s music and wearing Absolution shirts and Paige is just like “psssh, yeah, noooo, soarry.” What a dick move. Couldn’t you have just kept the Riott Squad if you didn’t want anything to do with a team that’s exactly like Absolution?

Best: Finally This Week, Shinsuke Nakamura Punches AJ Styles In His Damn Nuts

Raw’s show had heart, but Shinsuke Nakamura punching AJ Styles in the groin had Shinsuke Nakamura punching AJ Styles in the groin.

I can’t believe they didn’t do the “lol I was wearing a cup ALL ALONG” finish at Greatest Royal Rumble, but I also can’t believe they did a goddamn double count-out in a championship match on pay-per-view in 2018, so here we are. I’m assuming the “no disqualification” bit is so they can do that finish without finding a reason for the referee to randomly turn his back during half of it.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

troi

Its amazing the lengths Daniel Bryan will go to duck The Miz

@BigD_TVF

Paige: “Absolution is dead”
Riott Squad: “Hey, they stole OUR gimmick this time!”

The Real Birdman

Cien should show up and brutalize Dillinger. A beating ten times harsher than anything he’s ever seen

Blade_222

On the door it says “Paige here.”

Brute Farce

Nak should do Roman’s “lock and load” movement before the nut shot.

Obi Wan Jabroni

Apparently when it comes to global cities, Shinsuke can only recognize the capitol of Thailand.

AJ Dusman

WWE: Samoa Joe vs AJ Styles is a dream match!
Me: Umm they wrestled a bunch in TNA.
WWE: Some say they never thought they’d see this match on US soil!
Me: But TNA is located in the United…
WWE: DREAM MATCH NO DOUBT!

Dennis Miller must be writing Big Cass’s jokes now.

Endy_Mion

Samoa Joe is like Gorilla Grodd. Big and scary and can rip you limb from limb, but also shred your mind and cut into your innermost thoughts and fears.

LUNI_TUNZ

Renee: “Speaking of low blow, how does your dick feel?”
AJ: “Well, I’ll never have children, so John Cena’s pretty jealous.”

That’s it for this week. One day people will actually catch Charlotte Flair’s moonsault instead of making her land on her feet and smash their arm with her torso, but until then –

Be sure to drop a comment below, share the column on your social things, and be here this weekend for the third pay-per-view in less than a month! Hooray!