Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: It’s Becky, bitch! Plus, King Booker made a surprise appearance to knight New Day and welcome them to the five-timers club. ALL HAIL KING BOOKAH!
Remember that With Spandex is on Twitter, so follow it. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter. BUY THE SHIRT.
One more thing: Hit those share buttons! Spread the word about the column on Facebook, Twitter and whatever else you use. Be sure to leave us a comment in our comment section below as well. I know we always ask this, and that this part is copy and pasted in every week, but we appreciate it every week. We appreciate each and every one of you, RIGHT HERE TONIGHT!
And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for September 4, 2018.
Worst: How Are You Guys Liking Brie Bella Content On Both Shows
I’m not going to type all the same stuff I typed yesterday, but after watching Brie Bella botch not one but two dives in a single match, it is “clear than ever” than she doesn’t need to be the focal point of both weekly WWE main roster shows. She’s actually accomplishing an incredible feat by making me like my favorite wrestler less, which is something a show that booked him to go 0-10 and do a bunch of obstacle courses while Matt Striker snickered at him for sucking so bad and then firing him couldn’t do. Something even Kane couldn’t do. I know they want to tie together the Total Divas Cinematic Universe or whatever, but I think we could probably have a Daniel Bryan vs. The Miz feud with Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas getting involved without it mostly being about who has the best marriage.
Moving on!
Best, Mostly: Another Pun About How Almas Sounds Like ‘Almost’
This week’s opening match is 12 minutes of Daniel Bryan vs. El Idolo, and while yeah, it’s fragile granola husband Daniel Bryan vs. Jobber To The Stars Cien Almas, it’s still Daniel Bryan vs. Cien Almas. They could stand in the middle of the ring doing ‘Miss Mary Mack’ hand-jive and I’d give it a Best.
It continues to confuse me when they bring up guys like Andrade Almas, who have made their name in NXT and elsewhere based almost solely on their in-ring ability, then actually put them in these 12 minute matches but still have them hold back for the sake of WWE-style storytelling. And then the point is still that you’re supposed to think they’re great wrestlers, but they rarely win, and even in losses, no matter how good they are or how close they come to winning, you can blatantly see them not going full speed. Still, 75% speed and 40% appreciated Andrade Almas is a boss, and even Daniel Bryan wearing a Brie Bella backpack up a creative Mt. Everest is an ace. So yeah, it’s good, and they work well together, because they’re both very, very good at this.
Still, because this is a main roster show and reality shows on other networks are involved, the story is barely about Bryan or Almas. It’s about Bryan winning a tough match to set up a show-long angle about whether or not Bryan will go to an Italian restaurant in his gear without showering and try to punch The Miz. But then, when Bryan leaves to go do that, Miz is suddenly back in the arena and HE has a match, which is just there for a Bryan run-in. So why do the Italian restaurant and “Bryan/Brie leaving the arena to go find them” stuff at all?
Best: The Great R-Truth Resurgence Of 2018
Let’s all take a moment to appreciate R-Truth, a 46-year old veteran in his 21st year of being a professional wrestler who could just show up in Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royals and sit around collecting a paycheck, but somehow manages every year or two to add a quirk or refocus some existing quirks to make himself relevant on WWE TV again. We saw him do it with the Awesome Truth, we saw him do it with “Little Jimmy,” we saw him do it with the “my bad” jokes, and now he’s on every episode of Smackdown in a quest to pin Carmella to get a championship match. But now he’s refocused that into an on-purpose mind game to “play dumb” and manipulate people backstage, building himself into a Smackdown main-eventer somehow and heading into the second Mixed Match Challenge as one of the favorites based on hype alone. Crazy, but I love it.
Here we see him confuse Maryse with Carmella, confuse Carmella with someone else, decide that there are in fact multiple Carmellas — he sees Carmellas like I see Cathies — and then tell Tye Dillinger that “Maurice” is his cousin from Detroit. And whoops, it’s all a ruse to get a match with The Miz, get his future MMC tag team partner in his corner for backup against a cheating valet, and position himself for a win with an inevitable Daniel Bryan run-in. A+.
And while we’re talking about this segment, Tye Dillinger should go to prison for saying “for the LOVE of KID ROCK” and pausing for a pop. ACTUAL PRISON.
Sure enough, that’s how the main event plays out. We get the callbacks to Awesome Truth (one of the most criminally underappreciated angles in modern history, completely neutered by The Rock in a way I’d describe as “the worst” if CM Punk hadn’t happened), Daniel Bryan shows up (now wearing a shirt, which I guess he got at the Italian restaurant when he showed up and nobody was there), and Truth gets a distraction roll-up win. I hate the shit out of a distraction roll-up, but at least this one’s justified as part of a Machi-R-vellian scheme.
Best: Remember Asuka? She’s Back! In Pog Form
We get another 90-second Naomi vs. a member of the IIconics match this week, but it finally goes somewhere with the return of Asuka, and a match for Bonzer Royal Rumble: Peyton Royce and Billie Kay, hopefully treated like national heroes, versus The Empredactyls. I’m very into that as it’s four performers I love, and I guess I’m also happy they’re doing it on the Network house show to make room for Melina vs. Alicia Fox or whatever at Evolution.
Supplementary note: Yes, I loved the “no, me! no, me! Nao-mi!” gag as much as you expected, and yes, I’m the only one. Please vote “Peyton Royce and Billie Kay as IRL shit-posters” for Best Gimmick 2018.
This Week’s Biggest Disappointment: When The Wendy Blows
Huge thumbs down to WWE for featuring a Smackdown that in one way or another promised us both
- Daniel Bryan attacking someone at a fine dining Italian restaurant, and
- Samoa Joe showing up to murder folks at a family barbecue
and following through with neither of them.
Instead of Joe like, showing up with Wendy’s severed head or whatever to further this angle, Joe just comes to the ring like, “ha, I said I was gonna go accost your family, but I DIDN’T, but I MIGHT,” and then AJ Styles runs out and attacks him with a chair again. The announcers are even like, “this is what happened at SummerSlam!” like it’s a callback and not them just doing the same thing again because they’ve got two weeks before Hell in a Cell and have accidentally already escalated the feud to “one guy might kill the other guy’s family in real life.”
Best: The Segment They Should’ve Done The Tuesday After SummerSlam
This is easily the best Charlotte Flair/Becky Lynch feud segment they’ve done so far, for a very simple reason: it actually takes a second to portray Charlotte as a rational human being with a point of view, instead of booking her like the female Roman Reigns and expecting us to cheer for her because she’s the one they say is the babyface.
The problem so far has been that Charlotte just waltzed into a title match we watched Becky scrape and claw for for WEEKS, and then Charlotte won by hitting her with a finisher from behind and acted like absolutely none of it was iffy. Becky made her POV clear in every word she spoke, but Charlotte mostly sad around wiping away tears while we booed her. Here, Charlotte makes a really rational, human point: what’s she supposed to do, turn down opportunities? Lose the match on purpose? She’s a pro wrestler, she’s here to win matches and championships, and she knows her friend and co-worker is there to do the same. So she would’ve definitely given her a match for the belt, and it would’ve been great, but now Becky’s being a dick.
Meanwhile, Becky’s still got a good point: even in her moment of humility, Charlotte still comes across as a little entitled and full of herself, from the sarcastic clapping to the jump from “you’re my best friend ever” to “ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR PITY PARTIES.” From, “I would’ve given you a match if you’d asked,” to, “WHAT’S YOUR EXCUSE GONNA BE THIS TIME?” Charlotte’s a bad person doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Becky’s a good person doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. It’s great. It’s the tone they should’ve taken all along, as it would’ve allowed us to naturally “pick sides” instead of having Tom and Byron basically shame us into cheering Charlotte.
Best: Tag Team Wrestling!
Once again, Smackdown waves the flag of good tag team wrestling while Raw puts it in a storage trunk and hides it in a remote corner of its endless void. On Raw, we’ve had a month-plus of embarrassing stories where a jobber team repeatedly beats the former best tag team in the world, then starts losing to them every week to build to a rematch, and then WHOOPSY, a different team steps in and wins the championship. Because while I wouldn’t classify the show as “elite,” nobody says “Fuck The Revival” more than Monday Night Raw.
Last week we got a very good, fun triple threat tag match to name the first finalist for a number one contender match, and this week we named the other. It was the Usos vs. Sanity (brought to us by The Purge in an accidentally meta moment) vs. Rusev Day, with Rusev Day actually winning thanks to Aiden English remembering he’s very good at tag team wrestling. I hope English’s re-dedication to the team is real, and not one of those nWo schemes where you help someone win 10 matches just to turn on them in the 11th.
Also, it means Rusev Day moves on to face The Bar in the finals, and man do I want that. It’ll be two former League of Nations bros going at it, and Cesaro battling his alternate dimension son, Aiden English. I honestly don’t care who wins that one, just give me 15 minutes of Sheamus and Rusev beating the shit out of each other, please and thank you.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
DenseMan1
This story seems really familiar: “This Purge is too hot, this Purge is too cold, this Purge is juuuuust riiight.
Dave M J
I am perturbed that Brie and Bryan didn’t walk out there with take out bags from Scarfonis
AddMayne
As soon as that Purge countdown reaches 0, Daniel and Brie are gonna murder Miz and Maryse so they should probably run
troi
I am impressed that Carmella was able to learn the words to “Whats Up” in such a short amount of time
FeltLuke
Smackdown in here like the MiB Neuralyzer and being so good it’s wiping my memory of how bad Raw was.
Designated Piledriver
This video is a great reminder that Randy probably belongs in jail.
Baron Von Raschke
R-Truth just picked up an Obfuscating Stupidity entry on his TV Tropes Page
blacksnakemoan
R-Truth is Keyzer Soze…
dannibalcorpse
tonight i learned that the real reason Dr. Shelby quit so suddenly was that he realized he was only the second-best couples counselor on the roster
Big Baby Yeezus
I can only imagine that in the backwoods of Georgia, the Styles clan is cutting the swishes off their Nike apparel
Sorry guys, I’m not interested in Randy Orton “unleashing his serpentine” anything.
That’s it for this week’s show. Hooray for watchable main roster WWE shows! Make sure to drop a comment below to let us know what you thought of the episode, and share the column on social media to unleash our serpentine appreciation.
