The Best And Worst Of WWE Smackdown Live 12/11/18: IGNORANT Is Bliss


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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Daniel Bryan and Samoa Joe became the two biggest heels on the show by caring about the environment and advising you to drink responsibly, respectively.

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Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live’s 1,008th episode (seriously, how long am I going to do this bit) for December 11, 2018.

Best: The Mustafa Ali Legacy Award

Lately I’ve had people calling me a “sin eater” for having to sit through twelvve hours of four of the worst consecutive Raw episodes you’ve ever seen, but here’s my new theory: there’s a finite amount of “good” WWE can be at one point in time, so the worse Raw gets, the better Smackdown (and NXT, and 205 Live) get. So yeah, if Raw has Lucha House Rules and segments about Drake Maverick pissing his pants, Smackdown can have WWE Champion Daniel Bryan opening the show with a competitive 10-minute match with Mustafa Ali. Shit, I hope next week’s Raw is just three hours of Bobby Lashley presenting his asshole so The Revival can get traded to Smackdown and spend 20 minutes wrestling the Usos.

Things start off with the kind of show-opening “talking” segment that, get this, actually sets up the necessary character dynamics the crowd needs to understand for the match they’re about to watch, instead of just bringing out dudes in a line to say their catchphrases and announce that they’re wrestling. There’s a good chance a WWE crowd’s going to keep cheering for Daniel Bryan unless he makes it very clear he won’t have it — see Survivor Series, where he went from a heel to the world’s biggest babyface in like 10 minutes — so he works his magic and gets everyone jeering him.

Mustafa Ali shows up, and as good as he is, a large portion of the Smackdown casuals won’t know who he is and, let’s be honest, will still be inclined to boo him out of habit because his name includes “Mustafa” and “Ali.” So Bryan actually puts him over instead of barking at him about how he doesn’t deserve to be there — crazy, I know — and give Bryan a dumb reason to want to fight him (he drives an SUV) so everyone in the building knows CHEER THIS GUY and BOO THE OTHER GUY. It’s insane that Raw needs me to do this since it’s been on television for 26 seasons and 1,333 episodes, but [points at Smackdown] THIS IS HOW PRO WRESTLING WORKS, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.

That’s the proper response to anyone with kids, by the way.

The match is wonderfully competitive, in a way that it wouldn’t be unless Daniel Bryan was the WWE Champion, and more importantly it’s the right AMOUNT of competitive. While Ali is fantastic in the ring, he’s certainly not up to Bryan’s level in the WWE sociopolitical ecosystem, so he shouldn’t ever be on the verge of actually almost winning. But he can get in the ballpark, which is more than what a lot of people in the crowd and any senile 73-year old Republican billionaires who’d hypothetically be in charge might think. Bryan gives him just enough — hampered a bit by multiple commercial breaks, and most of the exciting stuff happening while Zales ads take up half the screen — and then shuts him down in brutal heel fashion, smashing his leg against the post a few times and locking in a heel hook.

One of my favorite developments in the match is that since Bryan killed the “Yes” movement, the Yes Lock has lots a lot of its power. This is the move that won him two World Championship belts in the main event of WrestleMania, but now he doesn’t have a “movement” behind it, so guys who haven’t even been able to win the Cruiserweight Championship yet can last in it for like a minute and a half and escape to the ropes.

“No” was a better chant than “yes” anyway, don’t @ me

Best: Asuka Gets To Be Asuka Again

Supreme Leader Smackdown continues to kick Raw’s ass by ending the show with a WrestleMania rematch between Charlotte Flair and Asuka, and while it doesn’t come close to being as good as the first match, it’s still very good, and (again, get this) works toward enhancing the story of the upcoming match at TLC and give it some heat beyond the general friendship malaise between Becky Lynch and Charlotte.

The best part is that Asuka’s getting to be Asuka again, which quite frankly she hasn’t been since that WrestleMania match where her undefeated streak ended. They did the thing WCW did with Goldberg with Asuka, where they were like, “well, Goldberg lost, now he can lose to Bret Hart four times in a row and lose a retirement match against Totally Buff.” Asuka started taking losses, which isn’t a huge deal, but she never seemed like herself. She was still good, but her character and in-ring mystique were gone, and she was basically Carmella minus the ability to speak English. She was Mixed Match Challenge Asuka. Here, she’s countering moonsaults by kicking Charlotte in a spiral and trying to choke her to death. That’s the murderous Nazi clown lady I want to see on my wrestling show.

WWE Smackdown Live

The finish is a play on what happened at Survivor Series, in which Charlotte Flair can’t put her opponent away and doesn’t know what to do, but she’s reached her Limit Break, so she pulls a kendo stick out of thin air and attacks with it. That gets her disqualified, and we end up in a three-way stick fight between Flair, Becky Lynch, and Asuka. It’s a good move to have Asuka ultimately stand tall here, too, because she’s goddamn Asuka, and because Flair and Lynch are already where they need to be in the heat department.

That match is going to tear it the hell up at TLC, unless something goes dramatically wrong. I want the WWE Championship (and Daniel Bryan) main-eventing shows, too, but right now the Smackdown Women’s Championship match should be going on last. Not only does it include the biggest star in the company right now, it’s, you know, a TLC match. What else is going on last, Baron Corbin?

(don’t answer that)

Best: The Usos Find Out What It’s Like, Havin’ A Roni

The rap battle between The Bar (who don’t spit bars, they are the bars) and The Usos with New Day as judges (“for obvious reasons”) is dumb but fun, and ends exactly the way you expect it to. Still, here are a few good things about it:

The Rest Of The Show

Randy Orton cutting a promo about chairs and then getting attacked by a chair to continue setting up a Chairs Match is pretty by-the-numbers as well, and I mostly spent it wondering (1) if I was ever going to love a Randy Orton match outside of how cool the RKO they came up with for the ending was, and (2) if WWE’s figured out a way for “chairs matches” to make sense. It’s kinda lame to have a match built around guys being able to hit each other with chairs when they still can’t hit each other in the head, which is how 100% of people would use a chair as a weapon. The “hit them in the stomach, now hit them in the back” thing Mattel apparently approved was played out a decade ago.

Also, Rusev has pinned the United States Champion! This was fine, and at least constructive in that it took two feuds and used a tag team match to combine them into one. Still though, the NXT fan in me can’t handle seeing Nakamura and Samoa Joe on the same team, and the everything else fan in me is pretty tired of milquetoast WWE Nakamura and Always Losing Samoa Joe.

Worst: Shane McMahon, Jesus CHRIST

If you’re looking for something Raw Bad on Smackdown, look no further than Shane McMahon, king of the embarrassing little brother punches and observed Best Wrestler In The World by 1-2 murderous dictatorships. He ends up getting tricked into a tag team match against the “Vegas Boys,” a jobber team made up of Kevin Hart — Graves’ words, not mine — and a Bret Hart create-a-wrestler where the creator put a Bret logo on the back of his trunks and then quit. Seriously, dude looked like the default red guy who shows you what the moves look like in the 2K games.

Here’s Shane’s blockbuster offense, including punches that either miss completely or land with the impact of a loving hand on your shoulder:

WWE Smackdown Live

And here’s Shane’s “float-over” DDT that neither floats nor goes over his opponent, where he almost paralyzes the guy by DDT’ing him into his chest. I slowed it down so you could see how lazy and awful it looks:

WWE Smackdown Live

Shane defeats two guys by himself with this offense plus an MMA choke, because he’s a total bad-ass and the best wrestler in the world. To complete the awfulness of everything involved, Paige refuses to pay the guys backstage for some reason because fuck independent contractors and yells at a referee for starting a match without her permission when it involved the commissioner of the show, who in theory can start matches as well, and Shane blows off Miz’s latest and most sincere attempt to be his friend like an a-hole.

The first person in creative who decides to either abolish “authority figures” permanently or just puts William Regal in charge of everything gets my fandom and support for life.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Harry Longabaugh

The triple threat will be like a slaughterhouse. Charlotte brings the chops. Becky hits a T-Bone. And Asuka is the butcher.

GLOSS

Lars Sullivan Is Lurking…Because He Realizes WWE Is Now Monitoring His Posts

Blade_222

In Rusev’s mind, if he gets the US Championship back he gets his tank back.

AwkwardL0ser

The Vegas Boys are called The Balrogs Boys in Japan

JayBone2

When Nakamura heard there was an ice rink in Vegas he thought it was so he could figure skate and dressed appropriately.

The Real Birdman

Don’t talk to Cathy 6 likes she’s freaking Cathy 3

Brute Farce

SDL started out smoothly, but it’s starting to feel a little… raw.

North99

Coming up… The Charismatic Enigma! And he’s teaming with Jeff Hardy!

PatsShredShack

One great Bryan vs Mustafa match to start the show, four cringe worthy barely-wrestling segments immediately following. The WWE scales of justice are balanced once again.

Mr. Bliss

Mr. Perfect just tapped Dynamite Kid on the arm and smugly said, “See? I was right about rap.”

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. Thanks for reading, and thanks to WWE for giving it two good matches on one episode instead of none for a month. Drop down into our comments section below to let us know what you thought of the show, share the column on social to help us out (it really does help, even if you’re tired of reading all these Calls To Action®), and make sure you’re here this weekend for all … whew, TWELVE matches at TLC.

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