Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: We experienced Smackdown 1000, an enjoyable Comic-Con special event featuring an Evolution reunion panel, an appearance from Rey Mysterio, and presumably a bunch of comic books in the middle of the arena nobody looks at.
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Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live’s 1001st episode for October 23, 2018.
And Now, A Very ‘Oh God What Are We Doing’ Episode Of Smackdown
In case you haven’t been paying attention to … anything, it’s been a very hard PR week for WWE. The United States government and mainstream media are urging them to cancel their upcoming event in Saudi Arabia in response to a horrific human rights violation (and, you know, murder), and then on Monday Roman Reigns opened the show by announcing he’ll have to step away from WWE entirely to deal with resurgence of leukemia. Plus there’s a women’s pay-per-view coming up where they advertised “over FIFTY WOMEN” in the commercials and are loading up a battle royal with everyone who’s ever worked for them to at least approximate it. Meanwhile they’re trying to fix a lot of what’s broken about their shows before they head to FOX next year, Alexa Bliss got a concussion a week before a PPV, NXT UK just launched, and more. If you work for WWE right now, you’re basically Cathy from the comic strip Cathy.
The reason I’m prefacing the column with all this (again) is to explain why putting on an engaging episode of Smackdown might not fit on WWE’s plate right now, and to explain why a show that’s had a decent amount of forward momentum lately might stagnate completely for a week.
For example, one of the marquee matches for Crown Jewel is a WWE Championship match between AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan. WWE wants to build this up on their weekly show, but (as of Tuesday morning) still hasn’t made any announcements for whether or not they’re canceling or moving Crown Jewel, so they’re just kinda … building to nothing, maybe? It’s hard to explain. Imagine if you were in charge of planning a wedding and making sure everything was just right, but the bride was like, “I might’ve murdered someone, you’re probably going to hear about it over the next few days,” and the groom won’t answer your calls because the bride’s worth tens of millions of dollars. And they’re both like, “just plan the wedding, it’s fine.”
So last week, they had Bryan and Styles team up — but how can they co-exist?? — against the Usos. The Usos won when Bryan accidentally hit Styles. How do you continue that story this week without actually doing anything or making any statements? You have Bryan and Styles team up — after last week, how can they co-exist?? — and lose to the Usos when Styles accidentally hits Bryan. Whoops! Whoopsie.
This is the Smackdown you’re getting this week. It’s not bad, really, but it’s going to be the most obvious, by-the-numbers two hours you’ve ever seen because we’ve got a lot of shit on our plate right now, okay.
In another more obvious example, a tag team match teaming Asuka and Naomi against The Artists Formerly Known As Absolution — which was originally announced as just Naomi vs. Mandy Rose, “for the first time ever” — ends before it begins because there’s a women’s battle royal coming up, and the only way to sell a battle royal these days is to have everyone from the battle royal run into the ring and have a second, practice battle royal for no reason. If you’ve watched wrestling for more than a month, you’ve seen it. There’s no reason to compel everyone to go into the ring and have a rules-based battle royal brawl, but they do it. Asuka “stands tall” at the end, which is a nice way of saying, “we realize it’s pretty dumb to have you lose in battle royals, so let’s at least lampshade it before we do it.”
Really the only highlight is how the IIconics say “WWE Evolution,” complete with flushing gesture for “Evolution.”
Also highly predictable but objectively fine in this episode is Rey Mysterio’s appearance on Miz TV turning into a match against The Miz, which, wow, has that ever happened before?
This is where we get into one of our normal routines of wondering why WWE operates the way it does. They’ve got a “WWE World Cup” tournament coming up in a week (maybe), and it’s a tournament featuring a bunch of big names. So how do you advertise that, and get people who might want to see those guys wrestle to watch the show? By having those guys … wrestle a week early in a full match with a clean ending. Mysterio just wrestles and pins Miz. And … that’s it. So does Miz not get to be in the tournament now? I know the answer to that, but shouldn’t it mean something? Like Miz drawing the #8 seed or something because he lost? Can we have this stuff actually affect what’s happening on more important shows, to give us a reason to watch and be invested beyond Personal Rivalries™? I don’t think everyone who works for WWE and gets into a < 5 minute argument with a co-worker needs to immediately wrestle about it.
The match is what you’d expect. Miz being the King of Safe Style, and Mysterio being one of the most unstoppable characters in WWE. Brother might as well be Brock Lesnar right now. I’m guessing Cena’s the only one allowed to pin him, if that even happens.
Continuing that trend is the main event, Randy Orton vs. Jeff Hardy; again, two people who are supposed to compete in the World Cup tournament in a week. Are they doing these as top secret first round matches in case they change their mind and cancel or move Crown Jewel? Like, did they do these so they can retroactively be like, “Orton defeated Hardy on Smackdown and Mysterio defeated Miz, so here’s Mysterio vs. Orton in SECOND ROUND ACTION! Also John Cena lost his first round match to Seth Rollins at a WWE live event in Rio de Janeiro!”
Again, the match isn’t terrible I suppose (at least not for Orton standards), but varies depending on how many times you’ve watched them wrestle in the past few months. Have you not seen Orton put his finger in Jeff Hardy’s spaced earlobe? You’re gonna think it’s VERY GROSS when he does it HERE! Again! WWE’s really counting on nobody watching their show weekly, and their ability to do a thing that “gets people talking” over and over until everyone in the world’s had a turn.
Hardy should really invest in a little cover or something to plug those flesh tunnels. You’re just gonna keep getting dragged around by them.
Were you upset by last week’s 45-second Rusev vs. Miz match? Perhaps you’ll like this week’s 115-second match between Rusev and Aiden English. Is Rusev hurt or something? Why can’t any of his matches go longer than two minutes? And it’s not like he’s Goldberg, just plowing through guys, he’s losing some of these. Is the point of the feud supposed to be that Rusev can kick English’s ass, or that they’re both not supposed to be very good?
If you were hoping they’d explain why Big Show would randomly turn on The New Day to help The Bar win the Tag Team Championship, you’ll be excited to learn that this week we find out it was because “reasons, we guess.”
Kofi Kingston shows up looking for some retribution against anyone from the heel team because they “lowered the bar” (ugh) and ends up one-on-one with Show. Show just kinda beats him to death about it, and the match ends in disqualification when New Day jumps in to keep him from chokeslamming Kofi into dust. The heels stand tall, and WWE has another week to figure out a better name for the team than “Team Show Bar.” I don’t care as long as Show drives up to Crown Jewel in a The Bar-themed monster truck.
Best: The Only Actual Segment
The only bit of new material this week comes in the form of Charlotte Flair giving a speech at the WWE Performance Center to a bunch of women who could straight-up kick her ass off right now. I kept hoping Shayna Baszler would jump in and randomly choke her out for thinking she can talk to her like that. Shout-out to Bianca Belair for just standing in the background making bored eyes the entire time. You don’t need to tell her to have friends, she never needed you at all [dances]
Anyway, The Champ shows up to shit on Charlotte for telling people they should have friends — pfft, pffffft — and a fight breaks out. Again, was really hoping Sara Amato was gonna jump in and start butterfly suplexing folks. It wasn’t a particularly memorable segment, but it forces Charlotte into even more of an assumed moral highground by saying Becky “disrespected” the PC and NXT (when her entire NXT career was about stepping on people to get to the top), and hey, it gives a bunch of future stars an early cameo on the show.
Still wish Baszler had meekly raised her hand and been like, “can I fight you like, right now.”
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
LUNI_TUNZ
“Here comes the money,” was also the original theme for Crown Jewel, but everyone thought it was too obvious.
blacksnakemoan
“Here’s comes the REMOOOOOOOTE!”
AddMayne
Dear Diary,
Today a girl came to the PC. No, not a girl. A WOMAN. A strong, powerful woman, with fire red hair and the strength of ten men. The way she totally beat up her former best friend was amazing. I think I may be in love for the very first time.
Signed
Tommy Entertainment aka The Champ
The Real Birdman
“Any questions”
“What has one leg & won’t win the MYC?”
“Umm… huh”
“Tegan Nox!”
“Inappropriate Rhea…”
AddMayne
Charlotte: Any more questions?
Unidentified, but very Irish accent: yeah why are you such a bitch
Dave M J
Shayna Baszler’s thoughts there:
CHOKEHEROUTCHOKEHEROUTCHOKEHEROUTCHOKEHEROUT
muchsarcasm
WWE: Look at what Becky is doing. You have no choice but to boo her.
Picard: THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS!
Endy_Mion
Charlotte: Don’t let anybody walk over you
Becky Lynch: Half of my Instagram photos are me standing on top of you in the process of walking over you
Charlotte: Do as I say, not as I do
cyniclone
Daniel Bryan: *does Too Sweet signal*
AJ Styles: DON’T EVER DO MY CLUB’S SIGNAL AGAIN OR I’LL GO ACROSS THE WORLD TO JAPAN —
Bryan: around
AJ: *ACROSS* THE WORLD
Mr. Bliss
Vince: “Daniel, Cena is bailing on Crown Jewel, I know you have concerns but what can I do for you to get you to tow the line and get on board with this?”
Daniel: “You could put me together with AJ again, those were good times.”
Vince: “You got it!”
Daniel sees who his tag partner is: “Not that AJ!!! I’m out!”
Note: I don’t know what Billie and Peyton were doing in the background here, but I wish we’d gotten to see more of it.
That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. Join us this weekend for Evolution, which apparently is a pay-per-view special of some kind, and then a week later for WWE Blacked Out In Permanent Records. Drop a comment and share the column to help us out, would you? It’s hard times.
