Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: AJ Styles punched Vince McMahon in the face, Daniel Bryan stomped Santa Claus to death, and the mighty RUSEV became United States Champion again. Plus, Shane McMahon stopped being a jerk for like one minute!
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Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live, New Years Day edition, for January 1, 2019.
Best: Big Hair John
Let’s go ahead and start off the column with the only segment anyone’s going to remember from this episode: the Smackdown Live return of “free agent” John Cena, now with realistic life-like hair. I typed this on Twitter, and I’ve probably already typed it in the column a thousand times, but I always want John Cena on television until he’s actually there. Then all my wrestling fan Spidey Senses start tingling and I have to type 15 bad things about him. Say what you will, but that “he gets a reaction” thing is truer for John Cena than it is for anyone. I can’t have him on TV without feeling something, good or bad.
So John shows up and pulls a B-Rabbit at the end of 8 Mile, bringing up everything anyone could possibly say about him before someone says it, then invites anyone in the back to come out and … say those things. I was hoping Alberto Del Rio was going to show up and tell Cena he only rents those fancy cars, but they do me one (million) better: El Hombre answers the challenge. They have words, get interrupted by some heels who have no chance of beating Cena ever, and that sets up a mixed tag.
There’s something truly fascinating about the 2019 version of John Cena. Everything about him is confusing. His body is weird to us, his hair is weird to us, he seems to simultaneously SUPER CARE and not give a shit about WWE, he’s off in Hollywood doing all the stuff he used to rag on The Rock for doing and promised us he’d never do, he’s still clearly depressed and having a mid-life crisis of some kind possibly/probably due to breaking up with his reality TV girlfriend, and the brother spent six months living in China doing martial arts only to come back with a Lightning Fist finisher best described as, “a punch that doesn’t connect.” He’s still dressing like a toddler, but now he has the hair of a 60-year old man. He’s SO WEIRD, and I love it, but I’m also worried, but also I LOVE IT.
The highlight of the match is Cena hitting all of his moves in a row on poor Andrade Almas and posing, only for The Man® to shit-can him. She goes on to win the match herself, leaving him standing out on the ramp with his Flock of Seagulls hair looking all distressed. He puts Becky over one final time by having her You Can’t See Me him and refuse a handshake, which he responds to by golf clapping. One great, consistent thing about Cena’s character is if you play fair and win like you’re supposed to and respect him, it’s never enough; but if you do something shitty and own up to it, he respects you. Cena can’t ever “turn heel” because he’s been heel since the day he showed up.
One quick note about Andrade Almas: You’ll read a lot of armchair booker wrestling fans (like myself) say that it’s actually GOOD that Almas got his ass kicked by part-time, barely-there John Cena, because Cena’s appearances are infrequent now, and if he chooses to work with you it’s giving you a rub. It’s the same thing people said when The Rock showed up and buried Rusev, or when The Rock and Cena teamed up to bury Awesome Truth. You’re working with the most popular guy, so that means you’re getting love and respect by proxy, and it’ll help you in the long run.
I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with a commonly agreed-upon statement more. Those scenarios certainly didn’t end up doing Rusev (or The Hurricane) or Awesome Truth any favors, as they languished as embarrassing undercard guys until something new came along and caught on. You can’t go back 20 years and be like, “Goldberg squashed Jerry Flynn in 20 seconds, but he keeps wrestling him every week, that must mean WCW has big plans for Jerry Flynn!” You can’t go back 30 and say Hogan was giving Killer Khan the rub by kicking his ass. You could maybe say Bruno Sammartino gave people the rub by letting them lose to him at Madison Square Garden, but shit, the last time that happened, Cena’s hair was in style. Long paragraph short, being on TV and making money is important, and being good at getting your ass kicked can sometimes allow you to be on TV more often and make money, but being the guy they pick to lose to the important people doesn’t make you an important person to fans, ever. It makes them think you’re a loser, which is why WWE keeps having to bring in dudes from 10-20 years ago, because they made everyone who works there now look like losers too many times.
An actually quick note about Becky Lynch: She rules, don’t be a hater.
Update: Shane McMahon Is Being Kind Of A Jerk Again
To quote that guy from Botch Club, “I’ve done the copy-cat gimmick with Alex Riley, Damien Sandow, and North Haverbrook and by gum it put them on the map!”
In attempting to pitch Shane McMahon branding ideas for their newly agreed-upon tag team, The Miz makes two crucial mistakes:
- assuming that Shane actually meant what he said last week and was going to be his friend, and not just forget what happened because “nobody’s going to remember it,” and
- pitching any item of clothing to Shane besides ill-fitting baseball jerseys and sweatpants
I want there to be more to it, but I can’t figure out if it’s genius or a failure that the heel is a heel because he seems to actually care about things, and the babyface is a babyface because he’s completely apathetic. The best thing WWE could do under new leadership is put someone who has had friends and good relationships in charge, so being nice to people and having emotions weren’t tropes of the weak.
Best: Everyone But The Good Brothers
Speaking of heels who are best friends,
If I could’ve asked for more of anything from Smackdown, it would’ve been more of these little New Years resolution videos. I always like on old pay-per-views when superstars explain what they’re thankful for at Thanksgiving, or whatever. Highlights include the IIconics screaming in Australian, and Shelton Benjamin rightfully pointing out that New Years resolutions are dumb and we’re all just going to fail at them anyway. Is this a face turn for Shelton?
The only lowlight is The Good Brothers, who still think screaming “nerds” is something we like. Did that ever even catch on? It’s the Ricky Ortiz rally towel of catchphrases.
Best/Worst: Rusev Day, USA
Precious Al Rusev and Lana (dressed like a mash-up of current Lana and Lana Classic) show up to celebrate his United States Championship victory, only to get jumped and beaten down by Shinsuke Nakamura. As a segment, this works. Rusev is a bubbling fountain of macho charisma, Lana’s enthusiasm is real and infectious, and Nakamura needs to get serious and kick some ass instead of being a wandering backstage weirdo.
The only thing I don’t like about it is Lana’s bump. Wrestling (mostly WWE) does this thing sometimes where they turn a manager or non-wrestling valet character into a wrestle and have them wrestle all the time, but lose all their skill/strength/HP/whatever when they aren’t. For example, Lana’s in the ring all the time now getting kicked in the head by Asuka, suplexed by Becky Lynch, speared by Charlotte, and so on … so why is she comatose because she took a single back bump here? I’d get it if Rusev accidentally kicked her in the face or something, but she just fell off Nakamura’s back and was completely dead. It just doesn’t make sense to me, I guess.
On the bright side, like I said, the actual foundation of the segment is great, and I hope Rusev and Nakamura get to improve upon their already very good match from last week on a grander stage.
Worst: Arrested Deville-opment
Mandy Rose drops out of her scheduled match with Naomi (again) and subs in Sonya Deville, who ends up winning when Mandy distracts Naomi with I SLID INTO YOUR HUSBAND’S DMS content. There’s a lot wrong here, from the fact that Mandy’s actually more covered in the photo she sent than she is in her normal ring gear and how WWE needs to learn how to tell stories with their women that don’t still revolve around the men, but the worst thing by far is Sonya Deville’s finisher.
Which is, uh … Sonya making her opponent give her a Mickie James DDT?
I guess she’s trying to do Matt Morgan’s finisher, but forgot to get her head out from under that arm on the way down. Can we maybe give Sonya a finish where she won’t accidentally give herself brain damage?
Best: Babe E New Year
The New Day’s New Year celebration was their usual mix of funny (Kofi freaking out about never getting a title shot and Brock Lesnar not even wanting to do his job and come to work at all) and forced (movie references, you guys), but it’s always good to see them out there having fun. Plus, I think the image of Big E as baby new year is burned into the frontal lobes of our brains for the rest of our lives. A lot of ageplay enthusiasts suddenly got super into WWE.
It’s also worth watching for the reference to Steiner Math, which Xavier Woods was actually around for. The numbers don’t lie, and they spell disaster for Samoa Joe at Sacrifice. Also, on Smackdown!
Best-ish: Joe Wins!
The actual first match of the show is Samoa Joe vs. Jeff Hardy (again) with the winner moving on to a fatal five-way match at the end of the night. The winner of THAT match gets to face Daniel Bryan for the WWE Championship at Royal Rumble. The good news is that Joe wins a perfectly fine match and doesn’t choke again. The bad news is that with the AJ Styles vs. The McMahons story going and Daniel Bryan only defeating him at TLC via small package, you knew there wasn’t a chance for EITHER of these guys to win, and that the whole qualifier/fatal five-way bit was just WWE trying to get to “automatic rematch for the former champ” in a world where they just axed endless automatic rematches for the former champ.
Speaking of that, part of me wishes they still just did “the former champ gets a rematch via CLAUSE” thing I’ve disliked (but understood) for years, because they still want to do it, and don’t seem to have a lot of plans for how to get there now. Like, they announced Asuka vs. Becky Lynch for the Royal Rumble on Main Event, then took it back because they forgot they’d stopped doing rematch clauses. And now Becky’s on Smackdown interacting with other people trying to get a rematch. They’re just doing the same thing with too many additional steps.
Best: The Main Event, Even So
The good news is that the main event still ruled, because shit, it was AJ Styles and Samoa Joe and Mustafa Ali and Rey Mysterio and a Randy Orton that doesn’t have to carry the action. That’s key for Orton. I always thought he’d be a fantastic tag team wrestler, because his signature moves and spots are all over and people like his personality, but he’s bland as a fucking sack of beige bricks when he’s controlling a match as a veteran heel.
Again, the end result was never in question, spoilers or not, because of course the “real” AJ Styles has to get the next shot at Daniel Bryan. They’ve spent years settling into running one guy vs. one specific opponent five or six times in a row for the past several years, and whether they’ve changed that on the back end or not, we’re gonna have to give them some time to work it out of their system. I really wish this was going to be Daniel Bryan defending the WWE Championship against Rey Mysterio, or another (longer, better) match with Mustafa Ali, or even a match with Joe (that would be another example of Joe not being able to “cross the finish line,” as they say), but Styles/Bryan will be good. I smell a wonky AJ Styles championship match finish a-comin’, possibly involving multiple McMahonspersons, but hey, at least we got one instance of him losing a 24-minute technical wrestling barn-burner via inside cradle.
P.S. now that he’s upgraded his championship, I hope Daniel Bryan is champion forever.
“You people used to revere the old Daniel Bryan. You used to love the old Daniel Bryan but the old Daniel Bryan is dead. Shut up! I did not give you permission to chant ‘Yes!’ But I am not here to please you people. I am no longer The People’s Champion, I am The Planet’s Champion. I’m out here to defending the planet from you heathens every single night, and I don’t care if it’s AJ Styles, I don’t care if it’s the great John Cena. Tonight, I am going to prove why I am The Planet’s Champion.”
After all, nobody is the champion of a flat planet.
