Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: We held an Extreme Rules brand pay-per-view, and nothing changed on the Smackdown side except the United States Championship. AJ Styles, Carmella, and the Bludgeon Brothers are all still champs, but Jeff Hardy lost to a nut shot, then got a second nut shot for his troubles.
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Here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for July 17, 2018.
Best: Almas There
Here’s a good way to get me to like an entire episode of a show: start it with AJ Styles vs. Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas, give it 12 good minutes, let us know how dope it’s gonna be while saving most of the best stuff for the future, and give it a clean finish.
That’s how Smackdown starts, with goddamn Al Styles taking on La Sombra for a quarter-hour. That’s lovely. These two guys look like they’re made to be in the ring together, and I love that Almas feels like Styles might’ve 13 years ago. That’s the age difference, if you’re wondering. Despite what we know about Almas, especially if we’ve watched NXT, it’s a good idea to make the guy’s first “marquee” match about how he’s almost as good as your best guy right now, so in a couple of years he’s going to be better than everybody. Styles has to struggle to win, and that matters. It should, at least. Plus, you’re only as good as the competition you beat. Styles vs. Almas felt like the best version of a John Cena U.S. Open Challenge.
I think a match like this helps Almas more in the long run than getting a non-title victory to set up a title match loss, the placeholder Rusev booking for cycles where you aren’t really building up to anything except showing you’ve got a fighting champion who can work. By having Almas almost win, or at least something in the ballpark of it, you show that maybe he’s holding back a little or tapping out a little earlier than normal because he knows there’s nothing to gain, and he’s proven he can go toe-to-toe with the “face that runs the place” and your general consensus Top Guy. Live to fight another day, when the prize is on the line, or whatever. Good stuff.
Best: And Then The Opposite!
Another reason why it’s good to have Almas lose to Styles like that is because you’re already running a “challenger defeats the champion to set up a championship match” bit with the following segment. Becky Lynch has been winning a lot lately, so she wants a match against Carmella for the Smackdown Women’s Championship. Carmella’s character is currently built on the idea that she’s building a resume without doing the work, so she’s “beaten Charlotte Flair twice” and she’s “beaten Asuka twice,” but circumstantially nobody thinks she’s better for it. So of course she wants to duck Becky Lynch until she can formulate the proper Scooby-Doo-ass gameplan she’ll need to beat her.
Carmella’s hubris catches up to her, too, as she goes to Paige to demand another Carmella Celebration and ends up having to work for it. If she can beat Bex next week, she’ll get her extraneous Mellabration for nothing. If she doesn’t, and Becky wins, Becky gets to challenge her for the Smackdown Women’s Championship (like she wants) at SummerSlam. I think a story like this works better when it’s a workhorse veteran like Lynch, because tearing through the red tape and getting around all the bullshit semantics to get to the top of the mountain is what workhorse veterans in WWE survive on the thought of.
In a related note, I still think Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan should throw in with Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville and form a Henchwomen without a Leader super group. Rise from your grave, Riottsolution!
Best: Smackdown’s Most Pure Feud
That’s the best word I could come up with to describe what Tye Dillinger’s doing with Samoa Joe. “Pure.” Last week they were supposed to fight, so Joe just ran out during Tye’s entrance and beat him down so badly he couldn’t compete. This week, thanks in part to an accidental pep talk from R-Truth, Dillinger FIRES UP and gives Joe everything he’s got in the tank … for about 60 seconds, at which point Joe throws him dick-first at the ring post and then chokes him the hell out. Because for real, any Samoa Joe vs. Tye Dillinger match ever should play out this way. Dillinger’s good at what he does, but Joe is gonna kill you.
Best: MVP
This is one of those segments that works on paper, almost never works in practice, but works here because of the talent involved.
On paper, “heel who had almost nothing to do with the babyface’s important loss shows up and can’t stop ragging on them for losing until the babyface shows up and kicks their ass” is great. Old school. Simple, and straight forward. The reaction it should get is the reaction it gets here. In practice, the segments are usually too pre-written and rehearsed to feel like anybody means what they’re saying, so it’s a lot of going through the expository motions to set up a couple of minutes of pull-apart. That lives or dies by how much we like the babyface. Here, Miz is so good at believably delivering dialogue that he turns what should for all intents and purposes be a corny-ass talk show segment into another delivery system for his Daniel Bryan slander, which is the best thing in the world because it still, still bothers him from all the way back in goddamn NXT season 1. Bryan should’ve never been able to succeed, his success has never made sense, and Miz should be the beloved popular one everyone cheers for because Bryan only “learned it from him.” Because almost a decade later, Miz still believes that coming up through the WWE farm system is the only thing that makes you a real “superstar.” See: Alex Riley, Damien Sandow, Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel. Those are his PEOPLE. The homegrown.
It’s not the best segment they’ve ever done, but Miz is such an unbelievable shithead when he’s doing these things that he almost wills it to work. Bryan is the king of the fired up babyfaces for now and always, so having him show up looking to kick this guy’s ass in instead of trading sassy barbs makes his side work, and they (still) leave enough to make us want to see them go at it one-on-one. I hope this feud is showing someone in WWE creative that the money is in making people want to see a match, a single match, not showing someone a match five times and asking them what they think will happen in match six. If you plan too far ahead, you sometimes forget to make those early steps of the plan matter enough to carry the rest of it.
Best: King T’Kofi
A great example of why you shouldn’t burn your audience out on wrestlers and matches that could be making you money: Kofi Kingston. He’s always been popular, sure, but they put him in that Lazy Susan of mid-card matches for years against guys like Dolph Ziggler and never really gave him something to grab onto. The Randy Orton feud back in the day was close. He ended up in a dead-end gimmick that shouldn’t have worked, but did, because the guys involved broke down the wall at the end of the street and kept paving. Now he’s been in the New Day so long and established such a strong character identity and personality that his singles matches have a “superstar” weight to them, and the fact that he gets the big spotlight moment of every good New Day match or attack or appearance isn’t an accident. Everyone in New Day has prospered from being in it, but I think Kofi’s a few good character decisions away from being a top-level elite guy. If they want him to be, I guess.
The match with Eric Young is a nice continuation of the understated (tables-related) beef Sanity and New Day established at Extreme Rules, showing that Sanity’s a well-oiled anti-whatever-they’re-anti squad who will do anything to win. Sacrificing themselves, teamwork, distractions, cheating, whatever’s necessary. New Day had that edge for a minute and goes back to it every now and then — mostly centered around timing and teamwork now — but got popular, and let popularity turn them into happy dancing unicorn dudes. Which isn’t bad, especially from a “make yourself happy as a performer” standpoint, but in kayfabe you can see how they might have a serious focus problem, while Sanity is literally nothing but focus, down to matching jacket patches.
I hope this continues, if only to give us 8-10 minutes of Big E and Killian Dain throwing hands next week.
Best: Drop That Nero And Get With The Hero
Lastly we have the night’s main event, a rematch for the United States Championship between the new champion, Evil Monster Shinsuke Nakamura, and the former champion, Jeff Hardy. Jeff’s look in this match is somewhere between Captain Jack Sparrow’s cannibal king and a henchman The Joker might have if he was trying to rob a rave.
What it lacks in the hilarious surprise of the first match, it makes up with in being … well, you know, an actual match. The story going around is that Hardy’s banged up and needs some time off, so much so that he’s stopped doing the Swanton Bomb at live shows for fear of it fucking up his back, so giving him a solid 17 minutes of main event spotlight before having Randy Orton show up again and Randy Orton him into oblivion is very good. Orton is such a piece of shit here, absolutely TRUCKING Hardy around the ring, screaming in his face about WHAT HE DID.
All I can think is that Orton’s still mad about Hardy using entrance themes to overrule him on the post-WrestleMania shows, but multiple attempts at castration are pretty extreme for that. Maybe Orton’s a big fan of the Broken Universe, still hates Bray Wyatt, and wants to take out his frustrations for how that all turned out on the closest Hardy he can find? How great would it be if Wyatt just turned the Hardyz into Brood members again and manipulated them into joining his Family? You can take the ancient evil spirit out of the boy, but you can’t take the boy out of the ancient evil spirit. Or … something.
Also, +1 to Randy Orton for letting Carol Burnett’s grandmother know she’s okay.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
The Legal Man
Orton backstage: I love you, Shinsuke.
The Iron Yuppie
Jeff thinks the attack is over, but just wait until he gets back to the locker room and sees what Randy left in his bag.
Endy_Mion
Call Joe the Millennium Falcon cause he is murdering all Tye Fighters
Bryan is channeling his polar opposite CM Punk and going after Paul Bearers.
SuedeGuy
Miz is a very good eugooglizer
Obi Wan Jabroni
Nice to see Eric Young five-finger-discounted all the Aces and Eights gear from TNA.
The Real Birdman
Really uncomfortable with an angle involving a mannequin & Kane
*Death tuba intensifies*
Mr. Bliss
Wow, Becky really trying to distance herself from Sasha and Bayley by emphasizing that she’s not just fire, she’s Straight Fire
JayBone2
I hope Bill Nye interrupts the Miz’s Team Hell No eulogy tonight in order to continue their celebrity softball game feud. Gotta build momentum. Bill will also explain to creative what momentum is and how you properly build it.
That’s it for this week’s column. Smackdown killed Raw deader than Lana’s accent. I like that she’s turned into one of those ’80s/’90s news reporters who only have an accent on certain words. She’s Florida as hell and then “Rusev” still has the Zoya the Destroyer R.
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