WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: It’s ’93, it’s time for Wrestle-MAIN-ya! The IIconics won the Women’s Tag Team Championship (putting them on both shows), Becky Lynch won the Winner Take All main event (putting her on both shows), and Kofi Kingston won the hearts of millions despite killing the planet when he became WWE Champion.

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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’re on the road to [checks notes] Money in the Bank? That’s next now?

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for April 9, 2019.

Before We Begin

So, next week is the Superstar Shake-Up, a “draft” of sorts in which people who are currently on Raw, Smackdown and NXT get shuffled onto a different brand to freshen things up. I didn’t give Raw enough credit for this in the Best and Worst of Raw, probably because we’re in a long-term abusive relationship, but here’s the truth: with WrestleMania ending on Sunday and the rosters completely changing next Monday and Tuesday, this week’s shows are total throwaways. At best.

It’s not a terrible idea, I guess, considering how infamous the post-WrestleMania Raw (and to a lesser degree, the post-WrestleMania Smackdown) have become for wild fans taking control and doing the wave and playing with beach balls all night. The important stories ended over the weekend, and there’s no use in starting new important stories if everyone’s delirious from excitement and exhaustion and nobody’s paying attention.

Just wanted to type this out first, because aside from a title change that makes a couple of people seem like obvious choices for Shooken-Up Superstars, nothing really happens. Enjoy!

Best: A Lot Of Butt Stuff

Smackdown begins with New Day organizing what looks like PRIDE to help celebrate Kofi Kingston’s WWE Championship win at WrestleMania. Between the unbridled celebratory positivity, Big E randomly doing the splits, and Kofi’s adorable family getting in the ring, they should be allowed to hold celebrations as long as they want. Just keep doing championship celebrations until they don’t want to anymore. I think it’d take a lot to make them start feeling disingenuous, and hell, it’s at least nice to see someone who seems happy about being champion. It’s like how 90% of super hero movies revolve around the hero not wanting to be the hero. The Marvel Netflix shows are basically therapy sessions for people who get to be beautiful and special. YOU POOR BABIES.

The celebration gets interrupted by The Bar and eventually their randomly occurring Raw friend Drew McIntyre, who I guess aren’t tired of losing all the time yet.

The main event is a lot like the Raw main event, in that it’s perfect fine pro wrestling with a good point — show that Kofi Kingston is a fighting WWE Champion who can win matches against strong challengers — but isn’t particularly consequential or exciting, and exists in the void between WrestleMania and the Shake-Up.

There’s also the weird happenstance of Drew McIntyre tagging out and then just kinda disappearing to the back. Reports say he exited off to the side and not up the ramp, where he would’ve gone if it was something story-based, although we haven’t seen any official “Drew McIntyre injured” announcements beyond speculation. We certainly hope he’s okay, especially with the Shake-Up coming up and him finally maybe getting a position worthy of his talents and natural humongousness on one of the rosters.

Related note: Can WWE resist breaking up the New Day this close to Kofi Kingston winning the WWE Championship? You can practically feel creative’s hands fidgeting from here. Breaking up the New Day is like teenage suicide. Don’t do it.

Best: Roster Cohesion (On The Last Episode Before The Shake-Up)

I really enjoyed how easily this episode flowed from one thing to another. The best example is definitely this stretch in the middle.

R-Truth and Carmella show up to recap WrestleMania, and Truth congratulates Carmella on “defeating Andre the Giant in the Royal Rumble match.” Carmella gets to show some awesome babyface likability by explaining how last year she lost her championship but gained a friend who put her priorities back in the right place and helped her love her job again. That’s really, really great, and Truth and Carmella have been a revelation and are easily the best thing to come from the Mixed Match Classic’s existence.

That causes Samoa Joe to randomly power-walk out and murder Truth, as “randomly murdering choking dudes to death as quickly as possible” is Joe’s great new character trait. His show of brutal confidence brings out the most brutal and confident guy on the show — Braun Strowman — and the two brawl. THIS is great because (1) Joe knows how to have exciting matches with big dudes, as seen with his awesome bout with Brock Lesnar, (2) Braun Strowman works a lot better with dynamic fighters like Joe than he does with big slogs like Kane or celebrities and desperately needs to get his edge back, and (3) it instantly sets up a match with a fight that makes us want to see MORE FIGHTING. Pro wrestling at is easiest, and its best.

And then that randomly leads to this incredible moment on the stage, in which The IIconics (of all people) try to make friends with Strowman and get cold-shouldered.

WWE Smackdown Live

He really does need to go to therapy.

Best: For Whom The Belles Toll

Quick, take a wild guess on whether or not I loved the IIconics Women’s Tag Team Championship title win celebration speech and the followup match in which they spectacularly trounce two jobbers who look like Hot Topic convinced two random girls at the mall to cosplay as the Young Bucks.

After the match, Paige (is) Here and announces that next week she’s going to be bringing a new tag team to Smackdown Live. I’d be happy if this was some form of Lady Road Warriors (like Rhea Ripley and Reina Gonzalez, for example), but I’d like it even more if it was a We Actually Started The Women’s Revolution You Idiots-themed Hulu NXT duo like Emma and Summer Rae. I’d rather the IIconics keep the belts for a while, especially since Bayley and Sasha Banks got a Sasha Banks run, but as long as (1) we can always call them “Women’s Tag Team Champions The IIconics” and (2) they keep doing these random backstage improvised character worked bits, I’ll live.

I don’t know what’s my favorite recent IIconicism, Billie Kay’s threatening lean against the wall in someone’s face, or “thanks for comin’ out” as a way to say goodbye.

By the way, Queen Cathy’s “I love them but I’m not supposed to” face when she’s done talking to the IIconics is always the best thing.

YouTube

Best: The Flight, The Light, And The Night

Two great moments from the very fun but otherwise extremely placeholder exhibition of Aleister Black, Ricochet, and Ali versus Andrade, Rusev, and Shinsuke Nakamura.

1. The triple sit-out, which is perfectly timed by everyone involved and way cooler when Michael Cole’s not calling it.

WWE Smackdown Live

2. Ali falling victim to the dreaded tight middle shot that hides RKOs From Outta Nowhere and, get this, eating an RKO From Outta Nowhere.

WWE Smackdown Live

Ali vs. Randy Orton is a ready made feud I’m dying to see, both because of the contrast between very good dude Ali and impossible to love bad human Randy Orton, and because Ali’s probably got 45 ideas for absurd RKOs nobody else is athletic or creative enough to pull off.

Also, as good as they’ve been as a tag team, there’s nothing I want the Superstar Shake-Up to shake up more than Ricochet and Aleister Black. Their partnership has never made sense, makes even less sense now that the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic is over and they didn’t win the NXT Tag Team Championship at TakeOver New York, and are too good as singles stars to get stuck in a Bobby Roode/Chad Gable “sorry you’re still employed” spot.

Best: Greg’d If You Do, Greg’d If You Don’t

I’m not sure I can articulate why it works so well, but I’m into the weird Miz vs. Shane McMahon sub-story where Shane is threatening Greg Hamilton all the time about calling him the “Best in the World” properly, and now “fans” are apparently threatening him if he says it at all. Of all the character on the show, Greg is the one who found himself in a weird “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” mob situation where he shall swim with the fishes because he exists and has a job.

Next week I want Greg to show up all nervous, dressed like Elton John in the ’70s, forced to do a big elaborate introduction for Shane McMahon only for George Mizanin to hop the rail and beat the shit out of him. Give me paranoid Greg losing hair and weight because he lives in fear every second of his life because a couple of rich assholes don’t like each other.

Best, Mostly: Superstar Shake-Uce

The best and most exciting match of the night is The Hardy Boyz winning the Smackdown Tag Team Championship from the Usos, putting them back on track to challenge The Dudley Boyz’ record number of tag title reigns. The trick to being a successful tag team is calling yourself “Boyz.” Booker T and Stevie Ray would’ve gotten into the Hall of Fame five years ago if they’d just been the Huffman Boyz.

I don’t love the Usos losing the championship (because I love me some Usos) and I think it’s weird that the pre-WrestleMania feud appeared to be the Usos and the Hardys ,only for that to get shuffled off to the side for a random fatal four-way that’d get more people on the card but not involve the Hardys, and then the match happen with a title change two days after WrestleMania. But this DOES clear up the Usos to get moved over to Raw in the Superstar Shake-Up, which is great because Raw’s tag team division is the most embarrassing shit in the universe and needs good tag teams having good matches pronto. It also maybe means they can Shake-Up Naomi to Raw, too, and give that post-Ronda division and Riott Squad graveyard some much-needed positive, likable faces.

Worst: All The Stuff They Did On Raw, But Repeated Here Anyway

WWE Smackdown Live

After the tag title match, Lars Sullivan shows up again and “destroys” the Hardys. All I’ll say is to compare Lars debuting by attacking the Hardys to, say, Brock Lesnar debuting by attacking up the Hardys and you’ll see why one worked and one might not.

Becky Lynch seriously needs to learn how to look out for a straight right hand.

Not much new to say here, so I’ll just copy and paste this over from Raw:

I like Lacey in this role, as you can give Becky Lynch an easy sort of “starter opponent” for a title defense at Backlash (or wherever), which will add a little longevity to her double title reign in a promotion where we’re already scared to death that all our title-winning fan favorites from WrestleMania aren’t going to stay champion through this week. Plus, Jesus, maybe now we’re finally done with the Lacey Evans Doing Nothing joke, which was honestly pretty tired back in February. She throws a good punch.

Next week they should have Lacey cut a promo in the middle of the ring, and when she’s about to leave have Becky Lynch show up dressed like a trophy wife at the Kentucky Derby and kick her ass.

Bray Wyatt’s Stinky Bird Puppet Made Another Appearance

Twitter/UPROXX

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Harry Longabaugh

Our KO from out of nowhere!

Pdragon619

Whenever the Usos aren’t tag team champions, people should be asking “why aren’t the Usos tag team champions?”

TheNewBarryHorowitz

BIRD BOX

Stagger Lee

Still bummed that Kofi’s belt plates are not pictures of Xavier & Big E.

Bigsexy75

E should write “Raw” on one leg and “Smackdown Live” on the other, and work that split into his moveset. Call it the Brand Split.

JayBone2

Don’t point out your family Kofi. That’s just what Joe wants.

troi

Do not let Lana near any dalmatians

The Real Birdman

*Takes down 0*
It has been 1 weeks since Vince McMahon ruined the SDL main event

Endy_Mion

In terms of friend groups, going from being friends with Corbin/Bobby to the Bar is like switching from MySpace to Facebook.

Jeeka

Lake of Reincarnation really works, they got their stats from 2000 back

One Last Thing

Shout-out to Sami Zayn declaring he’d show up every night to hold fans accountable, then showing less than 24 hours later to completely bail on the whole idea. It’s going to be a lot of fun when this happens to him:

WWE Smackdown Live

SummerSlam is in the “Bizarro Land” of Toronto, so I really want a card with both heel Daniel Bryan vs. face The Miz and heel Sami Zayn vs. face Kevin Owens on it where the crowd cheers the heels and accidentally gets last year’s intended show reactions right.

Thanks for reading, everybody. It’s been a hell of a weekend, and I will now lie down and not wake up until SummerSlam. Drop a comment down below to let us know what you thought of the show, give us a share on social media to help us close out WrestleMania week strong, and be here next week when we shake up some Superstars.

[collapses]

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: The Usos suspiciously lost the Smackdown Tag Team Championship a week before being sent to Raw, the IIconics tried to introduce themselves to Braun Strowman, and Drew McIntyre disappeared during the main event because WWE wanted us to forget he was about to lose another match.

Things to do: 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’re on the road to Money Inside Of The Bank!

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for April 16, 2019.

Best: O, You Didn’t Know

With Big E injured and Raw and Smackdown Superstars shaking themselves up into new factions and alignments, New Day has only one choice: replace their loyal, powerhouse third with a pissed off Canadian dad whose character’s reputation makes us think he’s gonna flip out and murder them at any moment.

That’s the delightful opening to the Smackdown Superstar Shake-Up; Kevin Owens joining the New Day as “Big O,” causing longtime WWE fans to think about Zack Ryder’s Internet show and the dorkier among us (myself included) to think about anime, and doing this:

WWE Smackdown Live

That’s followed by a backstage Gut Check® where he’s forced to eat an entire platter of cold pancakes with no syrup (and no beverage) during a single commercial break, which is madness. He might as well be eating a cardboard box full of packing peanuts.

These segments made me think about how valuable The Miz’s face turn has been. With Miz, we knew for a fact that he was just manipulating Shane McMahon to get a free title shot or two and suck up to management, and that his stories about wanting to make his dad proud were all bullshit, because he was just gonna swerve Shane as soon as he could. Then weeks went by, and pay-per-views, and whoops; it turns out the Miz was sincere all along, and Shane was the opportunistic jerk taking advantage of the heartfelt hopes and dreams of his employee. Independent contractor. Whatever.

Now with Kevin Owens, every single segment where he’s a happy-go-lucky do-gooder gives me squinting Philip J. Fry eyes because I know for a fact he’s just screwing with these fan favorites to get … something. It’ll all make sense when he powerbombs them into the apron. But weeks are already going by, Sami Zayn’s dipping deeper and deeper into nihilistic depression, and Owens is just squeezing into crop tops and being a good dude. It’s great. I probably need to just enjoy it while it lasts, because if it lasts for a long time, hey, he’s really good at it.

Here he is doing a Big E New Day intro, which I think is all we really needed from “The Big O.” My favorite part is the hard R at the end of “sour.” He’s already ahead of Shield Kurt Angle on the Unexpected Replacement power rankings.

That sets up a fun but also pretty depressing main event, in which the New New Day easily defeat Cesaro, Rusev, and Shinsuke Nakamura, Team Oh My God How Did You Fuck This Up Already. It’s like a battle to see which formerly super hot, top shelf performer could most easily be replaced by one of the nobodies from WWF Superstars.

A lot of us spent the match fantasy booking a new League of Nations (for some reason) with Owens swerving New Day, throwing Kingston into the Hardest Part Of The Ring, and representing Canada alongside Japan, Bulgaria, and a no longer neutral Switzerland. Not that we’re dying for a new League of Nations of anything, especially given how easily that could bring back Alberto Del Rio, but again, it speaks to our expectations for Owens’ character.

Any chance we could move all three heels to NXT on Wednesday night? I know they already taped the episode, but if the Superstar Shake-Up is supposed to “affect all three brands,” shouldn’t somebody get moved to yellow? Any three heels can take a fun house show loss to the babyfaces, it doesn’t have to be a literal superhuman, the coolest guy in the history of Japanese wrestling, and a man who once entered a WrestleMania match on a goddamn tank.

Best: Buddy Murphy Is Coming To Smackdown

… and he should probably get that dark spot on his face looked at by a doctor!

Best: The Smackdown Women’s Division Is The Jam

The first hour of Smackdown didn’t give us a lot in regard to the Superstar Shake-up. Then we got to the Becky Lynch promo, and we got:

• Ember Moon, who isn’t great on the microphone right now but is good enough in the ring that it doesn’t matter (plus, she’s on the show with Asuka again, which is key)
• Bayley, who has finally gotten away from the nightmare world of Monday Night Raw and has been formally separated from Sasha Banks, which is kinda sad but also probably for the best, at least in the immediate future
• Paige introducing her new team of Asuka and Kairi Sane, whose call up means the end of the Sky Pirates, but at least frees up Io Shirai to become the egotistical monster (and probably future NXT Women’s Champion) she was always meant to be
• a tying in of the rest of the Smackdown Women’s Division, which includes Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose deciding to be Absolution again and the IIconics rightfully noting that they are also Peyton and Billie Two Belts
• additionally, Mandy Rose’s amazing jacket

WWE Smackdown Live

I’m really happy this turned into an 8-woman tag instead of the IIconics vs. Asuka and Sane Women’s Tag Team Championship match I thought they were gonna do, because yeah, I love the IIconics more than I love most of the people I’m related to, but if they can last more than two minutes with Asuka and Kairi Sane it’ll be a miracle.

The actual match was a bit of a mess, but it established everyone and set the tone for the reshuffled division, and that’s good. The Smackdown women’s roster is really incredible right now, especially when you think about how Raw’s division is Natalya, a vintage fashion dog whistle, a broken up Riott Squad, a woman having double knee surgery, a talk show host, a Sasha Banks who doesn’t want to come to work, and a Ronda Rousey who might not ever come to work again at all. Who else do they have, Dana Brooke and Tamina?

Smackdown also makes a point to remind us that their division includes Charlotte Flair and Carmella Van Dale, who should really start using that as an on-screen last name. PVD fans represent. It’s the match it needed to be; Carmella being a scrappy babyface who’s still getting better every time she goes out there, and Charlotte getting a strong win to help her recover from the WrestleMania main event. It’s also important that they remind us Charlotte didn’t take the fall in that match, and is only not Smackdown Women’s Champion because the Raw Women’s Champion slipped up and a referee briefly lost his depth perception.

Eh: No Holds Lars’d

That leads directly into another random attack from ‘Ogre Rated’ Lars Sullivan. Sullivan’s beaten up Kurt Angle, the Hardy Boys, and Rey Mysterio, so now he’s onto WWE legend R-Truth. We should just get comfortable lumping him in with the rest of those guys because he’s going to still be awesome and still look exactly like this 20 years from now.

Lars’ attacks continue to be a little underwhelming, especially with the announce team yelling OH MY GOD LOOK AT THE POWER OF THE MONSTER when he’s just doing normal wrestling moves the cruiserweights can do to each other, and I think he could benefit from a Braun Strowman stunt spot or two. Can we have him rip off a crew member’s arm or something? He needs to do more than he’s doing now, whether it requires special effects or not, and “lurking” at Carmella ain’t it.

Best: Blue Demon

In other great news for Smackdown and a Superstar getting “called-up” to it, Intercontinental Champion Finn Bálor has joined the show. He immediately has a 10-minute match and clean victory over Mustafa Ali. That’s a way better use for Bálor than figuratively eating Bobby Lashley’s ass for four minutes four times a month.

Ali’s gear and hair kept making me think he was Seth Rollins, too, and I hope I wasn’t alone in that. Especially when he’s doing amazing shit like bringing back the Jericho Spike.

WWE Smackdown Live

Bálor being here is an awesome substitution for AJ Styles, because it gives the guy a chance to work with a new crop of fresh opponents, and, more importantly, work with them. Finn on Smackdown could be a godsend for both his character and the Intercontinental Championship, and he’s the right kind of star to push as one of the faces of the brand when you’re going over to Fox in the fall.

(Ali’s one of those guys too, so don’t forget him.)

Best: It’s … The BIG DOG

Smackdown continues its high quality cherry-picking of Raw in its main event segment, as Vince McMahon introduces the homie Elias as the “biggest acquisition in Smackdown Live history,” only for A Large Dog Roman Reigns to show up and punch Vince in the goddamn mouth. So many reasons this is great, including:

1. It gets Elias away from Raw, as he’s honestly way, way too good of a character and needs to get that Fox spotlight. That Fox searchlight? Whatever, he deserves the biggest audience imaginable, especially after getting stooged to John Cena and The Undertaker in two straight weeks.

2. It gets Roman Reigns away from Raw booking, which will allow him to continue becoming an Actual Fan Favorite by doing what he can secretly do really fucking well: wrestle. Reigns and Bryan have awesome chemistry already, as to Reigns and Bálor, and there are a ton of guys on the roster he can probably work high quality matches with. And it gets him out of the Drew McIntyre and Bobby Lashley and Baron Corbin circle jerk.

3. With Finn and Roman both coming to Smackdown, we’ve eliminated two of Michael Cole’s most annoying catchphrase in a single episode. Rest in peace to, “HE’S IN THE DROP ZONE!!!” and his infinite variations of, “here comes … the BIG DOG!” Leave the memories alone.

How is this show so good, and Raw so bad? Is Raw tanking to get the first draft pick in 2020 so they can pick up Matt Riddle?

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

JayBone2

Sky Captain and the Empress of Tomorrow.

Smackdown is no longer The House that AJ Styles Built. It is now and for ever shall be known as the New International House of Pancakes

AddMayne

Otis: what the heck is that perv’s problem

Endy_Mion

They should give Rusev a match similar to one of those supermarket brawls with Stone Cold and Booker T only in like a dollar store. And against a healthy Big E. That would be a comedy gold mine.

Harry Longabaugh

Murphy’s Law would make more sense on Monday nights; where everything that can go Raw-ng, will go Raw-ng.

NotJames

So pre Disney/Fox “merger”, WWE gives us the Iron Man vs Venom matchup we never knew we wanted.

Darth_Emmel

Vince: what do you mean we can’t call them the orient express?

Taylor Swish

Lars Sullivan basically has the body of Soda Popinski

AwkwardL0ser

If this doesn’t end with Kevin Owens murdering the two of them than he’s a Skrull’

cyniclone

Replacing Big E with Big O is quite the vowel movement

WWE Smackdown Live

when you find out who came up with The Viking Experience

Note: You’re probably looking for me to wonder what the storyline reason for Reigns punching Vince in the face was, but I’m okay with it being, “Vince was mouthing off to him,” with a mix of, “Roman Reigns has watched the show before and knows that Vince McMahon works in everyone’s worsts interests.” Vince has earned a random punching. Kinda sad to see him having to take the “Big Show knocking out Dusty Rhodes” assisted bump, though.

That’s it for Smackdown. Thanks for reading, as always. Drop us a comment down below to let us know what you thought of the show, and throw us a social media share to help keep us in the wrestling jokes business. See you next week for the first actual shows for the new rosters.

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown: Superstars got shooken up and Smackdown won in a walk as they picked up Roman Reigns, Ember Moon, Buddy Murphy, Kairi Sane, Elias, and Finn Bálor. They lost Aleister Black, Andrade, and Zelina Vega, but got them back anyway.

Things to do: 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’re on the road to Money Kept At The Bank!

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for April 23, 2019.

Best: O, No, You Didn’t

Last week I used my encyclopedic knowledge of professional wrestling and keen insider intellect — and not just the common sense of anyone with even a passing interest in understanding these characters and watching these shows — to see this coming. From last week’s report:

These segments made me think about how valuable The Miz’s face turn has been. With Miz, we knew for a fact that he was just manipulating Shane McMahon to get a free title shot or two and suck up to management, and that his stories about wanting to make his dad proud were all bullshit, because he was just gonna swerve Shane as soon as he could. Then weeks went by, and pay-per-views, and whoops; it turns out the Miz was sincere all along, and Shane was the opportunistic jerk taking advantage of the heartfelt hopes and dreams of his employee. Independent contractor. Whatever.

Now with Kevin Owens, every single segment where he’s a happy-go-lucky do-gooder gives me squinting Philip J. Fry eyes because I know for a fact he’s just screwing with these fan favorites to get … something. It’ll all make sense when he powerbombs them into the apron.

This week:

WWE Smackdown Live

The power of positivity as it relates to a forever pissed-off Canadian dad ends when Kofi Kingston’s match against Shinsuke Nakamura ends in a Rusev run-in, and Owens sees his opening to be the worst. He kicks Kofi in the face, powerbombs Xavier Woods into the ring apron to take out another one of Kofi’s boys, and screams in his face about how he’s going to take the WWE Championship away from Kofi’s kids. Somewhere in the back, Sami Zayn noticed a little extra spring in his step for some reason. All it needed was Kofi yelling back, “curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!”

In other words …

You’ve gotta wonder who Kofi Kingston thought he was defending the WWE Championship against at Money in the Bank, if not the disingenuous heel who suddenly decided to be best friends with him for some reason. Get this guy fitted for a Crow costume already.

Best: ♫ You Think You Know Me ♫

Aleister Black is here on Smackdown, and he “can’t even begin to explain the complexity of my tragic caricature.” What’s his new gimmick, writing about cannabis for LA Weekly? I wanted him to end the promo with, “in conclusion, Satanism can be compared and contrasted.” Either that, or for him to be like, “I’m a Dutch occultist who worships Satan and kicks people to death for a living. What do you need to know about me? Well, me and my cute Puerto Rican wife run a pet Instagram where we’ve given our four Siamese cats wacky names and personalities. I like them because they have smoosh faces.”

All I could think about thanks to the tone and cadence of the promo is that he was in there recording director’s commentary for the Firefly Funhouse special features. Here, watch the Bray video with Black’s dialogue over it and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Study Question: Is Shane McMahon okay? He was slurring his entire promo, is still pronouncing audacity as “o-dacity,” and made a reference to “Rount Mushmore.” We need to be careful with him before he physically explodes in the middle of a fight and gets his Purplesaurus Rex blood on everything.

We Definitely Already Know Lars

Chad Roode doesn’t even get a chance to show us he’s stopped wearing daddy’s bath robe because he’s a big boy before Lars Sullivan attacks him from behind. On the negative side, Chad Gable finally got away from Raw and is still being used in a background enhancement role someone dressed like a hamburger in a No Way Jose conga line could be doing. On the positive side … hey, at least Lars prevented us from having to watch Jinder Mahal wrestle?

As we’ve said a million times, whatever Mahal’s paying the Singh Brothers isn’t enough. Those guys deserve some kind of lifetime achievement award in the field of taking bullets for others and making basic transitional moves like a Randy Orton backdrop or a Lars Sullivan powerbomb look like death incarnate. Lars also beats up R-Truth again, because I guess they’re building to a battle royal where 20 people immediately jump and dump Lars? Or they’re flexing Lars’ muscles until John Cena’s available to fireman’s carry him into irrelevance, one or the other.

Best: El Vagabundo Challenges You, In Song

I already like how Smackdown Live is handling Elias. That one Elias segment Raw did where he’d sit in the ring, tell a crowd he hates them, announce that he won’t be interrupted, and then get interrupted/beaten up was great for roughly 99 of the 100 times we saw it, but it’s nice to mix things up every once in a while. On this episode, Elias and Shane beat down Roman Reigns 2-on-1, which you can do on Smackdown because one of his two friends just quit, one of his two friends is on Raw, and they probably wouldn’t have shown up to help him anyway. Top WWE babyfaces only have friends BEHIND the scenes! In the ring, it’s ONE VARSE ALL.

Elias then challenges Roman Reigns to a match at Money in the Bank while sitting on the trunk of Shane McMahon’s limo, and it’s so good even Shane’s lines hit. “Awesome idea. He’ll never accept. Let’s get outta here!”

Later in the episode, Kayla Braxton shows up in the world’s most comfortable looking pajama suit to ask Roman Reigns if he accepts the challenge and, surprise! He does. I love that there are at least 2-3 people in the WWE Universe who didn’t automatically know Roman Reigns was going to accept a challenge to fight. Kayla gonna show up next week and point a microphone at Kofi Kingston like, “does this mean Kevin Owens is no longer an honorary member of the New Day?”

Best: Stolen Bálor

Andrade getting moved to Raw and defeating the Intercontinental Champion in a non-title match only for the champion to get moved to Smackdown the next night felt pretty dumb, as did Andrade’s move to Raw being ret-conned off-screen because Charlotte Flair didn’t want to have her hot boyfriend switch brands. But they did a decent enough job acknowledging it here by having Andrade “follow” Finn back to Smackdown, so he can actually win the Intercontinental Championship from a guy he’s shown he can defeat.

The match is pretty good, with Finn getting his win back. Normally I’d be a little bummed at the 50/50 booking, especially in non-title matches where there’s zero consequence, but in the case of Bálor vs. Andrade, I’ll allow it. Finn getting one win and Andrade getting one win means they can do a “rubber match” at Money in the Bank with the Intercontinental Championship on the line, and we’ll have enough observable talking points from the weekly shows to argue that either man could win. Sometimes the simplest booking and acknowledgment that a thing that doesn’t make a ton of sense happened go a long way.

Worst: Let The IIconics Do Their Own Thing

From this week’s Best and Worst of Raw:

I’m also worried that the Raw creative team has “noticed” at the IIconics are funny. That’s a bad sign. Nothing’s worse than when the company’s not paying attention and wrestlers do something legitimately funny. Eventually WWE sees that people on social media like it or whatever and try to micromanage it to sell it to as many people as possible, which removes everything we loved about it and most of what made it funny. They did it with Santino Marella, they did it with the Fashion Files, they did it with Matt Hardy, and now the IIconics are cutting promos about how Ariana Grande sounds like Starbucks? I know my IIconics material. It’s a very specific kind of affably, performatively obnoxious. It’s not a joke to make your grandpa laugh.

That “hmm, this doesn’t sound like their specific kind of bad-on-purpose, it sounds like WWE creative’s bad-we’re-helping” continues on Smackdown, with the IIconics comparing Kairi Sane and Asuka to the Avengers for some reason and then calling them “super lame-os.” And then one half of the champions gets pinned again, easily, because winning a championship in WWE is a stat boost but drains 100% of your HP.

I might be worried over nothing and it’s just been a bad week of IIconics promos — they’ve got a naturally stilted delivery on the microphone anyway because they’re weaving two deliveries together — but compare and contrast this (like Satanism!) to the backstage followup where they’re CLEARLY unscripted. Whoever’s micromanaging them, don’t. Just let them do their thing. Their thing is why we love them. Don’t take Fandango’s music away from Fandango just because it gives people something to enjoy when he’s out there, you know?

I’m probably just being too overprotective. Can we just have them be a reverse Bayley and Sasha, and have them compete on every brand except Raw? I think that’d help.

Best: Charlotte Figures It Out

What’s that, Charlotte? You think it’s total bullshit that the Smackdown Women’s Champion lost the Smackdown Women’s Championship in the main event of WrestleMania when the Raw Women’s Champion got pinned? Sure was, wasn’t it? The only thing that’d have made it worse is if the previous Smackdown Women’s Champion had been really great, and lost her spot on the WrestleMania card and got shuffled into a losing role in a battle royal because they decided on a whim a week before the event that the winner of the Raw Women’s Championship match should also become Smackdown Women’s Champion. Wouldn’t that have been terrible for everyone?

Anyway, that (very good) segment reminds us that while the WWE women’s division is deep and talented right now, there are a few names who should be sitting at the top of it: Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, Bayley, and [redacted].

Becky Lynch brings up the very true fact that she wants to give title opportunities to people who haven’t gotten them, and yet Charlotte Flair’s always here about to have a title opportunity. It’s partially her “management prefers Charlotte” point, and the truth that Charlotte’s just better at her job than most of these people. Charlotte plays up the entitlement role perfectly, as she sees the “genetic superiority” stuff and her past accolades as infinitely renewable reasoning for more and more and more. It doesn’t feel like entitlement to her as a treatment she just deserves for excelling. Bayley gets to show believable, honest fire for the first time in ages by standing up to an old rival she has no reason to be scared of, and is maybe kinda sorta remembering that she’s already completed her big character arc and can (and should) hang with the top stars of the division.

Then, of course, Charlotte wins. Because that’s always the end of the story. Bayley proved she could go, though, and deserved to be there. Lynch is now stuck in a quandary of having “two belts,” needing to defend both of them independently, and heading into a pay-per-view against both a new, fresh nemesis (Lacey Evans) and the blood rival she can never seem to separate from (Charlotte). Great stuff.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Clay Quartermain

You know what would be a great subtle thing? Every time someone gets a dark version of their character or do a full on heel turn, you see a doll version of their old selves just sitting nondescriptly in the background of the next Firefly Fun House skit.

The Real Birdman

I will pay all the money if Chad Gable shows up with a handlebar mustache

AddMayne

“Why Kevin Why”
”Because Xavier got my title history wrong”

Harry Longabaugh

“Big O? I can see you’re Big! That would be like calling myself Fashionable Rusev.”

notJames

Charlotte: Your days are numbered.
Thor: Everyone’s days are numbered. That’s how time works.

troi

Rusev and Lana have to menace Batman after the show tonight

Pdragon619

I always thought evil Bayley should just be normal Bayley but with a leather jacket, because all her understanding of tough bad boys comes from watching Happy Days and Grease.

The C-Team

Why would you challenge someone to (and also accept) a non-title match at Money in the Bank and exclude yourself from the MITB match in the process?

AwkwardL0ser

Robert Roode looks like the type of guy who knows the last names and license plate # of at least 3 waitresses at his local Outback Steakhouse

SuperCalofragilisticexpialodocious

Calling Lacy Evans finisher the SuperMa’am Punch now, please spread it

WWE Raw

SEE YOU ON MONDAY NIGHT RAW

That’s it for this week’s Best and Worst of Smackdown. Thanks for reading!

You can help us out tremendously and keep us from the post-employment world of evil puppet shows for children by sharing the column on social media, and by dropping down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of the show. And make sure you’re here next week, to see which Superstars got Shaken-Up three weeks in a row, and what we’re calling the Vikings.

WWE Network

was it really that big of a deal though

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: Kevin Owens (gasp) (additional gasps) betrayed the New Day. Also, Charlotte Flair earned a Smackdown Women’s Championship match. Lots of unexpected things happening on Smackdown.

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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’re on the road to WWE Money in the Bank, not to be confused with WWE Blood in the Money.

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for April 30, 2019.

Best/Worst: The Main Event Scene

The first thing I need to point out for this week is that WWE Fan Nation titled this video, “Kevin Owens attacks Xavier Woods,” and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Kofi Kingston challenges Owens to a match at Money in the Bank and Owens shows up to accept, and then Woods is the one who attacks Owens from behind. Owens superkicks him and knocks him out, sure, but only after being punched a bunch of times. A more accurate title would’ve been, “Xaiver Woods attacks Kevin Owens, gets knocked the fuck out with one kick.”

That’s followed by two less effective segments: a bit where Kofi tells Woods to chill and let him fight his own battles, and the main event followup where Owens … insults New Day’s action figures? Kofi shows up to stick up for small plastic representations of his friends, and the two brawl to end the show.

WWE Smackdown Live

WELCOME TO MARWEN (2018) Dir: Robert Zemeckis

So … not a lot of this worked for me. It felt very “placeholder,” in that we jumped to the big swerve early because of injuries on the roster and Owens needing to be a top level heel again right away, so now we’ve got time to kill before the pay-per-view. This felt like one of those Game of Thrones episodes where you expect some shit to go down, but it’s just 60 minutes of characters walking through a garden, telling each other about all the shit that’s gonna go down. It’s not bad, it’s just kind of obvious and easy.

There’s a lot of good here, though, obviously. Kofi is still doing great as a singles babyface, even when he’s in a group, and I liked him admitting that trusting Kevin Owens was probably stupid and that New Day was just clouded by their undying belief in the power of positivity. He figured if the worst person in the world could find a little joy in their life, maybe he’d have accomplished something special. Owens let him down, though, and Kingston proactively makes the pay-per-view challenge to Owens. He doesn’t wait for Owens to control things. Which would be a perfect power play against anyone except Kevin Owens, the guy who threw his best friend into the ground like 30 seconds after the friend won the NXT Championship because he wanted a free title shot without doing anything.

I’m still hype for this feud and think the pay-per-view match is going to be great, but I’m giving it a very subjective and Smackdown-relative half-“Worst” — still better than almost anything that happened on Raw — for not hooking me with anything. The character motivations work and make sense, but the story of one of the champion’s friends attacking the challenger from behind and getting his ass kicked for it didn’t inspire a lot of sympathy.

Best: Bayley No Belts

One of my favorite things about the “new era” of Smackdown post-Shake-Up is that Bayley gets to be a real professional wrestler again and have real wrestling matches. I don’t even care if she wins or loses over here, because she’s getting to wrestle competitive matches against Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch and look like one of the Four Pillars of Heaven of the WWE Women’s Revolution that she’s always supposed to have been.

Plus, if they keep her solo and keep her away from any dopey interactions in the tag division — friendship therapy, I’m looking in your direction — they can tell a truncated version of her NXT story by having her go into a slump, rebound using the power of fandom and friendship, and become a new, better version of herself and character. I hate to say it, but I think the Bayley Buddies and headbands thing might’ve run its course. She doesn’t have to be my fantasy booked evil Onita version of Bayley or whatever, I just want her to have grown some as a character or performer in the four years she’s been on main. Smackdown could really figure out a way to do her justice.

Becky wins clean by submission after countering Bayley’s top rope elbow drop, which is great because (1) it gives Lynch a strong win against a valid opponent as champion and it (2) shows Lynch’s skill at scouting her opponents and remembering previous match interactions. Also good: Charlotte Flair showing up at the very end to wreck both of them, because she’s Modern Age Lacey Evans and Becky’s gonna be pulling some real Endgame shit wrestling Flair and Evans on the same night.

Best: You Gotta Be Joking Me

Less effective but still pretty enjoyable was Asuka, Kairi Sane, and their completely extraneous and awkward goth British manager defeating Local Talent while the IIconics made fun of everybody on commentary. The jobbers here — referred to by Peyton and Billie as “Ariel” and “Mac and Cheese” respectively — are “Jaylee,” a Taeler Hendrix approximation from OVW who fell victim to OVW’s female wrestler naming quirks from 15 years ago, and “Queen Aminata,” who has a Mr. Plinkett Star Wars name but is doing a Wakandan thing. Basically Kairi and Asuka defeated Melisandre and Missandei.

Fun note: Billie Kay is now clearly turning “you gotta be joking me” into a catchphrase, which I’m (of course) super into.

Throw it onto a black t-shirt with white letters, put some dumb embarrassing stuff on the back, and sell it to me immediately.

Best: Wrestling Friendship

One of my unexpected favorite moments of the night is this interaction between Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville, in which Rose approaches Deville with a passive-aggressive plan to get Absolution’s spot in the women’s Money in the Bank ladder match only for Deville to be like, “I see what you’re doing but it’s fine, I agree, you should be in the match.” It’s not written or performed with any malice, it’s just a woman who is longtime friends and tag team partners with an extremely self-obsessed woman being a good friend and making it easy for her.

And sure, this might end with Sonya running into the Money in the Bank ladder match and like, attacking Mandy with a broadsword or whatever, but for now, at least for this one segment on this one episode, we get female characters acting like human beings and wrestling friendship trumping backstage storyline jealousy nonsense.

Best: Move Your Bloomin’ Lars

It’s a shame to see Jeff Hardy get injured and neuter the Hardy Boyz’ latest Smackdown Tag Team Championship run, but if real life circumstances require them to call an audible, I like what they chose to do. They have Lars Sullivan get all the heat for the injury, and have him show up to make that point perfectly clear to everyone watching. He beats up the Hardys again, Jeff Hardy makes a valiant babyface stand despite being injured, and R-Truth shows up with a chair to remind us of other past Sullivan beatdowns.

He’s also giving Lars his best looking attack to date, as they finally realized they need to portray Lars as something other than an “unstoppable monster” when he’s like six feet tall and built like Shrek. He just has an abnormally large head and abnormally large hands. You need to be doing wacky stunt spots with him if you want his violence to be special in this post-Braun Strowman world. They accomplish that by having him deflect a chair shot by punching it, and then popping up and catching Truth to hit the Freak Accident instead of, like, struggling to get him up onto his shoulder without any leverage. Everything about this was laid out much, much better this week.

Worst: Quoth The Raven, Nevermore

Here’s Aleister Black taking a minute and a half to cut a 30 second promo. I don’t know why they’ve got him saying everything so lethargically, but he’s reaching Big Cass levels of slow-speak. There are few things in wrestling that make me irrationally madder than when people take forever to say “W, W, E,” or “N, X, T,” or “1, 2, 3.” I feel like Quicksilver waiting in line behind someone at the DMV. Who taught them to do that and made them think they have to say those things so dramatically? Was it Shawn Michaels? It was Shawn Michaels, wasn’t it. The Heart, brrrreak, kid.

Additionally,

Aleister Black and Zelina Vega keets power rankings, remembering that they’re all actually equally great:

1. Totty Potato
2. Pickles P. Pumpkin
3. Tubby Tomato
4. Phoebe Purriwell

Best: Finn Ali, It Happened To Me

The best match of a relatively weak-on-wrestling episode of Smackdown is Andrade and Randy Orton taking on the powerful sexual chemistry of Finn Bálor and Ali. I’m not saying anything, but Finn had way more going on behind the eyes with Ali than he did trying to flirt with Alexa Bliss or whatever.

This was a more effective version of the opening match from Monday’s Raw, as they announced the four Smackdown competitors in the Money in the Bank ladder match via graphic (instead of a 20-minute in-ring promo parade) and then paired them off for a tag team match. I hope you like watching Money in the Bank entrants wrestle each other in different combinations for a month, because that’s what you’re getting. I’m guessing next week we get Finn Bálor vs. Randy Orton and Andrade vs. Ali, and then probably a triple threat match where the fourth guy sits in on commentary and interferes at the end. They just have a Money in the Bank Build Template they lay down on the first day of the cycle and plug in everyone’s names.

I did appreciate Ali standing up for Finn and standing tall against Orton, especially since the only reason he’s in the Money in the Bank ladder match is to flip his beautiful ass into an RKO from Outta Somewhere Convoluted.

Worst: Ember’s Finish Should Be The Shenomenal Herarm

Ember Moon is fantastic in the ring so it’s probably not a big deal, but they need to decide if she’s a mysterious moon-based werewolf lady or a normal person who fights hard and wants to win matches. She doesn’t seem to know which character to be in promos. It feels more like a conscious decision than, say, Natalya or Dana Brooke trying to speak into a microphone and sounding like aliens, and I think leaning all the way into “I’m just here to entertain the fans” or “I AM THE REAPER OF LOST SOULS” instead of wading around somewhere in the middle would help a ton. Also when she has those contacts in and doesn’t maintain eye contact with anyone it kinda makes her look like she’s supposed to be blind.

But look at Carmella. Carmella’s dialogue is equally terrible, but she’s confident in who her character is and how she acts/reacts, so even when she’s reading corny default dialogue like “this match changes lives, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to win!” it doesn’t sound that bad. I mean … it does, but it’s delivered comfortably. It’s easy to want to do “wrestler voice” in promos, but I think anyone with an understanding of intent and nuance would prefer normal human speaking patterns.

Worst: Same As It Ever Was

YouTube

One of the most disappointing moments of the week for me is realizing that, oh, right, we had actual reasons to not like WWE’s handling of Roman Reigns that went beyond him “not having good mic skills” or being awkwardly forced into a John Cena and/or The Rock role he wasn’t ready for. There was also the Amazon rainforest-level demolition of everyone else on the show.

It’s been nice cheering Roman since his return from leukemia, and I still think he’s improved tenfold on the microphone and is a great in-ring performer. I thought he was before the diagnosis, and was hoping that when he came back, WWE would be smart enough to allow him a little vulnerability from time to time, to help keep us believing in him and on his side. Instead so far we’ve gotten him overselling and then no-selling a concussion, squashing a guy who desperately needed to win at WrestleMania, punching Vince McMahon in the face en route to a ROMAN VS. AUTHORITY angle nobody asked for ever, and now effectively a 3-on-1 handicap match win. Possibly 4-on-1.

To be fair, I liked that they had Roman actually fight and wrestle a smart match before “overcoming the odds,” but I think John Cena between 2005 and 2015 made it impossible for WWE to run a match like this without it seeming like a corporately mandated decision to say this one guy’s a bad-ass and everyone else in the world sucks. Roman’s been on the show for two weeks and is already single-handedly demolishing a former Intercontinental Champion, a former NXT Champion, and one of the best performers on the show in the middle of an episode to substantiate a feud between himself and a 73-year old non-wrestler’s evil family. I might be overreacting to one segment on one episode, but I’m so terrified of things becoming 2010 WWE again I can barely handle it.

Short version: Roman Reigns is great. “Roman Reigns” is forever an ordeal.

Plus, do we need two concurrent Shane McMahon feuds on the two weekly shows? Who out there is begging for more Shane McMahon content at this point? His troll job is funny enough (and I liked him using Miz’s old cronies to do his dirty work), but a Roman Reigns vs. Shane McMahon match should end quicker than Undertaker vs. Duane Gill. \

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

PDragon619

I just realized, Andrade lost his name because Aleister absolved him of all his Ciens.

JayBone2

B-Team were watching Firefly Funhouse backstage when they saw the word of the day was “Sociopath”. That’s why they teamed up with Shane.

The C-Team

Hoping Bray’s first feud is with Heath Slater – Slater’s kids watch Firefly FunHouse and burn down Heath’s trailer

Daniel Valentin

Aleister: “And those were my thoughts on Fear and Nihlism Within The Context of Professional Wrestling. Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.”

FreewayKnight

Aleister is right. We fear that which we do not understand, and WWE’s booking terrifies the crap out of me.

Dave M J

Poison Ivy and Vixen have fallen on hard times, I see.

troi

Asuka and Kairi should go after the Mens Tag Team Title.

notJames

I said this during her tenure in NXT, but Lacey should have a submission move called “Women’s Suffer-age”

Clay Quartermain

Bayley: “The River of life has brought us back to this Dance…”
Becky: “Oh don’t you even start!”

Kofi: “I asked Sting for his opinion and he said, sure, give Owens a chance!”

WWE Raw

That’s it for this week’s edition of Smackdown. Not the best episode, but certainly more watchable than the weekly “longer than Avengers: Endgame” fried chicken commercial round-up on Monday.

Drop a comment down below to let us know what you thought of the show, consider helping us stay in business by sharing the column on social media and telling your friends to read, and be here next week for more exciting Shane McMahon baby-punch plots. We’ll be here.

WWE Smackdown Live

WHILE CORD???

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: Kevin Owens screamed at some action figures, Sonya Deville gave Mandy Rose the Fire and Desire spot in the Money in the Bank ladder match because she’s a good friend, and you’ve still gotta be joking Billie Kay.

Things to do: 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’re on the road to WWE Money in the Bank, Lil Scrappy’s favorite pay-per-view!

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for May 7, 2019.

Best: Oh My Gosh You Guys, Putties!

WWE Smackdown Live

ROUND ONE, FIGHT

Monday Night Raw was cruel and unusual to get through, so let’s start off the Best and Worst of Smackdown with an unintentionally (?) hilarious best: Matt Hardy‘s fighting stance when he realizes Lars Sullivan’s standing behind him.

It’s like Matt Hardy finally saw those op board posts back in 1998 saying he looked like Tommy the Green Ranger from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers and decided to just lean into it. It’s one part Elvis performance flourish, two parts George Mizanin.

WWE Smackdown Live

WWE Network

I loved it. Plus, Hardy’s read of, “…. it’s HIM!” was so, so corny. I know all the Broken Universe stuff makes us think Matt Hardy’s been a sweded filmmaking savant from the beginning, but he might just be pro wrestling’s Tommy Wiseau: a guy who wasn’t originally in on the “joke,” but decided to just go with it. It’s the difference between the first volume of Trapped in the Closet as opposed to the rest of it. Hardy might be a good actor, but he spent so long being vampiric Eric Cartman that he forgot how to do it.

In short, thank you for making me smile, Matt Hardy, I thought I might not be able to do that anymore. I’m like five more bad minutes away from having my own Thursday Raw Thursday.

Worst: The Wild Card

Monday’s Raw … I guess you could say “loosely” set up the new “wild card rule,” Vince McMahon’s reported last ditch effort at improving ratings. You’ve got to love the fact that a guy who split the rosters in the first place to increase ad revenue and show-specific ratings’ big idea now is to pretend he didn’t.

Again, you aren’t the commissioner of baseball dealing with a players’ union and a bunch of television networks; it’s three “brands” in fiction but you own and control all three of them, and can do whatever you want whenever you want. You don’t need to say “three, no, four guys from each show are allowed to jump shows” when (1) you’ve had free-floating “free agents” in the past and nobody cared, (2) you don’t put any weight or gravity in your universe’s rules as is, to the point that you can introduce and break rules in the same goddamn episode, and (3) you’re desperately flailing to improve the waning quality of your product now that you’ve put all your competition out of business, when appropriating ideas from less popular competitors and broadcasting them to a larger audience as your own is how you got so successful to begin with.

Plus, by needing to establish who the “wild card” is every week, you back yourself into a corner where these promo parades of people showing up, demanding, and then getting things is your only segment. Are the announcers just supposed to not excitedly scream “WHAT IS RAW SUPERSTAR DOING HERE” the first four times, and pop for the fifth? You casually choose to not follow the foundational rules that construct and maintain the building blocks of your medium, why would you follow any of these once whatever story you’re trying to tell *right now* is over?

(See why I opened with the Matt Hardy thing?)

Best: Smackdown

The good news here is that since the thing I don’t like happens on Smackdown, it’s at least propped up with some actual wrestling. Even when the Smackdown guys randomly show up on Raw and have rules rewritten about them on the fly, they wrestle. Bryan vs. Kingston was literally the only thing (except, I guess, a toy vulture murdering a stuffed rabbit) worth watching from Raw, because it was just 15 minutes of Monday Smackdown.

So you have the same bad promo parade segment and garbage inhabitant Sami Zayn getting “take a shower” chants that’d make The Revival’s shaved backs and burny buttholes jealous, but the direct end result is Zayn, AJ Styles, and Kofi Kingston wrestling 17 minutes of Actual Wrestling Match with an actual finish, and nobody running in for a disqualification at the last second to negate the work of the whole thing. Again, it’s part of what made the brief amount of uncured Smackdown on Raw the only palatable part.

Kingston wins, which is good, and pins Zayn, which I guess is situationally good because a guy who got tossed in the garbage the day before needs rehabilitation as a performer but should also definitely be taking any and all falls in followup wrestling matches. Styles remains strong heading into his match with Rollins, Kevin Owens shows up to beat up Xavier Woods and continue his thing with Kofi, and Smackdown leverages a part of the show Raw wasn’t using anyway to put over its performers without necessarily doing so at the “expense” of anyone. Even the innocuous decisions on Raw feel like threats these days.

Best: When Even The Bad Ideas Are Done Better

Two examples of this for me this week.

The first is Ali vs. Andrade, which is one of those things as a wrestling fan you want to sit and enjoy in peace. When the finish is Randy Orton showing up to cause a disqualification and hit some RKOs to “stand tall” — the thing he does at least once per cycle, to remind us that we should like him and think he’s important because we like that one move he does — you could do what Raw did, which is have it go for 15 minutes with a bunch of near falls just to end in disappointing. Or, you could do the better idea, seen on Smackdown: have the match go just long enough to make you want to see more, and THEN send in Orton.

By having Orton show up five minutes in instead of fifteen, you’ve given the crowd enough to get them hooked, but not so much that taking a result away from them feels “cheap.” And while that kind of thing used to be really great and easy heel heat, the modern weekly product is so ubiquitous and bipolar in its quality that every hiccup and false start, whether intentional or not, feels less like a creative decision and more like WWE fandom being a serious waste of time.

Plus, the RKOs are pretty cool. Orton should sit out the first 20 minutes of Money in the Bank, slide in to hit seven of the most creative RKOs we’ve ever seen between minutes 20 and 25, and then disappear from the match until it’s over. Perfect Randy Orton content.

Another example of Smackdown understanding how low our expectations are and working with what they’ve got: the Smackdown Tag Team Championship situation.

Late last week, it was announced that Shane McMahon would declare new Smackdown Tag Team Champions on Smackdown. It felt weird that he wasn’t setting up a match or a tournament or anything and was just gonna hand them to somebody, because that’s what evil general manager characters do in this era where “we” are The Authority, but not really. They tease doing just that, and then have a team with no chance of winning but enough clout to convince you that maybe they do — Raw’s Jake and Logan Paul, The Usos — step in to “right the wrong” of the lazy booking. It’s actually lazy booking itself, but it’s disguised enough and better than the alternative, so it feels better.

That gives us Daniel Bryan and Rowan (who really need a team name, which is guess is now The Planet’s Tag Team Champions) versus the Usos, lasts long enough to actually be a wrestling match worth watching — a very underrated thing in modern WWE — and, most importantly, features an actual finish. By “actual finish” I mean to say that the people involved in the match have agency over who wins or loses, and don’t just feel like interchangeable “character” cogs in a mindless Time Wasting machine. Cheating and bullshit are fine in pro wrestling. Arguably they’re what makes wrestling wrestling. But if the people in or directly affecting the characters in the match don’t make or perform those decisions themselves, you might as well be watching someone smash action figures together. I hope that makes sense. The past 20 years of evil authority figures have really fucked our idea of why wrestlers would choose to have and keep this kind of job in professional “sports.”

Another bonus: does this mean we’re getting eco-friendly Tag Team Championships? I’m kinda bummed at Bryan getting immediately bumped down to the tag division, but maybe he needs it for a while to make sure his body and brain are okay, and they’re gonna eventually get $400 from me for some dumb shit anyway.

Worst: The Women’s Devolution

This tag team match was originally announced as Bayley, Ember Moon, and Carmella vs. Charlotte Flair, Sonya Deville, and Mandy Rose, but Charlotte and Bayley were dropped from it without explanation. Things are definitely iffy creatively when you can announce a match publicly and put it all over your website and advertising, change it without explanation, and have nobody bring up the change or ask you about it.

The other bad situation: this two-hour episode of Smackdown featured a grand total of 2:25 of women’s wrestling. It should be noted that that’s still about a minute and a half more in-ring time than the women got on a three-hour Raw yesterday. Lacey Evans vs. Jobber lasted about 40 seconds. Are we back to this again? Now that Ronda Rousey’s not around anymore, are we just dumping the responsibility for the success or failure of mainstream women’s wrestling on Becky Lynch’s shoulders and forgetting to do the work?

Also On This Episode

Aleister Black is still quothing the Raven nevermore, and now … he … talks …. like … … this, to … make … sure … … that the … twenty … second … promo … …. lasts … two minutes. “Silent, murderous, teleporting, Satanic, Dutch assassin” is a way cooler gimmick than “macabre William Shatner.”

Shane McMahon and The Miz are still going at it, and The B-Team are still Shane’s Miz-centric hate squad. It’s fine, but there’s only so much Shane-o-Mac content we can handle on a weekly basis, and I’m pretty sure the entire show peaked at that fan holding up a Wayne Campbell-style “YES, I SUCK” word balloon while Shane mindlessly cut that one heel promo he knows.

WWE Smackdown Live

Frinkiac

Daniel Bryan and Rowan run afoul of Jeff and Larry, Heavy Machinery, who want the Tag Team Championship so much they aren’t able to say anything about, they just have to stand there getting boners and coveting their neighbors’ belts. My favorite part is Tucker Knight mouthing a bunch of affirmations but not actually making any noise, presumably because he thought the Smackdown announce team would be talking over the scene. Awkwaaarrddd.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

The Real Birdman

Kofi: “Sami, what is that smell?”
Sami: “I was on Monday Night Raw last night”

troi

Daniel Bryan about to yell at us about mass incarceration at the Uso Penitentiary

Son of Tony Zane

I can’t wait to hear about the laxatives the Usos put in Bryan and Rowan’s protein shakes.

Dave M J

This probably would’ve been infinitely better if you did it years ago and didn’t blatantly edit everything.

FreewayKnight

Hypothetically, if Bobby Roode joins Bryan’s stable, can we call them Beard Money Inc?

Harry Longabaugh

Bryan and Rowan, aka the EarthBreak Kid and Bio-Diesel.

Endy_Mion

Since Jeff is out and SDL probably doesn’t have anything for Broken Matt, maybe he should join All Delete Wrestling eh?

know your role

The translation of the Japanese on Finn’s hat is “save me. hostage situation. held captive by 73 y.o. senile billionaire”

AJ Dusman

I can’t believe this company took Aleister Black out of the ring and made him talk backstage. What’s next? Taking the microphone away from ECIII?

DenseMan1

This show has been comparatively light on Vince haphazardly explaining retconning the Superstar Shakeup like he’s Grant Morrison meeting Animal Man.

WWE Smackdown Live

That’s it for this week’s Best and Worst of Smackdown Live. I think it’ll be okay, but “what if we added more Raw to Smackdown” isn’t going to help.

As always, drop a comment in our comments section below to let us know what you thought of the show (call to action!), and give us a share on social media if you’d like to keep us working in the field of Explaining WWE The Next Day So You Can Skip It And Do Something Better With Your Time. And make sure you’re here for Money in the Bank, on the same night as the Game of Thrones series finale! Everyone will be watching wrestling, probably!

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: Matt Hardy put up his dukes in the style of Mr. Miz, AJ Styles showed up as a “wild card,” and some guy in the crowd had the best sign placement in WWE fan history.

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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. This is the go-home show for the Game of Thrones series finale!

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for May 14, 2019.

Worst: Another Goddamn Promo Parade

In this week’s Best and Worst of Raw, I talked about WWE’s weird obsession with starting their shows like this — every single show, it feels like — and complimented them for at least “dressing it differently.”

Up first is The Big Wild Dog Roman Reigns, requester of television ratings, as a guest on Miz TV. Raw can’t seem to shake the idea that it has to open with a promo parade to introduce everyone to the live crowd and set them up for matches on the fly, and this is more of that. It’s just a promo parade with chairs. If I could recommend anything to Raw for improvement they could actually accomplish in the short-term, it’d be taking promo parades off the board entirely and holding yourself to opening the show with literally anything else.

On Smackdown … well, let me put it to you this way. Raw opened with Roman Reigns and The Miz talking until they were interrupted by Shane McMahon. The faces were attacked from behind by Elias and Bobby Lashley, which set up a match. Smackdown opens with Roman Reigns and The Miz talking until they’re interrupted by Shane McMahon and Elias, and then the faces are attacked by Daniel Bryan and Rowan. It’s the exact same opening with most of the same players, they just added a couple of heels and had someone make the save for the faces before making the match.

Like maybe Albert Einstein and more importantly Vaas Montenegro said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I honestly can’t believe that this far into 2019 I’m insulting Smackdown Live for not at least doing the bare minimum of creative work that Monday Night Raw did. STOP DOING THIS SAME SEGMENT OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER.

Instead of setting up a two-on-two tag team match and ending it with a Shane McMahon disqualification, Smackdown sets up a four-on-three handicap match (with Miz barred from ringside, because he’s feuding with Evil General Manager Character #47) with a Shane McMahon PINFALL VICTORY. In a 20-minute match broken up by two commercial breaks. On a show that only had three matches, with FIVE commercial breaks cutting them up.

What’s the payoff? Shane McMahon looking strong, and the Usos — who are not on the Smackdown roster, and are only appearing thanks to the “wild card” rule that still doesn’t totally make sense — getting a shot at the Smackdown Tag Team Championship on the Money in the Bank kickoff show. How sad is your tag team division when a team that isn’t on your roster can lose a match and get a title shot out of it? How badly must all the people in the actual division feel? With the Usos on Raw and New Day dealing with injuries and Kofi Kingston’s title run, does the Smackdown tag team division even exist anymore? What happened? What are we doing?

Best: Ladder Day Saints

The best match of the night (also divided up by not one, but two full commercial breaks) is Finn Bálor vs. Ali vs. Andrade vs. Randy Orton, which I described in the barely-used pre-tape open discussion thread as, “like a carousel where Orton’s in the center and everyone else is wrestling circles around him.”

That’s pretty much what it was, with Orton providing some fun moments like the little bunny hop where he was anticipating catching Ali with an RKO off the ropes. The RKO is great, but there are few things I love in wrestling more than Orton’s opponent knowing they’re about to get hit with one and faking him out. AJ Styles doing a springboard and just dropping back down to the apron instead of leaping head-first into a cutter is still one of my favorite moments.

This played a lot like the 205 Live version of the women’s match from Raw, with Andrade continuing to be head-and-shoulders above everyone else in terms of in-ring work and picking up another win against Finn Bálor. I wish they’d take those two of the ladder match and give them a 12-15 minute championship match on the pay-per-view, but I’m sure they’ll shine no matter where they are.

Also, hey look, it’s Ricochet! RIcochet, wild card your ass to Smackdown and wrestle Finn and Andrade and Ali and Buddy Murphy and whoever and get the hell away from Baron Corbin and Bobby Roode!

(He knows that’s just a prop briefcase, right?)

Best, Mostly: Destined To Do This Something Something

The main event segment is a total mess, with Kevin Owens inviting Kofi Kingston to be a guest on the KO Show and staying in the back for most of it, Xavier Woods being told to stay in the back and not help out only to come help out anyway, and Wild Card Sami Zayn showing up to help his eternal frenemy Kevin Owens only to get beaten up anyway? It’s not much, but it keeps the heat level for the WWE Championship match heading into Money in the Bank. They kinda peaked early with the Owens turning on New Day bit. They maybe could’ve kept that going for another week or two.

I’m mostly just wondering how the Wild Card Rule works when it comes to cross-promotional alliances. If Sami Zayn wants to be on Smackdown to help Kevin Owens but four Raw guys have already signed up to be Wild Cards, does Sami not get to show up? Am I thinking about it more than creative has? I’m definitely thinking about it more than creative has. It’s fine, Sami and Kevin shouldn’t be broken up off-screen anyway.

WORST: Team Japanese Thing I Know!

Hey Vince, Asuka wears a Noh mask to the ring, Kairi Sane is a pirate, and they’re managed by a goth British lady. What should we call the team?

Vince:

My reaction:

WWE Smackdown Live

You can do the “actually THIS name is stupid too, if you think about it” thing until you’re blue in the face, but WWE is on an objectively horrible run at naming tag teams right now. First they turned the toughest team in NXT into a dumb meme and renamed them twice, and now the two Asian women are the Kabuki Warriors.

The story is that they “picked the name themselves,” at least according to Paige, but I’m gonna guess it was a pretty short list of choices. Remember this is the company that tried to name Kenzo Suzuki “Hirohito”, put Godzilla noises in Ultimo Dragon’s entrance theme, put Ricky Steamboat in an actual dragon costume and had him spit fire, made a Samoan guy Japanese because they thought nobody would be able to tell the difference, and so on. NXT worked so damn hard to train American wrestling fans to see Asian stars as equals and not “foreigner” gimmicks, and all they’ve gotten on the main roster is “what” chants and the guzheng. Just because they picked it doesn’t mean it’s a great idea.

I’m not an insider, but I’m going to assume the approval process is “Vince McMahon has heard the word kabuki before.” Anyway, if you’re gonna call them the “Kabuki Warriors,” maybe give them some kabuki stuff to wear and not still have them just be freestanding Asuka and pirate princess Kairi Sane? And give them an actual entrance theme instead of that “flip back and forth between mp3s” shit you’ve got them walking out to. It might not be racist or anything severe like that, but it’s 100% lazy.

Promo City *Clap Clap Clap-Clap-Clap*

“Actually I think Kabuki Warriors is a cool name.” — Lars

The remainder of the show (when they weren’t going to commercial, please fix this, Fox) was pre-taped promos and video packages of varying quality, so we’ll tackle all of them here.

Charlotte Flair briefly shows up to intro a great video package about her history with Becky Lynch, seen above, which probably would’ve been a lot better and more meaningful if “Becky vs. Charlotte” still felt like the feud instead of “Becky vs. Charlotte and New Frontier Charlotte.” Shout-out to our comments section for that one.

Lacey Evans also gets a backstage promo, which features her looking into a mirror to suggest she was once a normal Marine turned into an antiquated plantation lady by the dark magicks of the Oculus. Or she’s just corny as hell, one or the other.

Occult William Shatner is still doing this thing. If we get any more of these before he wrestles again, I’m going to recite the preamble to the Constitution as Aleister Black and upload it here instead of trying to come up with something to say about it.

There are also a collection of promo class submissions to put over the Smackdown half of the women’s Money in the Bank ladder match, because they didn’t have time to run a match with all those commercials and video packages.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

AddMayne

Vince: “I’VE GOT IT, THE ORIENTAL EXPRESS”
HHH: “Honey, I swear to God, I will make it look like an accident”

Son of Tony Zane

“The Geisha Experience”

notJames

Given Kairi’s aerial arsenal, I hope their new tag team name is “Asiatic Flew”.

troi

Aleister Black: look at how dark and brooding I am quoting Shakespeare menacingly
Bray Wyatt: puts on evil clown mask and yells

All I want from The Kabuki Warriors is a losing streak that ends with Kairi and Asuka deciding to replace Paige. Which inevitably leads to Bull Nakano murdering Paige with nunchuks.

The Real Birdman

Let’s be honest, at this point I’m just happy Vince didn’t switch the first two syllables in Kabuki

Zelina, we’d be pretty happy with MitB spoilers since we’re all going to be watching GoT instead

Brocky

I legtimatley want zelina to try and grab the briefcase from the ladder, only to discover she’s still too short

Dave M J

Shout outs to Andrade for realizing that Randy Orton cannot RKO you if you lead with your feet.

Harry Longabaugh

The Knicks are the most disappointing tank since Rusev losing to Cena at Mania.

One more time for the people in the back …

That deep inhale while he’s trying to think of another heel in the promotion is going to be funny forever.

Anyway, that’s it for this week’s Best and Worst of Smackdown. If you’d like to leave a comment, drop down into our comments section below. A social media share is always appreciated, and make sure you’re here this weekend to watch Money in the Bank with us. We can guarantee it won’t be as disappointing as the series finale of Game of Thrones!

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Anyone not watching the series finale of Game of Thrones tuned into Money in the Bank to see Daniel Bryan and Rowan lose a non-title match on the pre-show, Becky Lynch lose the Smackdown Women’s Championship to Charlotte Flair only for Charlotte to immediately lose it to Bayley, and Shane McMahon win a steel cage match via wardrobe malfunction.

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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. Onward to In Your House: Badd Blood Money!

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for May 21, 2019.

Best: Big E!, Or
Worst: Welcome To The Promo Parade

You guys know the drill. This is the only way they know how to open shows anymore.

On the positive tip, Big E’s back! On the negative, he’s back way ahead of schedule, which as I mentioned in the open discussion thread meant only one of two things:

• the severity of the injury was a “work” for some reason to set our expectations and then flip them on their asses when he shows up earlier than expected and rages out with a heel turn on his friends (note: not especially likely, ever), or
• he’s not medically cleared, but well enough to show up and pretend like he got beaten up backstage, setting up Kofi having a personal grudge against whoever’s challenging him for the WWE Championship next

Sure enough, here’s Big Epsilon getting fridged:

WWE Network

E calls out Kevin Owens as the attacker, presumably to limit the amount of people Kingston would have at ringside for the match against Sami Zayn from “two” to “none,” and unless E’s pulling a weird Big Cass power move where he’s pretending to be attacked for some kind of grand manipulation, we have no reason to think he’s lying. The big twist-a-roo is that Sami just loses like a chump again in what makes up about 15 seconds of the 3-minute video, because a new challenger approaches:

Yeah, Dolph Ziggler is randomly back to do his one whimpery “actually I’m the best wrestler” promo and set up a WWE Championship match for Saudi Arabia because Kevin Owens isn’t going. So as per usual, Ziggler’s a last-second replacement nobody wanted as a first option, headed to WWE’s grossest show to do the job in a match nobody wants to watch. That we’ve already seen a hundred times! It’s PERFECT! Perfect Ziggling.

Dolph shows up later to explain himself — why, Dolph, why, and so on — by paraphrasing one of Billy Ray Cyrus’ forgotten ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ followup country hits — and like always, it’s good, passionate work that’s hard to connect with for long-time fans because we’ve been through this so, so many times before. Dolph’s the ultimate “rebound.” If you need someone to scab, Dolph’s your guy. He’ll show up, do that same promo a few times, talk about how he’s been in THIS BUSINESS for so long and is CLEARLY BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE IN THAT LOCKER ROOM IN REAL LIFE and just WANTS AN OPPORTUNITY, and then he gets one and loses, and we move on. And then six months later we get rumors of him leaving WWE or going on tour to do stand-up comedy, and then he pops up to do the bit again.

Taking it in a vacuum, it’s not a bad story. The idea that WWE has these talented journeymen veterans just kinda hanging around doing nothing hoping that one day maybe they’ll get their shot is an unfortunately real thing, and Ziggler finally pulling away from WWE after a decade only for one of his peers to step up and get that one magical opportunity that randomly came along is compelling. It’s what jealousy actually looks like. Jealousy isn’t hitting someone in the back with a chair because you’re mad at them and want their jewelry; jealousy is pretending to be someone’s friend because you want to ride their coattails and then flipping out on them and talking shit when they get opportunities that don’t involve you. Or just being cruelly, honestly mad in your heart that someone else is doing well, when you are the one who deserves it. It’s the difference in Mozart and Salieri, you know? It’s a tale as old as time.

WWE Smackdown Live

stop me if youve heard this one before

So in the short term, which is how they write these shows, it’s good. In the broader, been-here-before term, it’s a dude who’s good at his job but so visibly and vocally tired of having to do this for a living that he’ll pop in to take somebody’s place in the bullshit dictator show, because why not? It’s just wrestling, and it’s just money, and at the end of the day, this makes you more money than telling jokes.

And, as presented in this week’s Raw column:

With the wild card rule in play, the new championship causing a pack of random jobbers to run around screaming at each other, and the only available pay-per-view build being for a Saudi Arabia show none of us are going to watch or talk about, the next couple of weeks of WWE TV might as well come out and announce themselves as a wash.

Speaking of that whole, “random jobbers running around screaming,” thing …

Day Two Of The 24/7 Championship Is Going Great

Not to repeat too much of the content from Monday — WWE, I’m looking in your direction — but so much of the 24/7 Championship still doesn’t make sense. First of all, why would you want a championship that the first champion won by picking up Mick Foley’s droppings? There’s no prestige in winning a wrestling championship you win without wrestling. Second of all, why would you want to win a championship that doesn’t really get or earn you anything besides having everyone you work with trying to beat you up all day? Most of the time people want to win championships, in kayfabe and out, because it gives them a level of professional satisfaction and allows them to say they’re the best in their field. Plus, more money, merchandising, TV-time, whatever. The 24/7 Championship just gives you a camera man nearby who films you floundering around like a goober until somebody pins you.

For example, the longest reigning 24/7 Champion of all time is R-Truth, who continues to defend his championship by … [checks notes] getting Carmella to dress him up as Carmella. I’m not sure how this avoids conflict, or how wearing a disguise helps if you’re also wearing the 24/7 Championship around your waist, but it’s Truth, so … who knows?

If they wanted to do a Hardcore Championship without being able to say “hardcore” because Mattel has them by whatever the G-rated word for “balls” is, they should’ve just done a straight-up comedy championship like Dragon Gate does. Instead, you’ve got a comedy guy who was United States Champion not that long ago running around with his Mixed Match Challenge Championship partner (and former Smackdown Women’s Champion) looking like Gertie and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in his wig disguise.

YouTube

WWE Smackdown Live

Truth’s shenanigags end up interrupting Carmella’s match with Mandy Rose and culminate with him being chased off into the night, so what’ve we learned? That if the 24/7 Championship wasn’t a joke the second it got booed for Mick Foley holding it up, it is now, and that if Truth wants to stay champ he should just stay at home until someone puts in enough work to find out where he is. Just always be running away slowly, like in It Follows.

Great title you’ve got there, WWE.

Best: 210-ish Live

Outside of the return of Langston, the best moment of the night was Mustafa® vs. Cien Almas. It was almost as good as the Antonio® match from Raw.

In all seriousness, surprise! Ali vs. Andrade was the best match of the night. It’s a perfect intersection of stories for the characters; Ali is a never-say-die babyface who is still undersized and overmatched even when he’s in the ring with a 210-pound guy like Andrade, and Andrade is a murder buzzsaw whose biggest weakness is his attention span, and his need to physically dominate his opponent. It’s why Zelina Vega is such a windfall for him, but even with her barking orders he can’t always keep his concentration and do the right thing. He absolutely wrecks Ali here but can’t put him away, and misses a couple of key opportunities to try by shaking his head “no” and deciding to do more moves. The running knees to the back of the head were a great example of this. Unfortunately for An Daddy, though, Ali makes like so many Goonies and never says die, pulling an inside cradle out of his ass and stealing a flash three.

Another good thing about the finish is that they have Ali win the match like this without having to immediately have Andrade pull him back in the ring and beat him down and move the story somewhere else. They give us the story, finish that story, and then let it breathe. That’s great. The only issue you might have is Andrade losing clean when he’s supposed to be challenging for the Intercontinental Championship in a few weeks, but (1) he’s going up against the Demon, and (2) it’s on Bigger And Better-er Than WrestleMania-ass Super Showdown, so who gives a shit.

Best: Charlotte Flair Has … NOT Pinned The Smackdown Women’s Champion?

Also moving in a positive direction this week is the beef between new Smackdown Women’s Champion via magic briefcase Bayley and former Smackdown Women’s Champion via opportunistic manipulation and cheating, Charlotte Flair. Bayley and Becky Lynch team up against the Dollywood Blondes and you think the finish is either going to be Lacey taking the fall or Charlotte pinning either of her opponents to set up some other championship match. Instead, Smackdown takes a moment to actually make one of their champions look competent and strong by having Bayley pin Flair. She doesn’t do it in a dominant way, leaving a lot on the table in terms of both action and story, but she does it regardless. That’s crucial right now when Bayley’s trying to “move past the hugs” without seeming like a complete deconstructing and vague rebuild of the character.

Plus, it’s good to see future 75-time champion Flair put someone over on the weekly shows outside of a big epic crying thing. Charlotte’s the first-women’s-everything, but Bayley’s actually the first women’s Grand Slam Champion and took away that seemingly inevitable additional accolade. It subverted expectation in a simple way, and now you can tell a story beyond, “Charlotte thinks she deserves everything and doesn’t take you seriously,” and, “Bayley can’t socially or emotionally handle anything.”

Re-Live The History Between Triple H And Randy Orton!

Netflix

And Finally

Shane McMahon is still feuding with two top Superstars at the same time, and beating one of them every time they fight. Now he and the McMahon Family are “putting obstacles in the way of Roman Reigns,” which has never made sense because he’s obviously the guy they love the most from a business standpoint, and makes even less sense now that he’s a public survivor of cancer and checks literally every box on their hypothetical dream performer. They’re just mad at him because he punched Vince once? It’s not like Roman knelt on the dude’s chest and punched him in the face until EMTs took him away like Kevin Owens, who is their friend again because he cheats all the time at the job they run?

It’s the same “he’s like Cena, everyone” stuff that spoiled us on Roman in the first place, and he should definitely just be feuding with and having matches with other actual wrestlers instead of getting 50% of the attention of 25% of the evil general manager machine. Right?

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

GLOSS

R-Truth should claim Lil’ Jimmy pinned him for the title, and that everyone should be looking for him to win the title instead.

troi

I WAS BIG E’S FRIEND FIRST!

dl316bh

Good to see Dolphs character of “complete whiner” is still intact.

The Real Birdman

Carmella should’ve dressed Truth up as Liv Morgan or Buddy Murphy or Killian Dane then no one would recognize him

Pdragon619

Firefly Fun house was particularly terrifying tonight. Using that footage of that old Orton/HHH feud was thinking outside the box.

Son Of Tony Zane

If this doesn’t get ratings, Vince is going to bury the 24/7 Title somewhere and award it to the first person who can find it under the big W.

Swiththyborg

Brock still believes in the brand split

Aceassn716

WWE needs to pay for the Yakety Sax song. Just so it can play during the 24/7 bits

Dave M J

Hair dresser Carmella! CONTINUITY!

AshBlue

A gif of Sami sarcastically jumping up and down would perfectly illustrate how I feel about so much of WWE lately.

WWE Smackdown Live

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. While nowhere near as bad on the regular as Raw — few things could be, if we’re being honest — it’s been a rough couple of weeks for the blue brand, and I hope whatever creative “shake-up” they’re doing settles soon so the guys who write good WWE TV don’t have to constantly share with the people who don’t.

As always, you’re the best for coming here and reading this, and I appreciate it, and you. Drop us a comment down below to let us know what you thought of the episode, and be sure to toss us a social media share if you’re a Kofi and not a Dolph. Never be a Dolph!

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Dolph Ziggler returned from his comedy tour, and the people did rejoice. Also, Carmella dressed up R-Truth as “Carmella with the 24/7 Championship” to keep people from knowing he had the 24/7 Championship, or something.

Things to do: 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.

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for May 28, 2019.

Best/Worst: By The Numbers

Another week, another promo parade to set up a match that’d already been announced. It’s Kofi Kingston vs. Kevin Owens, which just happened at Money in the Bank and features the WWE Champion and his top challenger. You’d think anyone watching Smackdown would be able to go straight into that match without 7 minutes of Owens recapping the past few weeks and 3 minutes of Kingston responding, but maybe these are like those modern Mortal Kombat fights where the fighters are animated to say something sassy before they fight.

Anyway, it’s a good match — not as good as the one at Money in the Bank, but perfectly serviceable — hurt a little by Kingston getting his neck Pillmanized last week and being at 100% strength. I should’ve mentioned this on Raw as well, but treating the brands as independent timelines it’s on Smackdown where it matters most. I’m trying to make sense of the universe they’ve made here, stay with me. It’s sorta like when Seth Rollins blew out his knee, and then all his matches were guys attacking the injured knee somehow healed him instead of making it worse.

It’s also kind of a shame because it’s clearly intended (at least from my point of view) to write Owens out of the main event scene and make room for a Super Showing of Down with Dolph Ziggler. It’s still a strong, clean win for the champion against a legit opponent, and Kofi’s settling nicely into WWE’s “babyface gets beaten down for 17 minutes, kicks out of opponent’s entire moveset, hits one move and wins” championship legacy. Macho Man Randy Savage added 10 years to his career by just letting people stomp him for a while and then Instant Killing them with an elbow. It’s good work if you can get it.

Note: Sorry for the milquetoast tone this week, it’s just that WWE TV is pretty much a wash until Saudi Arabia. It’s certainly not an “equal to or exceeding WrestleMania” build.

Best: RIP Wiggles And Wilbur

Daniel Bryan and Rowan get challenged by Heavy Machinery, who are like Enzo and Cass if they grew up in the midwest instead of the northeast. Bryan’s promo, as always, is glorious, as he shits on the fans for eating meat on Memorial Day, gives backstories to the animals they’re eating, and declares Oklahoma the Worst State He’s Ever Been To. He also buries the Smackdown Tag Team Division for not existing, and it’s like, where’s the lie? He’s one half of the Smackdown Tag Team Champions and had to wrestle a non-title match against a Raw team on the pay-per-view pre-show because senile 73-year old Thanos snapped all the tag teams out of existence.

My only complaint here is that Daniel Bryan cut a promo about a pig and a cow, and named the COW “Wilbur.” That’s like me introducing my cat and dog as, “Stinky and Garfield.” Although now that I think about it, naming a dog Garfield might be the funniest thing in the world. Nevermind.

Wait, no, here’s an actual complaint: Why aren’t the tag belts eco-friendly yet? What’s up, WWE, do you not want 400 more dollars?

Worst: Triple H Takes Out His AEW Anger On Legacy’s Leader!

Netflix

Netflix

No Country’s Ever Truly Good

From the Best and Worst of Smackdown two weeks ago:

Occult William Shatner is still doing this thing. If we get any more of these before he wrestles again, I’m going to recite the preamble to the Constitution as Aleister Black and upload it here instead of trying to come up with something to say about it.

Welp,

If he doesn’t wrestle before we see another one of these, I’ll have him do a song from Hamilton.

Best: Female Friendship

Female friendship continues to be an ongoing theme on Smackdown Live, most notably when Good Friend Sonya Deville helps distribute copies of Mandy Rose’s edition of Muscle & Fitness Hers magazine to help the wandering IIconics and layabout bookworm Ember Moon learn … 10 ways to make a butt and 20 ways to firm it, I don’t know, the entire cover is about butts. Good for her!

Mandy also gets a quick win over Carmella, who takes a break from being the Penny to R-Truth’s Brain to compete. Mandy spends most of the match still promoting Hers, which (1) is great for publicity and a future working relationship with the magazine, and (2) makes me wish Mandy Rose would start doing a Toru Yano gimmick and trying to sell off all her copies of Hers magazine.

The other bit of friendship I loved was Charlotte Flair and Lacey Evans having an actual tea party with the fancy tea set Evans presumably carries with her wherever she goes. It’s a nice nod to Charlotte’s former friendship with Becky Lynch, where they were always drinking from and clinking invisible teacups, because neither of them was right-wing enough to dress up like burlesque Peggy Carter and have actual tea parties.

That friendship doesn’t last, however, as Lacey loses a match to Smackdown Women’s Champion Bayley. It’s a nice way to keep the heat on Bayley vs. Charlotte without having to have them wrestle over and over. I just wish Charlotte had pulled a Chris Jericho/Lenny Lane gambit and dressed Lacey like her for the match.

Lacey loses, because while she looks like Charlotte on the outside, she doesn’t have Charlotte’s Superior Genes® on the inside. She also takes a random opportunity to attack Charlotte from behind for some reason and get her ass kicked for it, because I guess she doesn’t want to share any more of her (I’m guessing sweet) tea.

Worst: WWE’s Decision Making Process

1. Realize Andrade is from Mexico and needs a mouthpiece to do his talking
2. Give Andrade a great mouthpiece who is good at talking
3. Have Andrade still cut his own promos while the mouthpiece stands just off-screen
4. Profit?

Worst: Shane McMahon Appreciation Night

What, is every night of WWE TV not already that?

Up first, Shane McMahon (along with Drew McIntyre and Elias, who just look thrilled to be there) does his normal fancy intro thing and segues into a lengthy Shane McMahon video package, intended to educate Roman Reigns on … whatever. The superiority of non-wrestling rich people? The value of being completely blown up 30 seconds into every match?

This turns into an appearance from R-Truth and the 24/7 Championship, where we learn that the champion CAN win matches. He pins Drake Maverick for trying to pin him. Does that mean the champion also operates under 24/7 rules, and can attack and pin anyone he wants? Could the 24/7 Champion attack like, the Intercontinental Champion from behind and pin him and win the IC belt? That’d be a cool attribute of the belt, at least … you’d want to have it so you could basically cash in “Money in the Bank” on anyone, but while you’re doing it you’ve got everyone else trying to pin you. They could introduce military strategy to being champion and everything.

Instead of any of that, the heels beat up Truth and Elias wins the 24/7 Championship.

That gives Shane the bright idea to sign R-Truth and Roman Reigns vs. Elias and Drew McIntyre for the main event, reminding us that heel general managers still manipulate and control everything (because the McMahon family are lying liars who lie) and that apparently we’re going to never do our homework and underestimate Roman Reigns forever. Shane, bruh, did you really think a tag team match against two heel cronies was going to hurt Roman Reigns? Even less than 100% recovery Roman Reigns could beat two henches on his own. Truth’s like, a bonus. A non-factor.

Still, that’s where we go with it. Reigns wins with a spear, big surprise, and Truth pins Elias again to win back the 24/7 Championship. I was really hoping Roman was going to bound in from out of nowhere and spear the shit out of Truth to win an extra title just for funsies, but alas.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

troi

this isnt the first time a white woman has helped her black boyfriend hide from a mob in Oklahoma

notJames

You can’t get Smackdown Live cookin’ if you keep serving it RAW.

Mr. Bliss

I hope this is setting up a fatal 4way in Jeddah with Becky, Lacey, Bayley and Char….oh, wait, that actually would be fatal for all of them, never mind

The Real Birdman

You’re supposed to eliminate your Looper, Charlotte

Endy_Mion

The real reason Lacey hates Becky is she disapproves of her relationship being The Man dating The Man because the bible is against two men lying with one another.

muchsarcasm

If the writers had any more protection from Black they’d cost two white mana and have first strike.

Pdragon619

I would love it Bray shows up and is aggressively supportive of Roman Reigns, “nobody but you Roman buddy!”

FreewayKnight

Can we bring back the old Smackdown fist stage, except have the fist be flipping the audience off the entire time?

Big Baby Yeezus

The only way I’d even consider watching Super Showdown is if they give us the rematch we deserve: The Human Spider vs. Bonesaw McGraw

Dave M J

::cut to Alexa Bliss squeezing Larry Steve a little closer::

To recap this week of WWE television,

WWE/UPROXX

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. Thanks as always for reading. Your social media share is appreciated, your comment down below in our comments section is encouraged, and your participation in this weekend’s NXT TakeOver 25 festivities is mandatory. Don’t worry, we’re not gonna ask you to sit around on a Friday morning watching Super Showdown.

See you next week! [gets rolled up]

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Charlotte Flair and Golden Age Charlotte Flair had a tea party that ended in betrayal, Shane McMahon Appreciation Night was interrupted by 24/7 tomfoolery, and Heavy Machinery promised to kill and eat Wiggles and Wilbur.

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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.

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for June 4, 2019.

Best: How’s It Ghana Be?

This week’s Smackdown Live opens with footage of Kofi Kingston’s return to his home country of Ghana with the WWE Championship, and it’s a refreshingly positive couple of minutes on an otherwise pretty pessimistic and meandering show. Between this and Johnny Gargano’s victory lap in Cleveland, WWE’s doing a good job of zeroing in on exactly why we should cheer for its few remaining heroes, and an even better job of connecting them (at least geographically) to the every day men and women who watch the shows. It’s the thing I always wrote about CM Punk’s reactions in Chicago; everyone in your company comes from somewhere, and if you’re truly a global omnipresence, you’re missing out by not leaning into your stars’ relationships with where they’re from and making every locale look important and unique.

Unfortunately for everyone, that leads directly into another Dolph Ziggler, “it shoulda been [voice cracks] ME!!” promo.

Worst: Super ShowOff

I joke a lot about Ziggler’s character because I don’t think they’ve ever had a guy more structurally sound at my internalized idea of what Vince McMahon might want a pro wrestler to be and yet despite all his obvious talents and upside, he’s more often than not the lesser half of some of the worst and dumbest segments you’ve ever seen.

Taking a step back from the performer for a second, what does anyone think is to be gained from a month of Dolph cutting the same, “it shoulda been ME” promo at Kofi? It’s like he’s stuck repeating the same one segment idea — show up unexpectedly, inform Kofi that his rise in popularity and success should’ve been Dolph’s — and never got the script for the followup. So he’s just reiterating the same point over and over, while trying to give it this acting “gravitas” that doesn’t have anywhere to go and (at best) makes him sound like Anakin in the Star Wars prequels. I can’t GO to Ghana, Kofi, because it’s full of SAND, which is COARSE and ROUGH and IRRITATING, and it GETS EVERYWHERE!

That leads directly to a tag team match between the Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, and the New Day that’s fine, and everything you’d expect from a forgettable weekly TV main event done at the beginning of a show.

Long story short, no Super Showdown angle or match is doing its participants any favors, so I’ll be happy when this weekend is over and we can go back to planning underwhelming mega-events in the war-mongering country of socially regressive law and policy we already live in, thank you very much.

We’re Still Not Wrestling Very Much

This has been a major problem on Raw recently, but it seems like WWE’s promotion-wide response to the critical success of the wrestling-heavy AEW Double Or Nothing has been to promote as little pro wrestling as possible, and to basically run 2-3 hour episodes of Hee-Haw without the money for sets or the commitment to corn-fed affability.

The tag team match in hour one goes 10:30. The main event in hour two — Carmella vs. Alexa Bliss vs. Charlotte Flair, with the winner moving on to face Bayley at Super Showdown where women are allowed to wrestle WWE Stomping Grounds — runs 8:50. Between those two matches, 2-hour-long wrestling show Smackdown has a whopping 35 seconds of wrestling. That’s technically “two matches,” as it’s two 24/7 Championship title changes back-to-back. So at best they gave us four wrestling matches for a combined , and 19:55 at worst, two for a combined 19:20. That’s under 20 minutes of wrestling total, and most of that was commercial breaks.

Has WWE considered just abandoning the wrestling parts completely and being a traveling Vaudeville show about co-workers at a smile factory?

Bayley, This Is Still Your Life

That women’s match is set up in an incredibly awkward Moment Of Bliss between host Alexa “Coffee Kingston” Bliss and Bayley. You may remember this dynamic duo from Bayley This Is Your Life, a bit so bad it’s taken Bayley two years to recover. Now that she’s finally got some prestige and momentum again as Smackdown Women’s Champion, we’re throwing her into another feud with Bliss, who isn’t even on the Smackdown roster. And we’re gonna base the feud on Bliss making Bayley wait while she gets a coffee order correct? Wild cards, you guys.

Two things:

• I think Bayley and Alexa Bliss are both very good at what they do (which are very different things), but for some reason they have a sort of anti-chemistry. The closer they get, the worse they are. It just happens sometimes.
• The “wild card rule” has gone completely off the rails. You had a non-Smackdown team challenging the Smackdown Tag Team Champions on a pay-per-view pre-show, and now you’ve got a non-Smackdown wrestler challenging the Smackdown Women’s Champion. It really doesn’t say a lot for Smackdown’s trust of its own roster and divisions. Plus, weren’t there supposed to only be 3-4 “wild cards” per episode to keep it fresh? This one episode has Alexa Bliss showing up to do a talk show segment and ending up in a match, Sami Zayn showing up to wrestle in the opener, Shane McMahon’s heel posse following him over to attack Roman Reigns, and an entire pack of 24/7 Championship jobbers floating from show to show. Does it even matter anymore? Why not just axe the brand split entirely and save yourself the trouble of weirdly un-explaining it?

Best/Worst: 24/7 Convenience

As mentioned, the only other “match” of the night is a 24/7 Championship defense ordered by Shane McMahon. It’s sort of a lumberjack match idea where a formal challenge has been made, meaning 24/7 rules are “temporarily suspended” until the match is over. This could be a cool idea, honestly, and give the title and the division some structure (or at least explain why someone who won the belt wouldn’t just stay home in hiding and be champion forever), but … well …

When it’s time for the match, they just do the same 24/7 “run up behind the other guy and do a roll-up” bit. It’s the exact same thing as the backstage “matches,” only done in the ring. So Truth gets pinned, immediately gets his pin back, and then runs away. It feels like a real missed opportunity to pepper these bits with actual matches and like, try to do something with the concept. Truth pinning Elias under the ring was fun. Truth can seemingly turn even the worst segments into something, but the gaggle of hapless idiots following him around with a mixture of aimless aggression and crippling depression make it feel less like a competitive division and more like an endless Benny Hill chase that runs you until you’re dead. Or, uh, is that just me?

Note: There’s seriously no reason WWE shouldn’t have given Matthew McConaughey a Raw-long run with the belt.

Worst: Aleister Black Is Still Not Wrestling

You really made me do this, huh? From last week’s column:

If he doesn’t wrestle before we see another one of these, I’ll have him do a song from Hamilton.

[vaguely gestures]

If he doesn’t wrestle before we see another one of these, I’ll do something a lot easier than trying to rap as three separate raspy-voiced guys.

Also On This Episode

Lars Sullivan gives an “exclusive interview” about his upcoming match with Lucha House Party and gives his Chris Farley speaking voice its main roster debut. There’s nothing that instantly kills Sullivan’s vibe as fast as that dorky voice, especially when he’s saying some serial killer shit like:

“Three blind mice, watch how they run, watch how they’re caught, watch how their tails are ripped apart with my bare hands and a beautiful portrait is painted with their bodily fluids!”

I really hope Rob Schamberger doesn’t get put in charge of painting Lars Sullivan in Lince Dorado’s urine and ass sweat.

Lars’ “exclusive” — really shocked that CNN didn’t get to talk to Lars before WWE! — is followed by a non-match between Andrade and Apollo Crews. I say “non-match” because they both show up in gear with music to do a wrestling match, but Andrade wins immediately without a decision being announced and Crews just rolls away. This is how much they care about the wrestling on the show right now. Stuff just starts and they haven’t put any thought into how to end it, so it just sorta stops and we move on. When did the SNL writing team start doing freelance work for WWE? Are Colin Jost and Michael Che still in the back somewhere?

With Crews instantly demolished, Finn Bálor jogs down and they do the same bit. Andrade stands tall, and … boop. Lars Sullivan’s interview, the Andrade/Crews non-match, and a Triple H vs. Randy Orton video package are the “cool down” between the second match of the episode and a main-event Goldberg promo. Buzz, your Smackdown episode, woof.

The Revival have wild-carded their way onto the show to serve as the helpless Dothraki, charging forward with fiery arakhs into the inevitable, frozen darkness of Roman Reigns. He snuffs them out pretty quickly — he’s been called out by BEST IN THE WORLD Shane McMahon, as “will Shane McMahon vs. John Cena Super S be competitive” is seriously a story we’re trying to get over in 2019 — and gets caught by ALSO wild-carded Drew McIntyre kicking him in the face. I’m honestly starting to lose track of who is supposed to belong to which show, since we’re just popping back and forth without any announcements or documentation.

Anyway, Shane gets another leg up on The Big Dog® in a (badly failed) attempt to convince us that even Shane McMahon +3 could beat Roman Reigns in a wrestling match. Miz has a sort of fantastic, knowing fakeness about everything he does that makes a match with Shane make sense. Roman should be able to snap Shane’s spine by looking back over his shoulder and raising an eyebrow at him.

Finally, for the benefit of the progressive nation of Saudi Arabia and its beloved Prince Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud, we have 52-year old Sid Haig-ass-looking Bill Goldberg making his Smackdown debut to respond to comments from 54-year old tired-ass-looking The Undertaker. On Monday, Undertaker said “you’re next” to Goldberg. On Tuesday, Goldberg says “rest in peace” to The Undertaker! That’s it, that’s the whole story.

Part of me is interested to find out what would happen to The Undertaker’s … you know, human life, if Goldberg spears him. The other half of me stopped being interested in seeing Goldberg vs. The Undertaker in like, December of 1998. Especially without any context, especially in a promotion both of them barely work for, especially plus 21 years, especially at the end of the grandest pay of them all, WWE Equivalent To WrestleMania.

Anyway, shout-out to anyone still dumb or five enough to think this shit’s still cool. Remember when Raw and Smackdown weren’t exactly the same every week? That was nice.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Mr. Bliss

Not Ghana lie, that was touching.

The Real Birdman

Lars: “I’ve been called this one word since I got here. Say it, Kayla”
Kayla: “Snitsky?”

*Shows up to wrestling match in street clothes*
*Shows up to talk show in wrestling clothes*

The C Team

*Producer knocks on Aleister’s door*
Producer: “You know there’s a 24/7 title now, right?”
Aleister: “…I’m good.”

Son of Tony Zane

A hardworking black guy tells a nice, subdued story about how he finally visits his home country and how proud he is to be an inspiration to kids there. Then a mediocre white guy interrupts and whines “what about me?” That seems like how we talk about race in 2019 in a nutshell.

Endy_Mion

Bayley i have a question, what’s up with those face tattoos? Your mom let you go to the mall unsupervised or what?

AshBlue

I will forgive all these Aleister Black dark room promos if eventually the camera pans down and shows us the rotting corpse of Mojo Rawley.

cyniclone

Charlotte’s mad at Alexa because it’s not sweet tea
Bayley’s mad at Alexa because it’s not a Capri Sun
There’s your character development, PAL

Harry Longabaugh

Goldberg challenges Chris Jericho to a match, and that coward Y2J doesn’t have the guts to come to the ring and accept!

Big Baby Yeezus

“Goldberg on Smackdown? This is the biggest moment in Smackdown history”- Me, 6/4/01

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. As a helpful programming reminder we’re skipping the Saudi Arabia show, but we’ll have a lot of content up on Friday in case you’d like to do anything else.

Make sure to drop a comment down below to let us know what you thought of this week’s Smackdown, give us a share on social media if you’re a pal — a real one, not the Vince McMahon kind — and make sure you’re here next week as we try to cram for WWE Stomping Grounds at the last second. See you then!

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Goldberg and The Undertaker had a face-to-face confrontation to set up what I assume was a really good and universally beloved old man fight. Plus, Dolph Ziggler is still a thing!

Things to do: 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.

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for June 11, 2019.

Worst: Another Half Hour Of Shane McMahon

WWE Smackdown Live

To give you a quick grasp on how fundamentally broken this entire company is right now, Intercontinental Champion Finn Bálor vs. Shinsuke Nakamura was relegated to being a dark match so Smackdown Live could run Raw’s Drew McIntyre vs. Raw’s The Miz as part of a 30 minute segment devoted to putting over Shane McMahon. Read that a few times until it really sinks in.

It’s terribly, violently broken, and nobody seems in much of a hurry to fix it. You’re breaking the hearts and killing the professional drive and artistic ambitions of the best talent of a generation so you can do the year’s 24th 15-minute show-opening promo and regurgitate a somehow worse version of the thing you literally did the night before. Raw had Miz TV get interrupted to set up a match, and a long, pointless segment glorifying Shane McMahon. Smackdown has a Shane McMahon appearance on Miz TV set up a long, pointless match glorifying Shane McMahon. It’s insane. It’s literally insanity. I feel like Tyrion Lannister, wondering why my dense cousin Orson keeps smashing beetles with a rock.

One of the reasons it feels so frustrating to be a fan right now is … well, everything, but what I’m specifically talking about is Shane’s weird invulnerability to everything. If you boo him, he pretends you’re booing someone else. If you chant, “this is boring,” he blows it off and pretends it’s about somebody else. If you make no noise, it’s “hushed silence.” It’s a weird, sweaty child trying to fill his dad’s shoes without knowing how to tie them, or why he SHOULD tie them, or why people wear shoes in the first place.

From Raw:

I just don’t understand what the end game is supposed to be here. What’s the end goal of this Shane McMahon superman push? The blowoff should’ve been The Miz kicking his ass and putting him away at WrestleMania, but it didn’t happen. So then the blowoff became The Miz kicking his ass in a steel cage at Money in the Bank, but it didn’t happen. Shane won both matches. Then you’re like, “okay, maybe Roman Reigns will just Superman punch him to death and that’ll be it,” but nope, Shane won that, too. This non-wrestler has won three straight marquee singles matches against top competitors and is dancing on their graves, so what’s left? What’s the goal? There isn’t anyone bigger than Roman Reigns on the regular roster to step up and give him his comeuppance, and it’s not even like they’re playing Shane up as that much of a master manipulator like Vince. He’s just going in there and winning matches, and everyone’s treating him like he’s amazing. He won that “Best in the World” trophy as a face, if you’ll remember.

If Miz couldn’t win the feud built around the guy turning heel on him and assaulting his father, and if Roman Reigns can’t win the feud beyond beating up Shane’s much bigger and younger and stronger and better henchman multiple times, what gives? Who’s the ultimate hero? Triple H? This is some straight-up Vince Russo booking himself to win the World Heavyweight Championship and shaving Ric Flair’s head shit, and I’m blown away that nobody seems to realize it.

What’s especially painful for me is that I was watching WCW while it was falling apart, and I was writing about this exact same shit on wrestling op boards. Why is any of this happening? What does any of this mean? And the sentiment at the time was, “wait and see where it goes!” Well, I waited, and I saw where it went, and I’d honestly prefer it if the biggest wrestling company in the world, the same company that put every other wrestling company out of business and turned the “sport” I love more than anything in the world into a globalized monopoly, to not circle the same hopeless drain I lost WCW in almost 20 fucking years ago.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Smackdown opens with Shane McMahon and His Amazing Friends as guests on Miz TV. Miz tries to get them to, you know, react to stimulus, but it’s hopeless. Shane just squints and makes faces about things until it’s his time to talk, and he uses that time to assure us that (1) he’s not intending to ever face any kind of consequences, and that (2) he barely cares enough to interact with or entertain the crowd, much less LISTEN to what they’re saying and REACT to it. If his dad has spent every segment on Raw in 1996-1998 playing off boos like they were for Stone Cold Steve Austin, it wouldn’t have been fun to boo him. The back-and-forth is what makes action storytelling, and if shit’s just one-sided forever you start losing interest. Ratings go down. People stop watching. They watch something else and wait for dumb assholes like me to tell them what happened the next day on the Internet. I did the same thing with comic books back in the day. Everything started feeling meaningless, so I stopped buying comics and kept up with the stories by reading Wizard magazine.

The payoff to another large, disinterested Shane McMahon promo flagellation is a gauntlet match, wherein Miz can get his “dream match” with Shane (which he’s already had, and lost, twice) if he can defeat Elias and Drew McIntyre. He defeats Elias in like two minutes, because in theory we might actually like and be entertained by Elias, and we can’t have that shit.

That gives way to Miz vs. Drew McIntyre, wherein this is the big spot.

WWE Smackdown Live

He clearly did that on purpose, especially considering they left it in the highlight video, so what, is the story that he was “exhausted” after wrestling a two minute match and getting four minutes into match two?

Anyway, now that we’ve established that The Miz is a complete geek who can’t even properly execute his own moves, we get to watch him lose to Drew McIntyre. That’s fine, because it’s Drew McIntyre, but that immediately sets up Miz losing via TAP OUT SUBMISSION to Shane McMahon’s strip mall jiu-jitsu in 40 seconds. So that’s the third time Miz has lost a match to Shane, and what’s the payoff? Miz maybe winning a match in the future, bringing the former WrestleMania main-eventing WWE Champion to a 1-3 record against one of his three evil non-wrestling bosses?

Independent of my opinions as a wordy, annoying “smark” on the Internet, this is just boring, lifeless, bad television. Can we start pretending NXT and 205 Live are the main roster, and that Raw and Smackdown are developmental? At least that’d explain why they keep writing and re-writing the same bad episode over and over and expecting the talent to magically salvage something from it. And I guess also maybe it can explain why they did a brand split and a “Superstar Shake-Up” only to feature the same 20 people on every episode anyway. How many wrestlers are rotting from the inside right now so we can give the boss’ son another half hour to depressively jack it on live television?

More Promo Parades

After that, it’s time to do a brand new segment: someone comes to the ring with a microphone and talks for a while, but is interrupted by someone, until 2-6 wrestlers have argued their way into a match. Maybe you saw it twice on Raw, twice on the Raw before that, and in every segment Dolph Ziggler’s had since returning.

The best news of the entire episode is that Big E is back, having quickly recovered from his meniscectomy. He looks great. Unfortunately, the most creative thing they have for the reformed New Day is a six-man tag team match against three heels who constantly lose, thereby making them about as threatening as the Smackdown announce team. Honestly I think Corey Graves and Byron Saxton would have a better chance of winning matches right now than Sami Zayn. That guy’s been literally and figuratively thrown in the garbage so many times he should start wrestling in a Hefty bag.

The resulting match is fine. It’s the only match in two hours that goes more than 5 1/2 minutes and approaches “good.” I’m super happy Big E is back, as Big E has always been my favorite New Day guy by a wide margin.

I feel like I need to take a second here to address those of you who might’ve already scrolled down into the comments to talk about how I obviously “hate” the show and how I should stop watching it, and for what feels like the thousandth time I need to shake you by the shoulders and say I do hate these shows, but I don’t hate the performers, the medium, or the idea of popular WWE television shows, and the only reason I’m on this tube of Internet every week running my mouth is because of a desperate, never-ending want for the most visible and available promotion of the thing I love to not make me feel like a stupid idiot for sticking around and watching it. There’s got to be a better way to urge the creatives in charge of a thing to put some effort into it beyond completely giving up and walking away.

Let’s talk about the positives, what do you say?

WWE

Jobbers Of The Week

Oh no

WWE Smackdown Live

Remember how weird it was on Raw that the IIconics just restarted the angle they abandoned in April where they said there were no good tag teams to defend against, so they set themselves up for an easy match against jobbers? Well, Smackdown does that exact same thing a day later with Daniel Bryan and Rowan. So now they’ve got the Women’s Tag Team Champions, the Smackdown Tag Team Champions, and Aleister Black all doing bits where they never wrestle because there’s “no competition,” in a universe where the only reason they don’t have competition is because nobody’s putting in the effort to create it. How many characters are gonna complain about talent not magically rising up to face them?

Anyway, Daniel Bryan and Rowan try to have a match for the “YOLO County Tag Team Championship” against AJ Kirsch and Dave Dutra. All you need to know about Dutra is that his nickname is “The Futra,” which is hilarious. You might know Kirsch better as the guy who plays “Buzz” in the WWE 2K19 career mode, which is perfect considering the belts they gave him to hold on Smackdown work just like those ill-fitting championships in the video games. Between Buzz showing up on Smackdown and Mansoor (the voice of “Cole Quinn” in career mode) winning a battle royal in Saudi Arabia, it’s been a great week for WWE video game characters. Maybe Stomping Grounds will end with Barron Blade putting on a smiley face mask and attacking Seth Rollins in the parking lot.

They end up losing a quick match to Heavy Machinery instead of the tag champs, and now I guess Otis and Tucky are Yolo County champs. Given the way they treat tag team wrestling, WWE should just make all the tag belts out of cardboard.

Worst: First World Problems

In women’s division news, the Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross friendship is suddenly about Bliss manipulating Cross’ emotions by claiming Bayley “liked” negative tweets about her without even taking the time to fake it, and Sonya Deville made Ember Moon mad by knocking her Switch out of her hands. NOW what’s she going to do for two hours during a live wrestling show? WRESTLE? Come on.

Additionally, the IIconics appeared. During a commercial break.

Can’t find room on the program for the Women’s Tag Team Champions if you’ve taken 30 minutes out of your afternoon to make funny cardboard belts for characters who are never showing up again!

The Best Thing On The Show Is A Guy Accidentally Getting Locked In A Box

R-Truth, Carmella, and WWE’s underest under-card guys continue to turn lemons into lemonade by making the 24/7 Championship segments fun to watch. The 24/7 Championship is still a dirt poor idea, especially in a world where they can’t do anything “hardcore” and can only schoolboy each other until the end of time, but the focus on underutilized talent is FANTASTIC. They can feud over the Butthole Championship For Jerks for all I care, as long as it gets guys like EC3 and Drake Maverick and Cedric Alexander more TV time. You know, assuming they can’t ever wrestle on the wrestling show.

Here, Truth tries to avoid literally nobody by accidentally getting locked in a production crate. Jinder Mahal briefly tries to impersonate Carmella and I guess pin the box (?), but loses track of him. Truth gets loaded onto a semi-truck headed for Raw, so … maybe Truth is dead, and Jinder will have to pin his corpse on Monday? It wouldn’t be the first time Truth has died on Raw, and incredibly that’s not a joke about the show quality.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

AwkwardL0ser

Dolph’s gimmick is really speaking to every white person who writes off a minority’s promotion as “affirmative action” even when they’re not qualified for the position the other person earned.

Pdragon619

That pin was Sonya’s pride month bonus

Mr. Bliss

Sadly, I’d love a stable of McIntyre, Elias, and the Revival if Shane was their manager not their muscle.

AshBlue

Those Taco Bell commercials have way better character consistency, plot, and pacing than any WWE programming.

LUMI_TUNZ

Aleister: “Okay, guys please. I’m trapped here, someone please save me!”

troi

Shouldn’t Mandy and Sonya as one of the 3 tag teams in WWE be more interested in going after The Iiconics than bullying nerds in the hallway?

Harry Longabaugh

Roman couldn’t beat Shane. It’s official: Shane is worse than cancer.

Chad Gable Acronym Comments Of The Week

The Real Birdman

The G.A.B.L.E. System

Get mini push
Abandoned by creative immediately
Become enhancement talent
Linger around backstage for weeks
Enter segment randomly

troi

G.A.B.L.E.

Go to AEW
AEW
Bucks of Youth
Leave WWE
Elite

BeatoPuente

Catch
His potential
Aflame as in the
Desert it

Glints from
Afar
But when I arrive at the gleam’s origin I see that it has been
Left
Empty

WWE Smackdown Live

“Dear Mr. McMahon,

You don’t know me, but my name is Chad Gable. I work for you. My gimmick for the past several years has been, ‘owned a towel,’ but has recently turned into, ‘can spell his own last name.’ I’m writing to you because Raw and Smackdown are the worst, and I will throw myself off a bridge if I have to wear another sparkling bath robe. Can I wrestle? Maybe on one of the shows about wrestling? I thought that’s what all the shows were about, but lol

Anywayz, get back to me when you can. Kurt Angle’s abandoned son says hi!

Love,
Chad Gable”

Hey, it worked!

That’s it for this week’s Best and Worst of Smackdown. Sorry I didn’t have any extremely dense, angry thoughts about it. You can help us out by sharing the column on social media, and by dropping down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of the Shane. Sorry, the “show.” Don’t know why I typed Shane.

Shane you next week!

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: Shane McMahon continued his unchecked dominance over the show, the Yolo County Tag Team Championship changed hands, and R-Truth accidentally got locked in a production crate.

Things to do: 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.

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for June 17, 2019.

Worst: Shane Old Story, Zayn Old Song And Dance

Here’s a strange way to open this week’s column: the admission that, at least this week, Raw was considerably better than Smackdown. The Wild Card Rule has made the brands feel like the same show on different nights, and has somehow simultaneously beaten every current feud into the ground while making it almost impossible to tell who’s feuding at all. It’s just a big pile of WWE stuff.

It probably sounds hyperbolic to people who weren’t fans at the time, but current Smackdown feels too much like WCW Monday Nitro. How? Well, let me put it to you like this; Miz cuts a really good promo that acknowledges and contextualizes a lot of the concerns fans have with the Shane McMahon story, in that he’s weirdly dominant over everyone, takes up all the TV time, and proclaimed Smackdown Live the “land of opportunity” with “the WWE Universe” as the new “authority” only to turn both weekly shows into commercials for Shane McMahon. He ends up in a tag team match and gets teamed with R-Truth, his old teammate from the Awesome Truth who has regularly been one of the most enjoyable parts of the show.

You’d think that’d go somewhere new, or somewhere at least exciting to get our hopes up about Smackdown turning a corner creatively and getting back to, you know, being a show we might want to watch, but it just leads to the same place as everyone else: Miz losing, Awesome Truth jobbing out to characters with more important feuds to worry about, and a Shane McMahon beatdown that on an atomic level feels like every throwaway nWo beatdown I’ve ever seen.

The only positives I can give here are:

• Miz’s promo work was good
• R-Truth is always enjoyable
• Drew McIntyre looked tough, even though he’s about to lose a pay-per-view match to a guy who got pinned by Shane McMahon earlier this month
• the whole thing only took 20 minutes instead of 30

Stomping Grounds should open with Roman Reigns running Shane over with a car, then backing up and driving over him again.

Similarly, I wrote this in the Best and Worst of Raw:

Did you guys make it a 2-out-of-3 falls match so you could do the “Baron Corbin’s partners don’t like him and abandon him” finish AND have Sami Zayn take a pin? Because you probably could’ve just not had Sami lose for once.

That happens again on Smackdown, with a tag team main event made into a “2-out-of-3 falls match” but ending in two straight falls, seemingly only to make sure that if Kevin Owens takes the pin, we ALSO get to see Sami Zayn lose. He gets hit with one move at the very beginning of the match and loses 100% of his HP.

I know they’re stooge heels right now and everything, but does anybody really know what’s going on with Zayn and Owens? Why are they Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco? J&J Security could kick these guys’ asses right now. Is Sami being punished for the Saudi Arabia stuff, or for not getting over the “actually it’s the FANS who are wrong” shit? Did GTV catch them talking about how they wish they could go to All Elite? I haven’t seen someone get turned out so hard since Wade Barrett spent like two years losing matches to strong gusts of wind.

Long story short, this Smackdown felt like the Raw I’d expected to see on Monday.

Worst: Dorf On Dolph

As for Kofi, he’s stuck in the same time loop as everyone else, forced to stand in the ring and listen to Dolph Ziggler cut these intense, rambling Mick Foley promos without any of the motivation or context Mick Foley had for cutting promos. He does these speeches like a melodramatic kid in 10h grade drama. I know a lot of you are huge Dolph Ziggler marks, and brother, I’ve been there, but he’s turned up to 11 and a half on some shit that requires a 4 or 5 at best. He’s gonna have a vein burst in his head if he keeps it up.

Sure enough, Xavier Woods is only here to get fridged six days before Kofi Kingston’s match at Stomping Grounds, the same way Big E came back early just to get attacked before Super Showdown. If they extend this feud to Extreme Rules, we’re gonna find out that Evan Bourne’s been mysteriously attacked backstage.

Best: Bayley, This Is Your Actual Life

Let’s talk positives for a moment, so you don’t think I just blankly hated the entire show.

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the Alexa Bliss and Bayley talk show segment based on … well, every other Alexa Bliss vs. Bayley talking segment, but it turned out to the be the highlight of the night for me. Alexa Bliss is on here, absolutely ethering Bayley for being an inconsistent character that peaked in NXT and can’t seem to constructively deal with any emotion or obstacle the character has. Bayley also throws the first punch here like an asshole, despite the WWE Fan Nation video labeling the segment as, “Alexa Bliss slaps Bayley.” What segment where you watching?

Another great thing here is that the crowd actually seems to be on board with the moral ambiguity. Bayley is right to point out that Alexa Bliss is a great manipulator and that she deserves to be forearmed in the face for her entire character history of lies and betrayal, but I honestly didn’t feel like Bliss was lying here. The stuff she was saying felt real, at least from the character’s point of view, and the Bayley I know would’ve been good-hearted (or at least Sting Stupid) enough to actually address the concerns.

The money here is that I think Bliss is actually telling the truth, and that Nikki Cross is the big manipulator. That’s the only really satisfying conclusion to this that I can see. Bliss has “cried wolf” so many times everyone expects her to be a huge jerk to anyone she pretends to be friends with, but Cross is literally an insane, feral monster that is for some reason acting perfectly normal and lovable with Bliss. Why? I think Cross is the one pulling the strings with the “gossip” and social media shit-talking or whatever, and I’d love it if it inadvertently double-turned Bayley and Bliss.

Best: If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late

Truth: “Whoa, whoa … you a Uber driver and a referee?”
Rudy Charles:

YouTube

Drake Maverick dressed as Carmella to finally bring his hunt for R-Truth to an end was pretty fun, but not as fun as (1) him using the car to “get his feet on the ropes” and somehow cheat to win a title without any rules, or (2) him leaning out of the window to yell, “you can bill me, I’m getting married! I’M THE CHAMPION!”

The continuity of Drake Maverick’s wedding has been great, and I’m gonna lose it when he’s delivering his vows at his actual wedding and gets rolled up by R-Truth. I want him to be the one human being brave enough to have a real WWE Championship change hands during what’s supposed to be the most important moment of his real life. Bonus points if EC3 tosses Truth into the wedding cake and wins it as well.

Too Much Good Content Happened During The Commercials

Speaking of R-Truth, here’s a fun and lovable bit where Miz tries to explain What’s Up® with the impromptu tag team match, featuring Truth calling Greg Hamilton “Alexander Hamilton,” and the reveal that Truth is, “legally insane.” Wouldn’t it be a good idea to, like, let the characters be likable on the actual show instead of having them talk like robots in pre-written paragraphs about shit we’ve already seen a hundred times?

Similarly, here’s Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn getting some old fashioned heel heat to get the crowd involved in their tag team main event. That also might have went a long way toward making us get involved in it as a viewing audience, and would’ve at least explained and built up some tension for Zayn’s instant loss.

They also put an entire Daniel Bryan promo in a commercial break, which is like having a parade and putting a black tarp over all the floats.

These segments all happening on the fly while we watch commercials for The Radkes, plus the ongoing difference between on-screen and off-screen IIconics promos, makes me wish they’d jettison a few of those soap opera writers into space and let the wrestlers have a stronger hand in what they say into a microphone.

Also On This Episode

Paige here!

WWE Smackdown Live

While the backstage segments that made the cut aren’t as good as the ones during commercials, at least WWE remembered the Kabuki Warriors exist. They’re going into a non-title match against The IIconics in Tokyo, Japan, which sounds like the easiest-to-win match in the history of professional wrestling. I’d actually be okay with the IIconics losing the belts at this point, because WWE doesn’t have any interest in doing anything with them, and when it comes to actual hypothetical match quality you can’t get much better than injecting Asuka and Kairi Sane into things.

In other backstage news, Apollo Crews uses his trout-like charisma to ask Zelina Vega about Andrade’s whereabouts and gets his ass kicked about it. Chad Gable takes notes, presumably because he’s looking for another random black guy to tag with. Hey, you know what would be REALLY good? Chad Gable vs. Andrade. Let’s do that instead.

*whispers* wrestle

Ember Moon is EXTREMELY MAD at Sonya Deville for breaking her Switch, and is going to gesture directly while speaking very sternly in the way watching promos on YouTube taught her. She’s also wearing a pelt and feather shoulderpad while Mandy Rose and Sonya stand around being friends and eating donuts, so I think we know who’s on the right side here.

Also, check out that look Mandy gives Sonya at the end of the segment. Is she finally into her? LET SONYA DEVILLE HAVE A PRETTY GIRLFRIEND AND GOOD DONUTS, WWE.

Finally, the Yolo County Tag Team Champions squash the B-Team. Congratulations to Bo and ol’ Mike McGillicutty for getting to stand in the background of TWO segments this week, including one in which Matt Hardy reminds us he used to do things we liked.

Oh, and a huge, huge best to this kid wearing a Nexus shirt in 2019 and doing a Macho Many Randy Savage impression. It’s always nice to see yourself represented on screen.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

notJames

Mr. Fuji spent many a night in jail for…

… a salt.

AddMayne

Huey Freeman: You know, we could all be watching a Nakamura match right now.

it’s about time ethan makes drake an honest man

AJ Dusman

Vince: I wish there was a way we could have both Sami AND Owens take a pin in the same match.
HHH: You have got to be kidding me…

LUNI_TUNZ

Miz: “This is very very important, I need you, Drew and the hairy guy with the guitar need to watch this.”
*Miz plays Miz and Mrs. episode on the titantron*

JayBone2

VINCE: Ratings are slipping and I need ideas people.
BIG E: Why don’t we make the second hour of Smackdown the freaky hour.
VINCE: What do you need?
BIG E: A slip n’ slide, Becky’s mom and a goat.
VINCE: Get me Jericho!

AshBlue

Oh, I get it. Chad Gable’s new gimmick is “guy hanging around taking notes for his Harvard Business School class.”

Son of Tony Zane

We finally got the Senor Shetlon Benjamin joke we all made!

The Real Birdman

Go ahead & flirt with her, Apollo. Her husband’s trapped in a closet somewhere

You guys think Nakamura, Rusev, Buddy Murphy, Ali, Aleister Black: Ring Edition, Kairi Sane, Asuka, Finn Balor, Chad Gable, AOP, Paige, Ember Moon: Non-Bookworm Edition, Killian Dane, Liv Morgan or EC3: Real Person Edition show up tonight?

WWE Network

Thanks for reading about Smackdown! Fox can’t happen soon enough.

Make sure to drop a comment down below to let us know what you thought of the show, consider being here for next week’s open discussion thread so Smackdown doesn’t turn into a complete critical wasteland, and give us a share on social media to help out. We appreciate it! See you this weekend for Super Shoe-Down!

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: Is it even possible to differentiate Smackdown from Raw at this point? The rosters, matches, finishes, and stories are all the same. They might as well call Smackdown “Hulu Raw” until it goes to Fox in the fall.

Things to do: 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.

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for June 24, 2019.

Shane McMahon Update Of The Week

Remember that part of Monday’s Raw where The Undertaker showed up from out of nowhere to save Roman Reigns from a 2-on-1 Authority beatdown, presumably sick and tired of watching the guy who little-brother-punched him inside Hell in a Cell dominate and treat everyone on the roster like crap? Well, it turns out that was a special favor for Roman, as The Undertaker doesn’t give a shit about what happens to The Miz.

At least Roman Reigns gets to pin Shane’s henchmen when Shane isn’t directly involved. Miz can’t even seem to accomplish that, as his character’s been reduce to a complete dipshit in the face of three straight losses to Shane and a loss to pretty much anyone Shane puts him front of him, because of Shane. Here, Shane causes him to lose a fall to Elias by grabbing his foot before he can springboard. Then, between falls two and three, Shane just gets in the ring and kicks Miz’s ass for several minutes while the referee stands there making angry faces, forgetting he’s a referee and could just restart the match and disqualify them. But Shane’s The Boss, so any rule-breaking situation boils down to the corporate equivalent of, “a wizard did it.” Also, Shane kicks Miz’s ass again after the match, in case 13 minutes of Miz being a loser wasn’t enough.

To their credit, at least the crowd attempts a, “no more Shane,” chant, which is about as close to putting, “we aren’t booing because he’s an effective heel, we just really hate that you keep doing this unbelievable garbage with a non-wrestler who got completely gassed throwing some punches and doing a spear,” into words as a 4,000-strong collective can get. Shane probably went to the back and high-fived people about how much heat he gets.

Also, Hey, More 2-out-of-3 Falls Matches!

WWE’s wrestling during commercials phobia from Raw continued on Smackdown Live, and yes, they’re already in way over their heads and out of ideas.

On this one two-hour episode of Smackdown we get a pretty great non-title tag team match ending, going to commercial, then continuing as a less enjoyable 8-man tag* (note: one of two “blank has pinned the champion” matches in the episode), and two (2) 2-out-of-3 falls matches. WWE’s gonna keep on until they’ve completely ruined the reputation of NXT’s best match type, and we’re gonna see NXT announce ADAM COLE VS. MATT RIDDLE 2-OUT-OF-3 FALLS and wonder why the main event of a TakeOver needs a commercial break.

There are also two instances of Smackdown doing their trademark picture-in-picture commercial breaks, which isn’t ideal, but seems like a super easy solution to the problem. Go to commercial break whenever you want during the meaningless stuff, and give us picture-in-picture breaks for matches somebody might actually wanna watch.

* only current WWE booking could have Daniel Bryan and Rowan vs. New Day end with Sami Zayn getting pinned.

About That Other 2-out-of-3 Falls Match

No.

NO.

Look, I know Stomping Grounds wasn’t terrible, but did anybody watch that show like, “oh wow, I hope literally ALL of these feuds continue into Extreme Rules and SummerSlam?” Do we need more of Seth Rollins vs. Baron Corbin, more of Becky Lynch vs. Lacey Evans, and more of Kofi Kingston vs. Dolph Ziggler? I honestly can’t care how “good the match is” when this is legit the 31st, 32nd, and 33rd singles matches I’ve seen between the two on TV. I don’t want to see ANYBODY wrestle ANYBODY 33 times, under any circumstances.

At least Smackdown had the decency to have Kofi win (again again) and make the match at Extreme Rules one-on-one with Samoa Joe, instead of turning it into a triple threat. For the billionth time, Ziggler is a talented performer who pretty much lost all the good will he had from jerks like me years ago, and has been dead in the water as a character since he was the star of the show at Survivor Series 2014 and creative immediately gobbled him up about it. Brother needs a Jon Moxley fresh start more than anyone in wrestling.

Best: Small Scale Character Developments

To discuss some positives, hey look, WWE remembered that Finn Bálor, the Intercontinental Championship, and Shinsuke Nakamura all exist! All it takes is a good wrestler we want to watch wrestle wrestling matches show up, another wrestler we wish we could see wrestle good wrestling matches show up to challenge him, and something on the line. Of all the things WWE seems to take for granted from fans, this instant forgiveness when we think something hopeful and positive is going to happen is number one with a bullet.

As an interesting note, I checked every resource I could find online, and the last time Nakamura showed up on weekly TV and won a match (not counting pay-per-views) was the October 30, 2018, Smackdown match against R-Truth. Other than that, it’s just an assload of tag team losses. Imagine paying Shinsuke Nakamura to work for your company and treating him like Konnor of the Ascension.

Someone finally knocked on the door of the Stardust Memorial Promo Cell to challenge poor Aleister Black to a match! Good for him! I really liked Black’s charisma and acting here, even if the context is ridiculous. Couldn’t he, like, get a match the way everybody else does? Are Sami Zayn and Dolph Ziggler taking all these pinfalls because some of their co-workers got locked in a janitor’s closet two months ago and didn’t show up to work? I hope Aleister at least had some snacks in there.

The Nikki Cross and Alexa Bliss friendship question mark story gets some forward momentum as well, with Cross signing up for a match with Bayley and actually pinning her fair and square — Nikki Cross has pinned the Smackdown Women’s Champion! — to earn Bliss another title match at Extreme Rules. Aleister Black should become friends with Alexa Bliss and ask her how she easily gets a free title match every time she thinks about wanting one.

Not that it’s an especially clever story, but I really do hope Natalya and Naomi constantly pointing out what a jerk Alexa Bliss is to her supposed “friends” causes this to be the tale of the one time Bliss found a co-worker who actually cares about her well-being, and helps her become a better person. A better feral anarchist? One or the other.

The most interesting interpersonal development for me was after Sonya Deville defeats Ember Moon with the Dana Brooke Driver ’19 in fewer than 90 seconds, confirming that Fire and Desire as the winner of the monthly Nintendo Switch and donuts feud. There should be a rule in WWE that if you lose a grudge match in under two minutes you don’t get any more chances. Just to say it, Ember Moon should probably be having awesome wrestling matches with everyone right now instead of being Helpless Backstage Dork, but I digress.

The interesting bit comes after the win, when Fire kinda sorta turns into Desire:

WWE Smackdown Live

That’s some actual chemistry! This could go any number of ways, a lot of them very bad, but I hope it just works out for Sonya and she gets a pretty girlfriend to eat donuts and shade nerds with backstage. And if she gets rejected, I hope she introduces Mandy to her new best friend, Shayna Baszler, who would like to speak with her at length about how easy it is to boot a woman’s arm into confetti.

Who Let Them In

WWE Smackdown Live

WWE Smackdown Live

Sonya and Mandy are also present for one of Smackdown’s Firefly Funhouse character cameos, continuing the theme from Monday’s Raw. Abbie the Witch and Mercy the Buzzard popped up in the background of backstage segments on Monday, so Rambling Rabbit (seen here) and Huskis the Husky Harris Pig (seen behind Daniel Bryan while he’s walking) show up on Tuesday. I hope one of the depressed Funhouse kids is the one knocking on Aleister Black’s door.

Best: Spud Gets Cooked

The best moment of the night (surprise!) is probably the far too short 24/7 Championship segment, in which Drake Maverick attempts to bare his soul, either in a sincere way or like Todd Chavez trying to guilt his way into J.D. Salinger’s pen, and gets Bugs Bunnied by R-Truth.

“UH UH! SIIIIIKE! I LOVE THIS CHAMPIONSHIP MORE THAN YOU LOVE YOUR WIFE! ARRIVEDERCI!”

All he needs now is a Daffy Duck crazy goodbye laugh to cement himself as a living cartoon character and the greatest WWE champion of our generation.

Also I hope they do a full Macho Man and Elizabeth bit with Drake Maverick eventually winning back the 24/7 Championship and his wife running into the ring to hug him, because it means they can finally consummate their marriage. Bonus points if Truth figures out how to pin Drake while he’s consummating his marriage.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Endy_Mion

Bryan will continue feuding with Heavy Machinery until they change their finisher to “The Composter”

LUNI_TUNZ

I want Aleister to get fed up, open the door only for it to lead into another room set up just like the one he’s in.

He will then go through successive doors, each leading back into the room, until he has a full on mental break, as he realizes, the reason no one is coming to his door, is because his room doesn’t exist on our plane of reality.

AddMayne

Seth: WWE has the best wrestling!

WWE:

WWE

Harry Longabaugh

Haven’t seen Maverick this emotionally devastated since Goose hit the canopy.

These 2 out of 3 matches are causing me to doubt both my love of wrestling and Meat Loaf power ballads.

BeatoPuente

I absolutely trust the WWE to tell a story centered on LGBTQ elements, especially since it will be depicted entirely through the medium of 12 second promos and sub-2 minute matches.

Pdragon619

Ember’s extra mad because Sonya asked if she wanted to smash and it reminded her that her Switch was broken.

Redshirt

In retrospect, Undertaker getting involved in the Shane McMahon storyline makes perfect sense. You can only beat a dead horse for so long before the dead horse’s soul gets tired of it and asks for help.

AshBlue

Maybe Aleister thinks people know where he is, while in reality a stagehand took his name off the door over a month ago.

Son of Tony Zane

With all this talk of not pissing people off, it’s pretty obvious Jeff Jarrett’s writing this week’s episode of SmackDown.

All I want before I die is a 22-minute version of this Carmax commercial with the IIconics improvising all of their dialogue. You know one exists.

That’s it for this week’s Best and Worst of Smackdown. Thanks for reading, as always. They’ve got me feeling like Slippy the Toad, because all I can do is hope Fox saves us. Drop a comment down below to let us know what you thought of the episode, and give us a share on social to help keep us in business.

See you next week, same Shane time, same Shane place, same Shane channel!

WWE Smackdown Live

HOW MANY PROMOS ARE ON THIS SHOW

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: The John Cena and Randy Orton of the 24/7 division, R-Truth and Drake Maverick, came to a brief emotional understanding about the difficulties of wearing the ugly crown. It didn’t last. Plus, Shane McMahon and commercial break avoision!

Things to do: 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.

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for July 2, 2019.

A Quick Note About MON-day NIGHT RAW!

WWE Smackdown Live

WWE’s weekly shows are under a microscope this week due to the big news of Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff taking over as executive directors of Raw and Smackdown, respectively, and being, at least we assume, given some expanded wiggle-room under the senile old Republican thumb of Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Raw differentiated itself on Monday by increasing the focus on chaotic action in and around the ring, and keeping the pace of the show moving forward. Smackdown differentiated itself on Tuesday by … talking a lot about Raw.

When I say, “talking a lot about Raw,” I mean talking a lot about Raw. The first thing you see when *completely different brand* Smackdown Live starts is the announcers talking about the LED board explosion incident from Monday and throwing it to a lengthy replay from Raw, in Raw colors, with Raw graphics. In the second segment, Kevin Owens talks to Shane McMahon and Drew McIntyre about what happened to them on Raw two weeks ago. A match happens (hooray!) and the next three live segments are R-Truth talking about what happened to him on Raw, a talk show segment where Nikki Cross and Bayley talk about what happened with Carmella and Alexa Bliss on Raw, and Kofi Kingston arguing with Samoa Joe about how he got choked out on Raw.

Granted, I’m not against episodic storytelling, but it kills the image of both a brand split and an, “unpredictable wild card,” when you’ve got the same 10 people on every show and Tuesday only exists to recap Monday. Maybe this will change when Smackdown’s on a different network, and maybe USA Network is just focused on using their last few months of Smackdown to put 100% of the focus on Raw, but it’s not exactly engaging television.

Worst/Best: SO MANY PROMOS, You Guys

Two things I felt strongly about after watching this episode of Smackdown:

• it was nigh-obsessed with promos, as if the increased focus on fighting on Raw made them feel like “constantly talking” was the only way to feel different, and
• the promos felt better and more natural across the board, like maybe they decided to just give the characters who can talk a few bullet points to hit and let them go out there and be themselves

That’s one huge Worst (for me, at least) followed by an equally huge Best. The talking on wrestling shows should be used to get you more interested in the non-talking parts of wrestling shows, but if you’re only going to spend about 25 minutes in the ring on a two-hour show, it’s a plus that the promos are well done and don’t put you to sleep with 9th grade creative writing monotony.

Kevin Pwns

As mentioned, Smackdown is like, “hey, Raw didn’t open with a 20-minute promo … what if we do? It’ll be so creative!” So the Kevin Owens Show No Longer Featuring Sami Zayn opens the broadcast with a quarter-hour of Shane McMahon and a conversation about The Undertaker, followed by a Dolph Ziggler interruption, followed by an impromptu tag team match with RIVALS AS PARTNERS being announced. It’s like they saw me get optimistic about Raw and were like, “how can we make Brandon throw himself off a bridge in one segment?” For real, though, if Kevin Owens hadn’t been out there keeping it together, this would’ve been a nightmare.

Owens is WONDERFUL, though, bringing back his “write the first half of an obvious phrase on a card, write the second half on a different card and still somehow have to switch cards” bit and going full Full Sail ether on Dolph Ziggler. No character has ever deserved a verbal beating as much as Dolph Ziggler, and Kofi Kingston’s too nice and humorously insincere to deliver the death blows. Kevin Owens was BORN to put Dolph Ziggler in the ground.

Shane McMahon — who is still the boss and can still make irrational evil general manager decisions despite the fact that evil GMs are played out and he couldn’t sell fear or compassion if you held a gun to his head — decides to randomly team up Owens and Ziggler in a match against Heavy Machinery for a chance to be in a triple threat Tag Team Championship match at Extreme Rules? The fuck? Sami Zayn’s in such a bad place right now his partner’s getting booked into tag title opportunities without him.

The match that results ends in the only way you could’ve possibly predicted it would: with Ziggler accidentally hitting Owens (or vice versa) and Heavy Machinery winning. Who knew that the guys with no relationship with each other who opened the show randomly arguing about how they hate each other would make bad tag team partners? I hope the corporate structure that employs them both messes with them for several more weeks! I don’t think there’s a better illustration of the failure of the American middle class right now than WWE wrestlers just hanging out and letting comically wicked bosses jerk them around without comeuppance for 20 years. KO hitting Ziggler with a Stunner was fun, though!

You’re Tuned In To Crossfire!

Similarly, an adorable bit with Nikki Cross getting put in charge of A Moment Of Bliss and politely explaining her Scottish accent to the crowd quickly turns into another “Bayley’s a WWE hard-ass now,” segment. The women’s division is dead set on making sure Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross aren’t friends, to the point that it feels like they’re trying to double turn Bliss and everybody else.

If Bayley and Naomi and Natalya didn’t care enough to talk to Nikki Cross for the first month she was there, why should she let them shit-talk the one person who did? Again, I know WWE can only end this with Bliss betraying her and proving them all right, but I really hope they don’t, and that SOMEBODY gives the women’s division a Grinch heart-growing-three-sizes-that-day moment.

The match, like every match on this episode, is short, fine, and uneventful. Bayley quickly gets her win back, which probably didn’t need to happen right away, and Alexa Bliss has nothing to do with it. It’s almost like they taped the Bliss/Cross backstage conversation during Raw! So, what did this prove? That Bayley can win if nothing’s on the line? That Cross is better when she’s motivated by her loved ones? Is Nikki Cross a shōnen anime protagonist?

Joe-makin’ Me Crazy, Kofi!

Kofi Kingston and Samoa Joe have a very good, very heated, censored PG-13 promo battle to help set up their match at Extreme Rules. It ends with Kofi Kingston giving Joe the finger, which is hidden from WWE television by the back of Joe’s head and a spontaneous black screen. This is the kind of thing you book when you want to bring back the teenage audience, but don’t want to make the company that makes your toys for babies mad.

As I mentioned earlier, this is better than normal because it feels more like Kofi and Joe (especially Joe) are saying things their characters actually believe, instead of having a pre-written snaps battle about bad breath and fat mamas, or whatever. Joe promising to not murder Kofi’s entire Great American Family as long as she shakes his hand, but sneaking in some fine-print addendums about Kofi admitting he’s going to lose the WWE Championship was great. Kofi’s incredible confidence as champion has been earned, too, as he wrestles on like every single episode of WWE TV and has only lost a time or two since WrestleMania. I half expected the brawl at the end of this to involve Sami Zayn showing up and letting both guys pin him.

Throwaway Promo Lightning Round

Cool Cat Learns About Pranks

YouTube

He challenged the shit to a match!

Shelton Benjamin Tries To Figure Out How He Got On The Show

UPROXX

Seriously, what the hell is with these filler-ass promos? “Lashley, do a selfie promo from a hospital about how you’re gonna kill a guy because he attacked you and got hurt worse than you because of it. I realize you should both be injured.” “Aleister, we advanced your story last week but we didn’t have any ideas, just do what you were doing before.” “Shelton, we have literally no ideas, just sit there and move your eyes around like a ventriloquist dummy.”

Dan Conner’s Id And Ego As Men

Questions:

• How long have Heavy Machinery been brothers?
• Is that why they got rid of their last names?
• Are they Otis and Tucky Machinery?
• Heavy Machinery is gonna “get smack?” Are Otis and Tucky Machinery addicted to heroin? Is that why Otis is so weird?
• How many times can I use the Roddy Piper Is Coming meme for a single team?

Ali Boma-y’all

What’s with Ali’s voice in this promo? He’s from Chicago. Why does he sound like Nicolas Cage doing a southern accent? Did his ability to cure people of drug abuse and alcoholism by staring at them disapprovingly change his accent? It’d be a really good promo if he wasn’t affecting a WWE “promo voice.”

Truth Has No Idea What To Promo About

(Seriously, nothing but interviews and promos for two hours.)

Also, In Rare Actual Wrestling Match News

The best match of the night was, unsurprisingly, Daniel Bryan vs. Big E. They only give them about eight minutes, end it predictably with Rowan interfering, and bring them back later to get ejected from ringside during a commercial break (that sets up ANOTHER Dolph Ziggler promo … another one), but even 30 seconds of Bryan vs. Big E is better than nothing.

It’s also probably important to make former heroic WWE Champion Daniel Bryan look like a guy who can win a match every now and then, especially considering how many non-title matches you have to lose when you’re a champion in WWE. I know 2019 Bryan doesn’t have as high an overall as 2013-2014 Bryan, but it’s not that much lower. We’re talking a 94 down to a 90 here. 89, maybe. That’s still higher than most people on Smackdown. He should kick your ass on a level playing field seven or eight times out of 10, and somewhere between eight and nine out of 10 with outside help from a murderous vintner.

Finally, the 2:58 of Bayley vs. Nikki Cross is followed by 2:20 of Ember Moon vs. Mandy Rose. Sadly there’s no romance development this week, which is probably a good idea if Eric Bischoff’s hanging around. You don’t want him finding out you’ve been working on a lesbian love story. I wouldn’t trust him with even three minutes of queer programming.

YouTube

Did somebody say … three minutes?

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Endy_Mion

Kevin Owens: why don’t we try, what’s the worst that could happen?
*fifteen minutes later*
Dolph lies in agony after his back is broken due to a post match Pop up PB to the apron.

Kevin Owens: Well, that wasn’t so bad after all. More of a Best than a Worst, you Uproxx smarks. Yeah I read your thread.

Harry Longabaugh

San Antonio, of course, was named after the patron saint of the giant swing.

Pdragon619

“Kofi from one fake islander to another…”

notJames

Man, Xavier is really selling that chokeslam…

… selling like hotcakes.

Aleister: there was a knock on the door and then I opened the door and they were making babies and I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me.

BeerguyRob

I’m not saying Drew’s being hindered in his current program, but he’s gone from the least-important member of the Three Man Band to the least-consequential member of the Mean Street Posse.

troi

who cares about Lashley I want to know more about The Kanellises descent into the kink lifestyle

AwkwardL0ser

Ali oughta make his move before Smackdown moves to Fox. Sonya Deville too

Dave M J

A SDL TAG CHAMP HAS PINNED SOMEBODY WHAT IS THIS?!

The Real Birdman

Smark Lorax Kevin Owens is possibly my favorite wrestler ever

WWE Smackdown Live

Hold on, I’m still trying to figure out why they wrote this episode.

That’s it for this week’s Best and Worst of Smackdown. Thanks for reading, as always. We’re back to a crazy world where Raw is better than Smackdown, at least for a week. Drop a comment down below to let us know what you thought of the episode, and give us a share on social to help keep us in business.

See you next Tuesday for more talking about Monday!

WWE Smackdown Live

a healthy man

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: WWE followed up a good episode of Raw with a terrible episode of Smackdown. This week Raw was terrible, so they follow it up with a much better Smackdown. I don’t know what they’re doing.

Things to do: 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.

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for July 9, 2019.

Best: Eric Bischoff Is Here (Whether He’s Actually Here Or Not)

I don’t know if Eric Bischoff took over Smackdown last night or if we’re waiting until Extreme Rules for the hard reset, but the episode certainly felt like he was there. You know how people said Raw had Paul Heyman’s fingerprints all over it because it involved a hardcore brawl with a big stunt spot and a random cuckolding pregnancy angle? Nothing says “Eric Bischoff” like a parking lot brawl and a worked shoot about how young wrestlers aren’t getting enough opportunities.

Smackdown opens with Dolph Ziggler being interviewed about whether or not It Should’ve Been Him (result: it should’ve) only to be interrupted by an arriving Kevin Owens. They shout at each other like South Park townspeople for a minute and that turns into a fight in the parking lot. Thank goodness the Singh Brothers and the B-Team were out there having a smoke or whatever, or else things might’ve really gotten out of hand.

Kevin Owens storms into the arena and gets on a microphone to rant against the ongoing glorification of Shane McMahon at the expense of stars like Apollo Crews, Asuka, and Buddy Murphy (the New Blood, if you will), and I swear, all it needed was Tony Schiavone in the background saying, “fans, we’re supposed to be sending it to Mike Enos vs. Wrath but LOOK WHO IT IS!”

It’s also wonderfully CM Punkish, complete with “why aren’t my FRIENDS the ones getting pushes” and a McMahon randomly trying to turn off his microphone to keep him from talking. It’s an improvement over the Daniel Bryan and Sami Zayn promo arcs, at least, as now they’ve got a person we’re supposed to CHEER saying shit that makes sense. A month ago they would’ve had Sami in the ring saying, “Shane McMahon actually really cares about you, it’s THE FANS who are making the shows bad!” Although I could honestly live the rest of my life without anyone ever referencing the badness of a product they’re actively participating in ruining and the power hierarchy of WWE management again.

There’s also some Stone Cold Steve Austin to it — not just the Stunner — as a McMahon randomly punishes the person raging against them by removing them from the building. Dolph Ziggler and his increasingly long nest of Ramen noodles shows up demanding satisfaction, which is a nice moment of character consistency because yeah he hates Owens but MAIN EVENTING is the most important thing in the world, and Shane puts him in a match with Roman Reigns. Ziggler probably should’ve said “no thanks” and wandered out into the parking lot to find Owens, because Shane McMahon is the only person strong enough to defeat Roman. Twice.

At this point in the column I feel compelled to remind you that Shane McMahon is currently the objective kayfabe #1 on the PWI 500. So far in 2019 he’s 3-0 against The Miz (including a WrestleMania win), 2-0 against Roman Reigns, the holder of the “Best in the World” trophy thanks to a win over Ziggler (who should probably be more upset about that, but I digress), and a former Smackdown Tag Team Champion who defeated The Bar and only lost to the Usos because his partner got pinned. So he beat the shit out of his partner and his partner’s family. Shane McMahon is like 1998 Vince on Bane Venom.

Sure enough, Big Dawg® has the match well in hand and only misses out on an easy win because Shane McMahon and Drew McIntyre get involved in various ways. That brings out Stone Cold Punk Kevin Owens to sneak up behind Shane (even though he’s not supposed to be in the building, exclamation point exclamation point) and drop him with a Stunner. That frees Roman up to store a special and a finisher, and finish the job.

And that’s the A-story of the show. Any broader criticisms I might have are negated this week due to an A-story even existing, and Smackdown putting in enough effort to tie together multiple stories in a logical and satisfying (if not by-the-numbers retreaded) way. I don’t want to watch two hours of Shane McMahon and Dolph Ziggler doing anything, and we still need someone to address the quick-change Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn relationship now that they’re diametrically opposed again, but it beats the ever-loving hell out of 15 minutes of nothing with an hour-45 of Raw recaps.

Best: Ignorant People Following An Ignorant Lead

The “Tag Team Title Summit” is a synonym for “promo parade,” but there’s some good stuff here. Big E trying to get R-rated with Xavier Woods about touching tips in three-ways was … funny, I guess? Just gonna politely point out that Paige doesn’t have the privilege to make self-effacing jokes about liking group sex on live television without being called a bunch of names, and politely move on. Big E makes even the problematic shit feel positive. It’s one of his charms. Big E could announce that my parents are about to be murdered by a firing squad and I’d happily clap about it without realizing.

Daniel Bryan is Daniel Bryan, so of course I like and agree with every word that comes out of his mouth. WWE taking a second to remember its own history helps a lot, as Woods pointing out Rowan’s history of henching is an astute point about his complete lack of character development, and Bryan’s response of New Day being stuck in the middle of the card as a comedy act despite how great they are is on point. Heavy Machinery is the low point of the bit, mostly because Tucker Knight feels like a create-a-wrestler who chose the tag team branch of Career Mode, but Otis doing the New Day gyration and Big E getting offended by it was great.

The match that results is fun, too. I’m happy that they had Otis pin Woods instead of Bryan, especially given the earlier result of the Intercontinental Championship non-title match that we’ll get to in a second. Otis is deeply underrated in the ring, and I feel like he’s never going to get his due as an in-ring performer because his gimmick is “sputtering dildo in a jean jacket.”

Shinsuke Nakamura Has Pinned The Intercontinental Champion!

Yeah.

After weeks of neither guy being on the show beyond brief backstage interviews and no feud to speak of besides the Intercontinental Championship getting Too-Sweeted once, Shinsuke Nakamura pinned Finn Bálor clean in a non-title match to set up a title match. “Can the person we saw pin the champion pin the champion again? Pay us money to find out,” is a weird flex that they’ve been flexing for a decade.

On the positive side, I liked the way the match was laid out. Nakamura really kicked Finn’s ass. Finn having to struggle to get back into the ring to avoid count-outs and getting wrecked every time he chose to do so was creative, in that it showed Finn has the heart of a fighter, and Nakamura can wrestle a smart match instead of just waiting for people to be in position for him to hit his moves. Nak should really be kicking the piss out of people on the regular, and until Finn gets his priorities straight and goes back to being a Real Rock ‘n’ Rolla, “more heart than brains” isn’t a bad route to take.

Just give me a PPV blowoff where Finn shows up as the Demon, and Nakamura counters with his Titan body paint.

Best: Al Vs. Tony

Aleister Black was out here like …

YouTube

… and then Cesaro showed up like …

AMC

Let’s hope the match is good enough to justify two months of Aleister Black being locked in a room and several weeks of Cesaro feuding with a conga line. It probably will be.

Worst: The Women’s Division Needs Some Help

The wild card rule, the 24/7 division, and WWE’s sudden obsession with marketing Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch’s relationship as a series of mixed tag matches has shrunk the women’s divisions on both Smackdown and Raw to three people — Bayley, Nikki Cross, and Alexa Bliss — so Smackdown’s problems are just Raw’s regurgitated.

Nikki Cross and Alexa Bliss are friends. Bliss is using her, but we aren’t totally sure if it’s because she’s intentionally trying to manipulate and “own” her, or if she’s just kind of self-centered in general and that’s how she connects with people. Everyone who isn’t them is obsessed with breaking them up. Bayley, who is supposed to be a nice person and has more experience than anyone with being used by a manipulative tag team partner who pretends to be your best friend, is super high and mighty about who should and shouldn’t get to be friends with people. Nikki keeps winning matches, and I don’t have a lot of faith in WWE taking the story anywhere but, “whoops, Bayley was right.” Although the “Nikki Cross was the manipulator all along” story seems like it could go somewhere fun. Cross winning, then insisting that she’s the champion by herself instead of the “co-champions” Bliss promised might be something.

But as it stands, we’re doing a contract signing without one of the people in the match present, and the only actual women’s wrestling on the show is three minutes of buffer for it.

The backstage segments don’t much to help, either. The IIconics and the Kabuki Warriors have a brief backstage exchange to remind us that yeah, the Kabuki Warriors won a title shot by defeating the IIconics in Japan, but nobody knows when it’s going to happen, and apparently nobody cares? Asuka and Kairi should try sitting in a dark room for a couple of months and waiting for Billie and Peyton to knock on their doors. We know where this is going, just cash it in and get it over with. I love the IIconics, but the Women’s Tag Team Championship has been dead in the water since Bayley and Sasha promised to defend on all brands and then defended on no brands, so just shit or get off the pot already.

There’s also another Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose bullying Ember Moon segment, which reminds us that if there’s one thing we should not expect from an Eric Bischoff run anything, it’s female characters being written as anything but aggressively sexual lesbians and jealous, shoe-hurling side-pieces.

Also On This Episode

Here’s a great gimmick idea: a guy who doesn’t say or do anything, except it takes up TV time.

I like WWE Champion Kofi Kingston a lot, and I love that they’re making him a legitimate champion instead of a good transitional idea during WrestleMania season, but for real, Samoa Joe should eat him alive at Extreme Rules. But I also though Joe should’ve murdered AJ Styles’ entire family on multiple occasions, so I hope Joe at least gets out of the match without looking like a fool. It’s Samoa Joe. How has he not been WWE Champion at least twice by now?

Ali’s voice is back to normal this week, which is good, and this promo is great. I hope that when Smackdown goes to Fox, they film promos like this that look like they belong on television shows instead of dark room slow zoom ramblings and iPhones in selfie mode.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

troi

Cesaro is going to lay seige to Nakatomi Plaza after this

AshBlue

I always wondered what it would look like if someone gave Brandon a microphone. Awesome!

Endy_Mion

Brandon is possessing Kevin Owens like Deltron takes over Russell in Gorillaz. And hopefully Balor has us set for Demon Days

Mr. Bliss

Rowan: “I am a big redwood.”
Daniel Bryan: “And I am the Lorax, I speak for this tree.”

Mark Silletti

“in anybody elses hands, this is just a microphone. in my hands, it’s a pipe bomb.” – kevin owens

BACHUR

Kevin Owens just did a Pipe Bomb while wearing a shirt with the PPVs name on it. The BEST in the WORLD

The Real Birdman

I keep waiting for Otis to ask me if Ditka or a hurricane would win in a fight

I’m never going to complain about Cesaro, but if Rambling Rabbit sat in that empty chair I would’ve popped hard

cyniclone

Feud idea: Nicki and Alexa feud with Charlotte but one sitting on the other’s shoulders and wearing a trenchcoat as Vanessa Adultwoman

AwkwardL0ser

A good ole boy getting ready to come on a black dude and hippy lib, Smackdown is really getting prepped for Fox.

WWE Smackdown Live

same

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. After Extreme Rules, can we try having both shows be good at the same time?

As always, thanks for reading. Give us a share on social so I can stop asking you all the time, and drop a comment down below to let us know what you thought of the show. Make sure you’re here this weekend for our complete Extreme Rules coverage and more!

WWE

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Kevin Owens cut a fantastic worked shoot promo, Cesaro challenged Kevin Owens, and everything was building to Extreme Rules.

I’m filling in for Brandon this week, since he’s catching up after an illness, so keep in mind my views don’t always align with his. Despite what some commenters have suggested, With Spandex is not actually a hive mind.

Things to do: Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. You can also follow Brandon on Twitter, and also me if you want. 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.

Anyway, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for July 16, 2019.

Worst: It’s Okay To Hate Your Job

I was conflicted about whether to give this segment a Best or a Worst, but I know it was one or the other (no middle ground, here). I kind of wanted to go with Best, because the “Smackdown Town Hall” that Shane McMahon hosted to get “respectful” feedback from his employees accomplished some good fun stuff. It gave Roman Reigns a chance to seem like a Babyface and a Locker Room Leader, calling out Shane simply and concisely without any of the “tater tot” nonsense they used to make him do. It reintroduced Charlotte Flair, being the exact same insincere asshole she was when she left a month and a half ago. It also reintroduced Liv Morgan, who’s been gone even longer, and she cut what’s easily the best promo of her WWE career. It featured what I think is the non-205 Live Main Roster WWE debut of Buddy Murphy, although he might have had a forgotten match at some point that I’m just forgetting about. It reminded us that Apollo Crews is here, and also gave Zelina Vega and Andrade a chance to be mean to him, and damn are those two good at being mean.

WWE

Unfortunately this was also yet another lengthy show-opening talk segment that revolved around Shane McMahon. I know we’re supposed to hate Shane, but every time he talks or wrestles I want to turn off my television, and I’m pretty sure that can’t possibly be WWE’s goal. There are things Shane is good at, like dad-dancing and stepping off the edge of tall things after crossing himself. Being the top heel across WWE is not something Shane is good at. I know Brandon has talked at great length about the Shane McMahon problem, so I’m not going to repeat all that here. They seem to be stepping the narrative that Shane is being ridiculous and power-mad and the roster’s ready to revolt, so hopefully this ends soon, but I’m already well out of patience.

Best: This Is How It Feels To Be Free

The best thing about Shane’s Town Hall is that it was a set-up for Kevin Owens, hero of the worker, to appear behind Shane and Stun him outta nowhere. At the very beginning of the show, we saw Shane and his security guys keeping Kevin out of the building and the Town Hall, so obviously we all knew he was coming back, but it was still great to see his bearded visage appear behind the puffy, sweaty face of the Best in the World.

WWE

If this is going to be a story about Shane McMahon being put in his place, and especially if it leads to him leaving TV at least for a while, I’m really glad they chose Kevin to be the hero who takes him down. I would have expected that to be Roman’s job, but he wouldn’t have been nearly as good at it. Whether he’s a face or a heel, Kevin Owens makes sense and seems like a real guy. The prizefighter who wrestles to take care of his family. The loving dad who takes his kids to the zoo every chance he gets. The friendless jerk who doesn’t trust anyone in wrestling, because he’s watched enough wrestling to know they’ll turn on you if you don’t turn on them first. All of that sets him up to be the working class hero who stands up to the latest iteration of Evil Boss, and even attacks him with a move popularized by wrestling’s all-time greatest working class hero. It’s just a shame Shane’s not better at selling that Stunner.

It’s just too bad that being that hero requires KO to have multiple matches with Dolph Ziggler, another guy I’d be more than happy to not see on TV anymore. I know some people like Dolph Ziggler, but I’ve found when you ask those people to talk about why they like him, they tend to talk about stuff that happened five years ago or more. In the present, Dolph is an inconsistent character, a real-life jerk, a guy whose promos mostly sound like whining, and a contender for the worst hair and most boring gear in wrestling. Fortunately this match ended with KO Stunning Ziggler, Stunning Shane, and running out of the arena while the bossman shook his fist. That’s what we like to see!

Best: I See The Girls Are Out

Three women’s matches on one show? Wow, this almost feels like the time before WrestleMania 35, when it seemed like the Women’s Revolution hadn’t been completely abandoned. The first match was between Charlotte Flair and Liv Morgan, building off of their exchange during the Town Hall. Obviously Charlotte was going to win with the Figure 8, there was never any doubt of that. What was cool was seeing Liv get some offense in, and not look like a total jobber. I never cared much about Liv Morgan in NXT, but she really found herself as a member of the Riott Squad, and now that she’s on her own I’d love to see her get a push.

Of course, we have no idea who she’s going to be the next time we see her, because after losing the match she grabbed Corey’s headset and declared “Charlotte was right. When I come back, I’m going to be real!” I hope that doesn’t mean she’s going to lose the pink hair and the blue tongue, because I for one fully believe that those are a part of the real her. I’m curious to see what comes next, though.

The set up to the next match was that Ember had to find a partner to face Fire & Desire. I can’t say that Bayley was the most exciting pick, because as the Women’s Champion, she was definitely going to be on the show anyway. But in an episode this women-focused, that’s not such a big deal. It does make sense, given that they’ve asked us to believe that gorgeous and fierce Ember Moon is a loser nerd with no friends, that Bayley would be the one to come to her aid and treat her with respect. Especially after Nikki Cross kind of seemed like she might be right when she talked about how Bayley never reached out to her the way Alexa did, it’s good to see Bayley reach out to another outsider, to prove she’s still the kind person she’s always sold as.

Ember getting the pin off of Eclipsing Mandy Rose was also an important character beat. Hopefully she’ll get some more solid-looking wins before facing Bayley at SummerSlam. Despite how little she’s been built on the Main Roster thus far, and also the Face Vs. Face aspect, I’m really excited for this SummerSlam title match. I kind of suspect, as I’m sure others also do, that Charlotte Flair will weasel her way into it. If Charlotte wasn’t going to be on the SummerSlam card, she wouldn’t have bothered coming back to work. I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem, though. A Triple Threat could be a lot of fun, and Ember’s presence will keep it from being something we’ve seen before.


Okay, here’s the thing: I don’t mind the IIconics letting themselves get counted out to avoid losing their belts. They’re the very epitome of cowardly heels, and that’s exactly the sort of stuff they should do. What I mind is that this Women’s Tag Division isn’t even a division, and hasn’t been since WrestleMania. WWE still seems to be too busy sulking that the Bellas couldn’t return to tell women’s tag team stories at all. This title match (except probably the version with an ending). Should have happened at Extreme Rules. Hell, it should have happened at Stomping Ground! So after they spent all this time doing nothing, they gave us a match that wasn’t even a match. Obviously the rematch needs to happen at SummerSlam, but even that’s annoying, because it means three more weeks of these two talented tag teams barely doing anything, while no other women in the company even acknowledge that there are Tag Team Titles they could be fighting for. Do better, WWE!

Worst: Turn Around And Take A Look At The Crowd

The Smackdown Town Hall was already enough of a promo parade to be annoying, and then they had a full-on promo parade halfway through the show anyway! Look, I love the New Day, and I really love seeing all three of them with belts. It’s awesome, for real. What I don’t love is seeing Daniel Bryan walk in and out like an angrier Lacey Evans with better politics, and then three heels showing up one by one, leading to a Teddy Long-ass tag team match. The only part I enjoyed was Bryan holding his hand out and making a constipated expression like he’s trying to cast a spell and just can’t get it out. Samoa Joe made sense, but I didn’t need more Elias on this show, and I literally never need to see Randy Orton.

But the tag match was what we got, and it led to Randy RKOing the WWE Champion, which clearly puts him in line to fight Kofi at SummerSlam. Real talk, this is my thing and I’m not judging anybody else for who they like, but I straight-up hate Randy Orton. He walks through WWE like he’s half asleep and can’t be bothered to fully participate, and then he gets treated like a top guy anyway, because he’s a legacy, a veteran, and the guy who feuded with John Cena for like a decade. Oh, and also because he has a cool finisher. And it is a cool finisher, don’t get me wrong. That’s his one good thing, and good willing he’ll get Trouble-In-Paradised before he has a chance to do it to Kofi at Summerslam.

Best: Do You Need A Character Witness?

Apollo Crews is around now! And he won a match! All call-ups from NXT are risky, but it seemed even worse with Apollo Crews, because NXT never managed to give him a personality in the first place. So it wasn’t that the main roster forgot what made him cool. He was never cool, he was just able to do cool things. Now, the fact that he’s been ignored for so long actually gives him the beginnings of a character (the guy who’s been ignored for so long), and hopefully they continue to build on that, because the stuff he can do in the ring is goddamned amazing.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Mr. Bliss

With all these jobbers chasing him, I thought KO won the 24/7 title

LUNI_TUNZ

Bayley: “I want to elevate this Smackdown Women’s division.”
*place title on high shelf where Nikki and Alexa can’t reach*

The Real Birdman

RTruD2

CFCarboni

Looking forward to the Wyatt-Balor-Bryan match I’ve fantasy booked in my brain, between the Fiend, the Demon, and the Dragon. Go full LU with it.

EZ$$$

wow look at that roster . really look at it, you won’t see them all again

Taylor Swish

Ironic that Ms. Morgan has LIV on her ring gear. Why would she want to promote her 54 rating in WWE2K?

NotJames

So, Cesaro used to be called the Swiss Superman. Then it was the Swiss Cyborg. Who’s next in the Swiss DC hierarchy? Swiss Hawkman? Swiss Booster Gold?

AddMayne

can’t wait for Black and Tony to have a best of 10 series which will lead to them forming a team called The Pub

JayBone2

CARMELLA: I have an idea Truth. You can hide in plain sight. You just have to wear a costume.
INTRODUCING….THE ASCENSION!

Harry Longabaugh

Nah, Kofi. The Viper will always Dodge.

WWE

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. I’m sure Brandon will be back on the beat next week, to everyone’s relief.

As always, thanks for reading. Give us a share on social media, and comment down below to let us know what you thought of the show.

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: Tea-generation X got passive-aggressive with each other, Samoa Joe LOL’d, and New Day won a tournament to be number one contenders to the Smackdown Tag Team Championship at SummerSlam. Also, Daniel Bryan punched Miz in the face, and Miz brained him with a vase.

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.

Here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for August 14, 2018.

Best: Destined To Do This Forever, Or At Least Until Sunday

WWE

Before we talk about anything this week, we have to talk about what might’ve been the greatest series of video packages WWE television’s put together in years: The retrospective on the past eight years of Daniel Bryan vs. The Miz, from NXT Pro vs. NXT Rookie to world title runs to their one-on-one match at SummerSlam. It’s one of two one-on-one matches on the 13-match card that doesn’t have a title or some kind of object as a prize, and in my mind (and everyone else’s, I’d imagine) it’s still the main event, no matter where it ends up on the card.

If you missed Smackdown, take 15-ish minutes out of your day and watch these. They’re incredible.

I use up a lot of (free) real-estate in these columns venting my frustrations on how WWE seems so terrified of being viewed as “old” or alienating to its audience of babies and America’s Heartland or whatever that it rarely ever accepts its own history, or use it to make the current product better. There are so many rivalries that could be improved by simply going back and explaining where they came from and how they came to be; establishing clear, consistent character motivations to allow us to, you know, actually feel shit about these fiction people and want one of them to beat the other in a wrestling match. You don’t need dates and match times and star ratings, you just need to sometimes say, “Here’s what you need to know about the rivalry at play and its stakes, and isn’t it cool that the history goes back farther than the last couple of months?”

Alternately, they’ll do stories like Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar where there aren’t really any character motivations, and despite them wrestling several times over the past several years, the story and people have never evolved past, “I”m going to kick your ass at [next show]!” Lesnar has never cared about this dude, and because of that, Roman doesn’t have anything new to say when his next title shot rolls around. Compare/contrast that with Bryan vs. Miz, which not only lives as the first-ever story on what became WWE’s most critically-acclaimed brand, but draws very real, tangible contrasts between not only the characters, but the men performing them. You believe what they say, because they are (say it with me) clear and consistent. They skip a lot, but these videos touch on the three most relevant touchstones for the feud: NXT season 1 and Bryan’s jump to the main roster, the retirement story leading into Bryan as GM and Talking Smack, and his return to set up this match.

It goes even deeper than something like Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens, because almost all of the character development and action in that happened before they got to WWE. Miz and Bryan is a WWE feud, built around the very idea of what WWE is. Over the past eight years, WWE’s gone from a place where indie darlings are “put in their place” (NXT season 1) to a utopia for nearly any independent wrestler worth their salt (current NXT, NXT UK, the Performance Center, Evolve, however far you want to go) where they’re beloved, at least in the short term, and celebrated. Almost everyone currently killing it on the NXT roster is there because Bryan Danielson made that horrible shit work. If he wasn’t there at the beginning and didn’t eventually connect with a larger base, we’d be living in a world of Kavals.

Absolutely beautiful work from everyone involved, and the kind of videos I’ll go back and watch every few months whether there’s a match to promote or not. Probably their best video since “Monster,” which coincidentally covered much of the same ground. It’s proof that doing the work pays off in the long run. Keep embracing and promoting your history, WWE. Don’t be ashamed of it. A lot of it’s a mess, sure, but a lot of it is magic. You aren’t old, you’re alive.

Best: The Most Biting Statement A Flair’s Made On TV Since FIRE ME I’M ALREADY FIRED

Speaking of remembering your history, Charlotte Flair ice-burns Carmella on this week’s show by declaring her “a Diva living in a women’s era.” Carmella’s response is to more or less turn into Scarlett Bordeaux for a minute with, “LOOK AT MY BODY, LOOK AT MY BEAUTY,” and sadly Charlotte never follows up with a deadpan, “what I’m trying to say is that you’re bad at wrestling.” It’s a good character to have as your top heel when your division’s all about competition and advancement of in-ring equality. Who’s easier to boo than an Eva Marie Type, you know? Carmella’s “I’m tired of your faces” is pretty good though, and sounds like me describing most of the booking.

That ramps directly into a tag team match (player), with Paige — who is really shining as maybe the only truly objective GM I can remember seeing on these shows in a long-ass time — teaming up Merida and Aurora against Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville. The hook of the match is that when they get into the home stretch, Becky Lynch stays in and doesn’t tag out to Charlotte, choosing instead to finish the match handicap style. Not only does this give her a proper workout before Sunday, which she cites, it sends a clear message to Charlotte.

And that sets up a really nice, easy-to-understand triple threat dynamic: Charlotte and Becky are friends, but Becky’s got an inferiority complex going and wants to prove to herself and everyone else that she can beat Charlotte. Charlotte was born overconfident, so she’s being nice about it … but also she’s a Flair, so there’s always a 55 percent chance she’s going to go full-on heel and break your hand with a baseball bat in the parking lot. Meanwhile, both of them are underestimating Carmella, who plays up the “Diva” thing and all the bullshit shenanigans to keep it that way, and positions herself to take advantage of all the distraction and rivalry and leave another pay-per-view match she should’ve easily lost as Smackdown Women’s Champion.

Best: It’s A Good Match, Yes It Is

Match of the night goes to the New Day, who are turning “New Day had the best match of the night” into a straight-up copy-paste. These guys are absolutely murdering it in the ring over the past … what, year? Year-plus? They get another strong, exciting, and creative six-man tag team match win over Sanity, which is bonus great because it’s an actual established trios team beating another established trios team. It feels like competition, and not, say, the Bludgeon Brothers beating up a trio of jobbers with a funny name several times a month to show they can beat child-sized fake wrestlers.

Not only that, but the Kofi Kingston birthday stuff allowed New Day to inject some fun and personality into what would otherwise be a normal match. They make you remember their matches, even when those matches aren’t particularly important to the narrative. Smackdown is pretty good, y’all. The only improvements I could suggest would be, “Nikki Cross would be there, because why the hell isn’t she already,” and, “is Killian Dain’s singlet really the best look for him?” WWE loves hiring these big hairy dudes and then shading them for being big and hairy.

Also On This Episode

Less important this week is Jeff Hardy vs. Shelton Benjamin, in the battle of a guy who’s spent the past month getting his dick stomped versus a guy I legitimately forgot was part of the show. They’re helping Hardy build momentum (and create separation) heading into his championship rematch at SummerSlam, but they’re also continuing to make Shinsuke Nakamura the least threatening guy in the world by having him do a run-in and get his ass kicked by a tired guy. It’s not the best story. Nakamura and Asuka should pull somebody aside backstage and be like, “are you guys doing this on purpose, or what?”

Meanwhile, Randy Orton lurks, which seems like the natural state of Randy Orton.

WWE Smackdown Live

hands where we can seem em pal

In other news, Aiden English gets more or less squashed by Andrade “Cien” Almas to further his issues with Rusev Day. As much as I love English, and as dearly as I adore his version of the frog splash and wish he’d use it as a finish, this is what it should’ve been. Almas should wreck Aiden English. Like, he should do that feint kick back elbow and English should explode into Mega Man particles.

The post-match promo was a little disappointing, though, because they had Rusev stick to the “catchy phrases” ( Zelina Vega), and Rusev’s always better when he’s talking off the top of his head. Of all the people on the show, he’s the guy most immediately improved by loosening the corporate reins a little. Still, even though it’s on the Kickoff show and a WWE mixed tag team match, any time we can get Handsome Rusev and Also Very Handsome La Sombra in the ring together, it’s a good move. Goddamn, can you think of a more beautiful mixed tag team match?

Worst: A Flat Ending To An Otherwise Great Episode

Finally we have another Samoa Joe vs. AJ Styles promo battle, which is hilariously uneven before they’re even talking. Styles is a competent promo but not a very good one — he was killing it for a while with his Beat Up John Cena stuff, but WWE top babyfaces only get so much material to work with, and if you don’t try to emulate the Rock you end up emulating Bobby Lashley — and Joe should just go to the ring and kick the guy’s ass instead of reading fan-fic letters from his wife. This comes across very much like a TV-PG Claire Lynch story, and I have no idea why AJ Styles loves these family drama bits so much. I don’t care about the families we’ve never met of these fictional characters. I’m not gonna get all up in arms if Paul Heyman puts Triple H’s kids’ names in his mouth. We’ve never even met them. It’d be like Game of Thrones building season 8 around The Mountain insulting The Hound’s wife and three children, who he got off-screen between seasons.

The saving grace here is that it’s more “flat” than bad — there just isn’t much to it—- and Joe vs. Styles at SummerSlam will (God willing) be brilliant. If Samoa fucking Joe can’t get a good match out of WWE Champion AJ Styles, something is irrevocably wrong with the top of the card. Let’s hope those seven Shinsuke Nakamura matches, all those corny Kevin Owens affairs and the past year and a half of Smackdown booking have just been anomalies. [counts on fingers] Yeah, that’s a lot.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Nippopotamus

I kind of wish Joe’s entire promo was a scientific explanation about how the Earth cannot possibly be flat.

Blade_222

Damn, but I thought Joe was going to say Dixie Carter.

Roman is so overpowered he can ruin a SmackDown match from Raw.

The Real Birdman

Joe looking like a main event mafioso

troi

Randy Orton is a Milford man

Martin Morrow

Jeff Hardy kinda looks like sad candy.

IC Champion PdragolphZiggler

Killian Dain sitting here looking like a “where are they now?” version of Kassius Ohno in 10 years.

LUNI_TUNZ

“The Miz stole my moves.”

*Hideo Itami side-eye intensifies*

North99

Killian Dain in a singlet is three types of all wrong.

1) He is not known for his college wrestling skills
2) He is a member of SaNitY, a stable known for chaos and power and leather scraps.
3) Everyone knows he rocks a bikini.

AJ Dusman

Even Sting can see this Flair turn coming.

That’s it for this week’s column. Thanks for reading, as always. Be sure to join us this weekend for NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn IV and SummerSlam 2018, in which Raw puts together just as many exciting matches and angles as Smackdown.

WWE Raw

Okay, not really.

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: A SummerSlam, and the only major change to the blue brand was Charlotte Flair winning the Smackdown Women’s Championship and getting taken to the steampunk woodshed by Becky Lynch, who’s supposed to be a heel, but is a billion percent the face.

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. It’s been an exhausting weekend of writing, but your positive feedback has made it totally worth it.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for August 21, 2018.

Best: Leave The Memories Alone

Up first this week is Parma’s greatest export, Mike The Miz and His Beautiful Wife Maryse, doing the world’s least convincing Mark Henry fake retirement speech just to say he’s never wrestling Daniel Bryan again. He beat him at Sunday’s Great American Bash ’87 or whatever with brass knuckles after 20 minutes of pathos and rest holds like the true old school veteran he is, and now he’s done with it.

What I like about this is that Smackdown currently realizes something Raw struggles with a lot: that if you’re going to use a fuck finish to set up a second match in a series, you have to have the babyface actually be blatantly and objectively wronged somehow, to give them a reason to demand another fight. Far too often they’ll have someone like Roman Reigns lose a match and then show up on Monday like, “no excuses, I lost, but actually I’m the number one contender and I want a REMATCH TONIGHT!!” And it happens, because that’s what they figure the crowd wants to see, whether it actually makes any sense or not. An immediate example of this is the B-Team/Revival feud, where the Revival lost clean on a pre-show just to set up them winning two separate singles matches the next night, just to set up another tag match we’ve already seen and nobody’s interested in.

Here, Bryan has a legitimate beef because he accused Miz of being a soft coward, Miz beat him at SummerSlam by being a straight-up soft-ass coward, and now Miz is out here pretending he won a barn-burner clean in the middle of the ring with his finish. Dude won via wife-assisted punch. Miz wants to get out of ever having to fight him again, thinking he’s justified himself enough with the old “the rulebook won’t say I cheated” chestnut. Again, this feud is very late 1980s NWA. To make it even MORE of a territories angle, Brie A La Mode runs out and punches Miz in the face to set up a mixed tag match. The only way this could be more Jim Crockett Promotions is if somebody got stripped down to their underwear to embarrass them.

It’s a great opening segment and another good installment of As The Miz Turns, and I hope they spend the next month focusing on the punching and the Miz/Bryan mic duels and never under any circumstances let Brie Bella talk. I’m 40% sure this is only happening to cross over their reality shows next season (in the WWE reality TV shared universe), and 60% sure they’re doing it to have the best possible footage for that Monroe Sky vs. Birdie Bryan match at WrestleMania 55.

Best: Samoa Joe Forever

While we’re on the topic of great promos, Smackdown had a handful of them. While it’s not the best promo — Becky Lynch gets that honor, which we’ll get to in a minute — Samoa Joe continuing to more or less commit the entirety of The Purge against AJ Styles and his family is the gift that keeps on going. Joe’s like two weeks from going full John Zandig on a Georgian toddler.

Dippy Dad AJ Styles shows up to be interviewed by gender-swapped Scott Hall and does his “AHM SORRY” stuff, and just when you think the promo’s going nowhere, Samoa By God Joe interrupts and beats him within an inch of his life. If Samoa Joe could just interrupt every Styles promo for the remainder of his career that’d be great. Joe’s “IT SEEMS LIKE WE’RE MAKING A LOT OF PROMISES TONIGHT, INCLUDING ONE TO COME HOME AND TUCK IN THE KIDS, BUT GUESS WHAT, DADDY’S ALREADY GONE NIGHT-NIGHT” is a hell of a mic drop, but those little kids in the front row yelling “GO SAMOA, I LOVE YOU SAMOA,” really bring it home. Even THE YOUTH want Samoa Joe to be WWE Champion. SAMOA JOE IS FOR THE CHILDREN.

Best: Please Give Me R-Truth Vs. Carmella On The Hell In A Cell Kickoff

With Truth getting a desperation roll-up for the win at the 12-minute mark, earning him a shot at the Smackdown Women’s Championship. I’m legitimately more invested in R-Truth vs. Carmella than Triple H vs. The Undertaker.

Best: Beck To Black

I won’t waste a lot of time complaining about WWE’s lazy Susan understanding of how “being a heel” is supposed to work, where the talking point slowly rotates between “they’re a heel if they’re getting booed,” to, “they’re a heel if they’re acting like a heel whether they’re being cheered or not, and faces are heels if they’re acting like faces and getting booed,” to, “it’s a popularity contest,” to, “it’s whoever the announcers say is the face or the heel this week,” to, “any reaction is a good reaction.” Sheamus has been stuck on that last one since like 2012. What I will say is that Becky Lynch cut the best promo of her WWE career on Smackdown, her actions are 100% justifiable and understandable, and WWE should really consider coming around on this crowd reaction and understanding that Becky’s easy to love and Charlotte’s a goddamn FLAIR.

I don’t know if WWE ever really understood how hated Ric Flair was, or was supposed to be. He spend his prime in the NWA being the world’s worst person for like an entire decade. In the ’90s he went face a few times, sure, based almost purely on nostalgia and longtime wrestling fans coming around to the understanding that yeah, he sucks in every way a human can, but he’s so good at it that you have to laugh and clap for him. His 1992 WWF run got it, but when he came back he was already Old Man Flair, the icon you want to see (because he’s Ric Flair) but he’s not going to really do anything. WWE thinks of Flair’s legacy as that part for his entire career. Charlotte’s out here being the worst definition of Female Roman Reigns, down to the bad promos and good matches with absolutely no understanding of how human emotions work and a complete deafness to the audience’s response, and longtime fans are just dying for her to cut the shit and be a Flair. You’re a Flair. It’s fine. Dustin’s a Dusty. Charlotte’s a Flair. Fun note: Cody is actually also a Flair, somehow.

Also, huge LOL for this, which is one of those Errol Morris moments you can’t plan, you just have to film:

WWE Smackdown Live

Dear WWE, please include a segment on next week’s Smackdown where Kurt Angle shows up in vacation clothes and sunglasses with a big sun hat to sip HGH through a straw in a coconut and tell Paige she should send her women’s division to therapy.

This Totally Fine Stuff In The Middle Of The Show

Rusev and Lana finally get a win over Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas and Zelina Vega in a rematch from their SummerSlam pre-show match nobody saw, with Aiden English helping out and actually helping this time. He grabs a chair from Almas, which prevents a steel chairing and distracts him long enough for Rusev to kick Cien in his beautiful, beautiful face and camelly clutch him to death.

Two truths:

• this should hopefully set up a singles match for Rusev and Almas at Hell in a Cell, which makes it only the actual card and gets some time because oh my god these guys are so good and everybody wants to love them, and
• even astronauts in deep space can see that Aiden English turn coming

Much like the Sasha Banks, Bayley and Ember Moon vs. The Riott Squad match from Raw, this Naomi vs. The IIconics match felt less like a match and more like a, “sorry we didn’t have any room for you on the 7-hour pay-per-view.” At least they didn’t have to come back out at the end of the show and stand around pretending to be happy for Ronda Rousey. And hey, they’re all still doing better than Asuka!

I don’t like the IIconics having to cheat for an ENTIRE MATCH to win. Like, yeah, Billie Kay can cheat for Peyton Royce and vice versa, but when the match is only three minutes long and features four or five instances of somebody getting on the apron or trying to interfere, it gets tiresome. So tiresome I half expected Bad Luck Fale and Tanga Loa to show up to distract the ref.

Presumptive Worst: The United States Of Nakamerica

Here’s a look at this angle in a month:

WWE Network

(Please do not do this.) (Again.)

Best: Getting Written Off The Show WITH A VENGEANCE

Possible show write-off numero uno goes to Randy Orton, who in the wake of a scandal we’re calling Standing Around With Your Dick In Your Handgate* gets stomped in the balls by Jeff Hardy, beaten down with a chair for several minutes, then Swanton Bombed through a table from the top of some production equipment. Production equipment seemingly set up for a Tommaso Ciampa/Johnny Gargano angle, but I’ll allow it.

Of course, this could just be WWE finally realizing they should throw Jeff Hardy a bone and let him look good for once before he completely turns into Jim Carrey’s The Mask. The guy’s spent the last couple of months getting beaten and humiliated every single week, so it was nice to see him say “fuck it” and beat the yard snake to death with a shovel.

*Orton should go compete on the Japanese indies and try to win the Open The Standing Around With Your Dick In Your Handgate Championship**
**do not challenge Joey Ryan

Definite show write-off numero dos is Bludgeon Brother and Award-Winning Vintner Erick Rowan, who got hurt at SummerSlam, needs surgery to repair a bicep tear, and will miss some time. Before we say anything about the match, huge ups to Rowan for competing in a no disqualification tag team match main event that went almost 16 minutes and saw him get mauled through the barricade with a bicep tear. That’s tough as shit. Get well soon, Upside Down Sheamus.

On a series of more positive notes, (1) hey, 16-minute no-DQ tag team main event with a title change on Smackdown, (2) this frees up Luke Harper to go to Raw and fulfill my fantasy booking of Braun Strowman getting a powered-up Wyatt Family back together to take on a powered-up Shield, and (3) New Day are now FIVE TIME Smackdown Tag Team Champions, a number not lost on Big E, who helps cut 1/3 of the best promo of the week to not actually appear on WWE television.

Please enjoy every second of this:

Great episode of Smackdown this week to cap off what I’d consider to be one of the best four-day spans of WWE programming in a long, long time. NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn 4 was obviously as good as you thought it was going to be, SummerSlam 2018 was intermittently great and a hell of a conversation piece, Raw’s main event and ending segment was such hot fire it’d knock Prometheus on his ass, and now here’s Smackdown delivering a tag title change, Becky Lynch getting the love she’s always deserved, and Samoa Joe giving small children nightmares. What else could you ask for?

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

AwkwardL0ser

Bludgeon Bludgeout I always say

Endy_Mion

“Let’s give Godzilla a machine gun!” Sorry Graves, still not as scary as Samoa Joe with a microphone

Amaterasu’s Son

X grabbing Rowan, like Ironhide grabbing Megatron.

troi

Luckily Kofi has a plus 5 resistance to ladder spots

Mark Silletti

At the current rate of murders on this show, SD 1000 is just gonna be Paige, Joe and Asuka filming Table For 3 in the bombed out ruins of… *checks notes* Washington DC? Yeah, that checks out.

The Real Birdman

“I will rip Samoa Joe’s heart out next time he mentions my family”

*Ron Howard voice* “He would not”

AshBlue

If my name was Wendy, I’d totally be changing my ringtone right now.

Zinger

God I wish Joe appeared in AJ’s mirror.

The C Team (aka The Coolest Team, duh!)

Vince: “Damn this crowd to hell, they’re ruining this Becky Lynch heel turn! Let’s try it again somewhere else, where are we next week?”

PA: “Uh, Ireland sir.”

Vince: “Perfect!”

AshBlue

I guess Brie was too busy with her YouTube channel to help out there.

WWE Network

“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people liURGHKKKK” [gets choked out by wife’s new boyfriend]

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. Thanks for sticking with me through five straight days of SummerSlam weekend Best and Worst columns and making this one of our best few days in site history. Let’s keep it going! Hell in a Cell is just as popular as SummerSlam, right? Anybody?

Drop a comment, share the column, and join us again next week, when AJ’s wife changes her name to Samoa Wendy.

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: WWE continued to try to make Becky Lynch a heel for some reason, Samoa Joe continued psychosexually stalking AJ Styles’ wife, and Randy Orton tried to pull Jeff Hardy’s ear over his skull like a sweater in a hockey fight.

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. Your fellowship got us through SummerSlam week, so now help us get through Hell in a Cell.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for August 28, 2018.

Best: The Five-Timers Club

SNL

Sorry, wrong link.

There we go. Alternate title: “Prince Check On A Jackass.”

So here’s something I never expected to happen, but am happy to have experienced: The New Day celebrating their fifth Tag Team Championship run, Big E getting to mark out about finally getting to “five” on the actual show, and Booker T showing up as KING BOOKAH to knight them and welcome them into the five-timers club. It’s only here so everyone involved can have fun and make the crowd happy, which is a billion percent a valid reason to write a segment into your show. Sometimes I wonder if Raw remembers we’re supposed to like watching it.

This is completely adorable from start to finish. King Booker has got to be one of my favorite wrestling characters ever, because dude spent like 20-years in various forms of “surprisingly large, threatening guy from The Neighborhood who is COMING FOR YOU, etc,” wearing flame pants and growing out his dreads and karate kicking people in the back of the head, and then suddenly was like, “you know what, I’m gonna put on some king clothes and do a Peter Dinklage-quality British accent and have my wife yell about how everyone should hail me.” And then suddenly he’s yelling at Cryme Tyme about how he “doesn’t speak Ebonics!” and trying to get ZZ Top to “kiss his royal feet.” It’s never not completely stupid, but it’s also never not completely committed, and that’s what makes it work. Booker rules. I love that King Booker keeps showing up without explanation every few years, and I hope it keeps happening. Booker T, G.I. Bro, and King Booker are the thinking man’s Three Faces of Foley.

Furthermore, Big E doing a spinaroonie:

WWE Smackdown Live

Woods’ spinaroonie was legit, though. He should keep that in his arsenal and break it out when he’s firing up. He’s been knighted by King Booker; he got it honest.

Worst: If Next Week We Don’t Get A Segment Of Samoa Joe Politely Chilling At A Family Barbecue

I’ve enjoyed Samoa Joe living rent-free in AJ Styles’ brain over the past month, but they really should’ve pulled the trigger on WWE Champion Samoa Joe at SummerSlam and ended it there. A month of “I’m going to murder you and usurp your family” drama can work, but two months starts to drag a little. Shouldn’t Styles be desensitized to this by now? Does he not talk to his wife between Tuesdays? It’s actually pretty funny that “hurry up and murder the guy’s wife or whatever” is a thing you’ve got wrestling fans asking for, but here we are.

I’m still assuming TNA canon that this is all a big Court of Owls situation, since we’ve seen Joe get abducted and brainwashed by cultist ninjas, draw a tribal dick on his face and start slaughtering people with a machete. Also, how are the New Day not in the Court of Owls?

Worst: Three Quick Observations

• If you’re chanting “what” at someone who’s just speaking English with a thick accent and not like, trying to get you to boo them by speaking a foreign language in ‘Merica or whatever, you’re the worst. Actually, let me rephrase that: If you are still chanting “what” at anybody for any reason in 2018, you should get punched in the ear.
• Does Brie Bella get to be on both brands? Is anybody gonna bring that up? Does it matter?
• Zelina Vega is so much better on the microphone than Brie Bella it’s ridiculous. She should have all the fame and clout the Bellas get. Although frankly that dog who said “I love you” on America’s Funniest Home Videos is better on the microphone than Brie. And better at believably telling someone she loves them.

Best: I’ll Be Cien You

Aside from bRiE mOdE, there’s no way in God’s green name I’m giving anything less than a Best to Daniel Bryan vs. Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas featuring Mike The Miz on run-in. Anything less than a Best is a felony.

One thing I don’t get, though … what exactly are they doing with Almas on the main roster? I guess they’re trying to “get us used to” him or something, but they keep setting up this incredible matches just to halfway do them, pull back on them, or avoid them completely. We got a pretty good Almas vs. Styles match on Smackdown last month, but it was clearly holding back. We had an Almas vs. Rusev feud that turned into a mixed-tag beef without a big payoff match, and now we’re doing Almas vs. Daniel Goddamn Bryan and having it end early with a run-in to put over a different match. Do they not have faith in Almas, or do they have TOO MUCH faith in him, and are “protecting him” to the point of never actually letting him be an important part of the show? He’s there, and he’s wrestling, so that’s something, but it’s like buying a Ferrari and parking it in the garage. Drive this beautiful motherfucker on the streets, Smackdown.

Still, this was good while it lasted, and furthered the Bryan vs. Miz issues as expected. Smackdown’s suspiciously stocking up for another Mixed Match Challenge with this feuds, aren’t they? Rusev and Lana, Almas and Vega, Miz and Maryse, Bryan and the mannequin from Mannequin 3. So many teams!

Worst (With A Little Best): The Future Is The Same As The Past TBH

Billie Kay vs. Naomi was the in-ring low point of the show, not so much because of the performers involved, but because it was two minutes long and like 115 seconds of the IIconics cheating. I guess if they’re the only people on the show doing that gag it’s fine, but at some point you Honky Tonk Man a character so much you’re never able to see them as anything but a shitty Jerry Lawler in an Elvis costume, you know?

Still, the IIconics always bring the delightfulness. Peyton Royce calling Billie Kay “Bill” is an excellent development, and these two can’t be on TV for more than a few seconds without providing GIF excellence. Suggestion: Let them seem like real wrestlers sometimes, so the over-the-top trolling and best-friends-forever cheating seem like character traits instead of 100 percent of their characters. They are worth the investment!

Best: Bar None

The in-ring high point for me (since I pessimistically assumed Almas/Bryan was going to be another tease on a show already featuring a weird amount of cuckolding) was the triple threat tag team match between The Bar, The Good Brothers and The Colons. My only complaint, because of course I’m going to make this complaint, is that we’re doing another tag team tournament, upping the amount of teams involved to six, and yet we’re still doing a four-match tournament. Can’t we add two more teams and do an actual tournament? Or at least have three first round matches and have the finals be a triple threat? Something to extend this beyond three weeks of Smackdown, or two weeks and a pay-per-view pre-show.

That said, hey, the Colons are still a team! And it looks like someone at Smackdown finally woke up and realized they’ve got Sheamus and Cesaro on their roster now and should probably be doing something with them, because Sheamus has won pretty much every championship and accolade in the company and Cesaro is literally a super man who can do anything and should win everything Sheamus has won twice. Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson look like cartoon wrestlers compared to them. Like, they aren’t even really wrestlers, Cesaro and Sheamus are just wrestling stuffed animals.

I’m going to guess the bad timing of the Rowan injury meant the New Day kinda-sorta HAD to win the Tag Team Championship again, and that they’re going to lose it pretty quickly to The Bar. A Bar/Rusev Day finals is gonna be dope, and possibly where Aiden English finally pools da strinks, but this is the Bar’s brawl to win. Unless we’re insane and still not pushing Cesaro in 2018.

Best: Jeff Hardy, Theater Dork

After a couple of months of trading dick stomps and letting Carol Burnett’s grandmother know they’re okay, Jeff Hardy and Randy Orton are blowing off their nut feud the only way a couple of guys from 2005 know how:

And you know, Jeff Hardy’s mic skills never really advanced beyond Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel, but I can’t give a Best to Peyton Royce impressions and King Booker and not throw some love in the direction of this A.V. club nerdlinger painting “RKO” on his face in magic marker, yelling “HAIL, IN A SAIL,” and popping a terrible Randy Orton pose.

WWE Smackdown Live

Jeff Hardy is The Room of wrestling characters. He’s objectively so, so bad sometimes, but he’s so sincere about it that you can’t help but enjoy it. Matt weaponizing this is what gave us the Broken Universe in the first place.

Best: Beck And Call

Finally we have the continuation of the Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Carmella feud, featuring the very strange occurrence of Charlotte Flair being the weak link in and out of the ring. Not that Charlotte isn’t great at what she does; I feel like I have to type this a lot, but she’s a top shelf performer, iffy gymnastics moonsaults onto nothing aside, and has had some of the very best women’s matches in the history of the company. And she has them regularly! But since coming back from injury she’s been off a step, and that’s only made more obvious by (1) Carmella working her ass off to prove herself as a legitimate wrestler, and (2) Becky Lynch’s supernatural attachment to the audience turning her into Stone Cold Steve Austin all of a sudden.

Seriously, watch this match and tell me Carmella’s not the one doing the work. Her rana off the top rope was fantastic and her bullet tope a la Austin Aries was even better. Plus, it actually connected, like dives are supposed to!

And I think we’re all on the same page with Becky Lynch. The announce team is spouting “betrayal” and “bizarro land” out of one side of their mouths and “Becky Lynch once again has to climb that mountain” out of the other, positioning her as a dreaded heel and a beloved babyface at the same time. And they’re still trying to convince us that current Female Roman Reigns Charlotte Flair is a hero with a broken heart while she saunters into championship matches she barely earned, takes away opportunities from her friends, and does that Hogan/Triple H thing where she lingers in the ring after attacks looking for sympathy cheers and gets booed instead. I’d say they should understand the alignments again, but hell, maybe they do, and that’s why Becky can beat down her friend and call her a bitch to thunderous applause.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Amaterasu’s Son

Becky 3:16 Says: I just whipped your Lass.

Brocky

Becky attacks Charlotte

audience cheers

Becky attacks Charlotte again

audience cheers

Becky trashes the locker room

audience cheers

Becky doesn’t help pay for gas

audience cheers

Becky has a chance to pet a puppy, and doesn’t do it

audience cheers

Becky says that she doesn’t think the star wars prequels were that bad.

audience cheers

Becky thinks ciampa did nothing wrong

audience cheers

The Real Birdman

Just give me all the Becky Lynch you have. I’m worried what you just heard was, “Give me a lot of Becky Lynch.” What I said was, “Give me all the Becky Lynch you have”. Do you understand?

You think it’s the Coquina Clutch, but it’s actually the Cuck Hold

AddMayne

A tear just fell from Sami Zayn’s eye

Pdragon619

Oh shit he gone be at your house! Eating YOUR BBQ!?

Zinger

I feel like he should be standing there with Wendy’s severed head at this point.

blacksnakemoan

AJ: “You know, I should call Wendy at home before my promo to make sure she knows I’m okay. I mean, Joe shook her up good when he kept saying he was the kids daddy now…”

(dials)

(*click*) “Hello? Joe here…”

AJ: “DAMMIT!”

troi

Don’t get too excited about that Brie chant there is an international cheese symposium in town

Dave M J

Brie’s theme still sounds like dying Chocobos.

That’s it for this week. Join us next week for a show that could not possibly top King Booker and a Stanley Cup full of pancakes. Comments are appreciated, likes and shares are even more appreciated, and being here to read this again in the future is appreciated the most. Stack that appreciation!

WWE Smackdown Live

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

WWE Smackdown Live

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.

WWE

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: R-Truth got to be great again for a week, tag team wrestling shined, and WWE continued to try to convince us to cheer Charlotte Flair instead of Becky Lynch. Not gonna happen, guys.

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.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for September 11, 2018.

Never Forget

I’m not going to spend the beginning of a wrestling column full of wig and storybook jokes pontificating on the effects of 9/11 on our country, but I did lose a friend in the attack, and it’s hard to believe it’s been 17 years since it happened. Next year, on Sept. 12, there will be legal adults who were born in a post-9/11 world. And while WWE pats itself on the back for pretty much everything, they were an important part of helping us — or me, I guess — figure out how to move forward. Lilian Garcia’s national anthem still gives me goosebumps.

[deepest possible sigh] Anyway.

Best/Worst: It’s 2018 And You Can Make A Serious Argument That Both Jeff Hardy And Randy Orton Are Better Than Shinsuke Nakamura

…the hell even happened?

Since winning the Royal Rumble (wow, he won the Royal Rumble this year), Shinsuke Nakamura’s been in this crazy holding pattern where he’s supposed to be cool and important, and objectively as a human being and a performer he is, but he never, ever gets to be on WWE television. He had seven underwhelming “dream matches” in a row with AJ Styles, then dipped into obscurity, and came back to win the United States Championship via RAMPANT DICK-PUNCHING and disappeared into 30-second pre-taped backstage statements about “Nakamerica.” Here, he shows back up to wrestle Jeff Hardy (despite saying he wasn’t going to wrestle on Smackdown because we didn’t deserve it), and the match only serves as a 15-minute water-tread distraction for a Randy Orton post-match attack.

The match isn’t bad, really, but every second of it feels like a waste of time. You know Orton’s running in. They know Orton’s running in. The announcers know he’s running in. When Hardy goes up to the top rope for the Swanton, you can see him stay up there stalling, waiting for Orton to hit his cue, because even in kayfabe he probably knows Orton’s running in. Hardy could’ve spent 15 minutes wrestling a Big Bossman Wrestling Buddy and it would’ve accomplished the same thing, only this stuffed animal is a former huge New Japan star we thought couldn’t POSSIBLY be made into an afterthought.

I’m giving it the Best/Worst instead of “Worst” because even if it’s a time-filler, it’s still 15 minutes of wrestling to open the show, and not a quarter-hour WWE 2K promo battle where characters stand face-to-face with microphones and state how they feel about the Upcoming Event®.

Additional note: I don’t want to watch Jeff Hardy die live on pay-per-view.

BEST: Dark Becky

A couple of notes about this match:

• Sonya Deville is going to be really good soon, as she’s already able to carry her half of a singles match better than Mandy Rose, Liv Morgan, or Sarah Logan. “Sarah Logan” the character, I guess. I hope when the NXT and MMA Four Horsewomen are beefing they use her as the DDP “tweener” character who could jump to either side.
• Charlotte even manages to not make contact with her moonsault when she’s moonsaulting onto her opponent’s knees. She seriously landed on her feet, popped a squat, and touched Sonya’s knees with her forearms.

The match isn’t as notable as the post-match event, however, because the post-match event is Becky Lynch wearing a Daria disguise to interrupt a family selfie and Pentagon Charlotte’s arm on the ramp. First of all, shout-out to Bayley for getting in on that selfie and getting on TV again, hope you get into a pre-show battle royal at Evolution! Second of all, DRAMATIC DISGUISE REVEAL ZOOMS:

WWE Smackdown Live

Again, I’m not sure what part of this we’re supposed to be booing. Charlotte’s put together a cogent point over the past couple of weeks and is babyfacing her heart out, but Becky’s had a better point for much, much longer, and is out here breaking bones as a MYSTERIOUS GOTH. Becky Lynch is molten hot lava right now. Poor Charlotte’s stuck moonsaulting into the volcano. And missing, somehow.

LOL: Take It Home, Joe

Don’t get me wrong, Samoa Joe is the BEST in capital letters and I’ve enjoyed all two months of Assault On Wendy Mountain, but I think they finally pushed the angle past my ability to accept it by having Joe read a storybook with ILLUSTRATIONS.

WWE Smackdown Live

Who drew that? Did Joe hit up a FedEx Office on Tuesday afternoon and get that printed up so he could do a bit? For the first time I think AJ Styles got the better of him in the promo battle, because at least AJ didn’t show up with crafts. Next week: Joe puts his hand on a piece of paper, traces it to make the shape of a turkey, and writes KILL WENDY on the palm.

Anybody figured out why Joe vs. Styles and Lynch vs. Flair are the two most personal feuds in the company right now, and both are matches at Hell in a Cell, but neither are in Hell in a Cell?

Best: Tranquilo-lizer

First of all, a huge Best to Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas for watching R-Truth do a completely unnecessary cartwheel and deciding to counter it by ALSO doing unnecessary flips until his feet are in Truth’s face. Second of all, the double Tranquilo spot in the ropes is probably the best thing happened in WWE right now. Zelina Vega deserves all the love, even before you realize she was out there working on the saddest anniversary ever.

Truth seriously looks like Almas’ contemporary out there, which is crazy considering he’s 46 and has spent most of his WWE career as a background joke. He looks like he could wrestle another 20 years and not age. He’s looked like that since he was born, I think. Almas even gives him a little bit by Cheating To Win, and I hope Almas and Vega meet Truth and Carmella in the Mixed Match Challenge finals. Wait, how the hell are Almas and Vega not in the Mixed Match Challenge??

Best: Rusev Day In America

I didn’t love the finals of the second biannual four-team tournament as much as either of the first round triple threats, and I wish they’d gotten the main event spot instead of being in a “double header” semi-main for a terrible angle, but bless Rusev Day and the Bar for continuing Smackdown’s streak of good-to-great tag team wrestling. All I wanted was Sheamus and Cesaro throwing hands with Rusev and Cesaro Junior for 15 minutes, and I got it. Well, I got 13, but we’ll round up.

I’m especially happy that they seem to be subverting my expectations with the Rusev/Aiden English angle by having English actually feel bad for what happened, apologize, and make up with his friends. Wrestling Friendship is so much more powerful to me these days than Wrestling Rivalries. There’s still a chance he’s going to randomly turn on Rusev at the end of a championship match at the end of a tournament in the most WCW way possible, but I hope he doesn’t, and that this is Rusev Day beating Transitional-Because-They-Don’t-Need-It Champions The New Day and finally getting at least a semi-important title run. That match could steal the show at Hell in a Cell, especially if they pair up Rusev against Big E and English against Woods.

Also, a huge Best to Lana for her infectious enthusiasm at ringside. She’s actually looks like she gives a shit if her team does well or not, and that goes so far.

Worst: Yes Mode

Because “our wives aren’t very good at this, but we love them, and we’ve got a bunch of reality shows to promote” doesn’t fit on a T-shirt. +1 to the Miz for continuing to be the biggest babyface in WWE by trying to stop a Brie Bella match from happening, though.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

LUNI_TUNZ

Oh no, Brie can’t compete… and also she may be hurt.

Zinger

Miz softly whispers…. “Let her dive”

Son of Tony Zane

Maryse just gave up? I guess she’s better at taking a dive than Brie too.

AddMayne

“Ouellet” is French for “McFly”

Amaterasu’s Son

Grand Theft Match: San Andrade

Ryse

Mortal Kombat Voice: Rusev Day Wins. Friendship

The C Team (aka The Coolest Team, duh!)

Anyone else’s screen messed up? All I’m seeing is this blindingly bright white light – oh wait nevermind Aiden English and Sheamus are in the ring at the same time.

blacksnakemoan

*checks Amazon*
*cannot find “Night Night AJ” by Samoa Joe*
*hurls laptop out window*

troi

AJ Styles sits like the cool youth Pastor in a suburban church

Baron Von Raschke

AJ went out to do this empty arena promo and had TNA house show flashbacks.

That’s it for this week. Stay tuned for 205 Live, in which cruiserweights compete to see who gets to finish growing their face!

Drop us a comment below and let us know what you thought of the show, what you think will happen at Hell in a Cell, and various Brie Bella jokes. We know you’ve got 5-10 more in the tank. Share the column as well, if you’re a pal, and be here this weekend for all the Hellish, cellish festivities.