BEST AND WORST OF SMACKDOWN LIVE

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: We held a Hell in a Cell and nothing really changed, but Becky Lynch is the Smackdown Women’s Champion now, so that’s something.

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for September 18, 2018.

Best, Mostly: Miz Is The Worst

Before I get complimentary about the show (because unlike Raw, Smackdown contains a few things I can compliment besides “Seth Rollins” and “jobbers I like showing up”), I want to take a second to point out how little Hell in a Cell changed for the show. Last week we had Becky putting Charlotte in the Disarmer, Joe and AJ’s rivalry continuing, The Bar trying to get a Tag Team Championship shot, and Bryan and Miz brawling about their wives. This week’s show features Becky putting Charlotte in the Disarmer, Joe and AJ’s rivalry continuing (for the third pay-per-view cycle in a row, after two straight wonky finishes), The Bar getting a Tag Team Championship shot despite them losing in the final of a tournament last week, and Bryan and Miz brawling about their wives. I know this is supposed to be episodic TV and sometimes it takes multiple weeks for stories to play out, but aside from Becky vs. Charlotte getting one upgrade, everything else is pretty much identical. The old joke used to be that WWE was great if you only watched the pay-per-views, but now even the pay-per-views don’t really advance the stories.

Anyway, this week’s show opens with Miz continuing to play the Greatest Hits of Heeling, from (1) hosting his own talk show segment, to (2) playing up that he got a very special guest for this week’s show only for it to be his wife, (3) being a sore winner and rubbing in his opponent’s loss until he ends up getting punched in the face about it, (4) a fake injury angle that turns out to be a swerve, (5) a gentle peppering of that “whoops you bumped into me and now I’m having a miscarriage” stuff WWE loves to do, and (6) Miz doing all of this and still ending the segment getting beaten up.

I’ll give it a Best for Miz’s general greatness, Maryse somehow speaking better English than Brie Bella despite Brie being a native English speaker, and the announcement of Bryan vs. Miz at Super Show-Down for a shot at the WWE Championship. The thing this feud desperately needed to move forward was a match of consequence, and that’s definitely a match of consequence. Although now I’m picturing an AJ Styles vs. Daniel Bryan championship match in Saudi Arabia that includes like four run-ins. Do I want to watch that? Ugh, I still probably do.

Best: Cesaro

WWE Smackdown Live

Netflix

The Bar getting a title shot after losing a match last week for a title shot and the general pre-match bantering between the teams was so lame it nearly cost me the use of my legs, but I have to give a Best to Big Tony Cesaro for yanking Kofi Kingston off the ground by the crotch to hit the Neutralizer. That is so bad-ass. I know they’ve been trying to get us to boo Cesaro or whatever, but that’s bullshit. Just let him do crazy stuff no human should be able to do, while he’s young and healthy enough to still do it.

WWE Smackdown Live

I really hope The Bar wins at Super Show-Down and gets actual characters again, because right now they’ve got the same problem the Riott Squad has: They’re not really characters, they’re just an aesthetic. Everything we know about them is what we knew before they were a tag team, and neither of them has grown an inch since then, unless you count doing the Zangief taunt from the Street Fighter movie “growth.”

Best: Hey, Finally!

After weeks and weeks of “this is probably where Rusev turns on Aiden English” or vice versa, we finally get to Happy Aiden Day with English boisterously costing Rusev a match for the United States Championship, bopping him in the back of the head with a microphone, and singing over his corpse.

I really think Aiden English has legs as a character, and as much as I liked the pairing, it’s time to get him focused up on being a legit singles star. I love his stupid singing, I love his wit, I love his frog splash (which is only behind Kevin Owens’ on my list of current favorites, because Owens’ looks like it should legit kill you), and as much as I don’t want every tag team they create to break it up, it finally gets Rusev into a story with some emotional gravity. The last time he was in one was what, the Dolph Ziggler/Summer Rae/Lana love rectangle? Enzo trying to go to his hotel and have sex with his wife? If we can keep English away from shit that emasculates him and keep Rusev away from comedy dancing and romance, we’ve got a stew going.

Study question: Does Nakamura even want to be here anymore?

Worst: Viper, No Viping

If you’d like to never be able to watch wrestling with your friends and family, you might enjoy this segment of Randy Orton abusing a production guy so he can get weird about Jeff Hardy’s bloody body and earlobe manipulation. He even has the dude saying, “yes, sir.” I kept expecting the guy to call Orton “master.” Honestly I’d probably be into this if I thought they were doing it on purpose.

Best: Surprise! AJ Styles Is Good When You Let Him Finish Wrestling Wrestling Matches

The best match on the show is this 14-minute affair between AJ Styles and Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas, because Almas could have a match with a paint can right now and get three stars out of it. Styles is also, you know, AJ Styles, a fact they always seem to forget when they get to the end of booking his pay-per-view Championship matches and decide he’s either got to win or lose like a complete idiot. On PPV, he tapped out and still managed to pin his opponent, then acted like nothing happened. On Smackdown, he does cool move reversals and hits his finisher. I’m not sure why one of those two things seems so hard for them to do.

I didn’t love Joe attacking and then running away as soon as Styles fought back, but it is what it is. That story’s seemingly never going to end, and we’ve raced past Oh Wendy and straight into generic run-ins. Which is probably fine at this point, because we did two months of family stalkings with nothing to show for it. Joe won the first match by disqualification, won the second match by losing it, and didn’t get the championship at either. Maybe they’re trying to get Styles past CM Punk’s 434 days mark, since Lesnar spent two years making sure the Universal Championship barely counts as a title.

I hope all those rumors of Vince McMahon “seeing something” in Almas are true, because hey man, the rest of us see it too. See some Zelina Vega while you’re at it.

Best: Flossing Is Officially Redeemed

WWE Smackdown Live

I shaded it in the Raw report this week, but now that I’ve seen Peyton Royce do it — and floss threateningly at the end — I’m okay with it. Although I still want the Backpack Kid to guest star at WrestleMania and get powerbombed off the stage by Kevin Owens.

A few truths:

It’s good to see Asuka back on television again as a wrestler
It’s good to see Asuka getting a dominant win again, which should be her default setting, instead of “helpless tag team partner” or whatever they’ve been doing with her since WrestleMania
If the IIconics don’t win that match in Australia and celebrate in glorious fashion, I will need to speak to your manager

Best: Smackdown Live Is Lynch Burg

I know they’re still halfway pushing the “Lynch is the bad guy, Flair’s the good guy” stuff, but they’re leaving enough of it up in the air to completely justify us hating Charlotte. Becky’s entire point heading into the match is that Flair saw her as second best and always wanted the spotlight for herself, so even when Becky beat her clean as a sheet, Charlotte tried to hang around and do the Women’s Division Memorial Hug and raise her hand so she could still be in the spotlight, even as a loser. Then Becky has a “coronation” on Tuesday, and who shows up? Charlotte Flair, to once again be the focus, and to be in the spotlight. She wants an apology, and respect, at Becky’s championship coronation. How in the world are we supposed to think THAT is the person we should cheer? Becky’s a billion percent in the right to keep shitting in her cereal.

It’s the same thing that Roman Reigns does sometimes, where he as a performer seems oblivious to whether or not he’s supposed to be getting cheered, but he’s going down a list of by-the-numbers ways to be cheered, and we see that, and we hate it. It’s why Rocky Maivia didn’t work, and The Rock did. It’s not that one was a “face” and one was a “heel,” it’s that one didn’t know how to get a purposeful reaction, and the other only ever got reactions on purpose. It’s why Sheamus’ “if they’re reacting AT ALL I’m doing my job” thing is such bullshit. No, man, your job is to get the reaction your characters have been written and designed to get. If they don’t, it might not be your fault — it might completely rest on the shoulders of creative, or some random person in charge — but you can’t force a narrative with all your announce team voices, force that same narrative with the words the wrestlers say, and then deny the narrative exists at all when you get the opposite reaction.

Anyway, Becky’s still taking Charlotte to the woodshed, and I’m okay with whatever they do as long as that keeps happening.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Night

AJ Dusman

Becky: You’re a bitch and I’ll piss on your grave!
*crowd cheers*
Becky: Your dad was overrated and was always in Hogan’s shadow!
*crowd cheers*
Becky: I hate puppies and Mario Kart and pizza.
*crowd cheers louder*
Becky to herself: wtf…wait I know.
*Becky kneels during national anthem*
*Crowd spontaneously combusts*

Blade_222

They should call Becky “Florence” because she devastated the Queen City.

Baron Von Raschke

Graves with the most Heenan comment on WWE TV in a long time: “What good is getting to the top of the mountain if you can’t look down on everyone else.”

In keeping with weird finishes to AJ’s championship matches, Zelina Vega will throw a DIY t-shirt at him in about 15 minutes and that will cause a DQ.

Zinger

Careful Becky, you’re on Truth’s radar now

The Real Birdman

Just roll over Billie! The ref won’t see you tap!

JayBone2

AIDEN ENGLISH: As far back as I could remember, I always wanted to be a Nakamerican!

Mark Silletti

the difference in skin tone between lana and aiden is destroying the contrast on my tv

Martin Morrow

You can tell Lana is really mad cause she slipped back into her Russian accent.

Pdragon619

If she went over to Japan to join Stardom, would she have to change her name to Zelina Balrog?

WWE Smackdown Live

Gotta bounce, but we hope you enjoyed this week’s column. Be sure to drop a comment in the section below, share the column to help keep us in the business of writing wrestling jokes, and several additional calls to action. And hey, don’t forget to join us for the variety of televised house shows happening over the next month!

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Heel AF Becky Lynch continued to be cheered relentlessly for heeling on Charlotte Flair, Peyton Royce flossed (???), and Randy Orton got sexy weird with a production guy.

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.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for September 25, 2018.

Best: 30 Minutes Of R-Truth

I’ve typed it before, but one of the best stories of 2018 is someone at Smackdown looking at 46-year old R-Truth, realizing he’s in better shape than 99% of 20-year olds, remembering he’s a 20-plus-year veteran who’s spent most of the past decade dressing up like Sherlock Holmes in comedy bits or whatever, and thinking, “oh, we could probably use this guy for something.” And then Frank Viola, here’s Truth not only anchoring a comedy segment to open Smackdown, but expertly playing to the crowd for like 20 minutes, getting over a batch of different stories, and parlaying the opening into an entertaining 12 minutes of wrestling. So, so good.

If you missed it, Truth decides that since he pinned The Miz on Smackdown a couple of weeks ago and Miz doesn’t have a championship, he should be allowed to take Miz’s talk show. There’s something truly wonderful about how R-Truth’s character understands pro wrestling, especially since we’ve been clued in to the fact that he’s just fucking with us. Other things to love before we even get to the wrestling segment:

it’s fun to remember when Daniel Bryan wasn’t considered “good on the mic,” which was technically never
it’s more fun to remember Daniel Bryan without Brie Bella lingering around ruining all of his matches and segments
Carmella looks AMAZING with her new hair, and I love that she’s managed to go from super heel to super face without really changing anything
I need a pair of thigh-high money boots
seven-second dance breaks!
The Miz will forever be my avatar on WWE television. Example:

WWE Smackdown Live

My love of the IIconics notwithstanding, Flossing has become a true epidemic on WWE television. They even got lovingly, preciously Caucasian Daniel Bryan to do it during a commercial break. Pay no attention to how they’re playing to the empty half of an arena:

@WWEDanielBryan danced after the Truth TV segment.#WWE #SmackdownLive #wwedenver pic.twitter.com/clk7v0lvRY

— Andrew Pichot (@bogardeth) September 26, 2018

Again, this is me to the writers every time they’re like, “hey, what if our wrestlers do the Backpack Kid!” How dare they do things kids today enjoy instead of pandering to me, the aging wrestling fan! This is the Batman’s Dick of dancing!

And hey, the match is pretty good, too. Miz and Truth have always had good chemistry with one another in and out of the ring, which is what makes The Awesome Truth one of the biggest missed opportunities of this era. Those guys were the hottest shit in the world for like, a few weeks.

Miz needed to win here, and he needed to show Daniel Bryan that he could win “fairly” “with his wrestling,” which is exactly what Bryan was complaining about on commentary. Miz even won with Bryan’s finisher, because in his mind he’s actually better at this than Bryan, even though he’s falsely equating R-Truth and the Smackdown mid-card with Daniel goddamn Bryan. It’s so wonderfully layered, and I hope Miz wins at Super Show-down with help from The Other Carmella and goes on to decimate AJ Styles at literally any show.

Better yet: Bryan beats him there and wins the title shot, but Miz costs him the Championship later. That way when Miz wins the WWE Championship, he can make Bryan have to win the Royal Rumble or whatever to get a shot at him, and claim that Bryan already proved he’s not worth winning title shots (even though it’s all his fault).

Best/Worst: The Milwaukee Bex

One of the most interesting (read: bad) developments from this episode is Rusev finally getting a good singles story against someone who can not only work but carry his end of dialogue and segments — Aiden English — only for it to immediately turn into another “Lana’s cheating on me” angle. They did that with the horrible Enzo Amore hotel room stuff, they did it in the Summer Rae/Dolph Ziggler love rectangle even though Lana and Dolph had the sexual chemistry of a tree and a wood chipper, and now Aiden’s out here asking Lana about that “one night in Milwaukee.”

Well, I’m a regular visitor there, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. The French missionaries and explorers were coming here as early as the late 1600s to trade with the Native Americans. “Milwaukee” an Indian name, pronounced “mill-e-wah-que,” which is Algonquin for, “the good land.” I think one of the most interesting aspects of Milwaukee is the fact that it’s the only major American city to have ever elected three socialist mayors. Also the fact that the only Lana Wisconsin reference I can remember is the time The Rock said he taught her the “Wisconsin Wheelbarrow,” so it’s either that, or she’s hooking up with Mr. Kennedy. I’m not sure which one would be worse.

Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy would be worse.

That bleeds into a match between Lana and Becky Lynch, in which Becky attempts to win a humanitarian award for giving Lana that much offense. The crowd chants “Milwaukee,” which makes me think they chose a city with three syllables like that just to make it easily chantable. I’m okay seeing where this goes, as long as it doesn’t involve “security cam footage” of people about to have sex. That’s the second worst camera trope they do, behind any time someone walks into the parking lot for a car crash and suddenly there are like 18 different camera angles available. Cameras in sun roofs and on the front of semi-trucks and shit.

On the plus side here, Becky’s on fire all night, because of course she is. The backstage segment where she attacks Charlotte Flair during a photo shoot, poses over her corpse and tells the camera man to “take the champ’s photo” is [chef’s kiss], and the cocky hallway followup where she pops in to rag on Lana just to get a match against an obvious can is also choice. And of course, the crowd’s chanting BECK-Y, BECK-Y at everything, because how could you not cheer this cool-ass woman who is also extremely dope at pro graps? Becky for life.

Worst: VIDEO EVIDENCE~

They’re totally going to do security cam footage of someone being seduced, aren’t they? I hope his video evidence is just Rusev losing every important match he’s had since 2015.

Best: KANAomi

While I’m deeply offended by the IIconics having their pre-match speech interrupted, I’m all into this Naomi and Asuka team. That combo finisher where they synchronize taunts and Conchairto their opponent with kicks to the head — a concerto from Shoe-bert, I guess? — is great, and makes me wish WWE would pay Naomi WWE money to spend six months over in Stardom or wherever. Give her one of those Kimber Lee runs, let her take that next step she’s never going to be able to take in WWE and become one of the best in the world.

I’m hoping they’re able to continue their winning streak heading into Super Show-Down, because the IIconics winning in Australia is basically all I care about. Also that they get a special Australia-themed entrance, and are treated like conquering heroes. And are allowed 20 minutes to talk about whatever they want before the match. I care about a lot of things!

Best: Die Dillinger

You know, I don’t like Randy Orton, and I especially don’t like Randy Orton matches, but I love these Randy Orton match builds where he makes a cogent point — example, “Jeff Hardy shouldn’t exist” — and spends a month beating the ever-loving piss out of someone. He’s doing that to Tye Dillinger now, and everything I would’ve typed about Tye not deserving a United States Championship match for losing everything he’s been in since coming to the main roster and/or the holding pattern Shinsuke Nakamura’s in right now is invalid because Orton’s taking him to the cleaners. I could watch dude throw Tye Dillinger into things and sarcastically count on his fingers above his head all month.

Also fun: Nakamura getting in a cheap shot on Tye’s already lifeless body for absolutely no reason other than being a colossal piece of shit. Let’s hope this feud can actually elevate Tye and give him something to do, because yeah, “The Perfect 10” is fun, but he’s been counting to 10 for YEARS. Turn him up to 11 for once.

Best: Give The Bar The Titles

New Day is reaching dangerous levels of John Cena unfunny with those Cesaro areola jokes, but at least the matches are good. This week we get Big E vs. Sheamus in a singles match, and while I of course want this to be a Sheamus vs. Mark Henry from SummerSlam-style super hoss fight, I’m happy with the 7-ish minutes of back-and-forth action we got. It left me wanting more, which is good, and absolutely didn’t put everything they could do on the table. I hope the tag match in Australia gets a ton of time, because Sheamus seems to have finally shaken off that bad vibe he had going with crowds for several years, and Big E is probably the most untapped potential for good singles matches in the company right now.

I really appreciate Sheamus doing a basic amount of homework and just getting his knee up to block Big E’s spear through the ropes. You’re standing on the apron and this big dude just hit the far ropes and is running at you. He’s always Chessmanning people to the floor with his shoulder. Why wouldn’t you at least bend your knee slightly to counter it? One of my favorite things in wrestling is when a guy has his opponent’s signature moves scouted, so if that opponent wants to hit them, he’s got to come up with outside-the-box ways to hit them. See also: Drew McIntyre countering Seth Rollins’ Falcon Arrow combo on Ziggler with a Claymore to the nose.

LOL: A Nightmare On Helms Street

Finally we have … haha, we have Samoa Joe participating in a contract signing live via satellite because we’ve entered like month three of him psychosexually stalking AJ Styles’ family. I love that Styles has “Styles” on his TV mailbox, because if Joe showed up to a mailbox labeled “Jones” he could be anywhere. Joe’s out here leaving flaming bags of poo on the porch of a guy he’s already failed to take the championship from twice, and at some point you’ve gotta just punch him in the face a bunch instead of buying plane tickets to Georgia just to ring somebody’s doorbell and bail.

Oh, and from DenseMan1’s live report in our open thread:

In Joe’s video, I’m pretty sure you can see the observation tower at the theme park literally a stone’s throw from the arena. I think AJ Styles’s house is in an actually kinda lame neighborhood to the west of Invesco Field.

I hope they pull a Devil’s Rejects double-turn here and have Styles barge into Samoa Joe’s house and putting Joe’s grandpa in the Calf Crusher or something. C’MAWN MAN! DUDE! C’MAWN!

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

PatsShredShack

Joe breaking into AJ’s house is the greatest lead in for The Purge i could ever think of.

Baron Von Raschke

If Brian Pillman opens the door, I will freak out!

FeltLuke

Joe: I did get a little gift for Annie.

*holds up a globe*

AJ: No man! That ain’t right!

The Real Birdman

By WWE’s own logic, Joe didn’t sign the contract during the show, so there’s no match

*Asuka kicks Mandy in the face. Concusses her*
Road Dogg: “Asuka, how are you gonna botch like Brie Bella like that?”
Asuka: “Botch?”

AshBlue

Becky could probably come out to ‘Cult of Personality’ in Chicago and get cheered.

I wish Kenny Omega would show up backstage, translate what Asuka’s saying, then walk off, never to be seen on WWE TV again. No explanation.

troi

this is for stealing my haircut!

Daniel Valentin

Becky: “I’ve beaten Charlotte!”
Crowd: “Yay!”
Becky: “You all suck!”
Crowd: “We’re the worst!”
Becky: “Rusev Day is crap!”
Crowd: “F*ck Rusev Day!”
Becky: “Brie Bella started the women’s revolution!”
*Denver, CO explodes*

JayBone2

BECKY: I’m gonna kills a puppy.

John Wick is in the crowd cheering her on.

That’s it for this week.

WWE Smackdown Live

Be sure to drop a comment below to let us know what you thought of the show, and share the column if you’re a friend, and not the kind of person who’d cheer Charlotte Flair over Becky Lynch. Be here next week for the Bonzer Royal Rumble!

WWE Smackdown Live

get it

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Samoa Joe went to a house where the mailbox read “Styles,” so that couldn’t possibly be AJ Styles’ actual home. Also, R-Truth got 30 minutes of TV time and it was great, and Aiden English promised to air a GTV segment of Dawn Marie and Torrie Wilson engaging in HLA, or whatever.

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.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for October 2, 2018.

Worst: The Styles Network

Am I the only one who heard AJ Styles say he was going to bury Samoa Joe alive and think, “oh, that means the finish of the no disqualification, no count-out match at Super Show-Down is going to involve one of those stunt spots where they’re fighting in the production area and Styles pulls down a beam or a bunch of boxes or something and ‘buries Joe alive?'” I keep trying to think of the wacky, non-wrestling finish they’ve got planned, and I think Styles just tipped his trilby. Or, you know, he’s going to literally bury Joe alive, and Super Show-Down’s going to end with lightning striking the grave and Joe’s hand bursting up from the dirt.

If you missed the segment, Disappointed Mom Paige opened the show by announcing that everyone wanted her to fire Samoa Joe for his attempted home invasion in last week’s hilarious The Purge crossover event, but that AJ Styles dropped the charges so the match could happen. Because the response to someone literally hunting your family and harassing your wife and children for like two months is to fly to Australia and have a wrestling match with them at 7 AM in the middle of a house show. YOU DON’T MESS WITH MAH FAMLY.

Look, detached from the ridiculous booking of his match finishes, AJ Styles is great. Samoa Joe is BEYOND great, to the point that he could turn “oh Wendy” into a popular catchphrase and make a months-long Cape Fear-style haunting entertaining, but I think they’ve completely lost what they were initially going for. A guy deriding your family to get in your head works, sure, but it works less when he’s been doing it for almost an entire quarter, and when everyone’s decided to just straight-up ignore the champion tapping out on video back at Hell in a Cell. That should’ve changed the direction of the feud, but they just kept doing the same thing every week, and now you’ve got to have your authority figure open the show with some “real life consequences” because the only way to escalate the feud is to have Joe actually murder a child.

If Joe doesn’t win in Australia, please move him into a program with Nakamura or something and get him away from Styles.

Best: The R-Mella Push Continues

Yeah, I wish they had something for Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas and Zelina Vega to do besides being extremely talented Jobbers To The Stars, but I’m also into the “Fabulous Truth” pairing, and am happy that the R-Truth experiment appears to be ongoing, and not just a thing they did for a couple of weeks to push Miz and Bryan forward. Plus, how great was Carmella’s finisher transition at the end here? I thought for sure they were going to pull the “outside distraction, DISTRACTION ROLL-UP OH NO” gambit, but they stretched it out for a couple of reversals and had Carmella, the “veteran” in WWE run terms, outsmart Vega and manipulate her into the choke. Really good stuff, as Carmella continues to improve basically every time we see her.

But just to type it again, I can’t wait until they slot somebody else into this “impressive loser” spot and let Almas shine. That guy is way too good and way too at the top of his game right now to spend a year or four eating disappointing losses to anybody that’s getting the spotlight on Smackdown. He’s doing better than a lot of former NXT Champions, I guess, but I want him to be more at the Seth Rollins level than the Kevin Owens level. It’s a fine line, but he’s good enough to hang himself up and tranquilo pose on it.

Worst: Can’t Find A Batter Man

You can usually tell the segments New Day came up with, and the segments writers came up with for them. The go-home angle to the Smackdown Tag Team Championship match at Super Show-Down ended up being a cooking segment, which was zero about cooking and one-hundred about “Mr. Bootyworth,” a reoccurring NPC who I guess we’re supposed to want to hear talk? He always just seemed like a guy they found backstage to hold stuff for them during promos, like the extremely G-rated version of Big Dick Johnson.

The Bar shows up, they run through a little stilted dialogue about Cesaro being nicknamed “Chef,” and a food fight occurs. Mr. Bootyworth is turned into Mr. Bootyworthless via some public humiliation, and that’s it. It’s not in the same category as “The Old Day” or Sonny Boy — his name is Sonny Boy! — but it’s not great, and definitely one of those segments they do when you’ve convinced a girlfriend or loved one to watch wrestling with you that make you embarrassed to watch yourself, and guarantees they’ll never watch again.

The Bar winning the straps in Australia is the only thing I care about as much as the IIconics being treated like heroes in their home country.

Best: THE AUSSIE FLOSS

WWE Smackdown Live

of course I giffed this
OF COURSE I GIFFED THIS
Billie Kay is somehow worse at flossing than Peyton Royce, which I didn’t think was possible
the IIconics have added a super hero pose for when they say ICONIC!, and that pan from picture-in-picture to live action where they’re doing the same pose in both is priceless
how do we get the Aussie Floss into Fortnite so everyone starts doing it

I’m okay with Asuka killing Peyton, because she should, and because the Great Prediction Correlation states that if someone looks terrible on the go-home show, they’ve got a better chance of winning on pay-per-view. That’s not always true, but it’s right more often than it isn’t, and if the Iconic Duo doesn’t win in Australia I swear to God you guys.

Worst: Here Comes The Bouncing Ball Of Justice

whoops, sorry, wrong video

You know that “One Night In Milwaukee” stuff Aiden English promised last week? It turns out it’s a webcam (?) video of him rehearsing his act in a hotel room — shirtless, even — and Lana coming in to talk to him. She says “I want you-” and the video cuts out, and despite the fact that she’s clearly in the middle of a sentence, everyone’s very upset about it. All I can hope is that since Rusev ran after Aiden to kick his ass and wasn’t listening to Lana’s explanation, he’s going to start the next segment about this with, “of course I know that’s doctored footage, you didn’t even do anything, I’m not an idiot, that guy’s a real dork.”

Anyway, best wishes to Rusev and Lana as they start their new life under the sea.

Best/Worst: The World’s Goatest Tag Team

The best match of the night by far, obviously, was Daniel Bryan vs. Shelton Benjamin. Benjamin’s intensity here was awesome, as he has a really legitimate beef being left “on the bench” for months while other people got matches and Smackdown seemingly forgot they’d signed him. Chad Gable leaving for Raw left him standing there with his dick in his hand.

What I didn’t enjoy so much is the finish, which saw Miz get up on the apron to cause a distraction, allowing Benjamin to get the jump on Bryan and win the match. I wouldn’t mind this so much (as it’s the world’s most common WWE trope) if just a night before they hadn’t done it three times on Monday Night Raw. I guess I can’t hold Smackdown accountable for what happens on Raw — can I? It’s all run by the same people — but if I’m tasked with running the Tuesday show and saw the Monday show do a finish 3-7 times, I’m going to make sure Tuesday finishes up with zero.

Lots of good stuff here, though. Miz’s suit game was incredible, and that might be the best tie I’ve ever seen on WWE TV. Bryan doing some basic homework on Shelton Benjamin and avoiding the “swing his leg around” feint kick thing was nice. Bryan even made Pay Dirt look good, which is almost impossible. I always wished Shelton X had a better finish than giving himself the Rock Bottom.

Best, Mostly: He’s Gonna Get A Bill For That Finger

Randy Orton has learned that he can look like the world’s deadliest and most sadistic heel by learning some basic level one sleight of hand. At Hell in a Cell he made everyone gasp by manipulating Jeff Hardy’s already stretched out and nerveless ear lobe, and on Smackdown he “broke Tye Dillinger’s finger” in the turnbuckle by cupping his hands over it like a warm mug of cocoa and sliding them around. It’s a good visual if you don’t think about it, and since almost nobody watching is going to think about it, by all means.

I also want to give a Best to Dillinger himself for actually changing his approach to a match based on what happened the week before. Last week he got the ever-loving shit kicked out of him by two guys for no reason, so this week he doesn’t just demand a match and wrestle it like normal; he shows up ready to fight, and physically tells that story by being more aggressive, hitting faster, hitting harder, and staying on the attack. I could’ve lived without him still doing the “ten” taunts while he was on the table punching Orton in the face, but it’s Tye Dillinger, so what’re you gonna do.

I don’t ever want to see Randy Orton matches, but asshole Randy Orton feud builds are great. I also love that he’s this dozen-plus-time legendary World Champion and he’s picking on the show’s lowest hanging fruit. Jeff Hardy? Tye Dillinger? Who’s next, Mr. Bootyworth?

Best: The Champ Is Here

Finally we’ve got the latest in a series of Becky Lynch segments where Becky’s great, Smackdown insists that she’s a heel in every piece of written dialogue from her or her opponent or the announce team, and the crowd insists she’s a conquering hero who should be showered with love and praise. It’s a rare example of a person getting (I guess) the “wrong” reaction by being so good at getting the right reaction. It’s a hard thing to explain. More or less I’m just happy that Becky’s the champion, and that she’s being cheered no matter what happens, because it makes perfect sense in my head. And in the heads of other people for once!

Becky’s out here doing everything she can to be a heel, too. She’s got a condescending poster she’s designed to inflate her ego, she’s running down the company, she’s running a video package recapping all her attacks, and the crowd’s like like, WOO YEAH BECKY IS SO GREAT. Charlotte shows up to be a scrappy babyface and fight instead of talking, or whatever, and the crowd’s still booing her. I’m not sure I agree with WWE’s mission statement of, “any reaction is a good reaction,” and I can’t claim to understand why WWE will see something not working for YEARS AT A TIME (see: Reigns) and decide to just keep doing the thing that doesn’t work because “reactions,” but as long as Becky doesn’t eat a spear and a bad moonsault in Australia and drop the title, I’m fine with it.

Also, can I buy one of those Super Show-Down posters on Shop yet?

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

notJames (technically a MMC comment, but I’m counting it)

Braun should have teamed with Ruby Riott.
They could have called themselves Monster’s Ink.

Dave M J

A list of things Becky Lynch is bad at

…

Well, that was easy!

Blade_222

I hope James Ellsworth returns and R-Truth reveals he was Little Jimmy this entire time..

Endy_Mion

Becky Lynch: I got a surprise for ya!
*pulls out a box*
Becky: this box is full of fucks!
*opens box, reveals it is empty*
Becky: Oh wait, looks like I am all out of fucks to give!
*crowd goes wild*

Ahh now I want Asuka to borrow Kairi’s tugboat and go sailing, fighting cancer round the world.

IC champion Pdragon619

Dillinger: oh man…I didn’t get to have my match tonight, Orton broke my finger, and Truth won’t hang out with me anymore now that he’s with Carmella… could this day possibly get any worse!?
*Asuka’s music hits while Peyton is in the ring*

Amaterasu’s Son

I don’t like The Bar saying, “Well Well Well” when I hear “Well Well Well” I still expect a Joel Gertner promo behind it.

blacksnakemoan

Miz should shockingly come up with the rest of Aiden’s tape.

“I want you….to help me set up my DVR to record Miz and Mrs.”

Baron Von Raschke

Unfrozen Bulgarian Wrestler: I am just humble Bulgarian Wrestler who was unfrozen from a glacier on Musala. Your world frightens and confuses me….I don’t understand edits or pausing. There couldn’t possibly have been anything that followed where that video ended suddenly.

The Real Birdman

Synergy Alert: Big E puts #@!% Sauce in his pancake mix

WWE Network

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. Join us this Saturday in the dead of morning for Triple H vs. The Undertaker: Last Time Ever Until Crown Jewel!

Make sure to drop a comment below to let us know what you thought of the show, share the column to help us out, and various other Calls To Action. Thanks for reading!

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: We put another knife on the barbie at Superstar Show-Down in Australia, where AJ Styles finally defeated Samoa Joe fairly, and the IIconics picked up a heartwarming win in their home country. The future is hashtag IIconic, hashtag acceptable.

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.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for October 9, 2018.

Best: The Charlotte Flair Vs. Becky Lynch Match We Should’ve Gotten At Super Show-Down

At the Melb’n Super-Show, the big heated rematch between Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch played out like a completely normal wrestling match, and featured Lynch intentionally getting herself disqualified. They fought at little afterward, but it was mostly to set up the next rematch on the following Smackdown. The good news: THAT rematch, the one you’re about to read about, justifies BOTH matches, and is the rematch we needed following the title change.

If you missed it, roughly the first half hour of the show was dedicated to Flair vs. Lynch, as they worked hard and beat a very believable amount of shit out of each other for about 25 minutes. The story I think they should’ve been telling all along isn’t that Becky is some kind of devious heel who has “wronged” Charlotte, but that their Tea Party friendship (not like that) had Charlotte off her game in the initial contest, which is why she lost. Now that Becky’s continuing to make it personal even when she doesn’t have to, Charlotte’s starting to channel THE DEMON FLAIR — that hateful, spiteful entity that lives inside of her, because she’s a goddamn Flair — and the fight’s getting a lot harder. Charlotte might even, for example, pull a Rhyno on Chris Jericho and spear you through the Smackdown set.

WWE Smackdown Live

This is how you do a double count-out. The only times you should be allowed to do that are:

when you’ve got something big planned for the post-match attack, like the spear through the set, which will immediately make everyone watching forget they just watched a double count-out, or
you are two very old stars on an independent show and neither of you is chill enough to put the other guy over

Note: One of my favorite memories is watching Tommy Rich and Jimmy Snuka wrestle in Cleveland in 2007 and gently choke each other for like two minutes for the benefit of dozens before wander-punching their way to the back. Wait, did I type “favorite?”

Anyway, that leads to only-good-authority-figure-besides-William-Regal Paige making a Last Woman Standing match for the Smackdown Women’s Championship at WWE Evolution. That’s going to be great, even if calling it “our first ever Last Woman Standing match” ignores that pretty great Asuka vs. Nikki Cross match on NXT last year. Although I guess it wouldn’t be Smackdown without ignoring pretty great Asuka and completely forgetting about Nikki Cross.

Worst: Aiden English And His Terrible Plan

Aiden English attempted the Homer Simpson Rock Bottom gambit with “One Night In Milwaukee,” a laptop video where he clearly paused Lana in the middle of a sentence to make it sound like she was coming onto him. After a week of deliberation — and apparently not talking to each other between Wednesday and Monday — Lana and Rusev were almost divided, until Lana used her Russian hacking skills (in a great bit of continuity) to hit “unpause.” Whoops, it turns out Lana is totally innocent, and Aiden was being weird! Who knew!

There’s also a pretty bad Dot Com followup where Sonya Deville of all people is disappointed in not seeing Aiden English and Lana get busy, and even the IICONICS don’t have anything to do. I’m telling you, it’s gonna feel truly revolutionary when WWE realizes they can book top women’s wrestling programs and still remember the rest of the division exists, instead of slotting them all into a vague “jealous bullies” or “good friend” purgatory.

Ah well, at least this Lana love triangle angle is over a lot quicker than the previous few. Join us next year when Lana might be in love with R-Truth, for some reason!

Best, Mostly: Miz Calls Winner

You could’ve written this week’s Miz TV segment in your head seconds after the two-minute match at Super Show-Down. Miz brings Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles on as guests, they agree to appear for some reason, and he tries to play them against one another. It doesn’t work at first, because Miz is obviously a conniving heel who only cares about himself, but then they say a couple of mildly personal things and get REAL TOUGH and face-to-face about it. Then Miz ACTUALLY plays them against one another, and they fall for it, because WWE babyfaces are dumber than mute dirt.

At the same time, it’s The Miz messing with two guys half his size who look like members of Stillwater, one of them’s Daniel Bryan, and the other is AJ Styles, so I’m fine with it. Plus, smart heels never get tired of pointing out how the WWE Championship never main-events shows, which is probably less about who’s holding it and more about modern championships being feud props without any real prestige or gravitas. And the business model changing from “get people regionally excited about a sport we’ve fictionalized” to “please a Saudi Arabian prince who hasn’t watched wrestling since 2006 so he gives us 40 million dollars.”

Miz ends up making a match (?) between Styles and Shelton Benjamin, which is another good match in a series that asks us to remember who Shelton Benjamin is, and why we should be excited that he’s still around. Benjamin had a good match with Bryan last week and a good match with Styles THIS week — shout-out to that knee-to-the-face counter to the Phenomenal Forearm — so maybe in a few weeks he’ll be teaming with Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas and attempting to make a more important tag team look good.

Also good: Styles actually wins again, which along with the finish to his match with Joe at Super Show-Down is indicative of a very positive trend. The WWE Champion and the “best wrestler in the world” should actually be able to win wrestling matches sometimes, even against challenging opponents, shouldn’t he?

P.S.: About That Saudi Prince

The A-story of this week’s Smackdown are the two WWE World Cup® qualifiers for WWE Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia®: Jeff Hardy vs. Samoa Joe, and Digit Killer Randy Orton vs. a returning Big Show.

The first of those two, like Bryan and Miz at Super Show-Down, features an uncommon finish. At Super Show-Down, Bryan Mr. Small Package’d Miz about two minutes in and pinned him. It was a flash that suggested any move can end any match at any time, but it didn’t totally work, because, you know, we wanted to see a wrestling match between heated rivals. On Smackdown, they ended Jeff Hardy vs. Samoa Joe by having Joe remember how badly injured his leg is supposed to be, and (hey!) having it negatively affect him. Hardy targets it, because he’s trying to win, and Joe eventually can’t stand, so the referee calls the match.

Smackdown’s (and SSD) are full of flat endings, but this one I kind of dug. It showed that Joe wanted to fight, he just physically couldn’t, because things that happen to you in wrestling matches should still affect you and exist a couple of days later. I think it’d work better if we did this all the time and trained the audience to pay attention to that kind of thing, so when it did, they can actively observe and predict it instead of thinking you copped out on a finish. Really my only problem with a lot of what WWE does is that they aren’t consistent about it. Rules, finishes, whatever.

The second of these is Well It’s The Big Show vs. Welp, It’s Randy Orton. It’s also totally fine, but the finish was never in doubt. Big Show hasn’t been around, and is really only used these days as very large enhancement talent, which is fine. It feels like if you had a healthy, in-shape 46-year old Andre you wouldn’t be having Bob Orton pin him on Superstars, but I guess the ecosystem has changed. Show’s still got a lot in the tank whether he uses it or not, and could probably have 10 more years of active in-ring career if he transitioned into an actual Andre instead of still trying to be The Giant. He’s probably more comfortable not spending another decade falling seven feet down onto his face, though.

Note: LOL so hard at them no longer calling Big Show’s punch the WMD because they’re doing shows in the Middle East now.

That leaves us with a very curious picture for Crown Jewel:

WWE Network

Saudi Arabia seriously hasn’t gotten a new wrestling show other than Greatest Royal Rumble since 2006, have they?
You know the original lineup requested for this tournament was Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Macho Man Randy Savage, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Bret Hart, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and the Iron Sheik.
We’re a billion percent getting John Cena vs. Randy Orton in the finals of this tournament, aren’t we? Do they bill it as LAST TIME EVER, or do they know even we aren’t stupid enough to believe that?
did Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles get compartmentalized off in their own match so neither of them could call themselves the “best in the world?”
How much money do they need to get CM Punk in this thing?

Best: “Rey Mysterio” Returns Next Week

I don’t know who this guy is, but the actual Rey Mysterio Jr. was eaten by the Monster Matanza Cueto. I guess there are a lot of “Rey Mysterios” in Mexico.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

blacksnakemoan

“Miz, I’ve been all across this earth.”

“You mean around the Earth…”

“You heard me…”

North99

“Hot Milwaukee Nights” sucked as a late night USA Show then, and it sucks now.

Dave M J

Dear Vince,

Lana fell in love with Rusev and married him because he is a Handsome Bulgarian who is hilarious and charming. Period. You don’t need to be so confused over it that every angle you run with Rusev as a singles guy is “HIS WIFE IS CHEATING.” Stop. Thanks.

Sincerely, LITERALLY EVERYONE

Blade_222

Destroy the set so they bring back the big fist next week!

DenseMan1

Aiden Niiiiighhts are like Rusev DAAAAAYS, more often not, Lana’s hotter than hot, in all the right waaays.

Mr. Bliss

2 minutes is still longer than 18 seconds, dweeb.

Baron Von Raschke

Clear Eyes. Open Earlobes. Can’t Lose.

Nakamura: Boy, I’m really going nowhere with no momentum. I mean, I’m US champ….Next week! That’s when I’ll turn things around…Next week on SmackDown 1000…I’ll get on a roll. Who am I wrestling? Awwwwww…..crap.

The Real Birdman

How is Shinsuke Nakamura not involved in becoming King of Crown Jewels?

Join us for next weeks World Cup qualifier, when Gangrel takes on Mideon

Bigsexy75

Hey hey HEY! Don’t you judge Charlotte Flair… she’s just going through a stage.

WWE Smackdown Live

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! Drop a comment and share the column, if you’re a Smackdown Fist Bro.

Join us next week for the star-studded Smackdown 1000, featuring the return of Rey Mysterio, an Evolution reunion a few weeks before a show named “Evolution” they aren’t a part of, and presumably Aiden English buying a Real Doll and yelling RUSEV THIS IS YOUR REAL WIFE I’M WITH into Skype.

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: We recapped the boring ol’ 999th episode with Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte Flair vs. an LED board, The Miz’s very difficult mission to make two stupid WWE babyfaces hate each other, and an appearance from the babyface Big Show (which becomes important later).

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.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live’s 1000th episode for October 16, 2018.

Best: After 48 Years, Vince McMahon Finally Explains To His Kids That WWE Is Supposed To Be Entertaining

WWE Smackdown Live

Saudi princes, Saudi princes everywhere

After 999 episodes of practice, Smackdown Live opens with R-Truth interviewing Stephanie McMahon while she backhandedly shades the shit out of him the entire time. She’s interrupted by Shane McMahon, and then they’re both interrupted by VINCE McMahon, and if Linda wasn’t currently the Executive Joint Chief of Burning Down Elementary Schools or whatever I’m sure she’d be out here too. A McMahon in every corner!

The good news of it all is that (1) R-Truth is so over right now he can make almost anything watchable, as long as he stays out of those Sherlock Holmes costumes, and that (2) Vince either calls an audible or crescendos the segment into the statement that “the E (in WWE) stands for Entertainment” and a dance break. So instead of 20 minutes of McMahon arguments, old man Vince pulls a metaphorical “haul ass to Lollapalooza” and breaks it up. Good times.

Plus: Stephanie McMahon briefly attempting to floss (like I’m guessing she’s seen Shane’s kids do, because I imagine Shane’s kids flossing all day every day, even in their sleep) and giving up to do her go-to “hand up, drop it medium” mom dance.

WWE Smackdown Live

Also, +1 to Shane for forgetting the wacky Shane McMahon dancing in favor of flirting with Carmella. Brother’s gonna have to drink a tall frosty glass of Mazola oil when he gets home.

Best: Bullet Club Bearded Dad Division Vs. The Uso Firing Squad

This week’s first match is one of those Smackdown specialties: a very basic, watchable, perfectly serviceable match that on paper looks like the most incredible dream match you could imagine. See also: the main event. HOT TAKE ALERT: AJ Styles is the fourth best worker in this match.

So yeah, it’s Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles teaming up to take on Los Usos in a “can they co-exist???” match. Short answer: no, no they cannot. Bryan accidentally forearms Styles in the face, then turns to duck an Uso superkick and Styles gets blasted in the face AGAIN. Then the Usos, who are a legendary tag team and should be able to beat any assembling of random singles stars in a tag team match 99 out of 100 times, pop D-Bry with stereo superkicks and pin him clean.

I’ll be cold in the dead, dead ground before I give a Worst to a tag team beating singles stars in a tag team match because they’re good at tag team wrestling. Especially when the singles stars are confused dads who are easily emotionally destroyed and can be pitted against each other using even mild inconveniences.

Best: Evolution Is Still A Mystery

While I wouldn’t call the Evolution reunion a “good segment” or “purposeful in any way,” I’d liken it to a really enjoyable comic con panel. Like, if you go to WrestleMania this weekend, you’d see this between Jim Ross’ one man show and Mick Foley tap dancing. It’s four people we haven’t seen together in a long time, including one legitimate greatest-of-all-time-legend we’re glad is still alive and one of the goddamn Guardians of the Galaxy.

Highlights include:

Randy Orton briefly attempting to heel on his friends because they made him wear pants to work
A “Bluetista” namedrop
Dave Batista deciding to give his WWE Hall of Fame speech for some reason (and doing a good job)
Batista making dick jokes about Ric Flair to thunderous applause
Batista putting over Triple H by saying “business” over and over, which Triple H couldn’t have written better himself
a tease of Batista vs. Triple H, which would at least keep Triple H from ruining somebody cool’s WrestleMania
Randy Orton corpsing, and going from stoic jerk to spazzy kid who wants to see somebody fight
all of this leading to nothing but them patting each other on the back and leaving

Like I said, there wasn’t really a reason for it to be happening, but it was fun. I just wished they’d done a followup where Orton doesn’t realize Batista’s standing next to him, because Dave has mastered the ability of standing so incredibly still that he becomes invisible to the eye. Like John Cena!

YouTube

Speaking Of BMJ

Happy Harry Haircut takes a moment out of his busy “getting so ripped my muscles turn into snakes” and filming heartwarming firefighter family comedies to send in a video congratulations. To show he’s still a bigger star than John Cena, The Rock doesn’t have time to film a selfie video and sends them a quote-tweet.

Huge #SD1000 congrats to my @WWE family!
Fun fact, in 1998, I said to @VinceMcMahon “I’m gonna use the word ‘Smackdown’ tonight in my promo”. He said what’s that mean? I said it means I’m gonna whup some ass. He belly laughed and said say it!
The rest was history! #IfYaSmell ? https://t.co/IVXI0WkkGl

— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) October 16, 2018

One of these days, WrestleMania’s going to be headlined by Cena’s people calling Rock’s people and explaining that they’re too busy for lunch today, but maybe next Wednesday would work.

Best (But Not Really): YOU STILL EXIST Cameos

WWE Smackdown Live

While I don’t love “this person is still alive” cameos where they just show up and stand there for applause instead of like, doing anything, I can’t get through this without showing love to John Laurinaitis and Vickie Guerrero, two of my favorite characters ever. Also, Teddy Long was there. Damn, how do you have Vickie there and not do something with her? She should’ve at least shown up to have Becky’s back against Edge.

Also Johny Ace should defeat Shinsuke Nakamura with an Ace Crusher. Sorry, I let the Widow Baba send me notes for this report.

Worst: The Match You Get When Big Dave Goes Long

Match two of the show, happening like an hour in, is Miz pinning Rusev off a distraction in about 45 seconds to advance to WWE World Cup at Crown Jewel in Unannounced Country. No part of that is enjoyable. It advanced the Rusev/Aiden English beef (I guess) and got Miz into a tournament he should definitely win if we’re crowning someone other than Bryan Danielson or CM Punk the “best in the world,” but yeah, it might as well have been Brie Bella vs. Cameron from 2012.

Best: Edge With Long Hair Again, Thank God

Worst/Best: Live Bex Celebration

First of all, the world just feels a little better when Edge doesn’t have short hair. That was just a crime against humanity. He went from the Rated-R Superstar to somebody’s nice cousin. Second of all, before I get into this segment, I want to say how much I like and appreciate Edge as an on-mic performer, and thought he did an awesome job with the material he was given.

That said, the material he was given was total bullshit. He tries to explain to Becky Lynch that she shouldn’t have thrown away her friendship with Charlotte Flair to become Women’s Champion, and uses himself as an example, saying that it won’t be worth it in the end. Did things really end up so bad for you, Edge? You were the “ultimate opportunist” and were once legitimately in a vampire cult (or a Bite Club, or whatever) and you ended up an 11-time World Champion, getting inducted into the Hall of Fame, and being married with a family you love. What, are you worried her guest appearances on the SyFy channel aren’t going to be good enough? Give me a break. Becky was right to tell him to stop disrespecting her and to get out of The Champ’s ring.

Also, bonus points for Charlotte Flair showing up to defend Edge’s honor and still being so naturally unlikable as a character that she gets booed for thinking you shouldn’t make fun of a retired guy for his broken neck. Tom Phillips says we should be excited for the “first-ever” Last Woman Standing match, but he also says Rey Mysterio doing an Ultimo Dragon move from 1993 is “innovative,” so we should’t expect any astute shit to come out of his mouth.

Best/Worst: Fish Gotta Swim, Birds Gotta Fly, WWE Gotta Ask Why Big Show, Why

Man, it wouldn’t be an episode of Smackdown without The Big Show randomly turning on somebody. Show finally gets that final punch on his “turn 99 times, the 100th turn’s free” card by randomly showing up and turning on The New Day to help The Bar win the Tag Team Championship. In the backstage followup, Show’s explanation for the turn is [shrug], and all I’ve got to say is that when you’re looking for a beloved global ambassador for children’s charities, maybe don’t select the 7-foot-tall monster born from a mountain to destroy Hulkamania on behalf of a Satantic George Costanza, a team of cartoonish super villains, and an old Hawaiian guy covered in flour.

At least this ends New Day’s “whoops, Erick Rowan lost one of his limbs, sorry everyone” title run that probably should’ve transferred the belts onto someone who needed them a lot sooner, and now we can either work on that Big E singles push, or that Kofi Kingston WWE Championship push, or … more video game videos, I don’t know. Probably the third one. New Day’s great, but they definitely don’t need those belts. I mostly just want them to move onto another comedy food.

Rey Mysterio Has Pinned The United States Champion!

Finally we have World Cup Something Something between Shinsuke Nakamura, who believe it or not holds a championship in this company, and “Rey Mysterio.” I put “Rey Mysterio” in quotes because the actual Rey Mysterio Jr. died in a jail cell in Boyle Heights a while back.

Like most of us predicted, this on-paper dream match turned out to be totally fine — see the trend? — and while it’s great to see Rey Jr. back on television, it’s kind of a shame that it has to be at the expense of Shinsuke. WWE’s version of Mysterio is occasionally completely unstoppable, which becomes a little stressful to watch when he’s facing guys who should at least be kicking his ass before he surprises them with something. He’s like a reverse Meng. In WCW, Meng would be a jobber until it was time for a push, and suddenly he’d be able to kill anybody single-handedly and break chairs with his forehead. For Rey, he’s basically Goldberg until he wins a championship or actually gets a push, at which point he’s a total jobber, and anyone from Cena to The Great Khali can kick his ass. It’s weird.

Anyway, independent of the depressing undercurrent here, Mysterio still rules, and that sliding splash to the floor was great. Tom Phillips needs to watch a couple of lucha libre matches during the entirety of his life so he doesn’t think every single mannerism Rey performs is groundbreaking, but it is what it is. Mysterio moves on to Don’t Mention The Country to defeat The Miz in round one of the World Cup tournament before getting Attitudinally Adjusted by John ‘Bradshaw’ Cena.

Worst: Great Job, Undertaker

The final segment of the show features The Undertaker taking fie minutes to walk to the ring and “deliver a message to D-X,” which is literally just the last sentence from the pre-taped promo they showed on Raw. D-X had three words for him and Kane: are you ready? He has three words for them: rest in peace! The Jerk Store called, they’re running out of guys from 1998!

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Night

Brocky

Undertaker: I’ve got three words for DX:

…..

READY

WILLING

GABLE!!!

The Real Birdman

Country Dominance? I thought that was WWE’s World Cup field

JayBone2

It’d be funny and a nice change of pace if Mysterio hit Nakamura with a 619 to the balls.

Mr. Bliss

I’m surprise WWE didn’t run a #LosingYourHomeIsUnacceptable at the end of that Hurricane Michael Relief ad

Martin Morrow

Big Show heel turn, McMahons starting off the show with a pointless talking segment, a roll up finish. If Mysterio blows a knee we get Smackdown bingo

IC champion Pdragon619

It would be perfect if Show immediately turned face again by attacking the Bar

Redshirt

Becky Lynch: “I support the Republican Party.”

(GOP wins all open Senate races and all 435 seats in the House)

troi

this wouldn’t have happened on The Peep Show

Clay Quartermain

If Becky celebrates her Evolution win by having live sex with Lita on Smackdown THEN she learned from Edge

Endy_Mion

It isn’t Blue-tista, for one night, it is You-tista!

WWE Smackdown Live

Ric Flair dick goes woo on a bitch

That’s it for The Best and Worst of Smackdown 1000. Here’s to 1000 more episodes, and like 150 good ones!

Make sure to drop a comment below to let us know what you thought of the show, and share the column to keep us in the business of watching TV for a living. At least you didn’t have to read about Raw, right guys?

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: We experienced Smackdown 1000, an enjoyable Comic-Con special event featuring an Evolution reunion panel, an appearance from Rey Mysterio, and presumably a bunch of comic books in the middle of the arena nobody looks at.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live’s 1001st episode for October 23, 2018.

And Now, A Very ‘Oh God What Are We Doing’ Episode Of Smackdown

In case you haven’t been paying attention to … anything, it’s been a very hard PR week for WWE. The United States government and mainstream media are urging them to cancel their upcoming event in Saudi Arabia in response to a horrific human rights violation (and, you know, murder), and then on Monday Roman Reigns opened the show by announcing he’ll have to step away from WWE entirely to deal with resurgence of leukemia. Plus there’s a women’s pay-per-view coming up where they advertised “over FIFTY WOMEN” in the commercials and are loading up a battle royal with everyone who’s ever worked for them to at least approximate it. Meanwhile they’re trying to fix a lot of what’s broken about their shows before they head to FOX next year, Alexa Bliss got a concussion a week before a PPV, NXT UK just launched, and more. If you work for WWE right now, you’re basically Cathy from the comic strip Cathy.

The reason I’m prefacing the column with all this (again) is to explain why putting on an engaging episode of Smackdown might not fit on WWE’s plate right now, and to explain why a show that’s had a decent amount of forward momentum lately might stagnate completely for a week.

For example, one of the marquee matches for Crown Jewel is a WWE Championship match between AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan. WWE wants to build this up on their weekly show, but (as of Tuesday morning) still hasn’t made any announcements for whether or not they’re canceling or moving Crown Jewel, so they’re just kinda … building to nothing, maybe? It’s hard to explain. Imagine if you were in charge of planning a wedding and making sure everything was just right, but the bride was like, “I might’ve murdered someone, you’re probably going to hear about it over the next few days,” and the groom won’t answer your calls because the bride’s worth tens of millions of dollars. And they’re both like, “just plan the wedding, it’s fine.”

So last week, they had Bryan and Styles team up — but how can they co-exist?? — against the Usos. The Usos won when Bryan accidentally hit Styles. How do you continue that story this week without actually doing anything or making any statements? You have Bryan and Styles team up — after last week, how can they co-exist?? — and lose to the Usos when Styles accidentally hits Bryan. Whoops! Whoopsie.

This is the Smackdown you’re getting this week. It’s not bad, really, but it’s going to be the most obvious, by-the-numbers two hours you’ve ever seen because we’ve got a lot of shit on our plate right now, okay.

In another more obvious example, a tag team match teaming Asuka and Naomi against The Artists Formerly Known As Absolution — which was originally announced as just Naomi vs. Mandy Rose, “for the first time ever” — ends before it begins because there’s a women’s battle royal coming up, and the only way to sell a battle royal these days is to have everyone from the battle royal run into the ring and have a second, practice battle royal for no reason. If you’ve watched wrestling for more than a month, you’ve seen it. There’s no reason to compel everyone to go into the ring and have a rules-based battle royal brawl, but they do it. Asuka “stands tall” at the end, which is a nice way of saying, “we realize it’s pretty dumb to have you lose in battle royals, so let’s at least lampshade it before we do it.”

Really the only highlight is how the IIconics say “WWE Evolution,” complete with flushing gesture for “Evolution.”

WWE Network

Also highly predictable but objectively fine in this episode is Rey Mysterio’s appearance on Miz TV turning into a match against The Miz, which, wow, has that ever happened before?

This is where we get into one of our normal routines of wondering why WWE operates the way it does. They’ve got a “WWE World Cup” tournament coming up in a week (maybe), and it’s a tournament featuring a bunch of big names. So how do you advertise that, and get people who might want to see those guys wrestle to watch the show? By having those guys … wrestle a week early in a full match with a clean ending. Mysterio just wrestles and pins Miz. And … that’s it. So does Miz not get to be in the tournament now? I know the answer to that, but shouldn’t it mean something? Like Miz drawing the #8 seed or something because he lost? Can we have this stuff actually affect what’s happening on more important shows, to give us a reason to watch and be invested beyond Personal Rivalries? I don’t think everyone who works for WWE and gets into a < 5 minute argument with a co-worker needs to immediately wrestle about it.

The match is what you’d expect. Miz being the King of Safe Style, and Mysterio being one of the most unstoppable characters in WWE. Brother might as well be Brock Lesnar right now. I’m guessing Cena’s the only one allowed to pin him, if that even happens.

Continuing that trend is the main event, Randy Orton vs. Jeff Hardy; again, two people who are supposed to compete in the World Cup tournament in a week. Are they doing these as top secret first round matches in case they change their mind and cancel or move Crown Jewel? Like, did they do these so they can retroactively be like, “Orton defeated Hardy on Smackdown and Mysterio defeated Miz, so here’s Mysterio vs. Orton in SECOND ROUND ACTION! Also John Cena lost his first round match to Seth Rollins at a WWE live event in Rio de Janeiro!”

Again, the match isn’t terrible I suppose (at least not for Orton standards), but varies depending on how many times you’ve watched them wrestle in the past few months. Have you not seen Orton put his finger in Jeff Hardy’s spaced earlobe? You’re gonna think it’s VERY GROSS when he does it HERE! Again! WWE’s really counting on nobody watching their show weekly, and their ability to do a thing that “gets people talking” over and over until everyone in the world’s had a turn.

Hardy should really invest in a little cover or something to plug those flesh tunnels. You’re just gonna keep getting dragged around by them.

Were you upset by last week’s 45-second Rusev vs. Miz match? Perhaps you’ll like this week’s 115-second match between Rusev and Aiden English. Is Rusev hurt or something? Why can’t any of his matches go longer than two minutes? And it’s not like he’s Goldberg, just plowing through guys, he’s losing some of these. Is the point of the feud supposed to be that Rusev can kick English’s ass, or that they’re both not supposed to be very good?

If you were hoping they’d explain why Big Show would randomly turn on The New Day to help The Bar win the Tag Team Championship, you’ll be excited to learn that this week we find out it was because “reasons, we guess.”

Kofi Kingston shows up looking for some retribution against anyone from the heel team because they “lowered the bar” (ugh) and ends up one-on-one with Show. Show just kinda beats him to death about it, and the match ends in disqualification when New Day jumps in to keep him from chokeslamming Kofi into dust. The heels stand tall, and WWE has another week to figure out a better name for the team than “Team Show Bar.” I don’t care as long as Show drives up to Crown Jewel in a The Bar-themed monster truck.

Best: The Only Actual Segment

The only bit of new material this week comes in the form of Charlotte Flair giving a speech at the WWE Performance Center to a bunch of women who could straight-up kick her ass off right now. I kept hoping Shayna Baszler would jump in and randomly choke her out for thinking she can talk to her like that. Shout-out to Bianca Belair for just standing in the background making bored eyes the entire time. You don’t need to tell her to have friends, she never needed you at all [dances]

Anyway, The Champ shows up to shit on Charlotte for telling people they should have friends — pfft, pffffft — and a fight breaks out. Again, was really hoping Sara Amato was gonna jump in and start butterfly suplexing folks. It wasn’t a particularly memorable segment, but it forces Charlotte into even more of an assumed moral highground by saying Becky “disrespected” the PC and NXT (when her entire NXT career was about stepping on people to get to the top), and hey, it gives a bunch of future stars an early cameo on the show.

Still wish Baszler had meekly raised her hand and been like, “can I fight you like, right now.”

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

LUNI_TUNZ

“Here comes the money,” was also the original theme for Crown Jewel, but everyone thought it was too obvious.

blacksnakemoan

“Here’s comes the REMOOOOOOOTE!”

AddMayne

Dear Diary,

Today a girl came to the PC. No, not a girl. A WOMAN. A strong, powerful woman, with fire red hair and the strength of ten men. The way she totally beat up her former best friend was amazing. I think I may be in love for the very first time.

Signed
Tommy Entertainment aka The Champ

The Real Birdman

“Any questions”
“What has one leg & won’t win the MYC?”
“Umm… huh”
“Tegan Nox!”
“Inappropriate Rhea…”

AddMayne

Charlotte: Any more questions?

Unidentified, but very Irish accent: yeah why are you such a bitch

Dave M J

Shayna Baszler’s thoughts there:

CHOKEHEROUTCHOKEHEROUTCHOKEHEROUTCHOKEHEROUT

muchsarcasm

WWE: Look at what Becky is doing. You have no choice but to boo her.
Picard: THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS!

Endy_Mion

Charlotte: Don’t let anybody walk over you
Becky Lynch: Half of my Instagram photos are me standing on top of you in the process of walking over you
Charlotte: Do as I say, not as I do

cyniclone

Daniel Bryan: *does Too Sweet signal*
AJ Styles: DON’T EVER DO MY CLUB’S SIGNAL AGAIN OR I’LL GO ACROSS THE WORLD TO JAPAN —
Bryan: around
AJ: *ACROSS* THE WORLD

Mr. Bliss

Vince: “Daniel, Cena is bailing on Crown Jewel, I know you have concerns but what can I do for you to get you to tow the line and get on board with this?”

Daniel: “You could put me together with AJ again, those were good times.”

Vince: “You got it!”

Daniel sees who his tag partner is: “Not that AJ!!! I’m out!”

WWE Smackdown Live

Note: I don’t know what Billie and Peyton were doing in the background here, but I wish we’d gotten to see more of it.

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. Join us this weekend for Evolution, which apparently is a pay-per-view special of some kind, and then a week later for WWE Blacked Out In Permanent Records. Drop a comment and share the column to help us out, would you? It’s hard times.

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Smackdown didn’t really seem to know what it was doing or why it was happening, but at least we got Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair brawling at the Performance Center with the MMA Four Horsewomen standing to the side smirking at them.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live’s 1,002nd episode for October 30, 2018.

Another Crown Jewel Disclaimer In The Form Of A 22-Minute WWE Championship Match

The last week of Raw and Smackdown columns and both my Best and Worst of Evolution and Best and Worst of Raw from last night featured lengthy disclaimers about the crazy state of WWE due to them building three “live specials” at once and doing a pretty reprehensible event in Saudi Arabia on Friday. John Cena dropped out and was replaced by Lash Lee, Lash Lee, Lash Lee on Monday, and then we heard Daniel Bryan had bailed on the event as well.

Cena was part of a “World Cup” tournament that doesn’t actually mean anything and hadn’t been on any of the shows to qualify for or promote it, so replacing him wasn’t a big deal. Bryan, on the other hand, was one half of a WWE Championship match seen as a “dream match” in a lot of fans’ eyes, set up at the OTHER big international house show event, Super Show-Down in Australia.

The reason I’m doing another disclaimer here is because it presents a very difficult problem for someone who loves wrestling and is employed to talk about it at length every week: I am having difficulty enjoying a 22-minute AJ Styles vs. Daniel Bryan match for the WWE Championship with a clean finish on free television. That’s an absolutely insane thing to type, but here we are. As much as I want to get hype and breathlessly type about how they’re wrestling their asses off and having the early limb work pay off in the finish, I also have to provide the context of “this is happening now instead of on Friday because a guy doesn’t want to go to Saudi Arabia to compete on the blood money pay-per-view,” and notice things like, “Bryan tapped out instead of getting pinned, is he being punished for standing up to them, or was this always the plan for the match?” Lots of weird internal conjecture that I can’t prove or even really justify beyond a crappy-feeling hunch.

Just to do it,

Best: Daniel Bryan Vs. AJ Styles

Taken on its own merits, this is great. I could’ve gone without seeing Submission Expert Daniel Bryan tapping out, but they build up the story of the head-to-head limb work really well. Bryan targeted Styles’ arm, Styles targeted Bryan’s knee. Not only was the work consistent and relevant to the finish, it made sense in a broader way; Bryan targeted Styles’ arm to keep him from hitting the Phenomenal Forearm, and Styles targeted Bryan’s knee to keep him from being able to use the Knee Plus. It’s beautiful. Even the submission finish makes sense with that story, because Styles had to go with the one finisher in his arsenal that didn’t rely on arm strength.

ALSO great is the post-match attack, featuring Samoa Joe showing up in Dean Ambrose cosplay to kick everyone’s asses and choke Styles out again. I’m not really excited to see another Styles vs. Joe match, especially not on the fly like this, ESPECIALLY not after Joe lost or won in stupid ways what felt like a dozen times in a row, but (1) it was a seamless and logical transition from one feud to another, and (2) Joe attacked after the match, after the finish, instead of influencing it in any way. It’s why Terry Funk attacked Ric Flair AFTER the match with Ricky Steamboat, not during it. You let one feud finish, and then you start the next one. They don’t have to overlap.

So yeah, taken on its own, this was great, and win or lose, the kind of championship challenge Daniel Bryan deserves to be having. At this point in his career, we don’t even need him to win, as long as he’s getting to do the thing he loves in the way that he loves it, against someone else who knows how to do it. But you can’t really take it on its own because it’s Crown Jewel week, and the match is only happening here because Bryan didn’t want to go on an extremely concerning Saudi business trip, and Joe’s basically showing up as a scab. So take it as you will.

Worst: Boo The Woo

Two points:

oh get over yourself, Charlotte
despite Evolution happening on Sunday and large parts of both Raw and Smackdown being dedicated to lovingly crafted Evolution videos, there wasn’t a women’s match on this episode, and there hasn’t been a women’s match on Smackdown since Becky and Charlotte wrestled way back on October 9. That’s four Smackdowns ago.

Paige there: let Asuka captain your team, or send her back down to NXT so she can help Io Shirai and Kairi Sane fight the MMA Three Horsewomen.

Best: She’s The Man

No booing of Charlotte Flair would be complete without cheering for Becky Lynch, so here’s a Best for her standing up to the image of Ronda Rousey, saying she’s “not here to cosplay” or talk about a reality TV show, she’s just headed to Survivor Series to rip Ronda’s arm off.

You know, I don’t have enough optimism in me to think WWE would actually ride Lynch’s incredible wave of popularity and buzz from Evolution by giving Ronda Rousey her first loss at Survivor Series, but shit, they should. There’s no better time, person, or way to do it. Lynch winning would give Rousey’s matches a little more believably — like someone could actually beat her, so it’s not Ronda selling too much for people who never had a chance or just squashing everyone — and Rousey could take her first loss in a way that wouldn’t cause her to also lose her championship. Plus, it’s goddamn Becky Lynch. Rousey’s not going to be a longterm investment for the company if you don’t establish that SOME of your WWE Superstars are on her level. Bringing in “legitimate athletes” helps, but if nobody who works for you can beat them, it makes it look like nobody who works for you’s legitimate. PULL THE TRIGGER. LET BECKY BREAK RONDA’S ARM.

Speaking Of Crown Jewel

The big “hey everyone, tune into Crown Jewel on Friday, it’s a great pay-per-view coming to you live from we aren’t sure where but Hulk Hogan’s probably gonna be there, oooh, Hulk Hogan” match of the week is the four Smackdown representatives in the World Cup tournament pairing off and wrestling each other for no reason. To “build momentum,” I guess.

It’s Randy Orton and The Miz against the 2004 dream team of Jeff Hardy and Rey Mysterio, and if reading that makes you go, “I’d like to see that,” you’ll probably enjoy it. It’s fine. It’s perfectly acceptable wrestling, and just like the Joe attack in the WWE Championship match earlier in the show, the post-match — Orton hitting everybody with RKOs — is at least saved for the true post-match, instead of being integral to the finish. I feel like Randy Orton would be the most popular wrestler in the world if he never actually wrestled matches, he just had a 2-minute segment every week where he demonstrated a new fun way to RKO somebody. “Join us this week when Rey Mysterio tries a straight-ahead springboard headbutt with his arms at his sides, which is definitely a move he does when he’s NOT jumping into an RKO!”

How Is Nakamura Not Joining In On This Dance Break

Also on the show is Shinsuke Nakamura vs. R-Truth, which was pretty good while it lasted, but hurt by the dreadful response from the crowd. They were just not into it, dance break aside. I’m worried those dance breaks are gonna become like “what’s up,” where they’re fun at first, and then they just do it the exact same way over and over until it’s lost its shine. Still though, dance breaks are fun. How is Nakamura not dancing?

Anyway, Nakamura wins and wins strongly, which is something we need to see more of more often. The guy is SHINSUKE NAKAMURA for God’s sake, he’s the United States Champion, he shouldn’t only show up when you need a debuting star to beat someone important.

Best: Broo Day

Lastly and probably most importantly, we have the “trick or street fight” featuring the New Day dressing up as The Brood, music and all. I wish they’d upped the pyro budget to have them actually rise up in a ring of fire, but (1) I guess that’s evil vampire magic and letting New Day do it would break 20-year old kayfabe, and (2) the production guys with fake Halloween fire lying on the ground were pretty funny.

I’m a little sad that the gag didn’t go over better, but I guess most of the current audience has no idea who the Brood is or was. Actually wearing the Edge and Christian tights was a nice touch. I always appreciate New Day when they make these niche references for hardcore wrestling dorks instead of doing the broader, more crowd pleasing comedy. I’M A YOUNG OLD PERSON, EVERYTHING SHOULD BE FOR ME.

As for the match itself, these holiday-themed street fights are almost always fun. The only time they aren’t is when like, they’re devoted to making sure somebody smarks like (Damien Sandow, I’m looking in your direction) gets humiliated. I really enjoyed how they went through the trouble of picking a member of the New Day and a member of The Bar to compete, then remembered it was a street fight and everyone could get involved.

Also great:

Sheamus somehow being even whiter
if you’re dressing as the Dungeon of Doom you need to make it more obvious, and put Cesaro in some zebra makeup
Big E winning the match by blinding Cesaro with BLOOD SPIT

I know I ask for a lot in these columns, but Big E should retain the blood spit as part of his move set for absolutely no explainable reason, both because I want to see Big E vomiting blood in people’s faces as offense, and because there should never be a time in wrestling where SOMEBODY doesn’t use poison mist.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

JayBone2

Hardy going for the delete but Miz counters with ctrl z.

blacksnakemoan

Randy Orton is the reason they can’t do backstage trick-or-treat anymore…

Blade_222

Dillinger isn’t injured, he’s just refusing to wrestle in Georgia.

cyniclone

Carmella: I GOT A MAN
R-Truth: WHAT’S YOUR MAN GOT TO DO WITH ME
Carmella: I GOT A MAN
R-Truth: I’M NOT TRYING TO HEAR THAT SEE

The Real Birdman

Why didn’t Cesaro come dressed as Mordecai so we could get the WWE vampire feud we always wanted?

AddMayne

Joe: also, Wendy says to pick up some milk on the way home AJ

AJ Dusman

I guess it’s apropos…Joe becomes champion in a country where murder is encouraged.

troi

MIZ HAD NEXT!

Amaterasu’s Son

This crowd is as hot as the Arabian Desert!

Endy_Mion

AJ: I don’t mind going to Saudi Arabia, why if we head a bit north then I think we’ll hit Georgia!
Bryan: You mean the country right?
AJ: I have my flat maps and you have your… Spherical objects
Bryan: You know what GPS stands for right?
AJ: God’s Placement System?
Bryan: ahhhh

Wait, you thought there WASN'T going to be a #DanceBreak in this match? #SDLive @RonKillings @CarmellaWWE pic.twitter.com/4moNUlr3hF

— WWE Universe (@WWEUniverse) October 31, 2018

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. Think there will be a dance break at Crown Jewel?

Anyway, drop a comment below to let us know what you thought of the show, and share the column to help us out. Join us next week for (hopefully) a Raw and a Smackdown not burdened by all this crap.

WWE Smackdown Live

the new Super Smash Bros is weird

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: It was Halloween (almost), New Day showed up dressed like The Brood, and Daniel Bryan lost a WWE Championship match to AJ Styles so he wouldn’t have to do it in Saudi Arabia.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live’s 1,003rd episode for November 6, 2018.

Best: The Man Comes Around

We’ve spent the last however long squeeing with glee at how great Becky Lynch is, and how happy we are that she’s The Champ and The Man and having the most memorable matches on the best cards of the year, but every time I think of Becky Lynch vs. Ronda Rousey at Survivor Series I have to talk myself off a ledge. My brain is like, “no matter how good she is, Ronda Rousey is a protected settlement, there’s a better chance of Survivor Series ending with The Revival beating up D-Generation X and the Brothers of Destruction than with Becky beating Ronda.” And still, my heart says, “BUT BECKY.”

The promo on Smackdown was good, and the backstage version where she doesn’t have to speak in that weird WWE promo cadence for a big crowd to understand is even better. This feels like one of those CM Punk vs. The Rock situations where everything one guy’s saying is correct and everything the other’s saying is disconnected baby-talk horse shit, but it’s still going where you think it’s going. If we win the lottery, it’ll be some kind of non-finish.

All I can do is lend my voice and reach to open, loud-mouthed pessimism, so maybe it’ll be agreed with or at least parroted on the Internet enough for WWE to say, “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we swerved everybody and did what they think could never happen?”

WWE Smackdown Live

NEVERMIND THAT SHIT, HERE COMES NECKY

BEST: AYE NO WHO DEDDAH

Here’s the best news of the week: now that she’s done snitching on Johnny Failure for attacking Aleister Black, Nikki Cross is finally able to show up on Smackdown and join her Internationally Diverse Purge Pals. Like always, it’s one part “HOORAY, Nikki Cross got called up,” and one part, “OH NO, Nikki Cross got called up.” At least she’s on Smackdown, where she’ll be allowed to maintain some sort of character consistency and not just be one of 10 smiling or frowning women standing around the ring on Raw.

Anyway, the match was good for what it was, which was an introduction to Cross without taking anything away from The Man. It’s one of those random TV matches where you think, “wow, I wish this was happening on an NXT TakeOver.” If you’re me, that happens a lot. But hey, Nikki rules hard and has never really lived or died on wins and losses, and her being on Smackdown instantly gives Sanity a desperately needed boost. It’s weird that they weren’t all just called up together, and Sanity’s milquetoast-ass Smackdown run so far is a big indicator of how important Cross is to the group.

Somebody give Road Dogg (or whoever) a tape of the past year and a half of Nikki Cross in NXT so we can make sure she stays a weird Scottish feral informant cat, or whatever she is. Necky forever.

Best: A Show Of Matches You Wish Were Happening On Pay-Per-View

Aside from Cross vs. Lynch, holy crap, here’s Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas.

The general consensus is that the match was great while it lasted, and nearly everyone who watched wished they’d given it some kind of program and built it up to make their first one-on-one meeting really matter. “Who will get to be on the Survivor Series team in the hopes of winning nothing” isn’t really a story befitting these guys.

Still, the best thing that can happen to Almas right now is continuing to get paired with guys like Styles, Bryan, and Mysterio. Not only does he get to show off his undeniable in-ring skill, he does it alongside people WWE think matter, which can only be good for his rep. Besides, you aren’t going to beat WWE Rey Mysterio right now. Rusev could show up on his tank and Mysterio would just flop sideways until the tank was draped across the middle rope for a 619. You could walk up to Rey Mysterio and shoot him in the face with a pistol and the bullet would just reverse directions and hit you instead. The only reason he didn’t win the tournament at Crown Jewel is because that was an Elseworlds pay-per-view.

Also on the “wow, this is good, give me 10 more minutes of it” tip is something we’ve seen on pay-per-view plenty of times, but somehow not enough: The Usos vs. The New Day. The highlight of the match is all of it, but the thing you’ll remember is Kofi Kingston causing a major distraction using the Hanging Dick Wiggle.

WWE Smackdown Live

This brings up a broad, general Worst I need to just go ahead and type, even though I’m afraid I’ll have to type it at least twice a week every week until Survivor Series: these matches don’t matter.

Don’t get me wrong; the Mysterio match was to “prove” to Smackdown Survivor Series co-captain The Miz that Mysterio should be on his team, and New Day vs. Uce and Additional Uce was to see which team would captain the Smackdown tag team Survivor Series team, so there’s context that should make them matter, but … okay, let me put it this way. What does winning the Survivor Series match get you? Approval from your boss? Didn’t you already have that if you were on the team? And what does being “captain” of the team mean? That you get to pick the team? The Usos fought the New Day for the chance to captain the team, won, then put New Day on the team anyway. So what do Jimmy and Jey gain from being the captains in that scenario? Is their blue shirt brighter? Do they get a C patch on the breast?

It’s less a problem with Smackdown and more of an issue with how WWE builds these pay-per-view cycles, and how Survivor Series has become such a wishy-washy gimmick that there’s no consistency, and Raw is just fighting Smackdown for the rights to [gestures wildly]. They could at least bring back the goddamn Bragging Rights trophy. Give the show that wins the Survivor Series main event the #30 spot in the Royal Rumble, or “home field advantage” so their main event goes on last at WrestleMania or something. Literally anything. Raw’s been calling Smackdown the “b-show” for as long as I can remember, and nobody’s keeping track of cross-promotional wins and losses to prove or disprove it.

Worst: BEST IN THE WORLD

That leads us to the sweaty, increasingly pink elephant in the room: Shane McMahon, winner of the WWE World Cup tournament and the title of “best in the world” at Crown Jewel. That actually happened. Smackdown attempts to lampshade it by having Shane say, “I don’t think I’m the best in the world, that trophy belongs to Smackdown,” but yeah, no, you guys booked 48-year old non-wrestler Shane McMahon to pop in halfway through the final match of a tournament to win a blood money trophy that says he’s better than Rey Mysterio, Seth Rollins, Miz, Dolph Ziggler, and everybody else. I don’t now how many episodes of Glee you’ve watched, but pointing out what sucks about your show all the time doesn’t make that stuff suck less.

Shane ends up making Daniel Bryan and The Miz co-captains of the Smackdown Survivor Series team, saying they bring out the best in each other. They also have been feuding for eight years and are dramatically different people with confrontational personalities. Just once I want an authority figure to go into one of these matches valuing teamwork and cohesiveness over the dorky thrill of “can they co-exist??”

Also, Shane McMahon is on the team. He’s the best wrestler in the world, though, why WOULDN’T he be?

Miz and Bryan argue throughout the show for various reasons, and it all culminates after Samoa Joe defeats Jeff Hardy to claim the last spot on the team. It’s probably the least interesting match on the show, but is a make-good after that World Cup qualifier where Joe lost because his leg was made of spaghetti.

Joe wins, and because Joe is Joe, he wanders to the outside and puts his dick in Bryan’s face, Austin Aries-style. Bryan, who has never been very good at controlling his emotions, starts kicking Joe’s ass. Miz, who is somehow the babyface in all of this, gets mad at Bryan for attacking one of his Smackdown Survivor Series teammates. BUT CAN THEY CO-EXIST? Bryan goes after Miz, and when Shane McMahon tries to intervene, Bryan judo throws him and bails. Bryan should know better than to mess with Shane McMahon, modern-day Steve Blackman and clearly the best wrestler in WWE. The trophy says so.

So that’s the angle. Raw’s Survivor Series team is a bunch of people who hate each other, and Smackdown’s Survivor Series team is a bunch of people who hate each other. They should just divide them up by heel and face instead of “Raw and Smackdown” and tell a story that’s not “wait a minute, HE TURNED ON HIS TEAM AND CAUSED AN ELIMINATION!!” over and over.

Best: Absolution Is A Mystery

The women’s team build is a little better, with Paige announcing a team of three faces (Asuka, Naomi, and Carmella), one face who is actually a heel (Charlotte, who didn’t even show up), and one heel who is probably a face (Sonya Deville). Mandy Rose shows up wondering why she was left off the team, hands are thrown, and Deville and Rose continue their slow resolve to absolving Absolution. Honestly though, I don’t blame Mandy. Paige putting one of her old Absolution friends on the team but not both of them was a dick move. It’s not like Sonya’s won a ton of matches lately.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

AddMayne

NIKKI

THE ONE WE LIKE

Baron Von Raschke

Put Nikki Cross on Total Divas and tell her to stay in character the whole time. It would be amazing. You know it to be true.

The Real Birdman

Becky Lynch finally found a loophole in getting over in the women’s division in WWE: Say you’re a man

Push Almas. Then push him again

Mark Silletti

This weeks Raw is focusing on Steph, Brock and Alexa? Jesus, thanks for the warning, voice-over guy.

Bigsexy75

Meaningful women’s match on SD Live with nary a hint of a Bella or Charlotte? There’s your Evolution.

troi

Becky Lynch vs Nikki Cross in a Who Hates the English More match

Amaterasu’s Son

Wait. I just realized. Ronda just said she was raised only for this purpose.

Becky has called herself Becky Balboa.

Guys, This is Becky Balboa vs Ronda Drago.

Mr. Bliss

Kofi tried to hit the rearview….Uso got that move scouted in the biggest possible way

Blade_222, on watching Smackdown and election results simultaneously

Red v. Blue, same thing.

WWE Network

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. Note: NXT is the A-show, Smackdown is the B-show, and Raw is a blank sheet of paper with SEE ME AFTER CLASS written at the top in red pen.

Make sure to drop a comment below to let us know what you thought of the episode, pepper the comments with plenty of love for Nikki Cross, and share the column on social to help us out. See you next week, for more Raw vs. Smackdown, now with 100% fewer invasions!

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: NECKY CROSS showed up, finally, and made our week happier. The Usos became captains of the Smackdown tag team Survivor Series squad, Paige announced the women’s team, and Kofi Kingston caused a distraction by hanging from the top rope and wiggling his crotch.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live’s 1,004th episode (ARM BAR!) for November 13, 2018.

Worst In Real Life, Best On The Show: Street Fighting Man

Okay, so the first thing we’ve got to talk about this week is The Man. If for some reason you haven’t had access to the Internet in the past 48 hours and missed Smackdown completely, but were interested enough in Becky Lynch looking like Prince Zuko to click on the column, here’s what you need to know.

Monday’s episode of Raw ended with Smackdown’s women’s division placing Raw “under siege” and kicking the Raw women’s division’s asses. Lynch got punched in the face by Nia Jax and busted open but finished the brawl in style, causing everyone who likes wrestling to go !!!!. It was such a hot finish and moment that everyone was talking about it, and you had certain online fake fighting joke depositories saying Becky vs. Ronda Rousey should main-event Sunday’s Survivor Series show.

Then, in what felt like seconds after we published that column, a rumor broke that Becky had been pulled from Survivor Series due to a reported broken nose and a severe concussion. Smackdown ended up confirming that, upgrading the broken nose to a broken face.

So that brings us to Smackdown. The good news is that we didn’t get a worst case scenario; Becky Lynch’s injury ending her title run, Smackdown doing a quick title change to put someone else into the match with Ronda, and Lynch’s incredible and organic surge of popularity being ignored because a badly-timed injury inconvenienced creative. Some of our brains went there, because shit, we’ve seen it before. Instead, Becky’s still the Smackdown Women’s Champion — thank God — and simply chose her replacement for the match. That suggests she’ll be back in the ring sooner rather than later, and that the concussion is hopefully not bad enough to keep her sidelined or to get her repurposed in another role.

Becky chooses her replacement from a lineup of Smackdown women’s Superstars, and while the crowd clearly wanted to see Asuka vs. Rousey, Lynch went with an interesting choice: Charlotte Flair, the woman she just got finished turning on and literally beating into submission. They shared a tense handshake which turned into a hug, and while the meaning is clearly “Smackdown is banding together and these women are putting their differences aside for the greater good,” I hope it sticks, that Charlotte realizes she’s had her Manhood usurped, and that the Four Horsewomen of NXT are going to find their way onto the same side again whether my fantasy booking from Monday is completely shot or not.

And hey, more positives: if they’re hot-shotting the rumored WrestleMania 35 main event of Charlotte Flair vs. Ronda Rousey to Survivor Series, maybe Becky Lynch will be back in action in time to win the women’s Royal Rumble and choose to challenge Ronda in the main event instead. Like there’ll be a hotter program than this. And like The Man said, Ronda’s not the baddest bitch on the planet … she’s the luckiest. Cue Ben Folds.

Best: The IIconics During All Of This

WWE Smackdown Live

At least somebody cares about character consistency around here.

And Now, The Other Important Part Of This Episode

We opened up the show with AJ Styles bragging about his 371 days as WWE Champion, and how he’s been a workhorse who has taken on all comers, Rowdy Roddy Piper not included. He’s faced everyone who has wanted a shot. If you want the complete list, it’s Shinsuke Nakamura 40 times and Samoa Joe 40 times. Styles doesn’t realize the fatal CM Punk sin of mentioning how long you’ve held the championship, which ultimately means you’re reminding people how long you held it before you immediately drop it. He puts Daniel Bryan’s name in his mouth without respect, so D-Bry shows up and punches him in the face about it.

That leads to some backstage rabble rabble rabble and the announcement from Best Wrestler In The Entire World® Shane McMahon that Bryan’s off the Survivor Series team, will get a WWE Championship match against Styles right here tonight, and that baseball jerseys with jogging pants is what all cool adults wear to work. I inferred that last part.

Before we get to where that goes (aka, “the fireworks factory”), let’s see how Bryan being pulled from the team affects the rest of the show.

Worst: Cien Alma’s Goddamn Losing Streak Continues

I know it’s a good thing that Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas keeps getting put into matches with more important characters and doing a great job before losing, but shit, as a fan, it sucks. I don’t want to see this spectacularly beautiful, spectacularly talented man lose to everyone he wrestles, especially not when he’s clearly a step or ten ahead of them. Hardy vs. Almas is pretty good, but Almas might as well have put his hand up a Jeff Hardy puppet and wrestled that instead.

Backstage, a newly emboldened solo team captain The Miz decides he wants Jeff Hardy on the team, and that he specifically wants Jeff to replace Rey Mysterio. Miz hates Mysterio’s guts, because he’s exactly the kind of 1998 Chris Jericho deluded heel that hates a pure scrappy international babyface the most, but Paige won’t let him do swapsies. Apparently even though Bryan’s no longer on the team, his picks for the team remain. I can see Miz’s point here, which is a thing I type a lot. Paige is like, “Paige here, you will face Rey in a match and if Rey beats you, he gets to stay on the team.” Miz agrees to this like a fool, not remembering that WWE Rey Mysterio has an overall rating of 100 and all the cheat codes turned on.

Best, Even Though: Mizterio

Miz is the perfect opponent for an older, WWE-style Rey Mysterio because he works a completely basic heel style without any flourishes, allowing for Rey’s offense to really pop and look amazing. Again, it’s like Mysterio’s matches with Jericho. Jericho could do some big time stuff, but usually kept it to rest holds and signature moves and dickbag heel moves to make Rey look special. As long as Rey doesn’t trust Miz to catch him on any dives to the outside, we’re golden.

Mysterio wins, because of course he does, and even has enough left in the tank to see a Randy Orton RKO From Outta Nowhere coming and avoid it. You’d think people would’ve learned that if Randy Orton’s feuding with them, he’s going to try to snake his ass in when you’re done wrestling and try to faceplant you. When you beat someone, you should just wrap your arms around your head, fall to the ground, and roll out of the ring. I’d also recommend this if you’re backstage and walking by any flat surfaces, like a wooden palette, or the hood of a car.

BEST FOREVER LOOK I’M DANCING: HEEL-ASS AMERICAN DRAGON BRYAN DANIELSON, WWE CHAMPION

AND NOW WE REACH THE PART OF THE COLUMN IN WHICH I TYPE IN CAPITAL LETTERS. WWE DID FOUR (4) WONDERFUL THINGS IN ONE SEGMENT HERE, AND I AM THE HAPPIEST BOY IN THE LAND.

they ended AJ Styles’ WWE Championship run, which has lasted for over a year and hasn’t produced anything better than, “the match was good, but the finish made me feel like an idiot for watching wrestling”
they put the WWE Championship back on Daniel Bryan, which is such a good thing it makes me internally travel back in time and hug myself while I’m watching Bryan announce his retirement. I wish I could go back and tell sad younger Brandon that everything’s going to be okay, and that hyperbolic pessimism is only appropriate 99% of the time instead of 100
they TURNED BRYAN HEEL during the finish, which is the most wonderful news. Bryan is a great babyface, but I fell in love with him as a wrestler and a personality as a heel. The reason the whole “yes” chanting thing caught on was because he was such an infectiously wonderful heel. His ROH title run is one of the greatest times I’ve ever had as a life-long wrestling fan. It means Bryan gets to have a personality again, doesn’t have to be the dopey husband in any more wife-themed mixed tags, doesn’t have to be everyone’s punching bag anymore, can tone down his style a little more to be healthy and happy without being “boring” (because his heel wrestling style is a billion times more entertaining to me than the running dropkicks and World Famous It Kicks), and God, if he cuts his hair and shaves off his beard I will sing Hallelujah
it instantly fixed a match for Survivor Series, making up for the lack of The Man kicking Ronnie’s ass by giving me a fantasy booked thing I’ve been trying to see for like half a decade:

WWE Smackdown Live

Technically they did five great things, if you count “Daniel Bryan realizing that Styles’ greatest weakness is the balls, because he watched literally any of those Nakamura matches.” He should’ve Yes Locked his balls.

Yeah yeah, it’ll probably be an underwhelming squash, but Brock vs. Styles from last year’s show was really good. Maybe this will be even better. I don’t expect Bryan to beat him, but I’m going to be in the crowd losing my goddamn mind willing him on to win anyway. SO MUCH IS HAPPENING ON THIS SMACKDOWN, I DON’T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE IT.

Oh man, are we going to have The Miz WANT a match with Bryan now, but not be able to get one? Are we going to let The Miz win the Royal Rumble and challenge Bryan for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania? Is everything working out? I swear, WWE is never better than when someone gets injured or sick and they have to book everything on the fly. They go from monkeys with typewriters to fucking Toni Morrison if they don’t have any time to change their minds.

Also On This Episode

The Usos know that the Raw tag team division is the most embarrassing thing in the world right now and that they could beat all 10 of Raw’s tag guys by themselves, so they fill out their Survivor Series squad with the Good Brothers, Sanity, and, of all people, Primo and Epico. Sure! If Jimmy and Jey and the New Day can’t beat the worst version of The Revival and eight comedy jobbers as a team, logic and reason have failed us.

Speaking of The New Day, they have a fun placeholder six-man tag against The Big Show and The Bar. I say “placeholder” because it’s one of those matches WWE does where Big Show’s getting pushed again, so instead of being an easy-to-defeat lummox, he throws one (1) punch and kills anything that moves. Here, Kofi Kingston goes through so much trouble to jump around on the ropes and bounce himself face-first into Show’s extended arm that I’m not even sure Show had to be there. I love me some Big Show — Dungeon of Doom ride or die — but he’s more of a hindrance than a help to these Bar vs. New Day matches. He slows it down and nerfs the energy a little too much. It’s like trying to win a motocross race in a Winnebago.

Finally we have a promo from [checks notes] United States Champion? [checks notes] Shinsuke Nakamura? as he heads into his champion vs. champion match against Seth Rollins at Survivor Series. Nakamura’s always pretty funny, and his “why didn’t you introduce me” gag is great, but there’s a special place in Hell for wrestling fans that “what” chant people with foreign accents. Actually, let me rephrase that: there is a dedicated place in actual Christian Hell for wrestling fans that do “what” chants for any reason in 2018. Or any year this decade.

If Nakamura vs. Rollins delivers on the level it could, Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey already had a WrestleMania main event-style match in mind, and Brock Lesnar shows up with his Jimmy John’s-branded working boots on, Survivor Series could kick a lot of ass. To optimism, and beyond!

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

WillMoPena

Nakamura’s in the back like “wtf, I tried that shit 8 times”

RealBDC

“If you fight for your dreams, your dreams will fight for you. And if that doesn’t work, kick someone in the nards.”

troi

In one of her matches in Japan Asuka countered a Pele kick into an ankle lock and I really want to see somebody do that to Aj Styles.

DenseMan1

Regarding that country music American Idol show they keep pushing, I’m going to spoil it by saying the white person wins.

JayBone2

The Smackdown Penitentiary. So THAT’S why most of their tag team division has been stuck in the hole.

The Real Birdman

She should pick Holly Holm

At some point tonight, I need Raw to try to invade SDL only to find in the back an Apocalypse Now situation with everyone bowing down before Becky Lynch still covered in dried blood from last night

Endy_Mion

Becky whispers: And with the Judas kiss, I seal your fate.
Charlotte: What?
Becky: Oh, good luck Charly! Go get her.

Brocky

Graves: Then champion Jinder Mahal defended against AJ Styles

The dream has no memory of that

Baron Von Raschke

If Nakamura doesn’t wear a tactical vest and enter through the crowd for his match with Rollins on Sunday, what are we even doing here?

WWE Smackdown Live

Let is sink in one more time. SHAVE YOUR HEAD, DANIEL.

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. Certainly a lot to talk about, so drop down into the comments and let us know what you thought of the show. Share the column around to help us out as we head into The Biggest Party Of The Autumn, and make sure you’re here for the festivities. We’ve got Dream vs. Ciampa and Bryan vs. Lesnar in the same weekend now.

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Raw swept Smackdown at Survivor Series, unless you know how to count. Daniel Bryan did better than anyone expected against Brock Lesnar, and Smackdown women’s division interim representative Charlotte Flair took Ronda Rousey to school.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live’s 1,005th episode for November 20, 2018.

Best: Flair And Present Danger

Coming out of a Survivor Series that (for whatever reason) firmly established Smackdown Live as the B-show, the most important narrative the show needed to carry forward was that Charlotte Flair has lost her goddamn sugar and will beat the hell out of you for little to no reason. Flair’s epic beatdown of Rousey has her in a particularly Flair-like mindset, so she opens the show throwing out challenges and making figurative wanking gestures at Paige’s $100,000 referee endangerment fine.

Her response is answered by a pair of precious treasures:

WWE Smackdown Live

hello, McFly

After Sunday, walking up to Charlotte Flair and making fun of her to her face is kinda like throwing yourself into an active volcano, so the interruption sets up not just Charlotte vs. Billie Kay, but Charlotte vs. both members of the IIconics in back-to-back 3-minute squashes.

While the fan in me is pretty disheartened to see them basically lose a handicap match, try to get their heat back with a post-matches 2-on-1 attack, then lose again, at least they got to be funny for a second. That’s better than The Revival gets. Peyton’s “I don’t know” face after Charlotte challenged her to keep the fight going was great, and I suppose if you need to feed two members of your women’s division to your new tall and muscular fury monster, you may as well send in the low-level social outcasts.

Charlotte as the Incredible Hulk is really only going to work if she ends up the muscle in a functional Four Horsewomen faction, and understands that right now she’s more the Arn Anderson than the Ric Flair. Sasha Banks is definitely the Tully Blanchard. Bayley’s Sting, as always, during that transition period between “not trusting the Four Horsemen” and “trusting them anyway against all logic and about to get turned on.”

Best/Worst: Thanksgrieving

If you ever wanted to see a match end with someone jamming their hand up a cooked turkey and knocking out their opponent with it, here’s the Thanksgiving Feast Fight featuring New Day and The Bar. Other highlights include Xavier Woods’ 6-1 shirt (never forget), Kofi Kingston catching a lobbed turkey carcass and using it as a weapon from the top rope to the floor, and Big E kicking the wrong rope to knock Big Show off the ring apron but it somehow working anyway.

WWE Smackdown Live

I’d say that was Big Show’s most embarrassing fall ever, but I remember him falling off the roof of Cabo Hall after using an exploding monster truck sumo battle to set up Hulk Hogan getting butt-fucked by a Himalayan ice mummy. So, you know, turkey punches aren’t that big of a deal.

I’d also be more upset about the finish being Cesaro being hit in the face with food for five minutes and how embarrassing that feels for a guy who should be a multiple-time WWE Champion already, but I saw him lose to a 10-year old at WrestleMania, so again, shit could be worse. As always, I wish WWE did these kinds of matches for every holiday. I want to see Bray Wyatt defeat someone in an ARBORING VIOLENCE match.

The Miz Should Not Presume To Be As Good Of A Wrestler As Shane McMahon

In other tag team news, the Bryant Brothers,, “Wayne and Dane,” get a surprise tag team victory over the best wrestler in the world, Shane McMahon, and also The Miz. I can’t even assign an emotional response to this one, because its quality varies on how much you want to see Mike goddamn Mizanin stooge in the shadow of Shane McMahon and then get pinned by the world’s tiniest man to make him look even stupider.

If you’re wondering, the Bryants are Keita Murray (who you may have seen getting squashed by Lars Sullivan before NXT TakeOver: War Games, if you were in the crowd), and “The Fly” Eil Everfly. Eli usually tags with Delilah Doom, who you saw on Raw laughing at Drake Maverick for pissing himself, and with no disrespect meant to Murray I cannot BEGIN to explain how much I wish this was Doom Fly vs. Miz and Shane McMahon. I want to be able to say that match happened.

Fewer Shane McMahon plot lines, please. Can he and Stephanie go into hibernation for like five years? Also, the Bryant Brothers could go to Raw and dominate the tag team division right now.

Absolute Miscommunication

The Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville breakup continues moving at a glacial pace, as Mandy’s basically gotten in Sonya’s face and said “I WANT TO STOP TAGGING WITH YOU AND START FEUDING WITH YOU” like three times already and they’re still in “hapless miscommunication” mode. Here, they take a loss to Asuka and Naomi because they can’t co-exist. But can they co-exist??

I’m all for a Sonya Deville face turn, especially if it gets her into some good matches with Shayna Baszler on Smackdown at any point over the next year or so, but go ahead and pull the trigger on this, guys. Nobody’s clinging to that Absolution fandom.

Best: Vennern Storylines

You know what’s nice, in a world of sports-entertainment built around us falling in love with NXT stars and watching them succeed only to be gutted and reformed as placeholder jobbers on the main roster? Seeing a feud like Randy Orton vs. Jeff Hardy or Randy Orton vs. Rey Mysterio, where the issue is between veterans who have a problem with one another. It’s one of the only times where WWE’s main roster doesn’t feel like a weird stress evaluation test where you desperately want new characters to get over, and they’re always in the PROCESS of getting over, and they’re always getting PUT over, but nobody ever gets over. Does that make sense? It’s like you’re always on step 5 of a 10-step process to making someone a start. Braun Strowman’s gotten up to 7 or 8 only to immediately get knocked back to step 3 at least twice now.

What I’m getting at is while I don’t love Randy Orton matches, I like how he uses his presence to move feuds forward. He’s like the opposite of Cena in that way. Cena will shit all over the build with his goofy nonsense and impenetrably annoying character, then the blow off match will be surprisingly good. Orton will make the build exciting, and shit the bed in the match. So while I’m not looking forward to Orton vs. Mysterio really going anywhere or ending, it’s fun to see him be the king-shit of asshole mountain and drag the Little Big Man around by his face. Plus, we’re going to stop buying Rey Mysterio as an “underdog” if he can just cruise through every challenge.

They should do a luchas de apuestas at TLC where if Orton wins he gets Mysterio’s mask, and if Mysterio wins, Orton has to wear pants for the rest of his career.

Best: The Old Daniel Can’t Come To The Phone Right Now. Why? Oh, ‘Cause He’s Dead!

Finally we’re introduced to The New Daniel Bryan®, created via meditation in a hyberbaric chamber to fight for his dreams and kill the Yes Movement that you people loved so much. If you want to talk about long-term booking, it all started with a tweet from 2017:

just heard about the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. VERY interested

— Daniel Bryan (@WWEDanielBryan) March 27, 2017

This is a truly great promo, as Bryan’s new interpretation of himself is somewhere between Best in the World at What He Does Chris Jericho, and Dude Love heel turn Mick Foley. He doesn’t think the fans actually care about him, they just cared about the story and “the moment,” and weren’t there for him while he was struggling. It’s the psychosis of a workhorse who took forever and did every step of a recovery to get back what he wanted, only to realize he was the only one fighting. Nobody had his back. They just put him in new places, gave him TV shows, made him general manager. Nobody believed in him like he believed in him, so why should he go out of his way to rely on us?

My favorite Bryan has always been confident heel Bryan, where his incredible skill and elitist personality get to really shine. Ring of Honor World Champion Bryan Danielson was a guy who was so good at basic wrestling fundamentals he could take on the most impressive and threatening athletes in the world and beat them with arm bars and small packages. The original “Yes” movement came from this self-obsession, as Bryan started doing it after winning Money in the Bank, claiming he was going to wait and announce his cash-in like a respectable babyface, then saw and took a cheap opportunity to cash in anyway … only to constantly, loudly praise himself for making the right decision. That’s what’s so amazing about babyface Daniel Bryan; his character has never really been a “good person.” He’s a rage-fueled, casually-deluded wrestling master who got told he wasn’t good enough so many times he started internalizing it and channeling it through boastful displays of skill and tenacity. He’s not valiant, he’s stubborn. It’s not that he has “heart,” it’s that his brain is so singularly focused that it won’t let the rest of him give up.

It’s not that he was rewarded with a comeback because he’s a good person who worked hard; he’s back and WWE Champion because his indignant nature and need to be in control Weekend at Bernie’s‘d him out of that chamber and into the ring. Why do you think he was always screaming “yes” and “no,” and wouldn’t even give his tag team partner credit for being half of the Tag Team Champions? He wanted to be both halves.

WWE Smackdown Live

All hail The New Daniel Bryan, the scumbag we all accidentally learned to love.

P.S. if the “yes movement is dead,” you might wanna get some sideplates that don’t say YES YES YES YES YES on them.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

AwkwardL0ser

Charlotte is the “Whoot, There it Is!” to Becky’s “Whoomp! (There It Is)“

Blade_222

Orton should get on the mic and remind everyone that Eddie is in Hell.

Mark Silletti

listen i dont know what your goal is here, vincent, but i have cried too many times over daniel bryan’s journey of injury and retirement and healing and returning and winning back the title he never lost. i am not gonna boo this man.

Clay Quartermain

I want to see a Talking Smack with this version of Daniel Bryan interviewing people

Harry Longabaugh

If they put McIntyre in this match, we could’ve had Scot Pilgrim. Come on, writers! Give me that!

AddMayne

So his motivation really is “You’re just jealous”

He’s spent too much time around the Bellas

LUNI_TUNZ

Bryan: “As these idiots chant AJ Styles.”
Idiots: “Daniel Bryan!”
Bryan: “Hmm, it appears I was wrong. My mistake.”

Martin Morrow

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 12 YEARS OUTSIDE OF 3 WEEKS AGO LIKE WE JUST SHOWED YOU, ORTON VS MYSTERIO LIVE!

Clay Quartermain

More commercials need a closed caption window of Peyton giving facial reactions

Beerguyrob

Just waiting for the Big Show to turn on The Bar if Sheamus tries tossing that stuffing.

WWE Smackdown Live

That’s it for Smackdown. Thanks for reading, and for being here with us all week for Survivor Series. You helped make it one of our biggest weeks ever, and we appreciate that. Drop down into the comments to let us know what you thought of the show (and what you’re doing for American Thanksgiving), and share the column on social. We’ll give you thanks.

WWE Smackdown Live

Matt Smith in the role of his career

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: The old Daniel Bryan “died,” the IIconics got murdered by Charlotte Flair, and Cesaro got hit in the face with a bunch of Thanksgiving food. Also, Shane McMahon is still the best wrestler in the world.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live’s 1,006th episode for November 27, 2018.

Best: Man, I Feel Like A Woman(‘s Battle Royal)

Opening this week’s show is The Man, Becky Lynch, getting into it with a newly rage-empowered Charlotte Flair, rewriting the past couple of weeks of story development, and setting up Flair vs. Lynch for the Smackdown Women’s Championship at TLC. I would be madder about them going from “Becky Lynch chooses Charlotte and asks her to fight Ronda for her, Charlotte agrees and whips Ronda’s ass” hugging to “Becky thinks Charlotte sucks for not beating up Ronda enough and didn’t want her to wrestle in her place” promo bickering, but Lynch’s new Twitter bio makes up for a lot of it.

With the match made, the champion, challenger, and only properly functioning authority figure on the WWE main roster are interrupted by a shoulder-to-shoulder collection of Smackdown’s B-team heels. Huge -1 to Smackdown for having Mandy Rose talk for her team instead of the IIconics, but it is what it is. Mandy asks Paige why she ditched Absolution and decided to give non-stop opportunities to her old Team PCB friends, which gets back that subtracted one for referencing Actual Recent WWE History.

They get interrupted by a similar shoulder-to-shoulder collective of Smackdown babyfaces, and Naomi tries her best to get over with the crowd while they all chant “Asuka.” With ten women on her case and no Baron Corbin in sight to focus the entire first hour of Smackdown on, Paige sets up a women’s battle royal, with the winner moving on to TLC to be the third wheel in a Becky vs. Charlotte championship match.

Three good things come from this:

a battle royal, which I almost always love, even when it’s a complete waste of time
ASUKA getting a win and moving on to the championship match, giving us Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka for the women’s championship, a match you’d have to try really hard to not want to see
by adding Asuka to the match, you allow Becky to lose the Smackdown Women’s Championship without actually “losing” it. That allows you to transfer the championship to Asuka or (probably more likely) Flair, which clears up a completely healed-up Man to win the women’s Royal Rumble and challenge Ronda Rousey for the Raw Women’s Championship in the main event of Wrestle goddamn Mania

Let’s hope that’s what they’re actually doing, and not, like, having Becky roll up Asuka to win the match to give Charlotte a reason to think Becky is a cowardly heel or whatever. You know they’ve at least thought about it.

Best: Mike Mizanin, Trophy Wife

WWE Smackdown Live

My favorite development of the week is the reveal that Big E apparently carries around an 8×10 of Kairi Sane in his sparkling sleeveless ring cloak at all times, and that The Miz finally gave him a reason to display it. I just wish Miz had reached into his golden Serpentor gown and pulled out an 8×10 of Shayna Baszler to counter it.

Heel The Miz loses to the Damned Numbers Game® of The New Day and their constant interference, because they’re “advancing the sport” and using New Day House Rules, which state they can wrestle singles matches 3-on-1. It’s new and exciting! It’s also not true, they’re just a pack of goofy dorks and at least Smackdown isn’t trying to convince us you and your friend beating up once person together makes you a hero.

This all sets up one of the funniest and most existentially confusing bits of the show, in which The Miz confronts Shane McMahon about not being a good tag team partner and backing him up (even though Shane clearly doesn’t give a shit about him), then turns it into a weird plot about how he and Shane are the parents of the Best in the World blood money trophy and that its dad (Shane, I guess?) is a deadbeat.

Like the Dean Ambrose story on Raw that plays as “he’s a heel so he HATES these fans” but should play as “a broken man is further broken by his friend’s sudden leukemia diagnosis and is suddenly paranoid about getting sick himself and is self-sabotaging by lashing out at everything good in his life,” this story that plays as “Miz is delusional and Shane’s too cool for him” could/should play as, “the birth of the Miz’s daughter fundamentally changed him as a human being, and even though he’s naturally a hateful narcissist, he’s progressively more and more human, and he doesn’t know how to deal with these feelings of separation from his family every week.” He got used to Maryse being there, and then when Monroe showed up she couldn’t be there all the time, and he’s treating every accomplishment or goal like it’s fatherhood.

He’s probably just a delusional heel who should get beaten up by Shane 18 weeks in a row.

The Usos Have Pinned The Smackdown Tag Team Champions!

The best match of the night is the Usos vs. The Bar, which proves that even basic tag team wrestling with a “blank has pinned the blank champion” finish is light years better than Raw’s pee-pee poo-poo. This feels like it only happened to set up The Usos getting a tag title shot at TLC, which could’ve been skipped completely by saying “The Usos won that Survivor Series match so they get a title shot.” But I guess they don’t want to remind you about that match, other than to say it “didn’t count.” Harsh.

I think the Usos are the best guys in wrestling at mapping out the final 2-3 minutes of a tag team match. No matter how good or bad the actual match is, Usos matches almost always seem to end with something at least mildly exciting or interesting. None of those finishes being pancake based helps a lot. Frankly, I’d be happy to see the Usos take the titles at TLC and end The Bar permanently, if only to give us the empty, hopeful promise of CESARO: SINGLES STAR heading into the only time a year when WWE’s main roster creative seems to try.

Worst: Announcing A Match, Then Not Doing A Match To Set Up The Same Match

If you saw Starrcade (which basically nobody did), Rusev made the save for Rey Mysterio during an attack from The Miz and Shinsuke Nakamura, setting up a tag team match (holler holler). It also set up this United States Championship match for Rusev on Smackdown.

Instead of doing that match, Smackdown weirdly booked itself into a corner. It wants to do the match at TLC, or more likely on the TLC pre-show, but they don’t know how to build feuds without having the challenger pin the champion to set up a championship match. See also: The Usos vs. The Bar. So what they do is have Nakamura just attack Rusev before the match, causing it to be called off. And the expectation is that fans will want to see what happens when Rusev actually gets a chance to compete against Nakamura, even though we just saw Nak jump him and kick the shit out of him like it was nothing.

Eh, I’d rather see this than another 45 minutes of Constable Corbin.

Best: AJ Styles Lives In A Glass House, But Doesn’t Throw Stones

AJ Styles’ promo for his upcoming rematch with Daniel Bryan at TLC was fine, but I wanted to point out how much I love him breezing past Bryan kicking in the nuts. That’s been Styles’ entire career since going to Smackdown, from the ongoing saga of Shinsuke Nakamura vs. a Georgian nutsack to D-Bry’s low-blow championship win. Styles is like, “I GET YA DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO WIN THE TITLE, I’M MADDER ABOUT THE KICKS TO THE FACE.” Because never forget, this is how Styles won the WWE Championship in the first place back at Backlash ’16:

WWE Network

He’s a man who knows he’s got a certain amount of karma coming back his way.

Randy Orton Never Bothered

no shit

Randy Orton’s ongoing quest to destroy WWE’s biggest and brightest heroes from 2003 continues this week with another attack on Rey Mysterio. He explains in great Randy Orton-esque detail that he never understood the cultural significance of a luchador’s mask because he didn’t care and never bothered to learn about it, which … well, points for honesty, I guess. He just wants to embarrass and humiliate him. Now that he knows how important the mask is, he can use it as another weapon in his psychological and falling-headlock war against WWE Do-Goodery. Rey catches a chair to the throat here, which will only leave him at about 99% for a match.

My only real complaint here is that they’re clearly building up to an “if Rey loses the match, he loses his mask” stipulation, and Orton has nothing to put on the line. What’s he gonna do, shave off the landing strip on his head? He’s only got a few weeks to grow one of those John Cena anchorman hairdos so he can apuestas the luchas.

Best: Samoa Joe Remembers TNA

Finally we have the celebration for the 20th anniversary of Jeff Hardy in WWE, a place where he didn’t work from 2003-2006, and again from 2009 until 2017.

The highlight is, of course, Samoa Joe showing up to remind Jeff Hardy that he’s let down his fans as much as he’s raised them up, possibly because he also was hanging out in TNA for Victory Road 2011. It really made me wish CM Punk was still around to be Samoa Joe’s friend here.

And on another positive note, bless Smackdown Live for at least attempting to give its babyface characters some stability and edge. On Raw, every face is a loser geek. On Smackdown, you’ve got Styles acknowledging his shortcomings and throwing out challenges, Hardy standing up for himself here and challenging Joe to a fight, and Rey Mysterio at least showing up to take another ass-kicking from Orton. It’s not uniformly successful, but it beats the hell out of Finn Bálor smiling into the middle distance until it’s time for someone to beat him down, or Bayley and Sasha Banks having to go to couples therapy for getting mad at each other.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Brute Farce

Coulda used about 5-10 more minutes of Asuka/Deville.

Tall Tyrion Lannister

ABC at TLC

The Real Birdman

Becky’ll take em both, she’s hardcore!

Baron Von Raschke

Becky gets in there, throws all of them out of the ring, grabs a mic, and says, “It just you and me, Charlotte!”

Redshirt

(cut to Paige with a broken hand and a TV monitor with a fist-sized hole in it after watching Rey Mysterio fight in a neck brace)

LUNI_TUNZ

“You see, Rey wore a mask, a mask is used to hide one’s identity, and when one hides one’s identity, one hides their true heart. What I have done is help to expose Rey’s heart, but not in the surgical sense, as I am not a surgeon, and if I were to do that, that would be murder, and I am no murderer, despite what you may have heard, no I merely want Mysterio – both his heart and identity – to be open to one and all. It is then and only then will we get to know the true Rey Mysterio Jr.” – Randy Orton

Bigsexy75

Silly Graves… Philips keeps his love for Marine 6 on the low. He’s a Sub-Mariner.

Ryse

Jeff: I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.
*Joe’s music plays*
Jeff: Oh, it’s pain.

Blade_222

Jeff Hardy is also 6ix9ine and will be going to jail.

Mr. Bliss

The Saudi Prince just called Vince to ask why he didn’t send all of those Jeff Hardys to compete at Crown Jewel.

WWE Smackdown Live

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown Live column. Make sure to drop down into the comments section to let us know what you thought of the show, and share us on social if you’re more of a Paige than a Shane McMahon.

Join us again next week for Randy Orton putting on a Psicosis mask and driving over Rey on a riding lawnmower.

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: A battle royal determined a new number two contender for a Smackdown Women’s Championship match already happening, The Miz took familial ownership over Shane McMahon’s blood money trophy, and Randy Orton shockingly revealed that he doesn’t give a shit about wrestling history and never bothered to learn it.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live’s 1,007th episode (how long am I going to do this bit) for December 4, 2018.

Worst Best: The Contract Signing

This is a relative “Worst” and not a complete condemnation of Smackdown’s opening segment, I just didn’t enjoy it for a variety of little nit-picky reasons. The most egregious is Becky Lynch’s character, and how she’s been overshadowed on the microphone by Charlotte Flair (of all people) two weeks in a row. It’s not that Becky’s doing a bad job; it’s the opposite, really. Becky Lynch is great on the microphone, but the way WWE creative writers her character makes her seem like she’s detached from her own agency as a performer. Like, Charlotte is able to talk over her here and tell her to shut up without any heated response or ramifications. Becky’s just like, “yeah yeah, additional talking points.” Can you imagine Stone Cold Steve Austin talking on a live mic at the beginning of a show, someone telling him to shut up to his face, and him just going “yeah yeah, okay, whatever” and letting them cut the promo? He would’ve punched them in their face. Or, you know, kicked them in the stomach and sat down really fast with their face on his shoulder.

I think the other characters are more on point. Charlotte’s got a second wind following that glorious beatdown of Ronda Rousey at Survivor Series and is finally carrying herself with the believable confidence of a true Flair. Asuka screaming at people in Japanese always works. Maybe I’m just too worried about Becky Lynch losing that incredible momentum she developed due to WWE creative not knowing where to go with her next, and I wish they’d let her just write her own shit, because if we could get Twitter Becky Lynch on WWE TV all the time, nobody could take her. “Not caring” isn’t how anti-heroes work. They break the boundaries of traditional heroism because they care way the hell too much.

And because it’s a segment on WWE television in the 2010s, it’s only happening to set up an impromptu tag match. Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville interrupt — I’m not sure what to make of their on-again off-again relationship, or even know if I’m supposed to be paying attention or caring — and end up in a match against Charlotte and Asuka. Becky Lynch ends up sitting on commentary, arguably making her the fifth most important person in the segment.

Rose and Deville get a big win thanks to, you know, Charlotte and Asuka being upcoming pay-per-view opponents who Can’t Co-Exist, leading to them hitting each other. Again though, this is lazy but comparatively fine, as Raw would’ve had Paige join Mandy and Sonya’s team and say 3-on-2 is fair because it’s being contested under “Absolution Rules.” And Mandy Rose would’ve gotten rolled up after peeing herself.

Best: Someone Remembered That Cesaro Is Amazing

Up next is Jey Uso vs. Xavier Woods vs. Cesaro, which advances the Usos’ claim to another Smackdown Tag Team Championship match and brings back something that’s been missing from WWE TV lately: casual, constant reminders that Tony Cesaro is the strongest and most inhumanly wonderful wrestler in the world. Please enjoy him breaking out the “airplane swing,” aka giantly swinging Uce while simultaneously airplane-spinning woods.

WWE Smackdown Live

I know we reference the insanity of Cesaro never being WWE Champion fairly often and keep wishing him into blockbuster singles runs, but man, it’d be nice just to give him a spotlight like this every now and then and not let him “being a heel” get in the way of his physical and professional peak as a performer. What, you wanna wait until he’s 45 to finally push him? Maybe he can feud with 60-year old “up and comer” Bobby Roode.

Best: THEY WORK HARD FOR THE CHICKENS

Speaking of talented physical monsters who need more love than they get, here’s Rusev corpsing Lana like three different times by comparing his body parts to food, and saying he’s going to fest on Shinsuke Nakamura. If you’re keeping score at home, his pecs are like wine barrels, and his traps are like “double-decker tacos supreme.” Also his bicep is bigger than Mount Fuji, which is not food, but is great.

The U.S. Championship scene on Smackdown is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to talent and likable characters, and I don’t think even the better weekly show realizes it. Imagine a division where Nakamura’s actually getting to be the Nakamura we knew and loved, AJ Styles was lingering around doing something other than I LUV MAH FAM’LY over and over, Samoa Joe wasn’t losing all the time, Cesaro was tearing through everyone, Rusev was riding in on a tank, and so on. They could clear up some room in the weirdly stale WWE Championship scene and do something really special just underneath. Eh, it’s still pretty good.

Also, Jon Stewart Is Here

WWE Network

He’s hosting Tribute to the Troops. I hope they keep him around for the next Saudi show, just to see if John Oliver still calls them out about it.

Best: Samoa Joe Dares To Resist Drugs And Alcohol

If you’re eight years old, you probably loved seeing Jeff Hardy and Randy Orton go through the motions of another tired but technically good wrestling match. I think everyone who watches the shows weekly is done seeing this match, but it’s two vets who know what they’re doing, doing what they know. It’s good for what it is.

The money here, however, is the fantastic assholery of Samoa Joe, who uses the same DIY spirit he used to make a storybook full of professional illustrations to insult AJ Styles’ family to film a PSA about moderation from a local bar, because Jeff Hardy’s had addiction issues his entire life and Joe’s the worst person in the world. Well, at least while Kevin Owens is injured. Joe pops in to distract Hardy with a condescending message, which honestly shouldn’t really affect a guy who shows up to work every week in 1997 Gadzooks pants with his face painted like a Papa Smurf acid trip, but here we are. Orton wins with an RKO, because of course he does.

Best: The Miz Thinks The World Cup Trophy Has Ears

Miz interrupts Shane McMahon’s intense weekly job of standing near a trophy he got for entering a murderer’s fantasy booked international tournament halfway through the finals and texting to ask why he’s interviewing a guy he hates on his talk show. Shane, who is still by record and definition the Best In The World, says he’s hosting it because it’s Miz TV and his name is Miz. Good one, Race Bannon.

After some prodding, Shane mentions that it’s a good idea for the guy who hates Daniel Bryan more than anyone in the world to do some investigative reporting and get some answers regarding his recent personality change, and Miz agrees, saying Shane owes him. When Shane says he doesn’t owe him anything, because he’s one of those garbage monsters from Fraggle Rock, Miz covers his trophy child’s ears. Which apparently the trophy has. THE HANDLES ARE THE EARS.

WWE Network

Really wouldn’t hate it if TLC ended with Miz and Bryan teaming up to shit-kick the Linda of Vince’s kids and his flat Earth frenemy.

Best: I’m Daniel Bryan, I Speak For The Trees

As for The New Daniel Bryan … holy shit, is he great. I wanted him to shave his head and beard and go back to being Ring of Honor American Dragon Bryan Danielson for a bit, but I’m all-in on him being an ultimate mash-up of Daniel Bryan, Kurt Cobain, and CJ Parker.

Bryan is now the top heel in the company because he cares about the environment, which is perfect for a company that went to Saudi Arabia after a Washington Post journalist got hacked to death with a bonesaw “because business” and gave George Bush a 10-bell salute at the beginning of Raw. Linda McMahon’s part of the Trump administration, so OF COURSE the worst person they could imagine is a little liberal-ass motherfucker who wears comfortable clothes and shades “real America” for not recycling or caring about climate change. It also allows those of us with basic interpretations of fact-checking and compassion to root for him, even if he’s calling us stupid all the time. Because guess what? We are super stupid. Not only that, but he kills the “what” chant by mentioning that fans are doing a stupid thing from 20 years ago. HEADSHOT.

I also love that it allows Bryan to remain at odds with his blood rival The Miz, who is easily the most society-obsessed and consumerist dude on the roster. Miz is the guy who WANTS to be on the red carpet and do talk shows all the time, and shows up to work every week in a sparkly Naruto headband. He’d hate the grungy little holier-than-thou know-it-all, and really the only difference in Bryan’s character is that he’s speaking out about the shit he cares about. If you’re going to make everyone a heel, at least do what Smackdown’s doing and give them enough dimension that you can understand their point of view beyond “I like the fans right now” and “I hate the fans right now.” I don’t care about the fans. I care about MOTHER EARTH.

WWE

Hey look, CJ Parker became the biggest star in WWE after all.

Best: Fickle Is Einhorn

This segment sets up the main event of AJ Styles vs. The Miz, which is very good but still highlighted by The New Daniel Bryan:

saying he hopes his daughter grows up to kick as many men as possible in their groins, and
jumping Style from behind and stomping him in his stupid yokel face

WWE Network

Bryan makes sure to get on the mic after the attack and once again scream “FICKLE! FICKLE! FICKLE! FICKLE!” at the fans. It’s such a good move, because yeah, you can say fans are stupid or whatever and that can be debated, but even my dorky entitled smark ass can’t deny wrestling fans are fickle. “Changing frequently, especially as regards one’s loyalties, interests, or affection?” Yep, that’s us. To deny that is to deny existence itself. My job is to write about wrestling for a large audience and approach the shows as constructively as I can, and I’m still gonna turn on Bo Dallas and Curt Axel the second they change their buttrock entrance theme to a Spirit Squad chant.

One thing I’m never going to stop loving is Daniel Bryan, though. Stomp fickle a-holes and truthers for THE PLANET, D-Bry.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

LUNI_TUNZ

I hope the MMC is delayed, because Daniel refuses to stop beating up AJ, or they’re forced to just wrestle around Daniel beating up AJ.

The Real Birdman

I hope Bryan somehow repurposes New Day’s announce table & puts it on Etsy

troi

Daniel Bryan and Cory Graves represents both types of hipster

I hope Daniel Bryan gets his own commentary table that is made out of reclaimed barnwood

DenseMan1

Shinsuke Nakamura works for WWE full-time yet I’m more excited for the stereotypical Russian strong guy trained by Rikishi.

Baron Von Raschke

Asuka as the voice of reason and violence!

Beerguyrob

I never saw Ricky Morton do that to Robert Gibson.

Endy_Mion

I wish Becky had sat in a backwards folding chair with a towel draped over her shoulders, Samoa Joe style.

Mark Silletti

4 girls fighting for the right to go one on one with The Man. Becky Lynch has true Big Ric Energy.

notJames

Samoa Joe picked up Baron Corbin’s shift at Applebee’s.

WWE Smackdown Live

cheers

Really enjoyable show this week, especially in the wake of a Raw that was a crime against nature. The New Daniel Bryan for President.

Thanks for reading, as always. Drop us a comment below to tell us whether you’re pro-environmental regulation or pro-everyone dying in an Earth-wide molten fire, and share the column on social media to help us out. Join us next week for Raw and Smackdown, WWE’s ongoing tribute to Goofus and Gallant.

WWE Network

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

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.

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

Best: The Mustafa Ali Legacy Award

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

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

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

That man has a family! #SDLive pic.twitter.com/Z8dR7nhqdR

— GIF Skull [6-1] (@GIFSkull) December 12, 2018

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

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

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

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

Best: Asuka Gets To Be Asuka Again

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

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

WWE Smackdown Live

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

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

(don’t answer that)

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

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

The Bar showing up dressed like Ari and Uzi from The Royal Tenenbaums and stealing one of New Day’s old looks
The entirety of ‘Ice Ice Sheamy,’ which would be the dumb-funniest thing in WWE rap battle history if Kurt Angle didn’t exist and Bo Dallas didn’t use “here to say/in a major way” to nuke Flo Rida
The Usos bringing up the time that Cesaro knocked out his front teeth on the ring post, and just the Usos flow in general

The Rest Of The Show

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

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

Worst: Shane McMahon, Jesus CHRIST

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

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

WWE Smackdown Live

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

WWE Smackdown Live

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

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

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Harry Longabaugh

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

GLOSS

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

Blade_222

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

AwkwardL0ser

The Vegas Boys are called The Balrogs Boys in Japan

JayBone2

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

The Real Birdman

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

Brute Farce

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

North99

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

PatsShredShack

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

Mr. Bliss

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

the only thing The Miz has in common with Jon Snow is that everyone thinks he’s a bastard but he’s secretly not

— Brandon Stroud (@MrBrandonStroud) December 12, 2018

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

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WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: WWE had a Fathead Tables, a Couple of Ladders, and Tons of Chairs pay-per-view that saw Asuka become the new Smackdown Women’s Champion thanks to Ronda Rousey, Daniel Bryan retain the WWE Championship thanks to mother Earth, and The Bar retain the tag titles thanks to their opponents already holding the titles too many times and for way too long.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live number 1,009 for December 18, 2018.

Worst: Paige Gets Outsourced

Raw introduced the dreaded Council of McMahons as the new posse of cross-brand authority figures, and if you missed it, the “master plan” to save Raw was to have the people we already knew were in charge open the show by telling us they’re in charge. Also, “we, the fans,” are now “the authority,” which is either a huge fucking lie or the first step in a year of Taboo Tuesdays.

The worst part of the announcement (relatively speaking, at least) is that the one authority figure on the WWE main roster who was doing a good job, Paige, got removed from her position. Smackdown opens with Shane thanking her for being a good “formal genera manager” — he was trying to say “former general” — and saying that she’s “sticking around,” and that her “role is changing.” So is she gonna wrestle again, or what? Otherwise you’re just demoting her to Brand Secretary. Hopefully they have something good for her to do, and shit, if you want a reason for the brands to actually hate each other, Smackdown’s suddenly gotta do everything different because Raw sucks so bad. That’s not even kind of fair.

Anyway, the best part of this was Andrade Almas and Zelina Vega-Black being disinterested a-holes.

WWE Smackdown Live

Worst, Then Best: Asuka Vs. Naomi

Smackdown proper started with a pretty loosey-goosey shout-argument between Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, and Asuka that turned into Papa Vince showing up and literally McMahonsplaining things to them, but it quickly righted itself with the announcement of Asuka vs. Naomi for the Smackdown Women’s Championship. I really don’t think we need the 73-year old man to show up and tell Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair how to compose themselves and how they should handle Ronda Rousey.

Not only is that a good match, it addresses a fairly logical point that Asuka might be down to give her best on-screen friend and former tag team partner the first shot at the championship. Also, three cheers for the death of the rematch clause! You made sense, but they used you as a crutch until you broke!

Asuka wins, of course, but Naomi gets nearly 13 minutes of back-and-forth to prove she can hang with the best. One of the reasons I like Naomi so much is because she proves that even some of the less celebrated performers from the “Divas” era had and have something to contribute in the new era of Actual Women’s Wrestling, and can evolve and grow over time if you put time and effort behind them. Sometimes you get Natalya, but hey, sometimes you get Naomi.

Best-ish: Jeff Hardy

So, this is a hard feeling to articulate. If it gets too wordy or doubles back on itself, I’m sorry in advance.

I really appreciate the fact that instead of just having a heel be an asshole and the face be like, “I’m gonna beat you at PAY-PER-VIEW,” they have Jeff Hardy acknowledging Samoa Joe’s taunts by saying yeah, they’re valid, but also he’s been mindful of them for years, and has worked really hard for a really long time to get better. So now he’s too internally strong to let that kind of bullshit taunting get to him, and he’s going to eschew the mind games and face Samoa Joe head-on. That’s great babyface writing. A guy can be a decent hand-clapper who loves The WWE Universe® and still not be an illogical idiot who pretends he is and has always been a saint.

At the same time, I wish Joe wasn’t in this bully heel role again. The Wendy Styles Saga was fun at first, but dragged on and on until you were like, “just slaughter AJ’s entire family for real or stop talking about it.” The problem is that Joe’s been kind of a super loser the past six months, failing at all his chances to win the WWE Championship (of which there were many), losing like a chump at Survivor Series, and now jumping into a feud with Jeff Hardy that Randy Orton just did better. This is more of a Jinder Mahal role than a Samoa Joe, you know? I want to see Joe kick people’s asses and choke them out. Why don’t any of Joe’s pushes last?

Eh: The Smackdown Tag Team Division Expands (By Just Doing What Raw Did)

I seriously forgot the Good Brothers were a thing. So hey, a Best to Smackdown remembering they have a bigger roster than the six singles stars, two women, and three tag teams who always get to be on TV.

That said, I wasn’t exactly plussed by how the segment was executed, even if I see its purpose. The Usos show up to call out The Bar, since they weren’t pinned in the triple threat at TLC. Instead of The Bar, Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows show up to mention that they haven’t been on TV since August, and are “grillegit” (Luke’s word) one of the best tag teams of the past decade. They’re a good enough team, yeah, but having a Bullet Club without a leader or a team name or a club of any kind is still as dumb today as it was when they signed them, and their promos always kinda wear me out. It’s a very Impact Wrestling style of promo, I’m not sure how to explain it. They’re just like “HEY, here are some STATEMENTS that we’ve REHEARSED, right here TONIGHT!” Which is weird, because if they were just Tex Ferguson and Chad 2 Badd I’d be losing my mind and GIF’ing everything they did.

That gives us the Good Brothers vs. The Usos, which is fine, but highlighted by Anderson intercepting an Uso dive and accidentally getting Uce’s entire leg tangled up in the ropes. It should’ve come with its own on-screen WASTED graphic. When The Usos are about to win, The Bar shows up to “cause a distraction” because they’d gotten name-dropped, but before they can actually do anything, Sanity runs in and attacks everyone. Then The Bar wanders in and picks the bones.

On a positive note, we expanded the Smackdown tag team division to more than the three important teams and remembered that two possibly important teams still exist. On the other hand, you had a call-out with the wrong team answering to set up a 7 minute match with a no-contest ending, because the team that showed up to cause the no contest got out no-contested by a team nobody’d even mentioned. It was just Raw’s fatal-fourway with no finish and too many moving pieces.

Best: Rusev

Worst: Nakamura

Good idea: Having Rusev cut another promo that could’ve come out of Hulk Hogan’s mouth in 1986 where he highlights all his strengths, hilariously says that you could shave his beard and use it to make sweaters for babies, and even more hilariously compares Shinsuke Nakamura to Sonic the Hedgehog.

Bad idea: Shinsuke Nakamura thinks Rusev is a woman! Get it!

Brother, showing us clips of Rusev being a great and funny dude in real life isn’t going to get us to boo him. Which I guess is the point, but don’t you have a bunch of rings to collect and too much sexy fan-fiction to star in? They should bring in Tommaso Ciampa as Dr. Robotnik.

Best: Awesome > Truth

Miz still wants to take local sweathog Shane McMahon to the Sadie Hawkins Day dance or whatever, so he ends up in a tag team match with a partner and opponents of Vince McMahon’s choosing. I see you ad-libbing Vince McMahon into saying the correct thing about who’s picking the partners, Miz. You’re a cut above.

So he ends up teaming up with Mandy Rose, definitely the first Smackdown women’s wrestler Vince is going to notice until Lacey Evans shows up, against Mixed Match Challenge tournament winners Carmella and R-Truth. Truth thinks Mandy Rose is Maryse, which is great, and Miz uses his intense knowledge of how R-Truth works to sneak up behind him when he’s celebrating his own stupidity and puts him down with a Skull-crushing Finale. The lesson here: at least two of the people in this match have now proven that they’re better tag team partners to Miz than Shane McMahon.

Secondary lesson: if this angle doesn’t end with Miz and Shane making out on the trophy like Jaime and Cersei on Joffrey’s corpse, what are we even doing?

Tertiary lesson: Yes, I’m still trying to reboot WWE as Game of Thrones.

Worst: Daniel Bryan Is A Liar

Bryan promised a new championship belt in this promo, and it’s what I wanted most from Smackdown:

“After I beat you….I am going to take this leather strap that was made from a skinned cow that I like to name Daisy and I am going to replace it with something sustainable, something better and the new Daniel Bryan is going to create a new world that these people don’t have any part of…You know what? Most of you probably don’t deserve to have a part of it either.”

What are you, Bryan, some kind of liar? Is Tom Phillips right??

Just Kidding, Best: Los Ingobernables de Whole Foods

Smackdown’s main event plays off last week’s awesome WWE Championship match — because again, it was already a good show, Raw’s the one that needed a “new era” — by teaming up Bryan with Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas against AJ Styles and Mustafa Ali. We joked about it in the Slack chat during the show, but what’s the weirder combination, AJ Styles and a Muslim, or Daniel Bryan and a fancy boy who loves stuff?

The match is a lot of fun while it lasts, and hey, get this: Mustafa Ali is now an actual member of the Smackdown roster, is getting spots in the main event, and pins the WWE Champion clean with his finisher. That’s not a thing you could even imagine typing like 9 days ago. Hell, you wouldn’t imagine typing it two days ago, given WWE’s history with these things. There aren’t many more underrated performers in the world than Ali, and adding a scrappy-ass high-flying babyface who is undersized (in a good way) and has a great story and awesome (goofy) entrance gear is an A+ move. Having him pin the B+ player only adds to it.

I’m excited to see where this goes, which is hopefully “more normal Smackdowns with fewer McMahons going forward.”

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

The Real Birdman

*McMahon Family lockeroom*
HHH: “Alright how can we build to Ronda/Becky for Mania?”
Shane: “Is there a trophy involved? Can I win it?” *Sweats*
HHH: “No there isn’t a trophy. What? You can’t win…”
Steph: “Right. Because I’M going to win the trophy”
HHH: “There’s no trophy! You’re not even in the matc…”
Vince: *Interrupting* “FILL THE TROPHY WITH PUDDING!”
HHH: “Forget it. Let the ratings tank” *Leaves*

troi

“Don’t try you will fail” is Daniel Bryan my dad and/or my high school guidance counselor?

cyniclone

Bryan: SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!
*Here Comes The Money plays*
Bryan: … oh goddamnit.

“I’ve never given anyone a blessing in my life”
Boy, he really leans into that sneezing phobia

Pdragon619

Bryan should be happy at all the resources they’re saving recording two episodes in a row.

It makes sense that Andrade would get along well with an angry short person.

Harry Longabaugh

It’s like Einstein said: Sanity is debuting the same team over and over and expecting a different result.

Alain Partridge

Shane: “Hey, do you know what sucks about being a McMahon?”
Steph: “What?”
Shane: “Nothing”
HAHAHAHAHA. YEEEEAHHHHHH (McMahon estate bombed by Canadians)

Baron Von Raschke

Oh, Miz….Vince doesn’t care about tag teams.

Mr. Bliss

Is Charlotte gonna fight Becky or ride off into the sky with Danny Zucco?

WWE Smackdown Live

That’s it for this week’s show. If you wanna read about next week’s (admittedly pretty good sounding) show, you can read the pre-tape spoilers here.

As always, thanks for reading, and for supporting us. Share the column if you’re a pal, as those social media shares really work wonders for our employability, and drop down into the comments to let us know what you thought of the show. Keep the spoilers in the spoilers post, though, and we’ll see you sometime that isn’t Christmas!

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: We entered a brave new era of WWE by putting FOUR McMahons in charge of Smackdown instead of one, and sent Paige to live on a nice farm upstate where she’ll have lots of room to run around. Also, Mustafa Ali pinned WWE Champion Daniel Bryan, and not part of that sentence feels normal yet.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live, Christmas Day edition, for December 25, 2018.

Best: Millennials Want Santa Claus To Be A Confused, Dancing Black Man

WWE Smackdown Live

The original plan was to give myself “not writing about Raw and Smackdown this week” as a Christmas present, but then Smackdown Live opened with The New Daniel Bryan® beating the shit out of “Truthy Claus” for holiday flossing, and I had to reconsider.

In case you missed it, R-Truth shows up with “Carm-elf-a” to “spread holiday joy” or whatever, and The New Daniel Bryan shows up to tell them some hard truths about Santa Claus dying because we’ve destroyed the environment and the polar ice caps are melting. I remain forever entertained by the best pro wrestler of the past 20 years adding “not showering” and “CJ Parker” to his character, and although it would be the worst career move of all time, I kinda hope Juice Robinson finds his way back one day to be the Alex Riley to Bryan’s Miz.

I think the most impressive thing about this segment is that it creates the idea that R-Truth actually could win the Royal Rumble, and that somewhere deep down Bryan’s already concerned about defending the championship until WrestleMania and wants to take out all possible contenders. Also, he’s just a hateful uptight scumbag who doesn’t want anyone anywhere to have fun, ever. The fact that he’s still completely right about everything makes it work. Yes, we DO have islands of trash everywhere, and yes, it’s probably the fault of various WWE undercard guys. Give me like 12 minutes of Bryan vs. Truth next week, and make it a barn-burner, because hey, only one of these guys is a former NWA World Heavyweight Champion.

Mostly Best: Almas Vs. Ali

Here’s my complete list of complaints:

If Ali is going to keep doing a “satellite DDT,” he needs to figure out how to get some height on it or take El Dragon Azteca Jr.’s moveset out his mouth
Cien Almas being enhancement talent for everybody else is still not a great decision
this was not 10 minutes longer and happening on an NXT TakeOver special

Those things said, yo, it’s Mustafa Ali vs. Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas. While I wish Almas had something better to do than look good jobbing to everyone on the roster, I remain stunned at whatever monkey paw we wished on to get a Mustafa Ali singles push. A month ago I wasn’t even certain we’d ever see him wear the Cruiserweight Championship, and now he’s pinning the best worker on the show and nearly killing Daniel Bryan with upside-down-spinning knees to the chest.

As an added bonus, we get a backstage celebration parade for Ali — what’s up, The Brian! — which culminates in Shelton Benjamin DEFINITELY luring him into a Daniel Bryan attack. If I’m fantasy booking this, I’m running Bryan vs. Kendrick, Bryan vs. Tozawa, and Bryan vs. Cedric Alexander in competitive matches (in that order) to build to a Bryan vs. Mustafa Ali WWE Championship match at Royal Rumble. The Rumble is where you get shit like Bob Holly vs. Brock Lesnar for the championship, so why not divide up those two hour-long battles royal with 15 minutes of TNBD dragging WWE’s scrappiest junior?

Best: Smackdown Is Attempting Tag Teams

As a followup to last week’s “remember our OTHER tag teams” segment, we get an eight-man tag team match pairing The Usos with Big Walder and Little Walder Frey against Sheamus, Cesaro, Alexander Wolfe, and Tacitus Kilgore. Like last week, the positive POV is that Smackdown now knows it has more than three good tag teams, and even if the execution isn’t particularly engaging, getting the Good Brothers and Sanity back into the mix is a good idea. I really hope Nikki Cross ends up on Smackdown soon, not only because splitting up Sanity is a weird and unnecessary decision, but because I want her on the show where the good women’s wrestling happens. Give me Nikki vs. Asuka again instead of Nikki jobbing to Natalya before the Riott Squad attacks, you know?

The finishing sprint here is fun — WWE’s “everybody hit their moves one after another until someone gets a pin” is a pretty fool-proof way to finish a multi-man tag match, whether it’s predictable or not — and while I don’t like Cesaro being the guy to take the pinfall on a squad featuring Alexander Wolfe, it gives us everyone’s favorite trope, “The Good Brothers have pinned the Tag Team Champions!” That’ll set up what’ll be a pretty good tag title match, which Sheamus should show up to bald just to fuck with everybody.

Worst: Christmas Shoes

We’re still building to that Mandy Rose vs. Naomi match that was promised a couple of weeks ago, and now it’s about how Mandy wanted to kiss Naomi’s husband under the mistletoe. Am I the only one disappointed that this didn’t end with Sonya kissing Mandy instead? Sonya Deville deserves some happiness.

And while I’m on this segment, be careful with that shoe, Naomi. If watching WCW taught me anything, it’s that you can kill someone with a well-placed shoe attack.

Not The Best: Samoa Joe’s Only Two Speeds Are Losing And No Contests

I’m still worried about what they’re doing with Samoa Joe. He’s fine, I know, and he’s making a bunch of money and everything else, but from a character standpoint, they really haven’t done him any favors this year. The feud with AJ Styles was just him losing matches, and when he wasn’t losing, he was getting disqualified or counted-out or whatever. Now he’s feuding with Jeff Hardy, and all he seems to be doing is losing, or getting disqualified or counted-out. While he eventually gets the upper hand and ends the segment on top, way, way too much of this was him getting his ass kicked by a guy in cargo pants and Christmas make-up.

As always, if I haven’t used up all the fingers on my monkey paw, I want to bend one down and inform WWE that if you have two guys feuding and don’t want to do a clean finish right away, you can do other things than repeatedly putting them into matches against one another where there’s no finish. There are more creative ways to build up a rivalry than, “these two have fought six times in a row, tune in this Sunday to see what happens the seventh time.”

Worst: AJ Styles Versus Another Authority Figure

The weirdest moment of the entire episode for me is this backstage confrontation between AJ Styles and Vince McMahon, who between this and his one-take Santa Claus announcement thing from Monday may seriously be losing his mind. He looks and sounds like somebody melted Tom Waits in the microwave. He’s still Vince, and there’s still a wonderful aura and TV personality in there, but how many times is this poor guy gonna have to show up and get punched in the face to help the ratings?

I don’t know if this was supposed to set up another Styles vs. A McMahon (or even worse, Styles vs. An Authority Figure) bit, or if it was just to “light a fire” under AJ in an anglicized Antonio Inoki Fighting Spirit kind of way, but it didn’t work for me. After that abysmal title run that lasted forever, Styles needs something new and engaging to do that gets him into good matches with real finishes and, in a perfect world, lets him dip back into his “beat up John Cena” personality. He was doing really good character work in WWE before they decided to make him a concerned family man who wins matches via divine intervention. Cena’s back next week, so who knows?

I just hope this goes somewhere, and that the authority figures aren’t just around to randomly buffer characters’ stats.

Speaking Of [Vaguely Gestures] All Of That

The BEST character work of the night goes to Mike The Miz, who finally convinces Shane McMahon to be his tag team partner with a believable, honest speech about never being able to impress his dad that is absolutely 100% heel manipulation. If it’s not, I will be as shocked as I’ve ever been in wrestling. Miz & Mrs. has done a great job of building up Miz’s dad (Cleveland’s own Mr. Hero) as an emotionally absent father who loves what Miz does and everyone Miz works with but can’t seem to direct any compliments at his son, so working him into the story and having Miz leverage that against Shane’s openly turbulent relationship with his OWN father is great, great writing. It’s characters looking into their actual, consistent character histories to see what they have in common, and “bonding” (or whatever) based on it.

I also really like Shane telling Miz not to “screw him,” because you’d have to be a special kind of Sting stupid to not think Miz is going to turn on you, especially after that speech, ESPECIALLY after a month-plus of badgering you to be his friend. Even if Miz is completely on the level about what he feels — and who knows, maybe he is — there are still 1/1 betting odds that he’s going to tag you directly into a Skull-crushing Finale in your first match together.

Honestly? I think the best route to go here is to keep Miz turning face, give him Daniel Bryan’s old stuff for real (like those YES chants), and always make sure Miz’s personality is directly inverse to Daniel Bryan’s. If Bryan is evil, Miz has to be good. If Miz is evil, Bryan has to be good. They should never be in alignment, and if they ARE, they should still maintain different enough personalities to hate each others’ guts. I think they’re doing a good job of that here, because even Miz’s rundown of his accomplishments amounted to “here’s all the stuff I have,” and there’s nothing The New Daniel Bryan hates more than stuff.

Best: Merry Christmas To Us, For Real

If I was going to fantasy book a Christmas edition of Smackdown, I’d probably end it with, “Rusev and Shinsuke Nakamura wrestle for 22 minutes, it’s the best main roster singles match Shinsuke’s had so far, the ending is built around who’s able to hit the most big strikes in a row, and Rusev wins back his formerly beloved United States Championship on both Rusev and Christmas Day. And also his birthday.”

THIS IS ALL OF THAT.

The major reason I wanted to write up this Smackdown (besides Daniel Bryan stomping Santa Claus in the face) is to celebrate Nakamura wrestling like Nakamura again for about half an hour and SPECIAL BABY RUSEV coming through on his end, big time, and being the new babyface United States Champion. There’s so much to love here, and if you didn’t get anything else from the experience, know that Rusev is exactly as awesome as we keep saying he is and deserves happy things in his life. Brother got de-pushed for getting married and weathered so much stupid horse shit booking to get here, but now he’s the champ again, and we get to love him like we want. No more sassy subtweets for Rusev!

WWE Smackdown Live

Look at these two. How could you not want them to be happy?

(Also, a total +1 to Nakamura losing the match before it even began by showing up in a black and red jumpsuit instead of the blue, because Rusev called him Sonic the Hedgehog last week and got him shook.)

That’s It For This Week

WWE Raw

Next Week:

John Cena returns, because WWE’s “master plan” to fix the ratings dip was “bring back John Cena and put him on both shows”
New Day New Year’s celebration, which hopefully involves them leaving pancakes in 2018
Naomi vs. Mandy Rose, maybe?

As always, thanks for reading, and for getting us through another year of WWE programming. We really appreciate you, even if it seems like we just joke at you and beg you for comments and shares. In a completely unrelated note, please comment down below and share the column on social media, because reasons.

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: AJ Styles punched Vince McMahon in the face, Daniel Bryan stomped Santa Claus to death, and the mighty RUSEV became United States Champion again. Plus, Shane McMahon stopped being a jerk for like one minute!

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live, New Years Day edition, for January 1, 2019.

Best: Big Hair John

Let’s go ahead and start off the column with the only segment anyone’s going to remember from this episode: the Smackdown Live return of “free agent” John Cena, now with realistic life-like hair. I typed this on Twitter, and I’ve probably already typed it in the column a thousand times, but I always want John Cena on television until he’s actually there. Then all my wrestling fan Spidey Senses start tingling and I have to type 15 bad things about him. Say what you will, but that “he gets a reaction” thing is truer for John Cena than it is for anyone. I can’t have him on TV without feeling something, good or bad.

So John shows up and pulls a B-Rabbit at the end of 8 Mile, bringing up everything anyone could possibly say about him before someone says it, then invites anyone in the back to come out and … say those things. I was hoping Alberto Del Rio was going to show up and tell Cena he only rents those fancy cars, but they do me one (million) better: El Hombre answers the challenge. They have words, get interrupted by some heels who have no chance of beating Cena ever, and that sets up a mixed tag.

There’s something truly fascinating about the 2019 version of John Cena. Everything about him is confusing. His body is weird to us, his hair is weird to us, he seems to simultaneously SUPER CARE and not give a shit about WWE, he’s off in Hollywood doing all the stuff he used to rag on The Rock for doing and promised us he’d never do, he’s still clearly depressed and having a mid-life crisis of some kind possibly/probably due to breaking up with his reality TV girlfriend, and the brother spent six months living in China doing martial arts only to come back with a Lightning Fist finisher best described as, “a punch that doesn’t connect.” He’s still dressing like a toddler, but now he has the hair of a 60-year old man. He’s SO WEIRD, and I love it, but I’m also worried, but also I LOVE IT.

WWE Network

The highlight of the match is Cena hitting all of his moves in a row on poor Andrade Almas and posing, only for The Man® to shit-can him. She goes on to win the match herself, leaving him standing out on the ramp with his Flock of Seagulls hair looking all distressed. He puts Becky over one final time by having her You Can’t See Me him and refuse a handshake, which he responds to by golf clapping. One great, consistent thing about Cena’s character is if you play fair and win like you’re supposed to and respect him, it’s never enough; but if you do something shitty and own up to it, he respects you. Cena can’t ever “turn heel” because he’s been heel since the day he showed up.

One quick note about Andrade Almas: You’ll read a lot of armchair booker wrestling fans (like myself) say that it’s actually GOOD that Almas got his ass kicked by part-time, barely-there John Cena, because Cena’s appearances are infrequent now, and if he chooses to work with you it’s giving you a rub. It’s the same thing people said when The Rock showed up and buried Rusev, or when The Rock and Cena teamed up to bury Awesome Truth. You’re working with the most popular guy, so that means you’re getting love and respect by proxy, and it’ll help you in the long run.

I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with a commonly agreed-upon statement more. Those scenarios certainly didn’t end up doing Rusev (or The Hurricane) or Awesome Truth any favors, as they languished as embarrassing undercard guys until something new came along and caught on. You can’t go back 20 years and be like, “Goldberg squashed Jerry Flynn in 20 seconds, but he keeps wrestling him every week, that must mean WCW has big plans for Jerry Flynn!” You can’t go back 30 and say Hogan was giving Killer Khan the rub by kicking his ass. You could maybe say Bruno Sammartino gave people the rub by letting them lose to him at Madison Square Garden, but shit, the last time that happened, Cena’s hair was in style. Long paragraph short, being on TV and making money is important, and being good at getting your ass kicked can sometimes allow you to be on TV more often and make money, but being the guy they pick to lose to the important people doesn’t make you an important person to fans, ever. It makes them think you’re a loser, which is why WWE keeps having to bring in dudes from 10-20 years ago, because they made everyone who works there now look like losers too many times.

An actually quick note about Becky Lynch: She rules, don’t be a hater.

Update: Shane McMahon Is Being Kind Of A Jerk Again

To quote that guy from Botch Club, “I’ve done the copy-cat gimmick with Alex Riley, Damien Sandow, and North Haverbrook and by gum it put them on the map!”

In attempting to pitch Shane McMahon branding ideas for their newly agreed-upon tag team, The Miz makes two crucial mistakes:

assuming that Shane actually meant what he said last week and was going to be his friend, and not just forget what happened because “nobody’s going to remember it,” and
pitching any item of clothing to Shane besides ill-fitting baseball jerseys and sweatpants

I want there to be more to it, but I can’t figure out if it’s genius or a failure that the heel is a heel because he seems to actually care about things, and the babyface is a babyface because he’s completely apathetic. The best thing WWE could do under new leadership is put someone who has had friends and good relationships in charge, so being nice to people and having emotions weren’t tropes of the weak.

Best: Everyone But The Good Brothers

Speaking of heels who are best friends,

WWE Smackdown Live

If I could’ve asked for more of anything from Smackdown, it would’ve been more of these little New Years resolution videos. I always like on old pay-per-views when superstars explain what they’re thankful for at Thanksgiving, or whatever. Highlights include the IIconics screaming in Australian, and Shelton Benjamin rightfully pointing out that New Years resolutions are dumb and we’re all just going to fail at them anyway. Is this a face turn for Shelton?

The only lowlight is The Good Brothers, who still think screaming “nerds” is something we like. Did that ever even catch on? It’s the Ricky Ortiz rally towel of catchphrases.

Best/Worst: Rusev Day, USA

Precious Al Rusev and Lana (dressed like a mash-up of current Lana and Lana Classic) show up to celebrate his United States Championship victory, only to get jumped and beaten down by Shinsuke Nakamura. As a segment, this works. Rusev is a bubbling fountain of macho charisma, Lana’s enthusiasm is real and infectious, and Nakamura needs to get serious and kick some ass instead of being a wandering backstage weirdo.

The only thing I don’t like about it is Lana’s bump. Wrestling (mostly WWE) does this thing sometimes where they turn a manager or non-wrestling valet character into a wrestle and have them wrestle all the time, but lose all their skill/strength/HP/whatever when they aren’t. For example, Lana’s in the ring all the time now getting kicked in the head by Asuka, suplexed by Becky Lynch, speared by Charlotte, and so on … so why is she comatose because she took a single back bump here? I’d get it if Rusev accidentally kicked her in the face or something, but she just fell off Nakamura’s back and was completely dead. It just doesn’t make sense to me, I guess.

On the bright side, like I said, the actual foundation of the segment is great, and I hope Rusev and Nakamura get to improve upon their already very good match from last week on a grander stage.

Worst: Arrested Deville-opment

Mandy Rose drops out of her scheduled match with Naomi (again) and subs in Sonya Deville, who ends up winning when Mandy distracts Naomi with I SLID INTO YOUR HUSBAND’S DMS content. There’s a lot wrong here, from the fact that Mandy’s actually more covered in the photo she sent than she is in her normal ring gear and how WWE needs to learn how to tell stories with their women that don’t still revolve around the men, but the worst thing by far is Sonya Deville’s finisher.

Which is, uh … Sonya making her opponent give her a Mickie James DDT?

WWE Smackdown Live

I guess she’s trying to do Matt Morgan’s finisher, but forgot to get her head out from under that arm on the way down. Can we maybe give Sonya a finish where she won’t accidentally give herself brain damage?

Best: Babe E New Year

The New Day’s New Year celebration was their usual mix of funny (Kofi freaking out about never getting a title shot and Brock Lesnar not even wanting to do his job and come to work at all) and forced (movie references, you guys), but it’s always good to see them out there having fun. Plus, I think the image of Big E as baby new year is burned into the frontal lobes of our brains for the rest of our lives. A lot of ageplay enthusiasts suddenly got super into WWE.

It’s also worth watching for the reference to Steiner Math, which Xavier Woods was actually around for. The numbers don’t lie, and they spell disaster for Samoa Joe at Sacrifice. Also, on Smackdown!

Best-ish: Joe Wins!

The actual first match of the show is Samoa Joe vs. Jeff Hardy (again) with the winner moving on to a fatal five-way match at the end of the night. The winner of THAT match gets to face Daniel Bryan for the WWE Championship at Royal Rumble. The good news is that Joe wins a perfectly fine match and doesn’t choke again. The bad news is that with the AJ Styles vs. The McMahons story going and Daniel Bryan only defeating him at TLC via small package, you knew there wasn’t a chance for EITHER of these guys to win, and that the whole qualifier/fatal five-way bit was just WWE trying to get to “automatic rematch for the former champ” in a world where they just axed endless automatic rematches for the former champ.

Speaking of that, part of me wishes they still just did “the former champ gets a rematch via CLAUSE” thing I’ve disliked (but understood) for years, because they still want to do it, and don’t seem to have a lot of plans for how to get there now. Like, they announced Asuka vs. Becky Lynch for the Royal Rumble on Main Event, then took it back because they forgot they’d stopped doing rematch clauses. And now Becky’s on Smackdown interacting with other people trying to get a rematch. They’re just doing the same thing with too many additional steps.

Best: The Main Event, Even So

The good news is that the main event still ruled, because shit, it was AJ Styles and Samoa Joe and Mustafa Ali and Rey Mysterio and a Randy Orton that doesn’t have to carry the action. That’s key for Orton. I always thought he’d be a fantastic tag team wrestler, because his signature moves and spots are all over and people like his personality, but he’s bland as a fucking sack of beige bricks when he’s controlling a match as a veteran heel.

Again, the end result was never in question, spoilers or not, because of course the “real” AJ Styles has to get the next shot at Daniel Bryan. They’ve spent years settling into running one guy vs. one specific opponent five or six times in a row for the past several years, and whether they’ve changed that on the back end or not, we’re gonna have to give them some time to work it out of their system. I really wish this was going to be Daniel Bryan defending the WWE Championship against Rey Mysterio, or another (longer, better) match with Mustafa Ali, or even a match with Joe (that would be another example of Joe not being able to “cross the finish line,” as they say), but Styles/Bryan will be good. I smell a wonky AJ Styles championship match finish a-comin’, possibly involving multiple McMahonspersons, but hey, at least we got one instance of him losing a 24-minute technical wrestling barn-burner via inside cradle.

P.S. now that he’s upgraded his championship, I hope Daniel Bryan is champion forever.

“You people used to revere the old Daniel Bryan. You used to love the old Daniel Bryan but the old Daniel Bryan is dead. Shut up! I did not give you permission to chant ‘Yes!’ But I am not here to please you people. I am no longer The People’s Champion, I am The Planet’s Champion. I’m out here to defending the planet from you heathens every single night, and I don’t care if it’s AJ Styles, I don’t care if it’s the great John Cena. Tonight, I am going to prove why I am The Planet’s Champion.”

After all, nobody is the champion of a flat planet.

WWE Network

Oh Wendy

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: John Cena returned (for an episode) to put over Becky Lynch and entertain us with his prehensile haircut. Also Big E dressed up like Baby New Year, and Sonya Deville came up with a fun new way to give herself brain damage.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for January 8, 2019.

Best: Daniel Bryan’s WWE Career Comes Full Circle

WWE Network

Way back in 2010, only ten weeks into his WWE run, Daniel Bryan was forced to chug a souvenir cup full of soda as part of an “obstacle course” to prove his worth as a superstar (?) on the first season of the game show version of NXT. In 2019, he’s opening Smackdown as the WWE Champion, cutting a unique and creative promo that features him explaining why soda’s bad for you, and throwing a souvenir cup full of it onto a nearby fan. He’s no longer wild nor young, and I love it.

You probably read too much about how happy The New Daniel Bryan makes me, but I can’t say it enough. This week’s show opens with him just roaming around the arena, finding things to make himself madder and madder about how pro wrestling crowds work. I FEEL SEEN.

I loved every second of this, from his boring grey t-shirt with a tree in the pocket to him pelting a guy in the head with a half-eaten hot dog and the guy SELLING IT. Like Daniel Bryan himself might say, that’s a good plant.

And of course we have Bryan’s march down the arena steps, where he stops and yells shit like “IMPOTENT, CHANGE IT,” in the face of a guy in an Undisputed Era t-shirt. “I AM NAWT! I AM NAWT, WOO!” I especially liked the guy who got called “submissive,” because the look on his face was totally, “hey man, don’t knock it ’til you try it.” This all culminates with an attack from R-Truth, who got beaten down by Bryan two shows ago for trying to spread holiday cheer and is out for revenge. So now we get another week of the WWE Champion (1) actually showing up, (2) actually wrestling competitive matches, and (3) putting over someone new every week, whether they win or not.

The match with Truth was short, but it was what it needed to be: the WWE Champion facing and defeating a lower-level opponent who has either gotten the opportunity via a personal grudge or winning a bunch of matches in a row. Technically, at least if you’re counting the Mixed Match Challenge, Truth had/did both. Truth looks good, but he’s facing the WWE Champion and rightful heir to Best in the World, so he loses. Clean. Because sometimes the bad guy is the best wrestler. LOVE YOU, LIL GRANOLA BOI.

After the match, The Real AJ Styles attacks Bryan and tries to kill him with a steel chair, because somehow they’ve maintained two wonderful bits of continuity:

the fact that AJ Styles has the mental processing power of a can of tuna and can be completely psychologically broken down by threats like, “we had an AFFAIR,” or, “I’m gonna harass your FAMILY in my SPARE TIME,” or, “YOU AREN’T AS COOL AS YOU USED TO BE,” and
the fact that even when he’s the heeliest heel in the world, the McMahon-Helmsley Facgime is never going to stop targeting Daniel Bryan and trying to make his life miserable

Later, Kayla Braxton (wearing Zapp Brannigan’s uniform) finds Bryan backstage and asks him about the attack. Bryan does what any smart heel should do; namely, point out a real thing that was done wrong to him — Styles attacked him from behind, with iffy motivations at best — and keeps twisting it around on its own logic until he’s screaming about how great he is and how he’s gonna save the planet via telling wrestling fans not to buy novelty gloves at wrestling shows.

I really do hope Bryan is WWE Champion forever. GIMME THAT SUSTAINABLE VEGAN BELT ALREADY.

Best (Mostly): The Usos Have NOT Pinned The Smackdown Tag Team Champions!

You won’t see any of it in the WWE Fan Nation video, but Smackdown was full of very good wrestling matches (attn: Raw) in addition to the Entertainment segments. The Usos faced The Bar for a chance at the Smackdown Tag Team Championship, setting up one of my least favorite common booking tropes: we’ll give you a match against the champion, and if you’re able to beat the champion, we’ll give you a match against the same champion. This is where the BLANK HAS PINNED THE BLANK CHAMPION running gag comes from, because it’s almost always the most obvious part of a show.

Two bits of good news here. One; any combination of The Usos, The Bar, and The New Day in tag team matches that get more than two minutes are going to be fun to watch, and worth your time. Two; there’s a pretty terrible sports-entertainment finish (which we’ll talk about in a second), but it was there to subvert the trope. The Usos get a match they’re obviously going to win to set up a title match at the Royal Rumble, and then they DON’T WIN IT! Because that happens sometimes! And when you illustrate that it can happen that way sometimes, it informs all future matches with similar stipulations, and your brain thinks, “maybe they won’t do the obvious thing here.” And that makes watching shows a more engaging experience, because you aren’t sitting there scrolling through your phone because you know how it’s going to end! Hooray!

WWE Smackdown Live

The actual finish they do here is pretty dumb, though. Mandy Rose interrupts the match, wearing a towel, to ask the homie James Uso if she left her “tiny gold shorts and her tiny gold top … in his hotel room?” The distraction causes them to lose, and sets up an hilarious backstage followup where Naomi shows up dressed like the Yellow Submarine and spikes her high-heeled shoes to instigate an attack. My favorite part of that is Mandy removing her towel to reveal she’s wearing her wrestling gear underneath, as though we thought she’d walked from the hotel to the arena and out onto the stage in just a towel because she only owns one push-up bra and one pair of booty shorts. But see? Even the “worst” parts of the “best” here are pretty good, because if they aren’t actually good, they can be enjoyed on some ironic level.

Speaking of that, the segments flow into each other really fluidly on this episode, and while we’re dealing with Mandy Rose TOWELGATE, we’re also watching The Miz head to the ring and challenge The Bar for the Smackdown Tag Team Championship, because his new partner is a McMahon and he rightfully assumes the McMahons can just book themselves into title matches. Miz understands how this job works better than most. Sheamus lays him out with a Brogue Kick.

The followup to THAT is another great bit where Shane McMahon shows up in a doo-doo brown leather jacket and questions why Miz went out there and got kicked in the face on his behalf. Miz, who is weirdly the top actual babyface on the show right now, gives him another pep talk and convinces him to nut up and help him fight The Bar at the Royal Rumble. See? Miz was right. Shane can just book himself into a tag team championship match at the pay-per-view.

That’s what I love about this. Miz’s motivations and actions here clearly aren’t on the level, because he’s the Miz, but we aren’t sure exactly what they are. Is he setting Shane up for a long con just to kick his ass, or is he (more likely) manipulating a system he understands better than anyone to worm his way into title matches he doesn’t necessarily deserve, separating himself from Daniel Bryan completely, and emotionally manipulating a guy to get in close with the new active management?

Best: Let’s Call The Rey Mysterio And Mustafa Ali Team ‘Rufio’

YO.

YO.

WWE Network

I think my favorite part of Rey Mysterio finally bringing the Canadian Destroyer into the WWE Universe is Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas pulling a full-on headstand in the middle of it to adjust his positioning and set up the proper momentum.

In all seriousness, and without resorting to caps lock every three sentences, this ruled. I would be very into Ali and Mysterio as a regular, recurring tag team, as it would allow Rey to spotlight what he does best, keep him fresh without having to work a bunch of long singles matches (even though he can totally still go), and give a new guy with a similar but evolved moveset a rub. Associating the hot new high-flyer on the show with the most popular high-flyer ever is a good decision. Also a good decision: Andrade Almas winning, which should happen a lot more often than it does. If Almas isn’t one of the final four guys in the Royal Rumble this year, I’ll be shocked. Put good work in your best hands!

The only downside to this was the fact that we took a commercial break during the entrances, then took a LONGER commercial break in the middle of the match. There’s gotta be a better time to run that than the middle of your show’s most kinetic match.

Worst: Where’s The Lie

The only part of the show that totally didn’t work for me was the promo from Rusev, aside from Rusev saying he has the “body of 1000 Hemsworth brothers.” Even Larry? Is that even possible?

It’s one of those situations that is fine on paper, but doesn’t connect with me for a couple of glaring reasons. One is the thing I mentioned last week; Lana’s not a helpless valet Miss Elizabeth character, she’s often and regularly booked as a pro wrestler. She’s not booked as a good wrestler, but if she’s competed with Asuka and Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair, why is falling off Nakamura’s back and taking one back bump enough to put her in like, critical condition for a week? Rusev’s out here cutting a promo “as a husband” like she’s dead. The other is that Nakamura’s telling the truth, in that he didn’t actually do anything to her. She jumped on his back, then Rusev kicked him and knocked her off. It’s not even debatable. Rusev’s just being irrational over a thing that shouldn’t have even hurt Lana that much to begin with.

Anyway, Rusev charges backstage to find Nakamura and gets jumped, and the Bulgarians are shocked to discover that the Japanese have allied with the Poles:

WWE Smackdown Live

Jamie Noble and Adam Pearce come to Rusev’s aid, and now I really want to see Rusev/Noble vs. Nakamura/Pearce. But yeah, for a segment built around a heel playing “mind games” with a face, there isn’t much of a game, and not a lot to mind.

Best: Man At Arms

Finally we have a triple threat main event pitting Becky Lynch against Charlotte Flair and Carmella (Van Dale?) for a shot at Asuka and the Smackdown Women’s Championship at the Royal Rumble. Like always, the Smackdown women’s division goes hard and puts on a great show, with Lynch coming out on top via submission to fulfill the prophecy put forth by the pre-cogs at Main Event a couple of weeks ago.

This is one of those examples of WWE doing the “predictable” thing, which then conflicts with another predictable thing, so half of us are like “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING” and the other half’s like “WHY IS THIS NOT HAPPENING” and we get mixed up. A lot of armchair booking figured Becky Lynch dropped the title last month to set up the story that made the most sense to us: her winning the women’s Royal Rumble and deciding to challenge Ronda Rousey, her new blood rival, for the Raw Women’s Championship at WrestleMania. It also slotted Charlotte in nicely for a WrestleMania rematch with Asuka. But hey, just because a lot of us talked ourselves into thinking that made sense, it doesn’t mean that’s what the plan ever actually was.

So here’s the more likely reality: Becky Lynch vs. Asuka at the Royal Rumble is going to be GREAT (plus one plus one plus one), Carmella’s still got the drama of being the #30 entrant in her Royal Rumble and having an ongoing beef with Becky and Charlotte over the respect she feels she’s entitled to, and Charlotte Flair can still waltz into and out of title shots whenever she wants, because we started calling her the Female Roman Reigns for a reason. Ronda vs. Becky at WrestleMania can still happen, or the more WWE-friendly Ronda vs. Becky vs. Charlotte triple threat, or maybe even Ronda vs. Becky vs. Charlotte vs. Asuka in a fatal four-way. The only true, confirmed fact here is that if there’s any division in WWE we should trust to give us a series of good matches and an end result we can be happy about, it’s the Smackdown women’s.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Amaterasu’s Son

I do love how Carmella kept using the Super Kick as a “Charlotte go the fuck away button.”

The Real Birdman

“How come you guys didn’t sell that??” – Charlotte lying on the floor on the outside

Harry Longabaugh

Normally when you go for a moonsault on one wrestler there’s a 80% chance of it landing. But Charlotte’s not normal and she’s got a 10% chance at best. Then you add in a second wrestler and somehow her odds drastically go down. If you take her 10% chance and double that multiplied by the normal 80% odds factoring that she’ll use 25% of her bodyweight, she’s got a 4% chance of landing that moonsault perfectly. Numbers don’t lie and they spell an awkward sell for you before commercial break.

MulkeyMania

Shane should have eaten 1/3 of that Brogue Kick.

Endy_Mion

Jimmy is playing the Bellas music in his mind “You can look but you can’t touch, you can look but you can’t touch”

Brocky

Hulk: mean gene loved entertai….

Bryan: MENE GENE WAS IMPOTENT!!!

Daniel Valentin

“My name is Alexander Rusev. You killed my wife. Prepare to die.”

troi

I heard rumors that the clangy pipes are unhappy at WWE and are checking out AEW

Beerguyrob

As long as The New Daniel Bryan keeps The Old Brie Bella out of the ring, he’s the real hero.

Mr. Bliss

Daniel coming through the crowd like

Foxtrot
India
Charlie
Kilo
Lima
Echo

Taylor Swish

Considering Miz’s skin tone and Shane’s skin complexion, I couldn’t think of a more apt tag team name than White Leather

WWE Smackdown Live

Hot Dogs

hot dogs

That’s it for Smackdown Live. As always, thanks for reading, drop a comment below to let us know what you thought of the episode, and share the column to help us out. See you next week!

WWE Smackdown Live

wait a minute, this isnt Fox News

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown: The New Daniel Bryan equated eating hot dogs and drinking high fructose corn syrup with cheering AJ Styles, and honestly, where’s the lie? Also, Becky Lynch became the number one contender to the Smackdown Women’s Championship a couple of weeks after being named the number one contender to the Smackdown Women’s Championship.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for January 15, 2019.

The Noble Sacrifice Of The IIconics

A lot of steps to get through here, so stay with me.

The show opens with The Man® arriving in a rental SUV, treating poor Cathy 3 like she’s a lowly Cathy 5, and sampling a grotesque “protein shake” whipped up by local championship belt harasser Otis Dozovic. It looks like Smackdown’s writing team at least realizes that Heavy Machinery are supposed to be dumb, affable Varsity Blues team members and not free-roaming perverts, which is progress. Also, bless New Day for staying perfectly in character despite being relegated to the background, with Big E weirdly rubbing himself down the entire time and Xavier Woods nonchalantly unzipping his track suit top to show Becky he’s wearing her shirt.

From there we get the standard show-opening Promo Parade, featuring Becky cutting a pretty boring promo (that at least people are being quiet and listening to) before being interrupted by Asuka, and then both of them are interrupted by the IIconics. This can only set up a tag team match or a pair of back-to-back singles matches, so they do a couple of singles matches and eat the poor IIconics for breakfast.

Becky beats Peyton Royce pretty easily, so Asuka has to go out and drag Billie Kay back to the ring so she can beat her even more easily. You’ve seen this kind of one-ups-Man®-ship before, and while it’s not exactly thrilling television (and I don’t love seeing the IIconics reduced to jobber trash without even getting to do or say anything funny), it’s purposeful and to the point.

Which is certainly better than the alternative, which this week’s Raw and Smackdown convinced me was [checks notes] “Asuka accidentally walks in on Becky while she’s pooping and decides she must sleep with Becky’s significant other as revenge.”

Worst: Mandy Rose, MASTER OF SEX

There are a lot of questions here, but the first and most glaring is, “who lets their brother read what they think is a love letter from their wife?” ESPECIALLY read it out-loud, especially in front of a camera, especially at work. When they realize the gift is from Mandy Rose and not Jimmy Uso’s wife, Jey’s hilarious response is, “what you gon’ do,” which should’ve been followed by, “ASK ME TO GO SLEEP WITH MANDY ROSE MYSELF AND SAY I’M YOU, BECAUSE WE LOOK EXACTLY ALIKE AND ALWAYS WEAR THE SAME CLOTHES?”

Anyway, that leads to a scene at the Local Lodging Facility straight out of Torrie Wilson and Dawn Marie’s Red Shoe Diaries, with Mandy stripping down to lingerie that more or less covers her exactly like her ring gear and trying to seduce Jimmy. But then, SUDDEN PAPARAZZI! IT’S ALL BEEN A CLEVER (clever?) RUSE!

WWE Smackdown Live

Frinkiac

That’s when Jimmy, a man who has presumably seen the Dawn Marie seduction, the Torrie Wilson/Billy Gunn/Jamie Noble/Nidia foursome and Enzo Amore getting his ass beaten in a hotel room, reveals that he’s actually not incredibly stupid and told his wife this was going to happen. Naomi bursts in in an outfit roughly the same color as Mandy’s hotel’s throw pillow and attacks her. +1 to Jimmy for basic human reasoning skills, I guess. -1 to Mandy for thinking you can frame someone with still photos when they literally walked into your room accompanied by a camera man.

I don’t know who sent out a SEXY THINGS UP memo this week, but I think Sonya Deville said it best when she said,

WWE Smackdown Live

Best: Al Be Cien You

In this week’s Actually Sexy news, Andrade ~~Cien Almas~~ defeats Rey Mysterio in a long, competitive match that plays off his win over Mysterio in last week’s tag match and, believe it or not, refocuses a young star at the expense of a seasoned veteran and sets up him for a better 2019. Glorious. Actual definition, not the Bobby Roode version.

Andrade is one of the most talented in-ring performers to come out of NXT (or anywhere, honestly) and should be legitimized sooner rather than later on a show that has for its entire history been worried about gaining and appealing to a Latino audience. I know WWE’s convinced that wins and losses “don’t matter,” but they still matter to a regular viewership, because it’s how we’re able to decide who is doing well and who isn’t in a fictional universe even the best of us barely understand the rules for. Andrade going over Mysterio matters, and whether it matters in a short or long term I guess is up to Smackdown’s writers. I hope they see what a diamond this guy is, and continue allowing him to develop an identity while going out there every week and stealing the show.

And while we’re at it, let’s heap more love on Rey Mysterio for turning back the clock and figuring out how to go through a second “prime.” During that Sin Cara tag run I think we all kind of assumed Mysterio was on the back end of things and winding down, but then he went back to Mexico or the Lazarus Pit or something and came back as 2002 Rey. It’s unbelievable. Dude’s out here throwing Canadian destroyers out of knucklelocks and eating sit-out powerbombs on the arena floor like he’s still 20 and a hundred pounds underweight.

The only negative here is that Cien Almas is now just “Andrade,” having lost his nickname AND his last name. He’ll be remembered by his closest friends, like Antonio, Alexander, Langston, Adrian, Luke, Erick, and Samson.

Best: Post Haste

Samoa Joe vs. Mustafa Ali never happened thanks to a pre-match attack from Joe, but still earns a Best for Ali’s absolutely sick leaps into the ring post. Usually guys getting smashed into the post just headbutt the back of their hand or whatever and fall over, but Ali chose to sell both postings by going into the air and practically flipping upside down. It’s great.

Also great: Ali’s sad Iron Man reactor heartbeat when he’s on the ground from the attack. I don’t know if the pulsating heart was just a happy accident or whatever, but it was a great way to illustrate how the babyface is down, but still alive. Nobody let Samoa Joe Ali is married and has kids, okay?

Worst: Like AJ Styles Doesn’t Know What A Concession Stand Looks Like

This week’s most unintentionally moment had to be AJ Styles responding to Daniel Bryan “at the concession stand,” which is clearly the WWE merch table with a bunch of hot dogs and sodas on it. Brother, most local shows have an actual concession stand, I don’t think for a second WWE’s running a 10,000 seat arena where the concession stand is a bunch of pre-made hot dogs and watered down drinks sitting next to the shirts. The inclusion of the condiment station was nice, but like, the condiments are clearly already on the hot dogs.

Furthermore, in episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

Cake: Going The Distance

Finally we’ve got The Miz holding a “birthday bash” for Shane McMahon. Miz confirms yet again that he watches WWE programming and knows how these things play out, as he brings out two really badly done sheet cakes for Shane’s birthday because they’re in a tag team feud and are gonna have to have cakes for both guys.

The first cake dies when Shane throws Cesaro through a table tracksuit-first. If I know anything by looking at Cesaro, it’s that coming that close to a cake will cause his body to revolt and malfunction on him. It’s like when they tried to have Finn Bálor eat a donut. It’s a crime against nature. Cake two dies when Shane McMahon dropkicks* it into Sheamus’ face**.

*touches it with his toes
**lap

It’s good to have a moment where the babyfaces triumph, though, especially considering how unbelievably hard Miz is going to turn on Shane at the Royal Rumble. Or to give them a special bonding moment that’ll explain why Shane’s adopting him, or whatever.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Son of Tony Zane

If you listen closely, you can hear Cesaro calling Cody to see if there’s room in AEW.

Harry Longabaugh

Miz and Sheamus are in the ring while the two best wrestlers in the world look on.

AwkwardL0ser

None of this would be happening if Baron Corbin hadn’t been scapegoated for a match that isn’t even happening ??‍

The Real Birdman

Just call him ACA. Then once everyone’s happy with it, take it away from them and charge them a ton of money monthly for him

Daniel Valentin

Miz: “Here you go, Shane, happy birthday!”
Shane: “Why, thank you, Miz, you shouldn’t have.”
*Shane opens the birthday gif, it’s a dress and stiletto heels.”
Shane: “…”
Miz: “Let’s go get those tag titles!”

notJames

So much bad acting. So much bad writing! What is this, RAW?

Clay Quartermain

Please let Dawn Marie answer the door

Taylor Swish

Next to Zelina, he’s Andrade the Giant

AJ Dusman

Who can forget those iconic superstars of the Attitude Era? Lead by Steve, Maivia, Hunter, Mick, and Under.

WWE Network

Why is he diving INTO the cake? TURN IT OVER

That’s it for another Smackdown. Thanks for reading.

Share the column on social to help us out if you’re a friend, drop down into our comments section below to let us know what you thought of the episode, and make sure you’re here regularly in the coming weeks for our Royal Rumble coverage. R-Truth and Carmella are definitely heading to WrestleMania!

WWE Smackdown Live

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Rey Mysterio and Andrade (Cien Almas) tore down the house, Mandy Rose tried to use a hidden paparazzo to ruin Jim Usos’s marriage, and Shane McMahon did a coast-to-coast dropkick to kick the cardboard that holds a cake into Sheamus’ tummy.

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.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for January 22, 2019.

Best/Worst: The Opening

This week’s opening segment couldn’t have been more by the numbers, and your enjoyment of it lives or dies based on how much you want to see these performers. For most of us the amount we want to see them is very high, so it’s probably fine, but it could’ve been better.

If you missed it, the show opens with Becky Lynch cutting a promo on Asuka. Asuka interrupts, because that’s how promos work 100% of the time now, and eventually Charlotte Flair interrupts them both. Charlotte talk shit until Asuka randomly hits Becky, and that turns into an Asuka/Becky pull-apart brawl. It’s one of those segments that isn’t bad, but would be a lot more impactful if this wasn’t the exact thing they do so often. Promo parade, pull-apart brawl. The only thing missing is a fourth person interrupting to set up a tag match for later in the show. I’m gonna guess Asuka jumped in too early and was supposed to wait for Charlotte to like, at least kind of attempt Becky and Asuka into fighting each other, and that’s why it felt so disjointed.

Anyway, Lynch vs. Asuka at the Royal Rumble is going to slap — and, though you don’t need to be reminded if you’re paying attention, right now even the worst shit on Smackdown tends to be better than the majority of Raw — so I’m fine with them stutter-stepping a little to get there. The “announce it on Main Event, then take it back, then spend two weeks building up to the same announcement” preface already made it feel more awkward than it needed to.

Best/Worst (Cont’d.): Rumble Roses

First of all, if you ever need a reason to break them up as a tag team, Sonya Deville having to be completely smudged out during Mandy Rose’s Sexy Soft Focus entrance all the time is a good one. That’s like asking someone to be in your Insta selfie and not letting them have the dog ears too.

Second of all, we finally got to the Fireworks Factory of Mandy Rose vs. Naomi, and … it wasn’t great. The action is really slow and purposeful, like one of them is trying to remember all the spots in real-time, and the finish is super weak. They do an awkward trading of forearms on the apron, causing Mandy to watusi into the referee and somehow blind him to Deville interfering. Mandy then shoves Naomi into the post and rolls her in to pin her. And that’s it! Weeks and weeks of build up, just for that.

And sure, the feud isn’t over, but there’s almost too much to it now. You’ve got the iffy motivations of Mandy Rose trying to not-really sleep with Naomi’s husband because she “doesn’t like her,” and Naomi being increasingly furious to the point of outside-of-work attacks on Mandy even though Jimmy Uso’s clearly been Hands Out Nah about Mandy the entire time. Sonya’s helping Mandy, even though she thinks it’s stupid. Mandy’s in the ring doing a bunch of “YOU’LL NEVER LOOK LIKE ME” stuff that would probably be more effective and less connotative if it wasn’t a blonde white woman screaming in a black woman’s face in a company with a history of not paying enough attention when they do shit like this. On a positive note, it’s a mid-card feud without a title belt involved that’s gotten several weeks of build and development. That, in itself, is good. It doesn’t make the content of all feuds like that good, though, and that’s where we’re at.

Best: The Miz Is The Best Tag Team Partner, Or, “Shane McMahon Really Eats It”

This is the part of the column where we briefly mention how ridiculous it is that Cesaro isn’t a major singles champion and hasn’t been for several years, because he’s clearly amazing at his job, physically charismatic in the ring to tell stories and connect in a way no one else can, and jacked out of his goddamn mind. He’s currently in a 50/50 feud with a sweaty old man who punches like a baby but is the “best wrestler in the world” because his family ran a fantasy booked show for a murderer.

ANYWAY, I’ve written about this a lot over the past few weeks, but I love this approach to Miz as a babyface. There’s always going to be a level of insincerity and falseness to Miz, because he’s just Mike from The Real World pretending to be The Rock, and that’s what (I believe) handcuffed him so badly years ago when he tried being “Ric Flair’s protege.” Here, they aren’t asking Miz to be a different person; simply, they’re allowing him to open up a little as a human being who no longer has to worry about keeping his “spot” in the company, and are setting him up to bond with people who grew up with privilege but also understand what it’s like to be passed over for people seemingly “better suited” for a position than you. Miz has Daniel Bryan (and The Rock, per Miz’s dad), Shane has Stephanie (and their weird dad).

Cesaro wins via ref distraction — that’s two matches in a row ending the same way, which should never happen on a 2-hour wrestling show — but hey, at least he wins. Cesaro should only lose wrestling matches via extreme pure passion (see: Sami Zayn) or act of God. See Cesaro. The best part of the match by far is the post-match attack, though, with Shane leaning into a Brogue Kick like a boss …

WWE Smackdown Live

… and Miz having to cover him to keep him from taking any more damage like the good 1986 NWA babyface he’s become. I’m forever in love with the dynamic of Bryan and Miz as eternal polar opposites, and how when Bryan becomes a straight-up heel who tells the truth and gets booed for it because he’s being too negatively aggressive, Miz becomes a babyface who tells lies and gets cheered for it because he’s being so positively aggressive.

Join us this Sunday for Miz totally setting up Shane for a hot tag and then kicking his ass for not believing him/in him quickly enough.

Best: He’s Running

“Vince, of course you don’t want to listen to this… because YOU and the baby boomer generation are PARASITES of this world!”

Vince, he’s just trying to pander to your demographic’s documented historical vanity. Resist!

Meet Daniel Bryan, a planet-loving master craftsman of his trade who is the bad guy in a pro wrestling story against (1) a 73-year old Republican businessman who just put his kids in charge of everything, and (2) a highly commercialized MAGA chud who believes the world is flat and gets mad at razor commercials because they’re trying to tell him how to raise his family. Bryan’s role right now, depending on your level of optimism, is either to:

represent everything WWE thinks is “bad” about its audience, from a sense of entitlement and “blaming others” for their problems to arbitrary shit like not dressing nicely enough, because they like to say they “turn a mirror on society,” and this is their interpretation of “society,” or
be a really wise actor who uses his job of playing a “bad guy wrestler” at a high level on live television to inject some of his actual thoughts and feelings on the world into his art, effectively communicating his truth to those of us who are paying attention

The actual answer is probably somewhere in the middle, and if you haven’t already angrily scrolled down to call me out in comment section of a wrestling blog on the Internet for caring about/noticing things happening in the real world and not just communicating to you exclusively in star ratings and smark jargon, I’d like to say that no matter the intent, a death of the author approach to The New Daniel Bryan has me loving what he’s doing independent of intent.

To say it more quickly, this is Daniel Bryan right now:

If Styles would like a more audience appropriate response than The Eric Andre Show, how about Galatians 4:16? It’s in the New Testament, way after that part in the Old Testament when Goliath beats the hell out of David for eating too many mushrooms.

Best: That Mustafa Ali Video

WWE Smackdown Live

One of the most disappointing things about this episode is that WWE Fan Nation didn’t upload the great pre-taped Mustafa Ali video promo that aired before his match against Samoa Joe. Ali’s been doing these in this style for a while and they’re almost always an improvement over Backstage Interviewer Wants To Know Your Thoughts Heading Into Tonight’s Match. He’s a fascinating person who is great at communicating to an audience like a human being, and if there’s anything WWE needs more of right now, it’s those.

Ali and Joe is a great combination, too, not only because of their physical differences, but where they are in their careers. Ali is a scrappy young guy who has to scratch and claw for everything he’s getting, because his look and name are things wrestling fans have been conditioned to be assumptive and stereotypical about for the past [entirety of wrestling history]. Joe was once that. I remember tons of stories about how Joe could never get a WWE contract because he wasn’t in the right family of wrestling Samoans, and seeing him wreck shop in ROH and early TNA to prove his worth. Joe finally made his name, so much so that he could waltz into WWE as himself, fully-formed, indie name and all, but it took him a while. Here’s Ali getting shuffled onto Smackdown in seemingly “no” time, and while there’s only about 7 years age difference between them and Joe only debuted about 4 years before Ali, Joe’s familiarity over a long period of time makes him feel more like a veteran, and with that comes a sense of seniority and, if we’re being honest, entitlement.

They probably aren’t going that deep with it, but “high-flying face out to prove himself against the top stars in the company” versus “guy who should be a top star in the company but can’t seem to ever prove himself against the top stars” is an even more direct story to tell. If you want to get even more direct, it’s two great wrestlers who are great at wrestling being great at wrestling. Sometimes that fixes any of the wacky stuff you tried to get you there.

Best: It’s A UCLA, Yes It Is

The Tony Chimmel cameo and “Kayla no!” were great, but the money reference here is New Day paying homage to Jaylen Hands and Moses Brown. Really hoping Kofi at least makes it to the final four in the Rumble this year. That guy deserves to win one before he’s done.

Best: Speaking Of Great Wrestlers Being Great At Wrestling

Rey Mysterio vs. Andrade Sin Cien Almas in a 2-out-of-3 falls match, following that barn-burner tag team match from two weeks ago and the somehow even better one-on-one rematch from last week. Bless whichever writer or producer watched those matches and said, “yep, you guys get the entire last half hour of Smackdown, do whatever you want.”

This was as good as you’d expect, and there’s so much to talk about. You could GIF almost any 10 seconds of this and find something great, whether it’s a powerbomb off the top rope (complete with Andrade going from the second rope to the top rope with Mysterio already on his shoulders, which Pete Dunne and Joe Coffey recently showed us is nearly impossible to do even if one of you is really good), the buckle bomb into the ring post, a powerbomb to the floor countered with a backflip off the apron, or that crazy innovative slide into a sunset flip into the barricade Rey pulled off. 44-year old Rey Mysterio shouldn’t still be able to pop shit like this off so seamlessly:

Here we go again!@ReyMysterio vs. @AndradeCienWWE (w/o @Zelina_VegaWWE) in a #2OutOf3Falls Match! #SDLive pic.twitter.com/AhNr2DSnzx

— WWE (@WWE) January 23, 2019

The downside here is that the final fall ends when Samoa Joe shows up and interferes, robbing us of an actual finish in favor of promoting the “every man for himself” aspect of the Royal Rumble they’ve been promoting for like 30 years. It becomes a Joe promo, and then Randy Orton shows up and poses, and that’s it.

The upside, however, is that the Smackdown mid-card scene is killing it right now, and maybe holding off on a finish to this 2-out-of-3 falls match can keep the feud going after the Rumble and maybe recreate itself with even more time and better results with a real finish. Preferably at Fastlane or something, or hell, open WrestleMania 35 with it. Let Almas kick Rey’s ass while Rey’s dressed like Miracle Man or whatever.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

troi

So which ringside child in a Rey mask is Zelina Vega?

The Real Birdman

You can’t steal Jaxson Ryker’s finisher if you’re not gonna mess it up first

AwkwardL0ser

Petey Williams shows up and Destroyers them both is the only acceptable ending

Endy_Mion

I would like a scene where Ali tries to convince the Fashion Police that he was a real cop before all this and Dango/Breezy just don’t believe him.

Harry Longabaugh

We’re going to look back on Alita as a technically dicey mess that was carried to relevance by Atrishstratus.

Mark Silletti

Charlotte just entered this scene like Carmella’s evil ex-wife

Baron Von Raschke

Vince: Good promo, Bryan. You really got into character there.
D-Bry: Character?

AddMayne

Calling out the boomers just caused 12 more weeks of Vince writing anti-millennial promos for Ronda

JayBone2

BRYAN: You Vince and all the other baby boomers are parasites to this world.

VINCE: CURSES! Who told you?
Sheds skin and scurries away on his eight legs.

AshBlue

Daniel Bryan would be the greatest heel of all time if he turned everyone’s beer into water right now.

Non wrestling fans who are wondering what’s up with wrestling, check this shit out pic.twitter.com/lxmWIQxl2S

— ORIN (@orinanne) January 23, 2019

One more time for the people in the back.

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. We’ve got a Royal Rumble (and an NXT TakeOver) this weekend, so that should be fun. Make sure you’re here for that. Drop a comment below to let us know what you thought of the show, and hit us with a share on social if you’re willing.

As Carl Sagan once blogged,

WWE Smackdown Live

Hulk Hogan looks great

Previously on the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live: The Royal Rumble is in the books, and Smackdown’s Becky Lynch is your 2019 women’s Rumble winner. Also in Smackdown developments, Shane McMahon’s a Tag Team Champion and Daniel Bryan’s only still WWE Champion because of the worst guy from the Wyatt Family.

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.

? Hey you! ? If you like these, please consider taking a second to hop over and vote for us as Best Wrestling Media in this year’s RSPW Awards! It’d be super nice of you!

And now, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for January 29, 2019.

Best/Worst: America Still Needs Your Help!

Don’t get me wrong, the “worst” modifier here isn’t necessarily for R-Truth becoming United States Champion. The guy’s done great work lately and looks better than most 20-year olds despite being almost 50, and he’s been around long enough that yeah, okay, giving him a secondary championship run and having some fun heading into WrestleMania’s not a bad idea. Especially when the United States Championship barely even feels like a title someone has or defends. It’s like someone getting a new pair of trunks or something.

I didn’t love the first half hour of Smackdown, but it was certainly eventful and interesting. That’s so much better than watching thirty average minutes where nothing happens and you’ve seen it all before. In case you missed it, R-Truth has been given a United States Championship match because Nia Jax attacked him from behind and took away his #30 spot in the Royal Rumble, which he won by winning the Mixed Match Challenge. I’m not sure a United States Championship match is a make-good, but maybe it is if you win it? So yeah, Truth counters a Landslide into a pin and wins the belt a little over 24 hours after Nakamura won it at Royal Rumble. On the pre-show. Things aren’t exactly prestigious right now, is what I’m getting at.

That brings out Rusev, who is upset that he lost the United States Championship to Nakamura via distraction during a “you made me accidentally knock down my own wife” feud and isn’t going to get the chance to get his revenge and win it back. So he challenges Truth for right here, right now, and still LOSES despite Truth having already wrestled.

What’s the next logical step? Decide that you hate this accidentally fortunate guy who just pinned you with a fluke roll-up more than the guy you’ve been feuding with over your wife being repeatedly injured for a month, and who took your championship in the first place. Now Rusev and Nakamura are allies, and Lana (who is the one Nakamura’s been causing to get beaten up) is just like, “sure, fine, we’re evil again!”

Then the new Notable Foreign Heel super team runs into botch culture also-rans Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson and get challenged to a tag team match, even though (1) Good Brothers have never been established as Truth’s friends, (2) Rusev hates Nakamura, and (3) they’ve been allied for like five minutes at best. AND THEY ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE, because I guess we’re just gonna change gears and move forward.

The larger point I’m getting at, if it’s even worth making, is that yeah, it was “exciting” in that things happened and the character motivations were addressed for the most part, but when they decided the entire mid-card should revolve around R-Truth on a whim it broke a lot of alignments and chose to add a bunch of story threads I don’t think it needed. We’re already doing the “I’ll agree to be your partner, but don’t screw me or else” thing on a much grander scale with Shane McMahon and Miz on this same show, you know?

Best: Tell Me About The Rabbits, George

Speaking of the Best Tag Team in the World — preferred name: The Miz Mac Challenge — they have a “best celebration in the world” that just turns out to be an adorable moment of Shane McMahon bringing out Miz’s dad so Miz can finally hear his dad say he’s proud of him. It’s nice, and I love that Miz’s hilarious dad holds the microphone with both hands and leans into it like Trump drinking a bottle of water.

They really missed an opportunity to not give Miz’s dad his TitanTron video and entrance theme, though.

Worst: Mandy Rose Attempting To Express Human Emotions

We finally find out why Mandy Rose hates Naomi, and it’s because Naomi called her “weak” on a 2015 episode of Tough Enough. The struggle here is watching Mandy attempt to show emotions besides “sexy” and “surprised,” which are to date the only emotions WWE’s trained her to show. No great shade on Mandy, I guess, but acting’s not her strong suit. Sonya covers for part of it, and she’s still got a ways to go before she’s considered Maria Bad.

I do think whether they show them or not, everyone who works for WWE should have to sit down in a confessional at weekly TV and explain who their character is, what they think about the other characters, and why they’re doing what they’re doing. And you shouldn’t get to start a feud or turn heel or turn face or anything important unless your story checks out. P.S. if being told you suck on Tough Enough is enough to hate someone’s guts, The Miz should hate everyone in the world.

Let’s Go Ahead And Accept The Inevitable Now, Because It’s Still Like Two Full Months Until WrestleMania

Charlotte Flair’s probably going to end up in the Ronda Rousey vs. Becky Lynch match. Right? We’re gonna write about how they should do Rousey vs. Lynch one-on-one as the WrestleMania main event because of the prestige of that spot and because Becky’s earned the right to send Ronnie out on her ass, and how they should do whatever Lynch vs. Flair matches they want at Elimination Chamber or Fastlane so we can do the proper main and Asuka vs. Flair again at Mania. It all makes sense to us, but what makes sense and seems like the right call is not always what’s Best For Business®.

The truth is that Flair has been as integral to the sustainability and growth of the Ronda Rousey vs. Becky Lynch feud, and I think the Ronda beatdown at Survivor Series was as important to all this being exciting and layered and having heat as the accidental Lynch injury that pushed everything back to the spring. Charlotte’s great and a big-match player, so adding her to the match will not only validate her good work, it recognizes that she’s essentially the established face of New WWE Women’s Wrestling. Addressing Lynch vs. Rousey and Lynch vs. Flair simultaneously on Becky’s biggest night ever wouldn’t be a bad call. Plus, adding in Charlotte makes it a triple threat match, which is where the whole Flair vs. Lynch beef began in the first place. Brings it all full-circle.

WWE Network

Pretty cool how that unexpected moment from after a match at SummerSlam retroactively became the most important WWE moment of 2018. I could live without Becky having to be “hurt” for everything, though. Is she Diamond Dallas Page? That Nia Jax thing was a fluke, it doesn’t have to be her defining character trait.

Best: Dream Andrade

Like a lot of this episode, this segment features a lot “happening,” but not a lot actually happening, if that makes sense. Rey Mysterio shows up for a match with Samoa Joe. He’s interrupted by Zelina Vega, who distracts him until Andrade can attack him. I guess in response to the 2-out-of-3 falls match from last week not having a finish? Was that Rey’s fault?

It’s extremely by-the-numbers and water-treading at best, but the water they’re treading is “the possibility of more Rey Mysterio vs. Andrade matches,” so I’m fine with it.

Speaking Of Predictable

The show also features a four team Smackdown Tag Team Championship number one contenders match featuring …

the three teams who are always competing for the Smackdown Tag Team Championship
a team that has never had a match on Smackdown, and are not actually signed to Smackdown at all yet

It was fine, and the Usos move on to Elimination Chamber to get back the Smackdown Tag Team Championship when the other shoe drops on the McMahon/Miz team. Or I’ve been wrong about this since the beginning, the Miz/McMahon story has no layers beyond the surface level ones we’ve been given, and the Usos are just getting in work before they end up on the WrestleMania pre-show. One or the other.

Plus, Heavy Machinery’s a lot better in the ring than when they’re backstage doing … whatever the hell this is.

WWE Raw

Best: And Now, The Moment I’ve All Been Waiting For

When he won the WWE Championship via kicking a flat-Earther in the balls like he deserved, The New Daniel Bryan promised to update the WWE Championship in his own image:

“After I beat you … I am going to take this leather strap that was made from a skinned cow that I like to name Daisy and I am going to replace it with something sustainable, something better and the new Daniel Bryan is going to create a new world that these people don’t have any part of … You know what? Most of you probably don’t deserve to have a part of it either.”

Now, on Smackdown, we finally have it: the New WWE Championship, made of “100% sustainable hemp” and “naturally fallen oak.” IT IS GLORIOUS.

“Last week, AJ Styles implied that I was a hypocrite. And guess what? I am a hypocrite. I am a hypocrite because I carry around this. Do you see this? This is a symbol. It is a symbol of excellence. But it is also a symbol of excess. It’s gaudy, it’s made from cheap labor, and worst of all, it is bound to this skin of a cow whose life was taken from her. I like to give that cow a name. In my mind, the cow whose life was taken her name was Daisy. And you see, Daisy had the ability to feel immense joy. You see, Daisy had the ability to feel immense joy, which unfortunately she didn’t get to experience much of in this life. Daisy also had the ability to feel insufferable pain, which unfortunately she did feel. And Daisy was forced to give her life for this symbol. FOR THIS SYMBOL. And this SYMBOL is the very thing that Rowan and I stand against, this SYMBOL … this is trash.”

WHERE’S THE LIE.

Unfortunately, things quickly devolve into a Raw opening segment — a Promo Parade, if you will — to set up the WWE Championship defense at Elimination Chamber. Bryan’s going into the Chamber to defend his gigantic friendship bracelet someone’s definitely setting on fire before WrestleMania against degenerate yokel AJ Styles, unsuccessful murderer Samoa Joe, rural artist Jeff Hardy, megalomaniac sneaky snake man Randy Orton, and in-over-his-head Mustafa Ali. It should be great, but if that beautiful new hippie championship isn’t given a run to validate and celebrate its existence, it’ll sure be disappointing.

Oh, and to quote my good friend Mike Fireball, “the best part about the New Daniel Bryan’s New Sustainable WWE Title is wanting to buy one of your own goes completely against everything New Daniel Bryan has been preaching this whole time, thereby proving him right about each and every one of us.”

P.S. if you’re calling the team “The Greater Good,” you better add Sami Zayn to it soon.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Blade_222

That’s a damn fine SmackDown six.

SHough610

Matt Riddle: Hey Hunter, can I go be on Smackdown?
HHH: … why?
Matt Riddle: No reason
HHH: You can’t smoke the belt, Matt

Endy_Mion

Jeff Hardy is going to work his ass off trying to win this hemp belt from Bryan

Cami

You can’t have a wooden Championship without Randy Orton!

Pdragon619

The title will be defended under 420/7 rules

Big Baby Yeezus

Janitor Jim Duggan’s gonna find that title and become the new WWE champion now

Clay Quartermain

Somewhere, Micheal Cole: “VINTAGE VINTER!”

Ryse

I, for one, am looking forward to Shane attending an Uso superkick party.

Taylor Swish (made before Graves said it)

Otis looks like the son of Gwildor from Masters of the Universe

AddMayne

Mandy: Sonya and I are officially declaring…
Sonya:*hopes raised*
Mandy: That we’re competing in the Elimination Chamber!
Sonya: someday…

WWE Network

SEE YOU NEVER, JOSTENS

Do it for Carl Sagan! The belt is just star stuff!

That’s it for this week’s Smackdown. Make sure to drop a comment below to let us know what you thought of the show, and hit us with a share on social if you’re a pal. See you next week!