Hey gang! Birdman here for a crack at putting my smarktitude to good use & take a shot at a Smackdown review. For those wondering or not familiar, I was a part of Uproxx threads from the With Leather & With Spandex days, so I’m very happy to see this community continue after everything that’s happened. I’ll try my best to keep this insightful, funny & literate.
With that said, welcome & let’s dive into the show!
BOTCH: King Of The Br…Oh No…
Smackdown opens with Michael Cole dressed like Angus Bethune going to prom (we’re starting with super obscure references) to formally introduce the FOX audience to Matt Riddle & find out what makes bros bro. The promo is pretty inoffensive, although Riddle says “bro” more times than even he finds necessary, but really goes off the rails at the end. I guess it works as a friendly PSA to not walk barefoot in the snow in Wisconsin during the winter. Cole, super shocked someone would dare wrestle without shoes, despite that being Rusev’s thing not long ago, asks what gives. Riddle explains he got mild frostbite as a kid on his feet, nearly losing his Bro toes. The freezing cold resulted in Riddle feeling a burning sensation on his feet any time he’s worn shoes after, so he never will again. Whether that story is true or isn’t, what are we supposed to get out of it? Assuming I don’t watch NXT, do I like him now or just think he’s a total goof? Wasn’t the best start. Ask him about his giant mushroom tattoo next time, Cole & let’s see where that takes us.
Speaking of freezing cold heat, out comes King Corbin to get in Riddle’s face about ganging up on him last week after his loss to Jeff Hardy. Naturally, Riddle says he’ll fight him right here right now, but Corbin insists Riddle is not on his level yet. Instead Riddle has to work his way up to Corbin by facing… multi-time champion across several promotions John Morrison? Sure, that tracks. I don’t really understand why Corbin gets to lead the likes of Ziggler/McIntyre, Cesaro/Nak & now Morrison/Miz, but I’m hoping the statue of limitations runs out on his King gimmick soon.
HUGE POP: Wrestling!
I just want to point out that this show was already on it’s fourth match by the time we hit the 90 minute mark & I can’t compliment that enough. For comparison, RAW the last two weeks has had one (1) match during the first hour. Not only that, each match got time & all but one had a clean finish. Let the wrestling inform your show instead of vice versa. Trust me, we all prefer the wrestling to endless recaps & Cathy interviews.
POP: Johnny Mund-Bro
The resulting match between Riddle & Morrison is really good & probably would have been match of the night if not for Kofi/Nak later on. These two compliment each other nicely in the ring, even though I’m sure Morrison at this point can get a good match out of anybody. Bonus points to Riddle for throwing a flip flop in Corbin’s face & causing him to vacate commentary. They have a nice back & forth of mat wrestling, strikes, as well as high flying, ultimately ending with Riddle hitting a flash roll up pinning Morrison for the surprise victory. I do wish there was more for Morrison to be doing than taking losses seemingly always & shooting music videos at Castle Mar-Miz, but I understand Riddle is being built up after his big Styles win a couple weeks back.
Afterwards, Riddle celebrates on the ramp only to get blindsided by Styles only for him to get blindsided by Gulak, giving us a nice segue to the Intercontinental Title match up next. There’s some nice bleeding of feuds into each other in WWE lately, which feels like it shouldn’t have to be pointed out as it should be the norm, but the midcard & women’s divisions are seeing people into multiple feuds right now as opposed to “face the same person for months on end” booking we’ve become accustomed to.
POP: Styles Makes The Fight
Despite Styles getting upset by Riddle a few weeks ago, he apparently has not forgotten getting upset by Gulak before that & was here to take him to the damn woodshed. In a bit of hilarious editing, during the match Cole brings in Daniel Bryan via Zoom (sadly without an American, dragon or combination of the two themed background) to ask how he thinks Drew is doing & while what we’re seeing Gulak is getting his lunch fed to him, D-Bry thinks he’s “doing great”. Gulak gets in a couple hope spots, but this is mostly about Styles having none of it, eventually Styles Clashing then Phenomenal Forearming Gulak for the pin.
I really like the idea that once Styles takes you seriously, you better be on your A-game or he’s gonna absolutely roll you. Even though this was mostly all Styles, it looks a lot better for Gulak going 10ish minutes with him as opposed to a two minute rout. Giving your champions decided non-squash victories does wonders for not only building up them, but making their challengers look good as well in a loss. Solid all around stuff.
POP: On A Golden Roll
Remember a while back when WWE were teasing the Sasha/Bayley break up, brought in Dr. Shelby & it was severely lackluster? Thankfully, we are now graced with the exact opposite of that. Since Bayley won the SDL Women’s Title, these two have become more or less The Stateside IIconics & have been the best thing on Smackdown, possibly the best thing across all three shows. I sincerely hope they stay together for the foreseeable future as they are firing on all cylinders right now.
Coming off the heels of last week’s Undertaker tribute show, they decide naturally they’re next in line to be celebrated. Bayley claims Taker called her personally (with an impression of him so bad it can’t help be great) to give the ok, leading to a video package of the two fawning over each other. It’s filled with all of their accolades over the years & is worth it alone for Sasha’s “The closest anybody else will get to a Grand Slam is a greasy breakfast at Denny’s” line.
Bliss-Cross interrupt to upstage the two’s actual accomplishments by… lying about their own & saying Nikki is currently the Queen of Scotland. Boy, you really showed them! They get in the ring & it leads to a nice juxtaposition of the last few weeks with Bliss slapping Bayley & Sasha putting the two in a match on the spot after weeks of the opposite happening to Sasha. The resulting match between Bayley & Bliss is a solid 5 minute affair, but mostly serves to antagonize Cross enough with taunts that she snaps & ends up costing Alexa the match via DQ after attacking Bayley. Please ignore Sasha choosing to wear Bayley’s title around her waist instead of her own tag title during the match & refer to my line above about keeping them together forever. And hey! We’re two for two on the challenger not pinning the champion for the night. Let’s go three for three!
POP: Nak Attack Is Back, Jack
Whoops!
Here’s something I’m happy to say: Shinsuke Nakamura might officially be back to the guy we all loved when he & Sami Zayn beat the hell out of each other at Takeover: Dallas. After appearing to be going through the motions for too long, Nak has found a pretty good groove these past weeks. He had an under the radar good match with Styles about a month ago, has been working well with Cesaro as a tag team since, and this match with Kofi was the best of the night for me. Nak when he has an edge is about a million times better than crotch uppercutting Nak a hundred times out of a hundred.
The two have a pretty hard hitting bout, with Kofi flying around with some urgency & Nak’s feet seemingly having a vendetta against Kofi’s entire body. The finish has Nak hitting a brutal looking Kinshasa to the side of Kofi’s head that Cole calls a “running knee” (Graves, where are you? That’s your thing). Even with the pinning the champion in a non-title match trope, I’ll take it in this scenario. Especially as it looks like they’re taking Cesaro & Nak seriously this cycle. Give them the tag titles already. I love New Day as much as anybody, but they’ve been pretty much the Charlotte Flair of the tag title scene since Kofi lost the WWE Title in that the division seems to be constantly revolving around them. Next week the titles are on the line, which I don’t love, so expect some sort of schmozz to set up a match at ER where hopefully they can capture the belts.
NOTHING: Bash At The Bayou
A vignette hyping up the “Wyatt Swamp Fight” upcoming at E(w)xtreme Rules between Strowman & Bray Wyatt Prime is shown to mainly kill time between commercials. They already established the match last week & went over the history between the two before their match at Backlash, so this is mainly just filler. It’s looking like this match will be another cinematic affair, which despite being pretty hit or miss thus far in WWE, are a welcome change up from the wrestling in front of tired PC recruits all show long. Given Wyatt’s track record with The Firefly Funhouse & the Cena breakdown at Mania, I’m actually hopeful this will be less House of Horrors 2.0 & more Boneyard Match. I’ll consider it an automatic success if The Nite Folk show up.
BOTCH: Sheamus Doesn’t Even Set The Bar
Finally, we get to the main event with Sheamus’ “Toast to Jeff Hardy” featuring an actual bar setup in the ring complete with NPC bartender. Hardy shows up before Sheamus can because he’s probably sick of being called a junkie loser on national tv for a month straight at this point & just wants punch him in the face about it. Instead of coming down to the ring, Sheamus shows up on the Tron from his bar at home that’s decked out in more Irish paraphernalia than a gift shop at the Dublin Airport just to to call Hardy a junkie loser on national tv. Sheamus tries to get Hardy to go off the wagon by raising a glass to his terribleness & shockingly Jeff doesn’t take it well. Hardy responds by going full Karen on the waitstaff, pouring a glass of a little bit of the bubbly on the bartender followed by smashing a lot of bit of the bubbly on the back of his head. As if the pandemic wasn’t already hard enough on those in the service industry.
I’m not really sure where this is headed at this point as they already did their match at Backlash with Sheamus winning clean. Given that Extreme Rules is right around the corner though, the only acceptable gimmick match would have to be a Stairs Match that has twelve steps, I think. That or Jeff gets his win back & we keep going until Summerslam. It’s that second one, isn’t it?
And that’s our show. Honestly, one of the better Smackdowns in recent memory even with the closing Sheamus/Hardy stuff weighing it down. More 10+ minute matches & less dream sequences about Otis poolside, please & thank you. Anyway, hope you all enjoyed my first column! Feel free to drop a comment below or on the Discord about what you liked or didn’t. Any & all feedback is appreciated. Thanks for reading & if all goes well, maybe this can become a weekly thing with your support.
