Previously on Smackdown Live…
Sasha & Bayley were (rightfully) celebrated for being the best, AJ Styles & Shinsuke Nakamura beat the hell out of their opponents, & Jeff Hardy tried to prove to us he’s a better person these days by smashing a champagne bottle over an innocent bystander’s head.
The show was actually quite good. Surely they capitalized on that momentum this week…
HUGE BOTCH: This Entire Damn Show
I seriously considered just writing “This episode sucked a lot” then calling it a day, but as this is my second column ever & we’re trying to start a new wrestling blog, that probably would not have been the best maneuver. That being said, I would be doing everybody a disservice by not pointing out that this show was the absolute worst. For all the praise I gave last week’s show, this one gets equal amounts of disdain. Four matches happened. Two distraction roll-ups & two disqualifications. And that’s not to mention the sing-song portion of the program. Yikes.
I do understand that WWE/Florida’s response to the pandemic lately has been questionable at best, so I at least sympathize with them not playing with a full deck & having to scramble to get things on tv. That’s how you get things like them replaying the Wyatt vs Strowman match from MitB in full since they need to put something on the show when half your roster decides your work environment is too unsafe. That makes sense. Everything else that happened last night was just uninspired & bad. Bad I can usually deal with as you can poke fun, but this was the worst kind of bad in that it was all just so boring & pointless.
Anyway… please read my review if you’re still here!
BOTCH: Showdown At The Not OK Corral
MizTV opens to take us through Jeff Hardy’s addiction history that everybody already knows & his ongoing feud with Sheamus that everybody already hates. Miz & Morrison suggest that in order to conquer his demons, Hardy should face both them & Sheamus in a “Bar Fight” (presumably at Sheamus’ behest). Jeff quickly accepts after realizing he’s got a better chance of winning now that the odds are against him & he’s a WWE babyface.
All of this is fine if we hadn’t seen it all before when they were building to their match at Backlash or Hardy’s feud with Samoa Joe or Hardy’s feud with CM Punk. WWE could do a real service by telling a layered story about how you never really conquer addiction, you just have to take it one day at a time with some of those days being harder than the others, but of course WWE can’t be trusted to do that. For example, in the middle of the interview, Miz explains how Hardy is his daughter’s favorite wrestler, but that makes him nervous given he knows all of Jeff’s exploits from the past & he doesn’t want her to head down a similar path. That would have been a nice little moment to really drive the point home about how an addict can ultimately become a better person if it weren’t for John Morrison shitting all over everything the entire time. He’s constantly cracking jokes & miming to a watch on his wrist to wrap it up, really taking away from the gravity of the conversation.
MizTV ends as always with a fight & Miz taking on Jeff Hardy. The match is perfectly pedestrian, like most Miz matches, but I’m almost certain they were both wrestling in Morrison’s slow motion entrance portal. Seriously, somebody please tell both of these guys they’re about 50% slower than they think they are. Sheamus shows up on the Tron (again) to throw being a disappointment in Hardy’s face, allowing Miz to go for the ever devastating Diva Driver ’08, but Hardy manages to roll through & pin him. Remember tag team champions Miz & Morrison? Good times.
BOTCH: Crossed Up
The only thing even remotely enjoyable on the show was, unsurprisingly, Sasha Banks & Bayley vs. Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross. Even then, most of that enjoyment comes from Sasha & Bayley’s heckling of their opponents & the announce team. The match itself is fine, but marred by the finish (this comes back later). Nikki gets distracted by Sasha on the outside, allowing Bayley to roll her up & “cheat” by putting her feet on the ropes for leverage. I say “cheat” because when Bayley actually does roll her up, she’s too far away from the ropes & can barely get one foot on them for a half second, so it looks more like Nikki Cross actually loses as opposed to being robbed by the heels.
I do like the story they’re getting at with Nikki ultimately being too easily distracted which led to the loss this week & Alexa’s loss last week. That works well heading into a title match that assuredly will be met with Sasha on the outside doing her best to psych Nikki out. At the same time, the match tonight felt off as Sasha & Bayley seem to be a lot more focused on their singles titles than the tag titles at the moment. Having Bliss-Cross challenge for the tag titles then be in the same match without the implication the tag titles could/will be defended if they win is a weird story beat. You would think both sets of titles would be equally important, but then again WWE just remembered the women’s tag titles existed about a month ago.
BIGGEST BOTCH EVER: American Eye Roll
There were no winners. Only survivors.
— Corey Graves (@WWEGraves) July 11, 2020
*Deep breath*
If you thought I was angrily ranting before, strap yourselves in. I don’t think I’m using hyperbole when I say that this was the worst segment Smackdown Live has had since it moved to FOX. Bad matches & bad segments happen all the time in WWE. We’re no stranger to them. However, at least with the matches there’s some wrestling & sometimes the bad segments at least have a purpose to further a story line even if we don’t like them. Here, none of that. When a “Karaoke Showdown” was announced at the top of the show, I had just assumed given WWE’s response to Covid testing, this would have been done via Zoom or backstage vignettes or something similar. Nope. They’re all there in the ring. So rather than have a tag match, which given the participants is still not ideal, they go ahead with this… thing. Let’s break it down.
First off, between this & The Viking Raiders “Carpool Karaoke” bit from a few months back, I’m fairly certain someone at WWE hasn’t been to a bar in so long that they’ve actually forgotten what karaoke is. For those of you who haven’t been out at a bar on a weeknight, karaoke is you singing the words to a song with the instrumental playing in the background. You’re not making up words & singing to no music like The Raiders did & you’re not just singing over the actual song playing like you’re driving in your car & singing along to the radio.
Which brings us to the song choices. As it’s karaoke & WWE doesn’t need licensing for songs, they could’ve chose literally any popular song they wanted. Nope. Instead Jey Uso informs us that they can only sing any WWE theme song. Let’s move to the side the fact that probably less than 20% of WWE entrance themes ever even have lyrics & are just either Casio keyboard beats or generic rock anthem number whatever, instead focusing on what they actually did pick. Out of all the WWE themes ever, these four women decide that HHH (of course), Jeff Jarrett, The Honky Tonk Man, & Dusty Rhodes are the best ideas. Topical! Dana Brooke should have just sang “Cult of Personality” until her microphone got cut.
The actual singing contest itself goes about as well as you’d think. Tamina decides to head bang instead of actually sing, Lacey Evans loses instantly by assuming anybody wants anything Jeff Jarrett related & Dana Brooke’s thick Ohio accent never stood a chance. Naomi wins by audience applause, which would have been hilarious to see had it been an actual Smackdown crowd instead of PC recruits in front of a giant flashing “APPLAUSE” sign, leading to Lacey Evans attacking her. I’m not even going to bother with the match that ensued as it’s Lacey & Naomi wrestling barefoot & in street clothes until Dana saunters into the ring & attacks Lacey after roughly two minutes. And did I mention Lacey is I guess a heel again now? *Shrugs*
Zero stars.
ZERO STARS!!
BOTCH: Castagnoli Excesivo
Finally & more importantly mercifully, we reach the main event of the Smackdown Tag Team Title match. From last week’s Pops & Botches:
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.
Quick! Guess what happened!
Much like the women’s tag from earlier, this match is good while it lasts but the finish just undercuts everything that happens before resulting in a giant waste of everybody’s time. In this case we’re met with WWE’s absolute worst finish to a match I think they have: Too much fighting. All four guys melee in the ring for maybe five seconds & the referee decides he’s lost control even though that routinely happens in almost all tag matches, so he throws it out. Nak & Cesaro, correctly assuming they’ve been screwed, don’t take it well & decide to put New Day through a table about it, thereby most likely hitting WWE’s Table Match quota for any hardcore themed ppv.
Even though I called this happening last week, it’s still super annoying to see occur. At this point, we’ve already had New Day lose a non-title match, had Kofi lose a singles match to Nakamura, & now had the non-finish. We’re one Cesaro beating Big E in a singles match away from a bingo. Note: The free space is them ultimately losing the title match (Sorry). Maybe don’t announce a title match directly before your ppv as it’s a huge red flag that the match won’t matter.
With that being said, let’s see what’s on tap for next week on the go home show for Extrweme Rules
Son of a….
And that’s the show.
Appreciate you checking out the column. Bless your little cotton socks if you made it this far. Please (please) join me next week for the last show before Extreme Rules: HORROR SHOW, where nothing could possibly be as horrifying as what happened tonight.
