Previously on Smackdown Live…
HORRIFYING things happened at Extreme Rules!
Sasha & Bayley took all the gold in both women’s divisions, Shinsuke Nakamura & Cesaro became Smackdown Tag Team Champions & Bray Wyatt may or may not have killed Braun Strowman.
Wait, where’s the bad stuff?
HUGE POP: Smackdown Live Y’all!
I’m just going to come right out & say it: This was a great episode of Smackdown. I’m talking Land of Opportunity Era Smackdown level good. Quality matches occurred, new plot points arose, current plot points were either furthered or finished, & nothing overstayed it’s welcome. Things were happening! I don’t know if it’s because we’ve hit Summerslam Season or if word going around WWE that Daniel Bryan & Edge have become part of the writing team & they were given their first crack at tonight’s show, but either way, keep doing what you’re doing. This is by far my biggest gripe with WWE: We all know they can be this good all the time, but for half a year or so they just phone it in. People will start watching again if your show is filled with good wrestling & character development but won’t if it’s a bunch of karaoke & garbage finishes. It’s not rocket science, guys.
POP: The Undisputed Era
RIP in peace The Women’s Evolution, 2015-2020. You had a good run.
The Era of Sasha Banks & Bayley has officially begun. Everybody who wanted them to turn on each other can send all apologies to me in the comment section or directly on the Discord accordingly. These two are wonderful here. They’ve gotten to the point where I want Michael Cole to talk just so they can jump down his throat. I don’t want it to end. They should get a proper celebration segment just to gloat for ten minutes every week without interruption until morale improves. And it will.
Naturally though, this is WWE & of course an interruption happens in the form of Bliss-Cross. At this point, I’ve just accepted that this is how all shows will open going forward & am learning to just roll with it. I’m like Nyles in Palm Springs. Resigning myself to my fate & just letting it all play out the same way I know it will.
*Cracks beer & hops on inflatable pizza slice*
Nikki grabs a mic, rightfully pissed about getting a gut full of BOSS knuckles during her last meeting with Bayley & demands a rematch right here, right now. This being an episode of Smackdown playas, naturally leads to a tag team mat… wait no, that’s wrong. Bayley instead puts an unwilling Sasha in a match against Nik… wait, what? What’s going on here? Swerve! Bayley decides sure, she’ll give out a title match. The twist being Bliss-Cross have to duke it out between each other & the winner gets to move on to face her. This is where the segment moves up a notch. Sasha Banks is now on the same level as Bayley & doesn’t have to be seen as a looming threat since she’s content with The Raw Women’s Championship. In lieu of hitting the same tropes we’ve seen for weeks on end with a tag match or Bayley/Sasha putting the other in a match on the spot, they subverted the expected & pivoted it into something different & exciting. They don’t need to worry about softening each other up since they have all the gold they can carry. That’s good story telling right there.
POP: Don’t Cross Bliss, Cross
You would think given their dynamic lately & with Nikki getting screwed over at Extreme Rules, Alexa would do Nikki a solid & perhaps take a dive allowing Nikki to get her rightfully deserved rematch. But Nikki can’t help seeing red & shoves Alexa down before the match, trying to spark a fight. This keeps highlighting the fact that Cross is still a loose cannon, who if just stopped for a second to devise a plan, could maybe outsmart the heels, but is too riled up for her own good. Great character consistency.
Alexa surprisingly let’s Nikki have it throughout the match way more than I would have expected her to. She constantly targets Nikki’s taped up ribs, trying to soften her up for an easy pin. At the end of the day, a championship title match is on the line & Alexa very much knows from past experience how to get the job done to get into championship contention. They get roughly a ten minute solid back & forth with the winner never definitively clear going in. Cross deserves the rematch sure, but like I said, Bliss is the one with championship pedigree & could easily have slipped past her. Of course we all know DDP rib tape give you +10 to all stats, so Nikki is able to flash pin Bliss & move on to the title match next week.
And what’s this?
Tag team partners fighting over an opportunity without it ending in one of them turning on the other out of jealousy? Reasonable human responses to things that happen between friends? It’s almost like these characters are based on real people! Seriously though, this is how something like this should go down. Be happy for your friends if they succeed. Bliss & Cross should be able to weather the storm of having a competitive match together.
Careful though, Nikki. I’ve seen Alexa Bliss get angry & lead men to their demise in nearby swamplands.
POP: Fryter Fest
Speaking of that, is… is Braun Strowman dead? It sounds like Bray Wyatt just left a body in a local swamp & is daring authorities to find it. Why do you need to bring The Fiend out if Strowman appears to be out of the picture? I’m sure that’s not the case, but Bray seems pretty confident he doesn’t have to worry about Strowman in the near future. Either way, we’re clearly heading towards a Fiend/Strowman showdown at Summerslam, which I’m all about, so this segment, while nothing special, gets a thumbs up for a quick & thorough foreshadowing of what’s to come.
POP: Matt Gets Marked
Tony Nese shows up to remind people he still works here only to get Bro’d to death by Matt Riddle in about three minutes. Nese gets in enough offense for it not to be embarrassing, but the end is never in question. Another strong win for Riddle as he rises up the card. The important stuff & why this gets a pop is what happens after.
Riddle of course calls out King Corbin after getting blindsided by him to close out last week’s show. Corbin still doesn’t believe that Riddle is on his level despite beating John Morrison, AJ Styles & uhh… Tony Nese since arriving on Smackdown, so he tells Riddle to kick rocks (but ow! His toes, Baron!). Corbin then decides to put out a “King’s Ransom” to anybody on the roster who can successfully take Riddle out going forward & rid him of this nuisance. So many questions, gang. Does Corbin have a bunch of gold coins he’s going to hand over in a giant sack with a dollar symbol on it to anybody who can complete his task? Is he able to grant a fiefdom in Orlando to someone? Is it just an Applebee’s gift card? We need to know!
POP: Clap For Your Singles Push & Feel The Powah!!
IT’S HAPPENING!!!
I don’t know anybody that hasn’t suggested a Big E singles push at some point in the past five years. Whether it was at the expense of New Day disbanding or not, people have constantly wanted the focus to shift onto him for a long time now. It’s even more exciting after they just proved they can make the whole thing work & keep New Day as a trio after showcasing Kofi as WWE Champion this time last year. I’m thinking a run at the Intercontinental Championship is probably what’s going to happen, but forget that & run him up against The Fiend after Summerslam. Do a cinematic match where Bray tries to breakdown the psyche of Big E like he did with Cena & Braun, but is just met with a world of pancakes & horny tweets about Becky Lynch’s mom. Have E burying him in a pile of flapjacks that he never stops pulling out of his singlet. Make it the most ridiculous thing we’ve ever seen.
Quick side note: What the hell is going on in the tag division? Cesaro & Nakamura show up later in the show to make it sound like they’re not quite done with Big E after not getting to put him through a table on Sunday, which would be fine if you weren’t tag champs now & should maybe be more focused on that instead? A quick rundown of SDL’s tag division lists New Day (Kofi/Woods hurt), The Usos (Jimmy hurt), LHP (Metalik in the IC Title hunt), Bryan & Gulak (Bryan quarantined), Heavy Machinery (Tucker missing), & The Forgotten Sons (Forgotten). The only other team around is Miz & Morrison, who are also heels. At this point, Cesaro & Nak might as well be Wolverine & Kitty Pryde on The Days of Futures Past cover with the other Smackdown tag teams listed on the wall in the background.
POP: #EverybodyDeservesBetter
Now that Cesaro & Nakamura have become the Smackdown Tag Team Champions, there’s a vacancy at the top of the show for most underutilized person on the roster. Three challengers emerge! Naomi has been underused since forever, Miz is too good just be an emcee for talk show segments & Morrison is really too good to be the comedy guy. All this needed was Chad Gable to come out & Festivus could truly begin with The Airing of Grievances.
Miz & Morrison try to address Naomi trending on Twitter this past week on MizTV, but can’t understand why anybody would be trending for losing so much. Miz of all people should empathize with this, but I digress. Naomi gets to at least explain herself somewhat with the thirty seconds of mic time she’s given that she deserves more because she works hard & is a good person, something the fans clearly recognize or they wouldn’t bother in the first place to support her. That all works. Unfortunately Lacey Evans comes out to Lacey Evans all over everything, but that too is only about thirty seconds & gets out of dodge before it can get overbearing.
The way I’m recapping it probably reads like a Botch, but it gets a Pop for three reasons: First, it appears we’re moving past these dumb segments of Naomi looking like a hapless dope & heading into the direction of some actual matches that hopefully go over ninety seconds. Secondly, Miz & Morrison dancing to Naomi’s theme is so bad it ricochets into good territory. Finally, The Seth Rollins Pukes ranking system is also so stupid I can’t help but enjoy it. Between this & Bray Wyatt dumping all over the karaoke segment during The Firefly Funhouse at Extreme Rules, I’m getting an appreciation for people in WWE recognizing the awful parts of some of these shows & not being afraid to point out how silly they are.
POP: Smackdown 205 Live
The spirit of 205 Live from 2018 shows up in the form of a fatal fourway match to determine the number one contender for AJ Styles’ Intercontinental Championship & was unsurprisingly really fun to watch. The concept of the match itself felt like the most Daniel Bryan thing he could’ve written into the show. Given that all these guys are so familiar with each other from the old 205 days, they got to seriously fly around & the match felt like it was a sprint to the finish throughout. There’s no reason these guys should not be regulars on your show & not in a way that they’re just fed to non-cruiserweights to make those guys look better (Buddy Murphy, I’m strongly looking in your direction).
And Gran Metalik bay bay! Metalik really shined in the inaugural Cruiserweight Classic, but unfortunately can’t speak English so got saddled into Lucha House Party with very little to show for it since. Talk about underutilized. The guy is called The King of The Ropes, WWE. You think you could maybe do something with somebody like that? I do. Given the title match with Styles is already set for next week, I don’t think anybody thinks Metalik will take it, but it’s the right step in putting the spotlight on a guy who at the very least can go with Styles in the ring & I have no doubt the two can put on a show stealer if you give them fifteen minutes to shine. And now I’m excited to see something for next week! Funny how that works when you put a segment together that gets people talking.
POP: Teetotal Nonstop Action
I could just be riding high from the rest of the show, but I thought The Bar Fight between Sheamus & Jeff Hardy wasn’t nearly as bad as most assumed it would be going in. They probably didn’t need to go twentyish minutes, but I figure at this point if WWE is going to make an effort with these off site cinematic events, they’re going to try to get the most out of all the work they put in. Your enjoyment of it may vary depending on how much you’re into Sheamus and/or Jeff Hardy in the year 2020, but I’d say this one falls right in the middle of their previous cinematic installments, behind the Wyatt ones & Boneyard, but certainly ahead of One Final Beat, Greatest Match Ever, & parking lot ninja fights.
The segment goes pretty much exactly how anybody who’s seen a bar fight in a movie before would expect. They fight through the entire bar including the bathroom, use kegs, video games & musical instruments set up as weapons, & of course do the sliding down the bar spot that if didn’t happen, would not make it an official bar fight. While I don’t think anybody was really into WWE using Jeff’s real life issues with addiction as a story beat for the fourth or fifth time at this point, they at least made him come out on top & course corrected after making him look bad for a few weeks. There was enough there to justify it as the final match of the feud & hopefully move both on to something different heading into Summerslam.
I did have one gripe with the entire thing & it was, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, the finish. For those of you who thought “Bar Fight. LOL” & didn’t watch it (fair), Hardy gets attacked climbing a ladder by the bartender he bludgeoned in the back of the head with a champagne bottle a few weeks back & then powerbombs him through a table for sticking up for himself. Sheamus takes advantage by smashing a barstool over Jeff from behind & leaves him lying on the floor. He goes to grab a beer, assuming Jeff down for the count, but beforehand… places his hat over Jeff’s face for some reason? When he returns, Jeff removes the hat to reveal he now has his face painted & his white contacts in, allowing him to get back up & take Sheamus down for the victory. As far as I can recall, Hardy’s face paint has no significance in WWE & is just that, face paint. This isn’t like TNA where it indicated different personas like Brother Nero, Itchweed or Willow. And it’s also not like if it were say, Bray Wyatt all of a sudden with a Fiend mask on so you know it was about to get messy. They even do a Dot Com interview after with him in full make up, but speaking like normal Jeff Hardy saying he’s excited to move forward after his win. Just a weird plot point that I think WWE overlooked going for a cool visual without wondering if it made sense. I’m willing to still leave it as a Pop though as it looks like we’re finally done with this feud.
And hey, even if you weren’t into it, at the very least it appears to be the final beat of the story & ended on the right note. I think that’s critical when judging something in WWE. Bad stories happen. Even if we don’t like the characters involved or the story itself, as long as it plays out with a clear narrative, it’s a lot more forgivable than them just mashing segments together because they’ve written the ending first & don’t really care to put in the effort regarding how they arrive at it.
That’s our show. All pops? Who are you & what have you done with Birdman? I know, guys, I know. It’s crazy how good WWE can look with a major event on the horizon. Two title matches are already set for next week, so let’s hope we can continue with the momentum created from Extreme Rules & keep the show as good as we know it can be.
***Real Quick***
SRP is still looking for writers. Raw, Impact, & NXT are all still open if anybody is interested. You can even write about retro stuff or other promotions if you’d like. We’re all on a volunteer basis, so you don’t have to worry about deadlines or forced to write anything you’re not into. If interested, feel free to let us know!
