Previously on Smackdown Live…
Chad Gable tried to collect that King Corbin ransom money, Sonya Deville tried her hand at a quarantine haircut on Mandy Rose, & The Fiend tried to lure Braun Strowman out of hiding by murdering Alexa Bliss.
A lot of the show tonight had plot points that started out earlier, but finished later on, so instead of going in chronological order like usual, I’m going to thread them all together this week to make it easier to follow along. If you like the old style, let me know. Just trying something new as I’m getting the hang of this.
BOTCH: A Monster Among Fiends
Hey, some good news first: Alexa Bliss isn’t dead after all! She was just… kidnapped by an Evil Clown Demon for a week? That’s… somewhat better… I think? Seriously, somebody at WWE should probably get a hold on their Performance Center. Alexa Bliss gets abducted, Braun Strowman disappears in a swamp for weeks, & a bunch of anarchists are fire bombing your building. This is the kind of recklessness that leads to underground Fight Clubs popping up.
Bray offers Alexa another finger sandwich but instead this time she politely refuses, so he just sort of walks away. Strowman finally returns on the big screen looking like he’s filming himself with a microwave & with his best Christian Bale Batman Voice announces that he doesn’t give a shit about Alexa Bliss & that he’s the real monster around these parts. I understand the concept that Strowman has to go to a dark place to prepare himself for facing The Fiend, but saying Alexa Bliss is acceptable collateral damage doesn’t seem like the right call. Who’s the bad guy here? I guess Strowman could be pissed about the whole Blisster Abigail thing from Extreme Rules, but that was clearly meant as some sort of hallucination, not something you need to hold a grudge about. I kind of wish this happened on the go home show & not with two weeks left until they face off. If Braun had other allies you could’ve really dragged it out with The Fiend taking out everybody close to him, but now they’re gonna what? Trade spooky promos until the match happens? Meh.
Anyway, Strowman gives The Fiend his Universal Championship shot at Summerslam & we get our Monster Mash, I mean Match. I will 100% not fault Alexa Bliss if she shows up & costs Strowman his title for not saving her proper. Team Little Big 4 Lyfe.
POP: Cesaro Swings… His Arm Through Dorado’s Head
Check out the 1:50 mark of that video above. Thanks for coming, Lince. I hope that mask caught some of your teeth.
Cesaro facing any sort of high flyer is one of my favorite contests WWE throws at us, just slightly ahead of Cesaro facing anybody. I’ve made a joke in the past that Cesaro should’ve been the final boss of 205 Live back in 2018 when that show was under the radar the best one WWE had going & it’s not hard to see why. He is so ridiculously strong that he can launch these guys to crazy heights, carry their body weight so effortlessly around his own body to set up hurricaranas or DDTs, or just straight up destroy a guy coming from a turnbuckle or springboard that it looks devastating. We get a little bit of all that here & thankfully avoid a challenger pinning the champion in a non-title match trope as well as making Cesaro look like the serious threat he should have been for years already. Now inject Gran Metalik vs Cesaro straight into my veins.
Note: I demand weekly updates on how The Champion’s Lounge is coming along.
POP: Royals Rumble
The Bray/Braun stuff takes about only ten minutes of the actual show, so arguably the main story going on is the introduction of beef between Sheamus & King Corbin to see who truly was the most obnoxious King Of The Ring winner of all time. We get a solid thread throughout the show of tensions rising between the two with three matches (yay!) that all end in either DQ or distraction (boo!) to tie it all together.
The first & hands down best of the bunch is Sheamus against Matt Riddle. Sheamus works predominantly at his best when he’s up against guys that are roughly the same size as him that are strikers. Sheamus isn’t afraid to take hits at all, so it always looks like he’s a video game boss as his skin gets all red as the fight progresses to signify visual damage. That clearly works out well for somebody like Riddle, who’s looking to kick & smash into you, so the two are a very good fit. I absolutely want to see more between them going forward.
Chad Gable sticks his nose in Riddle’s business again & runs him down at ringside, costing Sheamus the match in the process. Neither of them take kindly to the action, so Gable gets big time got by Riddle outside the ring & Sheamus inside the ring taking his head off twice with a couple of Brogues.
Sheamus gets in Corbin’s face backstage about it, but Corbin’s got his own worries with Jeff Hardy later, so tells him to hit the bricks. He can’t help that the proposition of half prize appetizers as his King’s Ransom has guys interfering in other people’s matches. Corbin versus Hardy is probably the weakest of the three matches as Jeff Hardy is the equivalent of a life-size wrestling snail these days, so a lot of it looks like Corbin just waiting on him for spots. Naturally, Sheamus comes down to return the favor from earlier & costs Corbin his match via disqualification leading Teddy Long to feel a disturbance in the force & we get a match, right here, right now.
HOSS FIGHT Y’ALL! Like Riddle & Sheamus earlier, this is a solid match while it lasts & definitely left me wanting to see it fleshed out further with a proper finish. WWE has a lot of solid potential matches available that you don’t even consider given alignments, but Corbin against Sheamus works well & can continue to as heel versus heel. I’m not sure if this is a potential Sheamus face turn, but there’s no reason for it to be as he has legitimate reasoning to want to fight Corbin other than “I’m good now & you’re bad”. He just got off framing a guy for vehicular manslaughter after all, not exactly something you can just pivot into babyface right away. It’s too jarring of a switch.
Easily the best part of the entire thing is how easily they were able to connect five guys on the roster & progress the story by wrestling. Crazy concept, I know. You get Gable & Corbin furthering their issue with Riddle, Sheamus not liking it because it cost him a win, then getting to do the same to Corbin with the added bonus of beating up Jeff Hardy later on, & finally Riddle getting his slice of revenge in the end costing Corbin. Everybody gets involved & has a clear cut motivation to do so. Another solid story developing on Smackdown. Is Smackdown back to being the good show again? Please say yes.
POP: Dos Belts Vs. Tres Brands
I won’t lie, the second some NPC announced backstage that Bayley & Sasha were being summoned to the ring by Stephanie McMahon, I immediately thought the worst. These two outsmarted Steph’s plans for The Raw Women’s Championship match last week by sending Kairi Sane to a fun & happy pirate ship upstate, so you had to figure with her, you know, being Stephanie, that retribution was in order (sadly, that comes later).
Luckily, instead of making the two duke it out or stripping them of any of their titles, she delivers the exciting news that we’re getting a BATTLE ROYAL across all three WWE shows to determine Bayley’s opponent for Summerslam. I’m assuming Steph just took a look at the current Smackdown roster & didn’t think a fatal fourway between Lacey Evans, Dana Brooke, Carmella & Naomi was up to par after seeing their singing prowess. Kidding aside, the inclusion of RAW & NXT brings a ton of possibilities to the table. Can Naomi or Sonya Deville take up for Smackdown? Will Bianca Belair or Ruby Riott emerge from the shadows of RAW? Maybe Rhea Ripley? Shotzi Blackheart? ALIYAH?? There’s easily ten possible winners you could reasonably make an argument for & I’m definitely excited to see who gets to take on Bayley at the Slam of Summer.
POP: Sonya Blades
The Youtube video above cuts out a part that will either make or break the segment for you. Before Deville is invited down, Miz & Morrison’s first guest on The Dirty Sheet is Mandy Rose’s Hair that she lost last week due to Sonya’s Brutus Beefcake impression. That’s right. Mandy’s Hair:
On paper, it is oh so dumb as hell, but as I’ve learned through years of watching WWE, they have three types of stupid segments. The first is a serious segment that is just plain bad, the second is one that knows it’s dumb but can’t be saved by the wrestlers involved or the story & finally, there’s the one that knows it’s dumb but the performers lean so hard into it, you can’t help but appreciate it. Every so often we get the last one & fortunately, this segment is that. If you missed it, Miz-Mo conduct the entire “interview” with their backs turned to The Hair. When they pan to The Hair on The Tron, the way the puppet is moving when they close in, you just assume they dubbed it’s voice earlier. Nope. The camera pans out & it’s revealed they’re just improvising Mandy’s Hair’s voice on the spot & full on having a conversation with each other instead. The best part is nobody interrupts, so it goes on for a solid two minutes of just high-pitched nonsense between the two. Again, so dumb it’s good.
Sonya Deville eventually comes down (looking better in a suit than any of us ever will) to continue to pile on Mandy’s inability to be anything other than eye candy. I gotta say, she’s not entirely wrong. It wasn’t that long ago Mandy was passing out magazines with herself on the cover for heel heat & other than this current thing with Otis, she hasn’t been the focus of really any stories in WWE nor has she even sniffed title contention. The heel is making a logical point? A WWE rarity.
Heavy Machinery doesn’t take kindly to the trio just dumping all over Otis’ girlfriend for ten straight minutes, so they interrupt inciting a little scuffle which takes us to the main event of the evening. I mentioned a while back that I had no idea what the hell was going on with SDL’s tag team division, so it was solid on their part to remind everybody that these two teams exist as well as Lucha House Party earlier on. As fun as it is watching Cesaro & Nak backstage calling everybody losers, watching them in the ring is a lot better. Here, we get a solid little match that mostly gets praise for the efforts of Morrison & *checks WWE’s roster page* …Tu-ker? Tucker. The not Otis one. Mandy Rose shows up after about fifteen minutes with a perfectly acceptable shoulder length haircut (that’s much better looking than her goofy extensions) which I’m assuming the referee must’ve been disgusted by, so the match gets thrown out.
Not the most exciting segment ever, but a solid step towards what’s looking like a potential trios match down the line. Otis is for sure not going to be cashing in his MitB briefcase on a Demon Clown or Possessed Rage Monster any time soon, so might as well help your girlfriend avenge her fallen fake hair. Seriously, you guys, she’s so ugly now! What’s next? Glasses?? Gross.
BOTCH: The Nex Of Us Part II
Or is it Part III? Does The Corre count?
We finally get kind of a payoff to who’s been mildly annoying everybody in WWE by flickering lights & cutting out microphones with the arrival of RETRIBUTION. If you recall the original Nexus Invasion from ten years ago (holy shit that doesn’t feel that long ago), then you already recognize this is a very cheap rip off of that. And if you watch that video, you also realize the original Nexus were dangerous. They legitimately tore the ring down & beat up everybody in sight regardless of alignment, so it felt like they truly were looking to topple WWE.
This… isn’t that. I’m probably doing it a disservice comparing it to Nexus, so let’s take it as it is (I’m also not going to dive into any Antifa or BLM comparisons because this is a wrestling blog & I’m woefully not qualified to speak on either). They show up at the end of the program with nobody around to really make a point to other than the announce team, camera crew & some of the PC recruits at ringside. Just showing up & shouting while you bang on the ring ropes isn’t exactly some sort of big entrance, you guys. Show up during the main event match itself & kick everybody’s ass there if you want to send a message. Beating up three or four PC recruits who we don’t even know doesn’t elicit any sort of sympathy or desire for these attackers to get their comeuppance.
Looking at everybody involved though, I think I know why they avoided the actual roster as these people were TINY. I thought they were looking to takeover 205 Live at first & just showed up ten minutes too soon. Granted, with them being masked up, they could easily just be stand ins for both figurative & literal bigger stars, but it looked like four Leon Ruffs & Kacy Catanzaro were on the scene.
So yeah, Retribution shows up & shouts up a storm while spray painting “WWE SUX” everywhere or whatever it was, but other than chainsawing the ring ropes apart, nothing of note to report. They didn’t really show who or what they’re rallying against. I guess you could just say it’s WWE in general, but scaring off the camera crew doesn’t really drive that point home like they think it does. We’ll play the always fun Wait & See game with this as there is potential there as a good wrestling stable, but for right now there’s a lot to be desired.
That’s Smackdown. Three good weeks in a row overall! That’s called a streak! Summerslam is just two weeks away now & The Blue Brand still feels pretty wide open outside of The Universal Title scene. Hopefully we’ll get some clarity in the coming weeks after the battle royal & they land on an opponent for AJ Styles. Let us know where you think the show is heading or thoughts on this one by dropping a comment below or hit up our Discord!
