Before We Begin: RIP Jon Huber
I purposely left this out of last week’s review as that show happened beforehand & as it was Christmas, I thought there might be an issue with tonality. I also wanted to wait until WWE put something out so I could link it in the post.
Luke Harper is part of one of my favorite matches of all time. The Shield vs. The Wyatt Family from Elimination Chamber in 2014. There are better & more important matches out there, but I always find my way back to that one at least once a year it feels like, usually more. I don’t need to break it down, you can go & watch it, but everyone is on fire there, particularly Harper. We talk a lot about underutilized people in WWE over the years & that match proves without a doubt, they could have & more emphatically should have given the ball to him & let him run with it for a little while. It’s even more apparent if you’re an AEW fan & you’ve seen what he was capable of when he arrived as the leader of The Dark Order over there.
If you’ve been following along with wrestling in any fashion this week, you’ve already seen the massive outpouring of love for Huber & his family. The guy was clearly beloved by the entire wrestling community & it’s been nice to see all the tributes & homages to him these past few shows. RIP.
While there’s no great way to segue into a show review, it is Friday Night, & you know what that means…
SmackDown decided to save the best episode of the year for last. Our guy Big E finally got the Big W, we had an exciting women’s triple threat tag, & Kevin Owens was assumedly left dangling above the ring handcuffed to a cage the entire show after Roman & Jey once again ruined his Universal Title opportunity.
Happy New Year, folks. SmackDown had it’s fair share of highs in 2020 & some lows that have successfully been repressed in my mind. Overall, I’d say a solid year for The Blue Side & they looked to continue that tonight as Mania Season is underway. What did SmackDown have in store to kick off 2021? You know the drill. Let’s get to it.
Desire Isn’t Fired!!
That's no illusion! @SonyaDevilleWWE is back on #SmackDown pic.twitter.com/26sgEDPL0H
— WWE on FOX (@WWEonFOX) January 2, 2021
Or was Sonya supposed to be Fire? This was never really explained. Mandy was portrayed as the hot one… which means she’s fire… but that also would make her desirable… but then Sonya was the rage… also known as fire… but desired to fight a lot, so…
Anyway!
Sonya Deville is back! We don’t need to recap the ugliness that caused her hiatus & that hopefully it’s all officially behind her so she can comfortably move forward. I had felt SmackDown’s Women’s Division really kicked it up a notch these past few months with Bianca getting a spotlight & Carmella showing she’s the real deal, but this just brings it to a whole other level. Sonya can believably be thrown into any scenario right out the shoot & it works. Run her at Banks, Bianca, Bayley, Carmella or whoever & I’m into it. I can’t stress how good this is for that division. They’re giving NXT’s a run for their money in terms of how incredibly stacked it is. Very exciting.
There are two very minor issues, however. The glaring first one is that she lost at SummerSlam with the stipulation being she had to leave WWE forever if she did. I’m sure they’ll retcon it somehow in the next coming week or so, but for now, it’s still something that lingers. Bonus points if she holds a chair to Edge’s neck & demands Mandy has to reinstate her.
The second thing, that I wouldn’t call it an issue as much as curiosity, is how they’re going to present her going forward. Before Roman Reigns’ return, Sonya was the runaway best, most aggressive heel on SmackDown. That girl was ready to stab people over how much she hated Mandy Rose. That’s not a joke, either. She threatened referees with hair clippers. I saw it. However, with all that’s happened to her outside of the company, it’ll be impossible not to root for her from now on, so it’ll be interesting to see how they choose to go with it.
Into The WWE Thunderverse
Kevin Owens sure does love getting his ass kicked, huh?
We open with already the line of the year when Owens interrupts Reigns’ self praising promo & Roman tells him to stop being selfish & let the spotlight shine on Jey for once. It’s such a funny, asshole move. That guy fully gets what being a heel is all about. Shouting “You people!” & dumping on local sports team works, but there’s something so much better about Roman being a layered jerk that you could really know in the real world. Obviously without the stuff where they throw you off a balcony after bashing your innards in with a chair, but maybe you know someone like that too. I don’t know your circle of friends.
Owens & Jey in the main event is really good while it lasts, but it’s the aftermath that really kicks things up another notch. I’m not sure how many more notches this thing can go, but they’re more than welcome to find out. Unfortunately for Kevin, he should really check behind all these monitors before attempting to dive off of them, because Reigns is hilariously lying in wait to stop him from taking out Jey. I’d bury the thing entirely if it wasn’t so absurdly ridiculous.
The only real problem is where is this heading? I know a final showdown at The Rumble most likely, but they did a TLC Match, one upped it in a cage the following week, so now what? Regular Match? That’s pretty anticlimactic. WWE needs to stop booking feuds in reverse like this or letting their gimmick ppv schedule dictate how match order plays out. They did the same thing with Sasha & Bayley. All of a sudden it was Hell in a Cell time, so they just threw the two of them in there, then did a follow up regular match the next week. That’s not how drama builds, guys. The de-escalation of violence is not what we’re looking for. I subscribe to The Samoa Joe school of thinking where things need to build up to all out chaos & then revel in it as I watch. Like a gentleman.
Mellbac On Track
I can’t say I’m certain why this match happened after last week’s as both of them lost to Charlotte & Asuka, but it was really good, so that’s a positive. Carmella pins The Champion & are we doing that still? And why is the referee allowing Reginald to pull Carmella out of the ring when she’s in The Banks Statement & then do flips on the ring apron? That’s probably a DQ or at the very least should get him tossed.
Whatever. All the wrestling is solid & I liked the match outside of the sommelier that moonlights as an acrobat. Big ups to Carmella for hitting the best Facebuster of her life by the way:
That girl can sneaky go in the ring now & I’m tired of people thinking she can’t.
As far as the big picture, WWE does this weird thing where every few months they remember The Women’s Tag Titles are a thing, so suddenly there’s a bunch of teams. They’ll then do the opposite with the singles championships & the tags get back-burnered. Right now, we’re in the former. Does anybody want to be RAW or SmackDown Women’s Champion? Bayley was obsessed with the thing for a year & now is too busy calling everyone a “Ding Dong”, while Carmella just wants to drink on the job. Maybe these losses will perpetuate Bianca Belair to throw Sasha into the upper deck & we’ll get that.
Another shoe needs to drop though. The Rumble puts WWE in a weird spot booking-wise because they decidedly don’t have enough women to fill the match between RAW & SD, so it’s usually all hands on deck & maybe a women’s title match elsewhere on the card if we’re lucky. I’d like to see a clearer direction for this division, but for right now, it’s looking like everybody is into the pool for The Rumble & they’re going to figure it out after.
It’s Hip To Be Squared Circled
YouTube doesn’t have it, but the sole reason this match happens is Cesaro & Nak catch The Alpha Academy & Bryan practicing “hip thrusts” in the training ring backstage. It’s supposed to come off as Bryan demonstrating how to lock your hips for a German Suplex, but looks more like he’s either teaching The Heimlich or something a little more nefarious if you catch my meaning. Team Swiss-suke point out they’re dorks (they are) & we’re off.
Not exactly breaking news, but the resulting outing is really solid. I don’t need to talk up the other three, but I would like to say Otis has gotten significantly better since his NXT days. They’ve landed on a look & style that works, with The Vader Bomb a definitive upgrade over his elbow drop.
Bryan’s kind of in limbo until The Royal Rumble it appears. I’m not really complaining, but he hyped himself up for that pretty hard & with the continuation of the Owens/Reigns feud, that’s leaving him with little to do for the next few weeks. As long as we’re getting fun & good wrestling matches out of it in the in between, there’s no knocking it. At the same time, I’ve talked myself into a Bryan with at The Rumble this year (I know. I know.) & just want to get there already.
Auld Langston Syne
Finally Big E’s Intercontinental Championship run can begin in exciting fashion against… King Corbin? Wait, no, not like that.
The match is fine enough & Big E looks solid in singles competition, but it’s over before you even know it. The good news is we avoid the horrible disaster that would’ve been Corbin pinning Big E in a non-title affair. Crews makes the save after Zayn & Los Lobos Solos jump E after the fact, naturally leading us to get hit with The Teddy Long special tag team match, playas. Wait, no, not like THAT.
I can’t quite land on why I’m just not into Apollo Crews. He looks great, can clearly wrestle & should be easy to get behind. Something just isn’t clicking though. He’s not very good at promos, but that can be said about countless others, so that’s not it. Is he just… boring? I think that’s it. Part of me thinks he’d work a lot better in a tag team capacity. It’s easy to picture him in as The Big Cass muscle to somebody’s Enzo that can talk for the both of them, but you know, good instead. They seem hell bent on flying him solo though whether it works or not.
Crews hops on an open title shot for next week & I know the match should be entertaining (until the inevitable run-in schmozz), but I’d be lying if I said it’s something I’m looking forward to. I’m hoping this open challenge becomes a thing again & not just a one off to get to this Crews match. SmackDown has a solid amount of midcarders & that’s something that can be really fun in the next coming weeks on the way to something more substantial at The Rumble or Mania.
The Hypertonics
Because when something is hypertonic, it makes things shrivel up & die. Like what you want to experience when you see Natalya & Tamina tag teaming. Sweet chemistry joke, nerd.
The matches have all been clunkers for the most part, but I’ll be damned if Billie Kay isn’t working double time to get this thing over. Her pivoting from corner to corner based on how well each team was doing & wanting to be on the winning side was genuinely funny. Can we get her a real partner, like, yesterday? I really hope this just isn’t them spinning their wheels until The Riotts get a tag title shot & then Billie fades into the background. I’d like that for The Riotts, don’t get me wrong, but Billie’s put a lot of effort in since they forced her away from The IIconics, so I’d like to see something good come of that.
And a giant shout out to SmackDown for getting their entire women’s roster on the show.
*Side eyes RAW & their extra hour to fill.*
The Dawgs Pound
It finally happened, everyone. They got me to root for Dolph Ziggler against somebody. Let the obituary read: “Birdman’s hatred for Dolph Ziggler (2015 – 2021). Murdered in cold blood by The Street Profits.”
These guys have become unbearable lately. What even was this portion of the show? I’m legitimately asking. I think my brain went into fight or flight mode & chose flight before I could register what was happening.
Here’s the thing: The Street Profits have tremendous upside. Their matches can range from serviceable to great & Montez Ford is a bonafide star. Dawkins is the clear Jannetty, but that’s fine. Some guys excel at the role, which he does. However, the are so bogged down in these garbage skits that WWE thinks are “funny” & are the furthest thing from. The stuff with The Viking Raiders you could at least make the excuse there was a pandemic & they were limited, so they were throwing stuff against the wall to see what would work in this new era of wrestling. It’s now six months later & we’re still doing these corny jokes & brutal photoshop. It’s so bad, you guys.
Someone being champion & somebody else wanting to take that from them is the most layup story in wrestling & they’ve botched it every time with them. Just let them wrestle. There’s a title match next week & I’m openly rooting for them to lose. And here I was all ready to mock Ziggler & Roode for their new “Dirty Dawgs” team name & shirt logo. Look what you did, Street Profits.
Overall
Worth Your Time: Jey Uso vs. Kevin Owens, BayMella vs. Sasha & Bianca
In You Have Time: Bryan/Otis vs. Cesaro/Nakamura, Big E/Crews vs. Corbin/Zayn
Don’t Waste Time: The Riotts vs. Natalya/Tamina, Big E vs. Corbin, Whatever The Hell That Street Profits Segment Was
That’s New Years SmackDown, people. Not as good as last week’s, but I’m not sure there are WrestleManias that are as good as last week’s show. While mostly everything was solid, nothing really happened in terms of focusing on what we’re going to get come The Rumble. That’s not the end of the world though as it’s still thirty days away.
Drop us a line below or on The Discord & let us know what you thought. We’ll also have The SRP 2020 Awards in the coming weeks, so look forwards to those as well. Tune in next week where The Intercontinental & Tag Titles are on the line. Hopefully Sonya Deville remembers she’s friends with Ziggler & bashes Dawkins skull in from behind as they lose. I’m sincerely crossing my fingers.
