We learned Roman Reigns likes to hide out behind the monitors in The Thunderdome, Sonya Deville got us all excited by walking down a hallway & The Street Profits predicted 2021 will be a better year (whoops!).
Big show tonight as both The Intercontinental & Tag Titles were on the line as well as a Gauntlet Match to figure out who will face Roman Reigns for The Universal Championship at The Royal Rumble. That’s all the hype we need. Let’s get into it.
As Usual, We Open With The Best Thing On The Show
Wait, what? No, not that.
Although I will be working “Rumble hips” into regular conversation going forward.
The Affinity Gauntlet
Of course we begin with Roman Reigns as King Shithead part 100 (1000?). I’m running out of praise for this guy, gang. Everything he does is so over the top villain. He’s not quite Vince from The Attitude Era yet, but if he keeps this up, he can make a push. The best thing about Reigns is he’s an equal opportunity asshole & will give anybody grief for even the slightest transgression.
Take Adam Pearce. It’s his job to make matches on SmackDown, not Roman’s. But since he books matches Roman doesn’t like, he’s bad at that job. And since he’s bad at his job, Roman gets to make matches for himself from now on because of that. He’s stupid, you see.
The back & forth between the two is objectively ridiculous as nothing Pearce says is taken the way it’s intended & Roman gets offended by literally every line. I kept expecting him to ask Pearce if he was a clown there to amuse him. Everything is an affront to Roman & it’s fantastic. Just beyond all reasoning, that it’s maddening to watch. I absolutely hate him. Good job!
This leads to The Gauntlet Match & oh buddy, if you want a master class in how to get behind someone, look no further than WWE’s last few major outings with these (I’m not gonna embed all of it, but you can check out parts one, two & three here). Unlike the Seth & Kofi ones however, this is a lot different.
When the match is announced, it’s Rey Mysterio, King Corbin, Sami Zayn, Shinsuke Nakamura & Daniel Bryan. Three heels & two babyfaces. You naturally think this is Bryan’s to win given the history with Roman & Jey Uso lately or maybe they’ll throw a bone to Mysterio as a transitional opponent until we get to WrestleMania. Or maybe still they’ll do something shady at the end & Bryan will get cheated since Roman doesn’t want to face him. They’re certainly not going to throw one of the heels in there with uber heel Reigns. No shot.
However, the last thing I expected happened. They turned Nakamura face through a single match. No promo, no build up, nothing. They just had a guy go out there & kick ass for forty minutes. I don’t care what your alignments are, crowds get behind wrestlers that do that. It’s why Stone Cold Steve Austin was the coolest thing in wrestling for a while. He was for all intents & purposes a huge prick, but he’d mow down everybody in sight & people loved that. The beer drinking & telling your boss to fuck off helped too, but stay with me. It’s why you see heels sometimes be as slow & plodding as possible in the ring, in spite of their wrestling ability. Crowds HATE that approach, so it’s so much easier to root for the guy up against it. With Nakamura unleashed though, we’re now all the way in his corner.
The best part of the whole thing (at least to me) is that the Nakamura stuff is so out of nowhere & it sucked me in so hard that I completely forgot what was coming. Reigns & Heyman put the fix in & make Pearce the final entrant & the second Reigns’ music hits after he defeats Bryan, your heart just sinks a little bit because you know what’s coming. Five minutes later Pearce’s body is laying on Nak’s after he just ran the gauntlet & it’s a severe gut punch.
That’s not a bad thing, either. I think we forget that wrestling is supposed to make us angry sometimes by design. It’s such a better feeling this time around though than the usual alternative of being mad at them for insulting our intelligence instead. In just one hour, they flipped the entire main event scene on its head & gave us something not only unexpected, but truly welcomed. Shinsuke Nakamura is fantastic. He was inarguably the coolest guy in all of wrestling a few years ago & if we get back to that, sign me up & then sign me up again. You give us anything approaching Wrestle Kingdom or Takeover: Dallas Nakamura & you have a winner on your hands. You already do.
Profits & Losses
I know I’m pretty critical of these two teams, so I would like to say that this feud hasn’t been terrible & the matches have been fairly good. Is that out of the way? Did you see that part, guys?
Ok. With that said, they pulled the same annoying move from three weeks ago & I just don’t get it. If you don’t remember because time is not relevant anymore, in the first first title match, Roode & Ziggler worked Ford’s ribs to counteract his Frog Splash. Makes sense as that’s his finisher. The problem became that didn’t factor into the finish at all & The Profits won with a roll-up.
The weird thing is they do practically the same story beat in this match. Ford’s knee was hurt last week & he tweaks it again in this match, so naturally that becomes the focal point. But it has nothing to do with the finish. After selling it & the announce team talking about it for most of the way, Roode & Ziggler just hit a double move & pin him. Huh? It’s like somebody wrote 95% of these matches, took a break & came back later forgetting what they were writing about, so they just filled in a finish.
The Dirty Dawgs (seriously?) are your new champs, which is fine. SmackDown’s not exactly crushing it in the tag team department now that I assume Nak & Cesaro are no longer a thing. I’d like to see literally any other team in the title picture as The Profits have been in it for well over a year now with diminishing returns overall. Gable & Otis can be fun as Otis has got history with Ziggler or maybe The Knights Of The Forgotten Wolf Sons can swoop in. Robert Roode thinks The Bar are still a team & I’m fine that matchup. Meanwhile, when Sonya eventually starts her Beefcake Barber Shop portion of the program, we can root for one of The Profits going through a window.
Three Pins Ain’t Enough
Remember how I praised how you can do a babyface turn really well in a short amount of time like they just did with Nakamura? Welcome to the opposite of that, just with a heel turn & Apollo Crews.
I really liked what they did in this match if you subtract the restart. Crews vs E should be a hard hitting, sneaky speedy, hoss fight & I’m all the way into that. They delivered & I don’t want you to think it was bad just because this is at the bottom. It’s good minus one big issue. Now please enjoy me tear that issue to shreds.
The problem going in, at least apparently to WWE, is they’re both babyfaces & that doesn’t work for the (digital) crowd. They remedy that with the most half-assed heel turn attempt I’ve seen since Dakota Kai turned on terrible friend Tegan Nox. If you missed it, Crews hits Big E with a Superplex & both guys upon landing get their legs up to cradle the other for a pin. All four shoulders are down, so the referee counts a double pin, which means tie goes to The Champion. As I understand it, refs are supposed to do this, but also, why? I think it’d be better if they just called it out & the guys continue, but fine. This naturally causes Crews to get mad so he slaps Big E in the face, demands a restart & then just… loses cleanly. Cool.
They should’ve cut out the restart entirely, combined both matches into one & done the Superplex spot as the finish. You then have Crews get angry & it simmers until next week, planting the seed of a heel turn that can eventually be fleshed out. Instead he gets rightfully mad & just loses immediately after. That doesn’t do him any good. I don’t want to see a rematch now since you just did it & he lost cleanly. You showed you know how to do amazing story telling with that gauntlet, so I know you know how this could have gone better.
Anyway, Crews has already challenged Big E to another rematch next week. I guess look for him to even it up then because that’ll build excitement for their best of seven series that I’m sure this will turn into, probably then forming The NEW New Day.
Overall
Worth Your Time: The Gauntlet Match
If You Have Time: The Tag Team & Intercontinental Championship Matches
Don’t Waste Time: Nothing. That’s Twice In Three Weeks!
Hey, Wait A Second… Where Were The Ladies??
Great question! While we did check in with some of them last night, it was entirely segue material & I think The Women’s Division got about five minutes of total screen time. Not ideal. I’ll give them a pass for this one night as you had the two men’s title matches & that gauntlet, but if it happens again, I will be complaining on the internet pretty hard about it.
Just a quick recap: Bayley & Bianca are officially Rumble bound, while Carmella thinks we’re still in 2020 where drinking while pretending to work is acceptable. The most interesting development appears to be Sonya Deville becoming General Manager In-Training? They weren’t really clear on it, but that would be a great way to get her back into the fold & sort of circumnavigate the talking point she’s not allowed to wrestle in WWE anymore. Boy will those Karens be afraid to complain to the manager now.
But come on, the best thing by a mile is of course the new & improved Riiott Squad
"I can be punk, I can be edgy. I've been listening to @blink182 recently."
Weekly reminder that @BillieKayWWE is the absolute best. pic.twitter.com/3PpEsufGyd
— WWE on FOX (@WWEonFOX) January 9, 2021
If you think they are not 100% going to be referred to as “Blink One-Eight-Two” from now on, you’re outside your mind. Nobody likes you when you’re two-three anyway.
That’s your SmackDown, folks. Between this episode & the one from Christmas, The Blue Brand isn’t pulling any punches lately. It’s Mania Season & they are acting accordingly. Really well done show from top to bottom. I know I nit picked the matches outside of the gauntlet, but trust me, that’s just weird beats in story telling over anything else. I highly recommend checking out the entire show, but if you can’t, CERTAINLY check out that gauntlet match.
A lot of moving parts as we close in on The Royal Rumble, so the next few weeks should be interesting. How do you feel about it? As always, drop us a line or join our Discord! We’d love to hear from you. Until then, get your Scrap Daddy merchandise before they sell & I’ll see you next week.
