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The WWE Smackdown Reaction for 8/27/21

By Kelly Dishnow • Published 28th August 2021

Welcome to the Smackdown Reaction, where I offer my take on this week’s show in North Little Rock. As always, you can check out John’s full in-depth review here.

We start off with a SummerSlam video package for the Women’s Championship match for the lead-in to Promo Time with “The Man” Becky Lynch. Lynch gets a great reaction from the crowd. Lynch explains why she did what she did at SummerSlam and you can’t argue against what she said. Like Taz used to say, “Timing is everything.” Bianca Belair comes out to start the Interruption Parade to issue a challenge to Lynch for a real Smackdown Women’s Title match tonight. Zelina Vega and Carmella come out separately to poke fun at Belair for losing and it was time for her to get at the back of the line with them. Liv Morgan then comes out to remind us that she is still on the Smackdown women’s roster wanting a title match as well. Lynch turns Belair down and leaves to let the rest of the division fight in the ring. Morgan clears the ring and stands tall going into the break.

Back from break, Teddy Long booked us a tag team match, but Adam Pierce made it a Fatal Four Way Elimination Match to find out who would be the next to challenge Becky Lynch instead. Sorry Teddy. Vega and Carmella are only in the match because we need heels and they are the only two left in the singles division. Kevin Owens and Corey Graves are filling in on commentary for Pat McAfee. KO gets some good digs on Graves about Carmella. The heels were dispatched quickly, Vega by Belair and Carmella by Morgan, leaving Belair and Morgan as the final two. We get a good competitive match between the two and Belair made Morgan look good. In the end, we went with the obvious winner and Belair picked up the win. That was a good effort from both and Morgan looks like an early pick to win the Royal Rumble.

The Usos were backstage questioning what Heyman knew about Brock Lesnar’s return at SummerSlam. That’ll give us something to follow tonight.

Cesaro is up next to take on Alpha Academy’s Chad Gable. It was a good match for the time given. Cesaro picked up the win after three minutes on an Otis interference DQ. After the match, Alpha Academy beats down Cesaro. No sign of The Street Profits here to make the save. I guess that feud is over?

Kayla Braxton catches Happy Corbin outside before he comes out for Promo Time. It looks like Corbin is still a heel after all of this and Cameron Grimes called wanting his gimmick back. Corbin invites Big E out to make amends for his theft of the Money in the Bank briefcase. Corbin offers to buy it and Big E said no. Corbin serves up a heaping plate of Meh and leaves.

The dueling promos from Edge and Seth Rollins were really good. My spidey senses are tingling for a rematch between these two.

Roman Reigns finally shows up and appears to have forgiven Paul Heyman for Lesnar’s surprise SummerSlam appearance.

Tag team action is up next with King Nakamura and Rick Boogs teaming up to take on Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode. This was another good tag match outing for Nakamura and Boogs. The match went a little bit longer than Boogs’ previous tag match. Boogs looks good in the ring and we might have a possible team for the tag division once Nakamura drops the Intercontinental title. Boogs picked up the win for his team again with his pumphandle powerslam finisher.

Sonya Deville ignored Naomi making her Smackdown return. We’ve got another face (for now) in the Women’s Division. She’ll be a good addition to Smackdown. Hopefully, she can keep the Usos out of trouble.

The Mysterios are backstage with Rey telling Dominik that it is time he flies solo for a bit. Rey got Dominik a match right now and the opponent turned out to be Sami Zayn. The match was another good showing for the younger Mysterio. In the end, Zayn picked up the crafty veteran win. After the match, Dominik was upset with Rey and it looks like we are going to get the heel turn we don’t really need.

Our final segment is Promo Time with Roman Reigns and the Family Celebration with the Usos. Their title entrance would look really good if Heyman wasn’t standing in front of one of the Usos. Not much is said before Finn Balor is out looking for his title match next week. Balor decks Reigns and the Usos pounce on him. Here comes The Street Profits to start their feud with the Usos. Balor wipes out Jimmy with a Coup de Grace so the faces stand tall to close the show out.

Let’s take look at tonight’s highs and lows.

The Highs

It was great to see Becky Lynch back in the ring and explaining her SummerSlam actions. It was also good to see Liv Morgan prominently featured in the segment and match as well. Belair took a protected loss to start this redemption story and it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out. I’m still of the opinion that Sasha was supposed to win at SummerSlam and they just plugged Becky into the Sasha role but still wanted to promote the Becky/Bianca money match.

Kevin Owens was fantastic on commentary. If he’s not going to be used, can we keep him there?

The Lows

The Happy Corbin character set up promo was just too long and boring. It is almost an exact copy of the current Cameron Grimes NXT gimmick. I’ll give it a chance, but I’m not holding out much hope.

The Fox time constraints really showed tonight for the matches. It’ll never happen, but I think Smackdown could pull off being three hours every week. They have some great stories going that just get sidelined or shortened because of the hard stop.

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Here’s the official announcement about Reigns vs. Balor next week.

I’m on Twitter @Ciscowebwiz76 if you’re on there with any thoughts or comments. That’s all I’ve got, until next week.