The WWE Smackdown Reaction for Nov. 22 by Kelly Dishnow
Welcome to another edition of The Smackdown Reaction, where I offer up my take on the festivities from night one in Chicago. You can check out John’s full in-depth analysis right here.
We open with the Smackdown superstars backstage ready for a fight. King Corbin tries to address them, but they don’t quiet down until Roman speaks. Roman gives a quick rally speech and the arena door is opened for all to come in. Sasha speaks up and said that the Women’s division is ready to fight and they were going to the ring. This throws us to the opening video and pyro.
Sasha leads Team Smackdown to the ring with her horrible new remixed theme playing. They get in the ring and Sasha said that they’re here and ready to fight. Charlotte Flair’s music hits and the captain of Team Raw leads them to the ring. After a little back and forth, Charlotte challenges Sasha to a match just for old times sake. Out comes five NXT women led by Rhea Ripley. Rhea announced them as Team NXT and was ready to fight in a captain’s triple threat match to kick off the 15 woman brawl.
Back from break, order had been restored and the triple threat match started. Good work from all three ladies with Charlotte hitting a moonsault onto the floor to throw us to commercial. Back from break and Charlotte’s bleeding again. She’s been doing that a lot lately for some reason. Anyway, the finish comes with Charlotte locking Sasha in the Figure Eight and Rhea pins Charlotte’s shoulders down. Very unique way to end the match. Bonus points to Sasha for tapping out just as the ref counted three. Team NXT goes back up the ramp to celebrate as Team Raw and Smackdown fight in the ring. Team Smackdown eventually clears the ring.
Quick promos from King Corbin, Sami Zayn, and Bayley lead us back out to the ring with Sami Zayn and Shinsuke Nakamura making their entrance. Sami cuts another promo on Corbin before presenting Shinsuke with a newly designed IC title belt.
The design kinda reminded me of one of the old TNA World Titles. I saw a few people point out its very similar to the Progress World Title. Anyway, with that out of the way, Sami hypes the Survivor Series triple-threat leading to Undisputed Era coming out. Sami and Shinsuke leave the ring and Undisputed Era cuts a quick promo leading to The New Day coming out. New Day issues a challenge to a match. Undisputed Era agrees thinking it would be four on two until Heavy Machinery comes out to even up the odds before the break.
Back from break, the eight man tag starts. We get another really good tag match out of Undisputed Era, but not as good as their match with The Revival on Wednesday. Otis and Tucker continue to impress with Otis getting the appropriate crowd reactions and Tucker pulling off a picture-perfect moonsault. Undisputed Era picks up the victory after pinning Tucker. After the match, Roderick Strong heads up the ramp to where Sami and Shinsuke were seated. AJ Styles appears and the brief throwdown between the three champs is broken up by Sami Zayn and a steel chair. Undisputed Era chase off Sami and Shinsuke, leaving Rodrick laying.
Back from break and AJ is still out on the stage with The OC for a quick promo on Survivor Series. As they get ready to leave, Daniel Bryan comes out to call out Bray Wyatt. Bryan issues the challenge to Bray to fight right now and gets The Miz instead. Miz runs down Bryan in a quick recap of their history and we’ve got a match after the break. The match was as good as you could expect between the two before The Fiend shows up for the non-finish. At least it was our first non-finish match of the night. The Fiend attacks Bryan and that’s it, kinda flat there.
Shayna Baszler is up next for a promo on Bayley. Bayley takes a page out of Shayna’s books and attacks from behind. A brief scuffle between the two does not bring out Becky Lynch and Bayley eventually leaves up the ramp as Shayna recovers at ringside.
Main event time with the King Corbin/Robert Roode/Dolph Ziggler team taking on Roman Reigns/Mustafa Ali/Shorty G team. The match itself was nothing special and just the setup for the show closing brawl. Of course, hometown boy Mustafa Ali had to eat the pin from a Corbin Deep Six.
Post match, Roman cleared the ring of Corbin and Rollins music hits. Rollins leads the Raw superstars though the crowd to the ring. Seth and Roman throw down and the fight is on. Braun Strowman’s music hits after a short delay to lead the Smackdown troops to battle. With everyone fighting, the NXT music hits and the fighting stops. The camera cuts to the back and DX is leading the charge in a Jeep-like it is 1998 and likely the whole point to this angle. NXT swarms the ring and the yearly massive brawl is on as we fade out.
Let’s check out tonight’s highs and lows.
The Highs:
All but one match had actual finishes to them, unlike Raw and NXT to a lesser extent. The action was pretty decent all night.
Rhea Ripley is simply awesome. Nuff said.
The Lows:
The whole Daniel Bryan/Miz/The Fiend segment/match just came off flat. There just wasn’t a whole lot of anything there for Sunday.
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We had a good start to the WWE invasion of Chicago tonight. I won’t be watching Takeover WarGames live, but will be watching Survivor Series. I’m planning on writing something for that and of course Raw. So, until next time.