WWE Smackdown Review 08/13/15

This week’s LiveWWF WWE ThursdayFriday Thursday Night Smackdown is brought to you by the following video:

I’m not going to spend time singing the praise of the indie sensations that are the Young Bucks, so just spend a minute to find them for yourselves because I’m not your friend and I don’t owe you anything.

This week’s show kicks off with Michael Cole telling us about how Monday Night Raw had some huge WWE title drama. Nice of them to use this show as a way to talk about how great the other show was. I really appreciate how much WWE cares about me. Not the show, so much, but me. I want to review stuff that’s relevant next week, dammit. It’s not like Raw ever kicks off with, “What a historic night it was last Tue…I mean Thursday on Smackdown.”

Seth Rollins kicks things off with his awesome “Never Shuts Up/You Can’t See Knee” shirt on. Before he even gets to the point of his promo I just want to point out that the promo was very slow, as if he was saying, “Listen, people, I’m going to talk very slowly so that all of you idiots can keep up.” He didn’t actually say that, it was just a subtle undertone that I picked up on and I love that he didn’t shout it out. The tone changed quickly after he got to the point that he was talking about how great he is. He ran down his list of accomplishments, topping it off with smashing John Cena’s face.

They showed the clip from Tough Enough where Cena confirmed that his Wolverine healing abilities will be allowing him to compete at SummerSlam. It’s kinda neat that he confirmed it there, but the promo Rollins was cutting led to him telling Cena to come to Raw and accept it in person. Meaning, despite the fact that he already announced it, they’re trying to sell me on watching Raw so that he can re-announce it. That’s like opening a gift on Christmas Eve, then putting it back in the box and trying to get amped up to open it again the next morning.

Neville cut him off and then Cesaro cut Neville off dressed as a professional assassin, which I can only assume he actually is outside of WWE, considering he’s bulletproof and all. But then Kevin Owens jumped him and there was a brawl between all of them. Wrestlers are f***ing rude, man. Can anyone just finish a sentence around here? I would so stop going to work if this was my life.

Vince: “Go out and cut a promo about your feud.”

Me: “No. Someone is just gonna cut me off/beat me up. I’m going home.”

Vince:

Charlotte vs. Naomi

*There are so many variations of the same nine Divas that any other Divas that are currently employed are…well…I have no idea what they’re doing. Probably shopping or something. Carrying around small dogs in little bags designed for small dogs. Buying Starbucks. Craving chocolate. Giggling at other girls that they don’t think are as pretty as them. Typical prissy girl stuff.

*Taunting opponents is a staple of professional wrestling, but good God is Naomi ever awful at it. There are the classic “throat slashes” or the “crucifix arm” poses that Finn Balor has basically perfected, but then there’s Naomi. She basically just says, “B.A.D. BABY!” between random moves. I should also never mention Finn Balor in anything I write aside from articles written about Finn Balor because now I just want to devote 3,000 words to how awesome Finn Balor is.

*I don’t think it’s one person’s fault over the other’s here, but there are a lot of awkward spots in this match that looked like maybe they botched a spot and then tried to save it. It’s probably because girls like Charlotte have a lot more of a high-impact offense than the normal Divas, so the girls on the main roster have trouble adjusting to it.

*It wasn’t a very long match, considering how hard they’ve been pushing for the Divas matches to be more meaningful, so let’s hope it’s not the company cooling on them. Charlotte got the win with the Figure 8.

Winner: Charlotte

Mandatory “Jimmy Uso nods, smiles, and flashes gang signs while the other commentators talk” moment. He doesn’t know what to do while they talk, so he just, I dunno, does stuff. Watch him every week. It’s one of the most awkward things on television. Aside from absolutely anything on Total Divas I guess.

A quick recap of the Stardust/Stephen Amell feud, which I’m pretty much totally sold on after Amell’s appearance on Raw. Did you see him gazelle hop into the ring? Totally effortless. Arrow clearly requires him to keep in pretty good shape, so I have hopes that he does some awesome stuff. Plus, if they want to really go into comic lore, then he should come out at the end of the show and shoot John Cena with a kryptonite arrow in order to help Seth Rollins win…and then Rollins will have a heart attack and we all wonder if he’s dead or not. Comics are weird.

Ryback came out for a promo about his staph infection, saying he overcame it with a meathook clothesline and a Shellshock. The crowd was really into it because he’s definitely come into his own on the mic in the past year or so. He referenced how the Intercontinental Championship is cursed, which planted the seeds for an amazing storyline in my head where everyone who gets it has a bizarre circumstance afflict them. Like, Miz wins it and then he’s on a train that derails. Then Big Show wins it and he contracts smallpox somehow. Leading to a point where everyone tries to lose it on purpose. Sure, it completely buries the prestige of the belt, but this is about my personal entertainment, dammit. Whatever. I’ll keep my brilliant ideas to myself until WWE hires me on full-time. But hey! Ryback made it through a whole promo without getting jumped. Neato.

Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper came out for another promo. I despise how they write their names in little glowing fireflies. That’s the lamest effect. WWE sees something starting to grow organically and they decide to destroy it. It’s like if one single flower in a field of hay is growing and the farmer says, “Oh my, that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Let’s cover it in 500lbs of cow shit because cow shit makes stuff grow better.” The end result, I’m afraid, is just 500lbs of cow shit completely suffocating a flower in a hay field. Then the farmer says, “God damn flower. What an idiot. It totally bombed.”

Luke Harper vs. Roman Reigns

*I’m searching the first few minutes of this match for something worth making a whole point about, but it’s just not happening yet. The most noteworthy thing so far has been how often the camera cuts to Bray Wyatt sitting next to the announce table where Jerry Lawler is in the background just looking down. Probably at his phone or something. It just goes to show that he literally doesn’t pay attention to his job. The ring is straight in front of him, so there’s no reason to watch the monitors or to do anything but watch what’s happening right in front of him and talk about it. That’s like if I wrote this review by turning on the show and then texting people the whole time…which I do. Hypocrisy tends to be as contagious as smallpox. Just ask Big Show in a few months.

*Roman Reigns’ offense gets touched on pretty much every week because, well, it’s just so basic. A lot of clotheslines and punches. The guy needs a storyline where he’s “taken out” by someone and then takes a few months off to work entirely on developing a more dynamic moveset. Have him work with a guy like Cesaro or maybe one of the NXT guys. He has an incredible amount of energy and he has managed to get the crowd sold on his character and there’s no denying that he has THE look to be at the top of the card. He has one last piece of the puzzle that he needs and he will be the full package that the company will need him to be in the future. Again, this isn’t something that anyone is going to care about coming from one guy on the internet, I just think they have entirely too much time and money invested in the guy to let him have this one single weakness that he could work on.

*Reigns hit the Superman punch and then went for the pin. He’s never done that. Ever. Why did he here? Because Wyatt was coming in for the DQ. I get that, but it made it so obvious that Reigns was aware of it that it irked me.

*Things got all kinds of crazy once Wyatt and Ambrose started getting mixed in. Wyatt came in and got the DQ for the win for Reigns, then Ambrose came in and took them out, just to be outnumbered. Then Reigns did a wicked sweet diving clothesline off the steps. It was fun. That’s what I mean. Watch Reigns’ energy when he hits moves like that. He’s got some serious potential that WWE needs to work with. Take the 500lbs of shit off of him and let him grow like he’s supposed to.

Winner: Roman Reigns

Sheamus cut a promo about Orton ruining his cash-in attempt on Raw. Screw the promo. Let’s look at this from Randy Orton’s eyes. The guy that you’re scheduled to face in two weeks is about to win the WWE Title. Yes, you hate him, but this turns your normal one-on-one match into a WWE World Heavyweight Championship match. Why would you not HELP him instead? Go in, RKO Sheamus because he’s a furry turd and you hate him, then RKO Rollins, drag Sheamus onto him and say, “I’ll see you at SummerSlam. Make sure you bring my belt with you.” Vince is very high on the idea that face/heel dynamics should be a little more blurry, since, basically, no person is 100% good or bad. This doesn’t make Orton a villain, it simply shows that he wants to further himself, and it’s not like he was helping a villain pin a hero. It was just so the crowd would pop at him hitting the RKO, so that would still be accomplished. On the plus side, I don’t have to see Sheamus with the World Title yet. Silver lining. I don’t mind Sheamus out of the ring, but I just haven’t been feeling his matches in a long time. They bore me. And I can watch a kitten play with yarn for a long time, so the fact that Sheamus’ matches are losing me is totally bad news.

The New Day vs. The Prime Time Players

*This is the only match the tag division seems to have because it’s the only feud happening. The other teams are all just serving to amplify this rivalry. It’s always “The New Day vs. (Insert Team Name Here) with The Prime Time Players on commentary,” so that their feud can go on. Can’t other teams not like each other?

*Xavier Woods isn’t usually in matches and instead serves to stand outside screaming annoying things. But the last little bit of his in-ring encounter with Darren Young was really fun.

*The match ended pretty quickly when New Day tried to bail and the other teams in the tag match at SummerSlam cut them off. That led to Xavier being tossed into the ring and pinned and the other teams joining the Prime Time Players as they celebrated. Cuz character motivations don’t matter.

Winners: Prime Time Players

Replay of the video package for Undertaker vs. Brock Lesnar. It is awesome. The interviews. The music not being generic Top 40 pop music and being more of a symphonic and dramatic tone. All of it. It’s flawless.

Neville and Cesaro vs Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins

*On paper, this match is something very special that WWE didn’t plug on their “A show.” They’ll probably just do it again on Raw in a few weeks under the assumption that no one watched this. They do that more frequently than people realize.

*The bumps that Neville took from both Owens and Rollins in this match were just insane. I know this won’t be a super long match but I want it to go on for the entire show. Any combination of any of these guys is going to yield amazing results.

*Neville played the babyface in peril for most of the match, which works for me because he sells like mad.

*The hot tag too Cesaro was beautiful. Neville did his springboard flips into the corner.

*Cesaro came in hot and threw Owens and Rollins all over. The best part was when he overhead pressed Rollins out of the ring, attempting to throw him onto Owens. But, like the huge dickhead that he is, Owens moved away and let Rollins hit the floor instead. Followed by Cesaro doing a running dive to take them out, then Neville doing a dive to take Owens out again. It was all worthy of the, “This is awesome!” chant that it received.

*Once things sorted out it led to Cesaro locking in a sharpshooter on Rollins, which Owens broke up, so Rollins got a rollup on him for the win. It was a very anticlimactic ending to a match that they should absolutely do again in the future with a little more time.

Winners: Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins

After the match Cesaro hit a crazy torture rack slam on Owens. I don’t know what else to call it, so let’s go with “Cesaro Torture Rack Wammy Slammy 5001.” That’s what WWE will call it next week. A Red Arrow from Neville ended the show with the babyfaces celebrating their loss…wait…yes. Okay. That’s the correct sentence. I thought maybe I had suddenly completely lost touch with reality, but nope. It’s still a slow and steady thing instead.

What We Learned on this Week’s Smackdown:

*The last match really saved the whole show, since the rest was to promote Raw and SummerSlam while the matches up to that point were short and anticlimactic across the board, really.

*Wrestlers are rude dicks that don’t allow one another to finish talking.

*Thank God wrestlers are rude dicks who don’t allow one another to finish talking or else we would have more god damn long-winded promos.

*All prissy “Diva” females like to shop and carry around small dogs in small dog bags. And they all look like Reece Witherspoon. Welcome to the inner-workings of my mind where I forget who people are if they’re not ultra-famous.

*Finn Balor is awesome. He wasn’t on or anything, it’s just something worth knowing.

*Jimmy Uso is so confused about his role on this show. And so am I.

*The Big Show may or may not develop smallpox in the near future.

*The end result of burying anything in cow shit is basically having a pile of cow shit.

*Roman Reigns should get a job for Hi-C so that he’s on their jugs of fruit punch. “Fruit Punch hard. Fruit punch often.” Let’s move some drinks.

*Kittens with yarn > Sheamus matches.

*Randy Orton is apparently a complete idiot.

*So, I guess the tag division revival is pretty much over then? I wrote a piece a few months ago about how great it was getting and how much potential the teams had. I’m a little tempted to print it off and put it in the center of a pentagram illuminated by black candles and ask whatever demons who will hear me to please make it so I don’t have to eat the entire thing due to being so incredibly wrong. There’s NOTHING I hate more than being wrong, which is why I choose never to be.

*The main event needs to happen again with a little more time in the future. Four guys who all came from the indie scene and will hopefully be carrying the company on their backs soon got to spend just a little time showing us that they’re amazing. More please.

That’s it. I’ve done it. No…you’ve done it. We made it through another review and now we are alive and ready to tell the world. How, you ask? I’m so happy you asked. You share this bad boy on your Facebook and Twitter and whatever other social circles you might have. While you’re already on those, go ahead and add me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/JakeDraperRulesTheGalaxy or follow me on Twitter @JakobDraper where I will tell you all about my new Podcast in which me and Mikey Zeroe from The Amazing Race talk about terrible movies and review them. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s free. I love all of those adjectives. Until next week, don’t (allegedly) attack your ex-boyfriend at a funeral.