BRM Reviews the 9/6/2016 Smackdown (go-home show failure)

[Big Red Machine]

DANIEL BRYAN HYPES UP THE SMACKDOWN WOMEN’S TITLE- Bryan is out there with the Smackdown Women’s Title on a gussied-up table. He announces that the women’s title match at the PPV will now be an elimination match. I like this because at least now the winner will have to prove herself to be better than everyone else in the division rather than someone being able to win the whole thing by stealing a pin. Unfortunately, instead of pushing this fact, they had Bryan put over the elimination aspect of this match by showing us his ability to count backwards from six.
Bryan announces that tonight we will have all six women in a six-woman tag team match, which I’m sure will mean just as much as the one they had a mere three weeks ago at SummerSlam. Or any of the other pointless matches they’ve had since this title has been announced.
Even worse, Bryan announces that right now we will have all six women come out for a “Smackdown Women’s Championship forum.” They do know that this is the go-home show and they only have six matches built so far, right? And that Dean and AJ are also scheduled to have a talking segment together later? And that in addition to those talking segments they still need to have both tag team tournament semi-finals and the six-woman tag, right? So that should leave them with approximately forty minutes of non-commercial time to not only do the final build for Miz vs. Ziggler, Corbin vs. Kalisto, and Orton vs. Wyatt, but also produce two other undercard matches out of thin air. I can’t wait to see what they come up with for guys like Apollo Crews and… Erick Rowan…and… and… and whoever else is on the undercard on this G-d-forsaken show.

So Becky Lynch is brought out first, and she and Bryan waste time with banter specifically designed for Daniel Bryan to plug Total Bellas… which got booed, because 99% of people who watch and attend Smackdown don’t give a sh*t about Total Divas/Bellas, and those who do care already knew about it and would have gone to find the starting time for themselves because it’s 2016 and they have the internet.

Becky cuts a babyface promo. Nattie comes out and interrupts her and cuts what I thought was a great heel promo, although I can see some people not liking it. Only now, well over two months after Nattie turned on her, does Becky say “you’ve changed! What happened to you?” like she has only recently just noticed that Nattie turned heel.
While Nattie was getting into the ring, apparently Alexa Bliss! came down the ramp and they didn’t play her music or show her entrance, which made me very unhappy. Alexa, coming off like a total afterthought, was given really lame dialogue. While Alexa was cutting her promo, Carmella apparently came down the ramp and started climbing into the ring, which made her come off as even more of an afterthought than Alexa did. She attempted to improvise on the formula Enzo created for her, so her promo came off even more lame than usual, which shocked me because I didn’t think such a thing was even possible.
Becky, a babyface, tries to stir up sh*t between Alexa and Carmella. Carmella refers to Alexa as “Paulie Pocket,” which resulted in a good chunk of the arena shouting “IT’S POLLY!” at her while Alexa stood there, totally bewildered, and Becky tried her best not to break out laughing. Nattie was given sh*tty dialogue to interrupt with and for some reason also seems to have been instructed to only speak while facing the hard-cam. The heels broke down into a cartoonishly animated “argument” while Becky stood there on the other side of the ring, giggling at this minor mischief she had caused, coming off exactly like that way-too-witty, usually opposite sex of the title character, small child/younger sibling character you see on tweenage sitcoms who is supposed to be funny but actually just makes you want to see someone smack him/her around (looking at you, Morgan Matthews, you annoying little twerp). Nattie figures out what is going on and the three heels bear down on Becky… and responsible babyface authority figure Daniel Bryan just takes the title belt and slips into the background instead of trying to break this up before it becomes a three-on-one mugging. I’m not that annoyed at this, though, simply because, at this point, Becky deserves this beating.
First Naomi and then Nikki predictably come out to even up the odds. Nikki makes the mistake of advancing too quickly and focusing only on Carmella, so Nattie just floors her with a big forearm to the side of the head and it’s on… for about four seconds. Becky tossed Nattie out of the ring, Naomi did the same to Alexa, and Carmella seems to have just disappeared so that the fight would be fair and the babyfaces could win.
This segment sucked hard. It was a bunch of sh*tty dialogue leading to a one-sided brawl that lasted four seconds, which one person inexplicably ran away from. This was also a colossal waste of ten minutes that accomplished nothing other than making me want to see the top babyface get an ass-whupping. Even freakin’ Mauro screwed up here (he said “the lit has been wicked”), so there was literally nothing good about this segment at all.

DOUCHEBAG DEAN VISITS CATERING- first he picks up a donut and a takes bite of it, then decides he doesn’t like it so he casually throws it back on the pile. Then he grabs a man’s coffee out of his hand, tastes it, decides he doesn’t like it, pours an outrageous amount of sugar into it… and then gives it back to the guy. Who could possibly want to root for this asshole?

Speaking of coffee, though, we have David Otunga, who was so prolific in his coffee consumption that it once became his gimmick. Today we found out that Mr. Otunga likes his coffee like he likes his knights: black. Rumor has it that Vince McMahon has slightly different tastes. He likes his coffee like he likes his midcard feuds: stale.

DANIEL BRYAN & SHANE MCMCHAON BACKSTAGE- they engage in what was clearly scripted and unfunny banter. You can add that to the list of ways these shows (especially Smackdown) would be better if there was only one authority figure instead of two. That being said, whatever they scripted here was clearly not what was said, as Shane took several tries at plugging the six-woman tag with the competitors in Sunday’s championship match and kept screwing up so badly that I think he just accidentally created a set of women’s trios titles that are going to be awarded to whichever team wins the main event.

THE MIZ & MARYSE SHOW UP- Miz complains about the booking, rightfully pointing out that Dolph Ziggler hasn’t done jack to earn a shot at his title, and has not won a single match since before SummerSlam. Bryan scolds Miz, saying that the women in the previous segment were willing to fight (well… except for Carmella, who ran away when the fighting started), but cowardly Miz is not, as evidence by his refusal to accept a fight against Dolph Ziggler last week. Bryan says that if Miz doesn’t want to defend the title against Doloh, he will forfeit it. Based on recent events involving these two, you’d think Miz would respond with some manner of cutting retort such as “you mean like you did?” But instead Miz just walked away. It would have made so much sense for Shane to send Bryan away when Miz showed up (especially after their conversation at the beginning of last week’s show), which would have avoided this whole issue in a nice and kayfabe way, but no. We just had to have Miz made to look bad by remaining silent when pretty much everyone knows that Miz probably could have thought of something rather nasty and heelish to say.

APOLLO CREWS vs. THE MIZ (w/Maryse)- 5.75/10
Ziggler is on commentary because WWE doesn’t know any other way to build things up. He is coming across as so… forcefully generically babyface that it comes off as phony. He’s trying too hard. Dolph annoys Miz when Miz is over by the commentary table, so Miz slaps him in the face. Dolph then accidentally gets in Crews’ way, which winds up costing him the match. Then Dolph grabs Miz’s title and starts challenging him to come get it. He came off like total asshole here, challenging Miz to a fight after Miz had already wrestled a match- although Miz sending Maryse into the ring to get the title for him did a good job of playing up the “coward” angle even despite Dolph’s obnoxious and rather unfair challenge.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS AJ STYLES- bad
Renee replays the footage of AJ’s crotching and humiliation last week. AJ then grabs a production assistant and threatens to get him fired by smashing his expensive production department-issued headphones and blaming him for it… all while on national TV. Do we have to make AJ look like an idiot?
That was ALL that happened here. At this point I will once again remind you that they still have one or two as-yet unannounced matches to set up, plus all of those other things I listed above, and they now have less than ninety minutes to do so.

AMERICAN ALPHA VIDEO PACKAGE- not bad, but it would have made a lot more sense to do this a few weeks ago.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS THE USOS- the Usos are very hyper tonight.

BRAY WYATT PROMO- do they really think another rambling Bray Wyatt promo will make anyone want to this match any more than they already do?
That being said, they found some creepy new angles to show Bray from. That final one looking at him dead on but a bit from above was quite good.

NIKKI BELLA, BECKY LYNCH, & NAOMI vs. ALEXA BLISS!, NATALYA, & CARMELLA- 5.75/10
Hey! What do you know! My ranting worked! They got over TWELVE minutes here. Everyone looked… fine. Carmella made Nikki tap to the Code of Silence because Nikki’s neck is still injured.

TAG TEAM TITLE TOURNAMENT SEMI-FINAL MATCH: American Alpha vs. The Usos- well… that was a little unexpected. Believe it or not I actually like this. You can set up an Usos heel turn and have them be American Alpha’s first challengers.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- or you could do the heel turn now, I guess. That jumping superkick to the back of the knee spot worked a lot better than it sounds like it should. I just hope they don’t use Gable’s injury as a reason to let Rhyno and Slater actually win.
Also… can anyone else see Vince huffing angrily and grumbling to himself “so they want a heel Samoan, do they? I’ll give ‘em a heel Samoan. In fact, I’ll give ‘em two! Heheheh.”
That being said, I think the Usos actually looked pretty mean and vicious here. This could work.

CHARLY ASKS RANDY ORTON A F*CKING STUPID QUESTION- she said “Earlier tonight we heard from Bray Wyatt, who said that you are no longer the predator and he is. How does this change your strategy going into your match with Bray at this Sunday’s Backlash?”
In other words: “Randy, will you change your strategy because Bray said some meaningless, empty words?”
Randy responded by telling a parable. Randy told the story very well, but it, like Bray’s words, ultimately don’t mean sh*t.

FANDANGO DANCES WITH A WOMAN WHO HAS TATTOOS ON HER ARMS- I will admit to laughing at this. I don’t know what the point of it was, but it was funny. Also, it ended with Kane chokeslamming Fandango, so I was happy.

AJ STYLES RANDOMLY BULLIES PEOPLE BACKSTAGE- AJ’s actons tonight have been completely out of nowhere. It feels like they’re worried that AJ is going to get cheered over Dean… to which I would tell them that maybe instead of having AJ act out of character they could not try not booking Dean to act like giant douchebag all of the time.

TAG TEAM TITLE TOURNAMENT SEMI-FINAL MATCH: Heath Slater & Rhyno vs. Hype Bros.- 2.5/10
There MUST be some sort of clever team name for Slater & Rhyno, but I can’t think of it. Oh well. Hopefully the Hype Bros. read my letter in last week’s review and have been inspired to make the right decision and go into business on behalf of all of us by going into business for themselves in this match.

The team of Heath Slater a FORMER ECW AND NWA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION RHYNO both come out to Slater’s music… and Slater isn’t even on the kayfabe roster!
All of Heath’s children are at ringside.
Sh*t.


CHAD GABLE HEALTH UPDATE- he’s “questionable” and we have to tune in to Talking Smack to find out.

THE USOS SHOW UP TO CUT A PROMO- decent.

AJ STYLES & DEAN AMBROSE TALKING SEGMENT-
They had Charly out to moderate just so Douchebag Dean could shoo her away. Dean gives AJ and old bowling participation trophy he received. Everything Dean said during this would have been perfectly at home coming out of the mouth of post-2008 heel Austin Aries.
AJ was great, and Dean was great as soon as he stopped being a douchebag. Unfortunately the damage was already done, so I didn’t care when AJ kicked Dean in the nuts.

A very bad episode of Smackdown, and a total failure of a go-home show. Not only do we not have a full PPV card, but now, at the end of the go-home show, we actually have fewer matches than we started with because we don’t know what’s up with the tag titles. They didn’t set up any new matches or even bother to put up a graphic confirming matches that have been speculated about based on build like Corbin vs. Kalisto. Meanwhile, none of the build they did for any of the matches that they have announced has in any way increased my desire to see those matches. A complete and total failure.