BRM Reviews the 9/27/2016 Smackdown (I never want to see Wyatt vs. Orton again)

[Big Red Machine]

T-Minus 12 days until Alexa Bliss! becomes the WWE Smackdown Women’s Champion:


OPENING SEGMENT- Randy Orton comes out and talks about Bray Wyatt and fear. Then Bray appears on the TitanTron and gives a speech. I AM SO F*CKING TIRED OF THIS SAME SH*T OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
He had giant hourglass. It looked stupid. He started singing He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand, but Bray is so stale by now that almost no one joined in with him. Randy then walked to the back. Well… that was short, pointless and boring. It’s currently 2:13 am. After seeing this segment I was sorely tempted to just give up and go to bed, but then I remembered that time a few weeks ago when I tried that with Impact and the show turned to sh*t overnight, and with a start like this, I don’t want to take the risk of having to possibly experience just how far down this show can go, so I’m going to just tough it out.

CHARLY INTERVIEWS DEAN AMBROSE- Renee is gonna be SOOOO jealous.
Also, Dean cut an awesome promo.

HEATH SLATER, RHYNO, & AMERICAN ALPHA vs. THE ASCENSION & THE USOS- 5.75/10
JBL starts jabbering away about Heath Slater, joking about the concept of Heath losing track of one of his kids. You know… because a child going missing is funny. He also insisted on constantly referring to Rhyno as “the Cheez Wiz-loving Rhyno.” He was also constantly talking about Heath’s pool and kids. It was EXTRMELY annoying. Even if I liked this Heath Slater bullsh*t, JBL beating it into the ground like this would completely kill it for me.
Only The Usos got an entrance because WWE wanted to show us their new heel entrance music. Their new look is way too bland. Viktor apparently decided that because The Usos are no longer painting half of their faces then that means that he should start doing so. It was very weird to see a guy with half of his face painted who wasn’t an Uso.
They got the heat on Gable by taking out his leg (shocking, I know). If you were going to have The Usos take his leg out every damn week then what was the point of bringing him back at all?
The Usos used their leg-killer moves to beat Heath. The match was good for the time it got.

CHARLY INTERVIEWS JOHN CENA- Charly is actually pretty good at her job. They should send her over to Raw and have Tom Phillips replace JBL in the booth on Smackdown. Cena’s promo was good.

Some Bray Wyatt TV feed-capturing effect happens, and then we cut backstage to… Randy Orton. Because we have to get that stupid thing in to let people know that this segment involves Bray Wyatt’s feud, even if Bray doesn’t actually appear in it. This stupid bullsh*t makes it impossible for me to get into Bray Wyatt segments because it’s a big glaring sign that this is fake TV show stuff, complete with screen effects like this that have absolutely no logical kayfabe explanation.
Randy is in a dark room, and he sees a big arrow made out of sticks that are tied together. It looked the type of pointless thing they made you make in arts and crafts at summer camp. It was hanging on the back of some sort of metal thing. Randy peers into the darkness in the direction the arrow is pointing, then grabs the arrow and starts to slowly turn it in the other direction, like he thought doing so would open a secret passage in the wall or something. Nothing happened, so Randy just walked off the other way. It’s nice to see that Randy isn’t a moron who is going to blindly walk right into Bray’s trap, but if he wants to fight Bray so badly, doesn’t he stand a better chance of finding Bray by following the arrows than by ignoring them?
After Randy walks off the camera pans back to the arrow to show that he has reverted to its original position, presumably due to spooky Wyatt magic, and Erick Rowan was standing there wearing a ram mask intead of a sheep mask. It’s sh*t like this that shows you exactly why Bray Wyatt is where is he right now despite how heavily he has been pushed and how much momentum he was brought up with. Ever since his feud with Cena ended, Creative has been SOOOOO f*cking lazy with him, rely on “spooky” (read as: “not spooky to anyone above age eight”) promos and spooky magic and spooky Erick Rowan in his spooky mask as a crutch instead of actually trying to tell a story with their feud. They just have him randomly teleport places or occasionally do goofy bullsh*t like this, and he cuts his long spooky promos which fans have learned to tune out by now because nothing he says ever matters (I mean… I guess “anyone but Roman” did technically matter, but he gave up on that vow for no real reason other than he lost a Hell in a Cell match).
The Bray Wyatt character has been such a tremendous waste. It’s impossible to deny that Windham Rotunda performs the character well, and that character- a mysterious cult leader who rules via charisma (rather than the promise of dark power like Ministry Taker) is something I don’t ever remember seeing or hearing about in WWE history, and something with real potential… but these f*cking lazy-ass incompetent writers who WWE has the audacity to refer to as their “Creative” department have absolutely no idea how to handle a character like this, so rather than putting effort into making Bray’s words mean something, they just waste time with dumb, magical bullsh*t and long-winded emptiness that is perfectly embodied by the literal smokescreen that is often present in their special set for Bray Wyatt promos, hoping to distract you from the fact that there is really nothing there anymore.

Okay. It’s now almost 3:20 and I really do have to go to sleep, so we shall now conduct an experiment to see if this “going to sleep in the middle of a show makes that show terrible” thing is exclusive to Impact or not.

And… I’m back. And so is Bray. Dammit. He wastes time with another stupid, pointless promo. This was apparently more important than Nattie and Carmella getting an entrance for…

NATALYA & CARMELLA vs. NIKKI BELLA & NAOMI- 4/10
The heels cut an inset promo and believe it or not, Carmella was actually pretty darn good. Maybe it’s just that the Orton vs. Wyatt feud is using up all of this show’s allotment of suckage. The babyfaces also got to cut an inset promo. Naomi was pretty good except for the beginning when she does that forced crap about “feeling the glow” being about believing in yourself. It’s a fine catchphrase on its own so just let it be. It doesn’t need this phony-feeling bullsh*t tacked onto it. Nikki… I don’t know what it is with her. They’re giving her this 100% babyface a dialogue, and some of it works, but other parts of it are terrible, some of it she just totally kills with her delivery. It’s like she’s been a heel for so long that she has forgotten how to be fiery as a babyface.
This was a basic tag match. Carmella didn’t suck, so that’s a plus. Carmella rolls Nikki up, Nikki still hasn’t beaten her.

RANDY ORTON IN ANOTHER DARK ROOM-
Bray has graffitied some phrases in red on some doors and walls like “I am a god” and “one way out, choose wisely.” Randy looks at one door that says “predator or prey” and then goes back to the “I am a god” door. He hesitantly opens it, and behind the door is a cardboard cut-out of Orton with the eyes whited out and the word “PREY” is written across his chest in red paint. Randy then goes over the “predator or prey” door and opens it just slightly, and we cut to a view from inside the room where we can see Orton opening the door but can also now see Erick Rowan in his shiny new ram mask hiding by the doorway, lying in wait. Orton eventually decides not to go in. Randy walks away, and then they zoom in on the handle of the door, which is now jiggling, because I guess Erick Rowan, who has bodyslammed the Big Show, is not physically capable of opening it. Not only was annoying and boring but the from the angle of the shot inside of the room, it looked like Orton and Rowan were just standing there staring at each other from two feet away and not doing anything, which caused me to become both annoyed and confused. That Orton cut-out is lucky. His eyes are covered so he doesn’t have to watch any of this bullsh*t.

MIZ’S HOMECOMING CELEBRATION- OH MY G-D WATCH THIS SEGMENT RIGHT NOW!
Miz & Maryse come out. The ring is full of pictures of Miz. If there was ever for some reason a Miz WWE Hall of Fame video, this was a damn good start. Also, I totally marked out for Angry Miz Girl. Miz then proceeded to cut a F*CKING AWESOME heel promo. He put over his own parents (who were in the front row), and then pointed out Dolph Ziggler’s parents (farther down in the same row) and buried Dolph. Dolph come out and actually cut a decent promo. Miz responded with a better one, and they started going back and forth and got better and better. Miz appears to have started a campaign to win Best Interviews for this year because he’s been GREAT for the past month.
And then Dolph cut a FANTASTIC PROMO. It was like all of his others since this feud started, but instead of fake, forced “I’m the babyfaciest babyface there has ever been” emotion but actual real emotion and words that I can believe came from Nick Nemeth just as much as they came from Dolph Ziggler. The end result of this is that at the PPV, Dolph is getting one more shot at the title… but with his career on the line.

BRAY WYATT PROMO- well… at least this one was short.

BECKY LYNCH vs….
Alexa Bliss! jumps Becky from behind during her entrance and slams her face into the ramp a few times while trash-talking her. They did a great job of getting a lot out of very little here. Alexa only slammed Becky’s head into the ramp three or four times, stopping to talk trash between each one. Becky sold it like she was knocked out by the last one, and despite everything we see in a regular match or beatodwn, you could completely believe that Becky was knocked out by this. Jim Ross would be proud.

CURT HAWKINS EMBARASSES HIMSELF ON WORLDWIDE TELEVISION- also, he’ll have a big announcement next week.

BRAY WYATT PROMO- he started to cut a promo calling Randy a coward for not being willing to face him. Then Randy appeared behind him in a standard Erick Rowan sheep mask, removed his mask, turned Bray around and beat him up.
Then Randy sat on Bray’s stool and put on his sheep mask and then stupid screen effects happened while Randy started singing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand” and magically turned into Bray or something. It was all f*cking stupid. If they think that this is entertaining or engaging anyone in any way, it would be best if everyone involved with writing these segments just quit the company right now.

CHARLY INTERVIEWS AJ STYLES- AJ’s promo was fine, but I’m sure he’ll catch hell for saying “all eyes and ears were on the presidential debate last night,” which flat out admits that Raw did a sh*tty number.

WWE TITLE MATCH: AJ Styles(c) vs. Dean Ambrose- 7.75/10
The drama of the match was really hurt by the fact that if Dean lost, we already knew he would be getting another title shot in two weeks anyway, so oh well. The match was still great but didn’t feel as consequential as a match like this should. The important part was the finish, which saw AJ attack Cena (who was on commentary) for no reason. When Cena recovered, he tried to charge the ring but was stopped by the referee, which forced the ref to miss Dean having AJ pinned for a three-count. Because of this, Dean laid AJ out as well, but then got rolled up by AJ for the pin. Dean tried to attack Cena but Cena reversed Dirty Deeds into the AA. AJ then tried to attack Cena but Cena countered the Styles Clash into an AA as well and this week it was Cena’s turn to end the show standing tall. Good stuff.


This would have been a pretty good Smackdown if not for the ridiculous amount of time devoted to that atrocious Bray Wyatt vs. Randy Orton bullsh*t.

[KILLdozer]

I'd love to see Erick Rowan face turn on Wyatt and basically just tell him our exact sentiments lol.

Why WOULD anyone want to be in a family with that idiot?

No...stupid idiot...and he definitely should get... it. IT.

[NWK2000]

The Uso's look like 3 Minute Warning in their new get up and the heel turn is ruined for me.

[Big Red Machine]

The Uso's look like 3 Minute Warning in their new get up and the heel turn is ruined for me.

But thinner.

[cero2k]

Did you guys watch Cena's promo on Ambrose on Talkin Smack? he pretty much killed Ambrose

[Big Red Machine]

Did you guys watch Cena's promo on Ambrose on Talkin Smack? he pretty much killed Ambrose

LOL. They keep putting something that looks interesting and/or Alexa Bliss! on Talking Smack every week and I keep saying I'm going to watch it, but I never get around to it.

[cero2k]

Did you guys watch Cena's promo on Ambrose on Talkin Smack? he pretty much killed Ambrose

LOL. They keep putting something that looks interesting and/or Alexa Bliss! on Talking Smack every week and I keep saying I'm going to watch it, but I never get around to it.

Talking Smack is seriously the best show in WWE right now. couldn't find the whole thing, but this has part of it

[KILLdozer]

So I'm watching it on Hulu... Bray Wyatt is such a fuckin' idiot.

[KILLdozer]

I just skipped past his entire damn bunch of horseshit.