Smackdown 900th Episode Live Thoughts

[Big Red Machine]

Should be heading out in about half an hour. Check for the big white sign that says "BIG RED MACHINE" on one side and "IF ALEXA BLISS LOSES, WE RIOT!" on the other.

Expect a full live report late tonight after my two hour drive home.

[cero2k]

sweet. looking froward to it.

[Big Red Machine]

Building was small but looked packed. I’m terrible at estimating crowd sizes, but Pro Wrestling Wikia says the building seats 10,000, so I’ll believe them. The parking lot there is terrible. A large chunk of it isn’t even paved, and one of the two exits requires you to drive up a steep gravel hill and then take a left turn onto a street packed with the cars of other people who have just done the same and are just as eager as you to leave.
The crowd seemed to be made up of a lot more either casual or lapsed fans than I had expected. Even people who talked in a seemingly knowledgeable way about WCW or late 90’s WWF and ECW they had been watching on the Network (including the guy sitting next to me, who said he was in the process of trying to watch all of the Raws and SDs, and had been engaged in this project since the Network first launched), had no idea who Oney Lorcan was when he came out to get squashed by Kalisto, and had no idea Carmella had been a babyface in NXT. Only one person seemed to know that she and Cass are a shoot couple. That being said, Roman Reigns was still booed every single time his image appeared on the screen, including in a commercial for action figures.

While we were taking our seats, they kept showing this video of highlights from WrestleMania XXXII. Meanwhile, all I could think is that they really should have had some sort of video package plugging Survivor Series instead of a show that happened over half a year ago that I’d guess 99% of the people in the building had already seen. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that for the first VERY large chunk of the video, a grand total of ZERO full-time WWE wrestlers were featured, and the only person who even qualifies as a full-time “performer” who was featured was Steph (although it’s possible there was a brief shot of Cena, who was kind of full-time at that point). The only full-time performers even SEEN during this first large chunk of the video were incidental shots of the New Day when they were in the ring with Austin, HBK, and Foley, and one shot of Sasha who happened to be in the picture when they were focusing on Snoop Dogg. Others who were featured include Shaq, Taker, Brock, Ric Flair, and Shane (I don’t remember seeing Hunter, oddly enough, though I can’t imagine he wasn’t in there)… and of course copious pictures of Dwayne being fawned over by the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, using a flame thrower to set a giant flammable set piece that spelled out his name on fire, and other bullsh*t that only someone with that large of an ego would engage in. I think the lack of representation of the current talent at the front end of this video package says a lot about their current mindset, and what it says is not good.

We started with a jobber named Ricky Martinez coming out to bury the town. Not being a native of Wilkes-Barre, I was able to sit there and snicker at all of this. James Ellsworth came out to say he liked the place and function as a hometown hero. Everyone in the building aside from me loved him. Martinez promised to make short work of Ellsworth. About forty seconds in I tried to start a “911!” chant. It didn’t catch on, but it did pop the guy sitting next to me so mission accomplished. Ellsworth won quickly with the No Chin Music.

We then got the Main Event taping, which they managed to wrap up in less than twenty minutes, and that was even with a pause in between to film the live shot of the arena that they air during a commercial on the previous show.

Hidden text.

The first match was Breezango over the Vaudevillains. No one really cared about this match. When Breeze got tagged in early on I was the only one who popped. People did kind of get behind Breezango by the finish.
Next was Luke Harper beating Apollo Crews. It’s sad to see Cruise so underutilized. I figured that if they were keeping him on Main Event they did it so they could at least protect him by feeding him nobodies, but he did the clean job here for Bray’s lackey. Both matches were decent. Crews vs. Harper the better of the two.

Then we were on to the main show. Bryan and Shane came out to open up and both got big pops, although Bryan also got a standing ovation and sustained “YES!” chants. They plugged the Edge and Taker appearances later on, then said it was time for the IC Title match, which was completely awesome (and we let them know that via chanting). Miz didn’t really get as much heat as you would expect for simply being Miz, but I think that’s more due to him having stepped up his in-ring game than anything else. He also didn’t get a chance to talk, which is one of the ways he usually racks up his heat, so that might have affected things. The things he did that got the most heat by far were the Daniel Bryan spots. Dolph was still as beloved as ever.
People went nuts for the false finishes, and the finish definitely worked in the building. It was pretty shocking, too. People kind of had this idea in their heads that it theoretically could happen because this show was so big, but it was equally possible that this being such a big show just made it an excellent time to blow this feud off (which is what this appeared to be going in). The other prevailing theory in my section was that we would get some kind of double finish that would result in Miz being added to the IC Title match at Survivor Series and yet another “guys who hate each other must work together for the good of the brand” angle, which thankfully didn’t happen.
A lot of people in the building seemed to think that Kalisto’s seemingly obvious victory at Survivor Series to bring the Cruiserweights to Smackdown means that Miz will be dropping the belt to Sami, but I don’t see it happening, as it just isn’t WWE’s style to have one show have two male mid-card belts. I guess an eventual unification match is possible as SD doesn’t have much of a male midcard right now so they really don’t need the title, but if they do ever want to push a guy like Crews (which they should) it’s a good thing to have around.

I, of course, popped HUGE for Alexa Bliss!’s appearance on the TitanTron in her segment with Dragon. I don’t see why Bryan was so exasperated that Alexa kept showing him the footage of her getting screwed out of the title last week. He and Shane had a whole week to let her know that she would get a rematch and yet they didn’t do so until now, so it’s no wonder she kept showing him the footage. This is his and Shane’s fault for not doing their jobs in a timely manner, so he shouldn’t be angry at Alexa.
Nattie showed up and the only thing that saved this was Alexa’s facials (which were also tremendous when it was just her and Dragon). The people in my section seemed to have no idea why Nattie had a whistle with her, so I guess they haven’t been watching.

Next was Kalisto vs. Lorcan, which was short and notable for Kalisto’s f*ck-up. IIRC they ended things pretty quickly after that and he was selling his arm a lot so it’s possible he legit hurt himself there.

Next we got Nikki vs. Carmella, which was pretty awful. It was fine at first and people were very into Nikki as a babyface, but then it just kept dragging on and on. Then Charlotte showed up and everyone went nuts (although them having the spotlight on her on her way down to the ringside area drove me nuts. It’s one of those things that is done “because it’s a show, therefore suspension of disbelief,” people were popping for her and started looking in that direction before she even got to the staircase of the section she walked down, so they would have popped for her anyway without it.
Due to the combination of the increasingly boring and increasingly bad match, how often we’ve seen this same match over the past three months, and Charlotte being a much bigger star than the other two, people started ignoring the match and just WOOOOOOing. This turned out to be a bit of a blessing in the end, as people were so busy WOOOOOOing that they didn’t bother to chant “YOU F*CKED UP!” after that atrocious spot in the corner. It was so bad the people in my row and I all thought that Carmella had ducked the kick, but then it was Carmella that started selling and we were all confused. That botch was so ugly that Johnny Ace would never, ever hire it, even to a developmental contract.

Eventually Nikki went over to Charlotte and attacked her for pretty much no reason. Isn’t that what got Steph arrested in the Brie angle?
While Nikki was beating up Charlotte, the referee called for the bell even though Charlotte had not laid a finger on Nikki so there was no reason for a DQ. Fortunately for Charlotte her teammates were also in the building and they all jumped the guardrail and started attacking both Nikki and Carmella… and so help me there I was, watching Bayley join three other women in viciously stomping the sh*t out of a downed opponent, gangland style, and all I could think was that this was by far the most un-Bayley-like thing ever.
The Smackdown women all came out to make the save and most of the brawl took place away from me so I couldn’t see much. People were pretty meh on the brawl until Nia went through the barricade (which got a “HOLY SH*T!” chant) and then Naomi did her big dive onto the pile, which got the loudest pop of any spot all night.
Because I’m me, I now have to tell you how I would have booked this to make it better. I would have had this go shorter, and I would have had this be Alexa vs. Nikki (I don’t think we've seen that match-up at all). It would also have been Charlotte who started the fight (she’s a heel), and I would have had her do so by taking advantage of big move Alexa had just hit on Nikki on the outside (we want to keep Alexa looking strong for her title match). Alexa and Nikki would then work together against Charlotte (to show Smackdown unity), which leads to the other Raw women jumping the guardrail to defend their teammate. The Raw women would look heelish by beating down on the woman with the kayfabe bad neck and smallest woman on the roster. The rest of the SD team would come in to make the save, with Becky and Carmella leading the charge (coming out to help their rivals to again show SD unity). We’d get our big spots (although I’d have Bayley hit Nattie with Belly-to-Bayley first to get the pop for that and to put some focus on Bayley) and the Smackdown women would stand tall (although Nikki, Nattie, and Alexa are all clearly banged up)… and as they start heading to the back I’d have Alexa take out Becky’s knee from behind or some such similarly dastardly thing to get Alexa her heat (which she could later explain that she did to get back at Shane and Bryan, because if they don’t care enough to let her know when she’s getting her title shot, then why should she care about helping them win this stupid Survivor Series match?).

The thing with Booker T and tag teams was weird. Also, I was quite confused because Usos seemed to be acting like perfect babyfaes again all of a sudden.

Then we got to the 16-man tag, which also went WAY too long. As someone in my section noted, most of these guys (including Breezango and the entire heel team) are jobbers, so why should anyone care about this match? The match was dull, went WAY too long (yeah, I know I said that two sentences ago, but it deserves to be mentioned twice), and was poorly received… but the interesting thing is that while no one gave a sh*t about the match and people chanted “BORING!” at it, they did actually care about and cheer loudly for some of the wrestlers in the match (mostly Ryder and American Alpha, but we even got a “WE WANT MOJO!” chant at one point). I think the reasons for this strange discrepancy are as follows:
1. Once again, the length of the match, which went WAY too long for a match with such an obvious outcome, and meant to hype up a completely unimportant Survivor Series match.
2. It was repetitive, both in that we’d already seen Breezango take on the Vaudevillains on Main Event (and on SD recently, too, I think), and because after what feels like months of seeing the exact same sh*t in every f*cking segment on both Raw and Smackdown, people were just sick and tired of it.
3. It also didn’t help that the most over guy out there ( Heath Slater, for some inexplicable reason), wasn’t even in the match, so there wasn’t much Heath could do when the people started to loudly chant “WE WANT SLATER!”

The other thing that really took away from this match was those teases of Taker coming out that they did. This was the second straight match where thought we were going to get Undertaker but instead got a match no one cared about. The women’s segment at least involved a babyface people liked and led to something cool, but this match here was such a waste of time, and as it dragged on and on, the feeling in the building was that this was taking away from our Undertaker time, which was the driving factor (pun intended, in my case) for most people coming out to this particular show. Hence the loud “WE WANT TAKER!” chants.

Edge got a HUGE pop, but the segment itself fell very short. Even going into it everyone was expecting a clusterf*ck, and when Edge came out and we still hadn’t seen Taker, everyone’s focused switched to those two guys instead of the guys in the ring. The people did still care about AJ and Ellsworth, though (and to a lesser extent Dean Ambrose).
Ellsworth, Shane, Bryan, Slater, AJ, Edge, and the aforementioned spots in the women’s brawl had all gotten huge pops, but the pop that Taker got dwarfed them all by miles. It was the loudest pop I’ve ever heard live, at any kind of sporting event. When Taker said he thought that “the man without fear” would be a great commissioner people took it as talking about Shane, but to me it seemed like he meant himself. Taker gave them a kind of odd pep talk-ish thing that also seemed to double as an announcement that he is returning regularly to TV. When he was leaving the ring, Kane came and they did their pose together.
Taker’s entrance live is different than on TV. I went in expecting some sort of… I don’t know… quasi-ecstatic experience where everyone is just kind of absorbed in the showmanship of the moment and the presence The Undertaker, but this was more of a combination of excitement and reverence. Maybe it was because a lot of us came specifically to see Taker, figuring it would be our last chance to see him live (rather than for something like a WrestleMania where he is just one component of the show), but Taker’s presence definitely brings a gravitas to things that bring them up to a different level.

We then got our post-show dark match, which was Orton, Harper, Wyatt, and AJ against Kane, Dean, & American Alpha (w/Ellsworth). I was glad that they did this because I was going to be quite disappointed if I didn’t get to see guys like AJ and Orton wrestle on top of not getting the chance to see Alexa Bliss! or Kane wrestle, but I did, in fact, get to see AJ, Orton, and Kane, wrestle, and even got to see a chokeslam! The match was pretty disappointing, only going ten minutes. The babyfaces won clean when Dean pinned AJ, which makes no sense to me because 1) he already has a title shot coming and 2) AJ is in the Survivor Series match, so why would you pin him when you could have pinned Harper? I figured that was the only reason Harper was even out here, or else you could have just done AJ, Bray, and Randy vs. AJ, Kane, and Ellsworth or something like that.

One other thing I need to note is that even without the announcers it was 100% clear when a match was going on through a commercial because for some reason they turned the TitanTron display of the match off, which definitely hurt the nearfalls that happened during that time. This could easily be avoided by just not turning off the TitanTron.

Anyway, I definitely had a lot of fun (well worth the two-hour drive through the hilly, confusing portions of Pennsylvania), and I would recommend that everyone go if they ever get the chance.

[NWK2000]

Here's a question for you BRM. Are you any more hype for Survivor Series than you were going into this show?

[Big Red Machine]

Here's a question for you BRM. Are you any more hype for Survivor Series than you were going into this show?

Nope. Because they're still aren't any consequences for anything. The closest we have is some vague promises that Stephanie and, for some wacky reason, The freakin' UNDERTAKER are going to be upset if their respective men's team loses (notice how no one has made any sort of similar statements to the women, tag teams, Kendrick, Kalisto, Miz, or Zayn?). In fact, I am less hyped now because Miz vs. Zayn will be an inferior match to Dolph vs. Zayn.
Am I excited for the concept of an Undertaker return? Of course! But that has nothing to do with anything he said about this stupid Survivor Series match.