BRM Reviews the 12/27/2016 Smackdown (awesome!)

[Big Red Machine]

JOHN CENA PROMO- OMFG GET TO THE POINT ALREADY!
This was just annoying. We don’t need John Cena coming out and talking about baseball, or even the other title matches, and we certainly don’t need him reminding us that just because we don’t like Baron Corbin doesn’t mean that he can’t win the title. They could have saved a good ten minutes by not having Cena show up until after the main event and just challenging the winner to a title shot at the Rumble to give the show a hot ending (and we all know it’s going to end with a stare-down between Cena and the winner anyway, so why not kill two birds with one stone.

FOUR WAY ELIMINATION MATCH FOR THE WWE SMACKDOWN TAG TEAM TITLES: The Wyatt Family(c) (w/Bray Wyatt) vs. American Alpha vs. Heath Slater & Rhyno vs. The Usos- 7.5/10
This would have been a lot better if it had just been American Alpha vs. the Wyatts. The other two teams didn’t do much, and American Alpha matches always work best with a long heat segment babyface in peril type of situation. The story that they had here was that the Wyatts didn’t tag in until the other two teams were eliminated, so we essentially got a shorter version of the same story.
But the real news here is that AMERICAN ALPHA WON THE BELTS (after only a minor screw-up between Randy and Harper)! And Gable got the pin on RANDY ORTON! Hopefully this bodes well for other BRM-favorites in their title matches.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS DOLPH ZIGGLER- Dolph was better than usual.

DASHA INTERVIEWS JAMES ELLSWORTH- It’s no secret that Dasha has improved drastically as an interviewer in the past few weeks, but I finally figured out what her secret is: she is patterning herself after Charly Caruso to the point that she is even dressing like her. I’m sure this won’t bother me as much once I internalize that Charly is on Raw and Dasha is on SD, but for now it always throws me off.
She asks Ellsworth what amounts to “does it bother you when people make fun of you?” Hey! Wasn’t Dasha the asshole who was making fun of Ellsworth last week while he was on his way to the hospital?
Carmella shows up to interrupt the interview and point this out, as well as point out that everyone else is making fun of him, too. Yes, now CARMELLA is acting like a babyface, and the writers don’t even realize it.

WWE SMACKDOWN WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Alexa Bliss!(c) vs. Becky Lynch- 5.75/10
Holy sh*t Alexa’s arm looks sickeningly dislocated. I hope she’s okay. The match… didn’t quite click as well as one would have hoped. The story was kind of all over the place, and there really wasn’t much of a heat segment.
Alexa won with some help from La Luchadora, so it’s 2-for-2 tonight. Dasha came out to ask Alexa who it was. Alexa feigned not to know and was then comically dismissive. I’m not sure who it was myself. The internet seems to think it’s either Mickie James or Tamina, but I’m pretty sure it isn't either of them.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS THE MIZ- Oh come on. It would have made so much more sense to send Dasha to do this interview and Renee to do Alexa’s.
Maryse comes out of the dressing room to threaten Renee but Miz tells her to back down. Renee has security with her… but they just leave when Miz tells them to. WTF?
Renee is professional… and, shockingly, so was Miz. Ambrose showed up to take Miz out. Miz calling for security (who he had just sent away) was funny.

DASHA INTERVIEWS NIKKI BELLA ABOUT BEING BETRAYED BY NATTIE- Nikki’s promo was good.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS BARON CORBIN- very good promo by Corbin.

WWE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: AJ Styles(c) vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. Baron Corbin- 8.5/10
Awesome match! This was really exciting and told a fantastic story of Corbin being so big and strong and scary that AJ and Dolph usually needed to work together to catch him by surprise in order to take him out. That spot where Dolph hit Corbin with the Zig-Zag as Corbin was hitting AJ with End of Days was fantastic! AJ retained clean, hitting Corbin with the Phenomenal Forearm and then pinning Ziggler, who had just eaten the End of Days. Cena came out for the predictable stare-down at the end. He wanted a handshake from AJ and, shockingly, he got it.

NEVILLE PROMO- good hype. I might actually decide to watch 205 Live this week.

This was an AWESOME show from Smackdown. It was tightly focused and good use of their time to make the matches they had hyped up all feel important, while getting their other angles (Miz vs. Dean, Nikki vs. Nattie) over by using short, effective segments. I LOVED IT! This is what both Raw and SD need to be more often. Everything should feel like it is building to something.

[NWK2000]

WWE SMACKDOWN WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Alexa Bliss!(c) vs. Becky Lynch- 5.75/10
Holy sh*t Alexa’s arm looks sickeningly dislocated. I hope she’s okay.

Alexa is double jointed. This was a work

[Big Red Machine]

WWE SMACKDOWN WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Alexa Bliss!(c) vs. Becky Lynch- 5.75/10
Holy sh*t Alexa’s arm looks sickeningly dislocated. I hope she’s okay.

Alexa is double jointed. This was a work

Well... it worked then. Good for them for coming up with it.

[Serujuunin]

WWE SMACKDOWN WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Alexa Bliss!(c) vs. Becky Lynch- 5.75/10
Holy sh*t Alexa’s arm looks sickeningly dislocated. I hope she’s okay.

Alexa is double jointed. This was a work

Is she for real? Because I was seriously worried for her when I saw that arm, and then she was just fine.

And I agree, this Smackdown was amazing, and I really wish that RAW would learn from it!

[Big Red Machine]

WWE SMACKDOWN WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Alexa Bliss!(c) vs. Becky Lynch- 5.75/10
Holy sh*t Alexa’s arm looks sickeningly dislocated. I hope she’s okay.

Alexa is double jointed. This was a work

Is she for real? Because I was seriously worried for her when I saw that arm, and then she was just fine.

And I agree, this Smackdown was amazing, and I really wish that RAW would learn from it!

Does anyone know if there are different writing teams for each? I think we all assume it, but I don't know if I've ever heard anyone say it.

[cero2k]

Does anyone know if there are different writing teams for each? I think we all assume it, but I don't know if I've ever heard anyone say it.

teams are technically the same, but the leads are different, Ryan Ward (who was doing NXT the last two years) and Steven Guerrieri are in change of Smackdown while Edward Koskey and Robert Evans (former Archibald Peck) are leading RAW. I think Kapoor is doing editing for both show, that and obviously Vince/Hunter/Steph/Hayes et al have their input

[Big Red Machine]

Does anyone know if there are different writing teams for each? I think we all assume it, but I don't know if I've ever heard anyone say it.

teams are technically the same, but the leads are different, Ryan Ward (who was doing NXT the last two years) and Steven Guerrieri are in change of Smackdown while Edward Koskey and Robert Evans (former Archibald Peck) are leading RAW. I think Kapoor is doing editing for both show, that and obviously Vince/Hunter/Steph/Hayes et al have their input

That seems like a large complicated mess. Why not just split the team into two?

[cero2k]

Does anyone know if there are different writing teams for each? I think we all assume it, but I don't know if I've ever heard anyone say it.

teams are technically the same, but the leads are different, Ryan Ward (who was doing NXT the last two years) and Steven Guerrieri are in change of Smackdown while Edward Koskey and Robert Evans (former Archibald Peck) are leading RAW. I think Kapoor is doing editing for both show, that and obviously Vince/Hunter/Steph/Hayes et al have their input

That seems like a large complicated mess. Why not just split the team into two?

Likely because Vince/Hunter/Steph don't want to go to two separate meetings