BRM Reviews the 1/24/2017 Smackdown (very bad)

[Big Red Machine]

MIZ & MARYSE COMPLAIN TO BRYAN ABOUT THINGS- great.
Bryan is so likeable that I actually laughed at him laughing at his own joke. Miz is getting his rematch tonight. He wants it to be a No DQs match. Bryan not only says no, but explains why that would be a stupid idea. I like to think that is them taking a shot at Raw. Instead we’re getting a Lumberjack Match, which at least played into something Miz said during his complaining.

LUKE HARPER vs. RANDY ORTON- 6/10
Bray is watching from ringside in his rocking chair. Randy won clean. Bray attacked Harper after the match, because breaking Harper off from the Wyatt Family has totally proven to be a good idea in the past.

WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH RECAP VIDEO PACKAGE- I really didn’t like the added clanging sound effects for the cage.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS MICKIE JAMES- great segment.
What is it with everyone who turns heel all of a sudden talking slowly?
Mickie was awesome here. Basically, she is angry that everyone is pretending that the “Divas Revolution” performance center group are the first real female athletes in the WWE even though she was doing her thing a whole decade ago. This is a good idea, but there seems to be one flaw in it. Upon hearing this, I immediately asked “what makes Alexa Bliss! different from Charlotte/Becky/Sasha etc.?” And then Renee Young immediately asked the same question, because on Smackdown the writers respect the audience enough to think their ideas through fully.
The answer that Mickie gave was that Alexa was the only one of them who remembered all of her big wins and WrestleMania moments. While this might seem like a cop-out, I think it works well because it fits right in with the egotism that Mickie displayed throughout this segment.
Becky charged out and started laying it in on Mickie but Mickie led her into an ambush by Alexa and Becky got laid out with a roundhouse kick form Mickie and then Twisted Bliss from Alexa.

CARMELLA TAKES ELLSWORTH SHOPPING- Ellsworth came into the store wearing not just his t-shirt but his gear, too. Including kneepads. This gave me high hopes for this, but this was just the same unfunny joke over and over again. Then it actually delivered in the end.

ROYAL RUMBLE QUALIFYING BATTLE ROYALE: Viktor vs. Konnor vs. Rhyno vs. Heath Slater vs. Mojo Rawley vs. Tyler Breeze vs. Fandango vs… Curt Hawkins?- 0.75/10
There was a bit of a theme of tag partners accidentally eliminating each other, but it was pretty much impossible to care about a battle royale full of geeks for a spot in a match we all know they have no chance of winning.
Corbin was on commentary. JBL congratulates him on an “incredible year so far.” He’s 1-1.

DASHA INTERVIEWS NIKKI BELLA- this happened outside the arena, earlier today, and yet somehow Nattie just happened to be walking by. Nikki tried to throw a punch but Nattie ducked it and threw her into the side of a truck. Snore.

AJ STYLES & JOHN CENA SEGMENT- bad
AJ cuts a promo complaining about the fact that he is way I back of the Royal Rumble poster while Cena is featured right at the front next to Brock, Taker, and Goldberg. Heels need to do things like this more often.
AJ calls out Cena and Cena appears. AJ then shows footage of Cena on The Today Show where the hosts didn’t know AJ’s name and kept calling him “guy from Atlanta.” This was bad enough, but when one of the hosts asked Cena “do you have, like, a move you’re gonna use on the guy” I became livid. Surely WWE must realize that doing an appearance where the anchors are so completely ignorant of the product (i.e. unprofessional for not doing any research on their guest and he was appearing on their show to promote) that it buries the product as being both unimportant and uncool?
AJ cut a promo on Cena, then Cena responded, pretty much burying AJ. I thought that the segment didn’t work because Cena’s promo didn’t feel like a real response to AJ’s. It also felt like Cena wasn’t even defending the fact that he buried AJ. He acknowledged it and dind’t care. Him saying that AJ isn’t on his level also feels ridiculous when you consider that AJ has beaten him clean. They set up a situation here where, for AJ’s long-term good, he NEEDS to win clean at the PPV, but I’m getting the feeling that he won’t.

DOLPH ZIGGLER vs. KALISTO- squash.
If Dolph’s gimmick recently has been that he keeps losing, how did he get into the Royal Rumble?
Well… now he got to squash Kalisto. Is there any reason they couldn’t have just used a jobber here?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Dolph goes to get a chair but is distracted by JBL, then blindsided by Apollo Crews, who chases Dolph away. This was dull.

NAOMI vs. NATALYA- the match doesn’t happen because Nikki attacks Nattie backstage. I feel like I’ve seen this a trillion times with Nikki in the past few months.

NAOMI PROMO- she still wants a match, so she makes an open challenge, and out comes Alexa Bliss!... in order to insult Naomi. Naomi cuts a good promo on Alexa and says she wants a title shot but Alexa won’t give her one.

DASHA INTERVIEWS DEAN AMBROSE- this was mostly a waste of time. The only thing that justified it was Dean reminding us that he is in the Royal Rumble, too, and saying he would win that, too (which he did in a very natural way).

WATER WILL BE TREAD AT THE ROYAL RUMBLE- they’ve booked Alexa, Mickie, & Nattie vs. Naomi, Nikki, & Becky.

LUMBERJACK MATCH FOR THE WWE INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: Dean Ambrose(c) vs. The Miz (w/Maryse)- 3/10
What a f*cking mess.
JBL is right. The lumberjacks shouldn’t be attacking The Miz. That’s not their job. Their job is just to throw him back into the ring. And they SHOULD be throwing Ambrose back in, not protecting him so he can rest. And American Alpha and Kalisto looked like idiots, standing there protecting Dean from the lumberjacks on their sides but not stopping guys form the other sides from running past them and attacking Dean. Also, the referee should be calling for a DQ if he sees the wrestlers attacking the referees.
Also making this annoying was JBL’s rant at the end about how all of the lumberjacks were biased against Miz when this so clearly wasn’t true. I wish JBL would go away forever.

Yeah… this fell off of a cliff after the first third of the show, and it’s not like it was that good before that. This was the worst episode of Smackdown in quite a while. The only real complement I can give this show is that the things that were actually developments in the storylines- the Wyatts stuff and the Mickie James stuff- was decent.

[NWK2000]

Upon hearing this, I immediately asked “what makes Alexa Bliss! different from Charlotte/Becky/Sasha etc.?” And then Renee Young immediately asked the same question, because on Smackdown the writers respect the audience enough to think their ideas through fully.

Because Alexa Bliss, like Mickie James, is an amazing wrestler overshadowed by The Four Horsewomen in terms of this "Women's Revolution"?

[Big Red Machine]

Upon hearing this, I immediately asked “what makes Alexa Bliss! different from Charlotte/Becky/Sasha etc.?” And then Renee Young immediately asked the same question, because on Smackdown the writers respect the audience enough to think their ideas through fully.

Because Alexa Bliss, like Mickie James, is an amazing wrestler overshadowed by The Four Horsewomen in terms of this "Women's Revolution"?

But that doesn't answer Mickie's question from a kayfabe POV. From a kayfabe POV all of these women (even freakin' Carmella) are all just athletes now and part of the new age of women superstars/women's revolution/buzzword/catchphrase package.

Also, even I will admit that Alexa Bliss! is not on the Horsewomen's level in the ring. I think she is a lot better than she is given credit for and I think WWE is doing her a disservice by not giving her a submission finish because she seems to use a lot of arm-holds and she is also at her best when she is has her angry face or her sneering face on (she's a more old-school wrestler than the Horsewomen, and would benefit from a more old-school opponent like a Mickie James), but she is not at the same level as Sasha or Charlotte or Becky or Bayley or even Ember Moon.