Anyway, Jinder just hands the belt back to Shane… and I actually liked that. Jinder’s not a stupid guy. He’s made his point and he knows that there is no possible benefit for him to pissing off the guy in charge. It also avoids having to do a physical confrontation between Jinder and Randy in which Randy gets the belt back- and thus, by necessity, gets the best of Jinder before their big PPV match.
Also, Shane has booked Jinder to face Sami Zayn tonight.
OPENING SEGMENT- Very good segment.
Shane comes out, then brings out Jericho to tell him that Owens is getting his rematch tonight. AJ comes out and AJ thankfully remembers that he doesn’t like Jericho because Jericho turned on him. AJ builds up the possibility of them facing off for the title at Backlash. Then Owens comes out and cuts a promo vowing to do terrible things to Jericho tonight and telling AJ to get the hell out of his ring. So AJ does... and makes a bee-line right up the ramp for Kevin Owens. They brawl but are quickly pulled apart.
JINDER MAHAL WALKS AROUND BACKSTAGE WITH THE BOLLYWOOD BOYZ BEHIND HIM- Jinder makes those two look so short that I did a double take because I thought the one on Jinder’s right was Jamie Noble.
RECAP OF A ZAYN/CORBIN ANGLE ON TALKING SMACK- Baron didn’t like what Sami was saying so he jumped him from behind and beat him up. To no one’s surprise, JBL did nothing to help the smaller man being attacked by a larger man. Referees eventually showed up to break it up and Baron shoved one of them, so he has been fined and suspended for tonight’s show. This is the sort of creative thinking that has been missing from WWE Creative for a very long time now. We want to build up Zayn vs. Corbin for Backlash (I assume) so how do we do it without having them interact on TV this week? We do an angle where Corbin attacks Zayn and gets suspended for this week, and we still get him on TV by showing the angle. Meanwhile, this frees Sami up to put Jinder over without everyone wondering when Corbin is going to come out and attack Sami or without having to put Corbin on commentary or anything else from WWE’s usual bag of tricks.
SAMI ZAYN vs. JINDER MAHAL (w/the Singh brothers)- 5.5/10
There was absolutely no reason why Jinder did not win this match cleanly.
BECKY RUNS INTO THE LEAGUE OF PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE CHARLOTTE-
FACT: Nattie has her hair tied up to look like cat ears.
They try to recruit Becky, and she is apparently seriously considering joining them in being mean to Charlotte for no real reason. Some babyface that Becky is.
ZIGGLER TALK TO SOME PEOPLE BACKSTAGE- I feel like I should recognize some of them but I don’t. Apparently Nakamura isn’t here tonight for no explained reason. He buries Shane while Shane is standing behind him. I got major self-important Stephanie vibes from Shane at the beginning of this, but they thankfully didn’t go in that direction.
AIDEN ENGLISH SINGS HIMSELF SOME GOOFY NICKNAMES- I’ve to agree with JBL here. I was quite enjoying Aiden’s singing and was disappointed when he was interrupted.
TYE DILLINGER vs. AIDEN ENGLISH- 0.25/10
I assume English is the babyface here, as he is the one beating up Tye Dillinger. Then Tye made a comeback and won. I’m not sure this even got a minute. English sold his frustration at the loss very well.
IT IS ANNOUNCED THAT AJ STYLES IS BARRED FROM RINGSIDE IN TONIGHT’S US TITLE MATCH- good.
A CRYING AIDEN ENGLISH WALKS THROUGH A CHRIS JERICHO INTERVIEW- Jericho was a jerk and put him on the list. More importantly, I think someone was playing around with a time machine and somehow the end result of their meddling was that Lilian Garcia is now Renee Young’s mother.
JBL said he wanted Jericho to put Byron on the list because he wants to see Byron cry. It begins again.
DASHA INTERVIEWS CHARLOTTE FLAIR- an excellent promo by Charlotte, making sure to retain her heelish arrogance.
THE LEAGUE OF PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE CHARLOTTE (I refuse to call them “the Welcoming Committee”) SHOW UP AND ATTACK- Charlotte made a good fight of it but got beaten up in what was a pretty crappy-looking beat-down.
CHARLOTTE FLAIR & NAOMI vs. NATALYA & CARMELLA (w/James Ellsworth & Tamina)- 6.5/10 (but as a segment, perfect)
I’m going to be nice and presume that Naomi doesn’t know about the attack on Charlotte rather than assume that she is coming out here and doing her usual dancing entrance even though she knows that her partner just got jumped and she might be walking into a two-on-one situation.
We have it confirmed that it is indeed the former when we return from commercial and Naomi looks and concerned and- this part here is key- Tom Phillips tells us that, during the break, Charlotte’s music played but she didn’t come out.
The opening bit with Naomi making Carmella look like a complete and total chump was utterly hilarious. Naomi did her best against two opponents but got overwhelmed. Charlotte did come out and the big moment and got the hot tag and ran wild on the heels. The crowd went nuts for this. Eventually Carmella pinned Naomi off of a bunch of distractions which throws a third woman into the title picture mix, but I kind of like it because the idea that Carmella eats the pin in the title match should help to build to an even more heated rematch between Charlotte and Naomi based around the story of “you might have won the triple threat match, but you never beat me.” There was a post-match heel beat-down of Naomi and Charlotte which ended when Becky Lynch came out to tease turning a bunch of time before revealing that she is has been a babyface all along. She, too, got overwhelmed by the heels, however. Hopefully we get a nice, long six-woman tag next week. This was so well done that I wouldn’t even object to it being the main event.
DOLPH ZIGGLER vs. WHAT THE F*CK IS SIN CARA WEARING!?- 4.25/10
LANA IS COMING SOON- and dancing. That Rusev is a very lucky man. And speaking of Rusev, shouldn’t we get some sort of response from Shane to Rusev’s ultimatum from last week?
THE FASHION FILES- HILARIOUS!
I assume that’s The Shining Stars who are wanted for Real Estate Fraud in the background there. Hulk Hogan is a “fashion victim” while Cena is listed as “whereabouts unknown.” The best part of this was Nakamura’s picture under which was written “
WWE UNITED STATES TITLE MATCH WITH AJ STYLES BARRED FROM RINGSIDE: Chris Jericho(c) vs. Kevin Owens- 7.5/10
Owens’ hand is all taped up after Jericho savaged it two days ago. Hooray for things having consequences! Owens won the belt back. If Jericho is coming back relatively soon then I will say this was a decently clever way to get him on Smackdown while also delivering a surprising PPV result, but if not then I don’t understand why they did the title change and change back.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- medical people attend to Jericho but Owens comes over and attacks him some more. Then he comes back and beats him up some more (but, sadly, he didn’t flip an ambulance over). By the end of this I was quite surprised that AJ Styles didn’t come out to make the save.
A very good episode of Smackdown, but I have to ask: where was WWE World Heavyweight Champion Randy Orton?
