BRM Reviews the 8/8/2017 Smackdown

Post Reply
User avatar
Big Red Machine
Posts: 27378
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

BRM Reviews the 8/8/2017 Smackdown

Post by Big Red Machine » Aug 9th, '17, 23:09

RECAP OF LAST NIGHT’S POST-SHOW ANGLE- good. The recap, I mean. Corbin attacking them only to get AAed through the announcers’ table by Cena will only be good if it leads to Corbin being even more crazed and violent this week and actually getting some heat, probably leading to a match with Cena at SummerSlam.

We’re in Toronto again. We went about a minute of live air before one of the announcers warned us that we were in “Bizarro World.”

OPENING SEGMENT- meh
Cena’s promo was extremely obnoxious. He came off like a total dick for pretending to be confused by the concept of losing cleanly. He did it to put over Nakamura and the respect they now have for each other, but it was a poor way to get there.
It did, however, prompt the first- and perhaps only- “JINDER!” chant in WWE history. Look: I know you guys are proud of your country and all, but have some f*cking limits, please. You’ve got Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Chris Jericho, and Nattie Neidhart to be proud of (and also you have Tye Dillinger, but I don’t see why anyone would be proud of having him from their country), and that’s just active wrestlers on WWE’s main roster. In NXT you guys have Bobby Roode, Eric Young, and Kyle O’Reilly, and elsewhere in the world you’ve got Michael Elgin, Kenny Omega, Candice LeRae, LuFisto, and Gail Kim. You’ve got a rich and wonderful history that includes names like Edge, Christian, Bad New Brown, Trish Stratus, Lance Storm, Steve Corino, and the entire Hart and Vachon families. There is absolutely no excuse for you to be chanting for Jinder f*cking Mahal at this point. If you want to chant for some ethnic Indians, you can chant for the Singh Brothers. Unlike Jinder, they actually have talent. Jinder was given one of the highest prizes in the entire wrestling industry simply by the accident of his birth. If he lives the same exact life but his name is Frank Smith or Tyrone Jackson or David Goldstein or Mohamed Sayif or Jose Guerrero or Tomohiro Nakagawa, he’s nothing but a jobber. But because his family happens to be from a place where WWE wants to expand, he went from the jobbiest of jobbers to the top heel in the company in about a week, and was the WWE World Heavyweight Champion a month later.
And while we’re on the subject of the Canadian crowd. GET OVER THE F*CKING SCREWJOB ALREADY! IT’S BEEN ALMOST TWENTY YEARS NOW!

Anyway, Cena was interrupted by Baron Corbin’s new music. Surprisingly, Corbin wasn’t embarrassingly bad on the mic. Cena also got much better once he had Corbin to play off of. I hope that “DUMPSTER FIRE!” becomes the official anti-Corbin chant from now on.
The short story here was that Cena said he wanted to fight Corbin. Corbin teased accepting but then said he had nothing to gain from fighting Cena because he has the MITB contract. Daniel Bryan came out and booked Cena vs. Corbin for SummerSlam.

We’re getting Orton vs. Jinder tonight and we were told that the Singh Brothers weren’t here tonight, which should tell you that the finish of this match will be a Rusev run-in.

THE USOS vs. SAMI ZAYN & TYE DILLINGER- 6/10
Good match. This is WWE, so of course the babyfaces lost in their home market.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh.
The Usos begin to cut a promo bragging about having taken New Day out when Big E. comes out on the ramp to distract The Usos so that Xavier and Kofi can attack them from behind. I realize that this is payback for The Usos jumping New Day from behind, but this was clearly premeditated and thus came off very heelish to me. They were about to destroy Jimmy Uso with a chair but Jey pulled him to safety and The Usos bailed.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS RANDY ORTON- based on the way Renee is dressed, it appears that we’re going to have a match with a Special Guest Referee later tonight. Randy’s promo was dull.

FASHION POLICE BULLSH*T- skipped.

TAMINA & LANA FROM WWE.COM LAST WEEK- bad.
Lana gave Tamina a backhanded compliment. Tamina was insulted at having been called ugly, even though Lana complimented her in-ring prowess.

CHARLOTTE FLAIR vs. LANA- squash
After a struggle over a sunset flip where Lana was on her feet and bridging, hanging on to Charlotte’s waist, the crowd broke out into a loud “THANK YOU, LANA!” chant, so I’m guessing either something slipped out of Lana’s top or Lana accidentally pulled Charlotte’s trunks too hard (it was facing away from the hard-cam). A quick search of the internet reveals that it was the latter, and Charlotte seems to be in good spirits about it, as she and Becky made some sort of video joking about it, with Charlotte saying “I just wanted to give Toronto a good show.” Better than that was a comment on reddit pointing out that this sort of thing does happen to Flairs with some regularity.
Aside from that unplanned incident, the whole match was Charlotte making Lana look like a complete and total fool and easily dispatching after toying around with her for a bit. This a complete and total burial.

SHANE, OWENS, & AJ SEGMENT- GREAT segment.
Owens was an awesome heel here. He started off by trying to get on Shane’s good side by apologizing for his behavior last week. Then Owens said he isn’t afraid of Shane screwing him out of the title because WWE has “already screwed one legendary Canadian out of a title.” This prompted the predictable “YOU SCREWED BRET!” chants (at SHANE, who had nothing to do with it)… and then Owens just turns it right back on the crowd, saying “of course he deserved it.” I don’t, but you guys don’t want to put up with the bad PR. Owens brought up AJ’s feud with Shane and said that he didn’t think having Shane as the referee was fair to AJ, and thus Shane shouldn’t be the referee. Excellent! And then AJ called him out on it. Even better!
Then AJ threatened to beat the crap out of Shane if Shane screwed him, and that would be totally justified. Shane got all defensive because he’s not Vince and that’s fair. Shane’s assertion that he doesn’t screw people, however, is BS, as anyone who remembers his time as part of The Corporation well knows… and it turns out that one of those people is Kevin Owens, who has already gotten the clip all queued up and given it to the production crew. Excellent!
AJ admits that last week’s finish was a bad call and suggest they have the match right now… but Owens says “I’d rather win the United States Title in the United States, in a city that actually matters,” which got some great cheap heat. AJ said some antagonistic things and a shoving match started, with Shane quickly stepping between them, and Owens then using the opportunity to nail AJ with a cheap shot. AJ tried to retaliate with a Pele Kick, but accidentally hit Shane, and Owens walked off, smirking. Then, in the only bad part of this, the crowd chanted “YOU SCREWED SHANE!” So they’re not really still angry about the Screwjob anymore (which is good) but they just chant “YOU SCREWED BRET!” because they want to have something to chant (which is bad). AJ then walked off without helping Shane up.
All of that being said I would have been a lot happier if there was an actual premise for these events to occur (like a contract signing or something). In kayfabe, what was supposed to happen in this segment, if everything had gone smoothly?

LANA & TAMINA IN THE LOCKER ROOM- odd
Lana is still in her gear, like twenty minutes after the match? Really? Doesn’t she shower?
They argued a bit, but rather than breaking up, Tamina now wants Lana to user her “ambition,” which Lana claims is responsible for her getting three title shots in a row, to help Tamina get a title shot. So I guess Lana is going to manage Tamina now? This segment would have been much better with better with more fleshed out dialogue.

Carmella vs. Naomi is up next. By my calculations, Ellsworth’s suspension should be up, so if I had to guess, we’re going to get some sort of Ellsworth distraction allowing Carmella to assault Naomi and incapacitate her, then we’ll get an MITB cash-in and either a new champion or Nattie running in to ruin it. It was Carmella who challenged Naomi to this match, so this would all make perfect sense. Otherwise Carmella is just challenging Naomi to a match for no reason (which I’d normally be fine with, but, it feels kind of out of character for Carmella).

CARMELLA vs. NAOMI- 5/10
Or Ellsworth could just return in a spot that doesn’t mean as much. If you’re going to go through the trouble of making this plan, why not use it to win the title rather than just win a random match?

CARMELLA, ELLSWORTH, & NATTIE BACKSTAGE- Nattie warns them not to stick their noses in her match at SummerSlam, or else. Nattie came off like a total babyface here, and they heavily teased a cash-in at SummerSlam… which, because this is WWE, means that it’s probably not going to happen. If it does, though- or even if it doesn’t and they just turn Nattie babyface, that means that the only three female heels on Smackdown will be Carmella, Tamina, and Lana. Yikes.

RENEE YOUNG’S SIT-DOWN INTERVIEW WITH SHINSUKE NAKAMURA- good
Their video package said that Nakamura’s debut was “last April.” It was actually this April. As in barely even four months ago. And they still got the timing wrong. Other than that, this was good.

RANDY ORTON vs. JINDER MAHAL- 7.5/10
Jinder got by far his best response from the crowd in his native Canada, but when you’re a Canadian and you’ve only got what seems like about 50-55% of Canadians supporting you, that’s not a good sign. Support for Jinder did seem to grow throughout the match, but I attribute that to people who started to cheer for Jinder and boo Randy because they saw others doing it and decided it would be fun to “play along.”
This was the best match these two have had together so far, and the hot crowd definitely helped it along. The logical finish here was Rusev costing Randy the match to building up to SummerSlam, (though you could also make a case for Jinder winning cleanly and Rusev attacking Randy after the match). Instead they had Jinder lose completely cleanly. If Randy Orton isn’t going to be the #1 contender after SummerSlam, then this served no purpose, and even if Randy is going to be the #1 contender after SummerSlam, this just reinforces the idea that Jinder can’t win without copious interference on his behalf. Because that will definitely make the Indian people start to see him as a national hero.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Rusev superkicked Randy as Randy was about to walk through the curtain. This would have been good if the show had not faded to black literally five seconds after this happened.

A MUCH better episode of Smackdown than usual. Thank G-d for small victories.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Byron Saxton- “The Usos are set to go one-on-one with Sami Zayn & Tye Dillinger
Dumbf*ck.

2. JBL thinks that the tournament to crown the inaugural WWE Smakdown Tag Team Champions happened “several years ago.”
It hasn’t even been one year.

3. JBL- “You’re like Gilligan: all alone on an island.”
Apparently JBL has never actually seen Gilligan’s Island. Or even heard the theme song.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

User avatar
KILLdozer
Posts: 5930
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 22:54

Re: BRM Reviews the 8/8/2017 Smackdown

Post by KILLdozer » Aug 9th, '17, 23:37

Yeah, those IDIOT announcers! Wtf lol

Saxton is just way too much of a cornball and I still want to know why he's on commentary at all still , and Who's really reenforcing it. Is like having an affair with Stephanie or something? Lol. He said "Randy Orton is buying a ticket to go to "that other place"... maaaaaaaaannnnn. Or something like that. The first part may be off bit that's about exactly what he said.

Yeah, no one was alone on Gilligan's island. I also caught the crap about "Oh Yeah man they used that kick in the back of the leg on American Alpha a couple of years ago."

A couple of months ago. Are these fools , "Smokin and drankin, drankin and smokin" , out there or what?

Yeah, Lana will now be managing Tamina it seems. Makes a lot of sense, in and out of Kayfabe. I guess I see now what they've been trying to tell.

I figured you'd be outraged about defeating the Champion, having the chance to do extra damage, and then cash in and become Champion... but again, not doing so. I couldn't believe the ridiculousness of it. Why wouldn't you just take that shit immediately right then and there?

At least Corbin is finally starting to talk about it.
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

User avatar
Big Red Machine
Posts: 27378
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

Re: BRM Reviews the 8/8/2017 Smackdown

Post by Big Red Machine » Aug 10th, '17, 02:33

I hadn't even considered Corbin cashing in on Jinder. That unanswered question is yet another reason why Jinder losing here was a bad idea. That would have trolled the crowd something good, though.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

User avatar
KILLdozer
Posts: 5930
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 22:54

Re: BRM Reviews the 8/8/2017 Smackdown

Post by KILLdozer » Aug 10th, '17, 08:04

Big Red Machine wrote: Aug 10th, '17, 02:33 I hadn't even considered Corbin cashing in on Jinder. That unanswered question is yet another reason why Jinder losing here was a bad idea. That would have trolled the crowd something good, though.
Yeah I didn't either though really. That's another one lol. Why wouldn't he just say that's it, I'm becoming Champion, ?
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

User avatar
KILLdozer
Posts: 5930
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 22:54

Re: BRM Reviews the 8/8/2017 Smackdown

Post by KILLdozer » Aug 10th, '17, 08:05

What about all those "greats", on the show? Lol
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 21 guests