BRM Reviews the 9/18/2018 Smackdown (WATCH THIS MAIN EVENT SEGMENT NOW!)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 9/18/2018 Smackdown (WATCH THIS MAIN EVENT SEGMENT NOW!)

Post by Big Red Machine » Sep 19th, '18, 23:24

MIZ TV WITH SPECIAL GUEST MARYSE- no rating, bad segment
Miz tells us all that he and Bryan have been booked in a #1 contendeship match at Super Show-Down, basically invalidating the finish of every match in this feud. They say terrible things like claiming that the Bryans don’t really love each other (which they’ve said before, so it makes it feel like this feud isn’t actually moving forward). Maryse announces that she is leaving Smackdown now, as a transparent attempt to prevent Brie from getting revenge on her.
Miz calls Bryan out for a fight so Bryan comes out and fights with Miz. Bryan gets the upper hand relatively easily but then dropkicks Miz, and Miz bumps into Maryse in the corner… and Daniel Bryan is horrified to see that him accidentally dropkicking Miz into Maryse has injured her. The problem with this is that a mere two nights ago- in the very match Miz and Maryse were just bragging about winning- I saw Bryan stand there and cheer while his wife tried to beat the sh*t out of Maryse.
They’re getting a backboard and EMTs, now, as this one bump has apparently caused some problem with Maryse’s womb (they kept mentioning that she “just had a baby) or stomach or something, but if this was some major risk then why did the company allow her to wrestle a mere two nights ago. As you’ve probably guessed but now, it turns out it was a trap… but Bryan fought Miz off anyway, so where’s the heat?

New Day were shown acting very strangely backstage, to the utter bewilderment of everyone they came across and attempted to interact with.

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS DANIEL BRYAN- meh
Bryan explains that he saw a trap coming. Oh well. I guess that explains things away, then. Good job, Creative. That being said, it still doesn’t the previous segment good because that segment wasn’t actually productive. Bryan then cut a decent promo to build up his #1 contendership match against Miz at Super Show-Down.

CESARO (w/Sheamus) vs. KOFI KINGSTON (w/The New Day)- 6.75/10
The last two times Smackdown has needed contenders for their tag team titles, they held a tournament with the potential challengers to see who among them were the most worthy to challenge for the most prestigious prize their division has to offer. For Super Show-Down, a champion will be determined by… just giving the title shot to Sheamus & Cesaro because “we’ve seen a number of times that The Bar has been knocking on the door of the tag team title picture.” In other words, they’re getting a title shot because they weren’t good enough the past few times and we feel bad for them.
There was a pre-match segment where New Day were being goofy and obnoxious, so Cesaro pointed out exactly that. I’m failing to see why New Day are the babyfaces and Sheamus & Cesaro are supposed to be the heels.
The match itself was great for the time it got (less than nine minutes). They did an excellent job telling the story of Cesaro working over Kofi’s leg. The commentators, on the other hand (as you would unfortunately expect) did not do a good job of telling this story. I don’t know what this particular thing jumped out at me so much as opposed to all of the other similar things that no doubt happen every single show, but when Kofi did a dive by pulling himself up to he was hovering over the top rope and then pressing the weight of his arms and chest down onto the rope a few times to get it to shake to give him more spring has he then flipped over the rope and came down onto Cesaro, not a single one of the announcers seemed to realize that the reason for this “innovation” of Kofi’s that they were so quick to praise was innovation by necessity; it was Kofi finding a way to do a dive (or, if you’d prefer, to keep up the pressure on Cesaro, who had rolled to the outside after Kofi hit him with a Tornado DDT, instead of giving Cesaro time to recover) without the use of his injured leg.

AIDEN ENGLISH, LANA, & RUSEV BACKSTAGE- Excellent!
Rusev rightfully blames Aiden for their loss at Hell in a Cell and tells him that he wants him to stay in the back tonight. English complains that “I was doing my best,” which Rusev rightfully responds to by basically saying that it doesn’t matter if you are doing your best if your best isn’t good enough.
Rusev and Lana walked off, at which point Aiden fumed for a few moments before beginning to rant to a nearby Valued Backstage Crewmember™, blaming everything on Lana and taking all of the credit for the success of Rusev Day. Just as I was thinking “thankfully they’re not trying to make Rusev the heel here, but they really shouldn’t have had Aiden wait until Lana and Rusev were believably out of earshot before he started ranting or else it’d be silly that they don’t come back and confront him,” Lana came back and confronted him. Unfortunately, her line made it seem like Rusev actually was out of earshot, but other than that, this was great. It just shouldn’t have taken them this long to pull the trigger on it.

RANDY ORTON & TORMENTS A VIDEO TECH- Randy tortures both us and this Valued Backstage Crewmember™ by forcing him to look at pictures of Randy’s screwdriver/earhole nastiness.

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS AJ STYLES- He dealt with the Joe situation relatively well, but I definitely agree with the people who say that the proper thing for a white meat babyface to do in this situation would be to vacate the title and have the match at Super Show-Down be for the vacant title. If they wanted to do this finish and have AJ keep the title then the right way to do it would be to have AJ tap out at the same time the ref’s hand hits for the three (like they did in the Taker vs. Angle match that turned the already-scheduled Rock vs. Taker match for the WWE Undisputed Championship at Vengeance 2002 into a three-way).

RUSEV, LANA, & ENGLISH BACKSTAGE- and now I hate this again.
English and Lana have both finally found Rusev… at the exact same time... and coming from the same direction, like they were looking for him together. Also, could we maybe have filmed this in a different backstage location than the one the first segment was filmed at, so it really feels like they went looking for him? And, because I’m me…
What they should have done is had Kayla be interviewing Rusev about his title match tonight. This would not only explain how they both found him at the same time as well as give us a more sensible reason for them both to have found him rather than random chance backstage, but it would also create a plausible reason for why we’re even seeing this in the first place.
Anyway, they both try to talk to him but Rusev tells them not now because he needs to be totally focused on his title match. He then tells Aiden that he wants him to do his ring intro, so even after Aiden’s screw-up at Hell in a Cell and all of his other past screw-ups, Rusev has now again changed his mind. Aiden is happy so he heads off. Lana then tries to tell Rusev about Aiden but Rusev says that her important news must wait. So we are ONCE AGAIN back to square one. This has to be the fourth time in as many months.
Also, Lana’s accent is back.

WWE UNITED STATES TITLE MATCH: Shinsuke Nakamura(c) vs. Rusev (w/Aiden English & Lana)- 5/10
For those of you wondering what Rusev did to earn this title shot, the answer is “Paige wanted there to be a US Title match tonight because there wasn’t one at Hell in a Cell.”
If there is anyone who was wondering what the entirety of Rusev’s ass-crack looks like, Nakamura made sure you got look. I don’t even know why he would have otherwise been pulling Rusev’s tights down like that other than to rib him by making him moon the hard-cam.
They did their stuff. It was okay. Rusev seemed like he was going to win but Aiden jumped up on the apron with a microphone to shout “RUSEV, CRUSH!” which distracted Rusev, allowing Nakamura to roll him up for the win. Aiden looked very sad about this, but then I guess he decided that Rusev was going to be super-pissed at him and break up with him no matter what so he might was well just attack him and turn it into a feud to ensure that he at least gets some sort of TV time.

WWE 2K19 COMMERCIAL- Hey, look! Actual game-play! Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but it seems to me that this a MUCH better way to convince me to buy a video game than showing me a live-action Seth Rollins vandalizing a warehouse full of WWE memorabilia.

The finals of Mixed Match Challenge Season 2 are going to take place at TLC. I’m not happy about this because this is just another thing that will take up PPV time and it won’t wind up meaning sh*t in the long or even medium run… but I can’t fault them for doing it because it is the most logical way to lure whatever fans they are making off of Facebook Live who (somehow) only watch that show to sign up for the WWE Network.

AJ STYLES vs. ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS (W/Zelina Vega)- 7/10
Almas jumped AJ before the match. They had a great match, which AJ won clean. AJ winning cleanly is good because he’s the champion, but having the person AJ beat be Almas really feels like it is cementing Almas a mid-carder rather than someone who is “on the rise” but being slow-rolled a little. Is there any reason we couldn’t have used Shelton Benjamin or someone like that in this spot?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Joe attacked AJ from behind, but AJ was mostly able to fight him off. That this point this is just repetitive and pointless. They should do something that actually plays off of the PPV finish, like having Joe choke AJ out here and then steal the belt.

They announced that the stipulations for AJ and Joe’s WWE World Heavyweight Title match at Super Show-Down are that there are no count-outs, no DQs, and “there must be a winner.” But we HAD a winner at Hell in a Cell. It was AJ Styles. You can say that Samoa Joe should have won, and I’d tell you that you’re not wrong, but that if we look at that match through the lens of what should have happened if the refereeing was perfect then we still had a “true” winner: Samoa Joe. The stipulation for AJ and Joe’s next match shouldn’t be a “there must be a winner!” stipulation. The logical follow-up to the finish from Hell in a Cell is a match with two referees (i.e. the thing would have yielded a right call at Hell in a Cell).

IICONICS PROMO- Not very good, but at least it didn’t make me want to change the channel, which is better than we usually get from these two. I’m sure Billie & Peyton’s crotch thrusting disguised as amusingly bad dancing will become a gif on the internet (and speaking of such things, I am still waiting for my gif of Alexa mocking Ronda’s angry face. Come on, wrestling giffers! Come through for me!).

ASUKA (w/Naomi) vs. BILLIE KAY (w/Peyton Royce)- 0.5/10
Asuka choked Billie Kay out. The match didn’t even make it three-and-a-half minutes.

BECKY LYNCH’S CHAMPIONSHIP CORONATION- F*CKING AMAZING!
Why is it that they only seem to do these “championship presentation” type segments in the women’s division?
Anyway, Becky called Charlotte out so she could be a jerk to her. If Becky thinks that Charlotte offering her a handshake was an attempt to “steal [her] spotlight,” then Becky is a hypocrite because I have vivid memories of Becky giving Charlotte two big hugs after Charlotte won the title at SummerSlam. You can all not like the fact that they put the belt on Charlotte instead of Becky at SummerSlam, but the idea that Becky has acted like a babyface and Charlotte like a heel is completely ludicrous.
Charlotte comes out and says that all she tried to do at Hell in a Cell is look Becky in the eyes and tell her that she was the better woman that night. And I completely believe her. Why? Because at no point after being bested completely cleanly did Charlotte assault Becky, which is a sharp contrast to the behavior of the other woman in this segment. Charlotte is getting her rematch at Super Show-Down and cut a great promo building up to that match. Becky proceeded to cut a heel promo and be a general asshole.
Charlotte was awesome in her role as not only the babyface former champion but also the friend doing everything she can to maintain some semblance of peace between her and Becky in the hopes that their friendship would, somehow, be able to be repaired with time, and Becky was a f*cking FANTASTIC heel. Every time she opened her mouth she said nothing but things that increased my desire to see Charlotte shut it with her boot, and when Charlotte finally did snap, Becky managed to win the brawl and humiliate Charlotte in the middle of the ring. This was easily one of the best segments of the entire year in WWE (and a lot of other places, too).


Overall this was a pretty good episodes of Smackdown, although I will admit that for most of it I actually felt it was going to be pretty bad, with the “YOU MUST GO SEE THIS RIGHT NOW!”-level main event segment and a look back over the overall whole of the show rather than individual segments or strings thereof made me reevaluate. At this point, October 6th cannot come quick enough for me, because I cannot wait to see AJ and Joe have a real finish and I cannot wait to see Charlotte give Becky the ass-kicking she so richly deserves.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Corey Graves- “In the United States of Naka-merica, Rusev Day could be abolished if Rusev loses tonight.”
The fact that this company thinks it is GOOD for announcers to say things like this will never cease to amaze me.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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

Re: BRM Reviews the 9/18/2018 Smackdown (WATCH THIS MAIN EVENT SEGMENT NOW!)

Post by KILLdozer » Sep 20th, '18, 18:57

I really just noticed that Brie doesn't really add anything on the outside to Daniel Bryan matches. Unlike Zelina Vega...she's literally nothing but facial expressions...and not very strong ones at that lol
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

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