Charlotte explains that she did it for
Out comes Paige and she is celebrating, too. Does anyone on this show realize they got their asses kicked last night? Charlotte says that if Ronda sticks her nose into her business at TLC she will “stick her neck in another chair and stomp on it a zillion times, over and over and over.” Based on what we saw yesterday, that will put Ronda down for, like, a good fifteen minutes before she’s as good as new.
Although Paige is happy with Charlotte’s inexplicable attempt to MURDER Ronda Rousey, she sternly tells Charlotte that putting her hands on referees is completely unacceptable and therefore Charlotte will be fined $100,000. Out come the IIconics to ask Paige to give them the money she is fining Ronda. Are they completely mentally deficient? Charlotte threatens to make one of them “the next Ronda Rousey,” which at this point I can only assume means she’s going to somehow give them mutant healing powers. Or maybe it’s a Saiyan thing where the closer to the edge of death you beat someone, the stronger they become.
CHARLOTTE FLAIR vs. BILLIE KAY (w/Peyton Royce)- 0.25/10
This was basically a squash, and the camera caught Billie not taking Natural Selection well, too. After the match, Charlotte kept insisting that Peyton come and fight her, and Peyton eventually did (apparently this is one of those weeks where someone is allowed to wrestle twice), so we got…
CHARLOTTE FLAIR vs. PEYTON ROYCE (w/Billie Kay)- no rating bad segment
Peyton cheated to get heat on Charlotte, then Billie ran in for the DQ. They went to get a chair from the timekeeper, but for the first time in recorded history, the timekeeper pulled it back from them, and apparently the combined strength of Billie Kay & Peyton Royce- both active professional wrestlers- was no match for the might of the random timekeeper.
In the face of this undefeatable force, the IIconics gave up on getting a chair and headed back towards Charlotte, who promptly took them both down with a spear and proceeded to beat the crap out of them. This is all so weird because Charlotte felt like a complete and total heel this entire time.
REY MYSTERIO JR. PROMO- he build up his match with Orton later tonight.
MIZ TV WITH SPECIAL GUEST SHANE MCMAHON- bad
Shane- unlike Ronda Rousey- is actually selling the beating he was given at Survivor Series. Miz tries to suck up to Shane while also taking credit for the cool stuff Shane did by saying they did it “together” as a team. This led into Miz asking Shane to be his tag team partner. Shane doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but apparently Miz went to Paige earlier and got a match booked for them. Paige can book matches for someone who isn’t an active wrestler (and is her boss)? And she didn’t even bother to let Shane know about it?
THE MIZ & SHANE MCMAHON vs. THE BRYANT BROTHERS (Wayne & Dane Bryant)- no rating, odd segment
The announcers are going on and on about how Shane is “in no condition to compete.” Do you think the idiots putting this show together even thought that doing this is ridiculous after Ronda wrestled the night after getting her neck Pillmanized?
Miz beat up the goofs and then offered to tag Shane in. Shane told Miz that he didn’t want to wrestle so Miz went to finish things off but got rolled up and pinned. So are we trying to build to Miz vs. Shane feud? That’s want it seems like, and that has me TERRIFIED.
NEW DAY BACKSTAGE- They are dressed up as pilgrims. R-Truth showed up in the Gobbledygooker costume. Then Byron Saxton excitedly shouted that “WE’RE ABOUT TO MAKE HISTORY TONIGHT: THE FIRST EVER THANKSGIVING FEAST FIGHT!”
Do they really think that people are going to watch this show and get excited by this “making of history?” Do they really think we don’t realize that this thing is only a first because they gave it a dumb name? If I ever got to inject Vince or Steph that with some sort of truth serum that only lasted long enough for one answer, this is the question I would ask them. “Do you really think that your branding and talk of ‘making history’ actually makes people more excited to see things on your show?”
NEW DAY PROMO- Everyone remember how for the past few weeks they’ve been screaming at us how imperative it is for Smackdown to win at Survivor Series? Well… almost half way through the show, and the first people to mention the fact that Smackdown not only lost but got their asses kicked were The New Day, and they were only doing it because they’re upset that WWE spent last night pretending that their win- Smackdown’s only win of the night- didn’t count because it happened on the pre-show.
Now Woods is talking about his video games here on this wrestling show and f*ck it, this is getting the fast forward treatment. Sheamus, Cesaro, and Big Show came out and talked but I don’t care what they have to say, either.
THANKSGIVING FEAST FIGHT: The New Day vs. Cesaro, Sheamus, & Big Show- 2/10
A regular match turned into people getting hit with food. After the match, dumb sh*t happened and food was thrown. Thank G-d no one walked into the room and caught me watching this.
RANDY ORTON PROMO- dull
ASUKA & NAOMI vs. MANDY ROSE & SONYA DEVILLE- DUD!
Their Progressive Auto Insurance “Moment Worth Saving” for this week was Mandy Rose eliminating Sonya Deville from the battle royale at Evolution. Raise your hand if you remember that happening. Anyone with their hand in the air right now is a liar.
Mandy & Sonya lost because of some miscues.
Early on we got a spot where Mandy and Sonya were both on the apron and Naomi and Asula ran across the ring to knock them off with simultaneous hip-attacks… and both Mandy and Sonya appeared to take phantom bumps (Many definitely did; I’m less sure about Sonya, but hers looked like one as well). There were some other sloppy points here as well, plus a spot where Mandy sent Asuka into the ropes and Asuka bumped into Sonya and knocked her off the apron but the camera managed to miss Sonya completely. I’d done being generous to matches tonight.
DANIEL BRYAN PROMO- EXCELLENT!
You really should watch this for yourself, but the gist of this was that Bryan feels that while he was putting all of his effort into returning to the ring and going through his hyperbaric treatments and seeing doctors and all of that stuff, the fans replaced him in their hearts with AJ Styles. Bryan said that his dream was to be the WWE Champion, and after losing to AJ once he vowed to never give up on his dream again, so when he had a chance last week, he kicked AJ in the nuts and took the title. He also said that at Survivor Series, he didn’t have to beat Brock to win; it was still a win for him because he knew that Brock would “beat the weakness out of him,” leaving only “the new Daniel Bryan” (the ruthless heel) in his place.
Also, AJ is getting a rematch at TLC.
REY MYSTERIO JR. vs. RANDY ORTON- 6/10
Randy went after Rey’s mask. I’m so tired of this angle. We’re already doing it on 205 Live. Do we have to do it on Smackdown, too?
Tom Phillips is whining about Rey’s mask “protecting his anonymity” like he didn’t used to run around WCW TV without it after he lost it to Kevin Nash. The announcers said that Orton is “looking to take away Rey Mysterio’s identity,” by going after the thing he puts on his face… so basically it’s the Jeff Hardy feud all over again, except without the ear stuff.
Randy catching Rey’s sliding splash into an RKO was really cool, but that’s about all there was here to make this better than decent. Randy rammed Rey’s head into the post with a chair and Rey’s mask fell off so Randy picked it up. Medical personnel tended to Rey, who was bleeding from the elbow. Randy posing with Rey’s mask got a lot of heat.
This was a weird episode of Smackdown, and really not a very good one either, although things did pick in the last half an hour with Bryan’s promo and the heat in the main event. Smackdown’s massive loss at Survivor Series didn’t mean sh*t, which just makes me even angrier, whatever is going on with Charlotte is surely not going to go right, and the idea of a Miz vs. Shane feud has me cringing. Meanwhile, we got no Becky, no AJ, no Joe, no Rusev, no Almas/Vega, and no Usos.