BRM Reviews the 1/1/2019 Smackdown (I've got A LOT to say)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 1/1/2019 Smackdown (I've got A LOT to say)

Post by Big Red Machine » Jan 3rd, '19, 12:30

The show started off with the following announcement: Tonight’s main event will be a Fatal Five-Way to determine the #1 contender to Daniel Bryan’s WWE World Heavyweight Title at Royal Rumble 2019 between AJ Styles, Mustafa Ali, Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio Jr. and the winner of a match that will take place tonight between Samoa Joe and Jeff Hardy.
The last time we saw Mustafa Ali wrestle, he pinned the champion cleanly. Is that not enough to earn a title shot on it’s own? The last time we saw AJ Styles he was Ali’s tag team partner in the match where Ali pinned the champion cleanly, but the last time we saw AJ in a match where he was actually involved in the decision was two days prior at TLC where Bryan beat him cleanly to retain the title. The last time we saw Randy Orton or Rey Mysterio was at TLC, where Rey beat Randy clean in the middle of the ring. How are all of these people on the same level?
Ditto for Joe and Hardy. The last time we saw them, Jeff lost to Joe vs. disqualification. Yes, the execution was idiotic, but the idea was that Jeff Hardy committed an infraction of the rules that was deemed severe enough that the only appropriate punishment was to issue him a match-loss. How the hell does he have the same standing as the guy who came out on the winning end of that match?
With this one announcement they told us a whole bunch of the matches that we have seen over the past few weeks that they told us were very important didn’t actually matter one bit… and now they want me to sit through two hours of wrestling matches. And these people can’t figure out why the ratings are tanking.

OPENING SEGMENT- terrible
New Day have come out in goofy costumes. Again. Big E. is wearing a diaper and drinking from a gigantic baby bottle and wearing a gigantic pacifier around his neck. I almost shut the show off. Thank G-d I am watching this while everyone else in my house is asleep.
New Day announce that all three of them will be in the men’s Royal Rumble match. They clearly did not watch the Scott Steiner mathematics promo enough times before coming out to do this promo. They say because all three of them are in the Rumble, it means they have a better chance than anyone else. This is going to sound like a silly complaint because obviously I know what they mean by this, but I would really like it if they would actually take the time to explain out loud that this is because they are going to work together to ensure that they all stay in as long as possible and try to get it to come down to just them left at the end at which point they will let the best wrestler win. I know that’s spoon-feeding, but WWE has done enough stuff over the past few years where it seems like these teams are considered one person for contractual purposes (like Survivor Series Elimination Matches where when one member of a team gets pinned his partner is eliminated with him, or tag teams being drafted together during the draft and moving together during the Superstar Shake-Up, or throwing up a graphic for the “ten-man” tag team division elimination match that featured eleven guys on one team and twelve on the other because there were three trios there and they didn’t bother telling you who was sitting out, and all of this ultimately culminating in the idiocy that was Lucha House Party Rules) that it almost doesn’t seem like such a silly question to wonder if New Day would get to enter the Rumble together and if one of them getting eliminated meant they were all eliminated. This company does so much to illustrate that it thinks of most of these teams purely as units that the idea of any of them ever being treated as individual characters again- never mind winning an individual accolade- while the team is still intact feels not just improbable but completely unfathomable.
Now, after having asked for information that I referred to as something that I and I would assume the majority of viewers found obvious to be spoon-fed to us anyway, I will make the seemingly contradictory complaint that I didn’t like the way New Day presented information to us in this segment because it felt like they were telling us things 99% of us already knew- specifically the “if we win the Royal Rumble we get to be in the main event of WrestleMania and we can choose to challenge for the WWE Title or the Universal Title” part. I think the reason this grated me is that New Day are supposed to be wrestlers, but the role they were put in is really the role of a host rather than that of a wrestler. When you watch figure skating, they don’t have the skaters explain to the viewing audience how many of each type of jump and lift and skate-work skill they have to demonstrate. That’s the announcers’ job, not the athletes’. When the athletes talk to the audience, they tell us how hard they have worked and what the win would mean to them and thank everyone who supported them.
New Day shouldn’t be out here saying “if we win, we can choose to challenger for the Universal Title or the WWE Title in the main event of WrestleMania.” Big E. should be talking about how he’s the only one in WWE who has the combination of strength and brawling ability necessary to finally wrest the Universal Title away from Brock Lesanr and get it back on WWE TV where it belongs. Woods should be cutting a promo on Daniel Bryan saying “what happened to you, man? I used to look up to you when I was on the indies and I looked up to you when I was in NXT while you were fighting tooth and nail to get the WWE Title despite everything the McMahons threw in your way and I saw the way the WWE Universe got behind you and I promised myself that I was going to work as hard as I needed to make sure that I had that kind of connection with the WWE Universe, too… and now you’ve turned your back on them and pissed that all away!” Kofi should be cutting a promo talking about all of his contemporaries who have gone on to become world champions- Ziggler, Miz, Punk, Swagger- and even guys who came up after him like Bryan, Sheamus, Rollins, Reigns, Ambrose, Del Rio. He’s sick and tired of always being the bridesmaid but never the bride. He respects the hell out of guys like William Regal, Goldust, Finlay, Tito Santana, Lance Storm, Scott Hall, etc. but whenever you talk about how great those guys were, someone always says, “yeah, but he was never the world champion, and Kofi does not want to go down in history as someone whose name will forever provoke the phrase “but he was never world champion.”
Anyway, New Day started to try to do comedy. This began with Woods joking that if they challenged for the Universal Title at WrestleMania, Brock might not even show up. Don’t even joke about that. Just them saying that put horrible images in my mind of Vince waking up in the middle of the night by shooting straight up right and saying “I’ve got it! Brock will no-show WrestleMania! That’ll get GREAT heat!”
They then started to do pancake humor and put over the success of John Cena’s latest movie. Then Big E. explained to us that later tonight we would see a match between Jeff Hardy and Samoa Joe to determine who gets the final spot in the #1 contendership match later tonight… which we already knew. While doing this, he appeared to scream right into Woods’ and Kofi’s ears with the microphone. He was extremely lucky he did not get a shoot elbow in the face, because that’s what he deserved for this

WINNER QUALIFIES FOR THE #1 CONTENDERSHIP MATCH: Jeff Hardy vs. Samoa Joe- 5/10
They wrestled for a while. Jeff’s selling of his leg was on and off. They set up a situation like last week where Jeff hit the Swanton but Joe rolled to the outside afterwards. Joe caught Jeff in the Coquina Clutch on the outside and rolled back in at the count of eight… at which point the referee started yelling at Joe for no reason, then went back and restarted his count at one. Jeff just barely beat this bullsh*t count back in… and then Joe caught him in the Coquina Clutch against and then choked him out for the win, meaning that the only thing that spot on the outside accomplished was making the referee seem incompetent.

VINCE, SHANE, & AJ BACKSTAGE- bad
Vince and Shane sitting in comfy chairs now like it’s a lounge, which doesn’t look quite as ridiculous as the old “office that doesn’t have any chairs or desks or visible doors because it’s definitely not just a set,” but it still looks stupid, and does not in any way give off the impression that the McMahons do any sort of real work in their jobs as authority figures the way William Regal seems to on NXT.
Vince and Shane talked to each other about how great the main event would be, and Shane said that “whomever wins that Fatal Five-Way match will definitely have earned their WWE Championship opportunity.” These words are phony and annoying when anyone says them like this, but when they come out of Shane’s mouth it’s just SOOOOOOO much worse.
Then we heard a knock on the door and AJ Styles entered. It was still [enter AJ, stage right] rather than us actually seeing a door, but at least the knocking and the “come in” made it feel more like a room and less like a fake TV set. This existed just so AJ could be growly at Vince and be defiant by saying that maybe he should apologize for punching Vince last week, but he won’t. Is happy that he has now brought out “the real AJ Styles.” So let me guess: AJ wins and Vince is now going to be taking credit for it. Because that’s definitely going to make the fans happy.

KAYLA BRAXRON INTERVIEWS RUSEV (& LANA) IN THE RING- He pledges to be a standard babyface champion. They have him doing forced comedy. It’s not good.
Nakamura jumped him from behind. Unlike Carmella last week, Lana- who wrestles even less frequently than Carmella and has never even come close to being a champion- ran in and attacked the male wrestler who was attacking her male companion. She did this by jumping on his back and trying to lock in a sleeper hold. While Nakamura was able to prevent her from fully locking in the hold, this did take his attention away from Rusev, and when Rusev had recovered, he hit Nakamura with a Machka Kick, causing Nakamura to fall backwards… but Lana was still on his back so she got crushed underneath him. Rusev went to check on Lana, and Nakamura used this opportunity to attack him a second time and lay him with the Kinshasa. As bad the interview part of this was, the angle part was excellent.

They keep advertising that “John Cena returns to Smackdown tonight” for “the first time in almost a year.” Okay… what’s he going to be doing? Are you telling me that the McMahons managed to secure a rare appearance by one of the biggest stars in the company’s history and didn’t even book him in a match worth hyping up?

NAOMI vs. MANDY ROSE (w/Sonya Deville)- or not.
Mandy’s entrance has a camera effect where everything but Mandy is made blurry. Also, her name gets a special font for her graphic. She got into the ring and the referee had to hold Naomi back from attacking her. Mandy then revealed that under her usual t-shirt she was wearing an Usos t-shirt, which incensed Naomi even more. Mandy rolled to the floor… and then, even though one of the competitors was not in the ring, the bell rang. Why? Because it turns out that despite the fact that Mandy and Sonya came out to Mandy’s music and the production people did Mandy’s screen effect and Mandy got in the ring, the actual match that was signed was Naomi vs. Sonya, who had just gotten into the ring in the background. WHAT?!
Did Mandy and Sonya think they could pull some sort of ruse with all of this? Surely Naomi knew who she was booked against, right? So who were they trying to fool here? The fans? What purpose would that serve?
Then again, the announcers were surprised by this as well. Was this Vince and Shane trying to rib the fans and the announcers? How does this make ANY sense?! This was WWE doing a swerve for no other reason than to do a swerve, and it was idiotic.
Anyway, on to…
NAOMI vs. SONYA DEVILLE (w/Mandy Rose)- 2/10
The announcers put this over like the heels had tricked Naomi, but doesn’t she know who she’s booked against? And if it was a ruse, how did the referee know that Sonya was the one the heels’ intended to have wrestle the whole time? How often do we see a heel immediately take a powder when the babyface starts to come for him/her? At least once a week, right?
Anyway, Mandy caused some distractions to help Sonya take over but Naomi made a comeback. Mandy then grabbed a microphone and told Naomi that while she was getting dressed earlier “I couldn’t help but think of your husband so I sent him this” and then then TitanTron displayed an image of Mandy in the shower, wearing only a towel… and this is the part where I become me and can’t help but notice that both of Mandy’s hands are visible here so that means that someone else is taking this picture for Mandy, likely making said person culpable in Mandy’s attempts to seduce a married man and ruin a happy marriage. Would it have been that difficult to have her take a damn selfie? Details matter.
This distraction allowed Sonya to not only take advantage to get the win, but show off her new finisher as well. It looked really good (it was basically Matt Morgan’s Hellovater) but at the same time it’s just… SOOOOOOO far removed from what you’d expect from MMA fighter Sonya Deville, and the fact that she used to be mixed martial artist is literally the only thing we know about this Sonya Deville character.

RANDY ORTON PROMO- fine

REY MYSTERIO JR. PROMO- decent

MUSTAFA ALI PROMO- GREAT… but oh my G-d that stupid f*cking light gimmick on his chest got SOOO annoying. And yet I still can’t feel too much negativity towards him for having it because at least they explained what it is here and then the pattern it was flashing in at least made sense (it symbolizes his heart).

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS- Shelton Benjamin was a total heel here even though he seemed like he had turned babyface last week. Gallows & Anderson were annoying and dumb. The IIconics were also annoying, but their resolution to become the “first-ever WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions” (I’ll give them benefit of the technicality that the belts the Jumping Bomb Angels feuded with the Glamour Gals over were the “WWF Women’s Tag Team Titles) gives me the first chance I’ve had in one of my reviews to give…

BRM’S THOUGHTS ON THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WWE WOMEN’S TAG TEAM TITLES-
In the other places I’ve discussed this I’ve talked about the reasons I think these titles are a bad idea. In case you don’t remember what I said, it’s basically the reasons you’ve probably come up with on your own: 1) they already have too many titles to fit on their PPVs so adding one more won’t help, and 2) neither show has a women’s division big enough to support healthy tag team scene. By now you’re probably saying “but BRM, they’re almost certainly going to try to mitigate #2 by having one set of champions who will appear on both shows.” My response to that is “that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
When you are writing a story, one of the steps is world-building. In many cases this is subconscious and obvious. If you’re setting your story in present-day America, for example, you can’t have flying cars because flying cars don’t exist. If you were to have them, that would make your book science-fiction, even if you were to set it today. If you want to have flying cars in present-day America then that is something that you will need to tell your audience along the way. Obviously, the more fictitious your work (i.e. Star Wars or LOTR or Game of Thrones) the more complex your world-building might need to be, but the purpose of my flying cars example is to illustrate that world-building is a part of the writing process even if we don’t realize it.
A situation that is a major change to the status quo- like, for example, WWE reinstating the brand split in 2016- requires some world-building to be done. Something about the very nature of the way the product now works has changed, and we fans need to be informed of how these changes operate. If I get drafted to Raw but my mortal enemy gets drafted to Smackdown and we are in the middle of a blood-feud then they need to explain to the viewers why I don’t just show up on Smackdown and beat him up. If people are not allowed to switch shows at will then you need to have an explanation for how something like the Superstar Shake-Up works that explains to me what makes it different than every other week of the year.
Unfortunately, WWE did not really do any world-building for any facet of this new Brand Extension. That’s because their attitude has been “better to leave things as vague as possible so that we have more wiggle-room later if we want to change something than to explain rules now and have to work around them.” I will admit that there is some merit to that idea, but WWE has gone about it in such an extreme way as to often be logic-defying or self-contradictory. For example, while all active wrestlers were drafted, injured wrestlers were not so that WWE could just assign them to whatever show they wanted when they were healthy… but if this really was the two general managers taking turns drafting wrestlers, there is no logical reason why injured wrestlers wouldn’t be drafted as well. Or why if NXT midcarders like Mojo Rawley and Nia Jax were available to be drafted, no one drafted some of the bigger NXT names at the time like Joe, Nakamura, Bayley or Asuka… even though other top NXT stars (Balor, American Alpha) were drafted. Or any of my numerous rants on the explanations we have been given for the how Superstar Shake-Up works.
Even worse, in WWE this mindset also tends to lead to intelligence-insulting laziness, where “we’ll leave things as vague as possible so that we have more wiggle-room later if we want to change something than to explain rules now and have to work around them” turns into “we’ll just do what we want this time and not explain it all,” resulting in people like Kane and Tamina apparently being allowed to change brands at will, or why if John Cena is a “free agent” and loves WWE and the WWE Universe so much and is allowed to work both shows he will often only show up on the show of the person he’s feuding with. Or- going all the way back to when this all started- why some stables like New Day were drafted using the tag team rule that they were drafted together while other stables (The Club) were split up into their components (one tag team that could be drafted together and one singles wrestler who had to be drafted separately) while still another (the Wyatt Family) had all of the members drafted as individuals. To bring the metaphor full circle, what WWE does is (at best) the equivalent of setting your story in contemporary America and writing a car-chase scene where the protagonist is being pursued while heading towards a cliff and you can’t come up with a way for him/her to evade capture but you don’t want to have your protagonist apprehended in this scene, either, so instead of thinking the whole plan for the scene out before you started writing it to make sure it would work, WWE thinks that the best way to do things is to just have the protagonist drive off the cliff but have him/her survive because oh yeah I forgot to tell you that the protagonist’s car is a flying car and the setting isn’t “contemporary America,” it’s actually “contemporary America but also there are flying cars.”
The women’s tag titles are, unfortunately, another instance of this situation. The reason we have one set of men’s world, women’s, and tag team titles on each show is that the champions are exclusive to the show they are on… but there aren’t enough teams to have a healthy division for these women’s tag titles, so the women’s tag team champions will be able to go to both shows, and the only explanation we’ll ever get for this is “because that’s the way we’re doing it, okay?!” And that alone will make the very presence of these titles frustrating for me because they will be a constant reminder of WWE’s laziness of storytelling.


SAMOA JOE PROMO- very good

JOHN CENA PROMO- no rating, technical issues
Is that really John Cena? Because this guy looks more like John Cena hopped into a time machine and got knocked by 2004 JBL and then delivered the babyface and sped up it’s growth in a special time chamber.
Cena started to speak… and then sh*t got all f*cked up on my TV and when it cleared up, Becky Lynch was standing in the ring talking to Cena. When did she learn to teleport? I picked-up in the middle of the conversation, but it appears that Becky came out, said she wanted to replace Cena as the top star in the company, then threatened to knock Cena out. So are they building to John Cena vs. Becky Lynch?
Or not. Zelina Vega & Andrade “Cien” Almas came out and Vega cut a promo burying both babyfaces so Cena challenged them to a tag team match. The McMahons sure are lucky that Almas & Vega came out or else the appearances of two of the top stars in their company would have been wasted building up a match that they’ll never be able to deliver. If you want to boost the ratings, why not ADVERTISE IN ADVANCE THAT TOP STARS WILL BE WRESTLING IN IMPORTANT MATCHES?

MIXED TAG TEAM MATCH: Zelina Vega & Andrade “Cien” Almas vs. Becky Lynch & John Cena- 5/10
The babyfaces won a predictable match. Becky tagged Cena in way too hard, and also gave him “You can’t see me” and walked off after the match. Why is Becky being a jerk?

MIZ & SHANE BACKSTAGE- Last week Shane agreed to be Miz’s tag team partner, but now Shane says he can’t because he’s too busy. Miz gets upset so Shane gives in. Miz then gives Shane a presentation about coordinating outfits (with Miz essentially wanting Shane to dress exactly like him). This was, shockingly, pretty funny.

WOMEN’S TITLE BACKSTAGE SEGMENT- meh
Hunter asks Asuka who she thinks deserves a shot at her title. She says she’ll face anyone because no one is ready for Asuka. They now have her saying that catchphrase in such an over the top way that it makes her look like a goof.
Charlotte showed up and said she deserves a title shot because if Ronda hadn’t interfered in their match at TLC, she would be the champion right now. That’s a good point. Carmella then showed up and said she deserved a title shot because she held the title for a long time, including having two wins against both Asuka and Charlotte. That was not a good point, so Charlotte told her to go take her dance break somewhere else.
Becky Lynch then showed up and said she deserved the title shot because she’s “the man.” Even though this was a Hunter segment, we still got that painful Kevin Dunn blocking where they’re all standing in a line, facing the camera. Hunter said he would “take it under advisement” and let them know when they’ve made a decision. Yes, this does serve to tell us who is being considered for the title shot at Royal Rumble, but I thought it just Hunter and Becky look bad. Hunter because, of the three women who said they deserved a title shot, only one gave him an intelligent reason for it and he’s still treating all of their claims as equal, and Becky because she easily could have given the same intelligent reason as Charlotte but instead just said “pick me because I’m me” like an arrogant heel. Here’s a crazy idea: instead of doing this segment now, why not do it two weeks from now and spend the interim time by having the potential suitors all win wrestling matches so they can present Hunter with some actual evidence to say that they deserve the title shot?

FATAL FIVE-WAY #1 CONTENDERSHIP MATCH: Randy Orton vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. AJ Styles vs. Mustafa Ali vs. Samoa Joe- 7.5/10
This was a great five-way, but the result was… troubling. And if I am describing babyface AJ Styles getting a clean victory in a #1 contenderhsip main event to earn the right to wrestle Bryan Danielson for the world title, then you know the booker f*cked up royally.
After TLC the McMahons came out and promised us a “fresh start.” So now we know what the WWE World Heavyweight Title match for the first PPV of their “fresh start” will be, and it is… the same one we saw at TLC.
Now, WWE will undoubtedly spend the next few weeks telling us that it’s not the same match because this one will be “The New Daniel Bryan” vs. “The Real AJ Styles,” and it’s totally going to be different because… Vince slapped AJ in the face last week. F*CK. OFF. AJ was the WWE World Heavyweight Champion for over a year and not once during that time did he need Vince slapping him in the face to motivate him to retain his title. They want me to believe that this is new now because Vince conferred upon AJ the magical Slap of Motivation?

This was a VERY frustrating show from WWE. It’s a new year. It’s a time for change. In the world of WWE it has actually been long past the time for change, and the company even acknowledged that several weeks ago. On the December 17th episode of Raw, the McMahons came out and promised us all a “fresh start” and that things would “change.” We have now completed three weeks of main roster WWE TV since that announcement. FIFTEEN HOURS of WWE TV. And as of right now, the closest thing to any change in policy we have been given is that champions will no longer get a mandatory rematch after he/she/they lose the championship, which is a change that I doubt made anyone’s list of top ten desired changes (Corbin was getting fired anyway, and authority figures always come and go. Ali getting moved over to Smackdown from 205 Live is just a wrestler switching shows, which happens and random times anyway, and none of the announced NXT call-ups have actually debuted yet, including the guy they announced they were going to call up several weeks before they made their big announcements).
A natural question, then, is how in the hell they came up with the idea to change that before anything else. I don’t work in Creative so I don’t know for sure, but if I had to guess based on what I’ve seen from this company over the past few years, my guess would be that this change was made because it allows the McMahons to lecture heels about how “opportunities must be earned” here in the WWE (which is basically the same thing Smackdown’s authority figures- including Shane McMahon- have been doing since the new Brand Extension started almost two and a half years ago) and then allow the announcers to tell all of us how things are different now because people aren’t being held back anymore because all opportunities are now earned.
And yet here they are, giving us a main event match where the guy who cleanly pinned the champion has earned the exact same opportunity as a guy who got pinned clean in the middle of the ring. Where the guy who pinned the champion cleanly has apparently earned the opportunity as the guy whose last decision was getting cleanly defeated by that same champion. Where two guys had a big singles match on a PPV and the winner taking advantage of the opportunity to compete in that match has earned him the exact same opportunity that is being afforded to the very man whom he bested in that match. It’s been almost three weeks of TV since their big announcement, and I’m left with the impression that it’s all a bunch of noise.

It’s a new year. It’s a time for change. I’m sure many people were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on their Christmas and New Year’s Eve shows because “no one will be watching,” and while I personally believe that’s a bullsh*t reason (we all have DVRs or Hulu or access to their YouTube page or website where we can get ourselves caught up on all of the important happenings), I understand that there are many fans who do think that way. Well this is January first. You’ve got a show airing at 8 PM on New Year’s Day. It’s a new year. It’s a time for change. They told us change was coming but hadn’t shown us yet. This was the show where they needed to pony up and show us that things are changing. Instead, they gave us the same old sh*t, and indicated to us that we’d be getting more of it in the future. Quite frankly, this show was the exact opposite of what it needed to be.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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Re: BRM Reviews the 1/1/2019 Smackdown (I've got A LOT too say)

Post by KILLdozer » Jan 3rd, '19, 22:18

First of all-Nakamura DID NOT "Land on/come down on top of/or crush Lana...underneath him"...in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.

He got kicked. He fell flat on his crack in a seated position and she fell BACKWARDS off of him. No comparison and I suppose it's just down to the bumping/sell of it really. Maybe that was clearly what they were going for...but that clearly didn't happen.

Weird lol.

The New Ga-Day...uh, The New Day...clearly need to stop and end. It's progressively getting worse obviously.

Naomi is still so bad to deal with.

Just as things progress....they get worse. Now it's also gonna be "THE REAL AJ STYLES!" ...every second until the whole thing is finally eventually over in 3 months, hopefully.

There was no real reason to not have Almas and Vega get the win here. Either way would have been great. Cena DESERVES the loss if anything, when you compare his current position to that of all these new talents, let alone someone like Almas, and Vega deserves better as well. Becky Lynch is the most naturally over woman they've got besides Asuka, or have had since Asuka, and the loss wouldn't have made much difference.
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

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