BRM Reviews the 11/13/2020 Smackdown (bad)

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

BRM Reviews the 11/13/2020 Smackdown (bad)

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 17th, '20, 21:12

OPENING SEGMENT- good
Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman come out and promos are cut to build up Survivor Series; specifically that Roman will beat either Randy Orton or Drew McIntyre, and that Jey Uso will lead his team to victory at Survivor Series. Roman said that being involved with him made Jey Uso go from someone who fans couldn’t even tell apart from his brother into as superstar. This is a specious argument to me because I’ll bet you that if you got a picture of both Usos from the waist up right now so that we can’t Jimmy’s injured leg, most fans still couldn’t tell them apart. We know which one Jey is because he’s the one who can wrestle right now. Of course, Roman is allowed to make a specious argument like this because he’s a heel, and Jey is allowed to foolishly believe it because he’s now a heel, too, but I figured I should point it out.
Roman’s promo was interrupted by Drew McIntyre, who is on the other show and thus isn’t supposed to be here, yet was given a full entrance, complete with music. Remember every other year when someone from the other show shows up and people are always screaming about a possible invasion? Well no one seems to be worried about that this year, either because they’re all idiots who never learn their lessons, or because the writing is terrible. Take your pick.
They cut very good promos on each other, but I’m quite annoyed by the fact that WWE can’t keep the rules about the shows straight (if Drew is allowed to be here because of the ever-changing Brand to Brand Invitational, why did no one mention this. The announcers’ job is to answer questions like “why is this guy allowed to be here?”) and they want us to have no memory of anything that has happened at Survivor Series in the past (Drew’s presence is not seen as a precursor to an invasion).
Jey Uso ran out to fight Roman’s battle for him. Jey said that “we run this show,” and Roman had a GREAT look on his face, like Jey didn’t realize that he is the underling and Roman is the Tribal Chief. Speaking of things Jey Uso seems to not understand, we’ve been told over and over again that Survivor Series is “the one night of the year when Superstars™ from Raw and Smackdown face each other in head-to-head competition.” One would think that, a member of the Smackdown men’s team at Survivor Series, Jey would know this, but apparently he doesn’t, because he challenged Raw wrestler Drew McIntyre to a match tonight. Roman knocked the mic out of his hand and shoved him so he could have a stare-down with Roman, which made me laugh. The heels then left. Maybe WWE will be smart and we won’t get the match after all?

ROMAN REIGNS YELLS AT JEY USO BACKSTAGE- mostly great
Roman is angry because Jey doesn’t understand that he’s just an underling. “We don’t run this; I do! This is all mine!”
Roman is also apparently angry that Jey “made a match” for himself. So does Roman also not understand that Drew and Jey “shouldn’t” be allowed to wrestle each other? And since when is this match official? That would have been news to come back from a commercial break with. Jey assures Roman that he will handle it.
The acting here was excellent (especially Roman), but as you’ve noticed by now, the lack of storyline continuity/logic about the rules of how the split works is really bugging me.

SAMI ZAYN PROMO- great!
He’s unhappy that he has to defend his title against Apollo Crews on just one hour’s notice. He claims this is management trying to sabotage him. He started going off into standard heel delusional ranting before he was mercifully interrupted by Apollo.

WWE INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: Sami Zayn vs. Apollo Crews- no rating, TERRIBLE segment
Apollo Crews hasn’t been on TV since being drafted to Smackdown. He lost his most recent match, has only one two matches since SummerSlam, only one of which was a singles match, which happened over a month and a half ago, and his most recent singles match was a title match where he lost cleanly to Bobby Lashley. And yet tonight he’s getting a shot at the IC Title. Why? I understand that they want to push the idea that Sami is going to beat a former US Champion as he heads into his match against current US Champion Bobby Lashley at Survivor Series, but that doesn’t mean this has to be a title match!
That one detail kills all of this because it takes Sami’s complaining promo and makes it so that Sami is actually right! If this isn’t a title match, then Sami’s complaints of attempted “sabotage” by management are null and void because Apollo has had the same amount of time to prepare for this match as Sami has. But with Apollo getting a title shot he has done absolutely nothing to earn, it feels like management is actually hoping that he will take the belt off of Sami.
Cole’s attempt to call Sami a hypocrite by saying that Sami kept complaining about not being booked, and now that he’s being booked even though we put him in a title match” completely misses this point, and is thus hollow. Sami isn’t complaining about being booked. He’s complaining about being given little notice (not necessary a fair complaint) and about being booked to defend his title against a challenger who has done nothing to deserve a title shot.
And of all people to give this title shot to right before Survivor Series, they chose APOLLO CREWS? We haven’t seen him in over a month, but for the few months before that, almost every time we saw him, he was getting his ass kicked cleanly by Bobby Lashley… and they think we would excited to see Crews beat Sami and go on to face Lashley at Survivor Series? They think that between a fresh match-up and a match we’ve seen many times over the past few months and the outcome has been the same and definitively so almost every time, we’d be excited if they gave us the latter?
And yeah… I haven’t even talked about the actual physical match they had! The match went two minutes and five seconds. 96% of that was Crews dominating Sami and kicking his ass. Then Sami managed to get Apollo’s leg stuck in the cables under the ring long enough to win by count-out. So Sami Zayn gets his ass kicked by the guy who got his own ass kicked for months by the guy they’ve booked Sami against at the PPV and Sami only win because he was able to lure Crews into a trap that won’t work at the PPV because Lashley will have no incentive to follow Sami to the outside the way Crews did because there is no belt on the line so he doesn’t mind winning by count-out (and, he’s a heel, so he doesn’t see a count-out as a lesser win. And, of course, that’s ignoring the fact that Lashley has devious friends on the outside who can help him).
Then, after it was over, Cole says that he has “never seen the apron come off that easily. Do you think Sami Zayn may have planned that?”
1. That’s the skirt, not the apron. You’d think someone who has been involved in the wrestling business for over twenty years would know the difference.
2. Planned it? How? If Sami came out to the ring before the show and loosened something, that’s on WWE for not fixing it. Or is Cole trying to tell me that the ring wasn’t even put together an hour before Sami’s promo, and between the time Sami was informed of the match and the start of the show, he conceived of a plan to bribe a member of the ring crew? Does that really sound likely to you, Cole?

So yeah. Aside from the physical mechanics of the wrestling and Sami’s delivery of his promo, everything about this match and segment- from the booking to the announcing to the idea behind the match and the idea of how to execute it- were completely horrendous!

ADAM PEARCE & DREW MCINTYRE BACKSTAGE- bad
Their way of getting around the “Raw wrestlers can’t wrestle on Smackdown” problem is the same dumb thing they did last time, which was to say “we’ll make it an “unsanctioned match,” which, if you remember from last time, was completely indistinguishable from a normal wrestling match.
Drew was doing too much comedy here. He should be intense and want the match. He should answer Pearce’s question by putting his arm on Pearce’s shoulder like he’s taking him aside and calmly asking “have you met Drew McIntyre before? Have you interacted with Drew McIntyre?”

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS REY MYSTERIO & FAMILY- fine
Kayla introduced Rey specifically “with his family” and then said “Rey, you’ve brought your whole family here,” and yet the graphic said “Rey Mysterio with Dominik.” I don’t know if Kayla f*cked up or the graphics people did, but either way, it should not be that hard to get this sort of thing right. Tonight is apparently “the final chapter” of their rivalry. “One final match.” After SIX MONTHS, they are blowing this feud off with less than one week’s notice, on FREE TV. And, as we would learn one commercial break later, it’s not even the f*cking main event, because Roman and Rey is the main event.
Rey’s promo was fine. He spoke with conviction, but I just don’t care anymore.

We saw Sasha’s entrance, then went a commercial. When we came back from the commercial, we were greeted by the graphic of Drew vs. Jey in an unsanctioned match and Graves telling us it was the main event, as I noted above. This got my brain going.

The idea behind an “unsanctioned” match has been that the promotion is washing their hands of everything and just leaving the ring up to let the wrestlers settle their beef. The fans can stay and watch if they want, but it’s not an official part of the show. For this reason, it made logistical sense for the match to be the last match that happens… and it just so happens that it fits in perfectly with wrestling logic that the blow-off to a feud so violent the promotion won’t sanction a match between the wrestlers is the most anticipated thing on it’s show, and thus makes booking sense as the “main event,” even if it isn’t official the main event because it’s not sanctioned. That obviously isn’t the case here with Drew and Jey, but if we are trying to do things as logically as possible, perhaps the “unsanctioned match” should happen last.
That runs into the problem of “if it’s unsanctioned, why are they making room for it on their TV show and broadcasting it?” Admittedly, this is a problem in just about any situation that isn’t a house show (you can substitute “TV show” for “PPV” or ask why they are putting a match they don’t approve of on a sanctioned DVD), but I’m willing to go with the common “we know fans want to see this, so just like we’re going to let fans stay in the building to watch, we’ll leave the cameras rolling and record everything for fans to see,” but I think that’s a lot more problematic on a TV show- which has a set amount of time allotted to it, than on a modern subscription-service PPV or a DVD.
WWE does have a streaming service, so they could theoretically do the “we’re leaving the cameras rolling” thing and tell people that if they want to see the “unsanctioned” match, they’ll have to go to the WWE Network after Smackdown is over.” Now, it’s a little silly to tell people that the only way to see this fight the promotion officially is washing their hands of is to go to purchase the promotion’s streaming service with their name right in the title, but I think WWE has actually accidentally created away around this with the way they have framed the brand split since Smackdown moved to Fox, with the two TV networks theoretically in control of the shows. If Fox won’t let USA’s stars on their show and visa-versa, then presenting the match that is not sanctioned by either network on WWE’s streaming service actually makes sense. They’ll never do this, of course, because the networks would hate that a big match is being aired as a special on the WWE Network instead of on their TV show, but I found it’s a fun thought experiment.

SASHA BANKS PROMO-
Didn’t like it. She still sounds like a heel. She started to talk about Carmella, but instead Bayley came out. Didn’t they promise us last week that Sasha vs. Bayley would be done with? Anyway, Bayley caused a distraction to allow Carmella to attack Sasha from behind again… and then Bayley disappeared and was not seen for the rest of the segment. If she and Carmella were in cahoots, you’d think they would celebrate together, but they didn’t. That signals to me that this was pointless water-treading, and Bayley was a convenient tool to distract Sasha so that Carmella could do the exact same thing she did last week. I ask again… why did they start this feud last week while Sasha’s next big match was against someone on the other show instead of using this time to build Carmella into a worthy challenger by having her win matches?

DOLPH ZIGGLER AND BOBBY ROODE TAUNT OTIS BACKSTAGE- bad
Look, I’m not trying to body-shame Otis. Some people have different bodies than others, and everyone is free to make their own choices, healthy or not (so long as you don’t endanger anyone else by doing something like drunk driving or driving recklessly or smoking cigarettes and producing secondhand smoke, or not wearing a mask when there is a horrible infectious disease running around)… but having Otis sit there, eating, with three full plates of food in front of him makes him into a joke. I’m not saying it’s okay for Roode and Ziggler to antagonize him, but it does make it a lot harder for me to care about him because he comes off like a one-note goof.

OTIS DOZOVIC vs. DOLPH ZIGGLER (w/ Bobby Roode)- 1/10
This year they have hats instead of the Raw/SD logo shirts.
Otis won a short match. Yes, Dolph has been permanently defined as someone who will never be more than an upper-midcarder, but Otis is a good, and so having Dolph be unable to beat him even with help from Roode still devalues Dolph, and giving Otis the win doesn’t help Otis because you’ve made it clear that he’s a comedy goof and thus will never be someone who moves the needle.

CHAD GABLE & OTIS BACKSTAGE- mixed feelings
Gable gives Otis a speech about him being able to do what he did to Ziggler to anyone, but he needs is some disciple, and a coach to bring it out of him. I was a little bit into this until Gable pulled out a poster for “Alpha Academy,” and Otis let out one of his goofy “OH YEAH!”s. I harbored no illusions that any pairing involving Otis wouldn’t wind up being goofy, but the idea that someone won a match, and then was approached by a totally unrelated person backstage to initiate a storyline based off of the outcome of that match is so rare in WWE that it caught my attention, and I guess I’m just naively hoping this is some sort of sign of movement in a positive direction in terms of storytelling capability, even though I know intellectually that it will turn out being unsophisticated crap like the vast majority of what WWE does.

NO HOLDS BARRED MATCH: Seth Rollins (w/Buddy Murphy) vs. Rey Mysterio (w/the Mysterio Family)- 7.5/10
They worked this match really well and did a great job of ramping things up, but the finish was exactly what everyone expected it to be… and therefore suffered from a problem that most people also saw coming. Murphy betraying Seth is fine, but if the idea is that this was a premeditated plan- and it must have been, or else Murphy’s comment to Aalyah to “trust me” last week after his apparent betrayal of the Mysterios makes no sense- then one has to wonder why he didn’t just attack Seth the moment the bell rang. The idea that he was trying to let Rey handle things on his own at first makes absolutely no sense because if Seth was able to handle things on his own, Murphy would not have gotten the chance to prove that this rejoining Seth was just a ploy.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Murphy waits patiently outside of the ring. Rey demands that he enter and offers a handshake. Murphy accepts it. Aalyah runs over and hugs Murphy. Murphy goes over to Dominik and Dominik also offers him a handshake, which Murphy also accepts. Mrs. Mysterio also hugged Murphy, that that didn’t really carry much storyline weight.

ADAM PEARCE & NATTIE BACKSTAGE- bad
Pearce tells her that she has to earn her way onto the Survivor Series team by winning a three-way. Nattie complains that she doesn’t understand why he doesn’t just name her to the team. On the one hand, Nattie is clearly acting spoiled because the other SD women have had to earn their way onto the team, but on the other hand, Pearce is also making the decisions for Raw, and he just named four of the five members of the team without them having to do anything to qualify, so she’s not asking for anything he hasn’t done for multiple other people, too.
Pearce then tells her that her qualifier is next. That’s kind of bullsh*t to tell her she’s booked in a match and not tell her about it until right beforehand. And in this case, it seems fair to assume that the others already knew. And if they didn’t, they why the hell did Pearce wait so long to tell them all about the match?
So, again, either our babyface authority figure is playing favorites for no good reason (which is not a babyface thing to do), or he’s lazy to the point of near negligence.
After Nattie left, Chelsea Green crept onto the camera and put her hand on Pearce’s shoulder and smiled at him. She would later be added to the qualifier, so I guess she seduced Pearce?
Anyway, she wasn’t drafted, and she clearly wasn’t called up, because if she was, you’d think they would have either announced it or had some sort of planned debut for her, so did she just show up on the main roster of her own accord? Is she allowed to do that? If so, it makes you wonder why everyone from NXT doesn’t just show up on the main roster and do things try to get themselves booked.

AN ANGRY SETH ROLLINS DEMANDS TO SEE ADAM PEARCE- meh
First, though, they had him angrily reject an interview to establish why the camera was there… even though they haven’t felt the need to do that in any other segment. Seth rantingly demands a match with Murphy. Actually, what he asked for was “the opportunity to destroy him.” Pearce seemed genuinely scared by this.

WINNER QUALIFIES FOR THE SMACKDOWN WOMEN’S SURVIVOR SERIES TEAM: Natalya vs. Tamina vs. Liv Morgan vs. Chelsea Green- 3/10
After all three competitors had made their entrances (which were skipped for the Pearce/Rollins segment), it was announced that Chelsea had been added to the match.
Morgan won. Apparently the planned finish was for Chelsea to win (which makes sense) but she broke her wrist so they called an audible, which was to give Liv the win. All things considered, the match was quite good for the time it got.
They focused on Nattie being frustrated in a “laugh at the frustrated heel” way. At this point I think it’s fair to ask what the endgame is with this Nattie storyline. If she earns her way onto the team in the final week after all of these losses, then all you’ve done is hurt her with the losses, and she’s been a total heel the whole time so it’s not like you’re building up a desire in the fans to see her finally make it. I supposed she could attack someone before the show and get herself inserted as a replacement to start a feud, but that’s the sort of thing you should be doing with someone like Carmella. If you want us to believe all of this stuff you tell us about how great she is and how tough and technically skilled she must be to have come out of the Hart Dungeon, you have to freakin’ protect her, and while she isn’t getting pinned in some of these matches, the focus of all three matches so far has been on Nattie losing.

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS DREW MCINTYRE- good

BIG E. & THE STREET PROFITS BACKSTAGE- good, with the potential to become great in hindsight
The Street Profits engaged in some trash talk in a goofy but in-character manner, at which point Big E. went off on them by using many different metaphors to call them New Day knock-offs… and while those of us who saw them in NXT know they are different, but I think to a lo of people who have only seen them on the main roster, they just come off as New Day clones, and having the person they have interacted with the most since coming over to Smackdown in the draft be Big E. definitely highlights that (even if there is a logical storyline reason for them to be interacting with him more than others).
What I would like to see out of this segment is them take Big E.’s words to heart and start to differentiate themselves. I think a heel turn wouldn’t be a terrible idea for them. The SD tag team division is pretty much empty right now, with the only other teams that are even semi-active being the babyface duo of Rey & Dominik Mysterio, and completely jobberized heel team of Dolph Ziggler & Bobby Roode. The Forgotten Sons still haven’t been let out of time out for Ryker’s poorly timed political Tweet six months ago (which is enough time that he should be brought back by now, and this punishment has been horribly unfair to the other two, who did nothing wrong)… and yes, there are heels, and The Usos will be as well when Jimmy comes back, but I think that a heel turn would help them develop a necessary edge to the point where you can turn them back in six months and have them be tweener-faces similar to how they were in EVOLVE, where they were playful, but did so in ways that you could absolutely see how others would take their actions as being disrespectful.
I’d start this heel turn off by having them use weapons to beat New Day (which also protects the Raw tag champs. Big E. would try to get revenge on Smackdown and wind up getting foiled by the numbers game. I’d have them injure Big E. for a short period of time to feud with the Gable/Otis duo that seem to have been put together tonight. The purpose of this would be to buy time for Owens to finish his angle with Roman/Jey, so that when Big E. comes out and makes his big return going after the Street Profits again but again finds himself getting beaten down due to the numbers game, Owens can come out and make the save.
The next week Big E. thanks Owens for the help. They are booked in a tag match against the Street Profits and pull off the win when Owens gets the pin. The next week everyone is obviously taking about them as #1 contenders. Owens talks about them winning the tag titles together, but Big E. seems a little uncomfortable. We get a KO show where Owens starts it off by reminding us all that when he was drafted to Smackdown, he said he was interested in forming a tag team, and he wants his partner to be Big E. Owens then brings Big E. out, and Big E. tells Owens that he doesn’t really want to form a permanent team with someone if it’s not Woods & Kofi. Owens is disappointed by this, but tells Big E. to at least let him help out against the Street Profits as penance for turning on New Day a few years back, and Big E. agrees. They lose their tag title match when Owens is pinned, but we can create some situation later when Big E. gets to beat them both in singles matches to get revenge. Meanwhile, we’re building up the Mysterios as challengers while Owens is also looking for a new partner, and that probably takes you to Mania while you rebuilding some heel teams to feud with whoever takes the belts from Street Profits (probably Rey and Dominik at Mania, if I’m booking it) and then you can start to turn the Street Profits back to tweener-faces.

“UNSANCTIONED” MATCH: Jey Uso vs. Drew McIntyre- 6.5/10
This was an okay brawl. They had very good intensity, but Jey Uso doesn’t feel like a main eventer, even after getting wins over AJ Styles, Daniel Bryan, and Kevin Owens. Roman came out to cause a distraction, but Jey still lost. The best thing about this was the stare-down and little exchange of words that Roman and Drew had afterwards.


This was a bad episode of Smackdown. It was one of those shows that makes me remember how damn frustrating and dull WWE can be. And due to the big news, I now have to watch Raw, too. Uch. I’m not looking forward to it.
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

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 16 guests