BRM Reviews the 2/5/2021 Smackdown (bad)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 2/5/2021 Smackdown (bad)

Post by Big Red Machine » Feb 8th, '21, 16:31

ROMAN REIGNS PROMO- meh
He’s upset about two things. The first of which was that Edge went to Raw and NXT instead of immediately going to Roman for a title shot because Roman’s belt is the most important and Roman is the biggest star. That makes some sense. What didn’t make sense to me was Roman’s second point, which was that he was upset because Edge didn’t come out here first tonight and Roman had to come out and cut this promo. Dude… if you want to do that Dusty Rhodes bullsh*t from the story Cody told Schiavone in the limo and ensure that you come out last, why did you come out here at all when Edge wasn’t out here yet? (And don’t tell me that Roman was upset because Edge wasn’t in the building, because Roman didn’t know that Edge wasn’t in the building until midway through the segment).
That second part is an ongoing issue I’m having with the way Roman has been booked since turning heel (and especially since the end of the Jey Uso feud), which is that while his board-strokes motivations of wanting to ensure that he is paid he respect that he feels is owed to him makes sense, the specific actions he takes on the show each individual week often feel like they are determined by the needs of the plot rather than any discernable goal Roman has. His entire issue with Adam Pearce felt that way, and this segment did to. Why does Roman want an answer from Edge by the end of the night? Because he feels disrespected, it seems. And in order for them to have him feel disrespected, they had to have him get upset, and thus they came up with something for him to be upset about that doesn’t make too much sense (and especially for him to get this upset about).
Cole framed everything that happened here as “mind games” from Edge, in which case Edge is the dick because that would imply that the face to face was a scheduled segment that Edge no-showed to play mind games for a match that is OVER TWO MONTHS AWAY (and, while Roman is right to get annoyed by something like that, his reaction still feels over the top to me).

DOMINIK MYSTERIO vs. KING CORBIN- 4.5/10
Whatever happened to Aalyah Mysterio and Buddy Murphy?
Corbin jumped the Mysterios on the stage before the match and threw Rey off of it, injuring him. Cole pitched to commercial too early. That made me laugh.
Even with the pre-match attack, I just can’t find a way to care about his feud, and I think there are two major reasons for that. The first is… well… not to put too fine a point on it, but Baron Corbin is just not very interesting. He’s a large dude who alternates between being mean and whiny, and that’s it. He’s being doing that same thing on the main roster for almost five years now. It has been apparent to pretty much anyone watching the show that any time a Corbin feud goes on for more than a month, it quickly begins to drag, but the people writing this show haven’t figured that out.
The second reason is that the whole Rey/Dominik thing doesn’t work. Not because “no one wants to see a parent and child feud,” as some people have said (and have also been saying about the Charlotte an Ric Flair), but rather because- and I did miss a few episode of Smackdown so maybe I’ve missed something here- the story is that if Dominik would listen to his father the veteran then he would have a better chance of winning, but we the viewers haven’t actually been given an example of what Rey wants Dominik to do differently. Without that, it’s hard to get invested in the match because we don’t have anything to look for while the match is happening. We’re just watching a regular WWE match with the usual WWE style that all of their matches have, and then waiting not for the finish, but rather to see what the announcers are going to tell us about the finish. At the moment the bell rings, we’ll know who won, but if Dominik wins, we don’t know whether it’s because he listened to Rey or if he did it his own way and won anyway (or if Corbin wins we won’t know if it’s because Dominik didn’t listen to Rey or if Dominik tried things Rey’s way and failed anyway) until the announcers pipe up to tell us. Show, don’t tell.

Oh. And here is a third reason why I can’t get into this feud. The babyfaces are cheaters! Rey came back during a commercial here and held Corbin’s leg so he couldn’t get out of the way of a 619, leading to the pin.

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS BIG E.- meh build for tonight’s title match

DANIEL BRYAN vs. CESARO- 5.5/10
Cesaro made Bryan tap out in just over four minutes. This was one of the best matches under five minutes you’ll ever see. I REALLY hope this finish was rushed because having a top babyface tap out clean in so quickly is never a good idea.
Cesaro showed Bryan respect after the match.

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS BIANCA BELAIR- Oh my G-d, hold the f*cking camera steady!
Other than that, this was fine. Bianca said the usual stuff about making her own way and told us that she would reveal who she will challenge at WrestleMania soon.

SETH ROLLINS RETURNS TO SMACKDOWN NEXT FRIDAY- fine

BAYLEY vs. RUBY RIOTT (w/Liv Morgan)- 2.75/10
Billie Kay is commentary. She is in denial about being kicked out of the Riott Squad. Get this goof off of my TV. She tried to help Ruby by pushing the ropes towards her but Liv Morgan stopped her because Liv has morals, unlike those darn Mysterios. Bayley won clean soon afterwards, and Billie Kay offered herself to Bayley as a tag team partner on the advice of Corey Graves.

BIANCA BELAIR PROMO TALKING ABOUT CHOOSING HER OPPONENT FOR WRESTLEMANIA- bad
If Bianca was going to come out and here and cut this promo now, what was the point of that interview with Kayla ten minutes ago?
Bianca started to cut a very good promo but was interrupted by Carmella’s sommelier who told her that she couldn’t be Sasha and or Carmella. Then Carmella herself came out to cut her promo. Then Sasha came out and cut a promo on Bianca where she did a strange amount of gyrating. They had a stare-down with Carmella and Reginald standing in the background silently the whole time. Reginald eventually spoke up and again told Bianca that she couldn’t beat Sasha. I don’t understand why Reginald cares about Sasha vs. Bianca that much. I guess the idea is that he wants to steer Bianca away from Sasha so that Carmella can get another title shot, but there is absolutely no reason for us to think Carmella deserves another title shot. Bianca eventually whipped Reginald with her hair while Carmell and Sasha both laughed.
Bianca was great here and Carmella was fine, but Sasha and Reginald came off like people trying to dramatically recite their lines rather than like real people, and by the end, it felt like the only reason Reginald and Carmella were out there was so Bianca could have a face-to-face with Sasha and be the one to “win” the segment (beating Reginald up created an excuse for them to play her music at the end) without there having to be any sort of physical altercation between Sasha and Bianca. Once again, it’s characters actions (in this case Reginald and Carmella) being dictated by the goal of the plot rather than by any motivations of the characters themselves.

PAUL HEYMAN TELLS ROMAN REIGNS THAT EDGE HAS ARRIVED- snore
I know that WWE does it with their backstage segments all the time, but cutting backstage for this even though there is no logical reason to cut to this and zooming in on Heyman leaning over and telling Roman the news makes the whole feel so fake.

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS SAMI ZAYN- Sami is good a being his character, but his character is past the point of being an annoying heel and has entered into the realm of go-away heat for me.

CHAD GABLE & OTIS DOZOVIC vs. BOBBY ROODE & DOLPH ZIGGLER- 2.25/10
Otis and Gable cut a meh promo before the match. Roode’s “GLORIOUS!” music is gone, which is sad, but on the bright side, so is Dolph’s terrible music.
The Street Profits did guest commentary from somewhere backstage. They were very annoying, mostly because they were both talking at the same time and never shut up. That G-d this match only went three and a half minutes. They were in a picture-in-picture box in the corner of the screen the whole time… aside from the part where someone decided that we needed to see a full-screen version of the Street Profits standing there and talking so we cut away from the match entirely. Moments like these make me grateful that I have no idea what Kevin Dunn looks like, because if I ever bumped into him on the street, I don’t think I would be able to stop myself from screaming at him.
They complained about not getting an automatic rematch, so I guess they never got the memo that automatic rematches are only for complacent people and are (as Shane put it) “passe,” which made them come off like whiny heels. And if automatic rematches are back, then management is dropping the ball here by not taking any steps to book one in the MONTH since the titles changed hands.
The heels won clean. We’ve had four matches so far tonight. The first one saw the babyfaces cheat to win, and the next three have had the heels go over cleanly.

HULK HOGAN TALKS ABOUT GETTING SCREWED OUT OF THE WWF WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE BY ANDRE THE GIANT, TED DIBIASE, AND CROOKED REFEREE EARL HEBNER, BUT MOSTLY ABOUT EDGE- snore
Michal Cole actually called it a “wrestling match.” That caught me by surprise. Hogan’s segue was so abrupt and happened after only saying one sentence about himself that it makes me suspect that this was edited down (especially because they pretty much immediately cut to a video of Edge pointing at the WrestleMania sign even before Hogan started talking about him). Hogan said nothing useful here (he said that whoever Edge chooses to face is “in a lot of trouble”), but at last he didn’t waste time talking about himself.

EDGE SHAKES HANDS WITH NAKAMURA BACKSTAGE- I guess this was intended to show that Nakamura is a babyface now despite not doing anything to change.

WWE INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: Big E.(c) vs. Apollo Crews vs. Sami Zayn- 6.75/10
Big E. won clean in a perfectly fine three-way, pinning Crews.

EDGE & ROMAN REIGNS SEGMENT- didn’t like it
Edge came out and cut a good promo. Roman came out with his crew. They argued over who was in whose head, which is the most boring thing to see people argue over. Roman sent his guys to the back and demanded that Edge choose him. Kevin Owens came out of nowhere and gave Roman a stunner.
WWE does this so much that it came off like what it actually was, which was an artificial way for them to get out of Edge having to give an answer about who he will choose, even after they spent the whole show hyping up that Edge was going to choose tonight because Roman said so. And, of course, this means that Roman vs. Owens is continuing for a fourth month now. Roman has been the champion for almost six months now and has defended the belt in actual programs again just two people. I have no interest in seeing Reigns vs. Owens anymore.


This was a bad episode of Smackdown. As it always does shortly after the Rumble (and during Survivor Series, and any other time of the year when Creative can be summed with a PPV tag line), WWE is completely undone by their inability to not be a slave to their own tropes.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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