BRM Reviews the 12/19/2017 Smackdown (boring)

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

BRM Reviews the 12/19/2017 Smackdown (boring)

Post by Big Red Machine » Dec 20th, '17, 10:48

OPENING SEGMENT- fine
Daniel Bryan comes out, plugs the women’s Royal Rumble, and then plugs tonight’s main event, which will be Owens, Zayn, & Jinder vs. AJ, Orton, & Nakamura. I would be SOOOO happy if they just gave this, like, forty minutes.
Then Shane came out. He started to talk to Bryan, but then stopped to ask the crowd “how’s everyone doing tonight?” then said something about the city, just to get his f*cking cheap pop. Then he repeated Bryan’s plug for the women’s Royal Rumble for no reason. Then he said “but let’s talk about a PPV that just recently happened. In fact, let’s go back to just this past Sunday at Clash of Champions. You know. You were there with me, in this very ring, and we were both special guest referees.” Things like this are one of the reasons I find Shane so insufferable. Rather than just get down to business and talk about things in a natural manner, he’s got to “build up” to it even though he’s not saying anything shocking, and often (as in this case) winds up essentially “setting the scene” for someone who he knows for a fact already knows the situation. He comes off like a narcissistic little twerp in love with the sound of his own voice. Every time he starts to speak it makes me wish someone would punch him in the mouth and break his jaw.
He takes forever to admit that he stopped counting when Sami had Orton pinned because he was angry that Owens beat Vince up and because Sami cost him the Hell in a Cell match and because Owens & Zayn supposedly screwed Team Smackdown out of winning the Survivor Series match… which they actually didn’t do and it absolutely infuriates me every time Shane tells this pathetic lie and no one calls him out on it.
The phrase Shane kept repeating was “my emotions got the better of me” as if he is acknowledging that he did wrong, but he’s really not. Why? Because what he’s really doing is setting up for another attempt to manipulate people. After admitting that his emotions got the better of him when he didn’t count a perfectly legitimate pin, he then tells Bryan that he understands that “your emotions got the better of you” when Bryan got upset at Shane over this. This is an attempt to use that phrase to equivocate between Shane getting upset and Bryan getting upset in order to disguise the fact that Bryan got upset about something legitimate for the situation- that Shane was being a biased referee after he had sworn he would be impartial- while Shane was getting upset about something totally illegitimate in that situation.
Shane asks Bryan why he did this. Bryan says “I did what I did to protect you from yourself.” The crowd chanted “THANK YOU, DANIEL!” Shane ignored them, then told Bryan “with all due respect, I don’t need protection from you.” The crowd booed this heavily. Bryan said that Shane did, and the crowd cheered.
Bryan said that he did this to protect their shared vision of “The Land of Opportunity,” pointing out that it needs to be a “Land of Opportunity for everyone. Not just people that you like.” I popped HUGE for this, as it marks the first time that someone has called Shane out on his bullsh*t.
Shane responds by showing that he just plain doesn’t get it by warning Bryan that Owens & Zayn will stab him in the back. It’s not about whether or not Owens & Zayn eventually stab him in the back or not! It’s about doing what is fair and just, and that is exactly why Bryan did. Potential futures do not matter to what is fair and just because those concepts are informed by the past and take place in the here and now. That’s why we say it is moral to save a starving baby even though there is a chance said baby might grow up to become the next Hitler. Shane tried to give Bryan advice “from a business standpoint,” to which Bryan responded by asking “are you saying I should have done what was ‘best for business?’” I found this to be really ironic because Bryan’s whole position has been that as much as Shane might hate Kevin & Sami, they are excellent wrestlers and keeping them on the show is what is best for Smackdown- which is just a Smackdown-specific version of “best for business.”
Bryan told Shane “if you want to fire somebody, fire me. Because I don’t want to see Shane O’Mac turn in to Mr. McMahon.” Dude… it’s about two months too late for that. Shane did not fire Bryan. Instead he just left, which must have been hard to do through that thick tension. This segment was fine, but would have been better if Shane wasn’t so wrong and insufferable.

CHAD GABLE & SHELTON BENJAMIN vs. THE USOS- 5.75/10
Gable & Benjamin beat the champs again. If you were going to do this, why the hell did you have Gable get pinned by them two nights again in the title match?

CHARLOTTE PROMO- She suck’s Steph’s metaphorical lady-dick for booking a women’s Royal Rumble (how can Steph book Smackdown women in a match?), but at least she did the thing that Steph totally failed to do and ACKNOWLEDGED THE ROLE OF FANS in WWE’s push of women’s wrestling.

WOMEN’S SEGMENT- terrible
Naomi comes out and declares herself an entrant into the Rumble. They tease a title match at WrestleMania, which would be a horrific waste of Charlotte. Then the Riott Squad came out and Naomi said the following:
“Well, well, well… if it isn’t the three stooges who won’t be entering the Royal Rumble match.”
First of all “three stooges?” That Naomi sure is clever.
More importantly, though, is the second part of that. Naomi just established that all it takes to be in the Rumble is to say “I’m going to be in the Royal Rumble” so why does she think these three won’t? When Naomi said this I was so badly hoping that each member of the Riott Squad would immediately declare herself an entrant and Ruby would look at Naomi and say “Looks like you’re wrong, dumbass.”

Naomi continued by lecturing them, telling them that “the Royal Rumble isn’t about sneak attacks. It’s about every woman for herself.”
1. Sneak attacks are a huge part of the Royal Rumble. The whole 2003 Royal Rumble is practically built around them.
2. Those two concepts are not mutually exclusive. In fact, in the Royal Rumble they tend to be mutually reinforcing, as the sneak attacks usually take the form of someone betraying their partner because it is every competitor for him/herself.

Naomi the proceeded to inform them that the Royal Rumble is also about “surviving the numbers game” and called them “chicken-heads” before challenging them to a tag team match. The crowd chanted “CHICKEN-HEAD!” at the heels, and Naomi laughed at her own cleverness. She came off like the biggest dork in recorded history.

CHARLOTTE & NAOMI vs. THE RIOTT SQUAD (w/Liv Morgan)- 2.5/10
The match was pretty good for the (very) limited time it was given. Sarah Logan worked over Charlotte’s knee and Charlotte sold it well. She managed to make the hot tag to Naomi, who then overcame an attempt to interfere by Liv Morgan and pinned Sarah Logan clean in the middle of the ring with her finisher. So yeah. Even in this totally meaningless match, they decided to beat our new group of scary heels. The match was pretty short, too. So much for that Divas/Women’s R/Evolution talk, huh?

RUSEV, ENGLISH, & NEW DAY DO CHRISTMAS STUFF BACKSTAGE- Everyone involved in this looked like a total buffoon. The people are going nuts for Rusev, though. Rusev stomped on one of their pancakes, which made Big E. angry enough to accept a challenge to a match. These are supposed to be grown men.

DOLPH ZIGGLER PROMO- snore
He brags about the titles he has won in the past and shows a bunch of clips of his wins celebrations. This wasn’t so much heelishly annoying as it was just plain boring. Dolph’s yelling style of cutting promos is pretty grating, too. He says we fans didn’t appreciate him and asks if we “want something to remember [him] by” then puts the belt down and walks out. Isn’t this basically what Nattie did at the PPV except that Dolph happens to be the champion?

OWENS & ZAYN THANK DANIEL BRYAN BACKSTAGE- meh
Bryan clarifies that he did it for Smackdown, not for them or their fans. They insist that he also did so because he doesn’t like Orton for “trying to break” him as part of The Authority, and they equate that to what Shane is doing to them and warn Bryan that Shane will try to do it to him next. Bryan tells them they’re delusional and orders them to f*ck off.

ADIEN ENGLISH & RUSEV vs. THE NEW DAY (w/Big E.)- DUD!
They’re all wrestling in their holiday clown suits. Big E., the member of New Day who accepted the match, isn’t wrestling it? What a coward!
Stuff happened for a bit until New Day grabbed their bag of presents, brought it into the ring, and started throwing them to the crowd, grinding things to a halt. Despite the fact that New Day had a bag full of foreign objects in the ring, the referee did nothing to try to get it away from them. Despite the fact that Rusev & English were on the outside this whole time, the referee made no effort to count them out, either.
More dumb sh*t proceeded to happen, involving food. Guys were on the outside forever and weren’t counted out. English tried to force Xavier’s face into a mound of whipped cream on top of pancakes but he got “flapjacked into the flapjacks” instead. This sucked.

AJ STYLES, RANDY ORTON, & SHINSUKE NAKAMURA vs. SAMI ZAYN, KEVIN OWENS, & JINDER MAHAL (w/the Singh Brothers)- 7/10
The match was acceptable as a seventeen-minute main event but felt like it could have been a lot better with more of a heat segment. The Singh Brothers got ejected from ringside, but still came back and even got into the ring… and the referee did nothing. The babyfaces all hit the heels with their finishers and got the win (with Nakamura pinning Zayn instead of the much more expendable Jinder for some reason)… and that was it. Babyfaces win and heels lose and celebration and end of show. This felt very counter-productive.

Another boring episode of Smackdown. It felt like whoever was booking the matches aside from the opener forgot that this wasn’t a house show, because the rest of the show was totally unproductive babyface victories, with nothing feeling like it has moved forward with the possible exception of the Shane/Bryan story.
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

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

Re: BRM Reviews the 12/19/2017 Smackdown (boring)

Post by KILLdozer » Dec 20th, '17, 11:53

That combination of Tyler Breeze and Shawn Michaels guy is so tiresome. Oh, that was Ziggler, right lol.

Yeah, whatever that means, who cares. Too little too late.
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

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

Re: BRM Reviews the 12/19/2017 Smackdown (boring)

Post by KILLdozer » Dec 20th, '17, 12:26

Raw's ending wasn't much better.
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

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

Re: BRM Reviews the 12/19/2017 Smackdown (boring)

Post by Big Red Machine » Dec 20th, '17, 12:54

KILLdozer wrote: Dec 20th, '17, 12:26 Raw's ending wasn't much better.
Raw's ending was much worse from an enjoyment standpoint, but at least that did something.
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

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

Re: BRM Reviews the 12/19/2017 Smackdown (boring)

Post by KILLdozer » Dec 20th, '17, 12:58

Raw in general felt small and pretty quick as far as lack of actual stuff. How much is being cut down on Hulu? From 3 hours on television to 1.30 on Hulu lol .
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

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

Re: BRM Reviews the 12/19/2017 Smackdown (boring)

Post by KILLdozer » Dec 21st, '17, 07:37

I feel like there should be a meme about...

"If every day is a new day...and every day is Rusev Day...what day is it actually?"
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

User avatar
XIV
Posts: 1802
Joined: Aug 19th, '13, 11:38

Re: BRM Reviews the 12/19/2017 Smackdown (boring)

Post by XIV » Dec 21st, '17, 08:45

KILLdozer wrote: Dec 21st, '17, 07:37 I feel like there should be a meme about...

"If every day is a new day...and every day is Rusev Day...what day is it actually?"
To quote a legend...

What?
Have A Nice Day!

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

Re: BRM Reviews the 12/19/2017 Smackdown (boring)

Post by KILLdozer » Dec 21st, '17, 20:06

XIV wrote: Dec 21st, '17, 08:45
KILLdozer wrote: Dec 21st, '17, 07:37 I feel like there should be a meme about...

"If every day is a new day...and every day is Rusev Day...what day is it actually?"
To quote a legend...

What?
It's pretty simple actually lol.
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 17 guests