BRM Reviews the 4/16/2015 Smackdown (bad)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- decent
Cena comes out and recaps Rusev’s beatdown of him and the title match announcement for Extreme Rules, then explains to us the Rules of a Russian Chain match and actually did a decent job of making it sound a lot more vicious than a match with the “touch all four corners consecutively” win condition should.

Then Kidd and Cesaro came out with their lame new t-shirts and were heels. They had some good lines, but them saying “fact” at the same time came off as really lame. It’s goofy and kind of fun when Tyson Kidd does it, but two of them doing it together is lame.
They said that they were “the greatest champions in WWE today,” so Cena challenged one of them to accept his US Title Open Challenge, but then Daniel Bryan came out to a HUGE pop and set up a tag team match. Based on Bryan’s promo, I thought that a fatal four-way would have made a lot more sense. Bryan was in his gear for some reason, so I guess no one told him the match was going to be later.

R-TRUTH vs. BRAY WYATT- pointless squash
And when I say pointless, I mean the following: In just over the past year, we have seen this match five times. That’s a lot for guys who have never feuded. Even worse, Bray has won every single one of them in less than five minutes. Even worse than that: it NEVER WINDS UP MEANING ANYTHING.
They are pushing that “over the last few weeks, Bray Wyatt has been delivering these very cryptic, very bizarre messages.” Past few weeks? THAT’S BASICALLY ALL HE’S DONE SINCE HE GOT CALLED UP!

INJURY UPDATES- Paige has been advised not to compete until further notice. We then went to a pre-taped promo from Roman Reigns where he seemed to be perfectly fine after being viciously destroyed by Big Show.

MIZ PROMO- good. Then he got interrupted by… WADE BARRETT? Is Miz-Dow on the toilet or something?

THE MIZ vs. WADE BARRETT- one-move squash
Well… at least they put Wade over clean rather than with a distraction by Miz-Dow.

MIZ & SANDOW SEGMENT- a lot to like and a lot to hate.
LIKE:
1. Miz’s performance. He was great.
2. The “winner gets the rights to the ‘Miz’ gimmick” match #BRMBookedItFirst
3. Summer Rae got dialogue! Remember everyone: women are not objects. When you actually make them a part of the storyline, it can bring things up.

HATE:
1. The “stop copying me!” crap. Sandow’s supposed to be the babyface. Why is he acting like an annoying younger sibling?
2. Summer’s dialogue was pretty bad
3. This segment made Miz’s earlier promo redundant and this match was hurt by Barrett squashing him. Could they really have not found anyone else to be in that spot?
4. WHY THE F*CK IS THIS MATCH NOT TAKING PLACE ON THE PPV?!
What else is going on the card?
1. World Title match
2. Women’s Title match
3. IC Title match
4. US Title match
5. Sheamus vs. Ziggler
6. Big Show vs. Reigns
7. Bray vs. whoever
That’s only seven matches. Even if you add a tag title match, there is no reason that this match can’t be on the show (just move the women’s match or the Bray match to the pre-show). I actually think that this could be a nice bit of comedy to break up a very hardcore gimmick match-heavy show.

NEVILLE vs. SHEAMUS- 7/10
So they had a great match and all, but I hated the finish. So they’ll job Wade Barrett out twice in past week (last week on SD in a six-man tag and this week on Raw to Cena in a US Title match) when Wade is supposed to be challenging for the IC Title at the PPV, but they can’t let Sheamus beat Neville, a guy whose only storyline is that he is the new guy looking to establish himself? If ever there is a time when a guy can really get over with a clean loss, it’s a spot like Neville is in now, so why have Sheamus get DQed? You can still do the same deal afterwards with Sheamus trying to hurt Neville and Ziggler making the save, but this way you actually give us a clean finish!
I don’t know. Maybe this wouldn’t have bothered me so much if they hadn’t been jobbing Wade out the way they have (and even on the UK tour, so Neville being an Englishman wrestling in England isn’t a valid excuse for the DQ, either).

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- apparently Bronies dislike Sheamus. Who knew?
Dolph says no one likes Sheamus because Sheamus is a bully, so he wants to fight Sheamus right now. Sheamus tells Dolph to kiss his ass. Then he challenges Dolph to a “Kiss Me Arse Match” at Extreme Rules. Well that’s a f*cking random (and stupid) stip. And it just got weirder. Based on what both men said, I believe that the stip here is not that the loser must kiss the winner’s ass but that whoever loses the match must kiss Sheamus’ ass. That seems pretty tough on Sheamus. I guess he’d better win, then.

We get a soundless clip of Cena and Bryan “discussing strategy” while Cole plugs the match. Wouldn’t it suck if the Upper-Cats hired a lip-reader to review the footage and this cameraman has now given away Bryan and Cena’s entire strategy?


LOST MATADORES (w/El Torito) vs. THE NEW DAY (w/Xavier Woods)- 3/10
A short match, but with a great finish.
Michael Cole talked about The New Day’s “change of attitude,” but they really haven’t changed their attitude at all. They’re just acknowledging that people seem to not like them.

FANDANGO & ROSA DRAMA BACKSTAGE- SNORE!
Fandango breaks up with Rosa. Then he walks away. Then the Rosebuds run by and Adam Rose tells Rosa that if does what he says, she might be able to get back together with Fandango. The only way this will be good is if it ends up giving us Fandango vs. Adam Rose (w/Rosa Mendes & the Rosebuds) in a winner, loser, and everyone at ringside must leave town match.

BIG SHOW PROMO- really boring, though it would have been a little better if they didn’t keep cutting to the clips. It was structured well, but it was just boring. The important part of this is that Big Show will face Roman Reigns in a Last Man Standing Match at Extreme Rules.

TRIPLE THREAT MATCH: Cameron vs. Alicia Fox vs. Natalya- 4.25/10
Cameron took an ATROCIOUS phantom bump for Nattie’s discus clothesline. Aside from that I thought they did a good job with the time they had and told their story very well.
FANDANGO vs. ADAM ROSE (w/the Rosebuds)- no rating, bad segment.
All of this was time that should have gone to the main event. There was no reason to do this match here- especially with a main event that could be SOOOOO awesome if they give it time.
No one gives a sh*t about this angle, and it only started a few days ago. Give it time to breathe and build up instead of doing what they did with Fandango, Summer and Layla last year, which was to blow through everything in a few weeks, then just repeat the same sh*t ad nauseam for months.

BRAY WYATT PROMO- waste of time. There is absolutely no difference between Bray cutting one cryptic promo a week and cutting two cryptic promos a week, so just keep it to Raw and don’t waste time on Smackdown. Time that should have gone to…

DANIEL BRYAN & JOHN CENA vs. UPPER-CATS (w/Natalya)- 5.75/10
They had just about the best match they possibly could the infuriatingly short amount of time they had (a mere eight minutes). Bryan made Tyson tap out, so that means that our tag team champions have now lost TWICE this week- once in a handicap match and once to a makeshift tag team, and none of it will lead to anything.

This show would have been a lot better if they had replaced the Bray vs. Truth match with the Divas match and replaced Miz with Truth in the Barrett match, and cut out the Fandango vs. Rose match so that they could have given some more time to the main event. My return is over. I’d done with this pointless show again.