BRM Reviews the 12/4/2020 Smackdown (terrible)

[Big Red Machine]

VIDEO TRIBUTE AND TEN-BELL SALUTE FOR PAT PATTERSON- I was wondering why they didn’t do the salute on NXT. I guess they were saving it for Smackdown.

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS ROMAN REIGNS- bad
This happened in the ring. Kayla rattled off a big list of accolades for Roman and called him the “most dominant Superstar™ of his era.” Of course, they got annoyed at Kayla for missing some.
Kayla wonders if Roman not coming out to fight Owens last week means he is afraid of Owens. Roman blasts her for asking a stupid question rather than answering it. Kayla then asks Roman if he is “manipulating” Jey and “using him as a pawn.” Roman blasts her for asking another bad question, then tags Heyman in for the spin. Heyman says that Jey Uso has main evented Smackdown for the past five weeks, so clearly listening to Roman is working for Jey.
Kevin Owens came out to interrupt them and asked to fight. Heyman is about to speak but Jey Uso snatches the microphone away from him and accepts the challenge, saying “we run this show.” If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same thing happened three weeks ago, and I guess Jey just hasn’t learned his lesson yet that jumping in and speaking for Roman will only serve to get Roman angry at him.
Owens responds “I wasn’t talking to the busboy. I was talking to the head of the table.” Owens says that if they won’t fight tonight, they should do so at TLC… and because it’s TLC, he suggests that they have a TLC match. Jey Uso- the man who interfered in Roman’s last big PPV singles match- is standing RIGHT THERE. Shouldn’t Owens be asking for a cage match or a Hell in a Cell match or some sort of match that will prevent Jey from interfering, rather than one that will invite him to do so? What an idiot.
Roman refused to fight now on the pretext that Kayla might get hurt. He went to leave, so Owens called him a bitch. This whole thing was an exceedingly clumsy way to set up a big gimmick match and title match for the PPV for no other reason than we have a PPV coming up and that PPV has a theme.

JEY USO IS A DUMBF*CK WHO STILL HASN’T LEARNED HIS LESSON- He tries to justify himself to Roman. Roman told him that there would be consequences.

The announcers told us that we’re having the PPV match, so Owens gets a title shot despite having won a grand total of one match in the past month, and that was by DQ.

BAYLEY vs. NATALYA- 2/10
Bianca Belair is on commentary. The storyline here is that Bayley is “jealous” of Bianca Belair for reasons that even Bianca flat-out admits that she doesn’t understand, giving Bayley’s standing in the company.
The match went six minutes, half of which took place during a commercial. I love how Bayley was unbeatable as champion, but now she’s tapping out clean in six minutes. Yes, clean. I was SHOCKED at that, but we actually got a clean finish here.

MORE PAT PATTERSON STUFF- fine

DANIEL BRYAN, REY MYSTERIO JR., & BIG E. vs. DOLPH ZIGGLER, SHINSUKE NAKAMURA, & SAMI ZAYN- 7/10
They had the original IC Title at ringside because Pat Patterson. That sort of th9ing doesn’t do anything for me and feels like overkill after the video package. All six guys here are former IC Champions, also because Pat Patterson. Telling me that they were all “honored” to be selected for this Pat Patterson tribute match does a lot more for me.
Everyone worked hard and they had a pretty great match for the time allotted. Bryan pinned Zayn with a roll-up.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- terrible
The babyfaces won the match and were celebrating on the outside. For no reason, they decided to get int the ring and have a stand-off with the heels. Zayn and Nakamura tried to attack the babyfaces. Ziggler was supposed to go, too, but only faked… but instead of rolling out of the ring to escape like you would escape, Dolph just stood there. Then, despite the fact that he didn’t do anything to the babyfaces, the babyfaces all beat Dolph up after he begged off a lot. I have no idea what the purpose of this was. If you wanted a babyface to win with his finisher, just make that the finish. And if your story requires Bryan to pin Sami via roll-up here, then you don’t get to have the babyface hitting his finish! That’s the sacrifice you make to tell a story!

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS KEVIN OWENS- bad
Owens is annoyed at Roman because Roman has changed and is a jerk now. You know… general “I’m a heel now!” stuff instead of the actual bad things that Roman has done to people.
Kalisto walked in and was a goof. Then Owens began to engage in PG bullsh*t, because apparently Fox won’t let WWE say “asshole” (or so we’re led to believe). It’s much better to have your babyface just call someone a jerk with passion than to dance around some other word.
Otis showed up and was an over-the-top goofball.

SPLIT-SCREEN INTERVIEW WITH SASHA BANKS AND CARMELLA- terrible
Sasha was saying babyface mostly babyface things, but her cadence made her sound like a heel. Carmella was also unlikable, but at least that was what she was trying to do. What she didn’t manage to do was be compelling in any way.
Carmella thinks Sasha is jealous of her… so that’s two women’s feuds on this show, and two jealousy angles. Sasha granted Carmella a title match at the PPV, even though Carmella has not won a match since the end of April.

BUDDY MURPHY (w/the Mysterios) vs. BARON CORBIN (w/Steve Cutler & Wesley Blake)- 6/10
Corbin brought the former Forgotten Sons to counter those cheating Mysterios. They’re dressed in suits and hoods. They look really goofy. The announcers didn’t know who they were (and I will admit that I didn’t recognize them at first either, and only recognized Blake on my own. You’d think there would have been a story they could have told with Murphy’s former tag team partner coming in to help Corbin, but we’re not going in that direction because that would be, like, work and stuff.
An otherwise good match ended when the Remembered Sons attacked the Mysterios on the outside to cause a distraction, allowing Corbin to win.

THE STREET PROFITS WASTE TIME BEFORE BEING INTERRUPTED- bad
This started off as one of those things where we cut to the Street Profits and they play human recap package, serving no logical purpose. Bobby Roode interrupted them and pointed out that he and Ziggler beat the last week. Good point, Bobby. This good point was immediately watered down by Cesaro showing up and saying “oh yeah… well… me and Nakamura are the best team on Smackdown and deserve a title shot… um… because,” and everyone acting like this was an equal claim to Roode’s. Everyone started yelling at each other.

KEVIN OWENS & OTIS DOZOVIC vs. JEY USO & ROMAN REIGNS (w/Paul Heyman)- 4/10
Roman didn’t show up to team with Uso for a while. He finally did show up. Stuff happened for a while. Roman beat Otis up with the stairs because apparently one non-legal competitor can hit another non-legal competitor with a weapon and it’s not a DQ. That seems like bullsh*t.
Eventually, we got some bad, forced drama between Reigns and Uso, followed by yet another pointless, stupid, DQ (Roman ran into the ring and got DQed for touching Owens). This did nothing for anyone.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
Uso and Roman beat Owens up with a chair, then Roman beat Uso up, too, just because.
The current Roman Reigns is a great character, but Jey Uso has become an albatross around his neck. We never got any sort of explanation for why Jey changed his tune and decided to join Roman, so all of the drama between them feels forced, Jey feels like a total simpleton for believing Roman’s BS and letting Roman treat him this way, and everything they do with Jey feels like either a desperate ploy for a attention or a way to get out of giving us a finish because his motives and those of Roman in his actions towards Jey are so inscrutable that we can’t come up with a consistent and logical reasoning for them.


This was a TERRIBLE episode of Smackdown. This reminded me of watching Raw in 2017-2019. Constant bullsh*t finishes in big matches, horrible talking segments, and the absolute laziest booking you’ve ever seen, making the results of the matches feel completely meaningless.