BRM Reviews the 2/27/2018 Smackdown (AJ VS. CENA!)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 2/27/2018 Smackdown (AJ VS. CENA!)

Post by Big Red Machine » Feb 28th, '18, 08:12

OPENIGN SEGMENT- bad
John Cena comes out and says he wants into the title match at Fastlane so he can guarantee himself a match at WrestleMania. He attempts to avoid a Shane O’ Mac lecture by saying that he’d like the chance to earn his way into the match. Unfortunately, Shane comes out anyway and… well… the pointing at the WrestleMania sign is annoying because of how excessive it is, but Shane, with his hokey, dramatic “behold my grand vision” theatrics is the only person Ive ever seen make it look completely phony.
Shane starts to lecture Cena about “the pathway you are proposing- to put you directly into the WWE Championship match,” at which point I started screaming because Cena specifically said that he wasn’t looking for a “hand out” and wanted to “do what it takes to earn” a spot in that match!. Cena himself seems to have forgotten this, though, and now suggest that Shane put him in solely because half of the fans would want him to win and half of the fans would want him to lose. The sad part is that the exact same thing would be true of Heath Slater.
Shane’s attempt at a lecture is interrupted by Daniel Bryan coming out so that Bryan can give the condescending lecture instead… so apparently Bryan didn’t listen to anything Cena said, either. Bryan says that in tonight’s main event Cena will face AJ Styles, and will be added to the PPV main event if he wins. Cool.

SAMI ZAYN vs. BARON CORBIN- 6.5/10
Kevin Owens was on commentary. He was quite hilarious. The best bit was probably him responding to a glare form Corbin by saying “if you’re looking for your hairline, it’s on top of your head.” Unfortunately, the whole reason Owens was on commentary was so we could cut away to Bryan and Shane arguing about whether or not he should be allowed to do commentary. Shane once again insisted that Bryan “let” this happen, without ever explaining why he himself didn’t just overrule Bryan, he is the boss, right?
When we got back form a mid-match commercial, we almost immediately cut back to Bryan watching the match… and here comes Shane with a box of popcorn, like a giant douchebag. Dolph Ziggler jumped the barricade and gave Owens a receipt for last week’s superkick, in both the kayfabe and non-kayfabe sense. This caused Zayn to be distracted. Corbin grabbed Zayn for End of Days while Dolph hid, then laif Corbin out with a Zig-Zag. Good stuff.

BRYAN & SHANE BACKSTAGE- more of Shane being a douchebag. Wants to go home early, and Shane says okay.

OWENS & ZAYN BACKSTAGE- they are upset about Sami’s loss and Owens getting ambushed by Dolph… and here is Shane with his f*cking popcorn, happily being a douchebag.

RUBY RIOTT (w/the Riott Squad) vs. NAOMI (w/Becky Lynch & Charlotte Flair)- 3/10
Yet again, each babyface second gets her own entrance. This comes off as a major time-wasting ploy. This match was so important that they cut away from it- not a split-screen. I mean fully away from it- to show us Carmella sitting around and answering our questions on her phone. Thank G-d Stephanie brought us the Divas’/Women’s R/Evolution to ensure that women’s matches are not treated as afterthoughts anymore.
Ruby won clean. Water continues to be tread.

THE FASHION FILES- other people were in the room, so I decided that this was a good time to pretend the show was over, go to sleep, and then pick it up in the morning.
The segment was a painful attempt to plug USA’s new show about the murders of Biggie and Tupac. New Day featured, for obvious reasons. Big E. insisted that he was the “Biggie” in question. Whether he was doing so because he is delusional or just to manipulate the idiotically gullible Fashion Police for his own amusement is left up to your interpretation.

TAG TITLE SEGMENT- AWESOME!
New Day cut a promo that shockingly wasn’t annoying. Instead, they said competently built up their title match against The Usos at Fastlane. Then The Usos came out and cut a F*CKING AWESOME promo about how New Day’s song and dance bullsh*t doesn’t get you to WrestleMania, saying that they tried that route for years and it took them almost a decade to get to WrestleMania. They’re frustration here felt very real.
Big E. countered by pointing out that this song and dance crap has clearly worked for them because they’ve been WWE’s top tag team for the past few years, and so while The Usos might have needed to “adapt” to make it big, New Day doesn’t. While Big E. through some stiff shots at The Usos (claiming they got their jobs because of their father, for one), I would have greatly preferred it if they hadn’t bragged out hosting WrestleMania, because that’s a bullsh*t, non-wrestling role that makes them look like dorks who are content to finish in second place (for comparison, see John Cena, who would certainly get the hosting gig if he wanted it, but he wants to make sure he was a wrestling match). But so help me G-d, despite my griping last week about how much I didn’t want to see these two teas wrestle yet again, they got me excited for the match with just this one promo segment.
Then the Bludgeon Brothers came out and it was business as usual… until, after doing their usual entrance shtick on the ramp, they picked their war hammers up again, and I made that combination gasp/cheer “OH SH*T! THIS JUST GOT SERIOUS!” sound… but, shockingly, no one in the arena did. Both the Usos and The New Day cautiously retreated… and the crowd, for some inexplicable reason, responded to this by chanting “Y2J!” I thought this was one of those rare occasions where the babyfaces retreating puts over the other guys as extremely dangerous rather than making the babyfaces look bad. Plus, it’s not like the Bludgeon Brothers have really done anything heelish yet.

SHANE, RUSEV, & ENGLISH FROM “EARLIER TODAY”- bad
This footage was from earlier today… and yet the people putting this show together- both in kayfabe and out of it- still felt the need to include in the beginning of this clip a scene of Shane talking on his phone to persons unknown, hyping up John Cena’s appearance on tonight’s show. Their lack of creativity is staggering.
Shane tries to talk to them, but Aiden English responds to this how every single wrestler on the roster should: he interrupts Shane with a warning of “don’t patronize us.” English yells at Shane for not booking them. Shane then goes ahead and books Aiden English, but does so in a way that makes the fans think Rusev will be wrestling as well but he isn’t, which not only makes the crowd unhappy, but also makes Shane look like an idiot because despite professing to give the fans what we want, he is now not booking one of the most over wrestlers on the show for the third week in a row. They still got the fans to pop at the end by announcing that Aiden English would face Nakamura, but Shane’s insistence on singing Nakamura’s name made him look like a douchebag. Again.

DOLPH ZIGGLER PHONE PROMO- for those wondering how to make a Dolph Ziggler promo even more annoying, the answer is to put big, brightly-colored words on the screen. It’s been weeks of this now and I have yet to find one single person who doesn’t hate these. Why are they still doing them?

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS BOBBY ROODE- Roode starts to cut a promo on Orton, speculating that Orton is jealous of his placement of the stupid Smackdown Top Ten list. As I’ve said before, this seems like exactly the sort of thing that Randy Orton wouldn’t give a sh*t about, and thankfully Randy showed up here to vindicate me, declaring that “it’s not about the list; it’s about that title.” Hooray for logic and remembering that this is an actual wrestling show!
Orton explains that he wants the US Title because it’s the only one he hasn’t won (so I guess the Raw and SD tag belts don’t count as new titles?). Then Randy leaves and the segment ends, and it is revealed that Tom Phillips didn’t listen to a damn word Randy Orton said, declaring that “it looks like whatever Jinder Mahal did, it has worked between Orton and Roode.” I hope Randy shows up to give Tom an RKO for that.

SHINSUKE NAKAMURA vs. AIDEN ENGLISH (w/Rusev)- 4.5/10
Aiden’s song this week had sing-along lyrics on the screen, complete with a bouncing Rusev head. Aiden sung a song burying the city they were in… because it’s not like there is someone on the other brand who is already doing that. Cena stole the Bludgeon Brothers gimmick of coming out right after the previous match to have a stare-down with someone. He and Nakamura pointed at the WrestleMania sign together.

IF CENA WINS, HE GETS ADDED TO THE WWE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH AT FASTLANE: John Cena vs. AJ Styles- 8.75/10
These two had an awesome match, but not only that, but it was a match where they seemed to be going out of their way to do different stuff than usual, which I appreciated. Cena got the clean win.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- didn’t like it.
Throughout the match, I was constantly wondering why none of the devious heels already in the WWE World Heavyweight Title match didn’t just run in and attack AJ. This would both inflict damage on one of their PPV opponents while causing Cena to lose by DQ and thus keeping him out of the match as well.
While the heels inexplicably didn’t interfere in the match, Owens, Zayn, and Corbin did, in fact, run out right after the match to attack both men. Ziggler ran out to attack all of them, seemingly only so that we could get a swerve of him officially being a babyface so that he could attack AJ and then get laid out by Cena, setting up for a painfully predictable six-man tag next week, but making sure that both sides have the exact same point of (supposed) intrigue where two guys on the team don’t trust the third… which is the exact same thing we got from the Raw women last week.

A better show than usual from Smackdown, although most of that is due to the awesome main event and the Usos/New Day promo battle. Other than that, this was a bland, mediocre show, but there was nothing particularly offensive, either, which is a major victory for Smackdown.
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

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XIV
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Re: BRM Reviews the 2/27/2018 Smackdown (AJ VS. CENA!)

Post by XIV » Mar 2nd, '18, 04:42

Randy won the SD Tag Titles with Bray Wyatt.... And the first incantation of the Raw Tag Titles (in the original brand split) I believe he also held... so maybe that's why he didn;t include those?
Have A Nice Day!

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Big Red Machine
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Re: BRM Reviews the 2/27/2018 Smackdown (AJ VS. CENA!)

Post by Big Red Machine » Mar 2nd, '18, 07:00

XIV wrote: Mar 2nd, '18, 04:42 Randy won the SD Tag Titles with Bray Wyatt.... And the first incantation of the Raw Tag Titles (in the original brand split) I believe he also held... so maybe that's why he didn;t include those?
I had forgotten about the the tag title win with Bray. Still, though, the WWE Raw Tag Team Titles are separate belts that Randy has not yet won.
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

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

Re: BRM Reviews the 2/27/2018 Smackdown (AJ VS. CENA!)

Post by XIV » Mar 5th, '18, 10:37

Big Red Machine wrote: Mar 2nd, '18, 07:00
XIV wrote: Mar 2nd, '18, 04:42 Randy won the SD Tag Titles with Bray Wyatt.... And the first incantation of the Raw Tag Titles (in the original brand split) I believe he also held... so maybe that's why he didn;t include those?
I had forgotten about the the tag title win with Bray. Still, though, the WWE Raw Tag Team Titles are separate belts that Randy has not yet won.
That's fair. But WWE expect you forget things they don't mention on a weekly basis.
Have A Nice Day!

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