BRM Reviews the 8/28/2018 Smackdown (pretty good)

[Big Red Machine]

NEW DAY CHAMPIONSHIP CELEBRATION- Shockingly tolerable
King Booker is back. New Day are playing along with his stupid sh*t. That scepter looks pathetically plastic. I will admit to laughing at Booker snubbing Big E. Oh. Okay. They’re five-time champions now. Which is why WWE has Booker out here doing this… except that King Booker led to Booker’s SIXTH world title reign. This was a lot less stupid and annoying than I was afraid it would be.

#1 CONTENDERSHIP QUALIFIER: Sheamus & Cesaro vs. Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson vs. The Colons- 6.75/10
New Day are on commentary again. Their commentary table has been garishly decorated with pancakes in the kind of way that only WWE would ever even consider thinking was somehow a good idea. They occasionally used a picture-in-picture to show us New Day, sitting at their commentary table, talking, and shoving pancakes into their faces.
Hey, look… the Colons are alive.
In perhaps the single most false statement a WWE announcer has made in the past five years (and think of the ground that covers!) Corey Graves claimed that “Primo & Epico have always been a force to be reckoned with in the tag team division.
Sheamus & Cesaro won, then got in New Day’s faces.

PAIGE, LANA, RUSEV, & ENGLISH BACKSTAGE- stupid
Paige says she got “approached with a very strong argument” that convinced her to put Rusev & English in this tournament. Oh come on. There are only seven teams on Smackdown, and one of them are the tag champs. Do they really expect us to think that Paige was going to do this tournament with a one three-way qualifier and one regular tag match qualifier but then someone convinced her to put Rusev & English in via an argument about their merit? F*ck off.
And what could this argument have possibly even been? “If you’re putting losers like The Colons in then you’ve got to put Rusev Day in, too?” That just buries Paige for being dumb enough to put The Colons in but not put Rusev & English in.
Anyway, Rusev thinks it was Lana who convinced Paige to do this but it was actually Aiden English. Everyone is happy and friendly again, meaning we spent months and months building up dissension to lead to jack sh*t.

JEFF HARYD PROMO- Jeff claimed that, among other things that Randy has done to him “he’s altered the chemistry in my brain, eradicating all rational thought.” Ummm… seems to me like it’s kind of tough to pin that particular issue on Randy. Rnady came out and they cut rather wacky promos on each other, culminating in Jeff challenging Orton to a Hell in a Cell match.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS CARMELLA- great promo by Carmella
Then R-Truth showed up to be a clown, and Tye Dillinger showed up to be the chaperone for the apparently mentally disabled R-Truth.

BILLIE KAY & PEYTON ROYCE PROMO- terrible and annoying, as usual.

NAOMI vs. BILLIE KAY (w/Peyton Royce)- 0.5/10
Short match. Heels cheat to win. None of this appears to be going anywhere.

BRYAN & BRIE PROMO- Bryan was great, but his whole spiel about Miz “acting” was undermined by Brie’s performance (and I do use that exact word intentionally), in which she sounded so proud of herself for being able to remember all of her lines.
They were interrupted by Almas & Vega for no real reason other than to create an excuse for a match. Bryan and Paige engaged in goofy and pointless comedy to get the match made… but instead of the logical and expected mixed tag (both to serve as a teaser of what we’ll get at the PPV between the Bryans and the Mizanins, and also so Vega, mainly a non-wrestler, can get beaten by Brie, who needs her credibility rebuilt after years of inactivity), we got a singles match between Bryan and Almas, which WWE’s terrible booking logic has somehow found a way to get me to complain about.

DANIEL BRYAN (w/Brie Bella) vs. ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS (w/Zelina Vega)- 7.25/10
These guys had a great match. The thing I love most about Bryan’s matches is that they always seem to include some moves you just never see anymore (especially in WWE). This match gave us an Inverted Gory Special and a Reverse Tornado DDT. Unfortunately it ended via DQ when Miz and Maryse got involved, but that did lead to an excellent post-match beat-down that is probably the closest thing we’ve seen to a true heavy-heat angle in WWE in years.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS CHARLOTTE- GREAT!
“You don’t deserve anything you don’t win.” She’s not wrong in any way.

AJ/JOE SEGMENT- same thing we’ve seen for weeks now: AJ vows to shut Joe up, Joe says/does some inflammatory thing that involves mentioning AJ’s family.


AJ vs. Joe for the belt is official for HIAC, and Paige has okayed Jeff vs. Orton in HIAC.

WWE SMACKDOWN WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Charlotte Flair(c) vs. Carmella- 6/10

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- GREAT!
Becky jumped Charlotte from behind, then said she was going to take the title back at Hell in a Cell, and also called Charlotte a bitch.


This was a pretty good episode of Smackdown. It did a very efficient job of setting things up for Hell in a Cell. The only problem (aside from the unneeded bursts of dumb comedy) seems to be the one or two feuds that are just stuck doing the same thing every week, but those weren’t the feuds being focused on tonight, so it really didn’t hurt tonight’s show.

[cero2k]

I found it incredibly annoying that Corey Graves was marking out for King Booker considering Booker and Graves had 'legit' biff with each other

the best thing all show was watching Brie's reaction to Alma's chops, first it was like wtf, then was like smile cuz you know Bryan is enjoying the fuck out of this

also

In Post Wrestling’s review of SD tonight, John Pollock mentioned that after the show he heard from someone in the company that after the response to Becky last week they have changed direction.

He says that going forward they don’t want to portray it as a defined face and heel. Rather, they want it to just be two ex-friends who both have valid reasons why they are against one another and neither will back down from the other.

He made it sound like Becky will be portrayed more as an anti-hero than an outright heel going forward.

[Big Red Machine]

It's obviously damage control, but I don't think it works from an artistic point of view because of the post-match hug, and especially the second one. At that point, to be, Becky has clearly calmed down from that initial post-match frustration and disappointment, which makes her attack on Charlotte right afterwards a (relatively) clear-headed choice rather than the emotional instinctive reaction it would have been if she had just slugged Charlotte right away.

[cero2k]

It's obviously damage control, but I don't think it works from an artistic point of view because of the post-match hug, and especially the second one. At that point, to be, Becky has clearly calmed down from that initial post-match frustration and disappointment, which makes her attack on Charlotte right afterwards a (relatively) clear-headed choice rather than the emotional instinctive reaction it would have been if she had just slugged Charlotte right away.

it actually works IMO because if it had been frustration, Becky should have apologized and support Charlotte, but now given what has happened, those hugs are like a mob boss kiss of death, or maybe more like Becky trying to take it as it was and then realizing that no, she needs to stand up for what she believes in and stop being under Charlotte's shadow.

[Big Red Machine]

It's obviously damage control, but I don't think it works from an artistic point of view because of the post-match hug, and especially the second one. At that point, to be, Becky has clearly calmed down from that initial post-match frustration and disappointment, which makes her attack on Charlotte right afterwards a (relatively) clear-headed choice rather than the emotional instinctive reaction it would have been if she had just slugged Charlotte right away.

it actually works IMO because if it had been frustration, Becky should have apologized and support Charlotte, but now given what has happened, those hugs are like a mob boss kiss of death, or maybe more like Becky trying to take it as it was and then realizing that no, she needs to stand up for what she believes in and stop being under Charlotte's shadow.

I totally disagree. If it's the "mob kiss of death" then Becky intended to attack Charlotte the whole time and used the hugs to lull her into a false sense of security, which is an indisputably heel move. I also don't like the other interpretation because the idea that "I need to beat the sh*t out of my friend in order to get out of her shadow" is inherently selfish. It is Becky putting her desire to be a star above her friend's health, (and not in a situation like during a match where such a thing is inherently called for). If it's out of pure frustration at her own failure, though, it is not thinking with a clear head, and instead of having Becky cut her big heel promo on SD, you'd need to have her try to speak but just have Charlotte charge out and attack her so that Becky never has the chance to apologize (someone can make it clear to us earlier in the show that either Becky wanted to apologize in person or that she has tried to apologize via other means but Charlotte has blocked her on Twitter and has been ignoring her phone-calls or whatever). Having Charlotte turn her attempt to apologize into a brawl then gives Becky a justifiable reason to be angry the next week, etc. etc.

[KILLdozer]

I'm actually watching SD #84 right now lol. Why couldn't I have been watching THIS live at 16, 17, 18, or even, now-a-days when I could actually get the most of it lol.