BRM Reviews the 6/5/2020 Smackdown

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 6/5/2020 Smackdown

Post by Big Red Machine » Jun 7th, '20, 19:10

SHOW OPENING- After a run-down of the card, we are shown Jeff Hardy happily hanging out with random Valued Backstage Crewmembers™. Then we pitch to a recap package of last week. Then Jeff makes his entrance while Cole gives us an update on Elias, who has a torn pectoral muscle and broken ribs, and could miss a few months.
Graves then tells us that “no one has heard from Jeff Hardy all week long.” I’m going to be generous here and assume that management knows what the real story is and want Jeff to communicate it on air. Does that make them look scuzzy for exploiting a car accident? Of course. But it’s generous because the alternative is that they don’t know what actually happened and are being completely irresponsible by letting Jeff speak.
Jeff tells us that was exonerated by the fact that he passed all of the sobriety tests, and the fact that eye-witnesses said that the person they saw fleeing Jeff’s car had “red hair and a red beard. And well all know who fits that description!” At which point I shouted “ERICK ROWAN!” Yeah, I know I’m supposed to think it’s Sheamus, but it’s not like Rowan hasn’t tried to commit vehicular homicide in the past twelve months.
Anyway, Jeff says that Sheamus tried to take everything from him, and he’s not going to let him get away with it. This… wasn’t bad, but Jeff has a very particular delivery that definitely sounds believable coming from him, but also comes across to me as trying too hard to be dramatic. If you like Jeff’s promos, you’ll like this. If you don’t, you won’t like it as much. That’s the sort of top-notch analysis that Cero pays me for.
Sheamus comes out and claims that Jeff is trying to blame his actions on others. He claims that the witnesses at the police station last week were all fans of Jeff’s who lied on his behalf. I know I’m supposed to think that they’re lying, but the only witness whose statement we heard was babyface WWE World Heavyweight Champion Braun Strowman, and he didn’t mention anything about the driver having red hair or a beard- just that he was wearing black clothing. Sheamus is a pretty distinctive-looking guy and has worked with him for a number of years now. I find it hard to believe that Braun wouldn’t notice that red hair, even if he was far enough away to see the color of his clothing (the best explanation I’ve heard for this was that The Fiend was using his magic to play tricks on Braun and make him see the wrong thing… but we all know that WWE will never come close to addressing this).
Sheamus said mean things to Jeff to provoke him into attacking him, at which point Sheamus quickly nailed Jeff with a Brogue Kick, then repeatedly threw him into the fiberglass boards. The beating looked good, but the rest of this wasn’t particularly engrossing.

OTIS DOZOVIC STEALS BARON CORBIN’S CROWN- terrible
Otis and Mandy are walking around backstage and they come across a chair where Corbin has left his crown and his fur… cloak? Stoll? Cape? Look… I’m not an expert on back and shoulder fashion, okay?
Anyway, they come across this and Otis sees the crown and asks Mandy if he should touch it. Mandy encourages him to try it on. He does, and then they just start walking away, with Otis wearing Corbin’s crown. Please explain to me why I’m supposed to like Otis, again? Because here, all I see is a petty criminal.
Also, they’ve got Mandy dressed in blue denim because she’s with Otis now and Otis wears blue denim. How about we let Mandy be herself and dress in her usual manner? You know… so that she can be seen as her own person and not an extension of Otis?
Cole referred to this as a “practical prank.” Corey Graves rightly told him off for this, but that’s not enough for me. I hope their next “practical prank” is to steal Michael Cole’s wallet. Then we can come back to Cole and see if he’s changed his mind.

We then cut back to Corbin coming across the missing crown. He rightfully gets upset. He grabs a Valued Backstage Crewmember™ and asks him what happened. The crewmember replies that he saw Otis wearing it (and the crewmember was visible in the background the whole time in the Otis & Mandy segment). Corbin then (again, rightfully) yells at this guy for not trying to stop the theft.
The weirdest part of this, though, is that when we cut to Corbin here, he was holding his scepter, as if he had taken it with him. That has me wondering where Corbin could have possibly been that he took his scepter with him, but not his other regalia. I know I’m “not supposed to” pay attention to things like this, but if you don’t want me to ask questions about people’s strange behavior, it’s up to you to not have them behave strangely.
Oh. And apparently these two are already scheduled for a match.

BARON CORBIN vs. OTIS DOZOVIC (w/Mandy Rose)-3.5/10
During Otis’ entrance they showed us a recap of Otis & Mandy at the pool from last week because… ummm… I guess they figured they needed to get shots of Mandy in a bikini on this week’s show. Dude… it’s 2020. We all have the internet. If we want to look at Mandy Rose in a bikini, it’s not hard to find them. She was literally a bikini model. If a viewer is attracted to Mandy Rose and wants to look at her in a bikini, said viewer will do it on their own time. We don’t need you to push it on us, so don’t insert it in where it just makes your wrestling show look low class and ridiculous (we have still not gotten any explanation for how we were able to see into Mandy’s dreams).
They did some stuff, the Corbin got angry and hit Otis with a chair for the DQ. Despite getting hit with a chair several times, Otis made a quick comeback and hit the Caterpillar on Corbin. If you were going to end the segment with Otis laying Corbin out with his big move, why not just do a clean finish?

MIZ & MORRISON USE A SPY VAN TO SPY ON BRAUN… DOING SOMETHING- dumb
Oh. They’ve pulled a prank on him by shaking up his seltzer bottle or something like that. Just because you preface something by tell us that “some people might say this is juvenile or low-brow” doesn’t absolve you of putting something that isn’t entertaining on your TV show.


KAYLA BRAXTON’S INTERVIEW OF CHAD GABLE IS INTERRUPTED BY MOJO RAWLEY- meh
Mojo makes jokes about Gable’s height, because that’s all “Creative” can come up with for this guy. He functioned as a distraction so Cesaro and Nakamura could jump Gable and they all beat him up. New Day came by to make the save, so I guess we’re getting a six-person tag.

LACEY EVANS vs. SONYA DEVILLE- 4/10
They have this gigantic CGI Lacey Evans with here idiotic catchphrase underneath it. I just don’t understand how anyone could possibly think that these things are cool. It’s the same thing as a giant balloon from the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. So what if it’s CGI? It looks just as lame.
Sonya jumped Lacey from behind during her entrance, then decided to not keep the beat-down going. We went to a commercial, and returned at the beginning o the match. Then, just before the next commercial, the ref’s leg got tangled up with Sonya’s and he was injured… but still fully conscious, which is really weird when you consider how fragile referees seem to be. I’m shocked this guy didn’t pass out from the pain of whatever sprain he or tear he seems to have.
We swapped referee’s, but Lacey was dumb and was still distracted by the outgoing referee allowing Sonya to take advantage of her distraction. Sonya controlled things for a while, then Mandy showed up on the TitanTron and called Sonya a “failure.” Sonya became distracted and enraged, allowing Lacey to recover and hit the Woman’s Right for the win. Two matches, two sh*t finishes.

AJ STYLES & DANIEL BRYAN IN-RING PROMO SEGMENT- decent
Michael Cole told us that AJ “came over from Raw in a trade.” Oh really, Cole? Then tell me who he was traded for. And if you can’t do that, DON’T CALL IT A TRADE!
Both men spoke passionately, but I will admit that I come down a lot more on AJ’s side than Bryan’s. Title shots are not Halloween candy. They should not be given out so freely, or else you will devalue the title. I’m also not realy sure why GUlak ws so angry that he attacked AJ, but I like that we’re getting…

AJ STYLES vs. DREWS GUALK (w/Daniel Bryan)- 5/10
Holy crap Gulak beat AJ clean in less than six minutes. I certainly didn’t see that coming. It’s kind of baffling, though, considering that AJ is facing Bryan for the IC Title next week, but my best guess is that it results in either Bryan vs. Gulak or AJ vs. Gulak for the belt on PPV, so that’s cool.

MIZ & MORRISON SMASH UP BRAUN’S CAR- bad
1. This really isn’t the best time period to be smashing car windows. Kind of tone-deaf.
2.You’ve already got a camera there showing us all of this, so why do you need to give us the “inexplicably, we’ve gained access to the security camera” shot a few times?
3. Doing comedy while smashing up someone’s car isn’t a main event act.

MOJO RAWLEY. SHINSUKE NAKAMURA, & CESARO vs. CHAD GABLE & THE NEW DAY (Kofi Kingston & Big E.)- 6.5/10

BRAUN SEES THE DAMAGE TO HIS CAR- bad
The parking lot attendant stooges off that Miz & Morrison are in the white van. Braun vows to kill them, then flips the van over. What’s this, the fifth time we’ve seen Braun flip a car? Six? It’s not that awe-inspiring anymore.

WWE WOMEN’S TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Alexa Bliss! & Nikki Cross vs. Sasha Banks & Bayley- 7.5/10
This was a great match where you were just waiting for Sasha or Bayley to make the wrong move that cost their team the match, resulting in a finish that really caught me off guard. The person who came up with that sequence that made it look like things between Sasha and Bayley were about to break down is brilliant. They did everything right there to make Bayley look like such a piece of sh*t while still retaining her plausible deniability.


This was a bad episode of Smackdown, but the main event is definitely worth your watching, and especially the last few minutes.
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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Big Red Machine
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Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

Re: BRM Reviews the 6/5/2020 Smackdown

Post by Big Red Machine » Jun 9th, '20, 21:43

Apparently there was a segment where Miz & Morrison tried to dump Nickelodeon slime on Braun but got Kayla instead. I'm thankfully I missed it, because I'm sure I would have had an aneurysm.
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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KILLdozer
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Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 22:54

Re: BRM Reviews the 6/5/2020 Smackdown

Post by KILLdozer » Jun 9th, '20, 23:06

Big Red Machine wrote: Jun 9th, '20, 21:43 Apparently there was a segment where Miz & Morrison tried to dump Nickelodeon slime on Braun but got Kayla instead. I'm thankfully I missed it, because I'm sure I would have had an aneurysm.
Just settle down big man...🙄
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