BRM Reviews the 3/5/2021 Smackdown (thank G-d for Bryan and the Bloodline)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 3/5/2021 Smackdown (thank G-d for Bryan and the Bloodline)

Post by Big Red Machine » Mar 8th, '21, 21:28

MICHAEL COLE INTERVIEWS DANIEL BRYAN IN THE RING- mostly great
Cole introduced Bryan as, among other things, “the man who invented the Yes! Movement.” They can’t possibly think that makes Bryan sound cool, can they? Also, wasn’t the whole idea of the Yes! Movement that it was the fans who started it because we loved Bryan so much?
Cole asks Bryan why he decided to “forgo” the scheduled tag match at Fast Lane with himself and Edge against Jey Uso and Roman Reigns to instead try to earn a Universal Title shot at Fast Lane. Um… because he wants to be the Universal Champion?
Bryan somehow managed to not call Cole a moron. He instead said that Cole was “making a lot of assumptions,” including assuming that Bryan had an interest in that tag match in the first place. Bryan says he’s going to be more assertive and ruin WWE’s plan for the Roman Reigns vs. Edge “dream match” at WrestleMania. Good for him.
Speaking of being assertive, Bryan even put together his own video package that he has lined up and ready to go. It looks a lot like one that WWE already put together and played last week. Bryan cut an absolutely tremendous babyface promo about why he HAD to win the title and main event WrestleMania. Then Roman Reigns and friends came out… and apparently they all stood around for three minutes waiting for a commercial break to end before they started talking to each other. That was considerate of them.
Roman came out and cut a tremendous heel promo on Bryan. Jey Uso grabbed the mic as Bryan was about to respond a cut a great promo for his role. He tried to attack Bryan like last week but this week Bryan saw it coming and reversed it. Everyone here was excellent, but the WWE “nothing happens during a commercial break” issue and Cole’s moronic question held it back.

TALKING SEGMENT CHANING A PREVIOUS-BOOKED MATCH- very bad
We were supposed to get a rematch from last week of Street Profits vs. Zayn & Corbin. Corbin came out and yelled at Sami because he doesn’t want to team with him. He suggested singles matches instead. Everyone but Sami agreed, and apparently (according to Cole) if the majority of the participants agree, they can just change the card. That’s stupid. I can MAYBE accept the match being cancelled, but now whichever singles match Sami is in doesn’t have the majority of its participants consenting… and that’s not even going into how the wrestlers can just change matches that management booked and all of the other times it would have made sense to use this loophole to get out of a match but no one did.
They could have gotten to the same place and still gotten across the idea that Sami wants to team with Corbin but Corbin doesn’t want to team with Sami by having the announcers quickly tell us that Sami wanted a tag match but Corbin refused to tag with him and instead insisted on singles matches to show that he could have beaten one of the Street Profits in a singles match and it was Sami who dragged him down by showing that Sami won’t be able to beat the other Street Profit. You get to the same place but without opening up a giant can of worms.
Well, I guess if we did it the smart way we wouldn’t have been able to get Sami accusing the three of them of conspiring against him, but that really wasn’t necessary because Sami has been ranting about conspiracies for months now and none of it has gone anywhere, so I highly doubt any plans would have been screwed up by taking a week off.

MONTEZ FORD (w/Angelo Dawkins) vs. BARON CORBIN (w/Sami Zayn)- 2/10
The referee ordered the bell to be rang despite the microphones still being in it. Bad refereeing.
In the category of “thank goodness for small mercies,” Sami Zayn did not do commentary as I had feared he would.
Ford lost cleanly in under two and a half minutes. I don’t care what Cole says. I don’t count Zayn’s distraction as mattering to the finish because Ford got offense in between Corbin capitalizing on the distraction and the finish.
Zayn tried to convince Corbin to stay at ringside and help him the quo of the quid pro quo that Sami tried to initiate, but Corbin just walked off.

SAMI ZAYN vs. ANGELO DAWKINS (w/Montez Ford)- 3.25/10
Dawkins beat Zayn in about five minutes when Ford caused a distraction on the outside. To recap, after these segments and matches we have:
1. Moved nothing along in the Zayn/Corbin story (Corbin didn’t want to work with Sami before, and still doesn’t want to work with him).
2. Done nothing to advance the Street Profits towards their goal of regaining the tag titles.
In the process of accomplishing that big fat pile of noting, we have:
1. Opened a big logical can of worms and inconsistencies about wrestlers changing the card on their own.
2. Made one half of our top babyface tag team look like a loser because he lost in two minutes.
3. Made that guy and his friend cheaters by having them cheat to win the second match.
The incompetence is staggering.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Sami snaps and attacks one of the guys filming his documentary, claiming that he “didn’t hire this guy.” So the paranoid Sami Zayn has been being filmed by a total stranger and is only noticing this now?

CARMELLA FIRES REGINALD FOR SPENDING MORE TIME FAWNING OVER SASHA BANKS THAN DOING HIS ACTUAL JOB OF PROCURING AND SERVING HER WINE- hooray!
Hopefully this dumb story will be over now and not waste any more time on TV.


CHAD GABLE (w/Otis Dozovic) vs. DOMINIK MYSTERIO (w/Rey Mysterio Jr.)- 3.5/10
This was great for the three and a half minutes it lasted. Dominik won with a roll-up. After the match, Rey attacked Otis for no real reason, so I guess next week we’re supposed to tune in to see Otis get revenge on Rey. Seth Rollins might have been onto something about these Mysterios.

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS SETH ROLLINS- bad
Seth rambled on about how Cesaro swung him a bunch of times because he wanted to humiliate him. Whatever.
Murphy showed up and offered to help Seth with his Cesaro problem, coming off like a total heel even though he turned on Seth last year. Seth told Murphy to f*ck off.

SHAYNA BASZLER (w/Nia Jax) vs. BIANCA BELAIR (w/Sasha Banks & Reginald)- 3.5/10
So even though his actual employer has fired him, Reginald is still allowed to roam around the building?
Cole said that Baszler and Belair had had “some tremendous match-ups” over the NXT Women’s Title. They only had one televised title match, so I don’t think the plural is really applicable. Graves followed this up by saying that they were “different competitors” back in those days. I’ll say. Fun fact, Shayna Baslzer’s first televised singles match on the main roster has been her only main roster singles match to go longer than 8:31.
Reginald annoyed Bianca, but despite this, Bianca overcame Shayna Baszler and got the win. Because Shayna is basically a JTTS at this point.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
Bianca talks trash to Sasha. Sasha then pretends to be happy with Reginald before slapping him and telling him “I told you to stay out of my business!” If that’s the case, why didn’t she tell him to go away the moment he came out here? Why wait until now? And why lead him on first instead of just kicking his ass? What changed between now and the time Reginald came out that would make Sasha annoyed with him now but not then.

ROMAN REIGNS & JEY USO BACKSTAGE- great
Roman gave Jey the heel version of a pep talk, putting pressure on him to not embarrass the family. Roman also claimed that he was okay if he had to defend the title at Fast Lane, but I’m sure that just bringing that up put even more pressure on Jey.

CESARO vs. BUDDY MURPHY- 2/10
Murphy didn’t even get his entrance shown on his big return to TV. Instead we got Seth Rollins’ entrance so he could annoy everyone on commentary. Michael Cole immediately started to troll him, leading to much bickering while we cut to Seth every fifteen seconds instead of staying with the action. His new thing is that Cesaro “humiliated” him by swinging him more times than he has ever swung anyone before, and he gets pissy any time the move is brought up or any time he sees it.
This went four minutes, with Cesaro getting about 80% of the offense, so Murphy is back to being enhancement talent now.

REGINALD MAKES ONE MORE APPEAL TO SASHA BANKS- She says “NO!” and slams the door in his face, as she should. Shayna Baszler starts to pick on Reginald, but apparently Nia Jax is into him, meaning apparently this useless loser will stay on our TVs to cause f*ck finishes in even more matches, because that’s apparently what Vince thinks we want.

APOLLO CREWS PROMO- more mixed feelings
Well… I gave them the benefit of the doubt last week, and I was wrong to do so. Crews now has a giant spear that appears to me made out of tin, and has guards dressed in military camo. They are the “Nigerian Elite Guard,” who have protected his family’s wealth for generations.
The most frustrating part about this is that I think Apollo’s promos so far have actually been pretty great. The character is good. The problem is that they had to WWE-ify it by going a little too over the top with the dialogue (for example, “you will fall before my feet” is something that works for someone who didn’t grow up speaking English, but that’s not Apollo) and going WAY over the top with the guards and the f*cking SPEAR.
Also…Corbin had guards until Steve Cutler got fired. Sami has a documentary crew. Now Apollo has different guards. What is it with all of these entourages on Smackdown?
Apollo explained the different accent and gave us some more backstory, then challenged Big E. to a match for the IC Title next week when he returns.

NATTIE & TAMINA COMPLAIN TO ADAM PEARCE & SONYA DEVILLE ABOUT NOT BEING IN THE WOMEN’S TAG TITLE MATCH AT THE PPV- bad
Nattie is upset that they aren’t getting a title shot but Bianca and Sasha are. She has a point that Sasha and Bianca haven’t done anything to earn this shot (they lost clean at the PPV less than two weeks ago), but as for Nattie’s claim of herself and Tamina being “dominant,” they are a grand total 1-0 as a team, so while they are more worthy than the other two, calling them worthy on their own is a big stretch.
Pearce essentially told them “because” and then left. Sonya tried to sympathize with them. Once again, Pearce didn’t actively take credit for a match being booked, but someone else (in this case Sonya) assigned it to him. I don’t know what they’re building to, but whatever they are doing to try to get sympathy on Adam Pearce is failing for me because Pearce has been such a pathetic pushover where Roman is concerned.

KAYLA BRAXTON’S INTERVIEW WITH JEY USO ENDS ABRUPTLY WHEN DANIEL BRYAN LAYS JEY OUT FROM BEHIND- good
I’m not a fan of Bryan attacking Jey from behind, but he just knocked him down rather than giving him a beating, and I can’t deny that it did a good job of showing that this is a new, more aggressive Daniel Bryan.

BAYLEY’S STUPID TALK SHOW THING- bad
She got angry because someone wrote a letter correctly saying that her crappy show is terrible.

IF DANIEL BRYAN WINS, HE EARNS A WWE UNIVERSAL TITLE MATCH AT FAST LANE 2021: Daniel Bryan vs. Jey Uso (w/Roman Reigns & Paul Heyman)- 8/10
Heyman brought a comfy chair for Roman to sit at ringside in. Bryan won clean in an awesome match. What set this apart from most other WWE cage matches for me is that there was a real feel of consistently trying to win. This was the only match on the show o go longer than four and a half minutes. In six matches tonight, there was less than thirty-two minutes of wrestling, with the main event alone accounting for almost half of that.


Basically, if it didn’t involve Bryan, Roman, and Jey, it wasn’t good.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
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ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

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