BRM Reviews the 5/7/2021 Smackdown

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 5/7/2021 Smackdown

Post by Big Red Machine » May 9th, '21, 16:38

It’s “Throwback Smackdown,” and so they’re throwing back to a time before Smackdown existed? That doesn’t make much sense. They’ve got this early 90’s WWF logo (without the F, obviously) and then you show a picture of The Rock and a clip of a promo of his, then it’s back to the 1990 with people holding up their yellow “Hulk Rules” foam fingers, and then we’ve got the original (not to beat the point into the ground, but LATE 90s) Smackdown logo.
We show Cole and McAfee at ringside, dressed like it’s 1990… and despite the fact that we were just shown a video package telling us that this is “Throwback” Smackdown, Michael Cole is worried that we’re too stupid to figure out why they’re dressed abnormally, so the first thing out of his mouth after welcoming us to the show is to tell us that “the reason we are dressed like this is because it’s part of Throwback Weekend on Fox.”

CLIPS FROM THE MAIN EVENT OF THE FIRST SMACKDOWN- snore
If I wanted to watch this, I’d watch it on Peacock.

OPENING SEGMENT- meh
As appears to be law at this point, Smackdown opens with Roman Reigns & pals coming out for a promo. Heyman offers a “ten-bell salute” to Bryan’s career by saying “DING!” into the microphone repeatedly. Roman hanging his head down in mock respect while trying not to laugh entertained me. Roman cuts a promo on Bryan, then brings out Jimmy Uso, who is fully on board with this heel turn.
Cesaro came out to say that Jimmy Uso can’t “replace Daniel Bryan” like Roman claimed. The he went on to tell Roman that he doesn’t have time for this because he has to prepare for his match tonight against Seth Rollins, which is “much more important” than this. Well then why did you come out here at all?
Cesaro was then jumped from behind by Rollins. Security came out to separate them. Then Teddy Long came out to make an announcement on behalf of Adam Pearce: If Cesaro beats Rollins tonight, he gets a title shot at WrestleMania: Backlash. What a lazy f*ck that Adam Pearce is.
Cesaro somehow wound up in the ring, and was jumped from behind by Roman. Roman knocked him out of the ring, and Rollins ran him into the steps. Rollins rolled him into the ring and started pounding on him. A referee pulled him off, and Cole told us the match would take place after this commercial break. Fortunately, both men are already in their gear. I guess they already knew their match was scheduled to be the first one. That’s fine… but it does make me wonder why WWE decided to book a match between two big singles stars with this big stipulation as the opener instead of the main event (and even more so with the benefit of hindsight, when the actual main event is revealed).

There was an IcoPro commercial.

IF CESARO WINS, HE EARNS A WWE UNIVERSAL TITLE SHOT AT WRESTLEMANIA: BACKLASH: Cesaro vs. Seth Rollins- 8/10
The Usos were at ringside for this match. Roman was shown watching backstage. Paul Heyman was holding the title and peering at the camera over Roman’s shoulder in a way that looked like he was Photoshopped in.
The match was awesome. It’s the kind of match that makes me nostalgic for 2010 ROH, and makes me hope that current fans of WWE would be willing to try to seek out older ROH stuff with these guys because of it.
The finish… requires some discussion. Seth saw the Usos setting up to interfere and prevented them from doing so, telling Jey “I’m not Roman. I don’t need your help.” When Seth went to get back into the ring, Jey tapped him on the shoulder, so Seth turned around and shoved him. Jimmy then superkicked Seth, setting up for Cesaro to finally be able to hit the Neutralizer for the win. Obviously, this sets Seth up for a babyface turn, but I think that in order for the story to work, it has to include two specific points: Cesaro needs to beat Seth cleanly before the PPV (so that the win that earns him a title shot isn’t tainted) and Seth needs to endorse Cesaro afterwards (i.e. do a babyface thing motivated by babyface respect to another wrestler who has bested him and show babyface humility, rather than just tonight’s babyface action of preventing interference that is motivated by selfish pride. Said pride is fine if you’re already babyface, but it’s also something that a heel could still do while remaining totally in-keeping with his/her heel character).
Given the way WWE books, I can see the latter happening (though probably either as or after Seth is moved into direct opposition to Roman himself rather than just getting into a scrap with the Usos, which I don’t think works as well), but I don’t see the former happening, and I think that’s a problem. This heel Rollins character’s defining trait has been his arrogance, and therefore, to turn him babyface effectively, a show of humility is required. A man who has spent eighteen months presuming himself to be the best and therefore entitled to all he desires in his professional career needs to admit that another has bested him and is therefore more deserving of the thing he wants the most (in this case, a title shot). For that reason, I think he needs to lose to Cesaro cleanly again and then endorse him in order to truly turn babyface. And if that is going to happen, it needs to happen next week so that it can happen before the PPV, so that Seth can endorse Cesaro receiving a title shot.
In addition to simply being crucial to making the turn work for the character, I think a third match with Cesaro is also necessary for the heel Seth Rollins character as he is right now. This Seth Rollins’ response to losing a big match due to interference would be to whine about it, which, when you have a babyface authority figure and a babyface opponent, really should lead to another match, as the babyface wrestler would be confident in his ability to beat Seth again, and the babyface authority figure would want to promote fair play (especially given the big stipulation in this match). You can’t just skip the match and have Rollins come out next week and say he respects Cesaro for beating him at Mania because you’d need something to explain why his feelings on this have changed since his whining promos and attacks on Cesaro between WrestleMania and now. Even more reason to book a third match (and especially one that fits in with the timeline requirements I’ve given above).
And, because I’m a fantasy booking addict just can’t help myself:
I’d have Rollins whine to Pearce about the interference later tonight. Even later, Heyman would go to Pearce (or maybe Sonya Deville would be better, depending on where that story is headed) and suggest that Rollins be given a rematch next week… and to keep the Usos from interfering- which he stresses that they definitely did not do on orders from Roman Reigns- it should be a cage match. The announcers can put over the idea that this is simply Roman trying to make his PPV opponent go through a grueling cage match just two days before the title defense.
Next week, Cesaro would beat Rollins clean. The Usos would attack after the match, but Rollins would help Cesaro fight them off, then grab a mic and cut the big babyface promo putting him over and saying that he has been the better man this month and endorsing him as the next Universal Champion. At the PPV, Roman would win after interference from the Usos, with Seth trying but failing to stop them because there are two of them and just one of him.
For Money in the Bank, we build up Rollins as the challenger while building Nakamura up in the background. Nakamura, Cesaro, and the Usos will wind up being the SD entrants into MITB (or, possibly just Jey, with Jimmy losing a qualifier to Cesaro and going on to interfere on his behalf during the PPV, freeing up the spot in the match for Owens or Zayn or Corbin or whoever). The main event of the go-home show is a six-man tag putting the Bloodline against Rollins, Reigns, and Nakamura. At the PPV, Roman beats Rollins clean, while someone from Raw wins MITB. For the July PPV we build up to Usos vs. Seth & Cesaro (babyfaces win clean when Cesaro pins Jimmy) and Roman defending against Nakamura (Cesaro and Rollins thwart the Usos’ interference, but Roman still wins clean), the build up to Cesaro’s big challenge at SummerSlam, with some way to guarantee that the Usos can’t get involved.

SETH ROLLINS CONFRONTS ROMAN REIGNS BACKSTAGE- great!
Seth wants to know “should I be pissed him (Jimmy)? Or should I be pissed at you?” Roman replies that Seth losing screwed him over, so he’s not happy, either. Roman says that he will deal with his own family, and Seth tells Roman that if he doesn’t deal with it “I will.”

SAMI ZAYN, TEDDY LONG, & SONYA DEVIILLE BACKSTAGE- More conspiracy stuff from Sami. We all know this isn’t going anywhere. Sami wants an IC Title match. Teddy wants to book him against The Undertaker, so I guess Teddy doesn’t realize Taker is retired. Sami points this out to him, so Teddy then books a tag team match. But not a regular two-on-two tag team match. A TEN-MAN tag team match. I think Teddy has been taking steroids.
Teddy wants them all to dance. His music magically plays. Sami doesn’t want to dance. This whole segment was stupid. How about having a main event booked BEOFRE you go on the air?

ROMAN IS ANGRY AT JIMMY USO… BUT UNLIKE JEY, JIMMY STANDS UP TO ROMAN- GREAT!
Roman tells Jey to “go handle that.” The directions this could go are interesting, but if you’re going to have Jimmy be an independent-minded babyface (as a contrast to his brother, who is now Roman’s proud lackey) then I would have brought him back that way from the get-go instead of making him a heel who is happy to cheat on Roman’s behalf and only opposes Roman because Roman yelled at him rather than because he thinks what Roman is doing is wrong and shameful.


CARMELLA vs. RUBY RIOTT (w/Liv Morgan)- 0.5/10
Carmella won a short match decisively.

WOMEN’S TITLE SEGMENT- meh
Bayley came out and cut a promo on Binaca that was less annoying than Bayley usually is. Bianca came out and they traded barbs, then started to fight. Bianca was winning until Bayley yanked at her earing. This gave Bayley an advantage and she beat Bianca down. This was the best thing they’ve done so far to build this match up, but that’s very faint praise. Bianca won’t be wearing her earrings for the title match, so this once again gave me no reason to think that Bayley has a snowball’s chance in hell of beating her at the PPV. Instead of having Bayley talk and be a goof for months, WWE should have spent some time having her cleanly win wrestling matches so that she could feel like a real challenge for Bianca. Sure, Bayley was champion for a long time a while ago, but for the past few months she has been a total geek outside of a ring and a loser inside of it, and we’ve been given no reason to think that her prowess from last year will suddenly return at the PPV.

THE USOS BACKSTAGE- This started off mostly good, but got bad by the end.
Jimmy made the points you’d expect about Jey being Roman’s lackey, and Jey countered with the expected argument that what’s good for Roman benefits the entire family. Jimmy responded to this by saying that Roman thinks that Roman doesn’t need Jimmy, but Jimmy needs Jey, and pitched the idea of Roman as world champion and them as the tag champs. That idea doesn’t seem to mesh with what Jimmy had said at the beginning. It was almost like Jimmy was persuaded by Jey’s argument, but didn’t want to admit it, so he kept yelling confrontationally even while proposing an idea that was more in line with the idea of them being aligned with Roman.
I think what Jimmy needed to say was along the lines of the following (imagine this in a more Uso-ish dialect, with apostrophes in place of unpronounced letters):
“You want to talk about family, Uce? He might be our cousin, but you’re my brother, and the way he treats you isn’t the way you treat family. We’re the best tag team in this company. We could dominate the tag team division. And Roman could dominate the singles division right there with us, and I’d be fine helping him do it, because you’re right: what’s good for Roman is good for the family. But that’s only good for us for he’s going to treat us like we’re part of the family.

DOMINIK MYSTERIO (w/Rey Mysterio Jr.) vs. DOLPH ZIGGLER (w/Bobby Roode)- no rating, okay segment
This was supposed to be Ziggler vs. Rey, but Ziggler baited Dominik into taking the match instead. This was easily the best promo Dolph has cut in YEARS. Fortunately, Dominik was out here in his gear even though he wasn’t supposed to be wrestling, so he could accept the challenge (with Rey’s, Dolph’s, and the referee’s approval).
Dolph beat Dominik up for a bit and kept yelling “YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!” at him. Dominik won with a small package.

After the match, Cole told me that the Mysterios are getting a title shot at the PPV. So last week the tag champs lose to the Street Profits, but someone else is getting the title shot?

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS REGINALD, NIA JAX, & SHAYNA BASLZER- This was a fine promo for a match no one could possibly care about or want to see.

ROMAN REIGNS ASKS PAUL HEYMAN TO “BRING ME MY COUSIN”- Paul asked “which one?” Roman glared at him, and Paul said “I understand.”

TAMINA (w/Natalya) vs. REGINALD (w/Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler)- no rating, bad segment
The kayfabe untrained non-wrestler flips out of everything the babyface tries, and she only gets a shot in on him when he takes too long celebrating his evasiveness. Then when get a run-in for the DQ, and a heel beat-down for a title match next week that feels extraordinarily stale already. It also didn’t help that this is the second time tonight that they’ve done an angle setting up a women’s title match with a heel beat-down.

APOLLO CREWS PROMO- okay
The accent is no good. He specifically praised Corbin and Gable but not Otis and Zayn, even though everyone was standing right next to him.

BABYFACE TEAM PROMO- They said stuff. Everyone but Owens was loud and goofy. Owens was uncharacteristically quiet.

BIG E., KEVIN OWENS, SHINSUKE NAKAMURA, & THE STREET PROFITS vs. SAMI ZAYN, BARON CORBIN, ALPHA ACADEMY, & APOLLO CREWS (w/Commander Azeez)- 6.75/10
Everyone worked hard, but this match was bogged down by a feeling of complete and total pointlessness. There were no noteworthy interactions between either Owens and Big E. (for whom possible friction was set up last week) or between Zayn and Crews (who they set possibly friction up between earlier). Corbin, who has been going nowhere, pinned cleanly pinned Nakamura, who has also been going nowhere.

Fortunately, the match ended in time for the cameras to cut to…

ROMAN REIGNS & JEY USO BACKSTAGE- fine
Roman tells Jey that he loves Jimmy and wants to help him, but they need to determine if he’s on their side.

CLOSING SEGMENT- mixed
Jimmy doesn’t want to stand with Roman and says Jey is wrong for doing so… but the way he chose to do so was weird. He brought up Jey quitting to save him at Hell in a Cell and said that Jey was wrong for doing so. I can understand the sentiment, but the way he did it came off as heelish- like Jey was a fool for having done so, and Jimmy loudly declared that if the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t have done the same to protect Jey.
Jimmy went to leave and ignored Roman’s recruitment. Jey went after him. While this was happening, Cesaro- supposedly the babyface, jumped Roman from behind. Jey wanted to help but Jimmy pulled him back… but then let him go moments later. Cesaro beat Jey up, too, and Jimmy eventually came down to save his brother, but he got taken out, too. Cesaro then gave both Jey and Roman Neutralizers (and almost lost Jey on his).
Cole declared that “this proves Cesaro has a chance! He has a hell of a chance!” of winning the title at the PPV. I think the idea behind Cole’s comment was that Cesaro had proved that he was able to overcome the Usos interfering, but that was undermined by the fact that the way he got the advantage on Roman in the first place was by attacking Roman when Roman wasn’t ready.
The stuff with Jimmy and his interactions with Jey on the ramp were very good in isolation, but I can’t divorce it from what came before. Looking at the whole show in hindsight, it really feels like they wanted to create these specific situations between Jey and Jimmy, and wanted to weave it into the Cesaro/Seth/world title aspect of Roman’s story, but weren’t able to come up with a way to do so that didn’t fight against itself. If the idea of the Jimmy/Jey/Roman story is that Jimmy wants to be with Jey not if that means being with Roman, too, and in order to emphasize that you want the potential Jimmy/Jey split to come from Roman being angry at Jimmy and Jimmy standing up to him, then you can’t have the event that get Roman angry at Jimmy stem from a situation that began with Jimmy acting like Roman’s lackey (Jimmy’s was willfully distracting the referee so that Jey could attack Cesaro when Rollins told Jey off).
Look… I am glad to see the ambition that was on display tonight. WWE rarely tries to weave storylines together like they did with the Cesaro/Seth/Roman and Jimmy/Jey/Roman stories. The mere fact that Jimmy Uso was healthy and they held off bringing him back until several weeks into the PPV cycle is very un-WWE like. What we saw tonight was an attempt at a more sophisticated approach to storytelling than we usually see from WWE and I applaud the ambition.
But ambition is only a small part of your grade. If you decide that you want to build a car that can go 900 mph, but engine you put in the car makes it too heavy to hit 900 mph you need to change something. Either you make the car out of a lighter material, or you change the shape so that it’s more aerodynamic or your make the engine more efficient so that it can be smaller and lighter. You do not just throw your hands up in the air and go “oh well. At least we were ambitious.” You go back to the drawing board until you make it work, and if you can’t make it work, you change the goal to something less ambitious. It’s the same with storytelling. If you want to tell an ambitious story but you can’t make things fit after the first few tries, you either keep trying until you can make it fit, or you remove the ambitious but complicating elements and put out a less ambitious story, but one that works, because a story that works is always better than one that doesn’t, no matter how ambitious the failure is.


Overall, this was yet another episode of Smackdown where the men’s singles main event scene was the only worthwhile thing on the show. The “throwback” theme seems to have been forced on them by Fox, and while I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t get in the way of serious tone they wanted, I think it would have been better to not have the old, campy HulkaMania Era logos and music and (and announcers’ clothing) and to try to use something more from 1999-2000, which had a slightly more serious feel.


I also wonder how much it costs them every time they do a "throwback" show. How much are they paying to create these graphics and dig up old referee's uniforms and find something atrocious for the announcers to wear, and how much they pay Teddy Long and whoever else, all for something that doesn't matter to the vast majority of people.

How much does it cost-
Graphics, Teddy Long, old referee shirts
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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