BRM Reviews the 10/22/2021 Smackdown (terrible)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 10/22/2021 Smackdown (terrible)

Post by Big Red Machine » Oct 24th, '21, 15:00

OPENING SEGMENT- meh
Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman come out. Roman lays into Paul for his terrible aim, but at least outwardly, his attitude seems to be “no harm, no foul.” He brags about having beaten everyone. He has Heyman read a Tweet from Brock claiming that he will beat Roman senseless when he shows up at Smackdown. Roman says he’s waiting right here, and won’t leave the ring until Brock shows up.
We go to a commercial, and when we return, Roman is still talking, with no Brock in sight. At this point, Brock is coming off like a coward. They were all in Riyadh and all had pretty much the same travel options to get to Wichita. There is no excuse for this f*cker not being here by now.
Roman got bored and was about to leave…and, of course, that when Brock showed up. They brawled. Brock dominated Roman and took some glances at Paul. The Usos came out and saved Roman, but they got their asses kicked, too. Referees and road agents came out to tell Brock to stop. He took a camera and shoved a cameraman. He threw the camera at Roman but Roman dodged…and instead of continuing to go after Roman, he started attacking referees and officials. The locker room emptied out and I guess they calmed Brock down. I assume this will be used to suspend Brock so that they can build up their pointless champion vs. champion match at Survivor Series that absolutely have to do for no adequately explained reason, which exposes this whole thing for what it is, which is a plot device so that they can book in their standard, calendar-driven pattern.

ADAM PEARCE ANNOUNCES THAT BROCK LESNAR IS NOW SUSPENDED- yup
Pearce goes on about how Brock didn’t just cause property damage and “endanger” WWE officials, but he also “endangered his fellow WWE Superstars™”- as if backstage brawls don’t happen all the time and no one bats an eyelash- and “endangered the WWE Universe™.” That last one in particular feels like total bullsh*t, as at no point did Brock or Roman came near the fans more than you would see in any other ringside brawl, and we’ve never heard anyone crow on about “endangering the WWE Universe™ before, even wrestlers have brawled into the crowd.
I also don’t buy that a suspension would stop Brock Lesnar from just showing up wherever he wanted and attacking Roman Reigns or anyone who got in his way of getting Roman Reigns.
Brock then came out and got into the ring. I guess he’s been up all of the referees and security and wrestlers, because no one came out to try to stop him. Brock bullies Peace a bit, then hits him with some F-5s.

KAYLA BRAXTON TRIES TI INTERVIEW SONYA DEVILLE EVEN THOUGH SONYA IS CLEARLY ON THE PHONE, IN THE MIDDLE OF AN IMPORTANT PHONECALL ABOUT THE CURRENT SITUATION- Paul Heyman is right. Kayle is rude.

NOAMI BOTHERS SONYA DEVILLE- In the middle of this emergency, Naomi decided this was a good time to interrupt Sonya t yell at her for last week’s bait-and-switch. Naomi is not wrong to be upset, but this really wasn’t an appropriate time to yell at Sonya. I was one-hundred percent behind Sonya here when she told Noami to stop making things all about herself and get out of her face.

DREW MCINTYRE TELLS SONYA DEVILLE HE’S GOING TO MAKE AN OPEN CHALLENGE- meh
Smackdown knew they had a new big star coming to their show, but didn’t have him booked on the first night in?

DREW MCINTYRE MAKES AN OPEN CHALLENGE- He even notes that we haven’t had a match yet (it’s over thirty-five minutes into the show). Sami Zayn comes out… and WWE decided that it was necessary to bother us by having Sami talk first.

DREW MCINTYRE vs. SAMI ZAYN- 5.75/10
The match starts… and Sami immediately takes a powder. Drew follows him out and tosses him into the barricade… and we immediately cut to a commercial. This wouldn’t be so bothersome if they hadn’t just had Drew point out that this was the first match of the show, at this late hour into it.
Drew won clean in a match where a disappointing amount of it actually aired on TV.

XAVIER WOODS’ CORONATION AS KING OF THE RING- predictably annoying

BECKY LYNCH PROMO- very bad
She teases the fans with the idea that rather than exchange titles, she and Charlotte will have a title vs. title match. I don’t care if Becky is a heel. You should NEVER tease something like that if you’re not going to deliver on it. NEVER.

XIA LI VIDEO PACKAGE- Yeah, because Xia Li was definitely ready for the main roster.

MUSTAFA ALI vs. MANSOOR- 3.25/10
Things have been so shaken up by the Superstar Shakeup or draft or whatever we’re calling it that this feud is STILL GOING ON. Even worse, they showed us stills of the match, telling us that Mansoor won clean, and then told us that Ali is in a bad mood tonight because in addition to losing to Mansoor, he was attacked after the match by the Karateka (no pictures of that, though), leaving out the key detail that Ali had attacked Mansoor after the match. With that detail, you could have at least framed this as Mansoor having asked for the match to get revenge for the post-match attack, but without that detail here, it just makes this “new era of Smackdown” feel like the same sh*t from the old era of Raw.
These two had the best two-and-half-minute match you’ll ever see. Mansoor won clean with a roll-up, which is the same finish they did yesterday on the PPV.

RIDGE HOLLAND PROMO- fine

ALIYAH PROMO- She’s going to give Smackdown a “makeover” and make it more “boughie” or however you so that word that they say in Franky Monet’s song.

ANGEL GARZA & HUMBERTO CARRILLO PROMO- fine

SHEAMUS PROMO- bad
He tells us that he will deliver many bangers.

HIT ROW PROMO- good
For the second time tonight, Michael Cole made sure to call them “charismatic, confident, competitive, and calculating.”

DANIEL WILLIAMS & DUSTIN LAWYER vs. TOP ROW (Isaiah “Swerve” Scott & Top Dolla) (w/F-Fab & Ashantee Thee Adonis)- squash

KAYLA BRAXTON PREPORTS FROM OUTSIDE THE TRAINER’S ROOM- meh
Sonya says that she had volunteered to tell Brock that he was suspended, but Pearce insisted on doing it. She laments that she must handle the title exchange alone.

BARON CORBIN & RIDDICK MOSS PROMO- very bad
I don’t understand how anyone can think that this “Madcap Moss” crap is a good idea.

SHINSUKE NAKAMURA (w/Rick Boogs) vs. BARON CORBIN (w/Riddick Moss)- 5.25/10
Yeah, I’m not saying “Happy Corbin” and “Madcap Moss.”
Yet another match on the “new” Smackdown that feels like we have been seeing it for months.
Nakamura seemed to have things won, but he got distracted by the geeks on the outside, allowing Corbin to recover and hit him with the End of Days.

CHARLOTTE FLAIR PROMO- Charlotte was a decent heel, here, but as unpalatable as the idea of this segment is (more on that later), the company seems to think it’s a good thing to do and there is some solid logic behind it, so it’s hard for me to get too angry at Charlotte for telling Becky to just do the damn exchange like an adult.

WOMEN’S TITLE BELT EXCHANGE- bad
Yes, the emotion and intensity here were great (and, as we would later learn, in some ways probably quite real), but I think that the very idea of doing this devalued the titles. I absolutely believe that it’s best to have one champion, floating between the shows, but I’ve come to grips with the fact that WWE won’t do that, just like they’ll never give up on the “just pretend the cameras aren’t there” style of presentation.
If you’re going to have two championships that are functionally identical and you want people to perceive both of the as being of the utmost important, you absolutely MUST keep them far away from each other. I’d advocate going back to separate PPVs for this reason, and as much as I hate the two-night WrestleMania, this at least allows you to keep each top belt in a division away from its counterpart on the other brand. Doing what they did here made the belts feel- quite literally- interchangeable, and thus not as important (and, of course, that’s ignoring the nightmares it gives people like me who love record-keeping. Did both of these women just get another title reign even though they didn’t win anything?).
And the most frustrating part, of course, was how avoidable this whole awkward situation was! If you want Becky and Bianca to keep feuding, JUST DON’T DRAFT EITHER OF THEM! If you want Charlotte to feud with Sasha, just draft Sasha to Raw! If there is some feud you want to do after that point, JUST MAKE A TRADE! You control everything!
And you’d think that someone would have had the foresight to wonder what would happen if the champion of a belt with “Raw” in its name got drafted to Smackdown because of the inherent awkwardness of the situation, but apparently no one did, because it’s the sort of thing that should have been announced in advance, because it’s pretty obvious that if the other show drafts your champion in a certain division, you absolutely need to draft their champion back or else you’d wind up with no belts (which they kept telling us might happen is Sasha won the title at Crown Jewel).
And all they’d have to do is add one basic, simple rule to the draft- Champions can’t be drafted- and they would avoid multiple problems. Obviously it avoids this sort of situation where the belts wind up on the “wrong” show and you have to do something awkward like this or do a title change that everyone sees coming to correct it. You’d also avoid the logical issue of why the champions aren’t always drafted immediately if the titles are so important. Additionally, you’d be able to make everyone else look better because they would be taken in higher draft spots. And if you really want to switch the champions, JUST DO A TRADE AFTER THE DRAFT!

SASHA BANKS COMES OUT AND WHINES, THEN SHE AND CHARLOTTE BRAWL UNTIL SONYA DEVILLE BREAKS IT UP- bad
Both of them came off completely heelish and unlikable here, though my sympathies lie with Charlotte, as she came off as telling the truth while being an asshole, as opposed to Sasha who was an asshole as well as egotistically delusional with her “I’m the boss so I call the shots” crap.

This was a TERRIBLE show from WWE. The “new” Smackdown feels like the same old sh*t. The only “new” feud we have going on is f*cking Sasha vs. Charlotte! The only positive thing I can say about it is that there was no talk of “brand supremacy” yet. But I’m sure that crap is coming next week.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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