BRM Reviews the 6/4/2019 Smackdown (bad, but just barely)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 6/4/2019 Smackdown (bad, but just barely)

Post by Big Red Machine » Jun 4th, '19, 23:14

OPENING SEGMENT-
Kofi came out and pitched to some clips from the thing WWE filmed about his trip back to Ghana. It was powerful stuff.
Included in the video was Kofi’s meeting with King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II. Unfortunately his son, Prince Nana, was nowhere to be seen, nor was territorial governor John Walters.
I just wish that they had let Kofi then finish cutting his promo so that he could have taken the things he was saying about inspiration and hope and transitioned them into a wrestling promo with a point. Instead what we got was Kofi showing us this video to plug the WWE Network and/or to put himself over in a way that felt intended more as a non-kayfabe thing than a kayfabe thing, Dolph interrupting him for the sake of garnering heat by interrupting Kofi talking about inspiring little children in Ghana.
Dolph gave yet another grand speech. He added even more body motion to his repertoire now. It’s awful. He had his own video package made. I have no idea how Woods and Kofi didn’t break out into fits of laughter while Dolph was emoting. Those guys are professionals.
Dolph once again whined about not getting the fans’ respect. Kofi apparently had a promo ready to go on Dolph, because he told Dolph “there is one thing you left out” and then asked “can we roll the footage?” and the production people knew exactly what clip he meant.
Said clips was Dolph’s goofy temper tantrum from the end of 2017 when he vacated the US Title because he didn’t think the fans were appreciating him (this was the culmination of his “you only like people with fancy entrances” stupidity). You might not remember this because he came back six weeks later and was suddenly a babyface and it was never brought up again.
Kofi the cut an awesome promo on Dolph, saying that the reason Dolph’s career has gone the way it has is because he walks out every time he gets upset. Then we had an extremely weird cut to a video package for their match, and then Dolph hit his finally line “Friday it will be me.”

Fun fact: based off of his entrance Graphic, we now finally know that Dolph is still a member of the Raw roster. It’s strange how they never tell us that the wildcard rule is in effect when Dolph comes out, though. Or when the 24/7 Title is involved. It’s almost like they only want us to think about it when they can try to make it sound cool, but then don’t want us to think about it when they just break it and don’t want us to notice.

KEVIN OWENS & SAMI ZAYN vs. THE NEW DAY (Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods)- 6.75/10
Now that we know that Dolph is on Raw, Sami brings our wildcard count up to two. Alexa Bliss! has also been advertised for this show, so they only have one spot left. Woods was the babyface in peril. Kofi got the hot tag, ran wild, and won by pinning Sami with Trouble in Paradise.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Dolph attacked Kofi from behind after the match for what feels like the fifth time in three weeks. Woods also ate a superkick.

SHANE MCMAHON BACKSTAGE PROMO- Not a bad promo on its own, but like with Dolph and Kofi or Brock and Rollins, it hasn’t actually moved forward at all, so I’m f*cking sick of this at this time.


A MOMENT OF BLISS WITH SPECIAL GUEST BAYLEY- terrible
Alexa is in her gear. Maybe she’ll actually wrestle tonight?
After being a babyface last night, Alexa is now a heel. And not only is she randomly a heel, but she is an anachronistic one, burying Smackdown by insisting that it’s inferior to Raw. The fans didn’t react to this line at all, because NOT ONE SINGLE FAN GIVES A SH*T ABOUT RAW VS. SMACKDOWN.
Alexa brings out Bayley, then buries the coffee on SD. Yes, really. Fortunately, she had her own cup already made and standing by just in case, which is also ridiculous.
Bayley just sat there while Alexa buried Smackdown, so Bayley clearly doesn’t care either. Instead she asked Alexa to ask her some question. Alexa said she would wait until she was brought some more coffee. This is dumb.
Without outright saying, they’re basically trying to have Alexa say that Bayley’s MITB win (and thus championship win) was a fluke (the phrase they used was “one good night”), while Bayley is trying to talk about all of the years of hard work it took to get to that point. This is the sort of thing that would work if this was Bayley’s first title win, but it’s not.
Alexa said she was a better champion and that the title means less now than it did when she was champion. A grand total of about six fans cared about this. I know it’s that low because you could hear individual voices.
Bayley said she wasn’t got to let Alexa bait her, but when Alexa asked her to hold off on answering a question because Alexa’s coffee was about to arrive (and presumably Alexa didn’t want to be distracted thanking the coffee-getter while Bayley was talking), Bayley angrily slapped the coffee cup out of Alexa’s hand. Yes, really. Bury Bayley’s show? She doesn’t care. Tell her that her big win was a fluke and that you were a better champion than her and her title reign doesn’t mean anything? She’ll turn the other cheek. But ask her to wait for you to have some coffee before speaking and THAT sets her off?
Just when it looks like we might have an actual physical confrontation, Carmella comes out. My assumption is that she was dragged out here by the magnetic pull of WWE-logic, which insists that she MUST be in this segment because she, too, is a former MITB winner and Smackdown Women’s Champion. Carmella also told Alexa “you can’t just walk in from Raw and challenge our champion. That’s not how it works.”
Oh really? Cause I have some pretty vivid memories of AJ Styles and Sami Zayn both doing exactly that on the first SD after the rule was made. And the Usos are Raw wrestlers but they were put in a match to determine the new SD tag champs when the titles were vacant. So that actually appears to be exactly how it works.
Carmella says that it should be a Smackdown wrestler who gets the next shot at the Smackdown Title. Normally I would agree with her, but the wildcard rule seems to make that requirement irrelevant. If only we had gotten some sort of clarification on the ins and outs of how the wildcard rule works, then maybe we all wouldn’t be so confused.
Alexa astutely points out that Carmella is attempting to position herself as the #1 contender. BRM will back Alexa up by pointing out that Carmella has not won a single match since the WrestleMania battle royale almost two months ago, and that that win was merely of two she has had since the finals of the Mixed-Match Challenge almost six months ago! Since Carmella’s most recent victory, Alexa has won two matches, and while one was a six-woman tag in which she didn’t do anything, the other one was a singles victory over none other than the current Smackdown Women’s Champion, Bayley.
Charlotte’s music played and she came out and told everyone that her “good friend” Shane McMahon had just told her that there would be a three-way #1 contendership match between them. Then Charlotte’s music played and the segment just ended. It was all very awkward. And speaking of awkward, Charlotte gave them all an exaggerated wink when she called Shane her “good friend.” Are we supposed to read into this that Charlotte and Shane are f*cking?
This segment was terrible on a lot of levels, and it is in no way the fault of the women involved, who were given utterly terrible crap to say and put in a horrible position.
I figured the fact that all of the women were in their gear meant that the match would be next, but apparently not. Instead the announcers repeated to us that “the iconic Goldberg” will be here tonight, which I take it means Goldberg is going to come out with a championship at Super Showdown but then do a job in short match that won’t actually matter.

CARMELLA & R-TRUTH BACKSTAGE- dumb
Truth thinks the Smackdown Women’s Title works like the 24/7 Title because he’s an idiot. He has been calling Shane McMahon because he wants to get rid of the title. Dude... just lie down and let someone pin you! Shane then booked him in a match for right now in a match with “standard rules” and also possibly with the 24/7 Rule suspended.

LUMBERJACK MATCH FOR THE WWE 24/7 TITLE: R-Truth(c) vs. “The Drifter” Elias Sampson- DUD!
Included among the lumberjacks were Bobby Roode, Cedric Alexander, EC III, Titus O’Neil, Heath Slater, Eric Young, and No Way Jose (all from Raw), as well as Jack Gallagher (205 Live), upping tonight’s wildcard count to ELEVEN, almost three times the allowed limit. Making this all even stupider is the fact that while they brought in EIGHT guys from other brands to be lumberjacks (plus Drake Maverick, who I’ll get to in a minute), which was more lumberjacks then they had out there from SD (B-Team, Jinder, Matt Hardy), SD has several of its own undercards who we can assume were at TV but weren’t used in this spot, including Apollo Crews, the Singh Brothers, Shelton Benjamin, the Colons, Chad Gable, and Buddy Murphy. Then again, I guess I should count be happy that Crew, Murphy, and Gable weren’t associated with this dreck. Sorry Cedric. You’re going to have to be the guy from BRM’s “WHY WON’T THEY PUSH THEM, DAMMIT?!” list who takes the bullet tonight.
Also there was 205 Live GM Drake Maverick, who I will not only give them a pass on for the wildcard rule because he is a GM, but I will also give WWE a hand and explain for them that Shane doesn’t have the power to order Drake to be a lumberjack but rather what is happening here is that Drake Maverick is out here of his own volition so that he can run in and try to pin the winner once the match ends.
Elias tossed Truth to the outside and some heel lumberjacks beat him up. They tossed him back into the ring, Elias hit him with a knee and pinned him. Then everyone realized that the match being over means that the 24/7 Rule was reinstated and they all swarmed The Drifter but he managed to slip free while they were fighting each other crawled out of the ring. He bumped into Truth on the outside and tried to escape by going under the ring. Truth followed him... and so did the referee. A few moments later the referee emerged from under the ring and ordered the bell rung. Truth came out and was declared the new champion, then ran off through the crowd. Even the announcers thought this was ridiculous and wondered how the referee could have possibly been able to see a pinfall in order to count it.

ALEISTER BLACK PROMO- GREAT (although the fact that no one has answered his challenge yet doesn’t make the babyfaces on our roster look very good)

SHANE MCMAHON CALLS OUT ROMAN REIGNS- bad segment on principal
Shane has brought The Revival with him. Tom Phillips reminded us that a tag team only counts as one wildcard slot tonight. I will admit that I had forgotten this rule. I will also freely admit that Tom bringing this up made me absolutely furious because of the sheer chutzpah it takes to try to convince me that you’re not over the wildcard rule limit by quoting a loophole in the rule at me that allows you to have two people count as one, mere minutes after shoving twice the allowed limit of wrestlers into one segment and not ever acknowledging that any of them were wildcard rule invitees.
Shane cut a great promo, then called Roman out. Roman beat up The Revival, then got jumped from behind and laid out by a Claymore Kick from Drew McIntyre (wildcard count: 13). So yeah. They did THE EXACT SAME F*CKING THING THEY’VE DONE EVERY G-D DAMN SEGMENT IN THIS FEUD. Roman gets jumped from behind by Drew and laid out with the Claymore Kick. Once was good. 833 times is bad. You can’t just do the same angle over and over and over again. That’s not a story, it’s just treading water.

The graphic for Stomping Grounds has a f*cking shoe in it. The person who designed this should have been fired on the spot. Do these people not understand that they are designing the logo for a professional wrestling event and not a shoe store?

WINNER GETS A WWE SMACKDOWN WOMENS’ TITLE SHOT AT STOMPING GROUNDS: Alexa Bliss! vs. Carmella vs. Charlotte Flair- 5.75/10
They told the usual three-way story. The match felt like it was going a three quarters speed a lot of the time. Fire & Desire came out and interfered to attack Carmella. She scared them off, but this allowed Alexa to hit her with a DDT and win. Hooray for Alexa!

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERIVEWS LARS SULLIVAN- F*CKING AWESOME!
Lars cut a FANTASTIC promo that was basically a personal mission statement followed by a threat to rip Lucha House Party to pieces.

APOLLO CREWS vs. ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS (w/Zelina Vega)- no rating, meh segment
Andrade jumped the bell on Crews, beat him up and hit his finisher. Finn Balor came out to help Crews and was getting the best of Andrade until Zelina Vega yanked Balor’s foot, which allowed Andrade to get the advantage, hit is finisher and won. This sounds like a pretty good little angle... until you realize that the PPV is Saudi Arabia and thus Vega won’t be on the show, so Andrade won’t have her to help him get the advantage like he did in this segment, so Balor’s title won’t be in the jeopardy this segment was designed to make us think it will be in.

GOLDBERG PROMO- an excellent promo for a match that I know won’t deliver so I can’t get excited about it.
Also... Bill, if you’ve wanted to find out what it would be like to wrestle The Undertaker for twenty years, why didn’t you ever call him out?
The lights go out and Taker appears behind Goldberg but lets Goldberg turn around to face him. They have a stare-down, then the lights go out again and Taker has disappeared... and Goldberg laughs it off. The stare-down tonight was an undeniably awesome moment... but once again I can’t help but have my enthusiasm destroyed by the fact that I know this match won’t be much of anything.

A bad episode of Smackdown raised up by a strong finish. If the Shane/Roman and Dolph/Kofi stuff hadn’t been so damn repetitive I might have been able to justify saying this show made it up to okay.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
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DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

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KILLdozer
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Re: BRM Reviews the 6/4/2019 Smackdown (bad, but just barely)

Post by KILLdozer » Jun 5th, '19, 11:15

How the hell does Dolph Ziggler even still work here? KNOCK THE STUPID SHIT OFF.
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

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Serujuunin
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Re: BRM Reviews the 6/4/2019 Smackdown (bad, but just barely)

Post by Serujuunin » Jun 5th, '19, 18:26

Are you starting to get the face feeling from Aleister yet like I do?

I'll be honest, he's one of the only reasons I'm watching Smackdown at the moment, because I feel like both Smackdown and RAW are SO bad right now.

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Big Red Machine
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Re: BRM Reviews the 6/4/2019 Smackdown (bad, but just barely)

Post by Big Red Machine » Jun 5th, '19, 22:31

Serujuunin wrote: Jun 5th, '19, 18:26 Are you starting to get the face feeling from Aleister yet like I do?
I'm not sure what he is, and I don't think we'll know until he actually wrestles. This promo gave me slightly heelish vibes with that crazy bit there at the end.
Serujuunin wrote: Jun 5th, '19, 18:26 I'll be honest, he's one of the only reasons I'm watching Smackdown at the moment, because I feel like both Smackdown and RAW are SO bad right now.
They are, indeed, quite bad.
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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Re: BRM Reviews the 6/4/2019 Smackdown (bad, but just barely)

Post by KILLdozer » Jun 6th, '19, 10:54

Big Red Machine wrote: Jun 5th, '19, 22:31
Serujuunin wrote: Jun 5th, '19, 18:26 Are you starting to get the face feeling from Aleister yet like I do?
I'm not sure what he is, and I don't think we'll know until he actually wrestles. This promo gave me slightly heelish vibes with that crazy bit there at the end.
Serujuunin wrote: Jun 5th, '19, 18:26 I'll be honest, he's one of the only reasons I'm watching Smackdown at the moment, because I feel like both Smackdown and RAW are SO bad right now.
They are, indeed, quite bad.
I think I've got, like a 5 paragraph post coming on the entire state of things lately-this "wild card", which is really just a false transparent end to the brand split, NO progression...the same angle every show with the same people....and more.
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

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Serujuunin
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Re: BRM Reviews the 6/4/2019 Smackdown (bad, but just barely)

Post by Serujuunin » Jun 7th, '19, 19:26

Big Red Machine wrote: Jun 5th, '19, 22:31
Serujuunin wrote: Jun 5th, '19, 18:26 Are you starting to get the face feeling from Aleister yet like I do?
I'm not sure what he is, and I don't think we'll know until he actually wrestles. This promo gave me slightly heelish vibes with that crazy bit there at the end.
Serujuunin wrote: Jun 5th, '19, 18:26 I'll be honest, he's one of the only reasons I'm watching Smackdown at the moment, because I feel like both Smackdown and RAW are SO bad right now.
They are, indeed, quite bad.
I can kind of see where you’re coming from. But I feel like if he was a heel, he would have just gone and found someone to beat on, instead of waiting for someone to come to him?

I mean, if I were writing it, that’s what I would do.

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