Smackdown Live Recap — 21/2/17
The great thing about Smackdown Live being a two-hour show is that when it’s bad it’s at least over quickly.
This week’s episode wasn’t great and it probably stems from the fact that Smackdown has to keep chugging along until April 3rd.
It’s baffling that this wasn’t the Elimination Chamber go-home show.
Who thought it was a good idea to have the brand with the least amount of talent have to build towards WrestleMania for a month and a half?
Anyway, here’s a recap of an episode of Smackdown Live that was incredibly predictable thanks to Dave Meltzer and his incredible sources that are never wrong.
Daniel Bryan In-Ring Promo
Daniel Bryan kicks off the show and immediately brings out Smackdown Women’s Champion Naomi.
Naomi is walking gingerly and has a knee brace on, so it seems she’s going to be relinquishing the title.
A little ironic after RAW ran a Women’s Championship segment this week based solely around relinquishing the title.
The crowd breaks out into a “You deserve it,” chant.
Chill, guys. She’s had the title for almost two weeks now.
Naomi tearfully gives back the title and the crowd is going ballistic.
They are really into Naomi, which goes to show you don’t have to be good in the ring or on the mic to get over, as long as you have a cool entrance.
As Naomi is leaving Alexa Bliss makes her way to the ring and asks for Bryan to give her the title.
The crowd starts a “What?” chant and my disdain for that stupid chant grows stronger.
Bryan teases that he’ll give Bliss the title, but then he swerves her and instead announces Bliss vs. Lynch for the title right now.
Becky Lynch vs. Alexa Bliss for the Smackdown Women’s Championship
Mauro immediately makes a pop culture reference when Lynch’s music hits and it’s so cringe inducing.
Honestly, I think Mauro is the worst play-by-play commentator in the WWE. Tom Phillips and Michael Cole are leaps and bounds ahead of him.
We’ve also seen this match every second week since the brand split and I couldn’t be less excited despite this being a championship match.
The match is incredibly average and Alexa Bliss wins the title after a roll up and grabbing the tights. It’s like they deliberately tried to recreate every women’s match finish in the WWE from the mid-2000s.
Mickie James then attempts to attack Becky after the match, but Becky fights her off.
Backstage Vignettes From Battle Royal Participants
So there’s going to be a battle royal to decide the №1 Contender for the WWE Championship as Randy Orton refuses to face Bray Wyatt.
Really, guys? You’re going to decide who main events WrestleMania by a battle royal? That seems like a bad business decision in kayfabe.
These vignettes achieved absolutely nothing except confirming that The Miz is by far the best talker in the business.
Natalya Interview Backstage
Natalya cuts literally the exact same promo she’s been cutting about Nikki Bella for the past 3 months. Yawn.
Breezango vs. American Alpha
Breezango get the jobber entrance, so it’s safe to assume they’re going to be fed to American Alpha.
Tyler Breeze and Fandango attack American Alpha before the start of the match and things look a little promising.
However, American Alpha get a hot tag, do literally two seconds of offence and then get the win.
See that image up there? That’s one of like three moves they did in the entire match.
Way to make your already shitty tag division look even worse.
The Uso’s then make their way through the crowd and threaten American Alpha.
This is actually a great promo and I’d argue it was the very best of their career.
Nikki Bella Backstage Interview
Yawn. This was not necessary.
Nikki Bella vs. Natalya Falls Count Anywhere Match
THANK GOD THIS FEUD IS ENDING.
This also seems like the kind of match Nikki shouldn’t be having if the rumours about her neck injury are true.
Nikki and Natalya actually put on an entertaining match here and made surprisingly good use of the Falls Count Anywhere stipulation.
Eventually they work their way backstage and Nikki gets thrown into Maryse, so we are 100% getting that Nikki Bella and John Cena vs. Maryse and The Miz match.
This is such a dumb setup for the feud, up there with JBL feuding with Chris Jericho because he got thrown into him and Kane’s feud with Jericho over spilled coffee.
Maryse later comes out and attacks Nikki Bella with a pipe, which leads to Natalya picking up the win.
№1 Contender Battle Royal
Mojo fucking Rawley is in this match. That tells you everything you need to know about the lack of talent on Smackdown Live.
It’s painfully obvious at this point that Harper is going to become №1 contender and Randy Orton will make it a triple threat to “make sure Wyatt doesn’t lose the title.”
It’s also obvious Orton is turning and winning the title.
It seems like AJ Styles is 100 per cent having a match with Shane McMahon too. What a waste of one of the top three wrestlers in the world.
But onto the actual match.
Dolph Ziggler eliminates Kalisto, but then Crews eliminates Ziggler. Ziggler attacks Kalisto with a chair and then attempts to do the same thing to Crews, but Crews chases him off. This is a dumb feud.
We also get John Cena eliminating The Miz, which gives more fuel to that feud.
Baron Corbin then gets eliminated by Ambrose, which causes Corbin to pull Ambrose under the ropes and hit End of Days on the outside of the ring.
Meanwhile back in the ring, The Miz sneaks back in and eliminates Cena from behind. Yep, that feud is 100 per cent going ahead.
Eventually we’re left with just AJ and Harper and their sequence of near-miss eliminations is quite lacklustre.
Eventually both men fall to the floor in an attempt to have both their feet hit the floor at the same time.
However, it honestly looks like like Harper just eliminated AJ and watching it back it looked like Harper’s feet hit the floor well after AJ’s.
The refs think it’s a tie and they never once decide to go to a video replay to see which guy hit the floor first. IT’S 2017 WE HAVE TECHNOLOGY.
Daniel Bryan then comes out and announces the match is a draw and there will be a №1 contenders match next week. This reeks of padding for time on their long as hell build to WrestleMania.
I guess we have to wait another week for Harper to become №1 contender.
Also, if Shane vs. AJ is really happening why wouldn’t they have Shane come out to make the announcement. It would at least give AJ a reason to hate Shane.
Anyway, Harper lariats AJ and then Bray Wyatt appears on the titantron and laughs. The end.
Verdict:
This was a pretty poor episode of Smackdown Live.
Only the Falls Count Anywhere match and Battle Royal were any good, meaning on average there was only one segment per hour worth watching.
RAW had four great segments this week, so I put it slightly ahead of Smackdown, but overall this wasn’t a great week for the WWE’s top shows.
Hopefully NXT has something good in store.
