Video: WWE Smackdown from Jan. 13, 2012, featuring Daniel Bryan vs. Big Show
by Geno Mrosko on Jan 16, 2012 3:03 PM EST
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Here's last Friday night's (Jan. 13, 2012) episode of WWE Smackdown, which featured the no disqualification, no countout world heavyweight championship match between Daniel Bryan and Big Show.
Predictably enough, WWE went with the non-finish finish when Show knocked over A.J., Bryan's lady friend who professed her love to him earlier in the night, leading to an injury angle. Show weeped openly at the damage he did and Bryan told him he can have the belt if he wants it bad enough to do what he did.
At the start of the show, it was determined that whoever won the main event would face Mark Henry next week. So who knows what's going to happen there. His heat is dead and Bryan isn't really getting over with what he's doing, though it's a slow process.
Oh and the debut of The Funkasaurus from Planet Funk, Brodus Clay, on Smackdown.
Lastly, an interesting sequence happened. Cody Rhodes defeated Ezekial Jackson with relative ease in a fairly short match. But a little bit later on, a promo was aired pumping up Jackson as a big time threat and the "personification of domination."
Right.
It's a typical episode of Smackdown, nothing special but not terrible. Enjoy.
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Ezekial Jackson has the greatest intro song
It is a damn shame that he is being treated as squash material. I hope they do something with him in the future.
So go forth, my brethren, and proceed to mark the f*ck out
Mega LULZ
when crowd is chanting “she’s okay” during the AJ stretcher job.
by Anthony Steven Lewis on Jan 16, 2012 3:41 PM EST reply actions
The angle is progressing decently
and Bryan’s doing the best he can with his new innocent, over-the-top braggart heel. But I just can’t help but feel that, had Mark Henry not been injured, they would have had someone to build on for the future in Daniel Bryan. As it stands, I have to say I agree with Asterisk when he called it a while back; the Daniel Bryan heel turn is going to make building him up credibly really difficult, especially given his first opponents. Had he had more realistic opponents like Orton or even Sheamus, it may have been easier for him to get over as anything other than the coward heel, but with two big men like Henry and Show, he has looked anything but believable as champion.
Fish Stripes, a Florida Marlins blog
Author, Baseball Prospectus Fantasy
All it will take is one good match for him to be taken seriously as a heel
and clearly, they don’t plan on putting a serious title defense on Smackdown. His heel turn has been taken slowly too, which I really like but is killing his heat since its not that obvious whether to boo him or not yet.
It's going to hard for even Bryan to have a good match
given his first opponent is Big Show and his next opponent is Mark Henry presumably. Not only are they limited in ring, but neither of them have heat to transfer to Bryan. Big Show’s heat is mostly because he’s a veteran, in much the same way that Kane often gets babyface heat regardless of what he does. Mark Henry had major heel heat, but it all dissipated from his anticlimactic loss to Big Show and the subsequent Bryan cash-in.
If indeed the original plan was to keep Henry with the belt until Wrestlemania only to have Bryan beat him, it would have gotten Bryan major heat because Henry would have been credibly built. Even if Henry could only 10-15 minutes tops with Bryan, the awesome Henry build-up combined with the underdog babyface story would have transferred the Henry heat to babyface heat for Bryan (or at least that’s the idea). As it stands, we have three potential problems:
1) All that great monster heel buildup for Henry was not transferred to anyone.
2) Bryan’s win was cheap, so he needs to regain credibility.
3) His two main opponents are too difficult to get good matches out of and have no heat themselves, making Bryan’s work look less impressive in-ring.
I don’t know, I feel like that Henry injury and the fact that WWE seemed completely uninterested in sticking with the Bryan babyface underdog storyline may have robbed the heat from everyone involved. I’d love for it to be not the case though, because Bryan is playing that Angle-like “oblivious good guy” heel pretty darn well.
Fish Stripes, a Florida Marlins blog
Author, Baseball Prospectus Fantasy
by Michael Jong on Jan 16, 2012 7:28 PM EST up reply actions
Did you see the Bryan-Henry cage match?
And I liked what I saw from Show-Bryan the previous two times before the disqualifiation/AJ run in. I think you need to give Daniel Bryan more credit. I’m convinced that guy can be put in the ring with anyone and put on at least a halfway decent match. And despite their size, Big Show and Mark Henry can put on some entertaining matches.
The Bryan/Henry cage match wasn't that good.
It was fine for a Henry match, but that’s not what’s needed to get Dragon over. He needs to have four star matches on a consistent basis, and a few of those need to be against guys who the audience at least somewhat cares about.
Those are limited options in today’s WWE, because so few people fit that criterion, but Henry and Show are not the way to go. Neither guy has ever had a great match even in their primes despite facing some of the greatest workers in history on a consistent basis, and now that both guys are in their early 40’s, the best match Dragon could ever have with them won’t be anything special.
If all it took to make people take you seriously was one good match, Danielson would still have heat from his Ziggler match last year.
I really wish that was the case, because if it was, all WWE would need to do would be to book Dragon in a match with Jack Swagger, Sheamus, Randy Orton, Christian, Heath Slater, Seth Rollins, YOSHIHIKO, basically anybody but the bottom tier of the roster in terms of workrate.
But this isn’t what it takes, ordinarily when a guy debuts, it takes at least a few months to get them over, even if they have the look, the mic skills, and the athletic ability. Then you need to put said guy in programs with people who are over, and have them consistently win by either hook or crook* until you find the right guy for them to lose to.
In Danielson’s case, things are much more severely damaged because he’s been buried for damn near a year by the loudest, most constant presence in the compnay, and almost always loses his matches unless he’s on Superstars, and Superstars doesn’t mean shit. It’d take at least a year of rehab before he’s ready to be taken seriously by the crowd. Since he’s not particularly imposing, good looking, or good on the mic, he might be a lost cause unless he’s just taken off TV entirely for at least nine months.
You have no idea how much this hurts to type. I’ve seen dozens of Danielson matches, and he’s easily the best wrestler alive today, but his heat has been so dampened that there’s likely nothing that can salvage the wreck of his WWE career now aside from drastic long term measures, which is an impossibility in modern WWE.
*Though if the guy wins via shennanigans, they have to do it of their own wits (Edge/Cena Summerslam ‘06), or the person who screws things over has to further the storyline (HIAC ’97), otherwise, they’ll look like complete jokes (every JBL title match ever).
I like that he's 2000 Kurt Angle all over again.
He’s a heel but doesn’t really know it.
by Kyle Rancourt on Jan 16, 2012 6:26 PM EST up reply actions
Decent enough show.
But please God no to a Sheamus/Jinder Mahal feud. Jinder Mahal sucks. I thought Sheamus was going to feud with Barrett until Orton came back?
Also, I sort of enjoy the “ALL HE DOES IS LOSE” angle with Drew McIntyre. He’s the reverse Tebow!
What's wrong with Sheamus and Jinder?
I don’t know that I particularly like that mini-feud so far, but it hasn’t been terrible yet.
Because Jinder Mahal has no heat at all.
I wouldn’t want to see a Mahal feud with anyone. Guys that low on the totem pole need to either lose every time they’re on TV, or squash other jobbers for a few months so that the audience won’t be bored out of their skulls every time they enter the ring.
I actually agree with you on something.
I think Mahal is fine in the ring. Not great by any stretch, but certainly not the worst worker in the company. I was fine with him squashing a bunch of FCW guys as a build up, but throwing him into a feud with Sheamus? It makes no sense.
by Kyle Rancourt on Jan 18, 2012 4:33 PM EST up reply actions
It's great if they could actually market Drew as having the longest losing streak on WWE right now.
I remember TNA running a similar angle (forgot the jobber’s name, though) between ‘03-’05, and it paid off wonderfully in the end. That wrestler went from being a whiny heel who throws tantrums whenever he loses, to one in which he became a face by default when he finally bagged a win, just because most folks sympathized with his rotten luck.
by horsewithnoname on Jan 17, 2012 6:01 AM EST up reply actions
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