SmackDown Live journeyed to Memphis, Tennessee last night (Jan. 17, 2017). Alexa Bliss was tasked with defending her SmackDown Women’s Championship against Becky Lynch in main event steel cage match. For full results and the live blog from the exceptional Reverend Kain, click here.
Welcome back
There’s no getting around this: Alexa Bliss is an exceptional character, and arguably the best talker in the company—hell, the industry—aside from The Miz. She’s a gif machine, and utterly owns every arena she steps inside despite being barely five feet of fury.
But she is simply not a good ring worker at this stage of her career.
The blame falls partially on the structure of the match, though. Despite billing the SmackDown Live Women’s Championship cage match between Bliss and Becky Lynch for a whole week with taglines including “no escape” ... the match was contested under escape rules. It is extremely difficult to produce a cage match of any quality when 90 percent of it is one of the competitors either trying to climb out of the cage or run out the door.
What’s more, the psychology didn’t make a whole lot of sense. This was actually a case when escape rules could have made some sense, with Becky Lynch trying to murder Bliss and Alexa fleeing for her life at any chance. Bliss had shirked confrontation with Becky for weeks on end—but once in the cage fought the match even with the challenger, displaying no fear or uncertainty. One would expect that Ms. Bliss would be seeking whatever underhanded methods possible to make dashes to the door, but basically just worked it as a regular match. Lynch, on the other hand, should have demonstrated zero interest in escape but rather to merely pummel the champion to bits—but yet also continuously attempted to leave the cage.
It didn’t make a whole lot of sense with the story that had been told—nonsensical wouldn’t be an inaccurate description.
To be quite frank, this match didn’t deliver in the main event spot.
The angle turned out to be much more interesting than the match itself. The rumor mill was churning all Tuesday, and the speculation that Mickie James would return and cost Lynch the title turned out to be well founded. When Lynch attempted to escape one last time through the door, La Luchadora appeared to block her path. This led to a 2-on-1 beatdown that eventually led to Bliss retaining with a DDT. In the post-match scuffle that followed, Lynch unmasked ol’ purple head—and stared in shock at the 5-time WWE Women’s Champion. This hesitation allowed Bliss to regain the upper hand, and the two villains put the boots to the Lasskicker and closed the show with arms raised.
James’ return is a very, very welcome sight. Her aligning with Bliss might not exactly make sense at this very moment, though we should at least allow SmackDown a chance to explain just why James has decided to help Alexa. Narrative coherency is where the blue brand shines best, and Mickie is a dynamite character and talker (and worker), so there’s little to fear on that front.
And her first appearance on Talking Smack should be an absolute delight.
Where art thou, Daniel?
Speaking of Talking Smack ... we’re on two weeks now without SmackDown General Manager and co-host Daniel Bryan. It’s no understatement to claim that the post-show’s co-hosts literally make that show—the dynamic between Renee Young and Bryan is immensely enjoyable, and they both do bang up jobs of bringing the best out of their guests to advance angles and add meaningful character notes.
Other guest hosts have succeeded in playing effectively with Young—Mike Mizanin (as played by The Miz, played by Mike Mizanin) and JBL both were big hits in their own respective ways.
But boy is Shane McMahon very, very bad in this role. The post-show that was lovingly nicknamed Talking Shoot and had the wrestling world losing its mind every week turns into something like a bad impersonation of Meet the Press when the SmackDown commissioner is tasked with co-hosting the program.
Moving Talking Smack to an hour after SmackDown Live was by no means a death knell. But without Bryan, it’s seriously lacking in juice. Bring him back, immediately.
Because Shane is killing the show.
Memphis style
SmackDown Live paid homage to its spiritual home of Memphis last night, with an incredible segment featuring a concession (well, merchandise) stand brawl between Nikki Bella and Natalya.
Nikki wanted to call out Natalya to the ring in order to settle the score from last week, but her embittered rival instead appeared from the crowd and taunted her from a distance. Nattie then made her way to the concourse and appeared at a merchandise stand, and proceeded to tear it apart when she realized there was no merch for her, but plenty for Nikki (“great product placement, right next to the Cena merchandise”) and even her uncle, Bret Hart. She tried to stuff a bunch of Bella merchandise in the trash, but was stopped by Nikki, who tackled her right through the table (!) and proceeded to waylay the Queen of Harts.
The two battled back and forth, as the shocked and elated fans chanted “NIKKI, NIKKI, NIKKI!”
Words don’t properly do it justice, in all honesty. When Nattie first appeared in the crowd, and made her way back up the stairs, the dawning realization that we were indeed about to get a brawl on the concourse was a wonderful, wonderful feeling—and they delivered in spades.
The assembled fans were utterly blown away—honestly, some of the excited reactions made it seem like they felt it was an actual shoot fight. It’s barely halfway through January, but this will be remembered as one of the best segments of the year. In fact, last week’s brawl will probably be as well.
Some have criticized the angle, saying the themes are too similar to Nikki’s last struggle with Carmella. While there are definite nuances that separate the two struggles, it’s not wrong to say that the two heels have used partially the same line of attack.
What this does, however, is reinforce Nikki’s defense of herself, and her status as a different sort of positive role model for women’s wrestling. Maybe some fans are annoyed that some of the same notes are being hit, but it’s working to make Nikki a very, very sympathetic babyface. In fact, at this point she’s arguably the best female babyface in the company.
This feud is hitting on all cylinders right now. More, please.
“He did this”
Randy Orton is a snake, and Bray Wyatt is blind to reality.
But there was no need to make the crowd sit through this long of a totally lifeless Dean Ambrose-Orton match to get to the desired angle. Five minutes could have easily been chopped off from this lifeless contest. Once Ambrose hit Luke Harper with a suicide dive onto the announce table, the real story began. (Harper in fact had taken the bullet for Orton in that instance.)
Harper, none too thrilled by being hit with the attack, tried to get into the ring to get at Ambrose. In the confusion, Ambrose scored a roll up victory. Orton was none too pleased, and eventually Luke and Randy came to blows, with Bray barely able to keep the pair apart. Harper continuously tried to press the issue, which resulted in him earning a punch from Wyatt—which devastated Harper, who walked off.
Orton, in the background, grinned the whole time.
Are Harper’s attempts to get in the ring kind of dumb? Most definitely. But they help drive real development in the story, so they’re somewhat excusable.
In fact, it’s a comparatively minor gripe, because this story is on fire right now. The lock of shock and hurt on Harper’s face after Wyatt punched him was utterly masterful, and prompted real sympathy for Bray’s real lieutenant.
Next week, Orton and Harper will square off against each other, brother against “brother,” to hopefully get the aggression out. Needless to say, this is not likely to go the way Wyatt hopes.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes Wyatt to realize that Harper was right all along—that Orton has successfully infiltrated the family, split it asunder, and now is primed to strike.
Three kings...
One of the beauties of SmackDown Live is that it never sits in stasis, instead always building for the next pay-per-view, or supershow, or, in last night’s case, the next two pay-per-views.
Shane McMahon opened the show and announced that the WWE Championship would be defended next month inside Elimination Chamber. Obviously, current champion AJ Styles was none too pleased about this, and told Shane that he might just “go back to Japan” with the championship. It wasn’t too long before his challenger at Royal Rumble, John Cena, appeared. The pair bantered briefly back and forth before Styles wondered aloud, “Who’s next out to try to steal my spotlight?”
AWESOME.
It has been really, really great to watch The Miz be legitimately elevated to main event player over the last six months. Whatever WWE championship feud he enters into this year—and make no mistake, he will be part of one—is guaranteed to be absolutely incredible.
The interplay between Styles and Miz was great, heightened all the more by Troll John Cena being a complete troll. Not just what he said (“Are you going to let him talk about you that way?”, etc) but scurrying around behind people with an impudent grin on his face was just fantastic.
When Cena noted, “Sounds to me like The Miz is saying he’s way better than AJ Styles,” it was only a matter of time before inevitable match between the champion and The A Lister—which Shane promptly made.
The match was nothing more than a tease, which makes sense—there was never going to be a clean finish, or even a finish at all, in this match. (Especially with Cena sitting right there on commentary.) After Styles threw Miz into Cena, the match was thrown out, and eventually the 15-time champion stood tall after delivering two AAs.
More and more it seems like the title match at Royal Rumble won’t reach a conclusive decision—and surely WWE isn’t going to run Cena’s 16th championship victory at Elimination Chamber. But there’s a main event at a certain early April show in Orlando that might fit the bill...
...and a King’s Court
It’s hard to claim that one misses Dolph Ziggler’s repetitive “rah rah” babyface promos, but, well, those seem to be more appetizing than Ziggler trying to sell a conflicted heart by merely standing silent for several minutes. Jerry Lawler trying to coax words out of him felt more like a bad therapy session than an entertaining wrestling angle.
Ziggler producing the footage of Lawler’s cardiac arrest in 2012 that was “caused” by The Show Off was a perfectly legitimate attempt at getting heat, but failed to accomplish its goal. The superkick to Lawler (his chest, specifically, which was a decent touch) was expected, and Ziggler refusing to return to the ring was on message.
But honestly, the highlight of the segment might have been JBL tripping when he left the commentary desk to attend to Lawler. That’s not a great sign.
There were several excellent segments on this show, including another incredible brawl between Nikki Bella and Natalya, an explosion of starpower featuring AJ Styles, John Cena, and The Miz, and further development in the Wyatt storyline.
But this week’s mediocre main event and another actively bad episode of Talking Smack (and no Carmella shopping spree with James Ellsworth!) have the blue brand in a relative slump.