2017 Review: In Which Everyone is Responsible for Last Week's Ratings Victory

1/4/2017

Hello all, and welcome to my inaugural review of SmackDown Live. And what better time to start than at the dawn of a new year? I think we can all agree that while 2016 was tumultuous (awful), controversial (terrible) and volatile (dismal), for wrestling fans the squared circle was a mostly wonderful escape.

And for me, nothing was quite a better antidote to 2016 than SmackDown Live. The blue brand was handed chicken shit and made chicken salad. AJ Styles decided to have the best debut year in WWE history. The Miz decided to become the best heel and promo man in the world.

Becky Lynch decided to become the most wonderful babyface, and Heath Slater the best Cinderella story. Dolph Ziggler… was also there (hey, you’ll always have No Mercy, Dolph). Talking Smack became a thing. What an absolute revelation that show has been. Utter perfection.

And on and on and on. SmackDown Live is, for me, the best serialised programming in wrestling today. So I’ll reiterate: what better time to start reviewing than now?

Mine is a minimalist style, and I’m more about discussing than recapping. My system of approval/disapproval will consist entirely of the coveted THUMBS UP and dreaded THUMBS DOWN system. Simple, effective, and not at all arbitrary (I hope).

In lieu of chronology, I’ll be picking up on the main narrative threads of each episode and discussing them as I so choose. This is my party, and I’ll… order it… how I want to. (What?)

I’ll designate one lucky man or woman as PERFORMER OF THE WEEK, and will take the time to point out why RAW was inferior to SmackDown Live each and every week.

(Disclaimer: I don’t watch Raw, but the excellent Kevin Berge’s reviews keep me up to speed. Check them out, seriously. The rest is deductive reasoning. Also, simply put: SmackDown Live is better than Raw.)

Shall we begin?

“You know when it comes to Hollywood, you will never be as good as The Rock. And when it comes to this ring, you will never be as good as AJ Styles.” – AJ Styles

The Miz / Maryse and Dean Ambrose / Renee Young

The show started with The Miz holding a microphone, which the latter half of 2016 consistently showed to be a good idea. He was out there to again chastise Renee Young while promoting his Intercontinental Championship match with her boyfriend, Dean Ambrose, later in the night.

It was inevitable, of course, that Ambrose was interrupt, and Miz did very well to whip the crowd into a frenzy of anticipation. It’s a far cry from just a few weeks ago when the crowd was slowly turning on Ambrose because of just how good his then-opponent, AJ Styles, is. More proof of The Miz’s invaluable ability to be fantastically loathsome.

Ambrose did arrive, and chased The Miz only for Maryse to intervene. She continues to be a terrific addition to his entire gimmick. A nit-pick of this is that Ambrose didn’t simply dart past her as The Miz left, but it’s a minor one. The segment was a good one.

Renee is much less present than the other three characters in this angle – I like that, as I’d prefer she remains primarily a presenter / broadcaster and a character second – but she is present for one segment in which Maryse tracks her down backstage and slaps her. Hard. This all feels like it could simply be for Total Divas but the work has been seamless and exciting.

Before their match, Ambrose is interviewed by Dasha Fuentes, and it’s clear he’s heard about the slap. He’s seething, and he guarantees that he will take away the championship Miz holds so dear. It almost distracts from Dasha’s fumbling over the phrase Intercontinental Championship. I felt for her, I really did.

Their Intercontinental Championship match in the main event, which is really important in emphasising the importance of that belt. Show, don’t tell (unless you’re The Miz, who is really good at telling people how important that belt is). The match itself was passable. I don’t think these two are the best opponents, since neither has a lot of snap to their offence, but it was fine. I liked that Ambrose didn’t go through the motions and actively tried to attack Miz from the off in retribution for the treatment of Renee.

Ambrose won, which was a shock. The title changing hands was surprising, but I think the decision is set to be reversed. Ambrose was attacked by Maryse and should technically have won the match via DQ but he convinced the referee to simply eject her from ringside. Something tells me The Miz will raise this point and contest the outcome. That way, his loss stands but he keeps the title on a technicality. Overall, the match was a fine main event that the crowd were very invested in. THUMBS UP

An aside: while SmackDown is the A Show, Talking Smack is the A+ Show. That fact can most often be attributed to The Miz, who continues to turn up on the show and unleash all-time great promos on a semi-weekly basis while Daniel Bryan and Renee Young look shaken. He was at it again yesterday, with a promo that defies description. Go and find it, if you haven’t already. You won’t regret it.

Dolph Ziggler and Everyone

Baron Corbin and Dolph Ziggler had the first match of the night. There’s not a great deal to say about it; there have been many matches between these two, and all have been decent. This was much the same, and Corbin’s clean victory with The End of Days was the expected, and right, outcome. Ziggler probably hasn’t been given enough credit for aiding Corbin’s progression since he came to the main roster.

More and more, Corbin looks like a star. His ring-work must continue to improve, but he’s already an effective television character, which is arguably more important to the right people in WWE. And certainly, this win set the tone for Corbin’s night as was shown later in another narrative thread.

The aftermath of the match was more interesting than the match itself, though. Corbin looked to attack Ziggler post-match only for Kalisto to make the save; this itself wouldn’t be interesting. Ziggler nailing Kalisto with a superkick, however, was. It was brilliant, in fact. After his feud with The Miz a heel turn was the last place for Ziggler to go right now, and him snapping after another loss was natural progression for a character that consistently failed in all his pursuits throughout 2016.

It didn’t end there for Ziggler, though. In the next segment, he was seen backstage trashing the locker room, only to be confronted by Apollo Crews. Crews is a character who has fallen to the wayside since arriving on the main roster. To be quite frank, he was called up from NXT much too early. They had nothing for him and he wasn’t ready. Probably still isn’t.

Working with Ziggler should be good for him in the same way it has been for Corbin, though. Crews has had nothing to do on SmackDown Live, but faces are naturally reactive, so narratively, all he needed was something to react to. Him pointing out that Kalisto is his friend and that Dolph is now his business is a reaction, and an interesting one. Dolph headbutting Apollo in response simply escalates it. THUMBS UP

Dolph vs. Kalisto and Dolph vs. Apollo are fresh matchups that have been given stakes with one simple segment. The fact that Dolph trashed the locker room with less enthusiasm than Tommy Wiseau trashing his living room couldn’t even detract from the segment.

AJ Styles and John Cena
The Face that Runs the Place, and The Face that really Runs the Place.
Both men stood in the middle of the ring and signed a contract for their Royal Rumble match, and they may have wrapped up promo/segment of the year just four days into 2017.

It was implausible – no, completely unfeasible – that we would be seeing anything like this when this time last year AJ Styles wasn’t even a contracted WWE wrestler. Now, he’s the WWE World Champion, and universally regarded as the 2016 WWE wrestler of the year. He carried the blue brand. He had several match of the year calibre contests. Many think his debut year is the best anybody has ever had in WWE.

As Styles flourished in his first WWE year, however, John Cena seemed somehow to fade in his fifteenth. He was preoccupied by outside commitments, something he once goaded Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson for.

When he was present, he somehow seemed at less than full capacity. Once omnipresent and unstoppable, 2016 was the year that Cena became absent and fallible. It was AJ Styles who exposed this weakness, over and over. He defeated John Cena in many people’s match of the year at SummerSlam. And after that, the Blue Brand became the AJ Styles show.

There was always going to be a reckoning. There was always going to be a collision. And this contract signing was it. AJ Styles and John Cena tore into each other verbally with a brutality that few physical confrontations could match.

AJ Styles has not, to my knowledge, been considered a classic promo man in his career. Which makes his gains throughout 2016, evident here in a blistering promo, all the more impressive. Styles lays waste to Cena, labelling him a has-been, a part-timer, and a hypocrite. The man who lambasted The Rock for bailing on the company is suddenly gone for months at a time, and Styles jumped on this at every opportunity.

Furthermore, this is perhaps the most interesting John Cena has ever been. He is both the franchise and the old gunslinger, somehow at once ubiquitous and superfluous at the same time. Schrodinger’s Cena, if you will. As Styles pointed out, SmackDown Live doesn’t need John Cena. It was doing just fine without him. Flourishing, even.

And honestly, I can’t imagine anything more insulting to Cena than the idea that WWE doesn’t need him. Because as a character, he certainly needs WWE. He needs WWE, and he needs to be the best and most hard-working in WWE. The very notion that he may not be needed, and he may not be the best or hardest working, is causing him to malfunction.

It’s so refreshing to hear him say that nobody can be him. It’s not a heel turn, it’s just real. He’s right. Nobody in the company can do what John Cena does. For better or worse, he is irreplaceable. And suddenly, there’s no more ‘aw shucks’ from him, either. No more, ‘you bought a ticket, cheer or boo as you please’. He acknowledges the ‘Cena sucks’ contingent not with a knowing wink, but with thinly veiled disdain. The sort of disdain born of ten years suffrage. Again, this is not a heel reaction. It's a human reaction.

It turns out that the most interesting character in WWE isn’t the undead wizard who turns up three or four times a year; it isn’t the Canadian manchild with a (literal) list of grievances, and it’s not even the cult leader born of a diligent taxpaying wrestler. It’s John Cena, actually being John Cena; not the underdog, or the marine, or the hero to millions of children.

John Cena, the man who gets a title shot because he’s John Cena. Recognise.

This segment was outrageously good. SmackDown Live is always looking forward though, so it didn't end with these men signing. Baron Corbin was next out to declare that he will see one of them at WrestleMania when he wins the Royal Rumble.

Cena takes umbrage, and is ready for a fight. Desperate to prove the fire is still there. Styles, though, is more wary. He'll fight when he has to. The segment ends with Styles hitting a cheap shot on Cena. The immediate story is Cena vs. Corbin, set for next week, and so it's he who stands over Cena, mockingly.

"Maybe AJ was right," he gloats.

The company is going all in on Big Banter, and he's swimming rather than sinking. THUMBS UP

Elsewhere…

This show contained three (arguably four, if you include Maryse and Renee) separate angles for the women, which is fantastic progress. There was also more tag team action, though it was limited in this episode.

Becky Lynch and Alexa Bliss continue to create admirable mileage from their ever-lasting feud, with the mystery of La Luchadora continuing. There’s every indication that the masked character is actually in league with Alexa Bliss, so I hope it’s Blake or Murphy.

It’s obviously not going to be, but the possibility of Becky killing them both with Exploder Suplexes is a pleasing one. We need either that, or a legion of masked female luchadores lining up to fight Becky in a scene akin to Neo fighting a parade of Agent Smith’s.

Becky defeated Alexa, who switched with the actual (?) La Luchadora mid-match under the ring but was caught in the Dis-Arm-Her. Becky continues to defeat Alexa readily in non-title action, while Alexa uses any trick possible to prevail when the title is on the line. THUMBS UP

Carmella and James Ellsworth continued their odd romance. Carmella, like Baron Corbin, is a far superior television personality than wrestler. Corbin continues to make strides, though, in a way I can’t see Carmella doing. She has a lot of value as a character, though, and their dynamic has the potential to be excellent. Ellsworth has huge worth but doesn’t belong in the main event, so this was a good direction for him. He helped Carmella defeat NXT’s Aliyah in a standard match. THUMBS UP

Meanwhile, Natalya and Nikki continued their rivalry, which I have mixed feelings towards. Their interactions feel like transparent Total Divas fodder, but there is something perversely entertaining about both women becoming quite so personal. Natalya even implied that Bret was having some Nikki days!

I can’t remember the last time Natalya was quite so good with a microphone, which is testament to her consistent mediocrity in years past, and testament to SmackDown Live’s powers of rehabilitation. Nikki floors Natalya with an elbow that Mitsuharu Misawa would have been in awe of, and their match is set for next week. ABSTAIN

The other match of the night was American Alpha squashing The Fashion Police aka Breezango aka The Hot Cops. Again, mixed feelings. It’s good that American Alpha are being put over strong because they are head and shoulders above the majority of their competition and are the second best team in the company (some teams can go hard all day all night, though).

On the other hand, Alpha’s best main roster match was with Breeze and Fandango in the original SDLive Tag Team Championship tournament just a few months ago, and it’s a shame to have that reduced to a squash. Alpha should always look strong, because they’re exceptionally gifted, but the gap between them and their opponents shouldn’t be as vast as this match implies. THUMBS DOWN

The post-match segment contained the moment of the night, though, as The Wyatt Family appeared on the magical titantron and challenged Alpha to a championship rematch next week. As Bray left, Harper approached the screen, only to be cut off by Orton, who takes Harper’s cue: “Run.”

Luke Harper is outraged, and it is tremendous. Imagine the time and energy that goes into Wyatt Family promo rehearsals, and then think about how Orton just disregarded the natural order and stole Harper’s moment. How incredibly selfish. THUMBS UP

This was an incredibly enjoyable episode of SmackDown Live, which shouldn’t be a surprise at this point. The only thing it was truly lacking was an outstanding match, which would have elevated it from very good to transcendent. That said, the Corbin/Ziggler and Ambrose/Miz matches were absolutely fine.

As usual, the true reward in watching SmackDown was the continued growth and exploration of fascinating characters, with many standout performances and further progression for the stories of many. AJ Styles and The Miz continue to stand out in particular, but special mention goes to John Cena and Dolph Ziggler this week. In fact...

Performer of the Week: Dolph Ziggler, for a good match, an overdue change of character, and an exciting backstage segment. He almost lost out for that Wiseau-esque trashing of the locker room, though.

Why Raw was inferior, Part One of Infinity: Because while SmackDown Live had the Intercontinental Championship be contested in the main event, Raw can’t be bothered to do a single thing to make the United States Championship important.

Until next time, folks. THUMBS UP for reading.