And fresh off of this Royal Rumble fiasco, I think its a must watch solely for the reactions.
The rest is just icing on the cake.
The last time I watched this show the music was different (it's always bad though), Eden wasn't the announcer and Byron Saxton was still GOATing it up on NXT. But the last time I last watched was only a couple of months ago. Things changed pretty fast for Smackdown.
Starting off with ball jokes. Oh so bad PG humour right?
SIT DOWN MARKS. Remember the degenerate's famous weenie promo.
After Trips' rambling, Roman Reigns comes out and speaks just a few words after a short staredown?
And then the match begins in an ad break?
Not very good booking for WWE's new basket of eggs.
I was tempted to skip the match out of COMPLETE DISRESPECT (plus mentions of awkwardness and general badness on the forum), but I decided to just solider on through it.
Honestly, the match wasn't as horrific as some people are making it out to be. It was basically an expected match from Reigns as well as Show. Granted, there was some awkwardness and general badness in the match - like Show essentially no-selling the apron dropkick Reigns has built up for over a year, or making Reigns, the JUGGERNAUT SUPERMAN POWERHOUSE look weaker than ever before with his Superman punches - it was bearable at the absolute least.
If there's anything I could mention as truly bad in the match it was how blatant the teasing of the fans was. Reigns knocking Show over the top rope several times in the match, with it being mentioned several times by commentary, is either extremely coincidental or just officials purposely trying to annoy the fans yet again. It's sad we've been in a stagnant situation like this since 2013, where the priority seems to be pissing fans off to the point they question if they want to watch, only then to turn everything goody good again.
Not including the casket match, the rest of the show was average at best.
Kidd vs. Jimmy or Jey Uso was alright for the allotted time, though honestly I expect more from Kidd. Jimmy or Jey Uso did pretty well selling a knee injury which has been lingering for months now I think. I don't know if that's excessive but if we look at it logically it makes sense because the fuckers always fly around. Nice to see Kidd pick up some wins.
Rusev and Lana as usual doing great in their promos. No need to even outright attack the US of A in this promo to get the crowd against them. Sadly it was mostly ruined by a "serious" Cena coming out and being "serious" yet throwing around multiple hoe jokes towards Lana as if she rejected his courting backstage and he has some self-entitled grudge.
I'd have loved a Rusev match instead of the Ass-ension versus the DUSTBROTHERS though. I get the story of Cody and Goldust having trouble in their teaming but it's so typical and I can't really care as they've missed their best opportunity at breaking them up as far as I'm concerned.
The main event casket match was overall solid not just for a gimmick match like it is, or a Kane match, but overall a pretty good calibre match. Nothing was truly deplorable in the match, and I still think Kane does a great job at knowing what his role is.
Compare that to Big Show - Kane is taken down by one extremely speedy jumping clothesline by Bryan, and Big Show still needs three strong clotheslines from the POWERHOUSE Roman Reigns to get off of his feet, and two Superman punches to be able to be lifted from the top rope.
Clearly there's a consistency problem here considering the fact Kane and Show were treated essentially equal in strength and roughly equal in size at the Rumble.
Personally I'd blame Show, as he's meant to be putting Reigns over as the up and coming strength wrestler, yet he takes so many hits to fall down and doesn't even sell the big signature hitters, whereas Kane has no problem being taken off his feet from a momentum-based hype signature of Bryan's.
Overall okay show. Probably not great enough to keep me interested in Smackdown but alas, I don't think much will.
P.S. Only respect for Arnie. None for Lawler's impression though.
