Welp, it’s finally happened. Smackdown has moved to three hours.
That’s one less show for me to watch on a weekly (or is it weakly) basis, but let’s give the first SD of the year a shot before we completely abandon it. I betcha it’s going to have lots of fun stuff involving Diet Bloodline and wondering when Dwayne is showing up?
Or maybe we’re just using this show to hype up tonight’s RAW, which will be the first Netflix episode.
On a side note, I should mention that this is the first Smackdown to grace Netflix as part of the new deal, which makes it the first live WWE show on the package (unless you’re in the US) and for the most part, the stream had held up just fine with few hiccups. I know that Netflix had some issues with live streaming in the past, but either they resolved those and I had very little problems. The issue comes with the replay, because that isn’t up immediately afterwards, which made revisiting this episode difficult. Still, the fact that the live stream didn’t go tits up at any point gives me hope that RAW might be faring a bit better. But back to Smackdown…
Right off the bat, we get a Cody promo who cuts his usual Cody promo before Drew McIntyre comes out and hugs him. So he’s stealing Bay Ley’s old gimmick now, is he? But no, Drew wants to help Cody and Cody said, “Nah, dawg. I don’t trust you.” So Drew tells him to watch his back and right on cue, the absolutely justified and totally right Kevin Owens comes in from behind and beats up the American Person while Drew walks away. So now Cody is gonna have issues with Drew because Cody doesn’t know how to make friends. I wonder if Armed Anderson is finally getting through to Cody’s thick skull after all this time.
US Champ Nakamura defeated Andrade in a fine enough match before getting attacked by LA Knight, who managed to get a rematch for next week. This is followed by a Michin/Piper Niven match that didn’t last long and also got a big ol’ commercial break in the middle despite the show being three hours long. What’s that saying about the more things change?
Listen, I’m not going to blow through three hours of Smackdown after years of not blowing through three hours of RAW, so I’ll give you the big events. Apparently, Paul Heyman will be on hand for the Solo/Roman match to declare the winner tribal chief or something like that – I’ve long since stopped giving a shit about this Bloodline storyline after Cody finished his and I’m just waiting for Dwayne to come back since that’s where the money’s at. There’s a DIY/MCMG tag match that went to a no-content, continuing a feud that’s being going on for a while, and there’s a six-man between old Bloodline folks and new Bloodline folks that… eh, whatever, I don’t care.
The big news to come out of this show is that we have a new WWE Women’s Champion and her name is Tiffy. Yes, after months of the tired old trope of teasing a cash-in and not actually doing it, Tiffany Stratton actually cashed in her MiTB briefcase to score a pinfall over former champion Nia Jax to win the title and put this briefcase nonsense out of its misery until next summer when we have to do this crud all over again. This is, of course, following the title match that saw Nia retain her (now former) title against Glow “Naomi” Girl in what I would call a surprisingly watchable match… which is high praise for anything involving Nia Jax. Still, congrats to Tiffy Time for learning how to pull a trigger and get the title she should have gotten months ago.
Perhaps the worst part about this show?
Not enough Cheslsea Green…
Yeah, that was Smackdown… it was… it was a three hour show on Friday…
dtm666 