Smackdown
 

A'merica

Here’s what WWE has announced for their shows tonight:

SmackDown Live
– AJ Styles vs. Aiden English
– Jeff Hardy will issue a US title open challenge
– Becky Lynch vs. Peyton Royce
– Asuka vs. James Ellsworth
– “The New Day face off in the First Annual Third of July Pancake Eating Contest” - Triple A

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Maybe Vince will open the petty cash bag and pay for some sparklers for tonight.

Kind of funny Kane's entrance still has the fake pyro sounds in it. Wonder if WWE will bring back the monthly pyro budget now that they will be a lot richer soon.

Good opening so far.......

All right kicking this off right with Team Hell No I still hate that name it sounds stupid to put team in front of it

Jeff...your makeup looks more Union Jack than mERICA

Feel like these Jeff Hardy promos the past few weeks need to be alternately yelled at the top of his lungs/whispered very quietly.

It really does sound like Jeff is reading that off the palm of his hand

:lol: at "SmackTeam Tag Championship"

Opener was pretty great overall.

I don't know why you think he needs to be Samoa Joe

Does Alexa Bliss play tonight?

Was thinking more ULTIMATE WARRIOR

No but Sassy Lassy versus Tits McRoyce. So there's that..

Hope some heel brings up that England won a thrilling game today while the USA sat at home and watched. Doubt anyone from Omaha would get it, though...

If Miz ends up winning the US belt, think I'm going to laugh for a while. His career since winning the WWE title has been basically just bouncing back and forth between the US and IC divisions for gold. Any time it looks like he might be moving up, he just swaps midcard divisions instead.

haha Union Jack ref

http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com.../07/sting.jpeg

"What the heck, Jeff. You've disappointed me for the last time!"

:eek: Phillips claiming Ruff Ruff Ref is not a real film.

When i decided to watch wrestling tonight, first thing i was hoping to see was The New Day having a pancake eating contest.

...

What is Baphomet doing hanging out in this thread...did J Hardy mention him in a promo??

Oh I also hope James Ellsworth got all his Affairs in order before tonight

I wonder what THE BIG DOG is doing r/n

Someone holding a NJPW sign in the crowd

This pancake contest is either going to be utterly terrible or ironically good.

:lol: at Big E's intro.

The demon Kane + goat DB

Ouch at Kofi's landing. He's lucky he didn't blow out his knee.

SANITY HAS CENA NUFF

Well...he did beat AJ a couple times..

:lol: Ellsworth's shirt

Not sure its a wise idea to piss off Asuka even more.

Goodbye James you will be missed.

I'm convinced Vince thinks Japanese people come to life out of anime comics and cannot be taken serious.

or punishing them for NJPW.

As far as Asukas handling the one thing that keeps me sane is the fact that she's more than likely going to win Sunday

It's weird seeing the Champion actually wrestling on a WWE event.

It really is ......this f****** company

It's the real championship. Not that shiny thing Sable's bitch wears a couple times a year

Love AJ but would be perfectly fine with Rusev winning gold. Dude deserves it.

Another good Rusev Day this week. Sure Aiden lost the match in Rusev's honor but the post-match beatdown makes up for it.

Rusev is heeling now

IIconics. time to mute

were they any less annoying in NXT?

Billie Kay looks straight up uncanny valley this close to the camera I don't know what's going on with her but it is weird as f***

Far far far from it they actually were still booked as annoying but it wasn't grating on your nerves and it was entertaining here it's like they turned up the dial to 11 and broke it off

Ah..Yeah, I really need to watch NXT and see wrestlers..sports entertainers before they're ruined.

Becky and Peyton at the same time

Time to lube up

You know I just realized I really like Becky Lynch's Brown onesie know who didn't look good in brown? Shawn Michaels.

Again I want to point out that Nakamura who can't really speak English isn't better promo then both Bobby Lashley and Roman Reigns

:eek: Becky winning another match.

She's pretty much being treated the way Asuka should have been on the Blue Brand. Just mowing down lower tier opposition in order to build her up as a legit threat and future title shot.

The Rock's name being on these movies are the only thing that keep them from being Saturday sci-fi films

No but like almost everything involving the main roster, they got watered down to just a single trait and WWE going overboard with it.

With No Way Jose, he got watered down to a guy who just dances around the ring. With Sanity, WWE put all the focus on their over produced entrance routine. With Almas ... well he's barely on tv to say what he's been watered down to.

Yeah, I heard some good things about Jose if I remember right. PLEASE go full time XFL, Vince. Take Dunn with you

This match is already at 7

Roman could stand to learn how to sell from the Usos

Way better main event and ending than last night's RAW.

Agh. sick of these Halloween City/Hot Topic pricks. They can't just give Harper a legit solo run.

Better show really

Enjoy it while it lasts. Next time this year we'll be preparing for Roman ReignsDown

SDL on a Friday night just seems dumb for that stupid amount of money. Maybe it's all about these 2 up start pro football leagues and FOX has a stake in XFL. Might as well milk the sport in case it dries out from the lawsuits and such in the next decade or so.

Anybody think they'll try and get the Rock to appear on the Fox debut of SD? Seems like something Vince would do. "See how savvy, popular, almost ahead of our time, and cool we are! We're on Fox and have one of the biggest Hollywood actors on our big show, who even used to work for us and is actually responsible for the show's name!"

Never has a truer statement be made. Vince is the genius of taking interesting over characters and turning them into midcard bores.

Could see them try to get him for Smackdown's 20th anniversary show next year although they'd still be on USA when it happens.

More likely they try to get Ronda to show up for the FOX move since she's a huge reason why they got a big spike with the new contracts.

It's too hard to tell. That will be over a year from meow.

I'm interested to see where the whole FOX corp will go from here.

It should be interesting.

I have absolutely no doubt he was the first call.

But the thing is, Triple H coddles the fuck out of them in NXT because he can afford to. Like, yeah, that's good booking to an extent (and Triple H doesn't book the shows), but they aren't trained to be good workers or reflexive performers. They are just well produced versions of the sports entertainment characters they eventually become. And you have to see them every week. Against the same people. With five plus main hours to fill. Triple H isn't going to be able to fix that logistics problem and that everybody works the same way and that without clever booking they aren't going to be able to survive in such a vast landscape with shitty punches and poorly rehearsed scripts that betray they don't really know how to hold a bunch of strangers that have never seen them over before.

Honestly, if Triple H were given full control of the WWE, I do think that some things would get immediately better. If he fired Dunn, for example, then I think the aesthetics of the show might get better, including commentary, because they would have free reign and probably do fine. In terms of performance, things might get a little better. I think mic work will get a little bit better, and generally speaking, people in the main events would be hyped better. But I think he would drown so fucking fast. He can't afford to keep Sasha and Bayley off TV every week. So what are they going to do this week? Ummm...shit. And those own lofty standards will come back to bite. "We've seen this match" will still be a problem. When you watch Takeover shows, you can already start to see the same things repeat themselves. Every match had those new post-modern verbiage tropes in them. Black/Sullivan and Baszler/Cross both ended with a "bring it motherfucker" finish. I appreciated that stories were there, and that they were simple, but you can see how they step on each other's toes a lot. That will only get worse with more hours to fill.

I honestly think the best thing that can happen for the WWE is that Disney buys it.

I agree with that, but my opinion is more in line with Emperors point above.

How you take an amazing heel with the whole story of I'm the best and I'm taking this company to the next level, with a bit of Ric Flair wearing custom suits, then bring him to Smackdown and turn him face with no backstory whatsoever while taking away every single trait and motivation for the character away is beyond me.

I don't care if NXT Bobby Roode had the same match against the same guy 10 times in a row, that would still be better than what his character is now, the guy with a cool theme who says Glorious over and over like a modern Hacksaw Jim Duggan saying Ho to everything every few minutes.

There is no point to Bobby Roode today, and that is Vinces fault. I honestly can't remember if he was even on Raw this week or not, cause it doesn't matter one way or the other.

And the last thing that is really MINDBLOWING to me is that Roode has not had a single special entrance in WWE. In NXT he had a special entrance at every takeover. He didn't even get a special entrance at Wrestlemania, which considering his whole purpose of being on the main roster is Vince saying "damnit pal, I want that entrance on TV". The one thing WWE focuses on for him in WWE, his entrance, and they can't even do that as good as it was done in NXT.

I think this is because Vince has this idea that most people who watch Raw & SD don't watch NXT. Also, that most people who watch NXT will shit on Raw or SD no matter what they do on Raw or SD. In addition, because Vince himself doesn't care, he truly believes that the few who do watch both and notice the inconsistent changes, won't care about the discrepancies and will continue to watch both regardless.

While some or all of this may or may not be true, it's incredibly short sighted, and still doesn't make any sense if what you were doing in NXT was working well and you truly believe in and are interested in what you're doing.

If Vince was actually interested and believed in the product they were producing anymore, he'd care about the quality of the product as opposed to the sheer amount they can produce and the amount of $ they can make off of it. Sadly that ship sailed years ago, essentially once they'd comfortably been past the point where they'd had no major competition for a few years, probably around 2004-2005-ish. It's only gotten consistently worse since then.

It is especially sad because all WWE ever talks about is how it is important to make new stars, yet their track record says very different over the past 15 years.

Braun is kind of almost their, but they haven't pulled the trigger with putting a title on him yet aside for the tag titles for a day with a kid.

The new stars they have actually created and followed through with are limited to The Shield in what 2012, Sheamus in I think was 2008, and Cena/Batista/ Orton in 2005.

That is literally it. CM Punk and Daniel Bryan got over as stars despite WWE trying hard to prevent it for a long time with both before finally giving in.

WWE goes out of its way to make sure they keep people from becoming stars.

It seems that Vince doesn't want another Rock situation where a top WWE star has opportunities to go on and make more $ or be even more successful or popular outside of WWE and leave the WWE hanging to have to build new stars when they don't have the talent or haven't been planning to have to do so. As a result, no one talent can be allowed to stand out and be a bigger focus or star than the company and its events as a whole, and so most talent seems at relatively the same level overall. It's a great idea if you have enough $ and consistent enough revenues that you have no reason to take any risk and/or you want your product and talent to be mediocre overall.

"Weird" @ how Cesaro and Sheamus went from having never-ending feuds and the same 30 minute (or so it felt) matches over and over again on RAW every week, and now they aren't even featured on Smackdown at all......

I forgot they were even on SD tbh!

Yeah but that argument goes both ways. If they have a constant stream of revenue, they shouldn't be afraid if somebody gets really famous and leaves.

Even in the situation of The Rock, it's not like it happened overnight. They had him full time as a mega star for more than 3 years, then as a part time moviestar for another 2 years after that. And for those 2 years as a part timer he worked way more than Lesnar does now.

For Cena it was even longer. Cena didn't start getting real outside offers until after about 10 years as a mega star.

Then you have guys like Batista who has put together a bell of an IMDB page, or Jericho who has done a lot of outside stuff, that still are willing to come back from time to time. Like it or not, they raise the awareness of WWE to a far greater audience then if they were just wrestlers.

Literally the only downside of guys becoming bigger than the WWE brand is they aren't on WWE TV as often anymore, but now especially with the Network, they are really always available.

Maybe some comic fan who never watched WWE in their life loves Drax, decides to check out a match or 2 of Batistas, enjoy it, and give Raw a shot.

If Raw is compelling and hooks them, WWE wins even though Batista himself hasn't had a match himself in over 4 years.

Building stars vs not is the difference in getting people to watch now, so who cares if the wrestler that gets them to watch now decides to leave in 5 years for outside success. Maybe that person will lead to a new person giving WWE a shot down the road after they are no longer a wrestler.

It's a far better option then somebody tuning in now and seeing bland interchangeable characters that don't compel them to keep watching.

Talent leaving in the attitude era os a big reason we are where we are. Austin and Rock never made anyone. Rock gave brock the rub but not only did he leave it didnt take on a MEGA level.

I like Bobby Roode fine. I understand why they brought him in as a face. That entrance is babyface. My guess is the plan was to bring him in and wait until it peters out and then turn him. They obviously feeling he is doing well enough in the role. They just want bodies to fill time, basically. He was in the main event of the most recent PPV. He's just a plug-in player/coach, which is what a lot of people expected him to be.

He could do a lot more. But not everybody can be the champion and right now he's not as valuable as Brock or AJ. I think he's been doing "fine" by the standards that you exist in WWE, contribute to hours and hours of content and earn money. He'll go into the Hall of Fame one day, don't worry.

Love discussing these things with you, by the way. I'm sorry if I sound stubbornly argumentative -- I genuinely appreciate your thoughts, you craft them very well and succinctly.

The thing is they don't want stars leaving, so they don't have stars. They don't have stars though, so their product fucking sucks. At the end of the day, I honestly believe Vince would rather have people swallow a shitty product he has complete control over and put little effort into than one that is a lot hotter, but is inevitably going to cool and means that those revenue streams are going to dramatically alter.

He's found a base that he can pedal to FOX and NBC and rake in millions upon millions of dollars for because he's lucky television is dying. He's got a monopoly, so no one is going to turn over and watch anything else, so he can get the best talent in the world to play paddy-cake on television and that will be the only supply for those with demand.

Unless competition comes along, the best we can hope for in terms of a content quality upgrade is that Vince gets bored and decides he wants to publicize his boutique and premium properties. NXT has got a good chance of becoming this, in my opinion. If the deal with FOX comes to fruition, then it might become the "top shelf" brand of WWE wrestling. I don't like everything in NXT, but it's got more "wrestling" than sports entertainment. And maybe Vince gets bored and decides he wants an "old-school" territory somewhere on his network, where he can play by his own rules and viewing discretion is advised. If Vince decides he wants to become Disney, there might be a chance of things changing. Other than that, we just have to hope some people in ivory towers decide that they could make a shit-ton of money off wrestling because Vince's product sucks and he's raking it in just because there is no one else on that level. Then Vince might start trying because he might need to.

I haven't been following that closely, so I wondered if they were even on. The tag storylines have seemingly revolved around The Bludgeons, Gallows & Anderson and The New Day with their pancakes. I worry, because SmackDown has that "problem" where Road Dogg has come out and said he would like just half-an-hour more, because he can't feature all the talent he wants to. It makes me worry that we're going to get a third hour at some point. Either that or another brand.

Ideally, it gives the guys a chance to rest up and regain some interest. Alternatively, they could work NXT. Cesaro was great down there. But they'll probably just be rotated back in when there are babyface champs (Team Hell No?). I can't say I am upset by the idea of Cesaro & Sheamus getting to mix it up with Bryan.

One of the main problems seems to be around who they want to be stars. It's no secret that Reigns is the one they want to turn into a star and that isn't working, but that is literally the focus of the entire show. They put so much effort into any segment that features Reigns, as well as a handful of others. Not only is this turning the rest of RAW into filler, but the rest of the roster as well. Their only purpose is to be on TV to have someone for Reigns, Strowman etc to beat.

When someone does start to get close to getting over, often it seems that they are punished for it. Or used simply in another desperate attempt to put someone else over, squashing any momentum they had.

The WWE has potential stars, but not only do they not know how to use them, they are just simply not interested in doing so.

There's some truth to that, but there are also guys that are more over just because they aren't Roman. As soon as you put them into the Roman spot, they're going to lose that secret weapon. This problem used to happen in ROH around the time Tyler Black got the championship. It seemed that every time someone would get the belt, the fans would get sick of them. That hardcore audience now sets the tone for how things are widely perceived.

I think Seth Rollins is great in the ring, and I do think there is a way to make him a top babyface people can believe in and get behind, but it's not something that is inherent and unwavering right now. People would cheer him if he beat Roman and maybe against Brock, but then they'd get sick of "The Seth Rollins Experiment" too. I mean, who is going to carry the company on their shoulders? Finn Balor? Braun Strowman? I mean, I'll take AJ Styles or Daniel Bryan over Roman Reigns, but they've got SmackDown and it's not exactly doing great.

I see the point, and they don't run with people who are getting over to get them more over, but I honestly don't see too many potential stars on that card.

A lot of the udercard is as hot as they are because its cool to like niche things. Wrestling fans are very much hipsters

:y:

Very true. Or at least they pretend to be people who hate hipsters while themselves actually are very hipster.

ROH-stink is "in". Much more so than actual ROH. Wrestling is a weird business.

Haha, that's true. ROH's trends are definitely playing out on the bigger stages, but ROH itself feels cold and sterile. I wonder where the change really kicked in? I guess with everyone wrestling an indy style on the main roster, those ROH fans don't need to go to the alternative to get their kicks, and therefore ROH becomes redundant as anything more than developmental.

It kicked in with WWE becoming awful and hardcore fans longing for something different. But not caring so much that they'll actually seek out other companies. They'll just wait for those guys to come to them.

ROH was a great product 10 years ago.

Grew too big too fast

I like Dalton Castle more than I like most of the past ROH champions. But he makes much less sense as ROH champion than they did. Him becoming champion gave me a "TNA" feel. In that it started to seem like they were leaning more toward trying to be competition for WWE and less toward being an alternative.

Almas hasn't been on SD since May. Weird.

Smackdown almost hit a sub-2 million number this week. Only 1 show did worse since going to a live format.

Imagine how bad itll do on fridays

In a lot ways tuesday was a friday this week

I think a large problem is that WWE signed a lot of ROH guys and let them work the indy style on the main show. Now ROH has got nothing to offer as an alternative.

It's going to be interesting when SmackDown goes to Friday, because on one hand, they're going to have access to a wider audience than ever before. On the other hand, fewer people watch TV. On a third hand, Friday is a dead night, but on a fourth people who watch wrestling don't have the busiest social lives, demographically-speaking.

Surely FOX would have had to know what they were buying. And WWE can't be naive enough to think that things are going to magically catch just because they are on network television.

I'd say yes to both.

FOX likely is very aware they have a lot of work to do for Smackdown since WWE has shown repeatability of being really lazy at fixing problems or staying motivated. Besides the $200+ million per year for Smackdown, FOX is also going to be spending countless millions promoting the show with their other sports licenses hoping to get the crossover for viewers. FOX won't have their in-house studios around to help pick up the slack if things end up becoming bad.

Based on recent numbers, FOX pretty much needs Smackdown to almost triple its current numbers just to keep their current spot for Friday rankings. The larger audience pool is going to help but only for the honeymoon period. Once viewers start tuning out and WWE starts slacking off again, almost impossible to get them back.

I agree with the honeymoon period part. A lot of people tuned in to watch the Raw 25 show at the beginning of the year, and you can tell the impression it made on people. To be honest, if they can keep the brand split going until then, they could probably milk some televised unification matches for a few weeks, throw in a televised match for Lesnar if they have him, etc. They can thread these along as being special events for four weeks or so and try to cement the habit of watching.

But surely FOX would lay down that much money for property they see as being lazily promoted? And they can't expect triple the rating. In their statement, they talked about 2 million viewers, which I think is probably around their expectation. If it performs better than that on a network? Great. But it wouldn't be beneficial to them OR WWE to have a relationship based on the promise of a fan base that just isn't there.

But yeah, WWE really should have already started booking certain big names for the shows over that period (Rock, Jericho, Lesnar, Batista, etc.) to try and make sure they have things in place to keep people thrilled, and ideally they'd already have a rough idea of some big angles or matches they want to try and make sure they can run. Obviously you can't account for injuries and major changes to the roster or things like that, but, you can philosophically have some ideas in place.

Could potentially get him for the 1000th episode later this year (sometime in October, I think)...:-\

They say that about Ronda, but while that enhances the "brand" of WWE, I'm not sure they would guarantee the presence of particular individuals on the shows, because she could get dropped on her by Nia Jax next week and be done. I think the idea that Ronda Rousey's name will likely be attached to WWE programming, or that their brand is strong enough to lure her is the likely sell. I can imagine it being sold as a lucky dip as to which stars you get by the time the FOX debut comes around, because they are always changing and evolving.

I don't think they would have promised FOX anything particular or anything hypothetical. I think FOX would be paying for the WWE brand as the gentrified crap that it is. That may or may not include Ronda Rousey, Brock Lesnar, John Cena, The Rock, Chris Jericho, The Undertaker, Rey Mysterio, Nikki Bella, Roman Reigns, Charlotte Flair, AJ Styles, etc.