Shane McMahon steps down as Smackdown Live commissioner!
The tag team championship feud continues to be awesome!
And Smackdown Live is mostly great again.
I am Luke Owen and this is the 13th of March 2018 edition of Smackdown Live… in about
4 minutes.
Headline: AJ Styles And Shinsuke Nakamura Come Face To Face
AJ Styles opened this week’s episode of Smackdown Live, to remind us that he is still
the WWE Champion.
Shinsuke Nakamura interrupted and cut a promo about winning said WWE Championship via a
knee to the face, before Rusev Day came out for a match.
Headline: AJ Styles def.
Rusev via DQ
Which ended up being a great match.
Yeah, who would have thought that?
Rusev dominated, but AJ eventually managed to lock in the Calf Crusher before Aiden English
jumped in the ring for the DQ.
It’s odd to see WWE not give AJ a clean win here, unless there are bigger plans for
Rusev Day in the build to WrestleMania.
Rusev and English then beat down AJ before Nakamura got in the ring to clean house.
It’s interesting to note that Nakamura took his time getting in the ring, perhaps playing
more of the heel in this babyface vs. babyface feud.
Headline: The Bludgeon Brothers def.
Big E & Jimmy Uso
Then came my favourite segment on the whole show.
Backstage, Big E cut a serious and passionate promo about how the Bludgeon Brothers had
put Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston out of action, who was then joined by Jimmy Uso who
said they had done the same thing to his brother Jey.
We then got somewhat of a dream team of Big E and Jimmy Uso taking on The Bludgeon Brothers
in an awesome TV match.
Big E played the babyface in peril, and Jimmy had an amazing comeback off the hot tag but
The Bludgeon Brothers won with the assisted powerbomb.
This all ruled.
From beginning to end was absolutely perfect storytelling.
Headline: Charlotte And Asuka Come Face To Face
What wasn’t quite as good was Charlotte cutting an overly scripted promo about facing
Asuka at WrestleMania, and how her challenger will bow before the queen.
This brought out The Empress of Tomorrow who told her she bows to no one, and no one is
ready for Asuka.
It’s only week one of this four week build, so this was a fine start.
They then got told to get out the ring by Randy Orton’s music, because he had a promo
of his own to say.
Headline: Randy Orton And Bobby Roode Come Face To Face
Orton said that he was now a part of a small list of Grand Slam Champions, a list he says
he actually cares about.
This brought out Bobby Roode, who asked for his rematch at WrestleMania.
Headline: Jinder Mahal def.
Bobby Roode
This led to a decent TV match between Jinder Mahal and Bobby Roode but was nothing special.
Sunil Singh got involved on the apron, allowing Jinder to hit the Kollos and win.
Randy then jumped in the ring and RKO’d Mahal.
Meh, it was fine.
Headline: Fabulous Moolah Video Package
We then got a video package for the Fabulous Moolah Memorial Battle Royal - they’re still
going with that name then.
We then got some tweets, suggesting that we could see NXT’s Ember Moon, Kairi Sane and
Peyton Royce in the pointless match…
Oh, sorry I mean pre-show match.
Whoops.
Headline: Carmella def.
Naomi
And two women destined for the ‘let’s get everyone on the card’ battle royal then
had a match.
Carmella defeated Naomi with a simple slam in a nothing match.
Headline: Kevin Owens And Sami Zayn Attack Shane McMahon!
Shane McMahon came out for the main event to make his big announcement.
He not only revealed he was stepping down as Smackdown Live commissioner, but his last
act was to make Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn for WrestleMania.
This brought out Owens who wished Shane the best of luck in his future endeavours, and
Sami came out to talk about McMahon’s bias.
Shane told both of them they should be grateful they’re even on the WrestleMania card.
I mean he’s not wrong, John Cena doesn’t even have a match!
During the broadcast we got promos from Owens and Zayn which suggested that they were as
far from the same page as they possibly could be, but here they finally re-aligned and beat
down Shane McMahon.
Shane O’Mac made a bit of a sweaty comeback, but a Helluva Kick and Pop-Up Powerbomb made
short work of that.
They then put a chair around his neck and threw him into the ringpost, before dragging
Shane backstage [23] and powerbombing him on metal equipment.
This was a fantastic beat-down angle that Shane sold brilliantly.
It made Owens and Zayn seem incredibly unstable and very dangerous, and it will be really
interesting to see what happens next week with Shane seemingly injured and Daniel Bryan
returning to run the show.
So that was this week’s Smackdown Live in about 4 minutes.
Vote in the poll above my head to give your thoughts on this show using this ratings system
from top to bottom.
SmackDamn, SmackTastic, Smack Bang in the Middle, Ellsworthy, and WWE naming a memorial
match after The Fabulous Moolah.
Seriously, come on guys.
Oli and I said on the WrestleRamble that once Fastlane was out of the way, Smackdown Live
should be a better show as it was then building to WrestleMania.
And this was a good first step.
A much better show than usual with lots of intrigue going into next week, this week’s
Smackdown Live was SmackTastic.
Has Jeff Hardy’s return to WWE been leaked?
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