Coming up on today’s news - WWE are still yet to decide on who’s winning the Money
in the Bank matches, loads more NXT call-ups soon and a WWE return in a dark match, and
my review of last night’s SmackDown. Subscribe and enable notifications for daily
wrestling news. But seriously, subscribe. Otherwise The Intangibles will blow up Terry
the Cat. Do you want that? Do you want to see us blow up a cat? No? Then subscribe.
Subscribe. Subscribe. Sub- It’s Money in the Bank tomorrow - with a
live audience in attendance, and expectations are pretty high. We’ve heard for months
that WWE have been saving some big plans for when crowds return, and now they’re back,
so it should be a pretty big show on Sunday, and the following week to set up programmes
for SummerSlam. Interestingly though, according to Ringside
News, WWE are still yet to decide on winners for the Money in the Bank matches, with the
eventual Mr. and Mrs. Money in the Bank “still being discussed”. The show’s 24 hours
away guys. You should probably get on that. Perhaps WWE were waiting to gauge crowd reactions
for people on SmackDown before deciding on a winner, or more likely they’re just leaving
it last minute, because they can. This does mean it’s probably going to be
quite the surprising show though, because if WWE don’t even know who’s going to
win, then how could the fans? Who would you have win the Money in the Bank
briefcases? Let me know in the comments because I’ll be replying to people FROM OUTTA NOWHERE
for the first thirty minutes after this video goes live!
WWE continued its recent trend of dark matches featuring people they will most likely call-up
soon from NXT - and there were a lot of them - but there was also a very interesting name
that appeared too. For the first time since 2011, Davey Boy Smith
Jr. wrestled in WWE in a dark match, tagging with NXT star Austin Theory. Davey Boy’s
return to WWE has been rumoured for quite a while, and since his release in 2011, he
has wrestled for companies such as MLW, Pro Wrestling NOAH and New Japan Pro Wrestling.
And of course there were a slew of NXT stars backstage at SmackDown and in dark matches
too - as Xyon Quinn, the former Daniel Vidot, posted a photo of him and Odyssey Jones backstage
in Houston in their ring gear. PWInsider then reported that Xia Li, Austin Theory and Aliyah
were also backstage. Theory, as previously mentioned, ended up tagging with Davey Boy
Smith Jr., and Aliyah was reportedly part of a trade that saw Mandy Rose return to NXT
this week. So perhaps we could be seeing some of these
names appearing on WWE main roster shows before long.
It’s been a public secret for a little while that one of the big ideas is to have Roman
Reigns vs The Rock at WrestleMania 38, which in fairness is one of the biggest matches
WWE can put with their current roster. In the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave
Meltzer revealed that WWE have a backup plan of having Rocky take part in a tag match if
he needs protecting in the match due to his film career. “if concessions have to be
made regarding Rock and movies and injury fears, that they do Reigns and an Uso vs.
Rock and an Uso”. An Uso in every corner! And now it’s time for my review of last
night’s episode of SmackDown, featuring the return of fans, in about 5 minutes.
The show started with a brilliant video package, welcoming back fans after a year and a half
of being away, showcasing all the moments in WWE history where fans played an integral
part in it, and it genuinely got me a little bit emotional. WWE video packages are the
best. And the show kicked off with Vince McMahon
himself, who came out, and just said “where the hell have you all been?” and then walked
off. Great start. And the opening contest of the night was Roman
Reigns & The Usos vs Edge & The Mysterios - and my god, hearing the pops for everyone
was so bloody refreshing. I had a massive smile on my face as everyone made their entrances
here, and the match itself was also very fun, which ended with Jey Uso getting the rollup
on Dominik Mysterio, which to me was a surprising result.
I would have thought this would have been a good time to have the tag champions win
here, maybe by pinning Jimmy, as we already had the announcement that it was going to
The Usos vs The Mysterios on the Money in the Bank pre-show, where I presume The Usos
will win. After the match, Edge goes for the crossface
featuring the chair leg again, and this time, Roman taps out as Edge has it applied! Aside
from the soft tap out Roman did for Daniel Bryan, this is the first time Roman has tapped
and it’s a big deal! They really showcased the possibility of Edge winning on this show,
and did a great job building that match tomorrow. Seth Rollins interrupted an Edge promo backstage
to continue their tension ahead of their reported SummerSlam match - saying he wants to finish
what he started 7 years ago. After this Sami Zayn came out and cut a great
promo saying he’s being excluded from the Money in the Bank and gets some lovely lovely
heel heat from the crowd, before the surprise return of Finn Balor! The Prinxe is back.
I still don’t know what The Prinxe means. This was fine - Finn came out and beat up
Sami a bit, hitting his big moves, before celebrating doing his main roster pose rather
than his NXT one. This feels like main roster Finn is back, and he’ll most likely be picking
up right where he left off. Which is to say, undercarder that loses a lot.
Shotzi & Nox faced Natalya & Tamina...again, in a non-title match. And they won. Again.
Liv Morgan and Zelina Vega were on commentary for this match, and they were genuinely harder
to listen to than Michael Cole, and that’s saying something. Just non-stop bickering
and talking over each other, it was not enjoyable to say the least. Including the great line
of Liv Morgan saying Zelina Vega had the longest vacation in WWE history - she was FIRED Liv,
jesus christ. Natalya & Tamina weren’t happy about the
distraction of Vega and Morgan brawling which cost them the match, so they tried to beat
them up but Morgan stood tall to end the segment. Good for her.
Carmella faced Bianca Belair for the SmackDown Women’s Championship next, in a match that
was given a fair amount of time and was a decent showcase for both women. Also I really,
really, hate the new AR stuff WWE are doing. I just think it looks bad.
Belair won in the exact way I’d have booked it - which is with her hair, followed by a
KOD for the win. A fun match, and I still have no idea why this was moved from Money
in the Bank to here. We got confirmation that Toni Storm will be
debuting next week - good! And after a backstage segment that saw Otis
beat up Cesaro, we got a match between the two. And as they started to make their entrances,
I thought, huh, this is a weird matchup. Ohhh, they’ve totally done it so Cesaro can swing
Otis and get a big crowd pop from it, right? I was wrong. The match lasted about a minute
before Gable interfered and caused a DQ for seemingly no reason, but Cesaro then beat
up Gable and got a bit of a swing in before Otis came back in and beat up Cesaro, hitting
the Vader Bomb to leave him laying. It’s not the choice I would have made, and this
doesn’t exactly bode well for Cesaro’s continued main event status does it?
Hey but at least he said bonehead in his backstage promo. That popped me.
Paul Heyman backstage cuts a nice promo about Edge, saying he’s going to atone for his
sins at Money in the Bank before he’s interrupted by Big E. Nice. Little bit of tension between
the Money in the Bank winner perhaps? Who knows.
Baron Corbin comes out next, looking like the most dishevelled man in the world. I never
thought I’d say it, but I’m loving Corbin’s character right now. I think it’s so much
fun. But WWE actually still made him the heel this week, which was a nice change. Instead
of me thinking he’s just being bullied all the time, he was interrupted by Kevin Owens,
and started doing some backhanded insults to him.
Corbin revealed he’d set up a Corbin Fund to get him through these hard times, which,
props to WWE, is an actual site with just an image on it. He then said Owens has money
because he clearly doesn’t spend anything on his wardrobe, before Owens gave him a Stunner.
If this is what you’re gonna use Corbin for, I’m all for it. This was fun.
Then came the main event of Big E vs Shinsuke Nakamura vs Kevin Owens vs Seth Rollins, for
MOMENTUM ahead of Money in the Bank, and while this was fun, it felt quite rushed and like
there was another 10 minutes in the match that they didn’t get to. After a fun spot
where Owens did a big elbow drop to Nakamura through the commentary table off a ladder,
Rollins did a stomp to Big E in the ring on a ladder and pinned him for the win.
The show went off the air with Rollins holding the briefcase atop the ladder, which I thought
was an odd choice of main event when the expectations of this show were so high. I would have either
main evented with the Roman six-man tag, because you know, main eventing is what Roman does,
and him tapping out to Edge’s submission would have been given an even greater spotlight,
or I’d have given this 4-way more time to shine, so it felt like a proper huge main
event. Regardless, that was the show, let me know
what you thought in the comments, and by voting on our POLL ON A POLE match on our Community
page on YouTube, where 79% of you voted for God it was nice hearing people react to things
again. And yes, it was. It was lovely to hear a crowd
again. However, this was a good show, but the content was mostly the same as what we’ve
experienced in the ThunderDome, the crowd simply elevated it a bit more. The shine of
the crowd and the excitement of hearing reactions again will fade in a couple weeks, so I’m
really hoping WWE has got some big plans for tomorrow’s show, and for the following week.
Overall though, this show gets a Smacktastic 4/5.