We’ve got a 24/7 Title change, that isn’t actually won back by R-Truth this time, there’s
an actually good episode of A Moment of Bliss? And did you know Sunday is the day of Stomping
Grounds, Time To Kick Ass And Take Names? And we’ve a major AEW TV update!
Click the timestamps in the video description to be taken to any of those stories right
now! I am Chopper Pete Quinnell doing my second and final week of SmackDown reviews while
Luke is on holiday, have a superclick party by pressing the thumbs up, subscribe and bell
icons to enable notifications, and leave us a comment answering the question of the day,
which today is
Which match are you most excited looking forward to at Stomping Grounds, Time To Kick Ass and
Take Names? And make sure to press the i above my head to let me know what you thought of
the show, where you can choose from SmackDamn, SmackTastic, Smack Bang in the Middle, SmackDowner,
and a Smack in the Face. This is the 18th June episode of SmackDown Live.
This week’s show opened up with The New Day coming out to a nice reaction from the
crowd. Kofi gets inspired by Vine and says this bitch is empty, yeet to all his pancakes.
Woods vs Ziggler is announced, and just as Big E attempts a pitch for the final hour
of SmackDown being “The Freaky Hour”, Ziggler interrupts.
Ziggler starts off cutting a really good, intense promo, but it still doesn’t make
me excited for their match on Sunday. He says he’ll kick ass and take names, that’s
one, and Kofi retorts by getting serious, saying his run began at Elimination Chamber,
so he knows how brutal cage matches can be. That’s a nice story element and a great
way to end the promo.
But then Ziggler ruined it by retorting again and...just repeated all the things he just
said. This started well but ended a bit dry.
Ziggler vs Woods followed this, which was a fairly normal match in the early stages,
before Kevin Owens & Wildcard Sami Zayn come out and attack Big E and Kofi Kingston, which
leads the ref to eject all four of them from ringside.
After an ad break the match picks up, with Ziggler getting the win. I’m still not excited
for Ziggler vs Kingston this Sunday.
Next we got a recap of the entire Seth Rollins chair angle from Raw. SmackDown has literally
become the Raw replay show. We’re back on the dark timeline.
Next we head backstage where Shelton Benjamin and the B-Team are queueing backstage outside
Baron Corbin’s office...Baron Corbin has an office? with each of them vying to be Corbin’s
special guest referee on Sunday. Then out walks Matt Hardy from Corbin’s office, who
motions to Shelton and calls him Senor Benjamin. That got a pop out of me.
Next up is....sigh...A moment of Bliss with Bayley. This couldn’t possibly get any worse
than This Is Your Life, right? Alexa started off by continuing her blood feud with coffee.
But then, amazingly, this really picked up. Alexa cut a sort-of shoot promo, where she
called out Bayley for not making her feel welcome in NXT, said that the only person
who had any time of day for her was Charlotte, even after Alexa turned to “the nice one”
in the locker room, Bayley. Is there some kernel of truth to this? It’s well known
Bliss and Sasha Banks aren’t each others’ biggest fans, so perhaps Bayley was associated
with this heat back in the day?
Bayley fires back and says Bliss isn’t a goddess, she’s an entitled princess who
doesn’t deserve a damn thing, before the pair exchange some fire lines. The pair really
upped their promo game. Then the duo started to brawl and we crashed
back to reality as Nikki Cross pulled Bayley off Bliss, allowing Bliss to nail a punch
to Bayley. This was a great promo, but it’s too little too late for this feud. If this
feud had just been Bayley vs Bliss and this was the promo that kickstarted this feud,
this really could have been something, but with the whole convoluted story of Nikki Cross
involved, I’m just not excited for their match on Sunday.
Next up Zelina Vega is backstage, and Apollo Crews suggested that Andrade can’t be far
away, and he’s right because ANDRADE’S BACK, BAYBAY. He attacked Crews while he was
distracted and slammed him into a crate before walking away. Also Chad Gable was there making
notes again. Okay.
Heavy Machinery vs The B-Team was next with SmackDown Tag Champs Bryan & Rowan on commentary.
Heavy Machinery win in a quick match, with Bryan laying in some great lines while they
wrestled. Then from out of nowhere, Universal Champion Seth Rollins appears with a chair
and beats up the B-Team for wanting to be Baron Corbin’s special guest refs. Which
means he should also beat up Matt Hardy and Shelton Benjamin, but somehow I don’t think
that will be followed up on.
Next, the Omnishane turned up in a limo, where he was immediately sought out by Owens & Zayn
who complained about Rollins and Kingston, so Shane puts them in a tag match against
them.
Aleister Black cuts a really generic promo next, which was a massive comedown from his
great one last week.
After that, the OmniShane comes out to the ring flanked by Elias and Drew McIntyre, which
led to the most frustrating segment of the night.
Shane cut a generic promo before Drew cut a generic promo about Roman beating them up
the previous night, and then Miz interrupts because apparently this feud is a thing that
still exists. Miz then introduces a video recap of Roman beating them up last night
which they had JUST TALKED ABOUT, before Miz then goes straight into ANOTHER VIDEO of Shane
beating beaten up by Roman, this time in suuuuuppper slooooowww mooootttionnnn. Miz then says after
Stomping Grounds, Time to Kick Ass and Take Names, he’ll host a special MizTV segment
where he showcases the highlights of Roman beating Drew. Please don’t do that.
Shane then insults Miz’s dad BECAUSE THIS IS A FEUD THAT APPARENTLY STILL EXISTS. Miz
then gets all fired up, and says that when Shane was SmackDown commissioner, he made
it the land of opportunity, now the only opportunities are for Shane and his friends and he hogs
all the airtime to feed his ego, THEN WHY DID YOU JUST COME OUT AND SHOW US MORE SHANE
MCMAHON?
Miz says it’s his fault Shane is the way he is because he got injured during the World
Cup. I’m the reason Shane’s on this ego trip, so I’ll be the one to end it. This
is some really great material FOR A FEUD THAT’S ALREADY FINISHED. THIS IS A FEUD THAT APPARENTLY
STILL EXISTS.
Shane then puts Miz in a tag match with Drew and Elias, and gives him ten seconds to find
a partner, and then suddenly, R-Truth emerges from under the ring, not knowing what’s
going on, so Miz picks him.
The IIconics and run in to the Kabuki Warriors backstage who reveal they have a match against
them next week in Tokyo, and if they win, they’ll get a women’s tag team championship
match.
Miz & R-Truth vs McIntyre & Elias was next, and it was an Elimination Match. Still trying
with the elimination match stipulation, huh?
Elias eliminates Truth, who then gets chased by the undercard, out of the arena, which
leaves Miz to be eliminated by McIntyre later on.
Ember Moon is backstage and finally attacks Sonya Deville...briefly before they just stand
across from each other and shout. Okay then.
Truth attempted to leave the arena next, with Drake Maverick revealing he was disguised
as Carmella, rolling up Truth and leaving in a car with his 24/7 title. This had some
great lines thrown in and was quite funny.
Kingston & Rollins vs Owens & Zayn main evented the show in a two out of three falls tag match,
which was completely nullified as Kingston hit an immediate Trouble in Paradise on Zayn
for the first fall, with Rollins winning the second fall on Owens after an uneventful match.
This was a really boring way to end your go-home show for Stomping Grounds, Time To Kick Ass
and Take Names, and does not make me excited for Sunday at all. This week’s episode of
SmackDown was a SmackDowner.
And now over to Oli with the news! Congratulations for a great review, Pete.
But even more congratulations for his WWE 24/7 Championship win to ...Drake Maverick.
But his first challenger might already be planning their move, with none other than
Aleister Black tweeting a photo of ...Drake Maverick wearing the 24/7 title in what seems
to be an airport lounge. Luckily for ...Drake Maverick, Aleister Black
can only fight you if you knock on his door. He’s like a reverse vampire.
Shockingly, WWE giving all their badly booked and misused talent a gimmick joke championship
belt hasn’t been enough to improve backstage morale, with EC3 posting after his comedy
playing dead segment from this week’s Raw: “Every time I make you laugh, I suffer more
inside.”
And according to the very reliable WrestleVotes, that sentiment is shared by many backstage
in the WWE locker room: “Texting with a WWE source, who travels
with the crew. Said the vibe going into Sunday’s PPV is similar to the vibe around the “In
Your House” shows from back in the day. Lack of meaningful matches, low ticket sales
and general feeling reminds them of 1995/1996. Yikes.”
1995 WWF, as it was called then, is widely recognised as the worst year in the company’s
history. If you think today’s product is bad, at least the in-ring wrestling talent
is great. 1995, in comparison, saw Kevin Nash holding the WWF title as Diesel for most of
the year. A few people on Twitter have asked WrestleVotes
who their source might be if they can compare the backstage atmosphere now with over two
decades ago - citing Triple H, Michael Hayes, Mike Chioda and Bruce Prichard as the only
people still in the company who would’ve been on the road back then. As WrestleVotes
points out, though, the backstage crew extends far beyond them with many names the vast majority
of us will never have heard of. And further to that, given the low ticket
sales and general interest for this Sunday’s Stomping Grounds pay-per-view, WrestleVotes
are also reporting: "WWE is aware of the poor ticket sales for
Sunday’s PPV event in Washington state. There has been talks of shaking up the card,
nothing I can confidently report on tho yet.” WWE fans to AEW confirmed!
After a six month hiatus, the Steve Austin Show podcast is back with a rather huge first
guest - the President of AEW, Tony Khaaaaaaan! The whole episode is a great listen, with
Austin giving his thoughts on AEW’s debut show Double or Nothing, which he really enjoyed
- in particular the five star rated match between Cody and Dustin Rhodes.
But as well as revealing Christopher Daniels is more than just an onscreen talent, he’s
also the backstage head of talent relations - a very important role in a wrestling company
- Khan also confirmed a few huge details about AEW’s upcoming TV show.
While he still can’t give us an exact launch date for the series on TNT this fall, nor
what day of the week it’ll play on, Khan did confirm it’ll be a two hour live weekly
wrestling show which will take place from venues around the US initially, rather than
from just one location like TNA’s IMPACT Zone, with ambitions to eventually run events
internationally. And one of the first major parts of AEW TV
will be its focus on establishing its tag division, with Khan revealing: “we’re
going to be doing a tag team tournament that’s going to have some of the greatest tag team
matches ever on TV. It’s going to be a main focus of our TV. There will be teams competing
to get a first-round bye in that tournament, which is a big deal. We’ll have some of
the best tag teams in wrestling competing for our Tag Team Championships coming up in
the fall.” The Khan and Stone Cold bromance continued,
with Khan tweeting after the podcast had gone live: “Thank you @steveaustinbsr for having
me on your show. Everyone at @AEWrestling worked hard to make Double or Nothing a success;
we did big numbers thanks to our great fans + the fact Steve Austin loved the PPV, to
me that’s the highest praise you can get in the wrestling business”
An Iron Man replacement has been teased for the Marvel Cinematic Universe! Find out who
by clicking the video on the right now! And which WWE star has backstage heat with Goldberg?
I’ve been Oli Davis, and that was wrestling.