Thank you for being an awesome Pledge Hammer on Patreon, "The Outlaw" Andrew Harris!
Roman Reigns is attacked backstage! Daniel Bryan still isn’t feeling chatty! And card
subject to change, as two advertised matches are changed before the show airs. And was
that because Vince McMahon re-wrote the show twice hours before it aired? Click the timestamps
down below to go to any of those stories. I am Luke Owen, give us a subscribe, press
the thumbs up button, and leave a comment down below to answer our question of the day:
Who do you think attacked Roman Reigns? And make sure you’ve voted in the poll above
my head to let me know what you thought of today’s show - where you can choose from
SmackNificent, SmackTastic, Smack Bang in the Middle, SmackDowner, and A Smack in the
Face. Thanks to Bomber Bo for suggesting the new SmackNificent in yesterday’s WrestleRamble
SuperChats! This is my review of the July 30th, 2019 edition of Smackdown Live.
The show opened with Shane McMahon doing the most heel-ish thing he can possibly do in
the whole world, he filmed himself cutting a promo with his phone in portrait mode! You
monster! He said he wouldn’t be on the show tonight, which was good news to Kevin Owens
who said that we can now focus on the SmackDown talent that doesn’t get TV time because
of Shane O’ Mac. But let’s ignore that we’ve got a segment coming up later with
not regular Smackdown talent Jerry “The King” Lawler and Trish Stratus. Drew McIntyre
came out, and the two then had a really good match with decent action. Owens kicked out
of a second rope Air Raid Crash, Drew kicked out of the Pop-Up Powerbomb - but couldn’t
kick out of two Stunners. This really put Owens over strong heading into Summerslam
where he’s going to face Shane McMahon, but it is more stop and start pushing for
Drew. Dolph Ziggler cut a backstage promo with Queen
of Segues Kayla Braxton, who again brought up Goldberg’s name - which plays into those
reports that Dolph vs. Goldberg was a match that could happen at Summerslam. However Dolph
instead said he would face The Miz at SummerFest, which is a huge step down from facing either
Goldberg or Shawn Michaels. Aleister Black is back in the Phantom Zone,
challenging someone to fight him at Summerslam - which was later accepted by Sami Zayn.
Ember Moon and Bayley had a tense backstage meeting, and then had a tag match where they
teamed up against Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross. This was your standard WWE tag match, where
the babyfaces run wild, we go to ad break, the heels work over one of the babyface in
peril, we get a hot tag and they run wild and we go to the finish - and the finish was
surprisingly Alexa Bliss pinning Ember Moon fair and square. Huh. After putting her over
so strong last week, this seems like a major step backwards. And then Bayley laid Moon
out with the Bayley-to-Belly. Not a good night for Ember Moon. From this I guess Alexa Bliss
will be added to the Smackdown Women’s Championship match? Or maybe a Fatal Four Way with Nikki
Cross involved too? If you’ve been wondering - whatever happened
to Big Show after he split away from The Bar last year? Weeeeeellllll, he’s signed up
for a Netflix shooooooow. Where hopefully he’ll be more chatty that
Daniel Bryan, who once again denied to comment on his advertised career altering statement
by just walking away from Kayla. Smackdown was in Memphis this week, so you
know what that means: an appearance by Jerry “The King” Lawler. He brought out his
favourite woman to objectify during the Attitude Era, Trish Stratus - who explained that she
wasn’t at Raw Reunion because of something on Instagram or something. Lawler said that
every legend on Raw Reunion all wished they could have one last match - I’m sure Shawn
Michaels does - but Trish said that she’s a mother now. This brought out Charlotte Flair,
who challenged Trish to a match at Summerfest. Trish called her a bitch - Attitude Era - and
accepted her challenge as she created the trail for Flair to blaze along with Lita,
Ivory, Jacqueline and Beth Phoenix. Yep, pretty sure that’s everyone.
Firefly Funhouse made a short return this week, with Rambling Rabbit saying that he
was a huge fan of Finn Balor, but he made a mistake in unleashing The Fiend.
And after teasing that the Universal Championship match between Seth Rollins vs. Brock Lesnar
might not happen due to Seth’s injuries from Monday’s Raw, the first-ever Universal
Champion Finn Balor took on Dolph Ziggler in a pretty standard affair. The lights went
out and The Fiend appeared from nowhere, and this distraction allowed Dolph to hit the
Superkick and pick up only his second win since coming back WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?!
The action continued next, as Shinsuke Nakamura took on Prince Ali, yes it is he, who won
with a roll-up. This should set, up a match, for Summerfest. This has been a very odd bit
of build. Two weeks ago this was teased, but last week Ali was cutting a promo about winning
the WWE Championship while Nakamura set-up a feud with Apollo Crews, and now we’re
back to Nakamura vs. Ali. I mean I’m very happy we’re getting this feud don’t get
me wrong, just an odd way to go about it. We then got a promo from Inside The Mind of
Randy Orton, who once again re-wrote his famous throwing the toys of out of the pram ‘stupid,
stupid, stupid’ hissy fit into a storyline. This was more great stuff from Orton, who
said that there wouldn’t be KofiMania without him because he kicked Prince Ali so hard in
the face that he couldn’t compete at Elimination Chamber. And to cap off this great bit of
promo work, he said that Kofi challenging him at SchummerSclam was stupid, stupid, stupid.
I loved this. Kofi Kingston cut a promo saying that Smackdown
is no longer the house that AJ Styles built and is now the Palace of Positivity - and
he then had a singles match with the United States champ. This was originally advertised
to be a six-man tag - BUT CARD SUBJECT TO CHANGE - we got this match instead. Speaking
of which, whatever happened to that Fire & Desire vs. IIconics match that was set up last week?
And before you say anything, I know they filmed something for WWE.com. But let’s be honest,
if it wasn’t important enough to be featured on the broadcast, then it doesn’t count.
Anyway this match was really good, and featured such a chaotic ending that the camera crew
nearly missed it - with Kofi hitting the Trouble in Paradise on AJ as he dove through the air
to hit the Phenomenal Forearm. Well that was a decent show and - what do
you mean there’s still more to cover? There’s only two minutes of the show left! Oh right,
it’s the much hyped announcement of Roman Reigns’ Summerslam opponent! Which we never
found out, as Roman was attacked by boxes and steel girders as he was walking to Kayla
Braxton. This felt like a big deal, until Roman just stood up and was fine. And it would
have felt like a bigger deal if it was given time to breathe. But the show clearly ran
long, and this segment was incredibly rushed and had no impact - which is a shame.
And it’s another damp ending for an episode of Smackdown. If Roman was always going to
be fine, why didn’t this happen earlier in the night rather than at the end? Overall
though the show was pretty good. There was some decent in-ring action and some good build
towards Summerslam. It wasn’t as good as Raw, but it was a high Smack Bang in the Middle.
And now over to Pete Quinnell with the news!
Great review Luke! Just watch out you don’t get crushed by some random scaffolding on
your way back to the office, because we might never know who did it! Luckily for all of
you guys out there though, I’ve solved the mystery of who attacked Roman Reigns...well,
Twitter has anyway.
After the scaffolding angle concluded the show, several eagle eyed viewers put up screenshots
showing who they believe was the mystery attacker. And who they believe it is WILL SHOCK YOU.
I should write for buzzfeed.
The screenshots show Buddy Murphy walking away from the wreckage. Could he be an innocent
bystander, or the malevolent attacker that destroyed Roman and his hopes and dreams,
until he walked away that is.
Could this lead to a Buddy Murphy vs Roman Reigns match for SummerSlam? I personally
would absolutely love that. Mainly because Buddy Murphy would actually be on the card.
While we might all be wondering who caused the scaffolding to topple on top of Roman
Reigns, it’s his former Shield brother who’s been making waves in AEW and New Japan Pro
Wrestling.
With All Elite making their weekly TV debut on TNT this October, segments have started
to be announced for the debut show, including Cody Rhodes vs Sammy Guevara, and now Jon
Moxley has been confirmed to appear live at the show too.
Whether Moxley will be wrestling on the show, or maybe starting a feud with somebody remains
to be seen, but the date is drawing closer and closer, with exactly one month until possibly
AEW’s final show before they begin their weekly TV programming, All Out, where Moxley
is scheduled to face off against Kenny Omega.
But AEW aren’t the only wrestling company starting a new show in October, as WWE will
be moving SmackDown Live over to Fox, and with it, moving the show to Fridays instead.
It had previously been speculated that SmackDown would undergo a rebranding, as a new logo
for the show had been leaked via advertisements, but now that has been expanded upon via the
ever-reliable WrestleVotes, who tweeted to say:
“When the move to FOX happens, expect SmackDown to be shot with different cameras. WWE tested
out some newer, much more expensive technology recently and said to have liked what it produced.
It will seem cinematic like, similar to some WWE24 footage.”
This is compounded by a recent report on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, that claimed
WWE were looking into testing out new cameras and equipment for their Fox move. It seems
those tests went well, and honestly, I’m very much looking forward to a more cinematic-feel
of SmackDown as it will differentiate the feel of the brands, and make it look nicer,
so what’s not to like?
What’s not to like is Vince McMahon seemingly re-writing the shows on a whim, because this
week, just like last week, it seems the Chairman of the board re-wrote the show, not once,
but twice!
The main event of this week’s SmackDown was scheduled to be Big E and Xavier Woods
vs Drew McIntyre and Elias, but Ryan Satin of Pro Wrestling Sheet tweeted out to say:
“Hearing from sources that Vince McMahon called in the SmackDown creative team to totally
rewrite the show today”
This caused the main event to be changed to The OC vs The New Day in a six-man tag match,
which WWE announced on Twitter.
This then changed again to the main event we actually got, being Kofi Kingston vs AJ
Styles, which they also announced on Twitter like nothing happened.
It must be a delight to work for Vince McMahon.
With SmackDown moving to Fox in October, hopefully SmackDown can find its feet, as entire re-writes
of the show hours before it airs every single week probably won’t fly, plus it can’t
be good for anyone’s stress levels.
And as the show was pretty mediocre, perhaps he should leave it to the writers. Unless
what the writers had was even worse. In which case well done Vince for scraping together
a decent show.
Check out the ScreenStalker video from yesterday, featuring Luke playing one of the hardest
games of all time...for children. Enjoy!