In this WrestleTalk News, a major WWE star potentially WALKS OUT of WWE, an update on
Vince McMahon’s creative control and Tempest’s review of last night’s Smackdown.
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[SUPPORT WRESTLETALK]
After an absolutely ABYSMAL Monday Night Raw, expectations were extremely tempered ahead
of last night’s Smackdown. But y’know what… it wasn’t too bad. At least there
was actually a fair bit of WRESTLING on this show.
Among the matches on Smackdown was an excellent opener between the always winning combination
of The Brawling Brutes and Imperium, continuing Gunther and Sheamus’ saga, which is nice
to see.
But wait a minute, isn’t there a missing piece of the puzzle there? A Drew McIntyre
shaped piece?
Yes, McIntyre was glaringly absent from Smackdown, with PWInsider Elite revealing that while
WWE had Drew planned for the show, they would later pull him from their plans. Not only
that but Drew was also planned for an autograph signing for Cricket Wireless but would also
be pulled from appearing, being replaced by Gunther.
Now while Wade Keller of PWTorch has reported that another health issue for Drew could be
the reason for WWE’s decision, it could also potentially be related to the ongoing
uncertainty over his WWE contract.
Keller would report that McIntyre and WWE’s recent failure to come to terms on a new deal,
relate to Drew’s unhappiness with both his current creative and of course those sweet
sweet dollar bills.
Keller said:
"there's been talk that he is unhappy with his current situation in WWE and I'm hearing
it's kind of a mix of creative and money and what kind of offer he's getting for a renewal.
It sounds like WWE is taking seriously the possibility that he is going to let his deal
run out rather than agree to something that he believes is less than he deserves or less
than he what he thinks he has coming."
Keller would add that from what he has heard, the situation will “be decided pretty quickly
one way or the other."
Lastly Keller adds that McIntyre’s absence could also be related to the fact that the
triple-threat IC title match at WrestleMania was just pretty bloody sore and McIntyre either
requested or was given time to recover.
Keller believes that instead of one thing being the reason for Drew’s absence, it’s
more likely to be a bit of everything.
While McIntyre may not be too pleased with WWE’s creative, I think it’s safe to say
we ALL shared that sentiment following that one-two punch of Cody losing to Roman and
Monday’s Raw.
So, when it came to Smackdown the apprehension was at an all time high, especially given
WWE’s announcement that Triple H was set for yet another WWE universe address. Would
he be leaving? Would he be publicly relinquishing control back to Vince?
Nah… he just announced a draft.
Phew, well, thankfully at least on the surface the Triple H era resumes, however, did the
black cloud of Vinny Mac still loom over Smackdown’s creative plans? Was he there in the flesh
ripping up all the scripts and replacing them with Omos matches?
Fightful Select would report on Thursday that “higher-ups” within WWE “believed and
hoped” that Smackown would return to the type of show we saw during Triple H’s creative.
And thankfully, as we mentioned earlier, the show wasn’t too bad, which would obviously
suggest that this wasn’t a Vince show, unlike Raw.
According to PWInsider Elite, Vince was in fact not in Portland for Smackdown, however,
F4W Online’s Dave Meltzer would reveal that he did review creative plans “remotely”
but only made “minor” changes to the script.
This would seem to be the case, as unlike Monday, Fightful Select’s traditional run-down
of the Smackdown script would prove to be 100% accurate to what ended up taking place.
While this is obviously a cause for celebration and optimism, PWInsider reported that there
is a “wait and see” attitude backstage, however, morale has reportedly improved since
Monday.
Would you look at that, Vince’s lack of presence equals happiness… take the hint
pal.
Talent also reportedly feels that if Vince continues to only be present remotely going
forward, then shows should continue to be run in a similar creative fashion as prior
to WrestleMania. The hope in the locker room is that Vince was only so heavily involved
with Raw due to him already being in LA for Mania, and maybe if last night was any indication,
that could be
the case.
So we kick off this WrestleMania fallout edition of SmackDown with a good ol fashioned donnybrook
between Imperium and the Brawling Brutes. While it does feel like we’ve seen this
sort of match a lot the last nine months I just can’t get tired of seeing it. The story
here was the teamwork of Imperium was impeccable while Walter did his best to keep Sheamus
from tagging in. Sure enough, after Walter hit his powerbomb on Ridge Holland for a nearfall,
Sheamus tagged in to a big ovation, clobbering Walter before hitting the Brogue Kick on Giovanni
Vinci for the win. It would appear that Sheamus is still at the front of the queue for an
IC title shot with this win and again, who could ever get tired of seeing that? Very
fun opener ⅘
Backstage Kayla Braxton asks Paul Heyman about why Brock Lesnar turned on Cody Rhodes and
Paul ignores that question to boast about Roman Reigns. Jey Uso walks up and asks where
Jimmy is and Paul tells him that Jimmy is at home watching so Jey can prove himself
tonight and solve the Sami Zayn Problem. Jey walks off and Paul tells Solo Sikoa that if
Jey can’t solve the Sami Zayn Problem then Solo needs to solve their problems. Ominous.
Ricochet then took on Ivar of the Viking Raiders. This was very straightforward. Ivar worked
him over, Ricochet tried to lift Ivar but hurt his back doing so, and all this built
to the finish where Ricochet hit a springboard hurricanrana and a Shooting Star Press for
the win. There was nothing wrong with it but there also wasn’t really anything more to
it than that. ⅗
Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn are backstage and Kevin is excited to put the bloodline stuff
behind them after Sami’s match with Jey Uso, but Sami tells him that he feels obligated
to go talk to Jey. KO tells him that this is a bad idea but he knows he can’t talk
Sami out of it.
Raquel Rodriguez and Liv Morgan then took on Natalya and Shotzi who say that they should
be the ones getting the tag title shot instead of Raquel and Liv in an inset promo. Personally
I would think it should be the team that actually won at WrestleMania but whatever. This was
another fairly quick match as Raquel and Liv worked over Shotzi until Natalya dragged her
partner back to the corner to tag in as they then went for the Hart Attack only to be countered
with Liv hitting Shotzi with an assisted DDT and then the Oblivion for the win. This match
was particularly clunky in places, Shotzi just is not smooth in the ring and both Liv’s
DDT and the Oblivion looked rough in this one. Nothing catastrophic by any means, but
not a match you need to go out of your way to see. ⅖
Madcap Moss and Xavier Woods are backstage playing WWE2k23 when LA Knight walks in and
makes fun of them. Xavier asks him what his problem is that he’s complaining to the
about not being on WrestleMania and says he will gladly beat him again tonight. LA Knight
breaks Woods’ PS5 controller and walks off. Hey man that’s a scrap those things are
mad expensive.
Triple H then came out to address the WWE fans and began by spewing a bunch of WrestleMania
propaganda before getting to the actual point of his appearance. Triple H announced that
in a few weeks they will have the WWE Draft and every single WWE star will be eligible.
Here’s hoping they go back to the really fun 2007-2011 format, I liked that. Triple
H then welcomes Rhea Ripley and Judgment Day.
---ADBREAK—
Rhea says April 1, 2023 will go down in history as the day that WWE changed forever because
she beat Charlotte Flair, Finn Balor then says that Edge had to split his head open
in order to beat him and but yet he is still standing, then Dominik got on the mic and
got nuclear heat. Like night after WrestleMania 33 Roman Reigns levels of heat. Dominik says
he couldn’t hurt his dad but that’s more than Rey could do and says his family can
go to hell. They show the recap of Bad Bunny getting attacked on Raw and then said Damian
Priest said that he hopes Bad Bunny can forgive him because he has forgiven Bad Bunny for
making him do what he did.
Rey Mysterio and the LWO then came out for their tag match with Dominik and Priest. This
was more entertaining stuff, Santos Escobar got worked over in the earlygoings before
giving Rey the hot tag as Rey tried to hit the 619 on Dominik only to be stopped by Rhea
Ripley. Zelina Vega hit Rhea with a hurricanrana and Priest got a blind tag just as Rey hit
Dominik with the 619. Santos went for the Phantom Driver but Priest hit him with South
of Heaven for the win. I don’t really know what direction I would like to see all this
go but this very much felt like a match that could’ve taken place before Mania just with
Rey now willing to fight his son. The Triple H announcement gets a 3/5 the Judgment Day
promo gets a ⅗ and this tag match also gets a ⅗
It is announced that Shinsuke Nakamura will return to SmackDown next week and Sami Zayn
went to talk to Jey Uso backstage. Sami told Jey that the Bloodline is crumbling but he
doesn’t have to just stand by and let it happen. There’s a commotion and Sami runs
to see Kevin Owens with a production case on his leg with Solo Sikoa being led away
by security. Sami tells Kayla that the Bloodline aren’t the only ones that have a problem
in need of solving now.
We then got the main event between Jey Uso and Sami Zayn and right off the bat I feel
like this match should have been much more than what it ended up being. Again not saying
it was bad by any means but the Sami Zayn vs Jey Uso match kinda felt like a really
big deal. Like a big enough deal to be a featured match at a Premium live event or something
like that. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so noticeable if we didn’t get such a lame
finish. Jey Uso tied Sami up in the ropes and the ref distracted himself so Solo could
hit the Samoan Spike and Jey could hit a kick and get the win. These refs are
really bad yall. Maybe I’m just sour because this is real close to the finish of WrestleMania
that I did not like at all but this had me down. After the match we had a nice touch
as Solo went to hit the spike again but Jey stopped him before Superkicking Sami and telling
Solo to get a chair. This is when Matt Riddle made the save and chased off the bloodline
to close the show. This was a decent enough main event segment but for Sami vs Jey I was
really hoping for more. ⅗
And so overall this was kind of a middle of the road episode of SmackDown.The action and
everything was solid but I don’t think anything on the show actually felt like it had progressed
since WrestleMania. Also still no call ups in case anyone was wondering. This smackdown
gets a ⅗
Before we get out of here make sure that you check out the first video of our new channel
Cut Scene entitled The Perfect Mario Bros Movie You’ll Never See.