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Kevin Owens gets fired from WWE! Kofi Kingston and Randy Orton repeat a spot from 10 years
ago! And Rowan powerbombs Chopper Pete Quinnell onto Roman Reigns! I hope he’s going to
be alright to do the news after this review. And which NXT star debuted on 205 Live? Click
the timestamps down below to jump to any of those stories, right now. I am Luke Owen,
press the thumbs up and subscribe buttons, and leave a comment down below to answer our
question of the day: Are WWE ruining Kevin Owens? And make sure
you vote in the poll above my head to let me know what you thought of the show. Where
you can choose from: SmackNificent, SmackTastic, Smack Bang in the Middle, SmackTastic, and
A Smack in the Face. This is the 10th of September 2019 edition of Smackdown Live.
Just like Raw the previous night, Smackdown was opened by a legend in the form of the
returning Undertaker. He wanted to talk about souls and the hallowed halls of Madison Square
Garden, while the crowd sat there patiently waiting for The Fiend to come out. Instead
it was Sami Zayn who interrupted Taker, and got Chokeslammed for his troubles. And, that
was it. That was your big Undertaker appearance. No feuds were set up, no new stars were put
over, nothing. Just every Taker appearance we’ve seen since he came back on the Raw
After Mania. Shane McMahon made his return to Smackdown,
telling Chad Gable that Elias had broken his ankle and would no longer be in the semi-finals
for King of the Ring, later telling him that he’ll take his place to become THE KING
OF THE RIIIIIIIIIIIIIING, Shane McMahon. The Miz beat Andrade with Shinsuke Nakamura
on commentary, overcoming multiple bits of interference from Zelina Vega. Nakamura laid
him out after the match, and was actually the best bit of this match, replying to all
of Byron Saxton’s questions in Japanese with Corey Graves blindly agreeing with what
he had to say. It just shows that Nakamura didn’t need Sami Zayn to get him over.
In an effort to build a modicum of interest in their title match this Sunday, Nikki Cross
quickly pinned Mandy Rose after Alexa Bliss stopped Sonya Deville’s interference.
After hyping themselves up by drinking smoothies, Heavy Machinery beat up a couple of jobbers
in very entertaining fashion. Both Otis and Tucker are so wonderfully charismatic, from
Tucker brilliantly carrying himself around the ring, and Otis humping the ropes wanting
to get a tag. I just hope this team doesn’t fall into just beating up jobbers each week
and get into an actual storyline again. Ember Moon approached Bayley backstage about
her heel turn, with Bayley telling her that she’s not changed and she did what she did
to make the Smackdown Women’s Division relevant. This was some good character work for Bayley,
a character which I totally overlooked and didn’t pick up on last week. She then quickly
beat Ember Moon while Charlotte Flair was on commentary. Sucks for Ember. Flair and
Bayley had a face-to-face stand off, with Flair motioning that she’ll be a 10x champion
this coming Sunday. I really hope not. This week’s Smackdown didn’t feature any
good in-ring action, but it’s two best moments came from angles to build Clash of Champions.
And that kicked off with Erick Rowan and his new generic entrance music - rest easy plinky
plonky Sheep Herder music - who came out to cut a promo on Roman Reigns and how he won’t
be told what to do anymore. Roman came out and the two got into a huge brawl around ringside.
Security tried to break things up, but Rowan powerbombed a fan into Roman - and laid him
out with a camera jib at the top of the ramp. This was a great go-home angle, and made me
really excited to see their No DQ Match this Sunday. At least with it being No DQ, they
can use all the smoke and mirrors and not have to rely on Rowan doing head squeezes.
The second big angle on the show came from Kofi Kingston, who cut a promo on Randy Orton
and reminded those younger minds in the crowd of what he did to Orton in this same building
10 years earlier. Orton appeared in the crowd to tell Kofi to stop bringing up the two things
he’s accomplished in the last decade - evening saying a big BS swear. So you know this is
super serious, now. They brawled for a bit, and Kofi repeated his Boom Drop spot from
10 years ago, putting Orton through a table. This was all really good stuff, and a nice
mirror to the angle that has been a big backdrop to this feud, but there was one thing really
missing from it: the return of New Day. Xavier Woods and Big E haven’t been by Kofi’s
side for a while now since they were taken out by Orton and The Revival, which is why
Kofi has been beaten down a lot. So, wouldn’t it have been really nice to have seen Kofi
again beaten down by the threesome, only for his New Day brothers to make the save. Not
only would it have been a nice capper to this story, but New Day and Revival have a match
this coming Sunday and it would have been nice to do some build for that too!
The show’s final big angle, and the one that was less good, was Shane McMahon taking
on Chad Gable in the King of the Ring semi-final. Earlier in the night, Shane told Kevin Owens
that he would be the special guest referee for the match, and he would take away the
$100,000 fine if he did what Shane wanted him to do. Didn’t that fine get sorted a
couple of weeks ago? Anyway, Chad Gable immediately won the match
with the Chaos Theory Suplex, but Shane made the match a 2-out-of-3 falls match. Ah, that
takes me back. Gable then got several visual pins on Shane, but Owens counted them slowly
and looked conflicted about doing so. Eventually, Gable locked in the Ankle Lock and Shane tapped
out. So Chad goes through to the finals of King of the Ring - which is no longer taking
place at Clash of Champions by the way - and he’s just a backdrop to Shane firing Owens.
This is just another step in WWE systematically picking apart Owens, who just four weeks ago
was the hottest act in the company. He’s just been made to look dumber and dumber since
Summerslam, and it’s a darn shame. And clearly I’m not the only one, as the show went off
the air with chants of AEW. And it left a sour taste in my mouth for this
week’s Smackdown. The angles to build Roman vs. Rowan and Kofi vs. Orton were good, but
the in-ring action was massively lacking, the Owens storyline is really hurting his
character, and we wasted 14 minutes of TV time on Undertaker chokeslamming Sami Zayn.
This week’s Smackdown Live, is a SmackDowner.
Lovely review Luke!
Last night was most certainly a wrestling show. Chad Gable beat Shane McMahon, Kevin
Owens was fired, The Undertaker was there. But for the live crowd there, the fun didn’t
stop with SmackDown, as they got to witness a huge debut on 205 Live.
Former multiple time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion, and resident Back to the Future
nerd, KUSHIDA, made his debut for the purple brand at Madison Square Garden, appearing
as Jack Gallagher’s mystery tag partner, where they picked up the win over Akira Tozawa
and Brian Kendrick with a double submission.
While KUSHIDA could definitely elevate the talent level within 205 Live, this doesn’t
seem like the smartest decision given that he is just getting settled in NXT, and there’s
rumours aplenty that 205 Live won’t be around for too much longer anyway. This could just
be a special MSG one-off though for the cruiserweights, so I guess KUSHIDA is their version of The
Undertaker.
Speaking of The Undertaker, he was brought to SmackDown to boost ratings, and on Raw,
Stone Cold Steve Austin was brought back to boost ratings too! And I guess to sign a contract
or some other such nonsense, but we all know why he was really there. The question now
though, is did it work?
No. No it didn’t.
This week’s Raw drew 2.13 million viewers, down 400,000 viewers from last week’s show,
and according to Bryan Alvarez of the Wrestling Observer, this is the second lowest non-holiday
viewership score in modern history.
Just imagine what it would have been without Stone Cold.
But now, you know what it’s time for, that time every Wednesday where I tell you that
Vince McMahon has torn up SmackDown and rewrote the entire show hours before it goes live.
However, this time, well it’s pretty much the same, but it’s got a slight twist on
it.
It was announced before SmackDown, that Elias would be forced to pull out of King of the
Ring due to injury, and on the show we saw that none other than Shane McMahon would be
replacing him.
However, this decision had a ripple effect on the show, with Kevin Owens being recruited
as a special guest referee for the match, and subsequently being fired after Shane lost.
According to PWInsider, the decision to use Shane on the show was a Vince McMahon idea,
despite other ideas being pitched to him, including a battle royal to find Gable’s
opponent. Classic Vince.
So yes, Vince McMahon and the writers did rewrite the show just hours before it went
live, but this time it wasn’t because Vince hated everything and tore it up, it was just
because of Elias’ injury. And that’s step one on the path to recovery.
But what’s next for Kevin Owens? Hey that’s probably the WrestleRamble title for today.
After his firing on SmackDown, one would normally expect in the world of WWE, he’d either
show up on Raw, or just continue showing up on SmackDown. However, this may not be the
case for Owens, because there’s another brand he might be returning to.
After SmackDown finished, Kevin Owens took to Twitter to say this:
“14-24-20”
Now while some of you, like me, might think that’s referring to the 14th day of the
24th month of 2020, or the 24th day of the 14th month of 2020, connoisseurs of the alphabet
may be quick to notice that this actually spells something. Using each number as its
subsequent letter of the alphabet, this spells out N. X. T.
KEVIN OWENS TO NXT CONFIRMED! OH MAN. Kevin Owens vs Adam Cole. Kevin Owens vs Velveteen
Dream. Kevin Owens vs Keith Lee. Kevin Owens vs Dominik Dijakovic. Kevin Owens vs...anyone
really. NXT is really good.
But chances are, he’ll be on SmackDown next week asking for his job back.
Will the new Joker and Batman crossover? Press the video to the right to find out on ScreenStalker
with Oli and Laurie! And should Stone Cold return fully to WWE? Press the video below
that to find out more! A special thank you to our pledgehammers on Patreon, some of whom
you can see scrolling below me right now! I’ve been Chopper Pete Quinnell, and that,
was wrestling.