WWE SmackDown LIVE 2019 Discussion

Zack T · September 12, 2019

Gable only got as far as he did because allegedly, Vince decided to advance him as he felt people were expecting Ali/Andrade to be the semifinal. Yay for meaningless swerve booking.

I wouldn't expect Gable to win the tournament but even if he does, what's he get from it? Practically nothing. Apparently the original plans were for the winner to go on to challenge for the Universal title and it was going to be Drew, but with the Fiend selling mass amounts of merch around Summerslam, the WWE saw those $$$ signs and decided to toss those plans and put Bray in the title picture instead. Plus Drew is recovering from a mild injury anyway.

So now Bray's gonna fight for the Universal title at Hell in a Cell, and the KOTR winner is gonna do...a whole lot of nothing. Probably be Baron Corbin running around in the cliche cape/crown/scepter, calling himself king Corbin or King Baron and being generally unbearable and annoying because that's pretty much always what happens to the KOTR winners. They look stupid and end up in a worse spot in their careers than before.

Kam · September 18, 2019

So...are we expecting Brock to take the title on the Smackdown Fox debut? I wouldn't be surprised, it gives Fox a big name to promote the show with.

Speaking of surprised, I fully expected Becky to make the save for Charlotte...but we get Carmella instead?

Looks like we're getting Rowan and Harper vs Reigns/Bryan. I wonder if WWE will turn Bryan face as most of the fans seem to be expecting him to turn on Reigns. I had the same feeling way back with Sasha/Baley when we all expected them to feud and it never happened. Then I had it again with Alexa and Nikki, that never happened too.

Zack T · September 19, 2019

Hard to say what's gonna happen with Bryan/Roman. This whole angle has been messed up and off the rails.

Brock Lesnar seems like a sure bet to win the WWE title. Kofi's had a respectable WWE Title run, I'm not really upset by it. I just hope they have Brock appear more often than once every 3 weeks or so.

Kam · October 5, 2019

I loved the new intro, not the music so much. I was surprised to see Raw and Smackdown superstars in the intro, I thought they wouldn't be brand hopping now they're on different channels.

The new Smackdown set looked amazing - probably my favourite one so far.

As soon as Becky came out I was thinking Rock would get involved...and sure enough, he did. Nice segment to kick things off.

I don't watch any boxing or MMA so Tyson Fury's appearance didn't mean much but they put it over as a big deal. Although I thought it strange having Braun go over to him and taunt him when he's meant to be a face.

I hated the title match...I generally don't like any quick finishes, but this had to be one of the worst. There were no redeeming parts for Kofi at all. They could have had Heyman distract him or have Brock attack him earlier in the show. I get they might want to push Brock as the beast again...but they don't have to do it at the expense of their roster. It doesn't just reflect badly on Kofi but also on those he's overcome since Mania - Daniel Bryan, Samoa Joe, Randy Orton etc

I had no idea who Cain Velasquez was (at first, I thought Dominic had shaved his head! :P)...he didn't look all that impressive but I'll take Cole's word on how good he's meant to be.

Overall I thought it was a good show but as you can probably tell, the Fury/Velasquez moments didn't mean so much for me.

Zack T · October 7, 2019

I think that intro was for this debut show only, since the draft is next week. Plus, that was a real long intro compared to a standard Raw/Smackdown intro.

I agree, the title match was rubbish. I think we all expected Brock to win, but come on. Kofi deserved better than instantly losing like that. I haven't watched hell in a cell yet so maybe he gets a rematch then to redeem himself some, but even if he did, there's not much point cause he'll still lose, so...

The set is freakin cool, I love it. They did a very good job from the moment the show came on air at making it feel different from Raw and NXT, have to give them credit for that. The stage is unique and cool, the intro video package was very sports-stadium oriented, as was the new little graphics they'll show when they put that text on screen of where Smackdown is that week or the superstars names. The new camera shots, it all added together to make Smackdown feel more like a serious sports program than the weird mix of everything Raw is.

The opening segment with Becky Lynch, Baron Corbin, and The Rock was absolutely perfect. We all love Becky and her coming out to issue an open challenge or something doesn't make much sense in hindsight since she was already booked for a tag match, but nevermind that. Baron Corbin coming down and being a butthead was great, and then The Rock made the place explode. I personally had forgotten The Rock would be on Smackdown, so I popped pretty hard. I think the choice of putting these 3 together was very smart - The Rock is great, but no one's gonna begrudge Becky for being in there with him and it's great to give that shoulder-rub to her. Baron was an excellent choice as well, because no one's gonna complain about him being made a fool of, that's kind of what he exists for at the moment.

Tag match was fine, Charlotte tapping Bayley out was slightly unexpected but makes sense to set up a title match, logical booking for the win.

Weird to book Seth vs Shinsuke but it really just served as a way to get Seth out there for another firefly fun house and attack segment. Also served as a way to let Sami rave to Shinsuke's music <3 Good firefly fun house episode. Also, there's a picture online some fan took of a bunch of fox execs in the front row watching the fun house episode looking utterly confused, it's hilarious. Anyway, my main complaint about this segment is that they waited a bit too long for the Fiend to come out. Building anticipation is nice, but Shinsuke looking around like an idiot in the ring was campy and Seth suddenly being at the top of the ramp was a bit weird. I mean I can understand he just ran up there but I dunno why he did it and it would've helped to see him make his way up there, I think. But at least the segment was short, I hate when they keep the Fiend out there for 5 to 10 minutes playing that screeching violin sound.

Ladder match was fun, although I don't like that Shane hit the coast to coast through a ladder and KO still managed to get up, I just couldn't buy into that. I would've rather him not hit the move at all or got countered. Regardless, KO was the rightful winner and the match was brutal and fast paced and Shane got wrecked. He really put his body through the wringer on this one. But now he's gone and we won't see him for a long time. Probably good. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Not sure what the point is of having Roman beat Erick Rowan in a lumberjack match just days before they fight at hell in a cell, but ok.

8 Man Tag was random as hell, what an odd set of teams. Fun tag match though, weird angle set up for Braun and Tyson though. I mean at first it was funny, Braun just playing around with Tyson at ringside was a cool moment. But then Tyson trying to leap the barricade was really unexpected and honestly unprovoked. Just didn't make much sense, kind of made him look like an overly sensitive punk. But it'll be huge to boxing fans.

And of course, the main event. Kofi deserved better. He deserved to at least get some offense in, and not be beaten in 7 seconds. But this may be the result of them running out of time for the evening, I don't know. Regardless, it was a means to an end, to get us to the showdown between Cain and Brock. Personally, I'm not hyped about Cain either too much because I don't watch UFC, but to UFC folks, this is another big deal. The point of this is to draw in new eyes or lapsed fans. I bet it worked, given Smackdown pulled off an impressive 3.8 rating, WWE's biggest TV rating in many many years.

Kam · October 12, 2019

I thought that was an awful show!

Reigns/Rollins was fine enough but it was a cop-out having Fiend do Kane and drag him 'to hell'.

I liked the idea of the Fox/USA Network executives having a say in who gets drafted but the war rooms were hilarious. Having them celebrate like they'd won the lottery was too funny. After all the hype, the majority of the picks stayed where they were. How did The Lucha House Party get selected over teams like New Day, Usos, AOP etc! I'm not too sure about The Fiend on Smackdown either - I thought they were trying to be more realistic with the likes of Lesnar and Velasquez.

Shorty Gable SHORTY? :rolleye2:

The only high point for me was Baley finally embracing the heel turn and taking the title back :clap

Zack T · October 17, 2019

That war room stuff during the draft on both Raw and Smackdown was comically bad. YEAAAAA WE GOT NATALYA WOOOOO THIS IS SUCH CELEBRATION LIKE A MAJOR SURPRISE EVEN THOUGH WE'RE SUPPOSEDLY HAVING SUBMITTED OUR PICKS SO WE SHOULD'VE KNOWN THIS WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN

The Short Gable thing is absolutely pissing me off. I get the intent is supposed to be Gable turning an insult around and shoving it in people's faces, but it's being done so heavy handedly and honestly, who would realistically change their name to Shorty to do something like that? If he used it as a nickname (Chad "Shorty" Gable) I think that'd work a lot better. But literally dropping Chad? Shut up, that's stupid.

Bayley's heel turn was pretty interested. It's a bummer they had to play her new music that way though, I think it would've been better to save that for a proper grand entrance. Maybe they should've just played it during her entrance instead of silence, but hindsight is 20/20.

While I'm glad Kofi got a significant win over AJ Styles, it still doesn't really do much for him right now. I mean just a week ago, he lost the WWE title to Brock Lesnar in embarrassingly short fashion, and now he's just dancing and happy, not even mentioning his title loss and hell neither did commentary or anyone else. It's like they're trying to pretend it never even happened.

Kam · November 2, 2019

I was interested going into the show this week with the news that most of the roster was still stuck in Saudi Arabia.

So...Brock just quits and goes to Raw. I guess that's one way to move a champion over :P I assumed Fox would have wanted Lesnar to stick with Smackdown due to his name recognition, I guess not.

How lucky was it that just after the Survivor Series announcement about NXT taking part...they have a show where they need talent that didn't go over to SA. It was a safe bet that they'd use the NXT stars in some form, kudos to WWE for pushing them as much as they did.

Baszler looked awesome taking out everyone.

I think I asked this before, but what has Sami done to piss someone off. He's becoming a joke.

I never realised how small Ciampa was, he looked tiny standing next to Miz. I don't think that will do him any favours if he ends on the main roster. Nice win for him there.

I found Bianca's beatdown hilarious, but that was down to Carmella's selling. It looked like she was just sitting there watching Bianca take out Dana :D

Great main event and nice to see Cole winning clean.

Overall a good show and a great way to build some hype for the Survivor Series PPV. My only real negative was that the crowd seemed to be very quiet for a lot of surprises/action which didn't make them as impactful as they could have been.