Welcome to the “Are You Ready For A Good Time On Fox” edition of The Wrestling List. Yeah, I didn’t plan on sending a List tonight but this night deserves another one. Lots to discuss. Mostly good. But bad in it as well with that ending. That ending put a buzzkill on it for me.
Let’s start with just the overall feel of the show. This show LOOKED amazing! Whew, that show looks PRETTY! When I tuned into the preshow, I saw the graphics, the video, and just the overall look of it which felt like a Fox Sports preshow. The show went on the air and the stage looks incredible. Love the theme song with AC/DC’s Are You Ready For A Good Time. The open looks amazing. Just can’t put into words with how much I love the look of the show. This show looked BIG LEAGUE.
Let’s recap the show. The show opens at Staples Center in Los Angeles with Vince and Stephanie McMahon walking out to welcome us to the show. Becky’s music then hits and she is cutting a promo. It is interrupted by Baron Corbin. Ok, at this point I see where this is going. Either Corbin is eating a stunner or a rock bottom. The Rock’s music hits and it all makes sense now. Big pop for The Rock. He does the finally the Rock has come back line and stops with a pause with tears in his eyes and says “home”. We get the usual greatness from The Rock as he rips on Corbin. Love that Becky got involved and played off of Rock. Becky used the “it doesn’t matter” line and Rock fist bumped her. Great stuff. Rock and Becky pound Corbin. Rock sets up for the people’s elbow and there was that one easy crowd moment where Rock stood over him and looked over his shoulder to the fans signaling the start of the elbow. The fans went nuts as he looked over his shoulder. Such a simple thing and so awesome. Perfect segment. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. We return from commercial and we get the four horsewomen kicking off this show with the action. Fitting for me. Becky and Charlotte against Bayley and Sasha. Good back and forth here. I was also watching this match just taking in the atmosphere too. The show just looks incredible and this was the first in ring action to see with it. Match ends with Bayley tapping to the figure eight by Charlotte. We get the announcement that the WWE Draft will start on Smackdown next week and finish on Raw. Hey, in case you don’t know what WWE sees as the A show now, there you go. When has anything ever started on Smackdown and finished on Raw??? We get the funhouse segment while Seth Rollins is in the ring. The rabbit in the funhouse is clearly Kenny from South Park at this point. Rollins takes on Nakamura. I was watching how awesome those lights were during the Nakamura entrance. Lights go down during the match and Rollins takes off up the ramp. Nakamura is left standing in the ring as they look at each other waiting to see who Bray is going after. The Fiend attacks Rollins and then throws him off the stage. Next is the Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon ladder match. If Shane loses, he’s fired. These two DESTROYED each other. We had the Shane elbow on to the table. Owens doing a frog splash on to the ladder on the outside breaking it in half to which Maria Menounos had the same jaw dropped reaction I had. Shane throws a van terminator across the ring kicking the ladder into Owens. Owens later power bombs Shane off the ladder on to the one in the corner. That leads Owens to climb the ladder which the crowd is popping monstrously for and Owens wins. He tells Shane he is fired and stunners him. I’m so happy at the thought of Shane off of my TV. Kudos to these two who destroyed one another in that match. I know they have to be hurting. They worked hard! Next is the eight man tag with Strowman, Heavy Machinery, and The Miz against Ziggler, Roode, Styles, and Orton. The match is basically just a backdrop for Strowman to get in Tyson Fury’s face at ringside. Strowman gets the win and Fury is caught trying to hop the rail to get to Strowman. No idea who Fury is so this segment really didn’t get much from me other than what they told me on who he was. No offense obviously. I just literally had no idea who he was as I don’t watch it. A sports crossover thing that is clearly wanted for buzz with the Fox crossover. Next we saw Marshmallow winning the 24/7 title accidentally from Carmella backstage after incidental contact. They showed that but they didn’t show the rest. That was playing out on social media. They should have taken the few seconds to air how Carmella won it back cause I thought that was pretty funny online. Roman Reigns was next and he now has his WrestleMania fist down to the stage and pyro set off entrance on Smackdown. Cool looking. Daniel Bryan at ringside on commentary. Lumberjack match with Reigns vs. Rowan. Harper gets involved. Bryan goes after him. All the lumberjacks get involved. Reigns dives over and takes them all out. Rowan then grabs Ali and power bomb throws him at Reigns. Harper jumps in after the superman punch. Bryan takes out Harper. Rowan goes for Bryan but Reigns hits the spear on Rowan for the win. After the match, Bryan offers a handshake to Reigns who hesitates to shake it. Bryan looks at the crowd who is chanting yes and he eggs them on. Notice that he is not actually doing the yes chant movement yet. He just eggs the crowd on to do it without the actual yes chant motion. Reigns shakes his hand so the flip of Bryan back to babyface continues to roll. Then, we get to the main event. And if you blinked, you missed it. Kofi defending the WWE title against Brock Lesnar. The bell rings. Kofi runs at him. Brock picks him up and F5’s him to win the title. 10 second squash match. 10 seconds. Wow. Really???? They cut to Goldberg and Mark Henry in the crowd for a reaction and Henry has a grin with a jaw dropped at it. Rey Mysterio’s music hits. He isn’t alone. He is bringing former UFC champion, Velasquez with him. This was the man that defeated Brock for the UFC title. He takes down Brock and then Brock bails looking very fearful. The two continue to eye one another from the ramp and ring. I am full clock watching through this whole last segment and I had forgotten that Fox wraps at three till the hour cause of a local break after Fox programming. This goes back as long as I can remember back to when I was a kid. So, that is something to keep in mind with future weeks is that Smackdown will not go all the way till 9.
Let’s digest the ending a bit here. I get why they did it. I understand it. Here is how I saw it as a fan. I had no idea who that was coming down to the ring with Rey. I thought it was Dominik and they had to tell me on commentary who it was. That is a big story that you have the guy that defeated Brock for the UFC title taking him on. Again, I had to have that explained to me. I had no clue who that was and why I should care. Between Velasquez and Fury, it is clear that they want more of these mainstream sports talents on the show on Fox. Make WWE look sportier. I get it. I understand it. I didn’t like it. They did all this at the expense of Kofi who they squashed. He didn’t get ONE MOVE IN. Not one. He got fed to Lesnar. I said already that I expected Brock to win tonight. It made sense. Put the belt on a mainstream name that is known with a sport crossover with Fox. I get it. I was ready for it. Squashing Kofi in ten seconds to do it and basically throw him completely out as an after thought was wrong. The interesting thing is that I thought the crowd sounded more like they were with Brock in the prematch. When that squash happened, the boos started. That crowd did not like that finish. WWE has to be very careful here cause you have AEW that just opened up with a strong number and they are grabbing a big segment of the wrestling audience. Main roster WWE is notorious for these type things where the show will be good and they do something at the end that turns you off. The ending really left me down and I was pumped and excited for most of the night. I thought the show lost some steam in excitement after Owens and Shane ended. So, this was the last thing I was left with with that ten second squash making me think, wow, Kofi deserved better that that. It put a down moment on the end of the show for me that I was loving through most of the night. If I’m AEW, part of me is grinning when I see them do that finish knowing that is going to turn a bunch of fans off and now you can grab them. To wrap again, I get it. I know why they did it. I didn’t like how they did it. It took the momentum off the show for me.
Other notes from Smackdown. I see you guy in the front row with the Trust In The Lord sign. Amen and amen. 🙂 One thing I noticed that I have never heard done on a wrestling broadcast before is that there were separate audio feeds. When Fox had to mute the crowd cause of a fan yelling something or a profanity chant, they pulled the crowd audio down and you could still hear the commentary. Usually when that happens, you just hear the whole audio drop out. This is the first time I can ever remember being able to hear the audio feed split. Pretty cool! Shown in the crowd throughout the show were Trish Stratus, Lita, Kurt Angle, Mick Foley, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Mark Henry, and Goldberg.
We saw Erin Andrews brought in to interview The New Day so another Fox crossover. Stone Cold Steve Austin was the voice and face of an awesome promo for WWE that was shown at the end of the pre show. No sign of Austin on the actual broadcast as I felt he was advertised to be on it. Apparently the live crowd at Staples did too as the post live notes have fans chanting for Austin after the final segment. So, it clearly wasn’t just me that was thinking where is Austin? Staples apparently thought they were getting him too.
So, there is the premiere of Smackdown. Visually and production wise, this show looks and sounds AMAZING. It felt BIG LEAGUE. You could easily see the Fox touch on a lot of it with upgrades and such on production. Fun level. Very fun show in the first half. The second half lost steam for me when we got into the crossover stuff and then the squash at the end kind of squashed my excitement too. I’ll be curious to see how the ratings did and I have to believe it did a strong number. That’s it for tonight. Oh hey, there is a PPV on Sunday. Wow, is there no buzz on that thing at all or what?? All the buzz has been the TV week between Raw, AEW, NXT, and tonight’s Fox Smackdown premiere. Have a great weekend!
About the Author
