WWE SmackDown Live
There was a lot to squeeze into two hours on Tuesday night but I thought SmackDown Live did a good job of it, besides not airing the promised footage of the James Ellsworth and Carmella shopping spree anyway.
Shane McMahon opened the show by announcing that the WWE Championship would be defended in the Elimination Chamber at the next blue brand PPV and that opened the door for a great segment with AJ Styles, John Cena and The Miz, all of whom brought their A-game for this conversation. The face/heel thing didn’t matter here as Styles went after Miz, Miz went after Styles and both obviously went after Cena. Miz reminding Cena of how he beat him in the main event at WrestleMania was fantastic but Cena getting Styles and Miz riled up may have been the highlight of the night. I mean, I always love the aggressive Cena promos but he was in comedic form tonight and it was really entertaining. The opener led to a good match between Styles and Miz and the finish was perfect here. Neither could afford a clean loss in this one and I thought it went down as it should have. Very good start to the show.
The Nikki Bella-Natalya feud continues to impress me. Instead of your typical in-ring standoff, we got Nattie at a merchandise stand, knocking the Nikki merch, the Cena merch and even the Bret Hart merch were here and it was beautiful. She’s really excelling in this role right now and hopefully the payoff in this program is as good as the build has been.
When it was announced early in the night that Dean Ambrose would be taking on Randy Orton, I was really hoping for a better match than the one that we got. It wasn’t bad by any means but I was just wanting a little more. I will say, however, that the spot where Orton countered the Ambrose lariat into his powerslam was well done. I’ve always loved Orton’s powerslam and despised that clothesline, so that made me feel good. But the match obviously wasn’t the focus here as the tension between Randy Orton and Luke Harper continued. After Ambrose picked up the victory due to distraction from Harper, things once again got heated and Bray Wyatt actually struck Luke Harper, which was a nice twist to things, as Orton grinned. It was announced later in the night that Harper and Orton will go 1-on-1 next week to sort things out. This is getting better and better every week.
I know what they were trying to do with the segment with Jerry Lawler and Dolph Ziggler but the whole thing just felt very off to me. Okay, we’re in Memphis and Lawler is the hometown hero and such. And Dolph Ziggler is once again a heel, so we need to get some heat on him but don’t want to start too much before the Royal Rumble. So let’s have him mock Lawler’s heart attack and show some old footage of Ziggler dropping elbows on his heart minutes before it happened. Anyone else uncomfortable? Look, I always like the realism angle as it makes things more emotional but I just don’t see where this is going. So Ziggler kicks Lawler in the heart and JBL of all people jumps in to make the save. Is this seriously all they have for Ziggler? So are we getting Ziggler vs. Lawler or Ziggler vs. JBL, or is Apollo Crews going to be the representative for the older guys? Again, I see what they’re trying to do but it just didn’t work for me.
The main event steel cage match wasn’t the best match that Becky Lynch and Alexa Bliss have had together but it was still pretty good. For a cage match, there wasn’t as much intensity as I would like to have seen but it still got the job done. I still don’t like the commercial breaks in the middle of the main event, especially a cage match with a title on the line, but we had to deal with that. There was some good back and forth and you knew at some point La Luchadora would get involved, and while there are tons of people out there who knew it was Mickie James under the mask, I still marked out a little bit when the reveal actually happened. Plus, Becky’s reaction only made it that much better. Mickie’s always been one of my favorite females in the industry and I think bringing her back to the main roster as a heel is a great move. She’s only going to help Alexa get better and a future match between her and Becky Lynch should be outstanding. Obviously, Alexa retained the title and I’m very interested to see how they proceed from here.
I thought this was another great show and SmackDown Live just continues to be the better program each and every week. Orton vs. Harper should be fun to watch next week.