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Botched! 5.13.17: Chairs & Blood, Fun With Side Plates, More

May 13, 2017 | Posted by Steve Cook
Roman Reigns - Sid Vicious Image Credit: WWE

Hi, hello & welcome to the column that nobody in wrestling wants to be featured in, Botched! Raw & SmackDown went to the United Kingdom this week, but the extra editing time didn’t keep us from seeing some slight boo-boos. Let’s look at five of them…

1. The Incredible Changing Raw Women’s Championship

Alexa Bliss was ready to wrestle on Monday night, but prior to that we saw her have a conversation with Nia Jax about how Nia deserved a title shot and how they would be best friends until that happened. Then she had a match with Mickie James, which was good enough and not the subject matter for this column.

The subject is the belt.

Here’s the belt in the locker room.

Here’s the belt in the ring with Alexa Bliss. Notice the difference? Yup, the belt didn’t have Alexa’s fancy side plates on it backstage. Does Alexa keep her plates off it at all times until she gets to the ring? That’d be an interesting way to go about things.

2. CHAIR TO THE HEAD ALERT

Roman Reigns went absolutely crazy on an already-injured Braun Strowman on Monday night, doing what he could to further injure the Monster Among Men. Hardly the actions of a top babyface, if you ask me. Anyway, Reigns went crazy with the chairshots on Braun, and one of them missed the mark just a little bit.

At 2:50 in the video you’ll see Braun receiving a shot right upside the head. I think the steps caught enough of it so it didn’t make full impact, but chairshots to the head are obviously a no-no these days unless Triple H or Undertaker are involved. Reigns might be in that untouchable class, but he’s not as high in it as those guys are.

3. It Wasn’t Edited Out

I have something to admit: I’m pretty well done with Dolph Ziggler. I have been for awhile, as it just feels like he’s hit his ceiling creatively and athletically and doesn’t have much more to bring to the table going forward. I have the same feeling about the Toronto Raptors & Los Angeles Clippers in the NBA. They’re never going to beat the best teams in the East & West in the playoffs, so I’m tired of seeing them take up spots that could go to teams I haven’t seen fail over and over again yet.

Now, me being done with you can make you an effective heel, and Ziggler was effective at getting boos from the SmackDown audience in London this week. He was running down current rival Shinsuke Nakamura during an interview and commented about how Nakamura had never even had a match in WWE. The London fans responded with an “NXT” chant, which makes sense as NXT is part of WWE.

About a minute in you see a jump cut and Ziggler then mentioning how they’ll edit it out anyway. They didn’t edit out him saying that though. It reminded me of when David Letterman would refer to cutting awkward moments out in post-production during his show. I have no problem with this. The heel should look like a dope, right? Maybe that was intended all along and it wasn’t the production team forgetting to extend the cut.

4. When Did KO Win The Title?

We’ve talked about SmackDown’s graphics here before. I like the concept of added information about the wrestlers, and I get annoyed when it’s wrong. Sometimes it’s excusable. Sometimes, as in :25 into this video, it isn’t…

I mean…Owens won the US title on the previous week’s episode of SmackDown. It wasn’t that long ago. Backlash hasn’t even happened yet. Come on now.

5. BLOOD ALERT

You can go to 7:30 in the video above to see Sami Zayn get his nose busted. It wasn’t enough blood to warrant fixing him up or anything like that, but he got caught with a Kevin Owens knee in the corner while Owens & Jinder Mahal were trying to double team him. You could tell Owens & Mahal hadn’t worked together, as it was the most awkard looking double team I’ve seen since…

OK, I probably shouldn’t discuss that here.

In any event, it’s good to see that WWE isn’t going quite as crazy over blood as they used to. The phase where they would stop matches for a trace was pretty rough. Now they seem to just make sure it isn’t too bad and move on.

Thanks for reading! If you see (or hear) anything wrong in the world of wrestling, let me know via Twitter or e-mail at [email protected]. Have a good weekend!