Wrestling’s 4Rs: The Right, Wrong and Ridiculous of WWE Smackdown

How the 4Rs of wRestling Work!
Here is a quick explanation of the 4R’s. The column will run TWO-THREE times a week. We will group our feelings on the shows in various categories: The Right, the wRong and the Ridiculous. The Right is stuff that worked very well: a great promo, a great match and so on. PuRgatoRy is a section between the right and wrong. It shows equal traits from both sides that cannot be ignored and needs discussed. It is not a bad place per say, as things can get remedied or go the wrong way the very next week. The wRong is what it sounds like: bad matches, bad or boring promos and so on. The Ridiculous is stuff that had no right on TV: Stupid angles and so on. And there is always a possibility of a 5th R, which is as bad as they come. This column is supposed to be analytical, and at the right time very critical of the shows, it was the whole reason it was created. This is not a “mark” column, nor a “smark” column, our goal is to analyze the show from many different fronts, reward the good and call out the bad. We will not apologize for our opinions, they are as they are, whether positive or negative.

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Smackdown 11.09.16:
Survivor Series Qualifying Match- Breezeango d. The Vaudevillians ¼*
Naomi d. Natayla DUD
WWE SmackDown Diva’s Championship- Becky Lynch © d. Alexa Bliss **3/4
Curt Hawkins d. Apollo Crews *
The Wyatt Family d. Dean Ambrose, Kane & James Ellsworth **1/2

THE Right:
Reverse of Fortunes: Kalisto Returns/Corbin Gets Taken Out: Earlier in the night Baron Corbin was booked to be the partner of Dean Ambrose and James Ellsworth in the main event. Corbin had no interest and told Shane McMahon if he had a problem with it, he should kick Corbin off the Survivor Series team. Shane instead booked Corbin to face the returning Kalisto, who Corbin put on the shelf a few months ago. The match never started, as Corbin attacked Kalisto while he was making his entrance. He went to go after him on the floor when he slipped off the apron and landed on his knee, allowing Kalisto the chance to strike. He dropkicked Corbin’s leg against the ring steps and followed up with a Frog Splash on the injured leg. Corbin ended up being injured to the point that he wasn’t going be cleared to compete at the Survivor Series. I really enjoyed this angle. The execution was perfect as Corbin was acting like the bully that he is and it seemed like he was going to have his way with Kalisto yet again. However, his bullying finally came back to bite him, as a simple accident opened the door for Kalisto to finally extract his revenge. We got an edge to Kalisto that we haven’t seen before and it was the strongest they have ever made Kalisto look. He injured Corbin in a similar manner that Corbin injured him and clearly did not care about his actions, which is perfect way for a baby face to act when he’s seeking revenge. This was a well done segment to launch this feud again and I’m already excited to see where this goes in the coming weeks.

WWE Smackdown Women’s Championship- Becky Lynch © vs. Alexa Bliss: For the past few weeks, this had been my most anticipated match in WWE. I thought Bliss had been killing it on the microphone and there was genuine heat being built up for this match. From a match quality standpoint, this wasn’t as great as I would have hoped, but it was still solid and it had that big match vibe that I felt it should have had. Both women attempted to work the arm of the other in a consistent story throughout the match and Lynch continuously attempted to lock Bliss in the Disarmer. When she finally locked it in, the referee was in a bad position, causing him to miss Bliss getting her leg on the ropes before she tapped, giving Lynch the controversial submission victory. The ref missing a rope break finish isn’t one of my favorites but in this case it was a good spot to do it. Becky got the big win but Bliss has an out to both continue to build her character and give her another rematch down the line. As a total package, this turned out really well and lived up to the hype that had been built for it.

puRgatoRy:
Team Smackdown Is Finalized: The show opened with AJ Styles coming out to complain about Dean Ambrose’s victory against him last week with help from James Ellworth. He shifted his focus to the Survivor Series and talked about how as team captain he would lead Smackdown to victory. Dean Ambrose, Baron Corbin & The Wyatt Family took exception to this until Shane McMahon came out to play peacekeeper. He made James Ellsworth the official team mascot and booked a six man tag match for the main event. It ended up being The Wyatt Family vs. Dean Ambrose, James Ellsworth & Kane, who replaced the injured Baron Corbin. The match itself was decent. The heat segment on Kane was boring and dry but once Ambrose got the tag it turned into a hot little match. The finish saw James Ellsworth tagging himself in and looking to land a super kick on Bray Wyatt, only to eat Sister Abagail immediately for the pin. AJ Styles and the Wyatts surrounded Ambrose after the match but once again, Shane McMahon intervened. Daniel Bryan would eventually come out and ask Shane if he would be the new fifth member of Team Smackdown, which he accepted. Shane as a last minute edition to the team seems weird, especially since they just had Kane in the main event and you would think a monster would fit better on the team in order to defeat Raw. I guess they felt they needed to add one more little twist to the Survivor Series match, so we’ll see how it turns out. The build to this Survivor Series match has just been weird and I’m afraid all the feuds within the team will ruin what should on paper be a really fun match. On the bright side, the James Ellsworth stuff was an improvement this week. The crowd LOVED him and the finish of him getting pumped up and wanted to make an impact only to get destroyed immediately was brilliant. Ellsworth as the team mascot for Survivor Series, however, has me worried.

THE wRong:
The Vaudevillains vs. Breezango: Smackdown scraped the bottom of the barrel to fill the final spot for the tag team Survivor Series match. I totally forgot these two teams were on the roster and apparently the crowd did too, as you could hear a pin drop for this match. It had no heat and really didn’t get any time to develop, as they just did a few things before Fandango won with a Falcon Arrow on English. These short, heatless matches killed my interest for the match and clearly the Raw team is stronger than the Smackdown squad in almost every way and hopefully the match can be used as a vehicle to get American Alpha over, as they are the only team from Smackdown than stands as a threat to the Raw squad.

Curt Hawkins vs. Apollo Crews: So after weeks of vignettes and false debuts, last week they killed Curt Hawkins’ second WWE stint right away with a quick loss to Dolph Ziggler. You got proof this week, as the crowd was even deader for this match than they were for the Vadevillans/Breezango tag. They made no attempts to make Hawklins’ look like any sort of threat, as he caught Crews with a small package to steal his first win since his return. Apollo Crews’ stock has taken a total nosedive, two months ago he was competing for the Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam and now he’s losing to a guy who’s barely above the level of Jinder Mahal. Crews has all the athletic ability in the world but he needs to find an edge and establish some sort of character or personality, otherwise he’s going to get further left behind and will continuously be put into death spots like this. Everything about this was just frustrating, the match was lifeless and both men are going absolutely nowhere despite the show’s desperate need for strong mid carders.

THE Ridiculous:
Natalya vs. Naomi: This whole segment flat out sucked. First off, the match amounted to absolutely nothing, as the focus was on the fighting on the outside between Nikki Bella, who was on commentary, and Carmella. Natalya left the ring to try to separate them, trying to blow her coaching whistle to break them up but getting knocked on her ass instead. She eventually realized she was still having a match and when she re-entered the ring she got caught with a small package from Naomi for the win. This was a total embarrassment and it sucks seeing them constantly turning Natalya into a joke. This did nothing for the build for the Women’s Survivor Series match and the only thing it accomplished was making Natalya look like the biggest moron in the world. This segment was complete garbage and was the worst thing I’ve watched on SmackDown since I started doing the 4Rs.

The 1123th edition is over…

5.0

The final score: review Not So Good

The 411

This was a tiny step up from last week’s episode but not much. We got better matches on this edition plus I really enjoyed the Kalisto/Corbin segment, so the good things on this week’s episode topped last week’s. That being said, some of the booking on this show was atrocious. They managed to kill my interest in two of the three Survivor Series matches, as the Smackdown Tag Team squad looks incredibly weak while the Smackdown Women’s team turned into a giant joke revolving around Natalya and her stupid coaching role. They’ve been trying to cram way too many feuds, gimmicks, and angles into these Survivor Series matches and it’s just going to kill the concept of Brand vs. Brand that the show was meant to be built around. Take a pass on this week’s episode and hope that the 900thepisode of Smackdown next week will serve as a decent final push for Survivor Series as they desperately need it.