Botched! 6.3.17: This Is Your Life, Weird Twists of Fate, More

Hi, hello & welcome to the column that nobody in wrestling wants to be featured in, Botched! Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there are more obvious botches going on in real life than pro wrestling these days. Everybody’s screwing everything up. We’re here to talk wrestling though, so here’s the top five screw-ups from this week!

1. Dean tries to tag the wrong Hardy

The opening match on Raw pitting Dean Ambrose & the Hardy Boyz against Miz, Sheamus & Cesaro had some rough moments. Matt seemed lost at times, Jeff & Matt’s Twists of Fate look different every time they do the move at this point, and there was an awkward moment towards the end of the match where Dean went for the hot tag at 7:45 of the video…

https://youtu.be/vrk1psTaNMI

Dean was supposed to tag Jeff, but ended up aiming for Matt. So Matt had to aligator arm the tag so Jeff could get it on the second try. Not a good look unless Matt is just trying to be Broken without people catching on.

2. Matt & Miz Aren’t Reading The Same Book

The ending sequence between Matt & The Miz wasn’t exactly on point either. At 8:50 in the previous video you can see him & Miz dancing around before Matt kind of hits a Twist of Fate. Not to pick on ol’ Matt, but he had a rough week. Happens to the best of us. You know what you have to do in order to move forward?

3. This Is Your Life, Bayley

Holy cow. This segment.

I mean, this whole thing from beginning to end was a botch. Lord knows that Alexa Bliss tried to get it over, but it just didn’t go well. For one thing, when was the last time “This Is Your Life” was a TV show? It was dated back when Mankind & The Rock did it back in 1999.

Booker T even dropped a “This is tough to watch.” on the segment. He wasn’t wrong! The romantic tension between Bayley’s best friend and her ex-boyfriend was so believable, let me tell you.

Then at the end Bayley finally comes out to attack Alexa, walks down the ramp, and stands there for 15 seconds mean mugging before she can run into the ring and get beat down. Way to show some rage, Bayley!

Just a bad time all around. Props to Alexa for trying with some sub-par material, but she was doomed to failure on this one.

4. Botch or No Botch?: Styles vs Ziggler

SmackDown Live ended with the Phemonenal AJ Styles losing in his hometown (Atlanta is close enough to Gainesville, I figure) to Dolph Ziggler. The finish to the match caused some highly-paid newsletter types to think that there was a botch at the end…they say AJ Styles’ foot was supposed to stay on the ropes. Let’s take a look at the video.

After reviewing the tape, I think this was NO BOTCH. Styles losing in his hometown makes sense because most WWE Superstars lose in their hometown, Ziggler needs to get wins once in awhile to retain some credibility with the audience, and his character would be smart enough to keep Styles’ feet off the topes. I don’t blame even the most inside of observers for thinking it might have been one, though, as the idea of Ziggler beating Styles does seem somewhat silly on paper.

But I think anybody beating AJ Styles is silly. I’m biased.

5. Spike TV (UK) botches Impact Wrestling

It’s one thing when your show contains a mistake, or botch. These things happen. People are not perfect. It’s another thing when your television partner makes a mistake in getting your product out there. One of Impact Wrestling’s biggest markets for the past several years has been the United Kingdom, so the status of their television deal there is integral to the future of the company. After years with Challenge TV, Impact’s deal ended there and they moved on to the UK version of Spike TV. The new arrangement seems to have gone well so far, at least up until last week. For whatever reason, Spike accidentally aired the previous week’s edition of Impact instead of the new episode, featuring the return to wrestling of THE BIG BAD BOOTY DADDY, BIG POPPA PUMP SCOTT STEINER.

Fortunately, Spike decided to make up for this by airing last week’s Impact that folks in the UK missed along with this week’s Impact on Friday night starting at 9 PM. I would comment about the second episode keeping people up until 1 AM, but it’s a Friday night/Saturday morning and I think WWE shows air at like 2 AM in the UK so wrestling fans are used to staying up late.

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!