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 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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By Daniel Clark
Smackdown 5.07.15
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* Dolph Ziggler def. Bad News Barrett at 7.13 by disqualification
* Dolph Ziggler and Neville def. Bad News Barrett and Sheamus at 5.30 by pinfall
* Luke Harper def. Fandango at 1.31 by pinfall
* The New Day def. Tyson Kidd, Cesaro and Ryback at 9.50 by pinfall
* Naomi def. Emma at 3.22 by pinfall
* The Lucha Dragons def. Los Matadores at 5.35 by pinfall

THE Right:
The New Day vs. Tyson Kidd and Cesaro and Ryback: Ryback got a pretty good reaction when he was announced as the mystery partner for Kidd and Cesaro and although he has been drifting, the good reaction he is getting is a positive sign for his feud against Bray Wyatt as at least the fans are caring about him. The match itself between these six men was pretty good and they were given the time to tell a story throughout the match and the New Day continue to make the most of this gimmick that they have and at the moment they perhaps understand and get what they need to do for their gimmick and to get heat better than anyone else on the roster. They manage to steal another win as well as the distraction from Bray Wyatt caused Ryback to lose concentration for just enough time to allow the New Day back into the match when they looked out of it. This was a good match that furthered two feuds, and did what it needed to do.

The contract signing: Okay, this was exactly what you would expect it to be, and as usual, a contract signing turned into a brawl, but the way we got there was pretty good and Seth Rollins deservedly stood tall at the end. Rollins managed to talk himself into trouble earlier in the night with Kane so is forced to come down to the ring and sign the contract himself and get into the ring with the other three who all despise him and want to fight him, but instead, Mercury grabs the contract and gives it to Rollins. The champion then shows why he was known as the architect of the Shield by trying to cause tension between Reigns, Ambrose, and Orton, by revealing the ‘truth’ as to what they all think of each other, before we get the brawl that we all knew would happen as Ambrose moves the table to the corner and throws Mercury into it, and then has a great moment where he throws the swivel chair at Noble and hits him in the face with it. Rollins manages to escape as Orton, Ambrose and Reigns turn on each other, before he sneaks back into the ring and stands tall with the belt. Rollins was the star here as he talked himself into a position of power and strength and backed up his words by being the one who survived at the end. You can see that he will keep the belt at the next PPV by turning them all against each other, which is what he did here. It was fairly formulaic this contract signing, but still entertaining.

puRgatoRy:
King Barrett and the mid card: The show opened with Jerry Lawler interviewing King Barrett, who tells Jerry that he earned the title of King and tells him to say ‘All hail King Barrett’. Jerry refuses, so Barrett goes to beat him up, which brings out Dolph Ziggler to make the save. It then leads to a match between Ziggler and Barrett, which ends with Sheamus running in to cause a DQ and Neville to make the save, and then a tag team match between the four of them. The tag match was pretty good and exactly what these four can do and they have sort of been carrying the mid card for the last month, but the ending, with Ziggler pinning Barrett, was a terrible mistake. Barrett has been given the title of King of the Ring, so logic would dictate that you want to keep him pretty strong and use it as a stepping stone to push him to the main event where he deserves a run – instead, you have him about to lose a singles match when interference causes a DQ and then have him pinned clean in a tag team match to complete his initial burial. The feel of this segment that lasted 30 minutes from start to end was good – with the initial interview with Barrett, to the singles match, and then to the tag match, and slightly different to the usual mid card tag team set up – but the end result was wrong and marred what was a good set of matches.

Luke Harper vs. Fandango: There goes the Fandango push and it is over as quickly as it begun. It is things like this that make no sense as Fandango was getting over a little bit as a decent mid-card face, so obviously, you have him Squashed quickly by Luke Harper in a fairly meaningless match. This though was a set-up to bring back the Wyatt Family with Erick Rowan coming out afterwards, beating Fandango down, and then leaving again. Rowan and Harper have been drifting and putting them back together might give them something to do in the short term, but long term is a backwards move and just shows the lack of ideas that they have for them, and it will be interesting to see how it all explained.

Emma vs. Naomi: The promo that Naomi and Tamina cut before the match wasn’t that good unfortunately and didn’t really do the job in building this new heel team that the two of them have, and if history tells us anything, it will last a few weeks before the WWE get bored of it, which seems to happen every time Tamina gets a push. The match was nothing much really but it was important that Naomi did win the match cleanly and the beatdown from Tamina happened after the match. Naomi is trying to make this heel act work but so far it isn’t really catching on, although the lack of strong face the fans care about is partly why.

Rusev promo: The promo that Rusev cut was absolutely fine but just seemed as if it was a complete filler and just something to waste a couple of minutes, particularly as he didn’t say anything new but just said he will tell John Cena to his face on Monday why he will force him to say I Quit. He did a nice job referencing Cena showing Sami Zayn mercy on Raw and saying that is a sign of weakness that he will exploit. The Lana face turn continued as well with Rusev kicking her out of the ring and although she is being cheered for at the moment, I’m not sure it lasts once she breaks away from Rusev. Just a perfectly okay promo but not one that really did anything.

Los MatAdores vs. The Lucha Dragons: This was a decent little tag team match that did the job that it needed to. The Lucha Dragons got the win as they continue to build some momentum on the main roster and get closer to being the next team in line for a title shot. Los Matadores in defeat continue to edge towards a heel turn that might freshen up and revitalize their act, as the Lucha Dragons have essentially stolen their gimmick and are better at it. And the match was a perfectly decent TV match, although there was a couple of slightly botched spots and if you are going to push the Luchas, then giving them a completely clean win is a better way to do it.

THE wRong:
NOTHING

THE Ridiculous:
NOTHING

The 411:
On the face of things, this was a pretty good episode of Smackdown, and was at least one that was entertaining and a fun episode to watch. And yet, look a little closer, and it just felt a little meaningless, bar the main event segment.

We saw a couple of really good tag team matches and a main event promo whereby Seth Rollins came out of it looking stronger, more resourceful, and more like a champion, and yet, there was actually nothing that really felt new.

The main event saw Seth Rollins manage to talk him into a problem by annoying Kane, and then talk himself out of by pitting Randy Orton, Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose against each other, and then having done so, picked up the pieces and stood tall in the ring, which is exactly what he needs to be doing as a champion and he acted as if he was the architect of the Shield in thinking and planning his way out of a difficult situation that he got himself into.

The show began with King Barrett but instead of making him look like a king, he was treated as if he was a peasant, and continues to be one of the worst booked guys on the roster. Having just won the King of the Ring tournament, you would hope that he would be booked like a king, but instead, he threatened to beat up an old man, needed to be saved by Sheamus to avoid defeat against Dolph Ziggler and was then pinned clean by Ziggler in a subsequent tag match. The baffling booking of Barrett continues as he has had all the momentum that he picked up by winning the tournament taken away from him almost instantly, and although it was in a good match, it was not a match he should be losing. Barrett should have been booked strongly so that whoever beats him eventually looks better – instead he just looks as worthless as ever.

Rusev also cut a fairly decent promo on John Cena, but in reality, his promo didn’t need to exist. He said in his promo that he would tell Cena on Monday why he would make him say I Quit – fine, and a hook to get you to watch Raw, but it just meant that the promo he had cut was a complete waste of time, and he is drifting a little bit at the moment into irrelevance, particularly with Lana going to turn on him soon.

The New Day against Cesaro/Tyson Kidd/Ryback was a really good match and continues this heel turn that they are having with them having to rely on a distraction to get the win. They are completely tuned into their gimmick at the moment with everything that they are doing being on point and have gone from being one of the most forgettable to one of the most watchable acts in a matter of weeks.

It also looks like Erick Rowan and Luke Harper and going to be joining back up together again which just smacks of creative not having anything for either to do (so why break up to start with?), but as it usually the case, we won’t get any real answers until Raw.

On the whole, this was a decent episode of Smackdown, but in the grand scheme of things, nothing happened. Smackdown is a perfectly fine show with the occasional important segment combined with some pretty decent matches, but in truth, can be completely ignored by the viewer as if something important does happen, they will re-run it on Raw anyway. It’s a decent show, but that’s it, and not one that ever feels important.

Show Rating: 7.3

As a reminder, I will be going by the 411 scale…

0 – 0.9: Torture
1 – 1.9: Extremely Horrendous
2 – 2.9: Very Bad
3 – 3.9: Bad
4 – 4.9: Poor
5 – 5.9: Not So Good
6 – 6.9: Average
7 – 7.9: Good
8 – 8.9:Very Good
9 – 9.9: Amazing
10: Virtually Perfect

The 988th edition is over…

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