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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Jack McGee
Smackdown 1.14.16
– Tables Match: The Dudley Boyz defeated Luke Harper & Erick Rowan @ 7:32
– Heath Slater, Bo Dallas, Adam Rose and Curtis Axel defeated Goldust, Damien Sandow, Zack Ryder and Jack Swagger @ 3:45 via pin
– US Title Match: Alberto Del Rio defeated Champion Kalisto @ 13:45 via submission to become the new champion
– Becky Lynch defeated Brie Bella @ 2:35 via submission
– Neville and Dean Ambrose defeated Sheamus and Kevin Owens @ 12:11 via DQ

THE Right:
Becky Lynch defeated Brie Bella: This was a short, but good match that continued Lynch’s winning ways and also connected the angle from Raw. Lynch gave another good promo, discussing her desire to beat Charlotte for turning on her. The angle here was that Brie Bella was upset that Lynch cost her the chance at a match with Charlotte on Raw, and requested this match. Now this wasn’t contrived or overly produced, it was quick and simple and it all made sense. That’s all I ask for really. Lynch cut a promo to continue to allow us to know her mindset; she came out and won a quick match with her finish that was a completely logical match to play off of Raw. Good deal.

puRgatoRy:
Heath Slater, Bo Dallas, Adam Rose and Curtis Axel defeated Goldust, Damien Sandow, Zack Ryder and Jack Swagger: The Social Outcasts (Heath Slater, Bo Dallas, Adam Rose and Curtis Axel) picked up a win on Smackdown. The match was pretty much nothing; too short to really mean anything, but I felt everyone largely worked hard and tried to do what they could with the shirt time frame allotted to them. I hated the finish here, where Dallas “accidentally” kicked Slater to the floor as he executed his bulldog. To me this signals that they are already teasing dissention in the group which sucks, because these guys are already more interesting than they have been in ages.

Alberto Del Rio defeated Champion Kalisto to become the new champion: Kalisto and Alberto Del Rio had another good match together on Smackdown this week, they have some things that they like to do and keep building around it and are slowly building a good chemistry. So as far as a wrestling match goes, I liked this. I hated the title change. Kalisto gets a “fluke win” last week that was all about John Cena and not about him. So they do the rematch on Raw, for the title, and Kalisto wins. If Smackdown is to be important, they should have ran an angle on Raw, and then done the big babyface title change on Smackdown. Doing the title change on Raw and then putting it right back on the former champion the next show; this was hot shot booking in order to try and get ratings and please USA. It’s the shortsighted booking like this that got WCW in trouble. Oh well, that’s what I get for getting excited about Kalisto. Also, for those trying to rationalize this and say, “they’re doing a best of series” and bullshit like that, no, they aren’t. They are doing matches because Cara got hurt and Cena went out and they need a temporary face. I don’t care that Barrett cost him the match because we see bullshit like this on every show and it means nothing. Hopefully Barrett didn’t tear his vagina during his few minutes at ringside. They have no real designs to make a true new star or a Hispanic star; poor Kalisto is just too little for Vince McMahon.

Neville and Dean Ambrose defeated Sheamus and Kevin Owens: Neville and Dean Ambrose defeated Sheamus and Kevin Owens via DQ in the main event of this week’s show. The pairing works as Neville has had issues with both Sheamus and Owens in the past, and with Roman in India, he makes sense as a partner and also (in theory) should get a bump from working with Ambrose, Sheamus and Owens. Of course, Neville is basically a flippy dude with a cool move that they do nothing with, so I am sure he’ll be losing on Raw or Smackdown because WWE fears momentum. It was a good match, but the non-finish took away from things here. But it’ll discuss that later….

THE wRong:
The Dudley Boyz defeated Luke Harper & Erick Rowan: The tables match returned to Smackdown, and so did nonsensical booking because The Dudley Boyz defeated Luke Harper & Erick Rowan. The match was… fine. It wasn’t great and didn’t have much energy at times, and then it had a lackluster finish. The feeling that I got from this match was that the WWE was worried that they damaged The Dudleyz, and decided that they had to give them a win in “their match” to protect them; the feeling being that the Wyatts were not getting pinned, and REALLY losing here. But that’s not how it works. First of all they have ran so many Dudleyz and friends vs. the Wyatts no one wanted to see this match. Secondly the Wyatts had actually been VERY protected since losing to Kane and Taker, and actually felt as if they had momentum. There was n o reason to stop that momentum here; they should have continued their winning ways and continued to look dominant. Instead, the Dudleyz win and then the 50-50 presentation rolled on as The Wyatts “got their heat back” with the big beat down. They seem to be afraid of allowing people to have momentum, which is shame because that’s another reason that guys are having issues getting over. We’ll probably get another rematch on Raw or Smackdown.

Top of The Show Talking: There were a lot of rumors when the move to USA was announced, and I didn’t kid myself to think that the show would be drastically different, but I had hoped that they would mix it up and make the show feel different than Raw. Instead we’re getting the same tired opening promo segment, which is only a reminder of what the main event will be. I mean, why give some other matches time or do something different when we can just start the shows the same so that nothing feels important. Heaven forbid we do anything like that to make the show feel a little different.

THE Ridiculous:
No Need To Finish Anything: I mentioned last week about needing to be careful about non-finishes, because the more you run them, the less the show can feel important. This week’s Smackdown ended with a DQ finish, and I had thought to myself that it felt like they have been doing this a lot. I am going to borrow this from Csonka’s report to illustrate my thoughts…

* December 3 – Roman Reigns defeated The League of Nations via countout
* December 10 – Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose and The Usos defeated The League of Nations via pin
* December 17 – Dolph Ziggler defeated Kevin Owens via DQ
* December 22 – Dean Ambrose defeated Dolph Ziggler and Kevin Owens via pin
* December 31 – Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose defeated Sheamus and Kevin Owens via DQ
* January 7 – Dean Ambrose vs. Kevin Owens went to a double count out
* January 14 – Neville and Dean Ambrose defeated Sheamus and Kevin Owens via DQ

– Out of those seven main events, there were only TWO actual finishes to matches. And then I wanted to go back to November to see what happened there…

* November 5 – Kevin Owens defeated Dean Ambrose via DQ
* November 12 – The Usos defeated The Wyatts via DQ
* November 19 – Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose vs. Kevin Owens and Alberto Del Rio went to a double count out
* November 26 – Dean Ambrose defeated Dolph Ziggler and Tyler Breeze via pin

– Seriously, there was one pin finish in November, meaning that there have been THREE FINISHES out of the last eleven Smackdown main events. This is not only lazy, but makes the show feel as if it doesn’t matter, that it only exists to give you Raw recaps and loosely connect you to the real show (in their eyes) of Raw, which is rarely good. Bottom line? This is bullshit and they still don’t care about the show.

The 411:
Welcome to the new Smackdown, same as the old Smackdown, which means that it is still the bastard stepchild of the WWE Universe despite the BIG MOVE TO USA.

Show Rating: 4.0

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 1059th edition is over…