WWE SmackDown Live – April 2, 2019 (Review)

Worst Of SmackDown Live

An Unexpected Moment of Bliss

Seeing Alexa Bliss make her return to the blue brand was an exciting surprise. I’m a big fan of ‘The Goddess’, both as a decent in-ring worker and an excellent heel.

But in recent weeks her character inconsistency has started to become infuriating. She flip flops between hero and villain more than Big Show in his prime, with last night being another example. After a few weeks of perving over Finn’s abs and the size of EC3’s massive… bank account, Alexa inexplicably returned to her full-blown heel status on SmackDown. The reason for her return? To announce that The Usos would be punished for their forfeit against The New Day last week, and would accordingly be defending their belts against Rusev & Nakamura, Ricochet & Black and The Bar in a fatal fourway tag match at WrestleMania.

On that note – and I can’t stress this enough – why does she have the power to book matches now?! This is the second time it’s happened, the first being putting the SNL lads in Sunday’s Battle Royal. She’s the host of WrestleMania. It makes absolutely no sense. Jimmy Kimmel didn’t decide who got Oscars last year. Ricky Gervais wasn’t responsible for handing out Golden Globes! I know I shouldn’t be annoyed by something this trivial, but it really bugs me.

Miz Beating Up All Three Members Of SAnitY

Even before Shane McMahon made this a Falls Count Anywhere match, green lighting the use of weapons, Miz was having little difficulty dispatching SAnitY.

There was a time when SAnitY was one of the most feared factions in WWE. Now they’re just Shane McMahon’s lackeys, routinely getting beaten up by a guy who made a career out of running away from conflict and looking for a sneaky way of winning matches. This was depressing and sets the scene for me to get really wound up when Shane – an untrained 50-year-old buffoon – proves to be a bigger challenge for the Miz than the whole of SAnitY.

Did Becky Steal a Cop Car?

I understand that Becky is ‘The Man’, but I’m not sure why that prevents her from calling an Uber like the rest of us. Regardless, Becky was chauffeured to the Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore, MD in the back of a police car.

.@BeckyLynchWWE is a free woman. #TheMan has ARRIVED to #SDLive! pic.twitter.com/25JpFYlE4a

— WWE (@WWE) April 3, 2019

This is baffling for a number of reasons. First, according to WWE’s own website, Lynch was released from custody on Monday. So that means, for some reason, she returned to the police station at some point yesterday afternoon to request to be driven to the arena. Okay… but that leads into the second issue. Why would the Baltimore police department ever accede to this request?

As a wrestling fan, I’m fully prepared to suspend my disbelief to a certain extent. But none of this made any sense whatsoever. The fact that it ended with Becky cutting a very similar promo to those she’s delivered many times in recent weeks only added to the feeling that Monday’s multiple arrests should have been the final angle headed into the main event of WrestleMania. None of this added anything.

The 92-Person Mixed Tag Debacle

I think the eventual tally had two teams of nine competing in this match, but it honestly felt like a lot more. Throwing this many wrestlers into a match effectively forces you not to care about any of them.

This is going to be BIG! A 1️⃣8️⃣-person #MixedTagTeam Match takes place NEXT on #SDLive! pic.twitter.com/QEw5DyBKSo

— WWE (@WWE) April 3, 2019

Essentially, everyone not involved in a marquee match this Sunday was summarily thrown into this mess of humanity – which is particularly sobering considering that some of the people involved included Asuka, Heavy Machinery, Nikki Cross, The Hardys and EC3.

It felt like the entire Donner Party had been tossed into a wrestling ring… although, I’ll freely admit that the outcome here was slightly better, as the match simply ended in a DQ and everyone hoisting one another over the top rope. Where they just lay for several minutes waiting for more people to get tossed out. It was truly awful.

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