The attacker of Roman Reigns has been revealed! And it sadly wasn’t Buddy Murphy! Shane McMahon brutally beats down Kevin Owens! And Chad Gable returns to TV to start a feud with… Elias… and it’s about being tall. I am Luke Owen, press the thumbs up, subscribe to this channel, and leave a comment down below to answer our question of the day:
Which Summerslam match are you most looking forward to? And make sure you vote in the poll above my head to let me know what you thought of the show – where you can choose from SmackNificent, SmackTastic, Smack Bang in the Middle, SmackDowner, and A Smack in the Face. This is the 6th of August, 2019 edition of Smackdown Live – the go home edition for Summerslam! Also, shoutout to whoever held that sign!
Charlotte Flair opened the show, intending to show a video package that highlighted her great career in WWE, but instead a video promoting her Summerslam opponent Trish Stratus was played instead – with Trish coming out to tell Flair that she wants to beat her at SummerFest to prove to herself that she can. She even quoted Harley Race and then slapped Flair across the face. Rather than fight back, Charlotte walked away. This was a decent bit of final build to their match, which is built more on the star power than it is on story.
After a recap of Goldberg returning to Raw to announce that he’ll face Dolph Ziggler at Summerslam, the music of Goldberg played through the arena. But Goldberg doesn’t work Tuesdays, and it was just Dolph doing his trolling act. He was set to have a match with Rey Mysterio, but attacked him before the bell and left him laying. Prince Ali, fast as can be, ran down to save Rey. Took his place, in the match, which he then lost. It’s been an odd return from injury for Prince Ali. He had those great promos hyping a return to the WWE Championship picture, then started a feud with Shinsuke Nakamura over the Intercontinental Championship, then dropped that to talk about the WWE Championship again, then picked it back up again when he pinned Nakamura last week, and then lost to Dolph Ziggler in a meaningless match. He’s swerving between lanes more than Jimmy Uso. I get that you want to put over Dolph strong ahead of his marquee match with Goldberg, but it’s a shame that it’s at the expense of Ali. Especially since you spent weeks and week and weeks building up his return.
After recaps of Roman Reigns being in a Simpsons Hit & Run, and Brock Lesnar beating up Seth Rollins and his massive bank account, Kalya Braxton had a sitdown interview with Reigns to talk about his attacker – with Roman saying he’ll get answers tonight.
Following a lovely video package to Harley Race, Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch’s Summerslam opponent, Natalya, took on Smackdown Women’s Champion Bayley’s Summerslam opponent Ember Moon. This is one of those matches where you question why WWE would book themselves into this corner. You want both of them looking strong as possible going into their respective title matches on Sunday, so you can’t have one win as it means the other loses. So all you’re left with is doing a duff finish which is unsatisfactory for fans watching. And that’s exactly what happened, with Nattie and Moon battling on the outside to get counted out. Bayley then ran down to make the save for Ember, who was trapped in Nattie’s Sharpshooter on the floor. What a downhill spiral Ember Moon has found herself on for the last couple of weeks. After laying out both Bayley and Charlotte Flair on her own and looking like a badass, she then lost to Alexa Bliss last week for literally no reason, and was essentially laid out on the go home show before Summerslam. What the hell happened?
I really wasn’t enjoying this week’s Smackdown Live, I’ve got to be honest, so thankfully the KO Show with Shane McMahon brought me back. The two cut very good promos on each other to hype their match this Sunday, with Owens trying to get Shane to put his career on the line as well. But Shane is the best in the world, and he’s not daft enough to also put his career on the line when he doesn’t need to. This was great storytelling, and it sows the seeds that Shane could put his career on the line at some point, which is something the fans want to happen. Shane and KO then brawled with Elias coming down to aide Shane O Mac. Owens gave Elias the Stunner on the announcer’s table, but Shane tripped him and laid him out by dropkicking a chair into his face. This was a great go home angle for Summerslam, and is now become one of my most anticipated matches. And I never thought I’d say that about Shane McMahon.
Sami Zayn came out to ask why Aleister Black hasn’t accepted his Summerslam challenge, and Black announced that’s because the match is going to happen right now instead. I’m a big fan of this, as adding more matches to the Summerslam card is unnecessary at this point even though the match would be better on PPV than on TV. And it was cool for Black to announce it was going to happen right now. The problem was he did it on his creeky entrance board which made him look quite silly. To the surprise of no one, Black won with the Black Mass.
Shelton Benjamin is back doing his weird eye gimmick, and we saw New Day walking backstage wasting water. No wonder Daniel Bryan doesn’t like you guys.
Bray Wyatt cut a promo from Firefly Funhouse with Huskus eating too much chocolate and sweets – or “candy” for our American viewers. This was more of Bray’s Mr. Rodgers facade fading away under the maniacal weight of The Fiend, and it was genuinely chilling. I love this character so much.
Chad Gable was backstage warming up, and apologised to Elias for leaving his weight lifting equipment on a flight case. Elias made fun of him before being small, even though there is literally only a few inches between them, and Chad did nothing about it. So not only is Chad small, he’s also a chump. I am so sick and tired of WWE’s played out, “I am taller than you” gimmick. Get better material, writers.
Kofi Kingston cut a return promo on Randy Orton ahead of their WWE Championship match this Sunday, saying that while Randy likes to use his influence to keep people down, Kofi uses his to lift people up. It was good promo work, but not the hottest go home angle for a WWE Championship match – which has sadly been a recurring theme with Kofi’s title run. It’s almost as if, despite being WWE Champion, he’s not the most important thing in Vince McMahon’s eyes.
And in the main event, New Day took on The Planeteers of Daniel Bryan and Rowan in a tag match that went through two commercial breaks – which would certainly back up the reports that Vince re-wrote the entire show just hours before it went on air. It was all good action, but had the lame ending of Rowan hitting Xavier Woods with steel stairs for the DQ. Lame.
There was no career altering announcement tease from Bryan this week, and that might be because Roman Reigns stormed into the locker room to ask Buddy Murphy if he was the guy who’s been attacking him. Rather than use this storyline as a way to elevate Buddy Murphy into a main event position – one he could easily fill – Roman beat him up from pillar to post until Murphy told him that it was Rowan who attacked him. So there you have it, as reported, Roman’s attacker was Daniel Bryan and Rowan. Well, at the very least it was Rowan, but Bryan didn’t seem to surprised when they cut back to the ring.
After two really good weeks of Monday Night Raw, it’s a shame that Smackdown is again just a damp show. Especially seen as though this was supposed to be the go home edition before Summerslam. It really makes Smackdown look like an afterthought, and the matches from the blue brand have way less heat than the red ones. With that said, I loved the Shane/Owens angle, Bray Wyatt continues to be ace, and the main event was fun despite it’s rubbish finish. So this week’s Smackdown Live was a low Smack Bang in the Middle.
And now over to Pete Quinnell, with the news.
It’s been a pretty solid couple of weeks for WWE TV, with both Raw and SmackDown shows being at the very least, watchable, which is more than we can say for most of 2019. You’d be forgiven for thinking this is due to several creative shake-ups that have taken place recently, but if reports are to be believed, it’s just Vinny Mac being Vinny Mac some more.
It feels like I’m saying this every week now, but once again reports from Ryan Satin of Pro Wrestling Sheet are stating that Vince McMahon entirely rewrote last night’s episode of SmackDown, this time just two hours before the show went on the air.
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer tweeted at 6:30pm Eastern that
Vince tore up the show 90 minutes ago
Which means at about 5pm Eastern, the show was being torn up. Then, Bryan Alvarez, also of the Wrestling Observer, tweeted at 5:45pm Eastern last night that
“Vince tore up the show again, and unless he changes his mind between now and showtime the new Smackdown main event is Bryan vs. Kofi.”
As the main event of SmackDown last night was not Daniel Bryan vs Kofi Kingston, it’s safe to say he did in fact change his mind again. Madman.
Granted, the last couple of shows have actually been pretty good, but the stress levels and frustration from the writing team have got to be reaching breaking point.
Speaking of breaking points, and that’s exactly what’s happened to poor old Bobby Lashley, who has been missing on WWE programming for some time, with a big question mark over him, as nothing had been announced regarding his absence from WWE, yet he was listed as an inactive superstar on WWE’s injury list.
Now it’s been cleared up, as Lashley recently underwent elbow surgery, according to Ryan Satin of Pro Wrestling Sheet. This will rule Lashley out until November, which means a potential return around the time of Survivor Series would not be out of the question.
WrestleTalk would like to wish Bobby Lashley a speedy and healthy recovery.
Speaking of recoveries, and that’s exactly what’s been happening with the wrestling industry lately, with pro wrestling on the cusp of breaking out in to another boom period of sorts, what with competition being rife, and top-quality wrestling being found all over the planet.
Part of that resurgence of interest is down to All Elite Wrestling, who managed to sell out tickets for their first TV taping of their weekly show on October 2 in Washington DC. Now they’ve announced the locations for their second and third weekly TV tapings.
AEW will be going to Boston, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 9 and16 respectively, with ticket prices and release dates to be revealed this Friday, August 9 at 5pm BST, or noon Eastern.
With the first show selling out in a matter of hours, AEW will be hoping to replicate that success moving forward, and it will most certainly be interesting to see if these two shows maintain that level of interest and popularity.
Speaking of AEW, I’m genuinely killing these segues today, and it seems like there’s been yet another tease from a WWE team about joining AEW.
Fenix, one half of AEW stars The Lucha Bros, tweeted recently, claiming that he and tag partner Pentagon were the best tag team in the world.
It seems current WWE stars The Revival have taken umbrage with that statement, as Dash Wilder responded to the tweet by saying
“You have to make actual tags to be a TAG team. Hell of a movez team though.”
His partner Scott Dawson would add to that saying
“MOVEZ! #FTR #FollowTheRuleZ”
This of course is poking fun at the high flying, more indie style of The Lucha Bros, emphasising high spots over tag psychology and old-school tag wrestling, like The Revival tends to do.
Now that The Revival have dropped the Raw Tag Team Championships, could they be looking elsewhere again to further their tag team careers? Is a move to AEW on the cards once their contracts expire? Probably, yeah.
Are the WWE production team splitting from WWE to make an AEW game? Check out the ScreenStalker video today to get the full story and check out the clip from the episode right now! Ciao!
5 years ago by Andy Datson
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