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SMACKDOWN - 15/06/2012 E: revinsamuel@rogers.com
What needs to be accomplished on this week’s Smackdown
•Pay Per View hype. The last chance to get some promotion in for No Way Out and in my opinion they’ve done an average job of hyping this pay per view so far
•Format Change. I’ve been saying it for a while, but Smackdown has opened up way too many weeks in a row with a promo segment, in fact I think both shows are guilty of this.
•Talent treading water. This goes hand in hand with format change. Lots of the talent these days are treading water, which means very little is going on in the storyline department. I go back and forth on whether this is a good thing, because WWE Creative doesn’t always tell the best stories, but I am not sure four or five different talents doing the same thing is the best strategy either
Show Breakdown
What this show accomplished?
The Good
•The AJ mystery continues. They’ve done a good job of making the viewer want to see what side she ends up on
•Big Show promo. The story is forced, but Show is doing a damn good job with the material he’s working with
•Dolph wins. Dolph got two much needed wins this week heading into No Way Out and challenging for the World Title. If WWE had any foresight this wouldn’t have been an issue, but hey one step at a time
•John Cena stays away from comedy. I’m not even sure this is a positive, but anytime Cena can cut a relatively clean, intense, babyface promo, I dig it!
•Otunga lays out Brodus Clay. Giving a build to a free YouTube match.
•Video package on Christian-Cody. I assume WWE did the video package, because Cody was away this week, but even if he wasn’t, sometimes a good video package is more effective than the scripted words of WWE Creative
The Bad
•Predictable, Overproduced, Over scripted and Formulaic television otherwise known as POOF. This applies to so many aspects of Smackdown from the opening segment onwards. Every Smackdown has a promo segment, there seems to be two or three treading water matches per show. We always hear the stories of everyone walking on egg shells behind the scenes in WWE and that’s exactly how Layla came across on commentary tonight. I thought the AJ fall to her knees thing and sinister smile was way overproduced. Nobody buys that kind of stuff in 2012, adapt with the times. I am not ruling out that perhaps I’ve seen too much wrestling over the years and it’s clouding my judgement
•Raw Flashbacks. My judgement is not clouded here. These were terrible. It’s amazing to me that WWE can screw these up. I don’t put it past WWE Creative for the next five weeks to give us only flashback segments from the last two years (Current creative team patting themselves on the back) and potentially involving Raw’s that only had celebrity involvement. I’m expecting to see Maria Menenous Raw moment next week followed by one of the divas talking about how great it was to dance along Snoop. These aren’t effective flashback segments. Does The Bubble really believe flashbacking to Michael Cole making JR kiss his foot brings back good memories to the Raw fans? No, it’s to make that inner circle laugh in the back. Just asinine television
•Where is Antonio Cesaro? Two weeks ago they run a video saying he’ll be back next week. He comes back last week for a throwaway match that nobody remembers and this week he is gone again. Cesaro is an example of why WWE shouldn’t have tried to introduce four new acts all at the same time. Titus and D. Young fit this bill as well
•John Cena fired stipulation. No, just no. If they were going to do this it should have been announced on Raw. I’ll give them some props for Cena saying Laurinaitis always threatens that, but it wasn’t emphasized that much. Perhaps the logic is that it will guarantee to the audience that Laurinaitis is going to be fired and so they will buy the pay per view, but I think it has the possibility to agitated the fan base, because we’ve had to deal with this stipulation a few times now and everyone knows John Cena isn’t getting fire. The other thought process I had is that Cena needs to take time off to deal with personal issues so they are actually going to fire him, but even if that’s the case, we know he’ll be back so I think it would be wiser to have a heel take him out as oppose to giving that heat to Laurinaitis
•Bad Habits. WWE has gotten into a major bad habit over the last couple years and that habit is telling the truth far too often. This is something Triple H has always done in his promos dating back to when he first came back from his quad injury in 2002 and now it seems to be a philosophy WWE has adopted. Rock and Cena both did it, Punk does it, Vince does it, Cole does it, Show does it, everyone does it. It isn’t an effective strategy to tear your opponent or the company down so much. How does it help the buy rate for Vince to say Big Show hasn’t been effective since 1999? This is the Chairmen of the company, if he says something; I assume alot of the fan base is taking it as gospel. Dolph is challenging for the World Title and there Punk is burying him for talking big, but always losing. Is that smart? I don’t know why this philosophy has spread to the entire company, but it’s a dumb one and it needs to change
Overall Thoughts
• I didn’t like this show. It all seems like stuff we’ve seen before. You might ask the question, why do you keep on watching if you are going to just bitch about the product so much? The answer is hope. When it’s done right, it’s a thing of beauty.
What needs to happen on next week’s show?
•Emphasize the importance of what happened at the last pay per view, while beginning the hype for MITB
•Improved flashback moments for Raw 1000
•Ryback, Sin Cara, Damien Sandow, Antonio Cesaro. I want to see at least two of these guys put into storylines or meaningful matches. I think Sin Cara and Cesaro would make great MITB participants
•Change up the formulaic and predictable ways of how the product is presented. This company is too slick for their own good right now
No Way Out Predictions
•Cena over Show
•Sheamus over Dolph, although WWE should divert from the course here and put the strap on Dolph
•Punk-Bryan-Kane. Tough call here. Punk has held the title a long time and I don’t think he should lose it in a triple threat match, but I think a story to tell is AJ helping Bryan win and then going to Bryan-Kane at MITB with the story being Kane feels betrayed by AJ. Put Punk in the MITB match and have him win that for a third time and cash in announced ahead of time since Punk’s a babyface for a Summerslam match with Bryan. Punk could be the first guy to lose MITB and it wouldn’t hurt him. However if I am WWE I let Punk keep running with the title, but I’ll go with my instincts and say they put the strap on Bryan, I hope I am wrong though
•Beth-Layla. If Kharma is coming back, I want Beth to have the title building to Beth-Kharma at Summerslam. If Kharma isn’t coming back, I’d have Layla retain and build to Layla-Eve. I’ll assume Kharma is due back soon so the strap goes back to Beth. Layla isn’t getting over thanks in large parts to that wretched theme music WWE has stuck her with
•Christian-Slotted Rhodes. Slotted Rhodes is definitely losing this one. I see Slotted Rhodes being a guy who keeps on losing on his way to winning MITB, because that’s logically in WWE’s world. This should be a good one if WWE gives them 15 minutes
•Santino-Ricardo in a tuxedo match. This reminds me of 1996 WWE and that scares the hell out of me. Of course Santino wins
•Otunga-Clay. Clay
Feedback: revinsamuel@rogers.com
