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There was a renewed sense of optimism and intrigue heading in to tonight’s Smackdown Live after a newsworthy edition of Raw last night.
Paul Heyman’s fingerprints were all over last night’s show, so would we see any of Eric Bischoff’s influence tonight?
Prior to start of the show, WWE announced another match for the upcoming Extreme Rules pay-per-view. After a couple of victories over the tag team champions, Big E and Xavier Woods will be taking on Daniel Bryan and Rowan for the titles on 14th July.
But what other developments would we see in Smackdown’s current storylines? Would we find out who knocked on Aleister Black’s door? Will there be any other NXT call-ups after Street Profits' Raw debut?
Let’s take a look at what went down on tonight’s show and give each segment a grade.
#1 - The Kevin Owens Show
Smackdown kicked off with an edition of ‘The Kevin Owens Show’ with Shane McMahon and Drew McIntyre as guests. After a brief recap of The Undertaker’s appearance on last night’s Raw, Shane revealed that their scheduled tag team match at Extreme Rules would now be a ‘No Holds Barred’ match.
Tensions began to rise between Owens and his guests after he suggested that Shane and Drew were scared of Taker. It looked as though this would lead to a brawl between the three men, until Dolph Ziggler interrupted proceedings.
Owens then had a war of words with Ziggler and, for some reason, this led to Shane making a match where Kevin and Dolph would team up against Heavy Machinery in the night’s main event. If Kevin and Dolph won, they would be added to the Tag Team Title match between New Day and Bryan and Rowan at Extreme Rules.
This was a bland and nonsensical segment to kick off the show, a far cry from the hot angle that opened Raw last night.
Grade: D+
#2 - Big E vs Daniel Bryan
After the main event was announced, both Bryan & Rowan and The New Day were interviewed separately backstage and expressed their frustrations with the news. Big E and Daniel Bryan would then face off in singles action in the first match of the night.
The match began with a couple of comedy spots with plenty of gyrating from Big E. Bryan would then start working over Big E’s recently injured knee to take control of the contest.
After a couple of brief comebacks from Big E, Rowan would then make use of a distracted referee to push E head first into the ring post, allowing Bryan to capitalise by hitting his running knee for the win.
Grade: B-
#3 - A Moment of Cross?
Alexa Bliss allowed Nikki Cross to host her own edition of ‘A Moment of Bliss’ as reward for her recent victories. Her guest was Bliss’ Extreme Rules opponent and current Smackdown Women’s Champion, Bayley.
After answering a couple of questions, Bayley decided to ask one herself and wanted to know why Alexa was getting the title shot at Extreme Rules when it was Nikki Cross that pinned Bayley last week. Nikki awkwardly said she didn’t know and challenged Bayley to an impromptu match. A short match followed which Bayley won.
This whole segment just didn’t connect and seemed to stall the ongoing Nikki/Alexa story as opposed to moving it forward.
Grade: D
#4 - Kofi flips the bird
The scheduled ‘face-to-face’ segment between Kofi Kingston and Samoa Joe was up next. Kayla Braxton was out to host this confrontation, but Samoa Joe quickly took over proceedings and went on to accuse Kofi of being a fake.
Joe claimed that Kingston uses the fans, just like he uses his New Day teammates Big E and Xavier Woods, to get his own way. But Kofi came back with a strong retort and ran down his recent victories, pointing out that he’s done them all by himself, while all Joe has done recently is lose his United States Championship to Ricochet.
After some more back and forth, Samoa Joe threatened that Kofi’s loved ones would not be safe unless he shook Joe’s hand. Kofi defiantly refused the handshake and instead flipped Joe off before laying him out with ‘Trouble in Paradise’.
Did Kofi just make a huge mistake?
Kingston came across as a fearless and resolute babyface in this segment, but it will be interesting to see how Joe responds to this humiliation next week.
Grade: B
#5 - Why would anybody care?
A number of meaningless segments followed, which I’ll grade as one as they all suffered from similar issues.
Mandy Rose took on Ember Moon in a short, inconsequential match that added nothing to their ongoing storyline, with Ember getting the win.
Neither woman had a televised entrance prior to their match, as was the case for the Apollo Crews vs. Andrade that took place earlier in the night.
While Apollo looked good in this match, he would end up losing after Vega hit him with a hurricanrana on the outside behind the ref’s back, allowing Andrade to hit his DDT finisher to get the pinfall victory.
Then we got a bizarre backstage promo where Shelton Benjamin was asked who he thought will win the WWE Championship match at Extreme Rules. Benjamin simply looked from side to side and smiled, not uttering a single word.
The crowd was not invested in any of these segments, and why would they be?
Not one of these performers has been presented as anything meaningful in recent weeks, or even months, and tonight’s show was no different, so why should anybody care what happens to them?
Grade: D
#6 - Black's opponent to be revealed at Extreme Rules
Up next, Aleister Black addressed the knock on his door from last week's Smackdown, but who was it?
Well, we still don’t know and nor does Aleister. He claimed that after the knock last week, he answered the door and nobody was there.
Black applauded these mind games from his mystery adversary, but challenged the unknown man to reveal himself at Extreme Rules.
This was another well-delivered promo by Aleister Black, but this has gone on long enough and I think we’re all ready to find out who his first challenger will be.
Grade: C+
#7 - Owens babyface turn?
That brings us to the main event match between Heavy Machinery and the odd couple tag team of Kevin Owens and Dolph Ziggler.
Big E and Xavier Woods, as well as Daniel Bryan and Rowan, were out for guest commentary. Not for long though, as the four men would soon begin to brawl at ringside, resulting in Rowan putting Woods through a commentator table.
The referee restarted the match after ejecting the guest commentators from ringside. I don’t know why it needed to be restarted; I guess that’s just what happens now.
Owens and Ziggler actually worked together pretty well in this match and went back and forth with Heavy Machinery in a fairly decent match.
That was until a slight misstep from Ziggler resulted in him accidentally catching Owens with a superkick, this allowed Otis and Tucker to take advantage, hitting their finisher on Owens and picking up the victory.
This means that Heavy Machinery have now been added to the Smackdown Tag Team Championship match at Extreme Rules, and it will now be a triple threat between themselves, Xavier Woods & Big E and Daniel Bryan & Rowan.
After the match, Owens hit a stunner on Dolph Ziggler to close the show, seemingly turning face in the process.
Grade: C
While there was nothing actively bad on this week’s Smackdown, there was also nothing of note that you need to go out of your way to see.
This was a tedious, run-of-the-mill show that came as a disappointment following the renewed optimism around WWE following last night’s Raw.
Overall grade: C-
