SmackDown Women’s Championship Match Was Made Official – Tonight, SmackDown Live opened with General Manager Paige, Charlotte Flair and SmackDown Women’s Champion Becky Lynch. During the segment, Paige announced that Flair and Lynch would go one on one at the TLC event in a Tables, Ladders and Chairs match for the SmackDown Women’s Championship. After the match was made, essentially the rest of SmackDown’s women’s division interrupted and said that either one of them could hold the fort down and be champion as well; they ultimately questioned why they couldn’t get a shot. Paige agreed with their sentiments and said there would be a battle royal tonight with the winner joining Charlotte and Becky at TLC. Asuka won the battle royal and is now set to join the two. They probably plan on doing another singles match between Charlotte and Becky at a more significant PPV, so they are tossing in another competitor for the b-level TLC. That being said, Asuka isn’t entirely out of it, I wouldn’t be completely surprised to see her win, but my gut tells me Becky is keeping that title going into Mania. And I’m sure a lot of you think that as well.
Jeff Hardy’s 20th Anniversary – Tonight, Jeff Hardy celebrated his 20th anniversary. Before he was interrupted by Samoa Joe, he talked about some of his memorable moments and questioned how he was able to survive some of the dangerous moves he’s put himself through over the years. But before the celebration could continue, Samoa Joe, as said, came out and gave his two cents. He knocked Jeff Hardy and commented on his personal struggles with drug and alcohol abuse, Jeff responded by claiming nothing will ruin his celebration tonight. Joe said what he had to say and headed backstage.
Jeff has been around for a long time. He had a plethora of memorable moments – most of which involving ladders and jumping off things. It looks as though a feud between Hardy and Joe is forthcoming. In another world, I’d say this feud has the potential to be decent, but knowing how WWE operates nowadays, it just doesn’t peak my interest. Joe is magnificent, I love Joe, a man that should’ve been Universal Champion on RAW and WWE Champion by now. It’s just sad to see the state of his career right now, he’s believable enough to beat anyone, terrific worker, he’s proficient on the mic, he really has it all, great overall talent. He just hasn’t gotten that big win on the main roster yet to cement the fact that he is a big star meant to be taken seriously when in big matches. He’s literally lost almost every match that was considered relatively big. Properly build Joe back up, give him the win against Hardy at TLC or whenever the hell they compete. He currently doesn’t fit entirely into the WWE Title picture leading up to WrestleMania, but post WrestleMania would be a great time to utilize his talent. He very well deserves it. I mean, I could see a fatal four way with Miz, Bryan and AJ – that’d make sense, but I much prefer one on one Championship matches at Mania, but we’ll see.
Anyways, congratulations to Jeff Hardy, a lengthy career to be proud of for the most part. He’s just one of those individuals that doesn’t seem to age really, all the best to him.
Big Show With Another Notorious Turn? – It was made known tonight that The Bar and Big Show have apparently split. There was a brief video showing Cesaro ripping into Big Show for not helping him and Sheamus last week. Cesaro would ultimately be on the receiving end of a KO punch by Big Show after forcefully poking him. And just like that…there done. It’s not really a huge deal as Big Show was just sort of….you know….there. Meaningless pairing, really. Not like I had expected anything significant in this whole ordeal, but it was rather short, they could’ve at least done something – like give them a dominant run for a while, Dogs of War-esque (or whatever the hell Braun Strowman, Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler called themselves). I like Big Show, he’s one of those guys where – you know – his presence isn’t quite an essential necessity these days, but when he does make a sporadic appearance, he’s usually putting over the young stars, giving them a rub – I respect that. Aside from Jericho, I think he’s really the only one to do that on a consistent basis.
Will they provide us with a little more explanation in regards to this split, or is what we saw tonight it? I don’t know, but I do like that they at least gave us a little context tonight in form of that video.
What In The Hell Is Going On With Miz? – Tonight, The Miz lost another match, this time to New Day member Kofi Kingston. Later in the night, he complained to SmackDown Commissioner Shane McMahon, asking him why he didn’t help him, and he weirdly proclaimed that he and Shane were parents to the World Cup trophy; told Shane to rethink things and change how he’s treating him, pretty much. This is probably leading to a match between the two, nothing more, nothing less, which sucks. I touched on this Miz-Shane situation with a more in depth view last week, and my opinion given still stands. If this constant sucking-up doesn’t lead to a WWE Championship match of some sort for Miz, then I don’t see the point in continuing it.
AJ Styles Is Ready For Daniel Bryan – AJ Styles returned tonight and simply said that he wasn’t medically cleared to compete the past couple weeks (as you know), and he’s out for revenge against Daniel Bryan and he’s going to get it at TLC. Not too shabby of a promo for AJ Styles.
An additional takeaway – US Champion Shinsuke Nakamura was scheduled to compete against Rusev, but attacked him from behind before the match started. This seemingly opens up an opportunity for Rusev to capture the US Title once again. I assume this match will take place at TLC and I think Rusev will and rightfully should win the title.
Thanks for reading.
