I will never understand how SmackDown and Raw are produced by the same person.
Then, on Monday, Shane McMahon announced all participants in the Raw Men’s Elimination Chamber fight without fanfare, and most people didn’t deserve a spot. Jeff Hardy has a lot of losses, just like Miz, just like Randy Orton lately. Aside from the fact that Kofi Kingston is on the same show, they no longer care about him being a former champion.
A three-hour show had zero qualifying matches, while a two-hour show was full of them. Explain to me how it makes sense.
SmackDown once again did it right. It is not so shocking anymore. SmackDown made several stars to be featured in his Elimination Chamber match. I want to see them in the game. With the exception of two of them, I would like to see any of the others win. One is very intriguing, and I will mention it in a moment.
Let’s go to the main hits and mistakes of this show. For a complete summary of SmackDown, check out Rev. Claire Elizabeth’s live blog!
Establishing stars
Roman Reigns started the show by telling Adam Pearce that he didn’t run SmackDown because it was Reigns’ control.
The one that Edge is afraid to face, and he won’t lose the title until he’s ready for it. Pearce said Reigns would be defending the Universal title in the Elimination Chamber, but Heyman said he nowhere says that Reigns has to defend inside the Chamber, only at the Chamber show.
Instead, the winner of the Chamber match will receive a title dispute on the spot. Pearce put Kevin Owens and Jey Uso into the fight and then announced the qualifiers for the rest of the night. Reigns jumped out of the ring and stood in Pearce’s face to intimidate him and stepped back at Heyman’s request.
Well! I wanted SmackDown to get the fight in the Elimination Chamber because more men deserve the title image. Now, having them face Reigns right after that match? Clearly the W for Reigns is easy, but we will see if they will be crushed or get the real babyface treatment.
What a struggle we had for the main event.
Cesaro is suuuuch a great hot brand, even taking care of some injuries that we will treat shortly. The other winners of a qualifying match left (I’ll leave that without spoiler here), but they didn’t interfere.
Cesaro hit Ziggler and Bryan eliminated Roode and Ziggler gave up. I liked to see some people winning important victories tonight. It is it’s how you create and maintain stars at a high level. Victories are important!
Then Jey Uso appeared OUTTANOWHERE and everyone got involved, until Owens appeared and cleaned the house. A good old Stunner party.
They showed Reigns in the background looking annoyed and shaking his head so that he had to face him again.
I am one of the few who is well with another rematch, just because Owens has not yet had a clean loss. Technically, the Elimination Chamber is unlikely to be clean regardless of who it is, unless Jey Uso ends up winning. He is the most intriguing winner. I was wondering when they would return to family feud and when Jey would start to come out of his trance. Maybe it’s coming soon?
Never give up
Man, that was an incredible segment before the match.
Big E talked about how he was ready to move on from Sami Zayn and Apollo Crews, but Crews decided to leave and once again respond to the open challenge. This time, E. said no and told Crews to go to the bottom and get his paycheck.
Woof. Crews did no take it well. The best part of it was the off-microphone discussion that they were both having before E’s opponent, Nakamura, left. Crews said he will always be after E as long as he has the Intercontinental title. A great moment between the two men.
Then E and Nakamura started to fight and Crews stood on the side of the ring hoping for Nakamura. Crews went for the apron and E threw him out. Nakamura hit E. with his knees and went to Kinshasa and the power of E struck him. And it went to Big Ending and Crews came in and interfered to cause a disqualification.
Crews said he will not give up as long as Big E has the title, and he reinforced his words. Usually I don’t go to DQ, but in this context, it really makes sense. Apollo will do whatever it takes to get into E’s skin. Make things make sense, and suddenly, irritating things become much less irritating.
Making fun of someone’s hole
Sasha Banks showed up and said that EST needs to choose me, which prompted Belair to leave.
She knows about Sasha’s achievements, but told the boss that she is not her boss. Suddenly, the female champions appeared and Jax and Baszler were complaining that no one was talking about their victory at the Royal Rumble. Belair and Banks showed Raw clips of the “my hole” incident and Baszler losing to Naomi, which led to a fight with the baby faces standing.
Okay, so WWE decided to cancel the censorship of “my hole” (heh) and bring it to the show. I think the best way to do that would be what they did here, for not having Nia saying it every time. Implicating the words because she shudders in pain and grabs her lower back works for me.
Bianca and Sasha looked great here, but I don’t think there should be a tag title match outside of that. Women’s titles don’t have to engage in a rivalry with the main title every time. This was a good segment and maybe if they were to fight for the title of the tag, things could break between the babyfaces, which would lead Bianca to officially choose Sasha.
On paper this looks good, but how would it work?
By the way, Bianca Belair’s husband dancing with Sasha Banks when she came in? That was strange.
The rest
Seth Rollins is burning it all up again
Seth Rollins came back and “Burn it Down!” He mentioned that he would be a father for the first time and his daughter changed his life and gave him a new vision. Where does he fit into a program with great talent and potential? To be a leader for everyone! (Basically, nothing has changed.) He asked everyone to adopt the vision and everyone left. Except Cesaro. Cesaro just shrugged and said he didn’t change anything.
Angrily Rollins attacked Cesaro and defeated him on the ramp. Bryan and the referees came to separate them and Rollins left. I was concerned that this defeat could make Cesaro the weakest link and cause him and Bryan to lose the qualifying match and I am extremely grateful that it was not the case.
Sami Zayn and King Corbin defeated Rey and Dominik Mysterio
Early on, Dom jumped from the ring to Zayn and looked like he had hit his head on the advertisers table, but he looked fine. That was scary and it sold wonderfully well. Almost also We will. For the most part, Corbin and Zayn dominated until Dom ran with Zayn. Dom had a great Tornado DDT. Graves continued to press the split between Dom and Rey weeks before. It was honestly what made me think they were going to win, but Zayn hit the suplex and Helluva Kick to win! It is so good to see Sami Zayn winning victories.
Street Profits defeated Alpha Academy
Okay, so a combination I made no hopes to need is Angelo Dawkins vs. Chad Gable at some point. A carpet-based clinic between them every time they were in the ring together. So, Otis came in and did great things. Only now did I realize that Otis and Gable make a great pair. Tez made his frog splash from the sky to take the victory. This is incredible to witness every time.
Bayley defeated Liv Morgan
Well, it was obvious that we were going to get Liv and Bayley after Ruby and Bayley happened. Morgan started out warm and dominated in the first minute and chased Bayley out of the ring so she could regroup. Morgan had a really cool look … I think you could call him a springboard facebuster for next fall. She was favoring her left arm before that and Bayley took advantage. So Billie Kay had her resumes in Ruby’s face and that led Ruby to throw the resumes behind her in the ring. So the referee was tied up with that and Bayley crawled Morgan’s eyes and immobilized her.
And this is where I would have attacked Billie Kay or just ignored her because she is getting too involved in this business after clearly hearing that she should be leaving several times. I love Billie in this role, but constantly interrupting and causing losses to Riott Squad is not a good thing. But, how can you same blame Billie here? Ruby needed to ignore all of this or agree just to shut Billie up.
Note: B +
What were your thoughts, Cagesiders?