Rate SmackDown 12/22/15

[Prince Bálor]

You know the drill, vote above and give your thoughts below!

​

Results:

The New Day defeated The Lucha Dragons to retain the WWE Tag Team Championships.

The Wyatt Family defeated Kane, Ryback & The Dudley Boyz

Alberto Del Rio & Rusev defeated The Usos

Titus O'Neil & Neville [w/ Santino] defeated The Ascension [w/ Stardust]

Charlotte defeated Brie Bella

Dean Ambrose defeated Dolph Ziggler and Kevin Owens in a Triple Threat Match to retain the WWE Intercontinental Championship.

In-depth review: WrestleView

 

[alexb]

2/10 for a...meh show and no further comment necessary...

 

[seabs]

2/10 for a...meh show and no further comment necessary...

I haven't caught the show yet, how was the main event? It sounds good on paper.

 

[alexb]

I haven't caught the show yet, how was the main event? It sounds good on paper.

Main event was quite decent despite the very obvious and predictable outcome but the show overall just didn't do it for me and felt like a mediocre followup to the previous night's mediocre RAW.

Anyway, this coming Monday is the final RAW of the year so hopefully they'll make it a good one. They NEED to make it a good one...

 

[Swift]

Most boring episode ever. Ok probably not, but it still sucked. The main event was okay, but even then it didn't blow my socks off.

 

[Prince Bálor]

This week's SmackDown was... BOOTY! 3/10

It was just as boooooooooooooorrriiiing as Raw for the most part. Continuity, man! The upside is SmackDown is a 2 hour show, though.

Positives:
- The New Day's pre-match promo. Hearing them wish us a "Booty" Christmas and a Happy "New Day" was awesome! 1:

- The New Day vs The Lucha Booties Dragons was solid. The New Day winning and more importantly, retaining, after having a little losing streak floats my boat.

- ADR & Rusev vs The Usos was okay for what it was. I'm glad the so-called tag team of the year lost.

- Ambrose vs DZ vs KO was a good ME. If you're looking to cherry pick from the show, this is the stuff you wanna see.
Seriously, good stuff.

Negatives:
- That Santino singing/Stardust stealing a star from the tree segment. :facepalm2:

- The Wyatt Family vs Ryback, Kane & The Dudley Boyz was boring. Ryback pulling a dropkick out of his ARSEnal was nice, though.
Sooo, I guess The Wyatt Family will keep going over The Dudley Boyz (+2 random dudes) in this never-ending feud. :quimby:

- The LON's booking continues to be a farce. I mean, shouldn't a heel faction get some heat by laying out the fan favorites every now and then? Not like I'm the biggest fan of the League of Nations, but seriously... They can beat down 1 or 2 guys easily, but every time Reigns comes out, he just wrecks them. I like Reigns and all, but you know, it wouldn't hurt him if he got his ass handed to him by 4 guys. It would actually bring some heat to the LON and it'd ultimately make Reigns' triumph over them mean something.


- That Titus/Neville/Santino/Cosmic Wasteland backstage segment, though! :facepalm2:

- Neville & Titus O'Neil vs The Ascension was garbage.

The 'I don't give a toss' about this segment:
- Gladly skipped Charlotte vs "C'mon, Nikki" aka Brie Bella.

 

[Snowman1]

Surprised people cared about this show. Why? Granted, SD is usually the better show than Raw, but it being live really makes so much of a differnce that it warranted a rating thread? Wtf?

This oddly gets a 4/10 from me, but for much different reasons. Also I chuckle about how the SD shows that get the worst reviews are the ones Prince Balls decides to watch.

But as a fan, after Takeover and Final Battle, I've really never been more down on this product and nitpicky, although that also leads to easy amusement here on SD, a show that is easier to just Pringle at instead of smart-mark away at...

Good stuff:

-The main event. Quality match if you don't mind just enough holiday goofiness to make it unique. There was a downer here with feeling about how all three of these guys should be infinitely more entertaining than they are. Still, I'd be super into another match in the future between these three. Also, I like how the IC belt has become the official main event title of Smackdown, and how it at least doesnt feel like such an albatross. Good stuff.

-Charlotte vs Brie: You at least tried to tell a story here! It's rough because this entire division is a COMPLETE disaster, but as a standalone angle this was good. Cole interviewed Becky outside and she talked about how she values her friendship more than anything before Naomi poured eggnog all over Lynch... Charlotte looked on after a 3 on 1 beat down, avoided helping as she just went to win the match instead. It came across like Charlotte was a heartless dick, but it's hard to justify "a diva caring about winning a match" as a heel action in 2015

-SASHA DRESSED AS A SNOWMAN OMG

-Brown Snowman selling for Kane.

-The New Day promo!!! And also, Smackdown not starting with the exact same Roman vs Sheamus promo I've seen three fucking times now, as Roman just came out to beat a bunch of ass. Thank you, WWE!

-Ascension vs Elf and Not Cesaro stuff is a small win, for Titus's part - really enjoying him lately, guess it's a fresh face but still - and Konnor yelling "SHUT UPPPPP" at Santino was incredible. Chuckled at the Cobra swerve even though the rest of this was throwaway.

Bad stuff:

-Usos vs the Midcard Mafia. So... Roman beats up the whole league of cannon fodder on his own, they beat the Usos relatively clean in an awful match, and the Usos beat the New Day in a handicap match on Raw. Wtf? Hey ADR: January 27. Be there. Stay off my Smackdown show, please and thank you!

-Lucha Dragons vs the New Day: I don't watch Raw, and this is the fourth time I've seen these teams fight in the last three weeks if you count Raw. New Day is getting AJ Lee booking now, a cycle of losing non-title matches to set up retaining in title matches. The match itself I really hated outside of Sin Cara face planting on a dive, hahaha.

-Wyatt Family vs Team Dumb as Fuck: It's odd that with these cycles and 50/50 booking, the Wyatts are beating up the 23 time tag champs time and time again, yet it means absolutely nothing. Why?

-I usually enjoy SD commentary - Brennan, Lawler, and Booker normally do a fine job - but this was borderline Raw bad. Hell I love dumb puns and Lawler was just driving them into the ground here. And Booker spoke coherent English. boo.

 

[Snowman1]

Oh yeah, I forgot.. Yay, Cena 1.0 is coming back to try to one-up the new, darker model on Raw! Wooooooo!

I mean, we've reached the point where Cena coming back is something to celebrate. Incredible.

 

[Prince Bálor]

Surprised people cared about this show. Why? Granted, SD is usually the better show than Raw, but it being live really makes so much of a differnce that it warranted a rating thread? Wtf?

Also I chuckle about how the SD shows that get the worst reviews are the ones Prince Balls decides to watch.

But as a fan, after Takeover and Final Battle, I've really never been more down on this product and nitpicky, although that also leads to easy amusement here on SD, a show that is easier to just Pringle at instead of smart-mark away at...

- Because it was airing live, goddammit! And we thought we were gonna get a good show. Also, this wouldn't have been a "Rate SD" thread had the already-taped show aired on Thursday as it usually does, but since it was airing LIVE, I figured why not.

- A Hulu version might've saved this show. Keeping Ambrose/KO/DZ and The New Day vs Lucha Dragons (while not showing anything else) would've made it a solid 7/10 for me.

- TakeOver and Final Battle >>>

 

[Snowman1]

- Because it was airing live, goddammit! And we thought we were gonna get a good show. Also, this wouldn't have been a "Rate SD" thread had the already-taped show aired on Thursday as it usually does, but since it was airing LIVE, I figured why not.

- A Hulu version might've saved this show. Keeping Ambrose/KO/DZ and The New Day vs Lucha Dragons (while not showing anything else) would've made it a solid 7/10 for me.

- TakeOver and Final Battle >>>

Hahahahahahaha. Hey now, Hulu has Smackdown too... just... the full show, with fewer commercials. :downer:

Don't know if it's available over there in Serbia thought but get it if you can. Hell if I knew how to do it, I'd upload that version here to y'all.

Screw that tag match so hard though. Feel like those are the matches hurting WWE more than the bad ones, the ones that are "a match". This one I called every spot before it happened. Downer.

Besides of course Sin Cara putting the "Suicide" in Suicide Dive. Botchamania: Some day at some time on Youtube.