FMKK

Not shaking hands offends you? That's like being offended that HHH cheated Seth out of the title on Raw. It's a work to sell a show.

That's assuming they're not stupid enough to actually schedule this for 3 hours. Even with all the matches being on, that's a lot of time to fill for this card.

This looks thin for a house show let alone a PPV. These single brand shows should really be 2 hours. I think the way to go is for the Usos to cheat Heath and Rhyno out of the championships to put heat on this heel turn. I kinda assume Styles and Ambrose will have a non-finish to keep the feud going because there's absolutely nothing else on top for Smackdown. No Cena and no Orton is a disaster for them. They need to call guys up from NXT or something. The Observer Twitter account is now reporting that Orton is out.

He was working.

Ziggler is such a dork that everyone is the good guy in a feud against him.

Similar to the New Day taking what was basically a racist gimmick and turning it back around on itself. I hope he gets a similar level of sustained push and featuring on the Smackdown midcard. A shirt glory run with the Intercontinental Championship would be nice and his character would mesh nicely with The Miz come to think of it.

The story online, that Meltzer has hinted at but not confirmed, is that Owens didn't know the finish until HHH told him in the ring.

I also think Reigns and Rusev are better workers for foregoing the workrate style. Would they be more appreciated if they had just been in ROH for a year before WWE?

You stink. Seriously. Go away . I knew you had an idea of what a master race should be but I didn't realize grimey and chubby white guys didn't fit in as well, you awful zero. Can you and El P merge into being a bottle of Vichy water so Claude Reins can throw you in a trash can and lightly kick you? Ah, the 'don't like Kevin Owens, must be a Nazi' school of pro-wrestling criticism. A favourite for sure.

He's had them since the start of the summer I think. I vaguely recall him having them during the New Day feud.

Is Apollo Crews new gimmick actually going to be spelling?

I feel that's overstating things a bit. It's not that people were having a temper tantrum over that one Rumble, it's that it represented the company taking what it knew the fans wanted to see and giving them a giant middle finger. So in turn the fans did the same thing to Roman knowing he means as much to the company (well, Vince at least) as Bryan did to them. It's petty, yes, but considering the company's history it couldn't have happened to more deserving folks. Why does Vince get cheered when he shows up? Why not take it out on him? Because he's a character they remember from when wrestling was 'good'.

In all fairness, that ended up being pretty heated and getting over well. Ziggler has been so much better on promos recently.

Miz was heeling well but what has he actually done wrong in kayfabe here?

Hope Smackdown lives up to last week's great show. Interesting to see if that Miz promo actually leads anywhere.

That one neck injury really fucked up two to three years of booking. If he had been able to hold it together until Brock squashed him at Summerslam 2014, would any of this shit ever happen? I know the shitty booking patterns that piss off the audience would still be in place, but the whole Bryan situation just made it all so much more visceral.

I would like to see a chart of all the 3.5 star plus ratings Dave has given to each top WWE guy since The Shield debuted. Roman would be right up there for well rated matches I reckon. I'm too lazy/busy to make such a list right now but I may do it before the end of the year.

If Dave's judgement was based on not eliciting the right crowd reaction, he should be calling out Rollins, Owens etc. for being dreadful heels because they get face pops from most of the audience.

I really don't think it's a stretch at all to say that he's better than Seth Rollins, who does a lot of cool moves but is terrible in his role as a top heel. And Rollins has been pushed just as hard by the company as a top star as Reigns has but doesn't get any shit whatsoever in spite of some glaring flaws in his game. If Reigns had have come through NXT two years later than he did he wouldn't be hated by people still pretending that he can't work.

This show has been pretty good. Raw has the better matches cause they have so much time to fill but this has been zipping along nicely, it's easy to watch and they're setting up lots of stuff.

That was a really effective opening segment all round. Set up like four different things.

More identical belts.

Bryan tweeting about new championships being announced tonight on Smackdown, which one would assume means a tag title and a women's title.

You know damn well that if it wasn't an internet favourite, say Reigns or Sheamus, he would totally flip that one round and bury the guy non-stop. As an aside, I think a bigger conversation needs to be had about the indy-fication of the WWE working style and the subsequent increase of injuries.

They need to overhaul the style of how they're working these main events. Way too many injuries in the last year and it correlates with them doing way more finishers, apron bumps, top rope bumps and dives in all the big matches. Rollins in particular needs to learn how to actually work as a hell but on a wider level, these guys need to slow down and learn how to pace and build a match in another format because they're dropping like fucking flies recently.