WWE SmackDown 01/16/18: Phoning It In
About Last Night is a quick reflection on the matches and segments, or random observations, from a wrestling show that sticks out to us the morning after we watch them. If you would like to get your comments featured, chime in below in our comments section or tweet us. You can also help support us on Patreon.
About Cell Phone Promos…
This SmackDown felt like everyone phoned it in. And by “phone it in” I mean they literally shot promo son their cell phone and emailed them to production so they don’t have to bother with appearing at the arena. This was dreadful, with all of them looking extremely amateur from the way it was shot to the Windows Movie Maker title cards with their names before them. No one outside maybe Becky Lynch sounded competent and this did nothing but detract from the Royal Rumble and this show. Leave this kind of stuff to social media, don’t waste my time on the main show when you can’t even be bothered to put the entertaining Fashion Files on.
About The United States Championship…
You know who are pretty dull in the ring? Jinder Mahal and face Bobby Roode. Unfortunately they moved up the United States Championship Tournament so both semifinals would be on the same episode, so I already knew this episode would have a lot going against. The obvious winners were Bobby Roode and Jinder Mahal instead of their more interesting opponents Xavier Woods and Mojo Rawley, so when they won it wasn’t a shock to anyone. What was a shock is they decided to double down on the awfulness and had the finals occur on this episode too.
So the entire episode would focus on these two instead of taking time to continue the story of the WWE Championship in a meaningful way, or literally anything else. The semifinal matches were not great, and the finals were way worse. I couldn’t care less about anything going on in the ring, and we had Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon standing at ringside in a baffling move since they didn’t do anything. Bobby Roode is now champion, and the United States Championship continues to mean nothing. Great.
About The Women Spinning Their Wheels…
We had another iteration of Charlotte Flair, Naomi, and Becky Lynch vs. The Riott Squad because we can’t write any interesting stories heading into the women’s Royal Rumble Match. For real, I still have no idea what the motivations are for The Riott Squad and why they’re fighting these three nonstop outside of “we’re faces and we’re heels”. Where is Carmella (besides hanging out with The New Day in an alternate reality)? I guess because there’s a title shot on the line in the Rumble we can’t be giving anyone a title shot ahead of it. Regardless, between these and the terrible cell phone promos I am quickly losing interest in the Women’s Rumble. Hopefully next week on the go-home episode they can do SOMETHING.
About Nothing Happening in General…
Seriously, what a waste of two hours this show was. We got a lame backstage promo from AJ Styles and a video package as the only hype we got for the WWE Championship Match at the Royal Rumble. We had a ton of people not on the show for some reason as I had already mentioned in the first section. And Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon had zero interaction aside from standing next to each other during the main event. There was no backstage segment or any progress to their storyline of having tension between them. Seriously, why did this episode happen? What caused them to rush the US Title match and toss out everything else? I’m very curious what went on backstage to cause this shitshow of an episode.
About The Mixed Match Challenge…
If you thought the night would be saved with the debut of The Mixed Match Challenge on Facebook, you would be wrong. The show felt low on the production side with no opening video package or fancy graphics of any kind. We had a single match between Finn Balor & Sasha Banks and Shinsuke Nakamura & Natalya, and it was a letdown considering the talent involved. Things picked up a bit toward the end with Balor and Nakamura getting time to escalate the action, but then it ended with the women on a flat note that cut all momentum that was peaking. I’ll keep watching since this is only twenty minutes long and one match per week, but it’s nothing to go out of your way to see.
What did you think of this week’s SmackDown? Let us know in the comments!
