WWE SmackDown 03/06/18: Fighting For Us
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 The Riott Squad…
The opening segment of SmackDown finally answered a question that we have all had for months – why the fuck is The Riott Squad a thing? It pretty much materialized out of nowhere a few months ago, and they never bothered to explain it. Hell, at least Absolution give it a shot.
The reason that The Riott Squad formed was because Charlotte Flair won the SmackDown Women’s Championship, completing the set of holding all the women’s belts (including the Divas one) and being “the face of the women’s revolution” or whatever. This seems kind of flimsy, since Alexa Bliss won both brand’s titles before her, but I guess they also added that she’s a Flair. This felt like just an excuse to justify Ruby Riott having a title match on a pay-per-view, so whatever, sure.
About Jinder Mahal vs. Randy Orton…
Jesus Christ, really? We’ll still doing this? Yet again we have a match revolving around the United States Championship with someone on commentary and then that commentary person causing a distraction that leads to the finish of the match. I swear, if this leads to an announcement on Sunday adding Jinder Mahal to the title match I’m going to be so pissed. Can we just vacate the title again and toss together a ladder match for WrestleMania?
About Whatever They’re Doing With The Women…
Due to the Fastlane card being so slim and the pay-per-view happening on Sunday, guess we gotta throw together some matches at the last second for no reason! After a bizarre backstage segment where Becky Lynch called out Carmella for a match (with shitty text popping up over it), the two had a match and it was fine. But, it’s followed by Naomi and Natalya backstage setting up a tag match for Fastlane with the flimsiest reasoning? This felt extremely lazy, and is indicative to the current state of the SmackDown women’s division since The Riott Squad got here. Please can we fix this starting next week?
About Dolph Ziggler…
AJ Styles cut another really bad promo this week, where he explained that no one wants John Cena in his match against Shinsuke Nakamura. Apparently he’s fight “for us” or something? It felt really cheesy and Styles is becoming less and less cool the more they script him with these terrible promos. This was just an excuse for Dolph Ziggler to interrupt and talk about how fighting for the crowd backfires.
So let me get this straight. Dolph Ziggler turned heel when he did the whole “doing everyone’s entrance” thing, and then he won the US Title only to vacate it and disappear. Then he came back with me good reasoning and is fighting heels like Baron Corbin, thereby getting face reactions again. And now he’s suddenly a heel again who feels burned by the fans? Ziggler’s character is completely without direction and it’s an absolute mess. Maybe it would be best if he went away until the writing team is ready to put some actual effort to give him a solid storyline.
About Sami Zayn…
Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens had a backstage segment earlier in the show discussing Sunday’s Six-Pack Challenge, but Sami explained that he is ready to help Owens get his Grand Slam Championship since Owens was the one who helped get Zayn even into this match and that his time was still to come. However, that seemed to be thrown out the window by the end of the night as they both competed in the Fatal 5-Way main event and things ended with Kevin Owens being on the receiving end of a Helluva Kick before being pinned.
Perhaps they should have saved the backstabbing for Sunday, but WWE loves to be impatient and rush things for television. But, perhaps this was an intentional misdirection by the two so they end up working together. Either way, there’s no way they’re coming out of the Six-Pack Challenge as champion. So where will this leave these two? With no other option for WrestleMania, I guess we get to see these two wrestle again for the 1000th time, including one of those matches happening recently.
What did you think of this week’s SmackDown? Let us know in the comments!
