WWE SmackDown 10/31/17: A Dumb Little Holiday Episode
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 Brand Unity…
One big thing that was the focus of this week’s SmackDown was further clarifying why #UnderSiege happened and why it makes sense. Shane McMahon opened the show pointing out how Raw is always seen as the flagship and “the A show” while SmackDown has put in a lot of work to compete with them since the brand extension, including moving to live on Tuesdays, making Daniel Bryan the general manager, and creating “The Land of Opportunity”. This didn’t seem to be enough, so he held a meeting with the roster regarding Survivor Series and they agreed to make the first strike with their invasion.
Later in the night we saw the women’s division all meeting with captain Becky Lynch laying down the reasons why they need to be on the same page for Survivor Series and be on the watch for Raw trying to strike back ahead of time. Natalya, the only person not in the elimination match, shows up to stir the pot with Charlotte more to remind us that there’s still a feud going on and Survivor Series isn’t just throwing that out entirely. We also had Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn in the locker room discussing how if one of them helped lead SmackDown to a win Shane would be indebted to them and they could finally get what they want for him and run the show.
I appreciated they are at least trying to make sense of all this brand feuding coming out of nowhere, where Raw’s best effort is making another Stephanie McMahon vs. GM storyline.
About Halloween vs. Rusev Day…
SmackDown was fortunate to fall on Halloween this year (well, maybe not fortunate for the ratings). The writers looked at what happened on Monday on Raw with whatever that travesty with involving pumpkins was, and decided to actually do something fun instead. The New Day were in the back in costumes giving out candy, with Xavier Woods as Jimmy Hart, Kofi Kingston as Brother Love, and Big E as Akeem The African Dream. Rusev showed up and apparently hates Halloween because it’s not Rusev Day and calls it a holiday for little babies before dumping out Big E’s candy and stomping on it. If that isn’t a set up for a wrestling match, I don’t know what is.
The match itself was fun, and ended with Aiden English trying to sing before getting interrupted by Woods’ trombone playing. English took out Woods, and this was enough of a distraction for Big E to eat a superkick and get pinned. Rusev wins, gets to be super stoked again, and wound up in a Survivor Series qualifying match with AJ Styles next week. I know Rusev won’t win, but I’m just glad he’s getting to be weird and interesting on television on a regular basis again. This may be one of my favorite versions of him.
About Baron Corbin vs. Sin Cara YET AGAIN…
Seriously? After the first two matches ended without a pinfall or submission, we are stuck watching Baron Corbin and Sin Cara spin their wheels yet again in a match that (gasp!) didn’t have a finish yet again! They at least put in some effort with the story being Corbin is trying to take off Sin Cara’s mask to disrespect his lucha libre heritage and that pushing him over the edge, but it’s really not working great. The United States Championship seems like a non factor and the champion is coming off as extremely weak. This is a man we’re supposed to care about facing a red hot Miz in a few weeks, and while Miz is running from Braun Strowman we have Corbin running away from SIN CARA. I can’t see how they can turn this around in a meaningful way. Not even a mask vs. title match would help.
About Strangerer Things…
The Fashion Files seem to have hit a good balance of being parody segments while also having a continuing storyline that is leading up to the debut of The Bludgeon Brothers. Tye Dillinger nailed it on his cameo and the fact the waffles are called “Uggos” is a beautiful detail to include. It looks like Saw may be the next parody, which could be really solid depending on how deep they take the references.
About The Qualifying Matches…
Two qualifying matches for the men’s Survivor Series match went down on this week’s episode, with the first being a 2 Out of 3 Falls Match between Dolph Ziggler and Bobby Roode. Is it weird I actually sort of enjoyed this match? It didn’t go extremely long, with Ziggler picking up the first fall with a superkick and Bobby Roode Cesaro-ing Ziggler in the corner during the commercial break for the second one. They saved the Glorious DDT for the final fall as Bobby Roode qualified for the match, which I have a bad feeling he’ll be fed relatively quickly to Braun Strowman. It didn’t help that he cut a terribly sloppy promo after the match, which made me once again wish he’d just play the cocky heel he was in NXT.
The other qualifying match was the main event, with Kevin Owens and Shinsuke Nakamura squaring off. We’ve seen this one before, and this was another decent entry. But most of the attention was outside the ring with Sami Zayn coming out partway through to help his best friend, including pulling him out of the way of a Kinshasa. But because Nakamura seems to have formed a friendship of his own with Randy Orton, the Viper came out to even the odds which give Nakamura an opening to secure the win and join him on the Survivor Series team. This makes Owens and Zayn’s role on Survivor Series unclear but very interesting. Will they continue to try to find a way onto the team, will they got placed into another match on the show, or will they show up to cost SmackDown the victory?
What did you think of this week’s SmackDown? Let us know in the comments!
