This week represented the now annual Superstar Shake-Up signifying that WWE is definitely sticking with the brand split until further notice and the results are pretty clear for right now that some things are getting better, while some things could be getting worse.
So let's start with the bad from Raw and just get that out of the way:
Ricochet and Aleister Black are remaining a tag team for the foreseeable future, because this is what Vince does when two tremendous talents come up from NXT and he doesn't know how to use them in a singles capacity. And not unlike the cartoonish creaking sound that Vince added to Aleister's entrance music, they added a Looney Tunes-esque ricocheting bullet sound to the beginning of Ricochet's entrance music. Now we really know why Ricochet was crying after his TakeOver match.
The most over woman in all of WWE had a totally meaningless match, and it was just a place-setter for an interruption. Becky Lynch had a match against Ruby Riott and all I kept thinking throughout was that I just felt so bad for all the members of the Riott Squad. They came out of the gate pretty hot, but ever since the rise of Ronda and The Man respectively, they've been relegated to props in service of that feud. And this match was hardly a barn-burner and more of a "we better finish this up quick because Lacey Evans is going to do something to piss everyone off". And it was discovered that Liv Morgan is going over to Smackdown effectively breaking up the Riott Squad. This honestly could be good or bad, but I'm going to lean towards bad because I don't know if anyone other than Ruby is a legit singles competitor yet, and they've spent so much time burying Ruby that I don't know if she's going to ever be able to recover without some serious rebranding.
Then there was Lacey's promo. Natalya came out first to Becky congratulating her on her Mania win, but she has her eyes on the Raw Women's title because she's "the best there is, the best there was and the best there'll ever be". Becky was about to accept when Lacey came out and said that the women were "nasty", and said that a real lady knows how to "curry favor" to get what she wants, and she convinced the McMahons that if she beat Nattie, she would become the #1 Contender for the Raw Women's title. There were so many moments of grossness in this promo. The "nasty women" evokes Donald Trump and we know where Vince's political leanings are so... that was a thing that was said. And the "curry favor" line was just fucking gross as all hell. Basically that verbiage implies that women should always use their sexuality to get ahead, and that has Vince's fingerprints all over it. I know that Lacey is heel as fuck, but this was just a bridge too far. I've never understood why a former Marine, particularly a female Marine, would be booked as a heel, but hey, good heels are hard to find, and Lacey is still finding her footing so I get it, but this was just such an awful promo.
The IIconics had a match with Bayley and new Raw competitor Naomi despite The IIconics not being on Raw. It wasn't a title match so why were they there? Look, I'm all for any excuse for more IIconics because I love them but this was just silly. And it does something to bring more light to huge elephant in the room and that is the absence of Sasha Banks. All the dirt sheets are talking about how she and Bayley apparently threw temper tantrums about losing the Women's Tag titles at Mania, how Sasha has apparently unfollowed WWE on Twitter and started following AEW, and how she skipped her post-Mania segment on the Wendy Williams Show. Now Bayley, for one night only, tagged with Naomi. I welcome Naomi to Raw, but this was not the way to bring her in.
EC3 apparently told someone higher up that he wanted competition, so he came out for a match and his opponent was Braun Strowman. There was never a match, but rather Braun hauling EC3 around the arena beating the tan off his body and put him through the stage beside the announce table with a chokeslam. This is a story I do not understand. First of all, is Braun a heel again? Because the events within this non-match really showed Braun being heel as fuck, but since we have absolutely zero context for EC3 as a character other than he likes to dress nice and pose in front of mirrors so we have no idea if he's a heel or babyface. Second, does Vince just really hate EC3? Because he hasn't had a decent match since his call-up, and he is just getting buried in every possible way out there. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he doesn't ask for his release soon (especially since everyone else seems to be doing that as well) because he's being treated like shit.
Eric Young was stealth-moved over to Raw because they need something for him to do since Sanity is no more after Alexander Wolfe requested his release to very little fanfare. Can we all just agree that the remaining members will be super-undercard players who will make appearances only in either lumberjack matches or unnecessary battle royals?
Now let's move to the vanilla/chocolate swirl aspects of this episode with are neither all good or all bad, but a mix of the two.
Our main event was the unholy triumvirate of Lashley, Corbin and McIntyre vs Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns and a mystery partner which ended up being revealed as AJ Styles. The move to Raw for AJ is good because it'll give him some new rivalries. But the move to Raw is very dumb for Styles since ten days ago on the Grandest Stage of Them All, he and Randy Orton went to war over who ran Smackdown, and with AJ winning that match, it seems only natural that he would continue to lord over SD. But here we are.
Andrade and Zelina Vega are over on Raw now, and despite him having a terrific match against Finn Balor (where Andrade pulled out a really cool new flippy move), he cut a promo before the match for 90 seconds speaking Spanish while in Montreal. It is my genuine fear they're going to try to turn him into Alberto Del Rio 2.0 and that would be a really bad move.
Elias came out and is wondering aloud why all these legends keep interrupting him, and it's clear to him that they're jealous. He gets some classic Elias heat by talking shit about The Habs, and then is interrupted by Rey Mysterio who uncharacteristically botched a springboard move but still did his best to save it. Rey drove Elias out of the ring, but was then taken out by Lars Sullivan with the Freak Accident and a massive powerbomb. Please see my recent post about NXT and Worlds Collide in order to read more about how sick I am of the powerbomb. So far, Lars has attacked a bunch of people in their forties and fifties. I know he's taking out legends, but in reality, he's taking out older people and that's not the way to build a monster. But at least Rey and Andrade are still on the same show.
The Moment of Bliss segment had Sami Zayn and it was really close to being perfect. Sami milked the shit out of the crowd pops and had his entrance music play three times and got the "Ole!" chants going hard. And then he naturally turned on the crowd by saying how much he loved Montreal but hated the people. He went on to continue his diatribe about how everyone's a critic and how all the fans project their toxic issues onto him. But then Alexa decided to play babyface and say that the problem is not with the fans but with him, and that's not a very good look for Alexa who should not be babyface at all right now. Or maybe ever. I don't understand why she just couldn't back him up and agree that Montreal sucked. Anyway, Sami will see us all in Hell.
Now let's get to the actually good parts, of which there were a few.
The show actually opened with Stephanie and Shane announcing the Superstar Shake-Up, and Shane trying to put himself over as the Best in the World (which was met with CM Punk chants because Montreal is a crazy good wrestling town), but Miz appeared and attacked him. Shane got in some quick jabs to the head and body (one of which smacked Miz's head and cut him open a bit) which Miz answered with a steel chair. It was a cool image to see this badass babyface version of Miz with blood dripping from his head wielding a steel chair. I'm fascinated to see how long they play this version of babyface Miz, but I'm guessing it'll be until it gets stale and that doesn't look to be anytime soon.
Roode and Gable are committed to their heel run for their final night together, and this paved the way for The Usos to come over to Raw, which I predicted would happen since they dropped the Smackdown Tag titles two nights after retaining them. This should help to breathe some new life into the floundering tag division on Raw, but Gable's gone over to Smackdown so hopefully this will lead to Roode staying heel as a singles competitor.
Cedric Alexander is going to be on Raw. I like Cedric a lot and there could be some really fun matches for him to have.
And props where props are due: the match between Natalya and Lacey Evans was surprisingly good. Evans has been doing some good work tightening up her in-ring skills, and hit an insane moonsault to finish the match up and get that #1 Contender spot. I'm not anywhere near convinced that Lacey should be the top female heel on the Raw roster but at least she had a really strong first outing on the main roster.
Before we go to Smackdown, we absolutely need to address the one thing that was universally despised by WWE fans and that was the 8-man tag match to start off the night. We already talked about the shitty sound effect added to Ricochet's otherwise totally appropriate and epic entrance music. He and Aleister were joined by Raw Tag champs Hawkins and Ryder to face off against The Revival and a new team, and I mean really new. It was a team that looked an awful lot like War Raiders but they were given more Nordic accoutrements, and were called The Viking Experience and Rowe and Hansen were renamed Erik and Ivar.
The. Viking. Experience.
Logically, I get it. Vince doesn't want 17k people chanting "WAR WAR WAR" on basic cable every Monday night. NXT is for the marks and the main roster is for the normies. So I get it.
But The Viking Experience is an exhibit at your local natural history museum, and decidedly not a badass tag team name. Most people are calling it the worst tag team name ever, and that's in the same era as the Boss 'N Hug Connection. So you know that people hate it. What does this mean for War Raiders in NXT? They're the titleholders there. Do they change them there, or does Hunter have the authority (no pun intended) to nix that bullshit? I hope so, because that name isn't going to do them any favors with the Full Sail crowd. Also what's with the inconsistency of the NXT champs either bringing or not bringing their titles? The last time we saw champs from NXT come to the main roster, it was Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano who brought their respective titles when they popped up in the very few episodes they were at. Kevin Owens brought out his NXT title when he debuted against John Cena. But here areWar Raiders The Viking Experience and they don't have their titles. All that aside, Christ, even Rowe and Hanson are a better tag name than The Viking Experience. It's awful, stupid and I hate it. I'm not even going to talk about the match because the name is still so infuriatingly bad.
Now let's dig into Smackdown!
Let's start with the bad, and as per usual with Smackdown, there's much less of it than on Raw.
In a post-match segment, R-Truth was destroyed by new Smackdown regular Lars Sullivan again. So that's another 40-something superstar that he got to wreck. After that, though, Lars started to creep his way toward a cornered Carmella. It was way way way too creepy and gross. When will Vince learn that women face shit like that every day of their lives? This really was not good or smart. I don't even like it when Otis is face to face with someone like Alexa and yells "Pretty laaadiieeeee!" because it's just kinda gross. But leave it to Vince to Vince things up.
That's pretty much it for the bad, honestly, aside from the fact that Daniel Bryan is out with an injury and that sucks rocks. But let's move on to the vanilla/chocolate swirl of this show.
Becky came out and remarked about how Lacey is coming after her on Raw, and she's interrupted by Ember Moon officially making the move to SD and getting all up in Becky's grill because she's here to make a statement and she wants the SD Women's title. Then Bayley comes down, also making the move (as a singles competitor), and she says she got all her hugs out on Raw and she wants a shot at the title as well. Then The IIconics come out to fuck with Bayley. Then we get Paige coming out to introduce her new fantastic tag team, and Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville come out saying they need no introduction and have been waiting for the reforming of Absolution, but waitaminnit, this is not the team that Paige wanted to introduce, and she brings out the team of Asuka and Kairi Sane! This leads to a brawl between all the women (except Becky, who's just hanging out watching the carnage) and to, of course, an 8-woman tag match. I know you're thinking right now, "Hey, Kayfabio, where's the bad here?"
Well, it's about Asuka. She was the easy call as to who should face Becky somewhat soon for the SD Women's title. Putting her in the Women's Tag division is not a good look because everyone knows that's a demotion. And there's nothing to indicate that Asuka should be demoted. The only thing wrong with Asuka is that Vince can't figure out how to book her well, and again, this is what Vince does with people he doesn't know how to book. Just stick 'em in a tag team. It's up to Vince to get these people over and Asuka should be at the very top of the Women's division on any brand. And maybe at some point, we'll get Asuka going after the singles belt but right now, Vince short-changed her again and that just really pisses me off. Aside from that, the match was actually really fun and really put over Kairi's entrance on the main roster. She's going to have a rabid fanbase and should hopefully end up being a big star. And this is also stacking some more babyfaces on SD in the Women's division and that's a big plus as well.
Now to the good, which was literally everything else.
The opening of the show with KO coming out to one of the biggest pops I've seen lately, addresses the Montreal fans in French and gets "Oui! Oui! Oui!" chants going, and brings out Kofi and Xavier Woods. Xavier addresses that they've lost 80% of the Up Up Down Down channel people to Raw and he wants Tyler Breeze on Smackdown. Then they address that Big E is out due to injury, and Kev asks if he can be an honorary member of New Day and wants to call himself "Big O" because it's funnier. They ask if he can get his pelvic area moving and KO begins to gyrate a bit. They give Kevin a crop top version of their shirt, and he gets down on one knee to be knighted by having a unicorn horn put on his head. These shenanigans continue throughout the show as KO has to eat a massive plate of cold pancakes (with no syrup or a beverage) and he has to be able to do Big E's intro. This whole thing was just super fun, and of course the expectation the whole show was that he was going to wrap up the main event by turning on New Day, but that didn't happen because they're apparently leaning into KO being a babyface for right now. This might last for a while; it might only last for one more episode, but Smackdown wisely utilized their biggest Canadian star for massive pops all night.
Carmella vs Charlotte was a terrific match as well, Mella has come a long way, and let's face it: Charlotte is always solid. It was just a really good match between these two. I was a little surprised that Charlotte went over since Carmella should be riding some momentum after winning the Uterus Cup at Mania, but Charlotte was probably the right choice for this.
The main event with New Day and Big O vs Shinsuke, Rusev and Cesaro was also really fun too, and I thought they were going to go with Kofi picking up the pin, but instead gave it to Big O, who hit Rusev with a Stunner that he totally oversold. It was still all just a lot of fun.
Buddy Murphy is on his way to Smackdown, so that should be cool as well.
Vince came out to introduce the "biggest acquisition in Smackdown history" and it turned out to be Elias. We all knew that this was a goofy swerve because since AJ joined Raw the night before, it would only make sense to put his, well... star power equivalent on Smackdown. So before Elias could play a little ditty, Roman Reigns' music hit, and the crowd popped hard for it. And he became a super babyface when he Superman Punched Vince. He then proclaimed that Smackdown was his yard now. Let's just hope that Vince doesn't rush him into any kind of title contender spot too soon. You have to get that belt off Kofi before Roman can challenge for it. But again, Roman going to SD is a smart move. There are a lot of great new rivalries that can be created, and it also makes sense to split him up from Seth, but I'm looking into the future and I can easily see Roman vs Seth at Survivor Series.
And my favorite moment of the night was Finn coming to Smackdown, which is literally the only thing I wanted from the Shake-Up, and he had a great match against Ali, which finished with Finn going over, which made me a little sad because I'd like to see Ali getting back to winning, but right now I'll settle for him having great matches, and Finn made Ali shine even in a loss. Finn coming to Smackdown is really going to give him some great rivalries to look forward to.
Now, you'd think that means that Samoa Joe is headed to Raw, but he's not confirmed as a move yet and that makes things really weird for the title scene. Right now, there are five titles on Smackdown and one that rotates between the two shows with Becky Two-Belts. You have Kofi as WWE Champion, The Hardys as Smackdown Tag champs, Finn as the IC champ, Joe as the US champ, and The IIconics as the Women's tag champs. Over on Raw, Seth is the Universal Champion, and Hawkins and Ryder are the Raw Tag champs. I don't know if this is emblematic of Smackdown's eventual move to Fox or what, but Raw needs another belt to give the mid-carders something to feud over.
Before we leave, let's take a look at who's now where:
Raw got AJ, Miz, Ricochet, Aleister Black, Erik and Ivar (grrrr), Andrade and Zelina, Rey, The Usos, Naomi, EC3, Lacey, Eric Young and Cedric. SD got Roman, Finn, Bayley, Ember, Kairi, Lars, Buddy, Liv Morgan, Elias, Gable, and stealth moves Mickie James, Apollo Crews, and Heavy Machinery.
Well, that's it for the main roster this week! Don't forget to check back tomorrow for my rundown of NXT, and we'll be here next week with more of the recaps of Raw and Smackdown!
Until next time, kids...
So let's start with the bad from Raw and just get that out of the way:
Ricochet and Aleister Black are remaining a tag team for the foreseeable future, because this is what Vince does when two tremendous talents come up from NXT and he doesn't know how to use them in a singles capacity. And not unlike the cartoonish creaking sound that Vince added to Aleister's entrance music, they added a Looney Tunes-esque ricocheting bullet sound to the beginning of Ricochet's entrance music. Now we really know why Ricochet was crying after his TakeOver match.
The most over woman in all of WWE had a totally meaningless match, and it was just a place-setter for an interruption. Becky Lynch had a match against Ruby Riott and all I kept thinking throughout was that I just felt so bad for all the members of the Riott Squad. They came out of the gate pretty hot, but ever since the rise of Ronda and The Man respectively, they've been relegated to props in service of that feud. And this match was hardly a barn-burner and more of a "we better finish this up quick because Lacey Evans is going to do something to piss everyone off". And it was discovered that Liv Morgan is going over to Smackdown effectively breaking up the Riott Squad. This honestly could be good or bad, but I'm going to lean towards bad because I don't know if anyone other than Ruby is a legit singles competitor yet, and they've spent so much time burying Ruby that I don't know if she's going to ever be able to recover without some serious rebranding.
Then there was Lacey's promo. Natalya came out first to Becky congratulating her on her Mania win, but she has her eyes on the Raw Women's title because she's "the best there is, the best there was and the best there'll ever be". Becky was about to accept when Lacey came out and said that the women were "nasty", and said that a real lady knows how to "curry favor" to get what she wants, and she convinced the McMahons that if she beat Nattie, she would become the #1 Contender for the Raw Women's title. There were so many moments of grossness in this promo. The "nasty women" evokes Donald Trump and we know where Vince's political leanings are so... that was a thing that was said. And the "curry favor" line was just fucking gross as all hell. Basically that verbiage implies that women should always use their sexuality to get ahead, and that has Vince's fingerprints all over it. I know that Lacey is heel as fuck, but this was just a bridge too far. I've never understood why a former Marine, particularly a female Marine, would be booked as a heel, but hey, good heels are hard to find, and Lacey is still finding her footing so I get it, but this was just such an awful promo.
The IIconics had a match with Bayley and new Raw competitor Naomi despite The IIconics not being on Raw. It wasn't a title match so why were they there? Look, I'm all for any excuse for more IIconics because I love them but this was just silly. And it does something to bring more light to huge elephant in the room and that is the absence of Sasha Banks. All the dirt sheets are talking about how she and Bayley apparently threw temper tantrums about losing the Women's Tag titles at Mania, how Sasha has apparently unfollowed WWE on Twitter and started following AEW, and how she skipped her post-Mania segment on the Wendy Williams Show. Now Bayley, for one night only, tagged with Naomi. I welcome Naomi to Raw, but this was not the way to bring her in.
EC3 apparently told someone higher up that he wanted competition, so he came out for a match and his opponent was Braun Strowman. There was never a match, but rather Braun hauling EC3 around the arena beating the tan off his body and put him through the stage beside the announce table with a chokeslam. This is a story I do not understand. First of all, is Braun a heel again? Because the events within this non-match really showed Braun being heel as fuck, but since we have absolutely zero context for EC3 as a character other than he likes to dress nice and pose in front of mirrors so we have no idea if he's a heel or babyface. Second, does Vince just really hate EC3? Because he hasn't had a decent match since his call-up, and he is just getting buried in every possible way out there. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he doesn't ask for his release soon (especially since everyone else seems to be doing that as well) because he's being treated like shit.
Eric Young was stealth-moved over to Raw because they need something for him to do since Sanity is no more after Alexander Wolfe requested his release to very little fanfare. Can we all just agree that the remaining members will be super-undercard players who will make appearances only in either lumberjack matches or unnecessary battle royals?
Now let's move to the vanilla/chocolate swirl aspects of this episode with are neither all good or all bad, but a mix of the two.
Our main event was the unholy triumvirate of Lashley, Corbin and McIntyre vs Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns and a mystery partner which ended up being revealed as AJ Styles. The move to Raw for AJ is good because it'll give him some new rivalries. But the move to Raw is very dumb for Styles since ten days ago on the Grandest Stage of Them All, he and Randy Orton went to war over who ran Smackdown, and with AJ winning that match, it seems only natural that he would continue to lord over SD. But here we are.
Andrade and Zelina Vega are over on Raw now, and despite him having a terrific match against Finn Balor (where Andrade pulled out a really cool new flippy move), he cut a promo before the match for 90 seconds speaking Spanish while in Montreal. It is my genuine fear they're going to try to turn him into Alberto Del Rio 2.0 and that would be a really bad move.
Elias came out and is wondering aloud why all these legends keep interrupting him, and it's clear to him that they're jealous. He gets some classic Elias heat by talking shit about The Habs, and then is interrupted by Rey Mysterio who uncharacteristically botched a springboard move but still did his best to save it. Rey drove Elias out of the ring, but was then taken out by Lars Sullivan with the Freak Accident and a massive powerbomb. Please see my recent post about NXT and Worlds Collide in order to read more about how sick I am of the powerbomb. So far, Lars has attacked a bunch of people in their forties and fifties. I know he's taking out legends, but in reality, he's taking out older people and that's not the way to build a monster. But at least Rey and Andrade are still on the same show.
The Moment of Bliss segment had Sami Zayn and it was really close to being perfect. Sami milked the shit out of the crowd pops and had his entrance music play three times and got the "Ole!" chants going hard. And then he naturally turned on the crowd by saying how much he loved Montreal but hated the people. He went on to continue his diatribe about how everyone's a critic and how all the fans project their toxic issues onto him. But then Alexa decided to play babyface and say that the problem is not with the fans but with him, and that's not a very good look for Alexa who should not be babyface at all right now. Or maybe ever. I don't understand why she just couldn't back him up and agree that Montreal sucked. Anyway, Sami will see us all in Hell.
Now let's get to the actually good parts, of which there were a few.
The show actually opened with Stephanie and Shane announcing the Superstar Shake-Up, and Shane trying to put himself over as the Best in the World (which was met with CM Punk chants because Montreal is a crazy good wrestling town), but Miz appeared and attacked him. Shane got in some quick jabs to the head and body (one of which smacked Miz's head and cut him open a bit) which Miz answered with a steel chair. It was a cool image to see this badass babyface version of Miz with blood dripping from his head wielding a steel chair. I'm fascinated to see how long they play this version of babyface Miz, but I'm guessing it'll be until it gets stale and that doesn't look to be anytime soon.
Roode and Gable are committed to their heel run for their final night together, and this paved the way for The Usos to come over to Raw, which I predicted would happen since they dropped the Smackdown Tag titles two nights after retaining them. This should help to breathe some new life into the floundering tag division on Raw, but Gable's gone over to Smackdown so hopefully this will lead to Roode staying heel as a singles competitor.
Cedric Alexander is going to be on Raw. I like Cedric a lot and there could be some really fun matches for him to have.
And props where props are due: the match between Natalya and Lacey Evans was surprisingly good. Evans has been doing some good work tightening up her in-ring skills, and hit an insane moonsault to finish the match up and get that #1 Contender spot. I'm not anywhere near convinced that Lacey should be the top female heel on the Raw roster but at least she had a really strong first outing on the main roster.
Before we go to Smackdown, we absolutely need to address the one thing that was universally despised by WWE fans and that was the 8-man tag match to start off the night. We already talked about the shitty sound effect added to Ricochet's otherwise totally appropriate and epic entrance music. He and Aleister were joined by Raw Tag champs Hawkins and Ryder to face off against The Revival and a new team, and I mean really new. It was a team that looked an awful lot like War Raiders but they were given more Nordic accoutrements, and were called The Viking Experience and Rowe and Hansen were renamed Erik and Ivar.
The. Viking. Experience.
Logically, I get it. Vince doesn't want 17k people chanting "WAR WAR WAR" on basic cable every Monday night. NXT is for the marks and the main roster is for the normies. So I get it.
But The Viking Experience is an exhibit at your local natural history museum, and decidedly not a badass tag team name. Most people are calling it the worst tag team name ever, and that's in the same era as the Boss 'N Hug Connection. So you know that people hate it. What does this mean for War Raiders in NXT? They're the titleholders there. Do they change them there, or does Hunter have the authority (no pun intended) to nix that bullshit? I hope so, because that name isn't going to do them any favors with the Full Sail crowd. Also what's with the inconsistency of the NXT champs either bringing or not bringing their titles? The last time we saw champs from NXT come to the main roster, it was Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano who brought their respective titles when they popped up in the very few episodes they were at. Kevin Owens brought out his NXT title when he debuted against John Cena. But here are
Now let's dig into Smackdown!
Let's start with the bad, and as per usual with Smackdown, there's much less of it than on Raw.
In a post-match segment, R-Truth was destroyed by new Smackdown regular Lars Sullivan again. So that's another 40-something superstar that he got to wreck. After that, though, Lars started to creep his way toward a cornered Carmella. It was way way way too creepy and gross. When will Vince learn that women face shit like that every day of their lives? This really was not good or smart. I don't even like it when Otis is face to face with someone like Alexa and yells "Pretty laaadiieeeee!" because it's just kinda gross. But leave it to Vince to Vince things up.
That's pretty much it for the bad, honestly, aside from the fact that Daniel Bryan is out with an injury and that sucks rocks. But let's move on to the vanilla/chocolate swirl of this show.
Becky came out and remarked about how Lacey is coming after her on Raw, and she's interrupted by Ember Moon officially making the move to SD and getting all up in Becky's grill because she's here to make a statement and she wants the SD Women's title. Then Bayley comes down, also making the move (as a singles competitor), and she says she got all her hugs out on Raw and she wants a shot at the title as well. Then The IIconics come out to fuck with Bayley. Then we get Paige coming out to introduce her new fantastic tag team, and Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville come out saying they need no introduction and have been waiting for the reforming of Absolution, but waitaminnit, this is not the team that Paige wanted to introduce, and she brings out the team of Asuka and Kairi Sane! This leads to a brawl between all the women (except Becky, who's just hanging out watching the carnage) and to, of course, an 8-woman tag match. I know you're thinking right now, "Hey, Kayfabio, where's the bad here?"
Well, it's about Asuka. She was the easy call as to who should face Becky somewhat soon for the SD Women's title. Putting her in the Women's Tag division is not a good look because everyone knows that's a demotion. And there's nothing to indicate that Asuka should be demoted. The only thing wrong with Asuka is that Vince can't figure out how to book her well, and again, this is what Vince does with people he doesn't know how to book. Just stick 'em in a tag team. It's up to Vince to get these people over and Asuka should be at the very top of the Women's division on any brand. And maybe at some point, we'll get Asuka going after the singles belt but right now, Vince short-changed her again and that just really pisses me off. Aside from that, the match was actually really fun and really put over Kairi's entrance on the main roster. She's going to have a rabid fanbase and should hopefully end up being a big star. And this is also stacking some more babyfaces on SD in the Women's division and that's a big plus as well.
Now to the good, which was literally everything else.
The opening of the show with KO coming out to one of the biggest pops I've seen lately, addresses the Montreal fans in French and gets "Oui! Oui! Oui!" chants going, and brings out Kofi and Xavier Woods. Xavier addresses that they've lost 80% of the Up Up Down Down channel people to Raw and he wants Tyler Breeze on Smackdown. Then they address that Big E is out due to injury, and Kev asks if he can be an honorary member of New Day and wants to call himself "Big O" because it's funnier. They ask if he can get his pelvic area moving and KO begins to gyrate a bit. They give Kevin a crop top version of their shirt, and he gets down on one knee to be knighted by having a unicorn horn put on his head. These shenanigans continue throughout the show as KO has to eat a massive plate of cold pancakes (with no syrup or a beverage) and he has to be able to do Big E's intro. This whole thing was just super fun, and of course the expectation the whole show was that he was going to wrap up the main event by turning on New Day, but that didn't happen because they're apparently leaning into KO being a babyface for right now. This might last for a while; it might only last for one more episode, but Smackdown wisely utilized their biggest Canadian star for massive pops all night.
Carmella vs Charlotte was a terrific match as well, Mella has come a long way, and let's face it: Charlotte is always solid. It was just a really good match between these two. I was a little surprised that Charlotte went over since Carmella should be riding some momentum after winning the Uterus Cup at Mania, but Charlotte was probably the right choice for this.
The main event with New Day and Big O vs Shinsuke, Rusev and Cesaro was also really fun too, and I thought they were going to go with Kofi picking up the pin, but instead gave it to Big O, who hit Rusev with a Stunner that he totally oversold. It was still all just a lot of fun.
Buddy Murphy is on his way to Smackdown, so that should be cool as well.
Vince came out to introduce the "biggest acquisition in Smackdown history" and it turned out to be Elias. We all knew that this was a goofy swerve because since AJ joined Raw the night before, it would only make sense to put his, well... star power equivalent on Smackdown. So before Elias could play a little ditty, Roman Reigns' music hit, and the crowd popped hard for it. And he became a super babyface when he Superman Punched Vince. He then proclaimed that Smackdown was his yard now. Let's just hope that Vince doesn't rush him into any kind of title contender spot too soon. You have to get that belt off Kofi before Roman can challenge for it. But again, Roman going to SD is a smart move. There are a lot of great new rivalries that can be created, and it also makes sense to split him up from Seth, but I'm looking into the future and I can easily see Roman vs Seth at Survivor Series.
And my favorite moment of the night was Finn coming to Smackdown, which is literally the only thing I wanted from the Shake-Up, and he had a great match against Ali, which finished with Finn going over, which made me a little sad because I'd like to see Ali getting back to winning, but right now I'll settle for him having great matches, and Finn made Ali shine even in a loss. Finn coming to Smackdown is really going to give him some great rivalries to look forward to.
Now, you'd think that means that Samoa Joe is headed to Raw, but he's not confirmed as a move yet and that makes things really weird for the title scene. Right now, there are five titles on Smackdown and one that rotates between the two shows with Becky Two-Belts. You have Kofi as WWE Champion, The Hardys as Smackdown Tag champs, Finn as the IC champ, Joe as the US champ, and The IIconics as the Women's tag champs. Over on Raw, Seth is the Universal Champion, and Hawkins and Ryder are the Raw Tag champs. I don't know if this is emblematic of Smackdown's eventual move to Fox or what, but Raw needs another belt to give the mid-carders something to feud over.
Before we leave, let's take a look at who's now where:
Raw got AJ, Miz, Ricochet, Aleister Black, Erik and Ivar (grrrr), Andrade and Zelina, Rey, The Usos, Naomi, EC3, Lacey, Eric Young and Cedric. SD got Roman, Finn, Bayley, Ember, Kairi, Lars, Buddy, Liv Morgan, Elias, Gable, and stealth moves Mickie James, Apollo Crews, and Heavy Machinery.
Well, that's it for the main roster this week! Don't forget to check back tomorrow for my rundown of NXT, and we'll be here next week with more of the recaps of Raw and Smackdown!
Until next time, kids...
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