Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! – Smackdown Recap – June 20, 2017

There’s a twelve year old trapped inside me that won’t let me do this recap without pointing out that Smackdown Live is Live from the Nutter Center at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.  If you don’t understand why I giggled, then you are significantly more mature than I am, not that the bar is set incredibly high.

For tonight’s show, we were promised that D-Bry would be in the house to rectify the situation regarding the “controversial” women’s Money in the Bank match, and he was already supposed to be here for some sort of big announcement anyway, so we’ll get two big things….maybe….booking.  Let’s see what happens.  It’s been a hell of a long work day, so I’m going to escape fully into “Sports Entertainment” tonight, thorough opinions expressed and all.  We’re also going to highlight actual matches tonight, rather than just toss them into bullet points, because the wrestling itself seems to get overshadowed by a lot of the ridiculousness and I’m not doing that here, damn it.

There’s Not a Damn Thing You Can Do About It

Carmella and Ellsworth cut a promo about being Ms. Money in the Bank.  Neither one of them are great at promos, and Ellsworth only got worse when he adopted this new character.  I won’t bore you with the details of this, it just killed a few minutes of television.

In the back, Daniel Bryan assures the rest of the women’s division he’s going to take care of it.

NEW DAY!

So the Usos, as the warden’s of their own penitentiary, staged a “prison break” at Money in the Bank, as they retained their titles via the Champions Advantage and taking the count out via escape through the audience.

New Day invite The Usos to join them in the New Day Playground.  I’ll take it, I think I’m desperate enough for someone to take the titles and get The Usos off TV for a while that they could have called it about a million things and I’d be on board.  Hell, they could have invited them to compete in Roman’s Yard, and I wouldn’t have been upset about it because it would have felt like one of those inside jokes The New Day tell because they’re really just uber-fanboys.

Big E is set for singles competition against Jimmy Uso, and both have their counterparts at ringside.  It isn’t a bad match at all, but Big E wins via the Big Ending.

How the Hell is Dolph Ziggler upright?

In case you missed Money in the Bank, Dolph Ziggler got sunset flip powerbombed off the top of the tall ladder.  I just assumed his internal organs had exploded and he was dead at ringside because he disappeared for the remainder of the match.  But no, he’s upright and he’s ready to renew this series of matches with Shinsuke Nakamura, who took a number of decent bumps himself on Sunday night.  I was really hoping he’d get right into a battle with Baron Corbin, but as we always say….booking.

Don’t think that I’m being down on this match, at all.  I am a massive Dolph Ziggler fan, and not just because he actually acknowledges when I tweet the ever loving hell out of him.  Ziggler is an incredibly gifted wrestler, like legitimate wrestler, and it shines whenever he’s in the ring.  I also love watching him sell moves, because it reminds me of the Attitude Era, where you had to flail around like a fish every time you got bumped at all.  He most definitely puts on a show when he’s put in the ring with a quality opponent, which he will always have when they put him opposite Nakamura.  His work with AJ Styles has been pretty great as well.

This match was pretty damn great actually, and long.  This had as many false finishes as a lot of PPV matches.  Pay attention to Tom Phillips commentary during this match, too.  He’s damn good, and I already miss him on 205 Live.  Dolph Ziggler eats a wicked Kinshasa as Shinsuke picks up the pinfall.

Kevin Owens New Face of America Open Challenge….psssh, he don’t want none

Probably a good thing, when is the last time he actually defended this thing?

Kevin Owens offers an open challenge to a local talent from the Dayton, Ohio area.  He gets more than he bargained for as AJ Styles answers the call.  Kevin Owens lets AJ know that the open challenge was for people from Dayton, and do you know who just moved to Dayton, Ohio?  Chad Gable.  So yes, American Alpha is still around.

Chad Gable comes out firing on all cylinders, hitting a number of consecutive belly to back suplexes to start the match off.  Cable is a ridiculous talent, so it’s good to see him back in the ring.  He’s also ridiculously hairless, and now you’ll notice it every time you see him.  AJ stayed on commentary, supporting the story that Chad Gable moved to Dayton this morning.

Gable put on a clinic, but with a Pop-up Powerbomb, Kevin Owens retains the United States Championship.

Other Stuff from the Middle:

• Naomi has a Naomi interview backstage, it’s interrupted by Lana.  She basically plays to Naomi’s pride, challenging her to a rematch because she only lost on account of the distraction from Carmella, so next week she gets another title match.  Naomi threatened to slap her back to Russia, which I am assuming is a fancy way of saying Gainesville, Florida.  Either that or Trump traded Florida for election help, so technically it would be slapping her back to Russia.
• Periodically, DB is approached backstage by various groups of women’s competitors, and all he does is tell us he’s going to come to an official decision.  They should have just led the show with this.  Honestly, Charlotte should have opened the show saying that it doesn’t matter who has the belt come Summerslam, she’s the Number One contender, and she’ll be facing the champ in Brooklyn.  I mean, she’s the Roman of the Women’s Division, right?
• A prerecorded interview with Randy Orton confirms that this feud is not over and we’ll have to see them in at least one more match.  For those of you who don’t read the rumors around the internet, its quite likely this feud goes to a Punjabi Prison match to close their trilogy out.  He also said he’s going to fly to India and start handing out RKOs to Jinder’s family as retribution for the unnecessary involvement of his father in the match.
• Daniel Bryan lets Sami Zayn know that he’s got a match against Baron Corbin next week, Becky Lynch hijacks the conversation for her moment with DB to talk about the MITB match.  Also, her new t-shirt looks like Steampunk Starbucks.
• Sami Zayn and Tye Dillinger are in Sonic commercial, and it’s actually funny.

Flight of the Valkyries

It’s amazing how much that works in this situation.  For those of you not up to speed on your Norse Mythology, a valkyrie is one of a host of female figures who choose those who may die in battle and those who may live.  I mean, nobody is dying here, it’s the PG era still.

Daniel says he has a big decision ahead, and invites all the women from the MITB match to the ring.  Becky Lynch is so pretty.  Oh, Ellsworth is there too.

Charlotte – “Natty, I’m out here for a decision.  If you don’t stop talking, I’m going to make you look like James Ellsworth.”

Tamina – “Charlotte, shut up or I’ll make you look like James Ellsworth.”

Yes, that happened.  I think Tamina had a stroke.  I don’t know what the hell happened.

In any event, Daniel Bryan has stripped Carmella of the briefcase and the women will get a redo next Tuesday on Smackdown.  As he left the ring, it broke down and the five women went after each other.  Eventually, Carmella was alone with Becky and Charlotte, and was victim of Natural Selection followed up by a lengthy Dis-Arm-Her.  So Tamina will get the briefcase, naturally.

Main Event – Jinder Mahal vs Luke Harper (Non-Title)

I was incredibly excited to see Luke Harper get the top spot on the card, and really just excited to see this match actually.  About 45 seconds into the contest we went to a 4 minute commercial break.

This match was a great performance from both, particularly from Harper, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise at all that Luke Harper was impressive in a match.

Baron Corbin walked to the ring about half way through the match, but he essentially pulled a Carmella then walked back to the back.  Harper went for a roll up on the distraction, when he attempted the Discuss Clothesline, in typical Mahal victory fashion, one of the Bollywood Boys got up on the apron to draw his attention just enough for Jinder to land the Collos (is that how you spell it?  I have no idea.)

Randy Orton would then make his way toward the ring, and Jinder serves up the Bollywood Boys to slow him down, but he would not be deterred.  This feud has been absolute gold for Randy Orton.  It’s been quite a while since he clearly put this much effort into his performance.  After picking Jinder to pieces, he geared up for the RKO, but the Singh’s would attack him as Mahal escaped through the crowd.  Both Singh brothers would get an RKO for their troubles.

That’s our show.  It was a pretty good one.  Honestly the only part of it that didn’t do anything for me was the Women’s segment with Daniel Bryan.  It just seemed to go on forever and the outcome and everything that happened was pretty much exactly what you expected.

I’ll see you tomorrow night as I roundup 205 Live and NXT for the week.  Watch 205 Live, Mustafa Ali finally gets a shot at Drew Gulak.  Hopefully a big win here and he’s moving up the big board towards a Cruiserweight Championship opportunity.

Also, do me a huge favor and tweet @wweshop to give Mustafa Ali a shirt already.