#TalkForever – Smackdown Live Recap – October 10, 2017

Grand Rapids, Michigan plays host to the fallout show for a pretty damn great Hell in a Cell PPV.  The Usos and The New Day brought the house down on Sunday night.  Their opening segment this evening set the stage for what would be TalkaMania for tonight’s broadcast.

Back of the Line

So, I know in my time I’ve been hard on the Usos.  I never got it.  I still don’t necessarily enjoy their gimmick, but by God if they haven’t put on fantastic match after fantastic match in this feud with The New Day, and Hell in a Cell took it to new heights.  So naturally, there’s a lot of respect there.  But, it was lost somewhere in the ten minutes it took for them to get The New Day to come to the ring to tell them, another ten minutes of indecipherable chatting between the two teams at that point, then the entire tag team division barely getting a moment to speak in between The Usos telling teams they suck and that they’re at the back of the line.

Shining moment: Big E dancing in the ring to the Breezango entrance music.  Epic.

Daniel Bryan would come out to declare that the Tag Team Number One Contenders would be decided in a Fatal Four Way match, pitting The Hype Bros, Shelton & Gable, The Ascension and Breezango.

Meh.  Chad Gable and Shelton Benjamin are the new number one contenders.  I mean, aside from both of them being kind of boring, are you surprised?

The Stuff in the Middle

• Becky Lynch def. Carmella via the Dis-Arm-Her.  Before the match, there was a backstage brawl between the entire women’s division.
• Kevin Owens talked for f***ing ever.  Then he called out Sami Zayn who talked for f***ing ever.  Jesus, this segment went on for what felt like two days.  Apparently Owens met St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and was told he was still needed on Earth, and St. Peter provided him with a guardian angel.  Sami isn’t a guardian angel, but he wouldn’t let Shane kill the man who’s always been his “Brother”.  This bullet it already ridiculously long winded and I could seriously go on and on and it still wouldn’t be the mind numbing crap that was this entire segment.
• During every match on this show, they did the split screen commercial break.  Why the hell couldn’t they show me the entire match on any one of them and go to commercial during either of these insanely long and completely pointless promo segments?
• Randy Orton and Shinsuke Nakamura def. Aiden English and Rusev via an RKO-Kinshasa Combination.  This match was significantly shorter than it should have been, and even though I’ve gone Vegan, I found myself craving Popeye’s Chicken because I swear they showed three Popeye’s commercials while it was going on.
• Bobby Roode went through his entire entrance, Ziggler did his silent walk down but stopped short.  There was nothing of substance here.
• Baron Corbin needs you to know that his title reign is simply him trolling you, because you’re a whiner on the internet.  The #DumpsterFire cut the only promo on this show that wasn’t actually a dumpster fire.

• Luke Harper and Erick Rowan are returning, and they’ve been repackaged as “The Bludgeon Brothers”…….I’ll hold judgment, I’m already so done with this episode I don’t want to put the cart before the horse on this.  If nothing else, it puts Luke Harper back in the ring and back on TV.  Please God let them actually use the hammers in match, like a Jeff Jarrett guitar.

United States Championship Rematch Main Event

I never thought I would see this day, and I never thought that I would be excited to see AJ Styles lose to somebody, but Corbin trolling is the absolute best thing to come in the fallout of Hell in a Cell.  Between Talking Smack, the prematch and his post victory promos tonight, and just his general state of being, he’s on fire, and in a good way, not like the fire I referenced above.  Oh yeah, Baron Corbin def. AJ Styles with the End of Days to retain his United States Championship.

Final Thoughts

Not a great episode, and it didn’t really even set up a whole lot of anything for them to build on, except The Usos vs Gable-Benjamin at some point not currently specified in the future.  I was really hoping for a tag team tournament to run them to Survivor Series, or The Authors of Pain.  For some reason I’m desperate for The Authors of Pain to write the Smackdown Chapter in the Book of Pain.

Also, coming off a damn good PPV, this show was just complete crap after last night’s Raw.  I guess there’s no sense in really focusing on the Smackdown after a Shield reunion, since that’s all that will matter for the next week or two.  I don’t really get into the shows that are overly focused on promo time and the few matches that are peppered in barely get any screen time.  That’s why I initially loved 205 Live so much.  NXT has gotten back to that after seeming to have lost that focus for a bit.  You had Asuka kicking ass and Bobby Roode’s entrance, why did anyone have to speak?  I’m hoping it was an anomaly and they’re sort of trying to stave off stealing any of the Raw thunder going into TLC.  Here’s hoping next week gives us something better.

Now go watch 205 Live.  Rich Swann vs TJP in a 2 out of 3 falls match.  Should be freaking great.