“The A Show” – Smackdown Live Recap/Reactions – 4/24/2018

The Blue Brand is in Kentucky holding it down before they all have to fly half way around the world for the Greatest Royal Rumble.

Guess Who’s Back, Back Again

Well, the scales of the superstar shakeup may have again favored Raw, but they managed to keep AJ and Nakamura, picked up Samoa Joe, and at the pleading of Daniel Bryan, the former and maybe soon to be Intercontinental Champion The Miz is back on the blue brand, so it is “The A Show” once again.

Let’s digress for a moment, if we may.  How long exactly has WWE known they were going to clear Daniel Bryan?  There’s absolutely no way in hell that his verbal feud with The Miz was by accident.  Someone has known for a while and they were laying the groundwork for his return for months and months before even the Shane McMahon/KO/Sami Zayn stuff started.

Anyway, what’s even more confusing is that it does not appear that Miz will be DB’s next opponent, as it would appear they are gearing up to put him across from the returning Republican, Big Cass.

Miz TV gets started and Miz plays the “I had a baby, I’ve changed” card, but when he asks DB to come out to join him as his guest, he is instead greeted by Cass, who finishes getting dressed at the top of the ramp before making his way down.  All in all, it wasn’t a bad promo from Cass.  It wasn’t an Enzo, but it was fairly good considering how shit he’s been in the past with a microphone.  And he didn’t misspell anything, which is good.

We later find out that DB was on his way out when he was attacked in the backstage area.  It would appear that Cass was putting his jacket back on because it’s harder to beat down a Goat with a blazer constricting motion.

It’s fine, Miz-Daniel Bryan for a title at Summerslam should be awesome (no pun intended, but very much appreciate the accident).

The Stuff in the Middle

• The IIconics def. Asuka and Becky Lynch via Peyton Royce rolling up Becky and using the ropes for leverage.  Now that Asuka lost the streak, we’ll likely start seeing more things like this, which is great because streaks tend to get really stale.
• A contract signing puts Carmella and Charlotte in the ring together.  Before Charlotte makes her way down, Carmella rolls her own highlight reel.  When Charlotte gets in the ring, Carmella trolls the ever loving shit out of her, holding the belt in her face repeatedly and “Wooooo”-ing, then doing the Ric Flair strut.  Charlotte signs the contract and flips the table on top of the Moonwalker Trashtalker.
• Shelton Benjamin def. Randy Orton.  They reversed the script from last week, having Randy Orton interrupt Jeff Hardy’s entrance for a Shelton Benjamin challenge.  Hardy sat ringside for the match.  Orton was up, but a masked individual attacked Hardy’s injured leg on the outside, then Randy Orton pulled them in the ring and unmasked Sunil Singh, laying him out with an RKO.  The distraction was actually enough for Benjamin to hit whatever the hell his finisher is rather than eating an RKO Outta Nowhere which was sort of disappointing.
• Jimmy Uso def. Erick Rowan.  It was sneaky, as Naomi did her full entrance to create the distraction necessary for Uso to get the upset.  All things considered, they better give Rowan and Harper more screen time to work in Jeddah.  Bludgeon Brothers are bringing the straps back across the pond come Saturday morning.

What an Asshole

This week’s main event brought us a 3-on-3 tag match, as AJ is joined by The Good Brothers in a Club Reunion and Shinsuke teams up with Rusev Day.

It needs to be pointed out that Gallows and Anderson were given an opportunity to look damn good in this one.  A lot of times they would have gotten the hell kicked out of them and then AJ would make the hot tag and get the job done.  Not this time.

I also need to inform you that if you were a fan of chanting along with Nakamura’s entrance theme, it is now a giant pain in the ass because they’ve added some “metal” Japanese Band playing and singing foreign lyrics over top of your favorite entrance music (this side of EC3).  I have yet to decide if this was another subtly xenophobic Vince move or not, I’ll give it time.

The good guys seemed poised to win, but Shinsuke would get a blind tag in and while Karl Anderson was distracted with Aiden English, Nakamura would set up to hit the Kinshasa and pick up the win.

He wasn’t done yet though, as AJ would come in for a bit of retribution, that would inevitably lead to his 40+ year old sack taking another brutal uppercut from the King of Strong Style.

While he was laid out, Shinsuke decided to add punishment with a Kinshasa, but Anderson dove in front and took the attack for him.  AJ, still writhing around in that sort of gut wrenching agony that only someone who has been clocked in the bits several times can relate to, slithered around as Nakamura picked Karl up once again and hit yet another vicious Kinshasa on the back side of his head.

Makes you wonder why they have so much trouble selling guys as heels when all it’s taken to completely turn me against Nakamura was a bunch of dick punches.

That was your Smackdown Live for Tuesday, April 24, 2018.  Not much gained, but at least The Good Brothers got their day in the sun and Carmella got to go full heel for a few minutes before being squashed by a folding table.