SmackDown Needed More Hype Than This

WWE SmackDown rolled into Barcelona, Spain for the final stop before Clash in Italy, and while the crowd brought a ton of energy, the show itself left me feeling like WWE needed a little more. The biggest talking point came from the face-to-face between Cody Rhodes and Gunther, where Gunther called Cody a “nepo baby” and Cody fired back by saying Gunther just wants attention. It wasn't bad, but for a world title feud heading into a major PLE, I expected something that hit harder and made this match feel absolutely must-see.

There were still some good moments throughout the night. Axiom got a huge hometown reaction in Spain, Jade Cargill continued building momentum heading into her showdown with Rhea Ripley, and Trick Williams remains one of the most entertaining stars on the roster. That said, I’m starting to wonder if some of the outside attention around Trick is beginning to overshadow Trick himself. The pieces are there, but not everything on this show felt like it reached the level it needed to for a go-home episode.

The highlight of the night for me was Chelsea Green. After years of making the most out of every segment she's given, she picked up what might be the biggest win of her WWE career. That was the moment that stood out the most and felt genuinely meaningful. Overall, SmackDown was far from a bad show, but when you're one show away from Clash in Italy, I wanted more excitement, more urgency, and more hype than what we got in Barcelona.

#smackdown #chelseagreen #codyrhodeswwe #gunther #wwesmackdown  

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Transcript

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Backdown was in Spain tonight, and I was hoping for a dog and pony show, but I think I more got a snail show. Like maybe like, you know, snail racing. I think that's more of what the show I got tonight. Chelsea Green, though, getting the biggest win of her career. That was super cool. Sammy Zayn continuing to be the last good guy in WWE. That's cool. But everything else, I don't know. I don't know. You know, Gunther calling Cody a Nepo baby. Yeah, yeah, okay. And then Cody saying that you just want attention to Gunther. I mean, that's the go home angle. That's what we're really selling their match on. Like, maybe if that was their first promo, but like I kind of wanted to see a little more than Gunther just saying, I retired Bill Goldberg, I retired AJ Styles, I tapped out John Cena, and then I'm going to do that to you. That was the go-home angle. This is what I've done, and I'll do it to you too. And then just walk away. Could have uh could have could have done with a little more hype. You know, we're in Spain. Give the give the people of Spain, give the people of Spain a a show, something to remember, you know? But yeah. We start off, we start off SmackDown. Well, you know what? First, actually, let's talk about the the belt giveaway. At 30,000 subscribers, I'm gonna give away this belt. All you gotta do to win is comment below and subscribe to the channel, and you can win this belt right here. It's not a toy, people, it's a replica. So let's get on with our one take, one shot smackdown review where I where I do a review immediately following the TV show. And that way you get my gut reaction. This was in Spain, so there were spoilers out there if you didn't watch it on Netflix. For some reason, my VPN was working tonight, so I was actually able to watch it somewhat early. Allegedly, allegedly, I allegedly watched it early because I don't admit to to any wrongdoing and improper use of VPNs. So allegedly I watched it early with a VPN. And uh that made a lot of difference though, if I had done that, because then I wouldn't have to sit through the laborious task of watching all the commercials. SmackDown is so much better when you when you can when you can skip the commercials. Gosh, gosh, we suffer here in the United States because man alive, Smackdown is so much easier to digest without the just the constant barrage of TKO trying to fill their bank accounts. I'm I I know, I know that corporations have to make money, but I mean, I mean, like, sometimes TKO takes it a little too far. And by a little, I mean a lot, way too much with the ads and stuff. So so being able to fast forward it and skip certain aspects of the show was very like it made it so much better. We start off with Jade Cargill and the baddies, they go to the ring, and then we have Rhea Ripley, she goes to the ring, and then we have Alexa Bliss and Charlotte Flair, they go to the ring, and it really seems like like Alexa Bliss does not like Jade Cargill. She did cut up like a promo on her saying, listen, I'm gonna give you a warning. Like, I will destroy you on the microphone before your career even starts. Like, that was either good acting or some real venom in her voice. And then we have ourselves a matchup. It's gonna be Jade versus Alexa Bliss. It's a decent matchup. You know, I think Jade has actually gotten a lot better. I think a lot of people remember Jade Cardiel from like a year or two ago. I think she did fine in tonight's match. And I actually really liked her match with Rhea Ripley at WrestleMania, and I think it'll be a low-key banger on uh Clash in Italy. Anyway, so we have this match and Alexa Bliss lost. I Alexa Bliss is starting, I'm starting to worry about Alexa Bliss. You know, it was okay for her to to to lose here and there, but now she just like she is the jobber of the singles, of the singles matchups when it comes to her and Charlotte Flair. I think we need to start giving Alexa Bliss some wins. Now, I'm not saying she should have beat Jay Cargill, not right here because Jade is a number one contender. Jade needed to win, but maybe we should just not have put her in this situation. Or we need to start giving Alexa Bliss some wins here and there. So it's not just loss after loss after loss. You get what I'm saying? I think she still has a lot of value. In fact, the the audience absolutely loved her. I think they were chanting for her more so than than than most tonight. But Alexa Bliss does lose after, you know, the baddies get involved, and then Rhea and Charlotte, they chase her away. We do a move, Jay Cargill's finisher on a chair, and it looked really bad. Like, I wish they would don't replay, don't replay Alexa Bliss, because it was very obvious that she didn't made no connection with the chair, but they sold it like she did. And, you know, later she will have, you know, the ice on her head, and Charlotte's all like, oh, you beat up my friend. She walks out, and and Rhea's like, is she okay? And she's like, I'm gonna, you better do something about this. Otherwise, I'm gonna do something about this. And I hate that, I hate that Charlotte and Rhea are just on the same page. I feel like those two, even if they're both babyfaces, should always kind of have a tension, an underlying tension between them, and should always just never like each other. Seems like they kind of sort of like each other right now. Um, not best friends, but at least like, you know, I mean, they're talking cordial. I don't think they should be talking cordial to each other. But that said, I think what is what's gonna happen the play here is that Rio will beat Jade, and then Jade will go have a feud with Charlotte. But yes, so that's that right there. Then we have the MFTs. They fight Damien Priest and Damien Priest and uh Royce Keys. R-Truth did the thing where he's like, he gets Damien Priest and Royce Keyes were at like kind of like fight like fighting with each other verbally, and then he tricks them by saying, Are you scared of the MFTs? I'm not scared of the MFTs. Are you scared of the MFTs? I'm not scared of the MFTs. Are you both scared of the MFTs? No, we're not both scared. Okay, then fine, you're fighting the MFTs. And then he runs away, they're like, What? Uh-oh, now we're fighting the MFTs. So that was that was funny. And by the time the match was over, it seemed like Damien Priest had come to the conclusion that Royce Keys is not out to get him. Because he was saying, like, I don't know if I can trust you, Royce. Seems like Solva wants you so bad. What if you're gonna turn on me? But you know, he could see that Royce was getting beat up throughout this whole thing. So, like, I think Damien Priest was like, Alright, this guy's not that bad, which kind of sucks. Honestly, I was kind of liking this idea of a babyface Damien Priest versus a babyface Royce Keys. I thought that was good, but it looks like now Damien is just gonna trust him because R Truth will come out in the match when even though he's not supposed to, even though he's the tag team champion. I don't know why we don't just strip him of the titles, because if he's that injured, he should be stripped of the titles, but no, he R-Truth comes out, he gets beat up, which then Royce Keys gets beat up, which allows Damien Priest to get distracted. One, two, three, Tala Tunga beats him. Solo says, There's still rub in my family, and then they bounce. All right, so that's that's that. Sammy Zayn, the last good guy, he goes up to Cody Rhodes. He's like, Cody, I think you owe me an apology. Love that. I love that he wanted an apology. Cody's like, what? Uh yeah, yeah, I owe you an apology. He's like, Yeah, man, I didn't have to fight my friend. You last week wanted to fight my friend. And then when Gunther got involved, I tried to save you. And then, and then when I hit Gunther, you you attacked me. So I saw you after you got like you were getting choked out by Guther at the end. I I fought against my good guy urges, and I walked away to teach you a lesson. Oh my god. That took some that took some brain work to spin it that way, but I love that. I loved how Sammy was able to to work it into a way that he was still the good guy. He was teaching Cody a lesson. He was teaching, and that's that's important. You want friends who are willing to teach you the hard lessons in life. That's tough love. So I love Sammy Zayn for that. He will be talking to Johnny Gargano, and Johnny Gargano's just planking, and he's just, you know, he's just there. He's just there, collecting a paycheck, probably got whatever. I don't know. It's like, I was never a huge Johnny Gargano fan. I know that's sacrilege to the black and gold NXT, but like I think he could be doing a little more, a little more. But at the same time, if WWE wanted to pay me to just go lay down on surfaces and and and give me TV time just looking like this, I would do it. Not gonna lie, I would do it. But Sami Zayn is talking to Johnny, and then Zack Ryder, Matt Cardona, he comes up and like, what's what's up, man? What are you doing? I I hate that Matt Cardona. Like, every almost every single one of his matches revolves around him sticking up for Cody Rhodes in some some fashion. Like, what do you mean you don't like Cody right now? Hey, you turned on Cody, Randy. I want to fight you. What are you doing to my boy Cody Rhodes? It's like, alright, dude. Alright. We get it. You and Cody are friends. But like, if if he's not if he's not name-dropping Cody, he's not getting matches. And well, he name-dropped Cody Rhodes and Sammy Zayn's like, you know, we've known each other for a while, so they have a match. They have a match, and it went a very long time, but it was still a good match. I feel though matches are a little too long in WWE still for TV. Like, I like long matches on PLEs, but I like shorter matches on TV because I want to see more matches or I want to see more stories. But no, we got a long match, it was a good match. Sami Zayn wins, and he continues his descent into his good guyness with his three rider dies. Love the rider dies. Now, Spain does love Sami Zayn, so I hope they kind of play into that and they do more of a Bret Hart gimmick where in the rest of the world he's a good guy, and then and at home in the US, he's a bad guy. But the problem with that is that, like, honestly, everybody just cheers. The WWE universe is just gonna cheer when they want to cheer. Danhausen, he was like, he was there and he's doing his thing again, still trying to raise the gingerbread man from the dead. And and Miz comes out. Miz is like, dude, like we well, he didn't say, dude. He's like, we can't have this match, and this is so hilarious. Kit Wilson, I I think this is real, but I'm not 100% sure. At first it sounded so far-fetched, but then I started seeing that this is real. So, like, take it with a grain of salt, but it said that Kit Wilson couldn't get into Spain because of airport security and all the moisturizer he has, and so it just plays more into Dan Housen's curse. And Miz is like, This, I can't do this. We can't have the match. He's supposed to face Axiom, and and and then we have Nick Aldous says, Nope, you're gonna do it. So he goes to face Axiom, they have a matchup. Of course, Miz is gonna lose because Triple H has forgotten that Miz is a WrestleMania main inventor, and Axiom loses. However, it was in front of his home people, so that is nice. That is nice. I like when you can win in front of your your mom and dad. I don't I don't know if his mom and dad were there. I didn't see any, I didn't see any old people with masks. Doesn't and so the way he wins though is Miz is on the top rope and the lights kind of flicker because of Danhausen's experiment, and then Axiom takes advantage and wins. Miz will later say this is an unsafe work environment because, you know, I'm getting curt because of the lights, the pyro attacking me while I'm in matches. And Nick is like, you're right. They go to Danhausen. Danhausen sprays Miz with like, you know, the extinguisher, and he runs away. We have Nick about to touch uh take the the the the the what is that the blanket, the blanket off the gingerbread man, dead gingerbread man RIP, and Danhausen's like, don't touch that. So that was pretty much it for Danhausen in the in the segment. But Danhausen's always funny. He's a good time. What else do we have? Tiffany Strand's kind of a jerk. She's like, Chelsea Green just wants to be your friend. Chelsea Green is just like, please be my friend. And Tiffany's just like, like, no, I'm not gonna be your friend. And she's like, it's not that deep, Chelsea. Like, you helped me, thanks, but ba. And so she leaves, and then Chelsea's like, yeah, cool, whatever. We have then later we'll have Nia Jax and Lash Legend. I kind of want these two to be gone. The fact that they have lost two out of two of their rematches with in the tag team division. I'm kind of over them as a as a unit together. I kind of want Lash to just go on her own at this point. But Lash and Naya go to Tiffany and, like, yeah, well, don't worry, we'll take care of that Chelsea Green problem for you. And then Tiffany starts thinking, ooh, I don't like Naya. So Tiffany will get involved in the Chelsea Green Naya match. Chelsea Green was looking really, really good. And if you know from earlier in the year on the Unreal documentary, Michael P. S. Hayes, someone really high in the WWE, said that Chelsea Green is just not main event material. And while, yes, this is technically a mid-card like kind of storyline because Chelsea Green has the US title, like it's Naya Jax. And Tiffany does help by hitting Naya with the belt, and Chelsea Green will get the win. This was really big for Chelsea Green. Now, Chelsea Green is the first US champion, but I really think her beating Naya Jax is the biggest win of her career. And it was really nice to see. Chelsea was very surprised. She went to Tiffany and be like, Tiffany, thank you, thank you. And Tiffany was like, no, no, no, no. I just kind of did it because I don't like them. And so this is a running story right here. But Tiffany's kind of looking like a jerk for being a baby face. But you know, at least it's something. I mean, honestly, at least it's something, you know. And I guess on some level, if Chelsea, like, if you don't want to be someone's friend, you shouldn't, like, you shouldn't have to be their friend. But but Chelsea Green is definitely coming out looking the best out of this whole situation. Don't like Naya and Lash just continuously losing, though. But yeah, way to go, Chelsea Green. I really hope this will actually get her into the main event scene. I think she would be excellente. So we have Trick Williams, he comes out with Little Yachty. I really like Little Yachty and Trick together, but it seems like it seems like that that little Yachty is starting to take more of the center stage of this act, or or it's becoming a 50-50 act. And I don't think it should be a 50-50 act. I think, I think little Yachty is here to completely highlight Trick Williams. Like Trick says something, and then Little Yachty's like, yeah, uh-huh, talk, preach. You know, he's just kind of there to be like, you know, sound bites for uh Trick Williams. But it seems like now little Yachty is taking 50% of the interview time, and I don't like that. I want Trick to have 90% of the interview time. So like I'm starting to get a little like, I'm not, it's not like red alert on on Little Yachty yet, but like I am starting to scratch my my my chin and be like, uh, oh that's a quote. Quote me on that. Uh so little Yachty, don't hate him yet, but but let's let's let Trick talk more. As he's talking, Carmelo Hayes comes out, and Carmelo Hayes is like, you only beat me last week because of Ricky Sait. Carmelo Hayes is doing a lot better on the microphone, doing a lot better on the microphone in the crowd, crowd was all about him. I can tell I want him and Trick to have a really proper feud. I don't know if Carmelo Hayes was like maybe holding back because he wasn't like as familiar with the other wrestlers, but he has like maybe has a true friendship with Trick Williams. So you're like, you know, when you're it's your buddy, you could roast him a little harder. And while it did seem like he was roasting Trick Williams a little harder, and it's really is showing a lot of confidence in Trick, and it's it's it's actually the crowd is picking up on that because I feel like they were actually cheering Carmelo Hayes and not just okay, it's time to it's time to cheer Carmelo Hayes now. Yeah, as part of just like that's just what we do, you know, because we're all robots. It feels like, oh no, we actually like this guy. And Trick Williams is so likable that like it's hard to get it's hard to get cheers against Trick Williams because Trick is awesome. So they're going back and forth, and then eventually Ricky Saints comes and Ricky is like, oh come on, guys, I should be champion. Now, Ricky, on the other hand, he's getting the Sol Ruka treatment. He's had what two matches now? Three no, no, no. He well, he's had three matches, one victory over Matt Cardona, and two losses. And then tonight was a double count out. Like a double count out. Oh, that like he's not nah. He's like, they better do they better start doing something with Ricky. They better start doing something with Ricky because this is not it. This is not it. It's not making him look like the good one in this in this uh trio. Right now, little Yachty, little Yachty is being booked better than than Ricky Saints. So, yes. Good match though, good match, but whatever. That's that's that. What else? Anything else happened? I already told you Oba Femi and and and Roman Reigns got promos. We did see, we did see the Grande Americano storyline, and that is gonna be. You're the American dream, you're dead, you know, you're you represent the American nightmare. And honestly, Gunther shouldn't really be bad mouthing America unless he's in America, because sometimes, you know, in the foreign countries they start cheering that. I think that promo, if he had done it last week, probably would have hit harder because he would have been in America, and then the Americans could have been like, oh, you, you German, even though he's Austrian. So yeah, he basically says it was just everything has been handed to you. You wanted to get into WWE, it was one phone call away. You wanted to train, one phone call away. You wanted this, one phone call away. Me, I had to work my way. Now, he does reference, Cody Rose does reference Thick Gunther, who is Walter, but yeah, it was a like, I don't know, it was it was just a promo that probably should have been the first promo and not the go home promo. We all had a good go home show this list week, but this one was not that good of a go-home show. It was just kind of there. It was just kind of there. Other than Chelsea Green winning, there's really not much. And and the the the further descent of Sami Zayn going to become a heel slash good guy. Nothing really here. So, you know, there you go. And and I will say this Gunther, Gunther said, I I Gunther made the promise. He's like, I promised I would do this to John Cena and I did it. I promised I'd do this to Goldberg, I did it. I promised I would do this to AJ Styles, I did it. And now I promise I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take, I'm gonna choke you out and take your belt. But he did not say, I promise I'm gonna beat you and become champion. So I'm thinking Gunther is actually going to lose somehow, roll up or whatever. Then he's gonna choke him out, fulfill his promise. Then he's gonna just take the belt and walk away with it, fulfill his promise. But I think he is gonna lose, so uh, and probably set up a third match. So, yeah, there you go, boys. There you go, girls. I will stream, I will stream 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Clash in Italy. I don't know though, if I'll stream tomorrow's mask first mask. Those are your uh not hot takes, hot takes are tomorrow. Silly. All right, boys, all right, girls. Thank you for joining me. See ya bye.