The SmarK Rant for WWE Network SMACKVILLE–07.27.19

The SmarK Rant for WWE Network Presents…SMACKVILLE – 07.27.19

Live from Nashville, TN

Your hosts are Tom Phillips & David Otunga

Trying this out on the web interface because the Windows app appears to be dead. The good: The new HTML5 interface actually resizes when you change window size. The bad: For some reason, the timeline overlays at the bottom of the screen for the entire show. GET OFF MY SCREEN. Anyway, video quality is very nice, although my laptop screen is nowhere near 1080p anyway. The REALLY bad: The sound is delayed by about a second for everything, which is really, really frustrating. The mildly annoying: This show is nowhere to be found in any of the new archives or categories, and I had to search the schedule to find it.

Intercontinental title: Shinsuke Nakamura v. Finn Balor

Apparently Balor is injured or finding his inner demon or something, so Nakamura demands a count for a forfeit, only to be answered by Ali instead.

Intercontinental title: Shinsuke Nakamura v. Ali

The crowd isn’t terribly excited by Ali’s entrance and challenge. Nakamura bails and Ali hits him with a dive, but Nakamura takes him to the apron and gives him a running knee to the head for two. Bad Vibrations and Nak drops knees for two. Ali fights out and makes a comeback with an X-Factor. They head up and Ali flips off him and then dropkicks Nakamura to block a move off the top, and that gets two. Nakamura with a spinkick and he hits Ali with a sliding german suplex to set up the Kinshasa, but Ali counters with a superkick and a tornado DDT for two. Ali goes up and misses the 450, and Nak hits a standing high knee that they call a Kinshasa to retain at 8:14. A decidedly average house show match with a dead crowd. **1/4

Meanwhile, Samoa Joe is confident in his ability to win the WWE title tonight.

Elias joins us for a concert, although he’s busy yelling at the tech guys first. Must be the same brain surgeons in charge of the audio feed on the Network. Do you have a one second delay on all your music, too, Elias? I feel your pain. So he plays some music and tells a story about meeting Johnny Cash with the usual cheap heat payoff about how the Titans will never win the Super Bowl and Shane McMahon is great. And then he takes a call from “Mr. McMahon” to really stretch this out further. And then finally after 10 minutes of this on a one hour show, Kevin Owens comes out and steals his guitar to set up an impromptu match.

IMPROMPTU MATCH: Kevin Owens v. Elias

Kevin is kind of funny here, demanding that a referee “sprint down to the ring and slide in dramatically”, which is what happens. So Elias attacks (after carefully moving all of his guitars out of the ring) and Owens slugs away in the corner and follows with a senton to send Elias fleeing. They fight on the floor and Elias catches him with a knee on the way back in, as Otunga actually references his storyline with Big Johnny from, what, 7 years ago? Who even remembers that shit? Elias bends him around the post and gets two. Elias with a ropewalk into a double knee for two. That’s pretty neat. They fight to the top and Owens sends him down and follows with a swanton for two off that. Elias escapes the stunner with a knee and goes up for a flying elbow, but that misses by a mile and the stunner finishes at 4:45. Yup, this sure was a match that happened here on the Network. *1/2 The crowd is so dead for this show and it’s really hurting the matches thus far. Maybe we need a Jeff Jarrett appearance or something.

So apparently if Owens loses against Shane, he has to quit WWE! Is that anything like that Wrestlemania match they had where he would be fired if he lost to Shane? And then he lost to Shane and was fired? And then he came back literally the next night and he’s been back ever since? No, this is a singles match, that’s totally different, I guess.

Meanwhile, Kofi is prepping his pancakes, and the robo-interviewer declares that tonight he faces INSURMOUNTABLE odds despite admittedly beating both guys in singles matches on multiple occasions. Plus one of the guys lost at the last PPV in like 2 seconds. Because, I mean, you don’t even have to be pinned to lose your title! That’s INSURMOUNTABLE! Do the people who write this stupid shit even watch wrestling? Never mind, of course they don’t. As Lance Storm noted recently, that’s just a Y-ask-y. Anyway, the storyline of EVERY FUCKING MATCH doesn’t have to be “babyface has to overcome all the odds”. There’s other stories you can tell.

WWE title: Kofi Kingston v. Samoa Joe v. Dolph Ziggler

Kofi dumps Ziggler out right away and then tries a dive on Joe, but Dolph pulls him out and the heels team up to beat him down out there. Back in and they take turns hitting him, but Kofi fights back with a High Fly Flow on Dolph for two. Kofi with a Boom Drop on Dolph for two, but Joe saves and goes for a superplex while the announcers are like “OMG THIS COULD BE A PIVOTAL NIGHT IF THE TITLE CHANGES HANDS!” Like, come on, how many pivotal moments in WWE history have involved Dolph Ziggler thus far? Let’s just round down to zero. They tease a Tower of Doom spot and Kofi gets a bodypress on Dolph for two, but Dolph gets the fameasser for two. Kofi with the SOS for two and Joe saves again and dumps Dolph, then sends Kofi into the stairs. Joe biels Dolph onto the announce desk, which is AN ENTIRELY NEW LEVEL OF BRUTALITY as we watch the replay of Dolph gently rolling off the desk. Back in, Kofi makes a comeback, but Joe catches him with an elbow for two. Joe sets up for the choke, but Kofi escapes with a jawbreaker, so Joe counters Trouble in Paradise with an anklelock. Back to the choke, but Dolph saves with a superkick on Joe that gets two. Dolph sets up the superkick on Kofi, but Joe catches him with a powerslam (or a “suplex” as Tom calls it) and then hits Kofi with a lariat for two. But then, as usual, Kofi hits Trouble in Paradise out of nowhere and gets the pin to retain at 12:13. So yeah, this was also a match that happened and was the usual decent, competent, placeholder, Ned Flanders’ favorite snack of white bread and tepid water match from WWE champion Kofi Kingston. **3/4 I mean, seriously, we’ve now reached the point where Kofi is champion for months having the same matches over and over because there’s literally no better choices anyway, so why not? Better him than Randy Orton or something.  Remember:  It could ALWAYS be Randy Orton again. 

So, uh, yeah, this is a show that definitely happened and there’s mostly proof of it existing on the Network if you can search hard enough through the somewhat bullshit new interface and such. I have no idea what the point of any of it was supposed to be or why we needed it.  I mostly kind of hated this show and the announcing was terrible, but I don’t think anyone is going to work up a strong opinion one way or the other. This is an easy AVOID IT. Watch an hour of Mid-South or something instead.