I Can't Believe We're Still Doing This Jinder Mahal Thing
Welcome to the SmackDown recap! Notice I didn’t call this a special edition, because it’s not special. I wasn’t there live…and I’m glad I wasn’t, because if I had to sit through AJ Styles struggling to make Jinder Mahal look like a star, I’d piledrive myself off a skyscraper.
Kevin Owens, the Face Of America, opened the show with his own Highlight Reel. I’m interested to see if this angle continues, because it really watches like they’re building to a Chris Jericho return, but I don’t think they are. You’d think an American will eventually beat Owens for the title, not another Canadian. Jinder was supposed to be the guest, but AJ Styles interrupted before he made it out. When he did make it out, he shocked me again with how bad he was on the mic. He legitimately gets worse every week. Every. Single. week.
Jinder and AJ had a match, which was NOT GOOD!!! Jinder is just terrible and he’s making Smackdown a dreadful show to watch. AJ Styles had good matches with James Ellsworth, seriously good matches, and he couldn’t have one with Jinder. I’m trying to be positive, I really am. I could say much worse things about him but I won’t. I’d just prefer about anyone else in his spot.
Another edition of the Fashion Files hit another home run. These guys are money. They need to win the tag titles at Backlash and go on a long, long feud with The New Day culminating at Summerslam.
We had a Welcoming Committee contract signing with Shane McMahon. James Ellsworth was good, but I just didn’t really care about any of these characters. Lana liked a tweet during this that said Naomi was better as a face, a heel, and in the ring than Sasha Banks, and it’s becoming hard to argue that.
Randy Orton is quickly becoming one of my most dreaded wrestlers to watch in the ring. VERY quickly. I don’t want this SmackDown review to be all negative, but it wasn’t a good show and their champion not caring about being entertaining doesn’t help. It gives his criticizing of “……dives” even less merit, and makes Ospreay mocking him even funnier.
That’s it for SmackDown. If this blog felt uninspired, it was. The Blue squad just didn’t make me care this week.