Five days until Money in the Bank, and WWE gives us yet ANOTHER six-man tag between the main participants. WWE Champ Jinder Mahal will face ex-champ Randy Orton, while The New Day and Breezango team up to face The Usos and The Colons.

New Day and Soul Rebels Entrance

Smackdown is live New Orleans tonight, the home of the next Wrestlemania. The Soul Rebels had a slightly rocky start but once they got going it seriously rocked!

• New Day said The Usos can get back to being extras in the off-off-off-off-off-off-Broadway rendition of Straight Outta’ Compton
• Usos interrupt and come down with great aggression
• Breezango interrupts and comes down with a confident swagger thanks to their recent comedy segment success. They say The Usos Day One is not so ‘h’, but actually ‘g’, ‘g for gross’.
• Breeze says ‘book ’em Dango’
• Colons interrupt, their music is good, I forgot since they always get jobber entrances
• Breezango gyrates to the New Day Rocks chant

New Day and Breezango vs Usos and Colons

• Announcer call Fandango a tremendous athelete, singles push coming?
• Fashion Files has been consistently great
• Fandango resists a sunset flip for a comically long time before gyrating into a leg drop
• Usos tag in for furious offense but first Colon goes immediately for a rest hold
• Usos offense looks brutal! They even put a rest hold on with a running ‘clap’ of the hands.
• Breeze is a great sympathetic babyface, taking spectacular bumps like a less over-the-top Ziggler

New Day pin a Colon

An exciting opener. Usos impressed me with their authentically aggressive ring-work, Breezango could move up, and The New Day was solid. The Colons didn’t elevate the limited opportunity they were given.

The actor John Cena will return as a ‘free agent’, could be switching to Raw?

Zayn talks strategy with Styles and ‘Shin’

Making Zayn look like an over-eager dork is the WWE’s current plan. Nakamura says he likes him.

Mojo Rawley and Zack Ryder make an alliance

Mojo talks about how Jinder isn’t the same guy he beat a few months ago. He is glad he lost because he knows he deals with adversity. The Broski shows up and they touch each other in a sign of friendship and teamwork. Bro’sko Rawley?

Naomi vs Tamina

• A 1v1 women’s match? WWE usually jams every Smackdown women into every segment.
• ………………Lana comes down.     Crowd chants ‘we want Rusev’
• Tamina dominates the first five minutes but Naomi hits her off the rope, hits one move and wins
• Lana hits a celebrating Naomi from behind and nails her new finisher

Lana celebrates with the belt

The match was too short to tell a story. Tamina beat the hell out of Naomi for 99% of it until Naomi magically leaped to her feet and hit her with two moves for the win. Lana’s finisher looked great which is a good sign for her ring skills to come.

Jinder Mahal promo

• Jinder says the same old shit
• Orton’s music hits and Mahal sends the Singh brothers to the entrance
• Orton sneaks in from the crowd and hits and RKO outta’ nowhere

He slithered out when the Singhs came after him and the crowd ate it up. Orton looked happy to play Steve Austin for a night and not take any bumps while soaking in applause and looking badass

Corbin, Ziggler, and Owens talk backstage

• Owens says they don’t need to be friends, but should work together to injure the three babyfaces tonight ahead of the MitB match

Charlotte vs Natalya

• Two women’s matches and they’re both 1v1? WWE has obviously been taking my advice
• Charlotte follows up a snap-mare by pulling Natalya into a pin. Very nice.
• Charlotte hits a great moonsault into a pin attempt
• Natalya counters a second with a powerbomb
• Charlotte boots Natty before a Natural Selection and the win

Exciting moves, but again, these short matches make it so hard to tell a story. It becomes a meaningless exchange of moves before a win out of nowhere. The two are talented and did the best they could but I’d love to see more

Fashion Files ‘Sweet Victory’

• Fandango wants to show off his pecs with his main man Breezy in the big easy
• Breeze has been attacked and their office ransacked
• Breeze describes the attackers as having greasy hair, dry skin, ‘one, no two arms!’
• Fandango drew two stick men with the appropriate arms

This wasn’t awful but was the least entertaining of their Fashion Files. Maybe it lacked the interplay between the two (more proof Fandango is getting a singles push?)

Lana backstage interview

• Lana doesn’t care what people think
• She will shock the world and become the first ever ravishing Smackdown Women’s champion

JBL mentioned the ‘shocking’ upset angle twice, even correcting his words at one point. Lana’s repetition of this phrase could mean WWE Creative is pushing her underdog status hard for an upset win.

Owens, Corbin, Ziggler vs Styles, Nakamura, Zayn

• Heels work over Nakamura to start
• Everyone got their spots in but Zayn picked up the surprising pin on Corbin
• KO and Ziggler used the ladder to viciously attack the faces
• Corbin hit KO and Ziggler from behind and tried climbing for the briefcase
• Nakamura knocked Corbin off the ladder and claimed the briefcase to end the show

Overall

I like a lot about this show. Giving the Women’s Division more than one segment is another great step forward. They need more time however, and cutting a few useless backstage interviews would have given them a bit more to work with.

The constant six-man tags of upcoming PPV competitors kills my interest in seeing them rather than build it. Building the wresters apart from their PPV opponent with squash matches or something else would be much better.

Some exciting moments that battled predictability and under-developed booking.

An average show.