Byron Saxton was stunned. Corey Graves was speechless. Tom Phillips was, I don’t know, reading an advertisement for Snickers or something.
I, meanwhile, was struggling to understand what on Earth was happening with just 12 days to go until WrestleMania.
The cause of all this confusion was the sudden announcement that Charlotte’s impromptu match with Asuka – as if that alone wasn’t surprising enough – was to be for the SmackDown Live Women’s Title.
The audience didn’t know what was going on. SmackDown’s announce team didn’t know what was going on. Even the production team seemed to be caught off guard, as most of the match took place during multiple ad breaks. And the surprise wasn’t unmerited. Charlotte, as we know, is locked in a much publicised three-way feud for the Raw Women’s belt alongside Becky Lynch and Ronda Rousey. Asuka, on the other hand, was scheduled to face the winner of a fatal four-way between Mandy Rose, Sonya Deville, Naomi and Carmella.
So why then have these two women square off now? And even more so, why put the title on the line? It was a strange decision, made all the stranger by the fact that there was no explanation of why it was happening. But surprise doesn’t mean disappointed – in fact, quite the opposite. I was more than happy to just accept a great match between to amazing wrestlers, at least until Charlotte inevitably got herself disqualified or Becky ran down to cause the interruption.
Except Charlotte won.
Ahhh… you what now?
Presumably the stunning move was made to put the SmackDown belt on Charlotte so that the titles can be unified by the winner of the triple threat at ‘Mania, thus consolidating the women’s divisions across both main roster brands. But why do it now? And, more importantly, why do it like this?
For months, fans have been decrying the treatment of Asuka, as she’s regularly been sidelined by the more star-studded feud unfolding on Raw. And yet, now not only will she not get a marquee match at WrestleMania, but the title that she’s carried since TLC last year may not exist much longer.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvfiiu5FZVi/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
Whether consolidating the women’s division is a good move is up for debate. For the most part, the true fallout of this decision will only be felt months from now, once we see where previous contenders like Carmella, Naomi and Ruby Riott fit into the frame. Will they still feature in a merged division, or simply fall further down the card?
Perhaps the biggest tragedy though is that we won’t get to see a separate program between Asuka and the winner of ‘Mania’s triple threat to unify the belts. That tantalising contest could easily have been the headline attraction of the next major pay-per-view.
But this wasn’t the only surprise on a night of shocking moments. Things undoubtedly happened on SmackDown last night. But which were good and which were bad? More on that after the break.
What was your favourite moment from SmackDown Live?
Steven Lugo
Tag Team Gauntlet match. There’s no denying it. This series of matches was awesome, and fans are fully invested in Kofi Kingston at WrestleMania. Not only did this gauntlet build to a satisfying conclusion, with Rowan getting buried under a table for a ten count, but the atmosphere was great.
As with Kofi’s gauntlet match last week, the crowd of onlookers grew and grew in the backstage area, because Kofi’s fellow wrestlers have that much respect for him. It was good to see tag team matches determine a WrestleMania championship match. Feels like, if only for a night, the division was getting some respect.
Nate Craver
It’s going to have to be the fact that it appears Kofi finally has his title match. The gauntlet match was fine. The Usos stepping out of the way to allow the New Day to win was a nice touch. While the two teams have been consistent rivals over the years, it is clear they have a deep respect for each other. Hopefully, nothing too crazy happens next week and Kofi gets a one on one shot at ‘Mania.
Nicholas Holicki
I was ready to give my vote to the Charlotte / Asuka encounter. This bout was a really excellent TV match between two of the best wrestlers on the SmackDown roster. But the decision to arbitrarily take the belt off Asuka just 12 days before WrestleMania, robbing her of her own moment on the ‘Grandest Stage of Them All’ and adding another unnecessary element to the Raw Women’s Triple Threat, is insanity.
So instead I’ll go with the tag team gauntlet match pitting Big E and Xavier Woods against a series of SmackDown’s best pairings. While I disagreed with the confounding premise of the gauntlet, I love good tag team wrestling. And I’m an even bigger sucker for multiple tag team bouts strung together.
As a minor point, I appreciated the Usos forfeiting their place in the gauntlet. At first it seemed that they would take advantage of a beaten down Big E – which would have been baffling considering that just last week they were cheering on Kofi during his gauntlet – but thankfully they sided with continuity on this one. And seeing Bryan go full cartoon villain backstage in response, throwing chairs around his locker room, was an appreciated bonus.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvfqsstl3kQ/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
What was the worst part of last night’s episode?
Steven Lugo
Asuka being fed to Charlotte Flair. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, the ends don’t justify the means – take your pick of cliched words of wisdom. Charlotte Flair defeated Asuka in the most spur of the moment, least developed title match we could have imagined.
Adding the SmackDown’s women’s championship to the triple threat between Becky, Ronda and Charlotte makes the WrestleMania main event bigger. It also makes Charlotte seem like more of a credible challenger to Becky and Ronda. But there’s the added effect of making Asuka look like a bum. It almost doesn’t matter that Asuka and Charlotte had a great match. The takeaway for Asuka is that she didn’t matter enough to have her own ‘Mania opponent, and oh what the hell, we’ll just take your title away and add it to the ‘real’ women’s championship match, too.
Very disappointing to see Asuka build herself back up after a long slump only for WWE to kill her off again. The very definition of a sacrificial lamb.
https://twitter.com/BeckyLynchWWE/status/1110731791390949376
Nate Craver
The booking of Asuka. It was bad enough she didn’t have a program as champ. Now, Charlotte is the champ and the WWE has put all their eggs in the triple threat basket. Asuka probably winds up in the Women’s Battle Royal. She is too talented to be booked this way. What is WWE doing?
They have taken Bayley, Sasha and Asuka and thrown wet blankets on the once white-hot characters. While they are getting all this credit for pushing women, look past the triple threat and what are they really doing? My answer is not a whole hell of a lot.
Nicholas Holicki
Everyone wants to see Kofi finally get his chance against Daniel Bryan with the title on the line. It goes without saying at this point. He was great in his first gauntlet match last month. His efforts were superhuman at Elimination Chamber. He solidified his ‘mega over’ status in the gauntlet match last week. And yet time and time again he gets screwed over through no fault of his own.
So how do you finally have Kofi overcome all the obstacles in his path and establish himself as a legitimate contender for the WWE Championship? Well you have Big E and Xavier Woods compete in a tag team turmoil match! Because we all know that the best way to secure a top singles match for one man is by having two completely different people win a series of tag team bouts on his behalf. It just makes sense.
Except it doesn’t really. And this was a thoroughly underwhelming way of crowning Kofi.
How would you rate the show overall? (From best to worst: SmackDamn, SmackTastic, Smack Bang in the Middle, SmackDowner and A Smack in the Face)
Steven Lugo
Smacktastic. While the Asuka situation is an abomination, I really enjoyed this installment as a ‘Road to WrestleMania’ edition of SmackDown Live. The ‘Mania card had been such a blur that it was nice to finally get a focus on key storylines, and see matches that put something on the line.
It still depresses me to see the shells of superstars that were once Shinsuke Nakamura and Rusev, and I guess we know why Gallows and Anderson got squashed. But as a show, everything held up for a good night of pro wrestling. SmackDown last night was built around the tag team gauntlet, which was a fresh way to continue Kofi’s story. I even liked Miz’s brawl, and I haven’t been the biggest fan of many Shane McMahon segments. Good show. But, Asuka, yeah, you should head to AEW.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvf1xH2A1-R/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
Nate Craver
I’m going to give this a SmackDowner. While I’m happy Kofi has a shot, the road to getting there was too jumbled. It’s WrestleMania season and we can’t get a solid, simple build of a storyline.
Then we get Asuka. They’ve just completely misused Asuka. Maybe the idea of a unified title will work out in the end, but do we really need one more thing in this match? Asuka deserves better. If this was always the plan, which is unlikely, she should have never been the champ. Asuka freaking pinned Becky at the Rumble! Why have Becky lose? Give her the title there. So many better ways than this.
Other than that, the Miz segment was there and Orton got Angle slammed. Maybe the gauntlet match should give SmackDown a higher rating but I’m not able to look past the Asuka angle.
over
— ASUKA / 明日華 (@WWEAsuka) March 27, 2019
Nicholas Holicki
This was a night of surprises. But not of the good, Christmas morning variety. It was more like spending an entire day looking forward to having that leftover pizza for dinner, only to find that your roommate ate it for lunch earlier that day and replaced the pizza with a large turd. It’s a surprise, sure, but it’s not going to put a smile on your face.
I don’t know why the only path to Kofi getting his shot at the WWE Championship involved a tag team gauntlet match. I’m not sure why Charlotte needed to beat Asuka and presumably unify the belts at WrestleMania. I can’t possibly be bothered to understand why SAnitY is acting as Shane McMahon’s personal security force, nor why they couldn’t handle The Miz between the three of them.
But the really infuriating part is that there was no effort to explain ANY of this. It smacked of a show haphazardly thrown together on the day, with little regard to trivial things like continuity or logic. While I enjoyed the two matches we got on the night, it wasn’t enough to overcome all the irrational booking. For those reasons, SmackDown was a SmackDowner.
Comments.
Loading comments…