The Smackers Thread

[RedTwoster]

1 hour ago, Supremo said:

I’m convinced of it. They won’t be able to help themselves. Brock being implicated in the lawsuit will become storyline. I give it a month.

If Cena doesn’t say ‘why don’t you tell the fans where you’ve been, Brock?’ it’s pretty much guaranteed a future opponent will. I’d be more surprised if that didn’t happen than if it did. As shitty and grubby as the company feels right now, I really hope I’m wrong about that. 

[Chico Torres]

Top executive and WWE Unreal star Bruce Pritchard was spotted having lunch with Vince a few days ago. Wouldn’t be surprised if Vince is still pulling the strings from behind the scenes like a mafia boss in prison.

[Supremo]

Sending Becky Lynch out to turn heel on the Dublin crowd giving her one of the biggest reactions of the year was certainly Vince-pilled. Surprised no-one said, “bizzaro world.”

[Supremo]

Haven’t even watched Smackdown yet. Can already tell you nothing that happens on that show will be as good as the camera cut to Chris Sabin in this clip. First real flash of the proper Motor City Machine Guns in WWE. Really made me laugh. Why are these hilarious men such boring losers of nothingness on the actual show itself?

 

[DavidB6937]

If they were allowed to be like that rather than just wrestling and us being told how good they are, the tag division would be a lot more interesting.

Watched the show live last night just because it's a novelty. Crowd were obviously decent. Didn't feel like they hijacked too much.

Cena/Logan is as good as it can be if we ignore how we got here. Plus John made it up to the poor kid he upset which has probably been worrying him for ages. He's a Make a Wish legend. He doesn't upset kids!

Some other stuff happened. Dunno what.

Oh yeah. Sami. Shows how exciting that is that i forgot that. The sort of push. It's something but not what we really want. One day.

[d-d-d-dAz]

4 hours ago, Supremo said:

Haven’t even watched Smackdown yet. Can already tell you nothing that happens on that show will be as good as the camera cut to Chris Sabin in this clip. First real flash of the proper Motor City Machine Guns in WWE. Really made me laugh. Why are these hilarious men such boring losers of nothingness on the actual show itself?

 

The problem is, I imagine, that the humour wasn’t a mean or snide jab downwards, so no one in that cursed writers room will get it.

[SpykeDudlei1]

Smackdown-related but this from the Observer’s report of this week’s show irked me. In fact the general quality of writing and ‘wit’ each week is pretty poor but this in particular stood out.

”He says respect means that people understand if you are mean to them that you were just having a bad day, then apologized to some kid in the crowd for having had a bad day in the past. The kid was too busy looking at his phone than look at Cena who was right there, which was hilarious.”

Surely anybody who’s followed this story and is across the path it’s taken knows about this young fan who went viral when Cena singled him out in Brussels. You’d certainly expect someone writing for a high-profile outlet such as WO would be on it.

Admittedly I do have to slightly agree that the lad looking his phone wasn’t a great look but he was nervously trying to access his video camera. However, that sums up the way far too many of us take in live experiences right now. Instead having a truly engaging moment with his hero, he spent most of it fumbling around to film something himself that would be caught on camera for the world to see anyway.

[Danny Franchetti’s Jazzbox]

27 minutes ago, SpykeDudlei1 said:

Smackdown-related but this from the Observer’s report of this week’s show irked me. In fact the general quality of writing and ‘wit’ each week is pretty poor but this in particular stood out.

”He says respect means that people understand if you are mean to them that you were just having a bad day, then apologized to some kid in the crowd for having had a bad day in the past. The kid was too busy looking at his phone than look at Cena who was right there, which was hilarious.”

Surely anybody who’s followed this story and is across the path it’s taken knows about this young fan who went viral when Cena singled him out in Brussels. You’d certainly expect someone writing for a high-profile outlet such as WO would be on it.

Admittedly I do have to slightly agree that the lad looking his phone wasn’t a great look but he was nervously trying to access his video camera. However, that sums up the way far too many of us take in live experiences right now. Instead having a truly engaging moment with his hero, he spent most of it fumbling around to film something himself that would be caught on camera for the world to see anyway.

The kid also seemed to be trying to take photos of Kiana James & Giulia’s arses later on in the show during their entrance.

[Doog]

17 minutes ago, Danny Franchetti’s Jazzbox said:

The kid also seemed to be trying to take photos of Kiana James & Giulia’s arses later on in the show during their entrance.

Lad

[Supremo]

“I’m sorry, I was having a bad day.”

Still absolutely wild to see them flush away the biggest angle of the year and the Main Event finish of this year’s Wrestlemania, turning the whole thing into this weird combination of a meta joke and a collective bad dream.

I can’t fathom the thinking behind it. Even if everyone agreed that Cena’s heel run was garbage and they seemingly wanted to bin it off after they fell out with Travis Scott, why didn’t they have Cody find and save Cena’s humanity at Summerslam? At least that would have been a logical, somewhat satisfying conclusion. There would have been some type of catharsis. As it is, Cena just decided to be a goodie two days before the Summerslam match and everyone who watched, followed or cared about the previous six months wasted their time. It’d be like abandoning The Invasion two nights before Survivor Series 2001. This isn’t working, so rather than at least conclude it naturally, let’s just pretend it never happened. On that week’s Smackdown Shane and Stephanie just pretend The Alliance was a bad dream. 

I guess it’s fitting. The worst thing about Cena’s career was the way he’d always undermine any drama or heat by no-selling and laughing everything off. It makes sense that in his retirement run he’d do the exact same thing with what could and should have been one of the biggest angles of all time. Time will tell, but I think this return to the, “Fuck All Matters,” Era will cause a lot more damage than they realise. The very reason they boomed over the last few years was because things started mattering again. You could feel that everything that was happening was being logged and referenced back to. You were rewarded for watching. Crazy to watch them abandon the approach entirely.

Not to worry though. Look what the Ket dragged in. The Rock is in Europe!

Would be really fucking funny if The Rock and Travis Scott turn up and tell Hunter and Cena that the heel turn is back on.

[RedTwoster]

22 hours ago, Supremo said:

Haven’t even watched Smackdown yet. Can already tell you nothing that happens on that show will be as good as the camera cut to Chris Sabin in this clip. First real flash of the proper Motor City Machine Guns in WWE. Really made me laugh. Why are these hilarious men such boring losers of nothingness on the actual show itself?

 

I really wish they’d signed with AEW. They’d have thrived there. If FTR was in WWE, they’d likely be part of the ‘red hot’ Smackdown tag division, trading wins with each poorly established team there. Switch most of these teams to the competition, and there’s a very good chance they’d be elevated significantly.

I thought Smackdown was decent this week. The Cena/Logan Paul segment was good, and most segments throughout the show were. I’m not so keen on how Bo Dallas has evolved into a cosplay Bray Wyatt - there was a bit more substance to the guy when his stable first debuted.

Sami’s gone from vowing to win a world title, to settling for the US belt. I find the Smackdown move disappointing mainly because I can’t ever see him winning the WWE title, and that’s a real shame. I hope I’m wrong, and if he does actually win that belt eventually, it’s a much bigger achievement than lifting the World Heavyweight title. But I don’t see it happening, sadly. 

[The Gaffer]

4 hours ago, Supremo said:

Still absolutely wild to see them flush away the biggest angle of the year and the Main Event finish of this year’s Wrestlemania, turning the whole thing into this weird combination of a meta joke and a collective bad dream.

That's a perfect description, as the tone of Cena's character since his return has essentially been John Cena in that covid student film match with Bray Wyatt at WrestleMania. 

In a strange way it's been a fitting reflective sendoff for their big 21st century star. Cena perfectly mirrors WWE as a whole. He's so there that he's almost not there at all. Up in your face, chewing all the scenery, bright and slick and inconsequential and pointless. He's always been an action figure of himself - that was the point - but since his return it has been in that uncanny, hyperreal, theme-park-to-self way which makes it virtually impossible to suspend your disbelief and take it all with any sort of weight. Or - in other words - exactly how the WWE itself feels. 

Legends segments for years now have felt like a creepy animatronic museum installation. Someone comes back to Raw and they're in an office that kind of looks like how they might have furnished it, in an increasingly more high definition same-but-not-the-same version of their classic legend t-shirt you always remember them wearing. They look and sound the same but there's a gnarly clarity and self-awareness to both them and you now where the fact that they're playing a character - and in this case with the string on the doll pulled just enough to get out the line - is much more transparent. 

Cena's always been the perfect star to complacently retire into that role, and the booking of his character is testament to it. It feels as reactive and emotionless as WCW 2000, only with the arrogant spectacle of them (for now) doing it as the winners and masters of the universe. 

I've not watched it in awhile but the sense I get is that he's fucked now. He could turn heel, face and heel again as the PLEs dictate over the next few months and none of it would matter because - much like the Netflix show suggests - WWE's become completely unreal. Post-post-kayfabe or something. 

[RedTwoster]

I’m not watching a show featuring Brock Lesnar, but I did watch the AJ Lee return segment and I thought it was really good.

I know that Becky Lynch’s character isn’t exactly well-loved around these parts, but I think she’s been excellent in this role, and is a far better agitator than Paul Heyman was for that group. Her shit-talking is very believable and she sold AJ’s offence brilliantly. If I was going to book an inter-company dream match right now, Toni Storm vs Becky Lynch would probably be top of my list, as tempting as it would be to run a Punk/Omega or Reigns/Hangman match.

I also read that Sami got some boos again. It absolutely baffles me, that. What’s he done that merits that? I’d suggest it’s because he interrupted Cena, but it’s not the first time this has happened to him. I was hoping for an emotional, Eddie Guerrero-style title win for him, but maybe the best route for Sami is to win the World title as a heel and turn babyface later based on how entertaining he can be. Cody vs heel Sami could be great, and something like Zayn vs Reigns with the roles reversed from their last match is also an interesting prospect. Then, eventually, when Owens returns we might even be able to get a Zayn/Owens World title match, with Zayn as the heel and Owens making his triumphant return as a babyface. 

[Daaaaaad!]

I’ll admit, when the segment began, I started to roll my eyes again because I thought we’re getting half of the same stuff from Monday before AJ comes out. When she did though, I thought the segment was really good.
 

There was something oddly cathartic about seeing her and Punk together in the ring. I know we joke a lot about how Punk has swallowed his pride and become the Corporate Man, but for someone who was caught up in it all through no fault of her own and has also been treated the same way that so many other women in WWE have been, it was really nice to see AJ get a moment of recognition like this. And yes, to her credit, Becky sold it perfectly, even if it was a little hammy.

[Chili]

She's on odd one for me AJ Lee. I find her as a person really nice and with an interesting career in how she got where and she tries really hard. But then on TV, genuinely annoying. I think I associate her with the time and place of her era being awful too so that doesn't help. The skipping, the head tilt, not actually being that good. Ugh. Very lucky wearing converse and being wrestling fan nonce bait was her thing. Becky Lynch selling fear of her is the story obviously, but rather laughable given who she's had to face in the past. It is hilarious that Punk/Rollins feud is still going, I swear it's being to booked to see how long Punk tolerates it before he buys a surplus of muffins.

Edited September 6, 2025 by Chili