Jonathan Dehn
WWE Smackdown
07/26/2013
Corpus Christi, Texas
Randy Orton vs. Damien Sandow
It’s strange to see two MITB winners start the show. Sandow grabs a side headlock to start. Orton hits a back elbow after they bounce from the ropes. They lock up again, with Sandow grabbing a headlock. Orton gets one of his own but is rammed into the corner, where they brawl back and forth. Randy hits a corner clothesline, and a second. Randy hits a suplex for two. Orton targets Sandow with stomps but misses a kneedrop. Sandow chokes away at Orton. Randy fights back, tossing Sandow from the ring. He follows and drops him over the barricade. Back inside, Orton gets two. Sandow drives some shoulders into the corner and stomps away. Orton answers back with a few strikes, knocking Sandow down with a Euro uppercut. Sandow pulls Orton down across the ropes, from the apron, and gets two.
We come back from commercial with Orton slugging away at Sandow in the corner. Sandow comes back with a knee to the gut and drops him over the top rope for two. Damien batters away and gets another two count. Sandow grabs a body scissors and stays in control with the Russian legsweep and The Elbow of Disdain for two. Damien goes back to the body scissors for an extended period of time. Orton fights back to a mount and slugs away to escape. They trade punches before Orton hits the clotheslines and the powerslam. Orton goes for the hanging DDT, but gets dumped to the outside as Rhodes walks down. Cody grabs the briefcase and walks off. Orton runs up from behind and hits the RKO for the win.
Final Thoughts: Sandow has to get one up on Rhodes, soon. This was fairly bland and nothing really seemed to happen. It seemed like they needed to find two more minutes in there to do more than kick and stomp.
-CM Punk is out in the ring to make a statement. Punk talks about how Heyman taught him how to expose weaknesses in opponents. Brock’s biggest weakness is trusting Paul Heyman. Heyman’s biggest weakness is his ego. Punk declares he will kick Heyman into a miserable pile of failure. Fandango is out to interrupt, for some reason. Punk quickly beats down Fandango and hits a GTS. Fandango’s sell on the GTS is actually a thing of beauty.
Wade Barrett and Prime Time Players vs. Mark Henry and The Usos
Young grabs a headlock on Jey to start. Jey comes back with a few forearm thrusts and Jimmy is in. Jimmy hits some right hands in the corner, but Titus charges and hits a big boot to take him down. Barrett is in and hits a short armed clothesline for two. Wade drapes Jimmy over the top turnbuckle and hits a big kick for two. Titus comes in and stomps away. He puts on the chinlock. Titus catches Jimmy and hits a fallaway slam, and takes a moment to taunt the face corner. Jimmy comes back and hits an enzuigiri. Henry comes in and runs through Titus and Darren. Henry hits a powerslam for two. The action breaks down as everyone enters. Mark catches Darren in midair and throws him into an Uso superkick. Henry then hits the World’s Strongest Slam on Titus for the win.
Final Thoughts: This was fun for what it was, but not much to talk about. I wonder where Wade is going to be a year from now.
-Vickie is backstage when Alberto pops in to flirt and say that he also should be able to choose his opponent for SummerSlam. Rob Van Dam pops in to say that he should be in the match. ADR wants him to prove himself, and Rob simply points to their upcoming match as his proving ground.
-Meanwhile, Damien Sandow is in search of Cody Rhodes, with no help coming Sin Cara. Cara seems to be enthralled with an empty box of sorts. Also, Sandow made sure to shower and change into a dress shirt before going in search of Cody. You have to look dignified when in a frantic search.
Rob Van Dam vs. Alberto Del Rio
I just realized that there’s a fan in Bray Wyatt cosplay. Cool. Rob hits some forearms and backs Del Rio into the corner to start. Del Rio bails after a whip and composes himself outside of the ring for a full minute. Finally, he tries to catch Van Dam with his back turned, but eats a spinkick. Del Rio then begs off in the corner for a century or two and then hits a cheap kick to the head for the win.
Final Thoughts: Well, that was garbage. The referee looked awful in this, pulling RVD away from the corner as he got kicked in the head, not knowing what “No mas!” means, and being made to make this look like less than a professional wrestling show.
-Sandow continues his search, still favoring his neck. He runs into Booker and Henry. Sandow asks that since Booker used to be the GM, he should know what’s going on. Booker takes offense, looking for reassurance that Damien didn’t just say that. Sandow quickly walks off as Henry holds Booker T back.
-AJ Lee heads down to the ring with Big E for the “State of My Mind” segment that was highlighted earlier on. For those wondering, AJ is going with a heavy Harley Quinn look tonight. She tries to halt a mental breakdown by reminding herself and others that she still has her title belt. To prove that she’s not losing it, she brings out Dolph’s house keys and is ready to move on. He interrupts on the stage, and talks about handing out plenty of keys and changing the locks over and over again. This is where they shouldn’t have gone. AJ pulls out Dolph’s suitcase. He reminds her that everything in the ring is replaceable. AJ pulls out his wallet and a pair of scissors. Dolph doesn’t care about her cutting up his license and passport. She tosses cash away, and then cuts up a credit card. She should be careful on how many times she tears up that U.S. currency. She really just did Dolph a favor in cutting up that credit card, actually. Dolph just laughs at her as she breaks down. AJ tosses the contents of the suitcase around the ring. AJ then wanders outside where Kaitlyn runs in from nowhere and hits her spear. Big E goes to check on her and takes a Fameasser. I suppose this was entertaining, but destructive for everyone’s characters.
Tons of Funk vs. The Wyatt Family
Luke Harper begins with T, and slugs away in the corner. Sweet T gets a clothesline for two. Eric attacks and grabs T into the corner by the mouth. Luke hits a corner splash and Eric blind tags in and finishes with a big splash for the quick win. Bray enters and takes Sweet T down with the Downward Spiral. Bray gets on the microphone and tells Kane that he’ll be easy to find on Monday.
Final Thoughts: This was a quick squash. The only moment of note was Sweet T getting dragged to the corner by his mouth. That was pretty cool.
-Damien charges into Vickie’s office and demands action.
Christian vs. Jack Swagger w/Zeb Colter
Before the match, Zeb talks about being at the border and not being searched because he is a real American. He says that Christian has overstayed his welcome. Swagger takes Christian down, the sneaky Canadian (Zeb Colter tm) fights back, getting a foot up on a corner charge. Christian sends Swagger out of the ring and hits a body press to the outside. Christian goes up but Swagger runs up the ropes and throws him back into the ring. Christian skids out of the ring and the floor as we hit the break.
Swagger misses a corner charge as we return. Christian hits a dropkick from the second buckle. Christian hops over to the floor and hits the right hand on the outside but misses a crossbody from the top. Christian hits the reverse DDT on a nifty reversal sequence. Swagger misses another corner charge but reverses the Killswitch into a slam for two. Christian gets the knees up on the Swaggerbomb and gets a sunset flip for two. Christian runs Swagger into the ring post in reversing the Patriot Lock and hits the Killswitch for the win.
Final Thoughts: This was a solid match between the two with good action. By default, it’s the match of the night, and Christian continues to win.
-After the match, Sandow power walks to the ring and snags a microphone. He demands for his case to return to him and for Cody to be fired for being a thief, because we all know that we can’t have thieves in the locker room. Cody comes up on the screen, standing outside of the arena, the Gulf of Mexico behind him. Sandow rushes outside to meet him. Some fans outside enthusiastically cheer from Damien. There are two of them. Sandow butters up Rhodes, but Cody tosses it into the water anyway. The briefcase sinks into the gulf and Damien nearly drowns, not being able to swim, of course. Smackdown ends with Damien crying beside the ocean.
–This show felt clunky. I can imagine why, considering that they shot six hours of Raw the two days before this was shot, and still had another two hour Smackdown to travel to on Thursday. We were not treated to an excellent or even a good, long match. I would say that Christian had the match of the night with Jack Swagger, as Randy Orton and Damien Sandow had an exceedingly bland ten minute match to start the show. I wouldn’t say that the Wyatt Family was impressive, either. Their match lasted just over a minute and didn’t tell the viewer much. I really want to see Bray in a one on one affair, but that should be happening shortly. The Dolph Ziggler and AJ angle from tonight’s show was just uncomfortable and, as it turns out, Big E is the most likable person in the story. He’s just there to pick up AJ when she falls apart. The non-match between Van Dam and Del Rio was disappointing, to say the least and did no favors for those involved. The lone bright spot of the evening would be Sandow’s quest to retrieve his stolen briefcase and the promise of his feud with Cody Rhodes. Also, the great camera work on the briefcase’s last moments should be highlighted. They got in good and tight on the air bubbles ripping against the surface of the water. It felt like this show could be condensed into ten minutes tonight.
