I decided to watch a Smackdown Live from 2016 (August 2nd, 2016) to see if it was as good as I remember, or whether it was more nostalgic memories of the time. As it turns out, yeah, this show was awesome for its time. The roster on SD Live during this time period was incredible. Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan as authority figures. Mauro Ranello on commentary. A performing roster including Dean Ambrose, Randy Orton, The Miz, AJ Styles, John Cena, American Alpha, Becky Lynch and Bray Wyatt. They somehow even make the likes of Dolph Ziggler and Baron Corbin entertaining. The show itself is really solid, all the way through. The writing is streets ahead of anything WWE had done in years and has done since.
It's funny to watch a lot of this now, knowing where certain performers ended up. It goes without saying Corbin has gone through some drastic changes. They actually do some great character building work with Ziggler in this period, with Ambrose trying to get into Ziggler's head about him not having what it takes and pointing to his recent history of getting nowhere. Wyatt then appears and makes a challenge for Dolph's #1 contender's spot for the title. In WWE nowadays the match would just happen with no further enhancement, but here they give actual logic as to why Ziggler would accept this challenge. Bryan even points out that he has nothing to gain from accepting the challenge, but Ziggler is incensed by what Ambrose has said and wants to prove he deserves his shot. It's simple but little things like this make stories stronger and tie them together. Yes it's still dumb babyface logic, but at least there
is some logic explained to the audience.
Corbin/Crews/Kalisto is a weird triple threat in terms of clashing styles, but actually pretty fun to watch and doesn't outstay its welcome, finishing within a few minutes. You can tell WWE were very high on Apollo at this point. A shame he never really got anywhere.
It's strange seeing pre "The Man" Becky Lynch. She's just a generic smiling babyface, pretty much. Still mildly over but nothing compared to what she's become today. They are doing an angle where Eva Marie makes a big entrance and then feigns injury not to wrestle. It's fun and she has genuine heat from the crowd. Another story that from memory didn't really come to a proper conclusion though.
American Alpha have their debut on this episode - how did WWE drop the ball on these guys? They were so good in NXT and are immediately over with the crowd. They're facing the Vaudvillains who are... well, they're OK, but one of those instances where you can tell the act isn't going to work on the main roster. Aidan English obviously went on to reinvent himself with the Rusev Day thing for a bit, whilst Simon Gotch is most famous for that YouTube video where he shits on Enzo.
The AJ Styles and John Cena feud from this time was great. By this point Cena is in his latter years as a regular active performer, but is still a regular, and getting plenty of boos. "Soccer mom hair" chant from the crowd to AJ is pretty funny
it's crazy really how AJ has had such a solid run in WWE. Considering his smaller stature, southern accent and TNA heritage you'd think Vince would have buried the guy, but I guess it speaks to how amazing Styles is that he broke through all of that and became one of WWE's prime assets. Anyway, it's a fun promo and these two always had good chemistry together.
Breezango, I'd forgotten about these guys. The Fashion Files were fantastic, although from memory a bit further ahead on the timeline. Lesnar shows up during the Orton/Fandango match and gives Orton an F5 as a receipt for the RKO Orton gave him on Raw. About 50 security staff make him leave. Simple but effective.
Heath Slater trying to get a contract after not being drafted was a fun storyline too. They were giving everyone something interesting to work with. Nobody on this show feels lost in the shuffle.
Ziggler/Wyatt main event is solid, with Rowan showing up at the end.
Overall yeah, I very much enjoyed watching this show. The only downside was a major lack of actual wrestling - I'm not sure there were even 30 minutes of wrestling across the entire hour and a half. Most of it came in the main event, with the other three matches barely going a couple of minutes each. I would imagine this varies from week to week though, as I don't remember Smackdown lacking good matches during this period. The focus is clearly on establishing storylines for all of the characters post-brand split though, and they do a great job of that.
