September 7, 2020 - Evan Luebbe

WWE SmackDown 9/4/2020

September 7, 2020 by Evan Luebbe

Bayley and Sasha Banks are finally starting their Breakup Storyline after it was Postponed Twice due to the Pandemic

Bayley and Sasha Banks have finally started their breakup storyline which was originally planned to start right before WrestleMania 36. That was pushed back due to the pandemic hitting, so Mr. McMahon and everyone else involved in WWE’s creative process decided to do it for SummerSlam (the second biggest show of the year for WWE). Mr. McMahon wanted fans to be president when this storyline came to fruition. When it became apparent that the WWE universe would not be able to be in attendance for SummerSlam, Mr. McMahon again decided to push this back.

Shortly after the second biggest show of the year, WWE made the decision to finally go ahead and set the storyline in motion a couple weeks later (Mr. McMahon most likely thought to himself “we cannot suspend our storylines forever because of this pandemic, so we should just go ahead and do it.” It completely makes sense from a business standpoint why Mr. McMahon would ideally want to have the WWE universe present to witness this storyline unfold (because this would mean a significant amount more revenue for the company), however it probably would not make as much sense within the framework of the story if WWE were to push it back several more months. It’s therefore a smart decision to start this breakup scenario now between Bayley and Sasha Banks while it is still relevant to viewers.

The Big Dog’s Familiar (and familial) Next Challenger for his Universal Championship

The next challenger for Roman Reigns was determined on this episode. It originally would have made the most sense for Big E to win the fatal four-way match for a few reasons. First, he is a former NXT Champion, so people in the company have seen that E is capable of leading a brand and being a workhorse. Second (and most importantly), he was one of the two men Mr. McMahon was deciding between to lead WWE into the future along with Roman Reigns in 2014 as the successor to John Cena. Big E has also been a former Intercontinental Champion on the main roster in WWE back in 2013-14.

Sheamus is also portraying a heel right now, so it would not make much sense for WWE to do a heel vs. heel match. Matt Riddle and King Corbin both appeared to be busy with their own subplot, so all that was left was Roman’s own cousin Jey Uso. Jey’s brother Jimmy is currently out nursing an injury he suffered at ‘Mania in April (torn ACL), so it’s a massive positive to see the company still electing to incorporate Jey into a storyline. No one expected it to be quite this big, but it makes perfect sense considering Roman Reigns is Jey’s cousin.

Paul Heyman put it perfectly when he stated that one of the core values WWE is built on is a sense of family. From the perspective it is so poetic for a family member of the Universal Champion Roman Reigns to become the number one contender on the same night. This storyline along with the breakup of Bayley and Sasha Banks will give WWE some very compelling stories to tell with some primary competition coming in the form of the NFL (which has its first Monday Night game on September 14).

WWE Payback 8/30/2020

September 7, 2020 by Evan Luebbe

The Big Dog is now a 5x World Champion and a 2x Universal Champion

WWE appears to be moving full speed ahead with transforming Roman Reigns into the top heel on SmackDown. The newest Paul Heyman Guy became the WWE Universal Champion at Payback and will most likely hold the championship for a long time, since The Big Dog has never held a world championship for an extended time. This title reign might have a similar trajectory to John Cena’s run with the WWE Championship in 2006 – 2007 when he held the title for over a year (the reason Cena relinquished the title was that he tore a pectoral muscle and had to leave WWE to take care of the injury).

This makes perfect sense for WWE to put the Universal Championship on Roman for two reasons:

It makes for a rather sudden change in storyline to draw more fans to tune into SmackDown every week to see what the face of the company will do next; and
While the first reason is purely from a business perspective, it makes sense within the framework of the story because Roman Reigns never lost the Universal Championship.

Now from a reality standpoint, he along with the company made the decision to build the reputation of his character back up organically when Roman returned from dealing with leukemia a year and a half ago.

The Fiend should continue his storyline with Braun Strowman and Alexa Bliss, causing dissension in the relationship between them. Alexa was shown on camera during the Universal Title match (before Roman Reigns made his appearance). This was smart storytelling because The Fiend has another story to immediately turn his attention to and thus will not lose any momentum with regard to his character despite dropping the title.

Keith Lee defeats Randy Orton, and another Main Event Caliber Star has been instantly created in WWE

Randall Keith Orton has had a positive stretch recently putting over younger superstars, which is exactly what Drew McIntyre pointed out that Orton had not done very often in his career. In the last two Pay-Per-Views, Orton has cemented Drew McIntyre as a legitimate superstar in WWE at SummerSlam, and just one week later he put over McIntyre’s good friend Keith Lee as a legitimate threat in WWE immediately to start his main roster run.

This match was reminiscent of the Elimination Chamber Pay-Per-View in 2015 when Kevin Owens defeated John Cena in his debut match on May 31, 2015. Now five years later, Randy Orton did the same thing to create a new start in The Limitless One.

The only difference is that Orton will not start a long-term storyline with Lee as Cena did with KO in the summer of 2015. Instead Orton will resume his WWE Championship regulatory with Drew McIntyre – setting out a rematch to take place at Clash of Champions on September 27.

The Mysterios defeat Seth Rollins and Murphy; Some Evidence of Discord between Rollins and Murphy was also Shown

Rey and Dominik Mysterio have excellent chemistry as a tag team, which would be expected given that they are father and son. I expected Rey to look as good as he did because he has been doing this for over 30 years. Dominik, however, was pleasantly surprising. The 23-year-old looked visibly nervous at SummerSlam (that’s a good amount of pressure to put on anyone – let alone a superstar making his debut), however he looked completely comfortable at Payback and as a result he performed much better. Dominik could be a major superstar in a few years because he has a real knack for the sport.

Since Dominik’s career is still in its embryonic stage, he is still in a phase where he is heavily reliant on his father’s legacy. The next stage in his character’s evolution will be breaking out to form his own persona and signature on the business. That may be happening sooner rather than later because Rey unfortunately suffered a torn tricep at Payback (the same injury suffered by Edge at Backlash in June in The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever – Edge looked utterly fantastic in that match, showing multiple moves that have never been seen before out of him). This injury will probably mean about an eight or nine-month recovery for Mysterio.

Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler defeated the Golden Role Models for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships

The team of Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler was formed the same way most tag teams in WWE are formed – two bitter enemies who develop a partnership based on how much they don’t like the champions. Maybe this partnership will evolve into a friendship; or Jax and Baszler might go their separate ways if the storyline fails to gel with the WWE universe.

As for Bayley and Sasha Banks, a match might be orchestrated between the two women for the SmackDown Women’s Championship in the near future seeing as that’s the only championship either one of them hold right now. This will be the payoff to the long-term story WWE has been in the process of building between these women over the last two or three years.

Three brand-new singles stars in WWE were created at Payback; Randy Orton put over Keith Lee, King Corbin put over Matt Riddle, and Sheamus put over Big E

In addition to Keith Lee, WWE is also in the process of creating new stars in the form of Big E with his long-awaited singles push and Matt Riddle, the recent NXT call-up.

Riddle got a victory over King Corbin, establishing The Bro as a legitimate star on SmackDown and a champion in the future. Corbin, however, will be a Universal or WWE Champion in the near future because of his excellence in portraying the heel persona. King Corbin already has all the accolades he needs; he is just waiting along with WWE for the right time to pull the trigger. It was actually in the original plans for 2022 make Corbin Universal Champion by now. Originally, it was in the cards for Roman Reigns to win the Universal Title from Bill Goldberg at WrestleMania 36; after holding the title for a while, Reigns would have lost his title to Corbin.

Meanwhile, Sheamus put over Big E, a very unselfish move by the 42-year-old. Big E is currently on the steady climb to becoming a top star in WWE. It was reported a few weeks ago that Mr. McMahon made the difficult decision to make Roman Reigns the face of the company over Big E in 2014. This decision came down to these two guys, and Mr. McMahon clearly made the right choice (Big E has an adequate amount of perspective on this and is on the right path right now).

Bobby Lashley, the CEO of The Hurt Business, takes the United States Championship from Apollo Crews

Lashley won his second championship in WWE since returning to the main roster in April 2018, and his first in over a year. Hopefully Bobby’s rivalry with Brock Lesnar will come to fruition in the near future (it needs to happen soon if those plans are in the works, because both men are in their 40s).

Apollo Crews might need to be off TV for a couple of months to let his character incubate for a while before ultimately returning with a new creative element to his character.

WWE SmackDown 8/28/2020

September 7, 2020 by Evan Luebbe

The week of 8/23 – 8/28 was arguably the greatest week of Roman Reigns’ WWE career. He returned at SummerSlam on August 23, followed by some extremely significant character development on the following episode of SmackDown. Many fans on the Internet have speculated about Roman possibly becoming a Paul Heyman Guy for a couple of years now given his history at WrestleMania with Heyman’s client Brock Lesnar.

Reigns was in the main event of WrestleMania 31 in 2015 and WrestleMania 34 in 2018 with Brock Lesnar (and lost both matches) before The Big Dog finally won the Universal Title from The Beast Incarnate at SummerSlam 2018. Reigns would have to relinquish the championship unexpectedly in October 2018 to deal with his leukemia which had returned for the first time in 11 years. Roman was out for about four months before he made his extremely emotional return in February 2019.

This change in attitude for The Big Dog means a whole lot more now as opposed to the possibility of WWE setting this in motion a couple of years, so the timing was perfect. This is the payoff of long-term storytelling – the only problem is, no one wants to wait to get to the conclusion of the story. However, the reward is so much greater if you wait for the right time and take the necessary time to build anticipation. Fortunately, Mr. McMahon understands this perfectly and has executed it many times over.

In my humble opinion, Roman Reigns’ promo on August 28 was the best promo he has done since the one he cut the night after he won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship from Triple H at WrestleMania 32 (I believe the date was April 4, 2016). His promo that night read “I’m not a bad guy, I’m not a good guy, I’m The Guy.” The energy Roman brought with this recent promo a little over a week ago felt extremely authentic and like WWE finally trusted him to bring out his personality.

Triple H has hinted at the possibility of WWE doing another draft in the Fall of 2020, so it would be conceivable to assume that Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar will be moved to the same show to make the travel easier on Heyman whenever the company does start traveling again. Reigns could very possibly win the Universal Championship at Payback on August 30 (giving The Fiend an opportunity to turn his attention to the storyline he started a few weeks ago with Alexa Bliss).

What could be an interesting story to tell is if, after Roman going through leukemia amongst other things to finally secure the Universal Championship for an extended period (because, unbelievably, The Big Dog has never held a world championship for more than about 2 ½ months consecutively), he could lose the Universal Title to Brock Lesnar (who Roman thought he was done with). WWE could then proceed to tell the story of how Roman cannot get rid of The Beast (with the subtext of how Paul Heyman betrayed him. Originally, Reigns may have been of the thought, “If I struggled this much to finally beat Lesnar and Heyman, I don’t want to waste years of my career doing it again. This go around, rather than fighting against them, I will join them.”