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8/12 SMACKDOWN RESULTS AND THOUGHTS FROM TAMPA, FL

By Richard Trionfo on 2017-08-13 03:12:00

On Saturday night, I attended the WWE Smackdown brand house show in Tampa, Florida.  Here are the results and my thoughts on the show.

Before the show started, Maria and Mike Kanellis appeared on the video screen to announce that Mike will be facing Sami Zayn tonight on the show.

Daniel Bryan appears on the screen to welcome everyone to the show.

Match Number One:  The New Day (Kofi Kingston and Big E [with Xavier Woods]) successfully defended the WWE Smackdown Tag Titles in a fatal Four Way Match against The Usos, Breezango, and the Hype Bros when The New Day pinned Jimmy with Midnight Hour.

Maria and Mike Kanellis came out to cut a promo before Mike’s match against Sami Zayn. 

Match Number Two:  Sami Zayn defeated Mike Kanellis (with Maria Kanellis) with the Helluva Kick.

After the match, Maria demanded that someone else come out to face her husband

Match Number Three:  Luke Harper defeated Mike Kanellis (with Maria Kanellis) with a clothesline.

Match Number Four:  Chad Gable, Sin Cara, and Tye Dillinger defeated Epico, Erick Rowan, and Aiden English when Gable pinned Epico with Chaos Theory.

Match Number Five:  Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Baron Corbin with Kinshasa

Match Number Six:  Brock Lesnar (with Paul Heyman) successfully defended the WWE Universal Title against Samoa Joe with an F-5.

They held an intermission.

Match Number Seven:  Naomi, Liv Morgan, and Becky Lynch defeated Carmella (with James Ellsworth), Tamina Snuka, Lana, and Natalya when Naomi pinned Natalya with Rear View.

Match Number Eight:  AJ Styles successfully defended the WWE United States Title against Kevin Owens with a Phenomenal Forearm.

Match Number Nine:  Jinder Mahal (with the Singh Brothers) successfully defended the WWE Title against Randy Orton in a Last Man Standing Match.

After the match, The Singhs attacked Orton and Orton gave one of the Singhs and Jinder an RKO.

 

Thoughts on the Show:

They used a smaller configuration than the January Raw taping, but the area that they used appeared to be filled, but there were some seats available.

They had listed Dolph Ziggler as appearing, but he was not on the show.

Since this was a house show, some of the wrestlers did do things that you would not normally see on television.  During the opening tag match, it appeared that it was going to break down into a step contest between Mojo Rawley and Kofi Kingston.  During a spot when Fandango was trying to avoid going over on a sunset flip, he started to dance, which led to Big E tagging in and gyrating under Fandango.  Mojo and Big E did the big man tries to take the other man down with shoulder tackles.

While I did enjoy most of the matches on the show, other than the opener and Owens/Styles, the rest of the show definitely felt like a house show.

It was a shame that the Kanellis/Harper match was less than 30 seconds, it was good to see Luke Harper in action (if you call a match of that length “action”)

The six man tag match felt very random.  The crowd was really into Dillinger with ten chants throughout the match.  Gable hit a very nice suplex combination with three belly-to-belly suplexes on English.

Before the six man tag match, Aiden English did his song entrance as he went to the ring.  When he got to the ring, he was about to finish the song but he told the crowd that because of their behavior, he would not finish . . . but he did finish.

It was good to see Samoa Joe live for the first time since signing with the WWE and the match was what I expected, but it is a shame that Joe/Lesnar was about as long as their Great Balls of Fire match.  Brock was good enough to hit an overhead belly-to-belly suplex, three German suplexes, and an F-5 along with his punches and kicks.

Paul Heyman did the introduction for Brock before the match.

During intermission, they did a ‘name the wrestler’ game with silhouettes of the wrestlers.  When they showed the one for Roman Reigns, the crowd booed.

I thought Liv Morgan was one of the standouts of the women’s match.

I thought the US Title match between Kevin Owens and AJ Styles was the best match on the show.  Owens did a great job stalling at the start of the match to the point where I thought it was Larry Zbyszko instead of Owens.

At one point Owens did a crotch chop to a fan in the crowd, but I wonder if it was to commemorate the 20th anniversary of DX or for the Young Bucks and the Bullet Club.

The crowd showed their support for the New Face of America by serenading him with USA chants during the match.

Jinder Mahal did a brief promo before the main event, but when he was going to address the crowd in Punjabi, Orton’s music started to play.

During the Last Man Standing Match, Orton press slammed Mahal through a table, but one of the Singhs hit Orton with a low blow and then they helped Mahal to his feet before the ten count.

The crowd was into most of the things during the show and I felt that they added to the quality of the show.

 

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