This week, Smackdown started with Jerry Lawler conducting an interview with King Barrett. Barrett is condescending throughout and Lawler doesn't like it, refusing to say "ALL HAIL KING BARRETT". When BNB threatens him, Dolph Ziggler runs out, leading to a match. This goes nowhere as Sheamus runs in for the DQ, bringing Neville out after, leading to the Teddy Long Special. Yup. A tag team match. The same one we saw before Extreme Rules and this past Monday on Raw. Look, I really like the work of all four guys but I've seen it too much. Ziggler gets the win for his team by pinning King Barrett, which was a bad move. It's tough in general here, since nobody can really afford the loss, so don't even book the tag match again. Now your new King of the Ring is already jobbing.
Next up we get a guy with talent, Luke Harper, taking on a Fandango. Harper mockingly does the Fandango dance, which steals the show for me. Harper wins pretty easily, which is how it should be. Erick Rowan shows up after the match and also attacks Fandango. Maybe we'll get a Rowan and Harper reunion? Hell, it's better than Harper losing meaningless singles matches each week. Then we get a filler talking segment from Rusev and Lana. Lana thanks the fans for cheering her but asks them not to. Rusev still gets pissy and banishes her. He then runs down John Cena and says he's weak for showing mercy to Sami Zayn. He says that he's going to tell Cena on Raw why he's going to win at Payback. So he came out to tell us that he's going to talk on Raw. See what I mean? Filler.
The New Day challenged Tyson Kidd and Cesaro to find a partner for a six man tag match. They went out and chose THE BIG GUY. Interesting pick here. This was probably the match of the night. All six guys worked hard, and I appreciate that they are putting in some effort to not give us the same tag match every week and trying to put variation on it. There was an extremely sloppy spot outside between Big E and Cesaro but the rest of the match was fine. The New Day win after a distraction from Bray Wyatt. This furthered both angles pretty well and did its job. Naomi, with Tamina, now faces Emma. I'm still not sold on Naomi's heel turn. It's like, she got AJ's role as a heel with Tamina, while acting like a Sasha Banks knockoff. She defeats Emma in relatively short order as one would expect since Emma is pretty much a jobber on the main roster. Throughout the show, Renee Young has interviewed the four men involved in the Payback main event and it's all standard stuff. Dean Ambrose says there will be chaos, Randy Orton will drop anyone, Roman Riegns will fight hard and Seth Rollins says he always has a plan.
The Lucha Dragons come out, in awesome attire, to face Los Matadores. This was fine though it featured a Sin Cara botch that hurt it. Lucha Dragons pick up the win before we head to the big contract signing. Kane introduces the challengers, who all sit down and await the Champion. Seth stays atop the ramp, they all bicker, and Seth says the Authority can sign for him. Kane wants him to sign on his own, again putting the focus on those two instead of the guys competing. Seth gets the challengers to argue with each other, leading to the usual contract signing brawl. Dean was the MVP of this, being highly entertaining. Seth ends up being the guy to stand tall at the end of it all, giving him an actual chance at looking strong, though the Justin Bieber stuff is fucking dumb. Seth is nothing like him and it's just a dumb way to try and be "cool." Overall, another relatively average episode of Smackdown. Nothing of real note continues to happen here, but the show isn't straight up bad. 6/10.
