Smackdown Report 8-15-14

The only thing that was announced beforehand for Smackdown was an edition of MizTV featuring Roman Reigns. I was interested in how this would go since Roman Reigns is not great on the mic just yet. The Miz is sporting an all red outfit, which reminds me of Eva Marie's "all red everything", but the Miz pulls this off. He looks like a movie star and he is rocking this character. Miz brings up the fact that Roman is his mom's favorite Superstar in a callback to a few weeks back. Miz continually cuts off Reigns after trying to play the "mentor" role to him. Reigns punches Miz out from his seat, which was pretty damn funny. HE HIT THE MONEYMAKER THAT SONOFABITCH! Reigns cuts a very short promo on Randy Orton. His stuff was lame but Miz was entertaining.

Next up, we get Dean Ambrose vs. Cesaro in a battle of two guys who should be future Superstars. Well, Ambrose is one right now but Cesaro could just never get his character down. Of course, because it's these two guys, we get a very good match. Cesaro will be a lumberjack as he's fallen hard. It goes just under ten minutes and features a good amount of counters, but Ambrose wins with the Dirty Deeds. I wish he had a better finisher. After the match, Seth Rollins comes out to smack talk on Smackdown. He says that he is the future of the WWE and is better than Ambrose. The Lumberjack stipulation is stupid, but the match should be entertaining as hell.

Corporate Kane finds Miz backstage and tells him that he will be facing Roman Reigns in the main event tonight. Anyway, because Dolph Ziggler lost to the WWE's hottest Superstar, Heath Slater, on Raw, he faced the other half of SLATER GATOR tonight! You know, I think that Titus O'Neil has some potential to be a solid mid-card heel or part of an entertaining heel tag team like SLATER GATOR! He does lose here in about three minutes as Dolph gains momentum before his Intercontinental Title match at SummerSlam. Side note, Dolph was again rocking a Miz shirt.

After seeing some more of the build for Chris Jericho vs. Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper was set to one on one with Mark Henry. After a few minutes, Erick Rowan runs in and causes the disqualification. Despite getting let go a few months back, the spirit of Teddy Long lives on because this gets turned into a tag team match playa. Now all we need is someone to go one on one with DA UNDATAKAH. I think it blows that The Usos, who have had the best match on two straight Pay-Per-Views, won't be on SummerSlam. Anyway, Show and Henry win, which sucks.

Time for the mandatory look at the Brie Bella vs. Stephanie McMahon feud, which was well built until the poor "Megan" debacle from Raw. Because it's Smackdown, we have to get at least one Raw rematch and tonight it's AJ Lee vs. Eva Marie. Eva Marie ruined my life by pinning AJ on Raw, so tonight, in another short match, she would win, but by countout here. This was of course because of Paige coming out and getting into a brawl outside. That should've caused a disqualification but whatever. Eva escapes AJ after the match this time, which allows Paige to hit the Paige Turner and skip away. Oh man, I hope this delivers at SummerSlam. Quick note, at one point, AJ rips out part of Eva's weave.

Up next, Bo Dallas, who has become less of a focal point of the show since his first loss, suffers another loss. This time, it's to Jack Swagger via submission in about a minute. Of course, Rusev and Lana have to come out and wave the Russian Flag and such. The best part of this was Bo Dallas getting on the microphone after the match and saying that the silly referee thought he was tapping when he was trying to reach the ropes. He forgives the official and leaves. Not bad, but I want to see more Bo Dallas.

Here we go with some non-title action between the Intercontinental Champion The Miz, and Roman Reigns. This was more competitive than I expected, since I figured Reigns would demolish the IC Champion. That wasn't the case as they got about seven minutes. Dolph Ziggler showed up as the Miz tries to bail when Reigns goes for the Superman punch. He sends Miz back in and the Champion eats a Spear to give Reigns a victory. Not a bad match but not really main event worthy. Overall, this was a decent episode of Smackdown. Some of the matches were a bit too short though. 6/10.