WWE Smackdown Blog
May 24, 2013
Report by Michael Cupach, PWTorch contributor

- Miz TV with special guest Fandango.

Odd fact about Josh Mathews - his favorite institute of higher learning is East Carolina University! My favorite is Cuyahoga Community College – go Fighting Flamingos! Summer Rae is starting to get a bit of a character or personality to her. She hurried the ring announcer to give her a microphone and scowled until she handed it to Fandango. Miz called Fandango “a dancing bag of Skittles” and the crowd chanted it back at Fandango. Miz said that he is the new “Fruity Pebbles.”

Wade Barrett interrupted and he has new music. I didn’t get enough of it to form an opinion, but every time he gets new music it is usually worse than the previous song. Barrett threatened Fandango for ditching him last Monday and then brawled with Miz.

Outside of “dancing bag of Skittles” this was a waste of a segment. 15 minutes were spent just to get Miz and Barrett in the ring and trading blows with each other so they could have their IC Title match. I like that Summer Rae is becoming more than a smiling pair of high heels, but no one really benefitted from this segment, in my opinion. Crowd included.

1 - IC champion WADE BARRETT vs. THE MIZ – Intercontinental Title match

Not much of a match. Both men were just starting to get going when Fandango (who was on commentary) started dancing to his music, which distracted Miz and Barrett. Miz baseball slid into Fandango, who came back to kick Miz to cause a DQ. Fandango started attacking Miz when Barrett gave Fandango the Bull Hammer. It looks like this will lead to a three-way for the title at Payback, perhaps. The dancing during the match lasted a good minute or so and distracted the crowd and threw off the wrestlers (which was the point), but it seemed odd and awkward, I hope they don’t make a habit of using this trick.

-Backstage, Bryan misconstrued a conversation with Kane and thought that it was implied that he was the weak link.

2 - JACK SWAGGER vs. DANIEL BRYAN (w/Kane)

Daniel Bryan started the match beating the crap out of Swagger to the point that I thought this was going to be a vintage Swagger getting squashed match, but Bryan slipped on a banana peel to give Jack some offense. The theme of this match was that Bryan thought he was the weak link and was either using that to fire himself up or prove to everyone that he is his own man who can hold his own.

Bryan appeared to snap at the end of the match and got vicious with Swagger then put him in the No Lock and refused to let go after Jack tapped. Bryan stared down Swagger after the match and then put him back in the No Lock and Kane had to physically pull him off Swagger. It looks like Daniel Bryan is getting a Napoleon Complex! As for Swagger, will he get his punishment for his joyride back in February now that WrestleMania season is over, will they go back to the drawing board with him, or is he back on the backburner?

- Damien Sandow Interview Segment.

What appeared to be a board room was set up in the middle of the ring. Sandow and Matt Striker stood in the ring on the same side of the table. Sandow ran down the arm wrestling matches, tractor pulls, and tug of war matches form the previous weeks and he is done playing to the lowest common denominator. Sandow then told the story of Gordian’s Knot and invited Striker to untie the knot. Striker quickly gave up and Sandow reinstated his idiots license. Damien called him all that is wrong is today's educational system.

Sheamus interrupted and made his way to the ring and mocked Sandow's hobby for playing with knots. Sheamus asked if he could solve the riddle of the knot and Damien welcomed him to try. Damien barely let him try before taking the knot and a pair of bolt cutters to untie the knots. Sheamus tried to congratulate Sandow with a Brogue Kick, but Damien rolled to the floor and patted himself on the back for knowing that Sheamus would resort to violence when challenged mentally. Sheamus then gave a poor example of Newton’s Law by throwing Matt Striker at Sandow and declaring that what goes up must come down.

Is this the next great feud for Sheamus? Will he be fussing and a feuding with a guy who hasn’t won on TV in weeks? Match-ups like this might be the reason that ratings and interest in WWE wane post WrestleMania. Don’t get me wrong, I think Sandow has a good upside and deserves to be used better on TV, but I don’t think that getting squashed and outwitted by Sheamus every week is the best thing for him.

3 - CHRIS JERICHO vs. BIG SHOW

I thought after the punt from Orton at Extreme Rules that Big Show would be headlining shows down in FCW or NXT by now! JBL and Cole pretend to not now who Johnny Depp is and instead make old time references to the original Lone Ranger and Tonto. When Josh tries to call them out on it or make fun of them he has this unsure/nervous pitch to his voice. Jericho won via count-out when he nailed Show with a Codebreaker on the floor. Decent enough match from these two for how short it was.

Show hit all of his offensive moves in under 90 seconds, and Jericho got in all his David vs. Goliath hope spots in in his 90 seconds. After the match, Show grabbed a chair and the announcers thought that Jericho was toast, but Chris turned the tide and beat Show all the way to the back, popping the crowd. Jericho is starting to get a nice series of wins, and I wonder if they are building him back up as a challenger for the World Title or as a heel challenger for Cena.

-Curtis Axel and Paul Heyman cut a promo in the ring. Paul brought up his record as a manager – he managed guys in two out of three main events of WrestleMania. He also said that when he points his finger at a guy, you know he is the next WrestleMania main-eventer. Axel spoke and said that in his first match as a Paul Heyman guy, he beat Triple H so bad that no one knows when or if he will wrestle again.

To me, it doesn’t feel natural for Heyman to come out and say this is the next guy, this is who I support. I think it should be up to the crowd to say who is a Paul Heyman guy and who isn’t. It reminds me of the early 2000s when announcers would say that so and so was the next Shawn Michaels or when a wrestler would be called the next Ric Flair, it can be too much for the rookie to live up to. I think it should happen more organically. I think there should be a back story on why Paul picked Joe Hennig because he was a jobber as of six days ago. Why didn’t Heyman start managing Axel when he returned to WWE in the spring of 2012?

4 - CURTIS AXEL (w/Paul Heyman) vs. SIN CARA

Instead of getting that IC Title match against Wade Barrett on Main Event last Wednesday, Sin Cara instead gets to enhance Axel! Sin Cara took a few bumps to make Axel look good, then made a small comeback. After missing a top-rope cross-body, Axel hit him with a move where Cara was bent over, Axel ran at him and hooked him under the neck and kept running past him and pulled Sin Cara face first into the mat. It sounds like a DDT, but wasn’t quite a DDT. I’m sure someone reading this will know the name of it.

5 - United States champion DEAN AMBROSE vs. KOFI KINGSTON – U.S. Title match

Rollins and Reigns walked Dean to the ring, but turned around and left Dean to defend the title on his own. A lot of discussion from JBL, Cole, and Mathews about Dean Ambrose’s style early on - they described it as chaotic. Ambrose took a beating to start, so The Shield came back to ringside and Kofi fought them off for a hot second before the numbers game was too much to overcome. Kofi officially won by DQ, then Randy Orton and Sheamus made the save and fought off Shield. Now get this, you better sit down. Teddy Long came out and made a six-man tag match with the six men in the ring! Unbelievable!

6 - RANDY ORTON & SHEAMUS & KOFI KINGSTON vs. THE SHIELD

Kofi is showing some aggression tonight, probably a result of his frustration with losing the title on Sunday and then getting cheated out of his re-match tonight. The faces dominated the match, then Orton was ready to pick up the win when Reigns jumped and hit him with a flying shot. Reigns landed and immediately grabbed his ankle. He kept holding it through the rest of the match and tried shaking it off. Orton fought off the assault of The Shield and hot-tagged Sheamus.

Sheamus cleaned house, then gingerly knocked Reigns off the apron and tied Rollins up in the ropes and clubbed him. He got Ambrose up for the spear and Reigns took him out with a spear and walked into a RKO from Orton. Sheamus tagged in Kofi, who came in and was taken over by the numbers game of The Shield and ate a pin from Ambrose.

I like the dynamic of The Shield, and I enjoy the matches they are in, but these finishes are becoming paint by the numbers. As Smackdown closed, the faces were shown on the floor regrouping as The Shield stand victorious in the ring as Smackdown faded out.

Thank you for reading, for more from me, please follow me on Twitter @MJCupach. Also check out my Main Event reports every Wednesday right here on PWTorch.com .

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