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WWE SMACKDOWN PRIMER 7/16: Continued Extreme Rules Fallout, This Meeting Has Been Called to Order, Bryan’s Announcement, Women’s Tag Team Championship Match, Rose & Deville vs. Moon & (blank)

By Frank Peteani, PWTorch contributor

July 16, 2019

Daniel Bryan (art credit Joel Tesch © PWTorch)
SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...

WWE SMACKDOWN PRIMER
JULY 16, 2019
WORCESTER, MA. AT THE DCU ARENA
AIRS ON USA NETWORK, 8:00 p.m. EDT
BY FRANK PETEANI (@FrankPeteani), PWTORCH CONTRIBUTOR

Announcers: Tom Phillips, Corey Graves, Byron Saxton

Smackdown Viewership Last Week: 1.40 (.01 Increase from previous week)

Arena, Items Advertised by WWE, and Show Start Time

WWE travels northeast tonight for Smackdown as they head to the DCU Arena in Worcester, MA. I challenge everyone to pronounce the name of that city correctly. Nonetheless we continue to put Extreme Rules behind us and turn our attention now towards one of the “big four” in SummerSlam as that comes to us in just under four weeks. The DCU Arena opened in 1982 and has been an on again/off again host to WWE. Many events have emanated from here including house shows, Raws, Smackdowns, and even an episode of the original ECW back in 1998. Smackdown last appeared here on May 22, 2018, which was ironically a week before I started doing the primers here at PWTorch.com. As always, I hope I have served you the reader well in getting ready for the shows on a weekly basis.

The arena website shows a start time of 7:45 p.m. local for the house. They advertise Kofi Kingston vs. Dolph Ziggler for the WWE Championship, as well as Roman Reigns vs. Drew McIntyre.

Here’s what WWE.com is advertising for the show thus far:

Matches & Segments:

  • Shane McMahon to host a town hall meeting
  • The Kabuki Warriors to challenge WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions The IIconics
  • Ember Moon and a mystery partner to face Rose & Deville

Storyline Follow-Up:

  • Daniel Bryan to make a career-altering announcement
  • Shane McMahon to Hold Town Hall Meeting

Kevin Owens has certainly raised our eyebrows in the past couple of weeks. Last week he was to have a match with Dolph Ziggler, but it was cancelled as a result of him attacking Dolph during a pre-taped interview in the arena parking lot. He then came out and discussed how the McMahon family promised us change back in December, but instead gave us more Shane McMahon on TV. (Amen!). He then discussed several others not getting TV time including Ali, Buddy Murphy, Kairi Sane, AOP, Asuka, Apollo Crews, etc.

Later in the evening during the main event between Dolph and Roman Reigns, Owens would give Shane a Stunner as he was interfering in the match. This past Sunday at Extreme Rules, Owens would defeat Dolph in what was essentially a squash match giving him the Stunner. After the match he cut a promo essentially telling Shane to kiss his ass.

Prior to Extreme Rules, Owens put up these tweets that WWE actually acknowledged during the show and also had words for Shane and Dolph:

As was told to us on Raw last night, Shane will hold a town hall meeting and let the Smackdown roster speak their mind.

Frank’s Analysis: These things sound good on paper, but to me if you let people speak their mind and nothing comes of it then what’s the point? It just further reminds us that such people don’t matter . Ultimately this is going to lead to Owens vs. Shane likely at SummerSlam. They feuded back in 2017 which ultimately lead to Sami Zayn’s heel turn and Daniel Bryan’s return at WrestleMania. This time the roles are reversed.

WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship: The IIconics (Peyton Royce & Billie Kay) to defend against The Kabuki Warriors (Asuka & Kairi Sane)

It’s been a while since we have seen in-ring action from Asuka & Kairi Sane, but that will change tonight (if things don’t change beforehand). At a house in their home country of Japan, they defeated the IIconics in a non-title match which earned them a championship match. After that contest, the IIconics had this to say in a WWE.com exclusive and then check out the confrontation last week between the teams as well as the IIconics reaction to learning about tonight’s match:

Assuming Billie is over her mad cow bird flu disease, her and Peyton put the women’s tag team titles on the line tonight against the women they lost to in Japan.

Frank’s Analysis: The titles have not been defended in I don’t know how long, and I don’t care to look it up. Does anybody care? I apologize if you do, but I just can’t take this championship seriously given how WWE has handled it since they put the titles on the IIconics at WrestleMania. Perhaps things will change if Asuka & Kairi Sane win it but given how WWE has booked them I don’t have much confidence.

Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville vs. Ember Moon & A Mystery Partner

Ember Moon and Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville have been ‘round and ‘round over the past several weeks. Nintendo Switches, magazines, and donuts have all been casualties of this high school like feud where Ember has been bullied.

Two weeks ago, Ember defeated Mandy in a one-on-one match. Last week, while Ember & Mandy & Sonya were getting catering and the cameraman was fortunate to be there, they had this confrontation:

Ember tweeted this in advance of tonight:

Tonight, we learn who Ember’s mystery partner will be as they take on the duo once (still?) known as Fire & Desire in Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose.

Frank’s Analysis: Ember Moon & Alexa Bliss are apparently close friends if you look at Twitter, so the “A” could be Alexa. Would Alexa be her partner tonight? It’s possible. The wild card rule is in effect, so no worries about a Raw wrestler appearing on Smackdown. Alexa got booed out of the building last night and Nikki Cross told everyone to shut up, which garnered a tweet from Alexa saying everyone is disrespectful. Perhaps she wants to silence everyone by teaming with her close friend? We’ll see, but I don’t think anyone is holding their breath in anticipation.

Daniel Bryan’s Career-Altering Announcement

This past Sunday at Extreme Rules, New Day (Big E & Xavier Woods) defeated Daniel Bryan & Rowan (Smackdown Tag Team Champions at the time) and Heavy Machinery (Otis & Tucker) in a triple threat tag team championship match to begin their sixth overall reign as WWE Tag Team Champions. Last week on Smackdown, Otis won a triple threat match over Woods and Bryan.

After the match this past Sunday, Bryan was interviewed by Sarah Schreiber in a WWE.com exclusive:

Tonight, Bryan makes a career altering announcement. WWE.com is saying it will “change the course of his career and shake SmackDown LIVE to its core.”

Frank’s Analysis: Luke Harper has reportedly been travelling again with WWE and thus I wonder if Bryan brings Harper back to pair him with Rowan while Bryan goes back into the singles scene. This could be part of a mission where Bryan tries to “save the singles division” and leaves the tag division to Harper and Rowan. They can function as a stable (after all they briefly did when Bryan joined the Wyatt family many years ago) It’s just a thought and not backed with substantial evidence. It would be nice to see Harper back on WWE TV though. His last appearance was in a dark match against EC3 before Smackdown in Brooklyn after WrestleMania. My wife and I were in attendance that evening.

Not Advertised for Follow-Up:

New Day does hold “all the gold” (well almost all of it) with Big E & Xavier Woods holding the Smackdown tag titles and Kofi Kingston still holding the WWE Championship. We’ll see if there’s a celebration of some sort.
Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Finn Balor in a non-title match last week and then on Sunday to gain his first Intercontinental Championship. Here’s Nakamura in a WWE.com exclusive following the title win:

Nikki Cross defeated Carmella in the run-up to her and Alexa Bliss teaming to face Bayley for Smackdown Women’s Championship at Extreme Rules.

In regard to Alexa getting booed last night, here are some tweets from her timeline. I don’t read too much into stuff like this, but I couldn’t help include them:

https://twitter.com/MysticPabbz/status/1150955506766364672?s=20

Finn Balor lost to Samoa Joe last night and was then attacked by a returning Bray Wyatt, who was wearing his scary clown mask. It is rumored that Bray and Finn will go at it at SummerSlam. If that’s true we can certainly expect the Demon as we got at SummerSlam 2017. Here’s Bray on Twitter. Like everything else, read into it what you may:

Overall Thoughts on Tonight’s Show

We know who will challenge for the Universal Championship and the Raw Women’s Championship at SummerSlam. I would imagine we’ll find out who will challenge for the WWE Championship as well as some of the other titles or at least lay the groundwork for how that will be determined. The shows coming out of PPVs are usually a bit hotter although I didn’t get that feeling last night. Perhaps with the town hall meeting and Bryan’s announcement, there may be a little more juice to tonight’s show. We’re on path for SummerSlam now, and thus expect heavy promotion of that event which is still considered one of the “big four.”

Follow Frank on Twitter @FrankPeteani. Questions and discussion are welcome. Thank you for reading!

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