WWE SMACKDOWN HITS & MISSES 6/12: Festival of Friendship, Forever Knight, and Urine Big Trouble

So when I get mad, I make a fist.  I grab my pen and I write out a list.  Of all the wrestling stuff that hit and missed.  Let’s see who’s made our WWE Smackdown Hits & Misses list for the June 12 episode on Fox.

HITS

•Daniel Bryan vs. A.J. Styles: No, it wasn’t the Greatest Wrestling Match of All Time, but it was outstanding.  I can’t say the contest got both men over, seeing as they were already over before Friday.  But putting the WWE Intercontinental Title on the Phenomenal One sets up a bunch of potential storylines.  Bryan can get his rematch and continue the feud.  Jeff Hardy will be looking for the opportunity he was denied a couple of weeks ago.  Elias should be back in the hunt once he recovers from his injuries.  Drew Gulak already has a non-title win over Styles.  And Sami Zayn will eventually return, looking for the championship he never lost.  It’s as if WWE was an actual wrestling promotion.

•Forever Knight: You might have thought, now that Otis Dozovic is Mister Money In The Bank, WWE would have Tucker Knight disappear like Chuck Cunningham after Season 1 of “Happy Days”.  Maybe you thought instead that Tucker would return as a jealous villain for a one-off feud with his former partner, much like the rivalry between Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville.  We were pleasantly surprised on both counts.  Tucker is still Otis’s buddy, and his return gave us a reason for a show closing six-man tag team match.  It wasn’t an all time classic, but it set up the coming war between the Big O and King Corbin.  Plus, we had a Dolph ZIggler sighting.

Festival of Friendship:  Under normal circumstances, the bit where the heel does a long, drawn-out celebration after winning a title is one of my least favorite WWE tropes.  Not this time.  Bayley and Sasha made it fun.  Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross played their roles well, as did the visiting Iiconic Duo.  It leads to a big match at Backlash, but that’s just the icing on the cake.

•The Results Are In: At least WWE had the doctor inform us that Jeff Hardy passed his drug screening.  That was a significant plot point.

MISSES

•Urine Big Trouble: In the opening segment, we learned Sheamus was paying for Jeff Hardy to take a piss test in order to prove his sobriety.  The story is that Sheamus persuaded WWE management to have Jeff submit to a urinalysis.  That right there is awful writing.  Jeff had already been cleared of wrongdoing for the car accident, and Sheamus is still a suspect.

But if you watched Smackdown live on the East Coast feed of FOX, you got to see the payoff, which was the Charismatic Enigma throwing a jar of his urine in Sheamus’s face.  Fox TV enjoyed the segment so much that the urine toss was edited off the West Coast feed and the subsequent airings on FS1, FS2 and FS8, The Ocho.  Vince McMahon may want to spike Smackdown ratings by reliving storylines that didn’t get over in the mid 2000’s, but Fox wants a PG show.  Since Fox is paying the bills, they will get their way.

•New Day, Same Old Stuff: Look, I’m happy we’re going to get matches between the New Day and the Artists Collective of Shinsuke Nakamura and Antonio Cesaro.  And we don’t really need to see The Forgotten Sons in the tag team title mix.  But I feel like we missed an episode somewhere.  Compared to the rest of the show, this truncated matchup didn’t feel all that important.

•More Than Words: I am a little disappointed we didn’t get to hear Bayley read the poem she write for her friend Sasha. Maybe next week?

You can find Pat McNeill of Greenville, South Carolina on Twitter at @realpatmcneill.  Listen to his weekly “Wayback Playback” watchalong podcast with Jim Valley over at HERE or sign up for their Patreon HERE.