3/13 WWE TALKING SMACK REPORT: Big E continues serious tone on Crews, Sami Zayn complains, Heyman brings up Christian, more

WWE TALKING SMACK
MARCH 13, 2021
BY NICK MORGAN, PWTORCH CONTRIBUTOR

Hosts: Kayla Braxton and Paul Heyman

This week’s guests: Sami Zayn, Shayna Baszler & Nia Jax w/Reginald, and Big E

(Morgan’s Analysis: One note I want to say here up front, Talking Smack is a good show and usually a fun watch, but the guest list continues to shrink and we are again this week going to be subjected to Baszler and Jax for like the third time in four weeks, as well as Sami Zayn and Big E.)

– Kayla opened the show with a quick promo of being on the Road to WrestleMania and the upcoming Fastlane show on Sunday. She announced that it had been official that Apollo Crews would face Big E for the Intercontinental Championship at Fastlane, that Nia Jax would face Sasha next Friday for the women’s title and that also next Friday Jey Uso would face Edge to see who would become the special guest enforcer in the Daniel Bryan versus Roman Reigns title defense at Fastlane. With this announcement she turned to co-host Paul Heyman to get his reaction.

– Paul seemed to be frustrated by the whole thing, but quickly turned to Sami Zayn complaining about a conspiracy. Then he turned to saying that it was Roman Reigns facing a conspiracy with everyone clamoring for the title. In a veiled reference to Christian moving over to AEW, Paul said “how many of your ‘Christians’ need to convert” before you (Edge) realize it’s not wise to piss off the Tribal Chief.

(Morgan’s Analysis: Very interesting that while he didn’t technically say “Christian’s” name, that Vince would allow this kind of recognition that Christian left the WWE for AEW.) 

– Paul continued to rant telling Edge that it is obvious that Edge doesn’t want to face Roman. He said in fact he knows that Edge would rather face Bryan, but that it won’t happen and that Edge will have to face Reigns and ultimately lose to the Head of the Table and the main man in the WWE, Roman Reigns.

(Morgan’s Analysis: This was a pretty good effort at trying to add heat to this presumptive WrestleMania match up, but I am surprised that they do it here on a show that has a much smaller audience than Smackdown. That seems to be where WWE has gone though – using this show to add flavor and counting on social media and articles like this to bring the information to the WWE fans.)

– With that Kayla kind of took back control and got the show going with their first guest, Sami Zayn. Sami, accompanied by his film crew, immediately came out and blasted Paul for saying that Roman Reigns is facing a conspiracy while Sami is the real victim. Sami actually said, “I am losing it, man” as he almost started crying. He then launched into more and more conspiracy theories against him.

(Morgan’s Analysis: As I noted above, having Sami do a similar type of appearance every couple of weeks is really getting old. I love Sami and his ability to inject energy and somewhat sophisticated humor into a segment, but quite frankly enough already. This angle needs to get paid off soon before it just becomes irritating which it is close to becoming.)

With his ranting complete, Sami banged the table a bit, claimed his documentary will be out soon and left the set. Paul and Kayla discussed what had just happened with Sami with Paul “revealing” that on Raw when he was the exec. Director, there was a “conspiracy” against Sami but that it was instigated by Kevin Owens saying that he didn’t want to work with Sami and that he was a jerk.

(Morgan’s Analysis: Sounds to me like they are laying the seeds to start another run with KO versus Sami, which quite frankly I think there has been a long enough break from and would be great wrestling and great WWE television.)

– Shayna Baszler and Nia Jax with Reginald were up next. As they came out Reginald was holding Jax’s tag team belt and Baszler just sat there getting frustrated. Unfortunately, they spent some time on the “relationship” between Jax and Reginald and then moved to the match next week between Sasha and Jax. Paul suggested that since Jax would have to face Bianca Belair if she won the championship from Sasha, why wouldn’t it make sense to have Baszler defend the tag team titles by herself so Jax could concentrate on Belair. Jax said, I think supposedly sarcastically, that it might be a good idea, but because Jax has so little variation in her delivery it sounded like she meant it.

– At this point Baszler chimed in that she would be fine with defending the titles herself, to which Jax said that she was kidding, but then switched over to saying that Baszler should go after the Raw championship so that they would have all the gold. Baszler didn’t say anything, but gave Paul a look. After, Nia Jax stormed off (as usual and as pointed out by Kayla that she always does), Kayla excitedly introduced Big E. I’m happy to say that after a very serious performance on Smackdown, Big E came out in a straight forward serious Big E mode and asked Paul, “Is this what you wanted.” Paul said that it wasn’t what he wanted, but it was what he predicted and said that Big E now understands what Roman Reigns has to go through being at the top. He said that now Big E is discovering what it means to be at the top and the target of the locker room who want to take away his title.

– Paul continued to talk about Roman Reigns and Jey Uso (well done continuing to keep Roman top of mind). Paul then alluded to the fact that there is more than one Uso (meaning Jimmy?) and if he wants to benefit from some back up, just give him a call.

– Rather than taking the bait here, Big E gave an impassioned and un-funny promo that he will destroy Apollo Crews and hold the Intercontinental Championship for a year and come back at WrestleMania 2022 and take on whom ever is the Universal Champion (whether it be Roman or someone else) and become both the Universal Champion and the Intercontinental Champion. With that he put down the mic and left the set still in serious mode.

– As Paul smiled with evil intent, Kayla signed off and we were out.

FINAL THOUGHTS: A rather fast paced 25 minutes this week due to Paul’s opening rant and Sami’s rant in the first segment. Overall, this week’s Talking Smack was a mixed bag. Sami did his normal schtick with some potential angle moving allusions to Kevin Owens and the Big E segment was refreshing in that Big E really showed a serious side. The tease to Jimmy Uso was an interesting bread crumb for us to follow as well. Unfortunately, these two segments sandwiched a brutal and mind-numbing segment with Nia Jax and the continued presence of the irritant that is Reginald. Skip through the Nia Jax stuff and enjoy the rest of the show, which was good.

NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S TALKING SMACK REPORT: 3/6 WWE TALKING SMACK REPORT: Bayley takes over the questions, Crews reiterates Smackdown statement, and Rey Mysterio lays down the challenge to Otis and Gable