WWE SmackDown Smacks/Downs: Bray Wyatt remains fascinating

Down: how many times do we need to see the same, tired angles?

I’ve made my complete dislike of King Corbin (the gimmick) well-known in this space. His ongoing feud with Elias does nothing for me, either.

Elias turning heel-face-heel-face on a whim doesn’t help. His “songs” where he tries to straddle that line are generally just bad.

Corbin’s entire King gimmick needs to be retired (as discussed here). He could use time away to repackage.

Their segment with Corbin knocking Elias off the elevated platform (taking a cue from Tomasso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano) was less effective than in NXT and less believable.

While we saw Elias fall, we didn’t see him land like in most of these angles. There was also an audible “crash” rather than the expected “thud” of someone landing on concrete, yet the shot had no destroyed table.

I understand you can shoot things like this when taping shows, but it wasn’t believable because the sounds didn’t match the actual scene.

If that really happened and Elias fell straight to the concrete like that, he’d be dead, right?

The other segment that needs to be revamped or scrapped was the opening segment of the night.

https://twitter.com/WWEonFOX/status/1243694050450059267

Let me be clear: this has nothing to do with the women in the segment. They played their roles. This has to do with the segment itself.

It seems like when WWE has no direction for a championship match, they decide to have a parade of contenders trot out individually to declare their intentions of winning whatever championship is being presented. These always devolve into physical altercations, and is generally just a space for everyone to say their witty one-liner.

Then again, in Tamina’s case, there was nothing witty; it was just straight physicality.

Last week, we had Paige announce all the competitors. Last night, we had all of them (except Brooke) make their case. This is one where it’s predictable but not reasonable.

There has to be different ways to accomplish the goals of these segments without trotting out the same thing basically every month.

This also applies to the triple threat Tag Team Championship match set for WrestleMania. How many times have we seen heels stupidly interfere in #1 contender matches in an attempt to have no contender only to have to defend their championship against all possible contenders?

It happened again last night! It happens in pretty much every #1 contender match when the champion is a heel. It’s just so tired.

I know it protects the challengers and supposedly garners more heat for the heel champions. It just needs to be done differently.

Look, the triple threat match should be great and fun, particularly considering The New Day and The Usos are involved. However, these repeated, illogical angles need to “drift away” to infringe on a certain wrestler’s previous gimmick.