The Prime Time Players and The Usos def. Stardust, The Ascension and Tyler Breeze via pinfall
Every participant in this 8-man tag gets a full entrance, which helpfully burns off five minutes of airtime – even Tyler, who is now sporting a rather dashing five o’clock shadow.
Boring 15-minute match here, that meandered along at a glacial pace until the hot tag to Darren Young. Up to that point, Jey Uso had the honour of being beaten up by the heels forever, a portion of the match enlivened only by Jerry Lawler’s excellent commentary. Highlights included berating Titus O’Neil for not splashing out on ringside tickets for the kids he invited to last week’s Smackdown and instructing Rich Brennan on how to tell the Usos apart.
Young ran wild with a belly-to-belly on Stardust, followed by delivering his back suplex on the apron to Viktor. Of course, Titus had to blind tag himself in and steal his thunder, Pay Check-ing Tyler Breeze into Stardust, before hitting the Stinger Splash on both men. Clash of the Titus on Cody wraps it up for Titus and his team. I can’t believe it wasn’t Breeze taking the pinfall there.
– A recap of the Sasha/Becky/Team BAD segment from RAW leads us into a backstage interview segment featuring Naomi and Tamina. Jojo, wearing an unnecessarily large amount of slap on her face, asks the ladies for justification for their actions on Monday night.
Naomi maintains that Sasha betrayed them first, before Tamina goes all Confucius/Cantona by talking about the dangers of baby birds flying too high from the nest, or some such bilge. Naomi finishes by saying that “Naomina” (ugh) never needed Sasha, to which Tamina adds “you can take that to the bank”. Poor Naomi.
Jack Swagger def. Fandango via submission
Pretty funny/sad moment during Fandango’s entrance when they attempt to cut to shots of the crowd dancing to his music; only to find one little kid Fandango-ing in the midst of a sea of bored faces.
Fandango also arrived to the ring wearing a “Let’s Get Weird” jacket, which seems to nod at his old Johnny Curtis gimmick. Or has he always worn it? Answers on a postcard, please.
Nothing match, which wrapped in under three minutes with a Patriot Lock out of nowhere. Crowd did not care one jot. Unfortunate for Swagger, who has impressed on this show when given time in recent weeks.
Naomina def. Paige and Natalya via submission
That Team BAD entrance theme that lasted all of two weeks appears to be dead along with the faction that spawned it; the heels emerge to Naomi’s “amay-yay-yay-yay-zing” tune instead.
Another long tag match that failed to hold the interest here, I’m afraid. Paige’s shine seemed to go on forever, but featured a cute spot where she tried a headbutt on Tamina, only to beg off when she realised the old adage about trying that on a Samoan.
Paige has to resort to screaming about her house on more than one occasion to draw heat, to which Lawler responds “we get the message”. She is also guilty of loud spot calling (of sorts) later on, when she is picked up shouting “Trin! Trin!” on the mic, reminding Naomi to lay the boots to her on the outside as Tamina distracts the ref.
The heat is dull, especially when Tamina is in the ring, although “Nah-eeee” (as Paige calls her) is amusing with her energetic cheerleading on the apron.
Nattie eventually gets the hot tag, only to quickly fall victim to the numbers game to cut her off. Paige trips Tamina from the outside to help her out, but can’t stop Naomi hitting the Rear View on her partner. She does break up the ensuing pinfall attempt, however.
The ref then sends Paige back out of the ring, as Nattie lines up the sharpshooter, only to see Naomi counter it (awkwardly) into her headscissors choke (the Slay-o-mission, apparently) for the win. The finish makes sense, given that the heels are likely going to be featured in a tag feud with Sasha and Becky going forward.
Final Thoughts:
Two disappointing tag matches, bookending a nothing squash, makes this a pretty underwhelming edition of Main Event. Recommendation to skip.
