SmackDown Delivers One Great, and One Awful Promo

This week’s SmackDown Live gave us an example of a great promo, while at the same time, giving us an example of a promo so truly awful, it was barely coherent.

Let’s start with the good, because I’m in a good mood. Rene Young sat down with American Alpha (former?) member Chad Gable, who watched with the rest of us on Monday’s Raw as his tag team partner, Jason Jordan, was revealed to be Kurt Angle’s son.

Part of that storyline is seeing Jordan move to Raw, leaving Gable on SmackDown as a singles wrestler. This, of course, is totally fine. Gable was ultra-impressive two weeks ago in a match against AJ Styles, and a few years from now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Gable farther along in a singles push than Jordan.

Gable was perfect in this interview, hitting some key points. He was open, honest but also completely genuine. You sympathized with him, when he said Jordan didn’t tell him ahead of time.

If anything, I thin Gable has more of the characteristics of Angle; a bit quirky, but good in promos and he also has Angle’s similar pedigree.

I think it made Gable look good, too, when he said he noticed his friend was distant in recent weeks and he wasn’t sure what was wrong. Gable is human, and so is Jason Jordan. The story they told here worked well.

Now, the conspiracy theorist in me believes this could be setting up a swerve, and it has nothing to do with Gable. Maybe Gable noticed that Jordan was distant in recent weeks, not because of anything that had to do with Kurt Angle being his father, but rather a scheme he is a part of where Triple H and Stephanie McMahon are trying to pull something over on Angle and re-take Monday Night Raw. Jordan could have been contemplating whether or not to get involved.

I just feel like they need to get Jordan out of the “Kurt is my dad” storyline at some point. It might help elevate him now, but I think it could hold him back later.

There are some other tells in here as well. For example, they announced Jordan was coming to Raw because Angle is the Raw GM. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? If Angle was in charge of Raw, you would think, in the interest of fairness, it would be mandatory that Jordan was on SmackDown Live. Here’s the play where I think Triple and Stephanie try to take the show back, using this as an example of nepotism by Angle.

Gable’s interview all happened without him mentioning himself much, and what his future was going to be.

Meanwhile, you have the Singh brothers cutting a promo to open the show inside the Punjabi Prison that was almost non-coherent. The best part of this bad promo? They were telling the audience the rules of the Punjabi Prison match. Then Jinder Mahal grabbed the mic, and said there were no rules.

Well done.

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Jimmy Uso beat Kofi Kingston

Good opener that got all of the tag teams involved. It will be interesting to see where they go with this at Backlash, and while it gets a little over the top with New Day, I thought this opener was fine.

Mike Kanellis beat Sami Zayn

Kanellis looked good in his WWE debut. Maria got involved to distract Zayn and give Mike the win. I’m not sure the gimmick is anything that will get above the midcard, but Bennett is really good and could elevate himself.

John Cena cut a promo on Rusev

Another bad promo. This was Hulk Hogan during the first Iraq War level of over-the-top patriotism. I have nothing against America, but John Cena, in 2017, talking about waving old glory is obnoxious.

Becky Lynch beat Charlotte

This was probably the best match on the show. Becky and Charlotte have good chemistry and have wrestled hundreds of times by now, most likely. You can tell because they work really well together and the match was fun.

Kevin Owens & Baron Corbin beat AJ Styles & Shinsuke Nakamura

As written just seconds ago, I was a big fan of the women’s match on this show. This match here was a very close second. I liked that the heels won here, not with any outside garbage, but by just outsmarting the babyfaces. This was a really good match. In fact, most of the matches on this show (in-ring) were really good.