Welcome to the ring, it's rich and atom.
Breaking down the fights with flair and passion.
Tag teams grappling belts are clashing.
Finishes and factions catching action.
Welcome back to Finishes and Factions,
does Smackdown part 2.
We are going to jump straight back into the action
where we have singles match between Drew McIntyre
and Big Jim Uso.
On paper we have a nice little match here.
In practice it turned into a not a bad little match either
where the action started as soon as Jim Uso hit the ring.
Which is what we like to see.
I'm not going to lie to you, sometimes it pisses me off
when they have these big feuds going on
and you just want them to get at it and they are stood around
waiting for introductions and stuff like that.
So get in that ring, get both of you in the same ring,
throw a punch, let the referee shout at the ringmaster
about ringing that bell when he's ready.
You throw the first punch and you've got to throw it as hard as you can.
You want to throw that first one as though your life depends on that punch.
So yeah, the fact that these two jumped straight into it
and got right into it was an absolute bonus for me.
Jim Uso managed to pull off one of the smoothest ring entries
I think I've ever seen in my life to be quite honest.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, we've seen a lot of different ring entries over the years
that have been pretty smooth.
Non-quite smooth as when Titus O'Neill decided
he was going to make a flying entry into the greatest rumble in Saudi Arabia.
I'm not sure if it's called the greatest rumble actually.
They did a 40 man Royal Rumble out there and Titus O'Neill tripped, fell over and landed underneath the ring
rather than in the ring.
So shout out to Titus O'Neill for that one.
But yeah, no, I say this was a great match
and basically once Druid kind of started off quite strong,
Big Jim took control for a short section of the match
and then we get some spots here.
Jim Uso slams Drew McIntyre into the announce table at one point
and then slams him head first in and his Druids just coming back round like,
oh wow, but now he eats a super kick.
There was a couple of slow and drops in there from J.U.S.O.
Of course you get the obvious ones from Drew McIntyre.
We get a couple of play more attempts, a couple of big kicks.
Lots of throwing him around ring ropes, clothes lines.
Drew's just a very high powered wrestler
and likes to show his dominance by pushing the buttons with his mouth
and then swinging for the fences and using every inch of that ring
to give him the advantage he feels he needs.
Normally he does it quite well to be fair.
This wasn't the longest match of the night by any stretch of the imagination
but I got quite sucked into it so my notes for this are actually quite minimal.
It wasn't the ending that a lot of us saw coming I don't think.
Purely for the fact that McIntyre's been on a bit of a losing streak recently.
I think I'm a little bit unsure about where I think he's going to end up getting his WrestleMania moment
because obviously he's not going to any of the main events.
He's got eliminated at the Royal Rumble and at the Elimination Chamber by Damian Priest.
So I think at the moment that he's just kind of finishing off his I'm angry at everyone that's helped Roman Reigns angle off
and he's just going to start beating through everyone else that's helped him via different ways.
I'm going to sort of argue the toss here and say that I don't think he's quite done yet
it's not necessarily going to be he's upset and he's going to punch his way through everybody.
It's going to come up down to the fact that I think Damian Priest is going to end up punching his way through Drew McIntyre at this point.
I think Drew has started a fight that he really didn't have any intention of finishing.
You mentioned Damian Priest so let me just roll it up quickly.
Jey Uso-Mis is a splash attempt and it's a massive claim or where Drew McIntyre managed to pull off the three counts
to get the win over Big Jim in this specific match.
And then just as Drew is leaving the ring, we actually see Damian Priest come running out and attacking Drew
basically getting revenge for what Drew did to him earlier on in the day screaming at him that you should have killed me
because now I'm going to kill you.
So we got quite a big, I mean those two have had a massive year in pro wrestling like obviously Damian Priest
cashed in on Drew McIntyre to take his title which is done the circle all the way through.
There's been a lot of uncertainty here around the two and there's definitely a lot of hatred between the two
so we're going to see a very strong finish to this storyline I think.
Will this one have the legs for WrestleMania?
I hope so but I'm not entirely sure how they're going to continue building it because we have been told a few times
through the course of this episode that we are only 41 days away from WrestleMania.
So yeah, they've got about five weeks, five, six weeks to keep this going.
It could be a push but it could get away with it if they do it correctly.
So we flew from Damian Priest kicking the absolute crap out of Drew McIntyre into a Shinsuke Nakamura promo in
a lot of it was basically just, it was all in Japanese basically just saying that this was LA Nights last opportunity at the United States title.
You know LA Nights had a fair few opportunities at the title, I say that.
Shinsuke Nakamura has defended his United States title twice including tonight's main event which is coming up in a few minutes.
Both times have been against LA Nights but there's been quite a lot of people within the wrestling community that have been really annoyed at the fact that Shinsuke has had this title and he's done nothing with it.
Granted he did lose his brother last week in real life and he's been going through some bits but I think this should have been dealt with a little bit earlier.
But it did save him, the way they've done it does save him the embarrassment I suppose of vacating the title.
I can imagine having to say look, I really don't want to have to give this up but circumstances beyond my control may not have to.
It's just been one of those sort of processes really. We went from this VT into a backstage segment with Byron Saxton.
He was talking to DIY about defending their tag team belts against street profits next week.
And DIY claiming that they're best in the world at the moment and since the profits have come back they've had an attitude and they've not had a lot to do.
But next week in Spain they've got a match and it will be DIY who reckon they'll be coming out of that one holding the WWE tag team titles again, well retaining.
And then we went from there into our main event of the evening which is the men's United States title match between Elaine Knight and Shinsuke Nakamura.
Nakamura being the current holder of the men's US title.
Shinsuke Nakamura's title reign so far has lasted just under 100 days.
Obviously we heard Rich earlier on about the fact that he's only had two title defences in that time and including this one and that is both of them fought against LA Knight.
Now I've got all the sympathy in the world for somebody that loses a family member I have.
But the family member thing was very recent and he just didn't realise, he just, yeah, the effort wasn't put there before he lost his brother.
His brother passed away within the last 20 days, which means they had 80 days before that to build some kind of arc for Shinsuke Nakamura and they chose not to.
And Adam said this off podcast earlier, he feels that when the next set a series of contract cuts are made, we're going to see Shinsuke Nakamura being cut from the company because he really just hasn't made the impact that they feel he probably should have made.
Yes, he's had a few title runs and he's not really done much with them so it's just been difficult.
And we've said this a few times but for someone who's been in the company for nine years, his English has not improved and it just makes his ability to cut promo a lot harder.
It's a lot harder to kind of build a relationship with the character even in a heel term, like I know you're not supposed to but you can at least align with the heel if you're a bit of a prick.
But you can't align with Shinsuke Nakamura on anything because you can't really understand what he's saying, still very broken and quite difficult, but it is for me anyway.
Yeah, and I feel very much the same way is that I've been very vocal about the fact that I'm not a big Shinsuke Nakamura fan.
He has his talents and he is a talented individual because he wouldn't have got to WWE without being in some way shape or form talented.
However, I just don't think the talent stretches far enough for him to have had the length of run in the WWE that he has had.
Bearing in mind that there were some superstars that probably have been more over than Shinsuke Nakamura has been in recent months that were cut in the last round of cuts about a month or so ago.
Yep, I would agree with you there.
So I'm not sure why they didn't choose to cut him before.
I'm guessing that may have something to do with the fact that he was holding the US title at the time.
But yeah, it's just I'm not feeling the love for Shinsuke Nakamura at all.
But in this match for the first half of this match, it is Shinsuke Nakamura.
Yeah, LA Night does not get any offense going at all during this match and it's almost as though he's there to take the hit.
The point was that he threw Shinsuke Nakamura out and connected with the baseball slide.
And then we had a neck breaker and a suplex followed by a big elbow for a two count.
And that's all I really had for LA Night for quite a while up until he hit the box jump suplex later on in the match.
Well actually to be fair, pretty much near the end of the match.
That was the beginning of the end for Shinsuke.
But Shinsuke, most of my notes here, you know, sliding German suplex.
There was, we don't refer to it as a botch on this podcast.
We refer to it as a, what's it Adam? A missed move?
Yeah.
So Shinsuke Nakamura pulled off a very questionable suplex.
Now commentary tried to say that, you know, they could see that he was trying to spike him.
I don't think he had full control of what he was doing, which made the suplex look a lot worse than a standard suplex.
Because LA Night landed basically on the back of his head and the top of his shoulders rather than on his shoulders.
And he didn't look too happy about it, I'm not going to lie, but he was definitely reeling on the floor of the ring in the Wells Fargo arena,
feeling that specific move.
But then, yeah, I said, you know, about the box jump suplex into the elbow.
That was the start of the end for Shinsuke Nakamura somewhere.
And I can't remember exactly where it came from.
There was a chair introduced into the match. Now this is a title match, so therefore, you know, a chair is a disqualification.
You're not allowed to use them.
And, you know, we've got to a point with this, this storyline that it needs to be done.
We've had one match interrupted by Jacob Fatou after LA Night told him off using his outside voice inside and through him outside.
And then the previous match, I can't remember why that ended up being a no DQ or a no contest,
but it got to a point now with this being said third and final match in the trilogy.
The fans wanted to see an actual result that wasn't a DQ. They wanted to see a clean win.
And as Shinsuke Nakamura goes to use the chair to try and get the disqualification, the referee Charles Robinson actually takes it off him.
Well, just take it off and he grabs hold of it and pulls it down.
And then the chair shop for me sort of slept a little bit of desperation on Shinsuke Nakamura's behalf is that he has played.
He played this entire match as the heel roll and did a reasonable job of betraying the fact that it was a heel roll.
However, it's Shinsuke Nakamura that initially introduces the chair as he dives to the outside, grabs the chair,
attempts to use it on LA Night, who manages to get him get it away from him.
I don't know if it was intentional, but does manage to give him a little knock to the noggin as he goes down on the outside of the ring.
And then brings the chair up, is caught by Charles Robinson, who basically says,
No, put that chair down, dickhead.
And that's when we sort of bring ourselves up to the point that we're at the moment where, yeah, Charles Robinson has essentially wrestled the chair off Shinsuke Nakamura.
We then see, as Nakamura is trying to argue that, I'm guessing trying to argue the toss, is that LA Night comes to try to land a blow on Shinsuke Nakamura while his back's turned.
Some kind of fucking premonition hits Shinsuke Nakamura that he moves out of the way.
LA Night nearly flattens Charles Robinson, who then is really not having a good night tonight where he ends up getting hit by a missed attack from Shinsuke Nakamura,
which is something we see quite common in superstars from Asia who use this missed attack that is...
I don't even know what you would describe it as.
It's everyone that uses it seems to use a different colour.
I'm guessing it's just like a capsule they hold in their mouth that's just kind of like if food dies, something that's spray out.
But I am... yeah, not sure what the gimmick is.
It's just a pointless gimmick, I suppose, it's like, always got something in my eyes.
And then it allows LA Night to...
I'm just going to get to the bottom of my notes here.
Yeah, so LA Night goes, I didn't catch what happened between the missed attack hitting and then all of a sudden LA Night's got...
Go on.
Yeah, so Shinsuke Nakamura used to move Scorpio Rising, which was a homage to another wrestler whose name I did not get from NXT UK.
And then I've got Shinsuke Nakamura chair in hand, Night Kicks hits into the face.
Yeah, Night Kicks the chair, it hits Shinsuke in the face and BFT onto the chair by LA Night to Shinsuke Nakamura for the three count.
Making LA Night our new US title holder champion for the third time.
I'm not sure how many times he's held the title, but the most important thing about this is that he is now the current title holder.
And the program basically fades out to LA Night celebrating with his title, which I think is a fitting way to be fair.
I mean, we wanted LA Night to get that title back for weeks and we've had to see him fight off multiple other competitors for his number one contender spot multiple times.
And now he's finally got the gold, he's got that big target on his back that we're going to see him hoping really give that title back to the people and kind of open it up and offer it up as much as possible.
Yeah, which we've seen him do before, we know he's got the star power, the prestige to be able to pull that off. So we're not necessarily concerned that that's what he's going to be that he's going to continue on a pretty shoddy rain from from Shinsuke Nakamura.
And as I said, as I said previously, now that he's dropped the title, it really honestly would not surprise me in the next round of cuts.
The Shinsuke Nakamura finds himself on the chopping block.
I mean, I wouldn't disagree with you at all. I wouldn't want to call any other names to put on the block next to him, but I think it is time for Shinsuke Nakamura to possibly call his time in WWE.
Even if he's got some time left within him with his wrestling ability, I think he'd probably better off finishing his career back in New Japan.
Yeah, I feel like the style of wrestling that he does is probably much more appreciated in that in that domain than and then.
Which he'd be able to cut those promos that we wished he could have bought to WWE.
Yeah, this is it. And it's just, yeah, it just, it ain't working anymore. And it barely worked when it did.
Right. That's my point. It's Shinsuke Nakamura's time in WWE has not been a part of what it has been. And it's definitely been a bit of a disappointment for me.
Yeah, very much so. But yeah, we've got a new US title, new men's US title holder in LA Night.
And I'm looking forward to seeing how that translates going forward. But in terms of notes for this, what felt like an absolutely colossal episode of Smackdown,
I've well and truly run out of written notes here.
Yeah, I'm done for notes as well. So I'm going to think we're better off wrapping this one up with a thank you all for listening to us ramble along for so long.
And we will see you next time when the finishes and factions does Monday Night Raw from Madison Square Gardens, New York.
Yeah, 100%. That's been it from me. And I've been it from you to Adam on it.
Yeah, very much so. Just thank you everybody for listening. And yeah, we'll see you when we start when we report from or report on Madison Square Garden, not from we're not going.
Peace out guys. Enjoy.
Light is.