February 28, 2020

WWE Super Showdown (2.27.20) review

WWE Super Showdown

 

February 27, 2020

 

Hi, I started this once but the Fedwork crashed my PC with its horrendous cuts. We’re in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to take some sweet, sweet, Saudi blood money. It’s all coming up gold for Vince McMahon. Not only does he have to do literally nothing with WWE and it makes money, thanks to these oil rich money marks, but the XFL has been a hit. The dream is coming true! Vince is now a sports promoter. Instead of watching his terrible wrestling shows, watch his fantastic football league.

 

Tuwaiq Trophy Gauntlet

Gauntlet matches are stupid. Why are we still doing them? Speaking of terrible ideas; there’s a guy in the crowd with a “Riyadh for WrestleMania” sign. Get all the way in the sea mate. There’s no way that would fly. But all the local promotions could run…oh.

They flew Lana over so she could wear all the clothes in the world and pose on the stage for three seconds. I can see her fingers. I am fully erect. Calling this trophy “prestigious” is certainly a thing. Yes, this trophy no one had heard of 15 minutes ago is “prestigious”. I’m sure Bobby Lashley has been lying awake at night over the past year wondering if he might win the prestigious Tuwaiq trophy. Lashley has the nerve, the fucking NERVE, to do a chinlock so we know where the efforts levels are tonight. Bobby literally falls over Truth and gets pinned. That might be the worst spot of the year.

 

And that’s just the first fall! Lashley beats Truth up to complete silence. Andrade is next in and the match gets even more boring. Nobody gives a fuck today, lads. They do a dumb ‘clash of heads’ spot and Truth falls on top for the pin. Two for two on terrible finishes! Next in is Erik Rowan. To be fair to Truth, he’s trying quite hard to get over his underdog status. It’s not his fault that no one cares. It is the fault of whoever decided a gauntlet match would be a good idea simply because the last entrant is a ‘surprise’. Rowan gets disqualified for hitting Truth with the ring steps and they keep flogging that dead horse. Cole claiming it’s a shot to the ‘face’ when Truth has clearly had his arm worked all match and Rowan clearly hit him in the arm is truly something. Way to read the room Michael.

 

Next in is AJ Styles, who’s supposed to be the next nasty heel for Truth but gets greeted with rapturous applause as he’s the biggest star on the show so far. AJ taps Truth out to no reaction whatsoever. Next is Rey Mysterio only he’s not here at all.

We see footage of the OC beating Rey up backstage, which absolutely isn’t in a set in another country. The crowd immediately bites on the Undertaker being in this, which would normally be weird that he’d be involved in some jobber opening match but hey, here we are. They do a ‘count of ten’ gimmick and if there’s one wrestler who can’t do the entrance in ten seconds it’s the fucking Undertaker. He misses the ten second window by approximately six years. Seriously though it takes him five minutes to walk to the ring.

Then two seconds to chokeslam AJ and he wins without even taking his fucking hat off. Credit to him giving this show the level of effort it truly deserves. This horseshit went on for over 30 fucking minutes.

Final Rating: -**

 

Smackdown Tag Team Championship

The New Day (c) vs. The Miz & John Morrison

These prestigious belts have a lineage dating back to 2016. New Day have had the belts five times already. We get house show effort here. Especially from Miz who looks like his bump clock is reading empty. Basement level effort from Miz and the crowd are still into it. What a worker. Morrison and Kingston have a few sequences that at least look designed to entertain someone. Kofi decides this is the place to take a sickening bump and does the Trust Fall with Miz moving out of the way. Why would you do that in any match, let alone a Saudi blood money show? That’s a WrestleMania bump dude. Kofi somehow comes back from that and eats a sneaky chair shot into a Miz roll up. Holy shit, this show is dying. It’s like they got together a think tank and said “give us your worst finishes”. Morrison looks great with his contractually obliged ‘title win’.

Final Rating: **1/4

 

Angel Garza vs. Humberto Carrillo

It takes a video package to remind me that Garza is a bad guy now. Cole says something weird about “talking to the experts in the game”. What experts?

They run an opening sequence of near misses that’s so awful I almost turn the show off. Low effort lucha is the dirt fucking worse. Garza working a chinlock for minutes at a time while screaming “shut up” at the silent crowd is certainly something. The spots they do hit feel like they’re planning a match in training at half speed. And Carrillo still manages to tag Angel in the face accidentally and make his nose bleed. Garza wins and nobody cares. Both guys phoned this in and while I don’t blame them it made it hard to watch.

Final Rating: *

 

RAW Tag Team Championship

Seth Rollins & Mr. Murphy (c) vs. The Street Profits

Buddy has lost his Buddy. I’m not your Buddy, guy. More chinlocks here. This may be the show with the lowest collective effort in a decade. It’s like they all had a chat about the marks in the crowd and decided they’d pop literally anything so here we are; Chinlock Central. As a match this is totally fine and the best thing on the show to this point. Largely because of the combined creativity. Murphy in particular, who takes a bump over the announce table for shits and giggles. Ford taking a sick double team powerbomb into the rail. The finish is weird with the ref pulling Murphy away from Dawkins allowing Seth to sneak in there and give him the Blackout for the win. Murphy and Dawkins were the legal men so who knows what that finish was about. Potentially MOTN even with all the rest holds and the bad finish.

Final Rating: ***1/4

 

 

Dolph Ziggler vs. Mansoor

It makes me laugh that Mansoor gets on all these Saudi shows because he’s the only decent Saudi wrestler they can find but he gets nothing everywhere else in the world. His last big match was at EVOLVE in January. We’re back to Chinlock Central here. At least Ziggler is putting effort into his bumps and the match is over because Mansoor is the local favourite. The match is a wee bit sloppy because Mansoor is so inexperienced and they don’t use him enough. Mansoor almost breaks all Ziggler’s ribs on the moonsault finish.

Final Rating: **1/2

 

WWE Championship

Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Ricochet

Remember Brock vs. Kofi Kingston? (Both times).

This is the face of a man who’s about to get squashed. Suplex City has a new resident. F5. Brock barely red after sixty seconds work.

Final Rating: Squasheroo

 

Cage Match

Roman Reigns vs. King Corbin

Oh good grief, is this still going?

A nice low key entrance for Corbin. They run a gimmick with the door being locked so Roman can punish Corbin. But we’re already being punished by having to watch this match so in the end everyone loses. This match is so boring. They have the usual sluggish pacing but this being Saudi it’s somehow even more mediocre. Everything in the match just feels perfunctory. They do a spot where Roman hangs off the outside of the cage and it’s paint-by-numbers dull. Superman punch with a chain mercifully ends this chore of a contest. Corbin is borderline unwatchable.

Final Rating: DUD

 

Hey kids, remember that one WrestleMania?

 

WWE Smackdown Women’s Championship

Bayley (c) vs. Naomi

I appreciate WWE going to bat for the women and having them as a part of the Saudi shows after the locals beefed about a promo for the Evolution show first time out. Baby steps.

Naomi looks fairly energized here, although that’s not tough following Corbin vs. Reigns. The match is pretty untidy though. There’s a worrying lack of chemistry. Bayley wants to keep things basic and Naomi’s ambition causes her issues. Bayley continues the tradition of lazy work on this show with a bunch of rest holds. It takes the crowd a while to actually catch onto Naomi being the face and by the time they do Bayley wins. Bayley did a decent job of controlling the pace here and working the leg but it wasn’t a good match.

Final Rating: **1/4

WWE Universal Championship

The Fiend (c) vs. Goldberg

12 minutes left on the show as Goldberg emerges from his locker room.

How I’d book this match; spear, Jackhammer, 3 count. That’s it. That’s all you need here. For everyone saying how well the Fiend has been built up and it’s a shame to waste it on old man Bill; Bray Wyatt is a fucking terrible wrestler and ending this shambolic experiment now rather than at Mania is the best way out of a bad situation. In a perfect world Wyatt never gets the belt and you just keep him away from the title doing weird shit. The gimmick doesn’t need titles and, in all honesty, it doesn’t even need matches. Just keep him out of the ring and I’ll be happy.

Cool mask though. Bray barely jumps on the Jackhammer. I’m just glad his title run is over. It’s overdue.

Final Rating: DUD

 

 

Summary:

These Saudi shows are a low bar but holy shit this one suuuuucked. Everything was terrible. There was no effort at all. The big matches were all just bad ideas to begin with. I watched the show for banter purposes but most of it was just horribly boring. I lost all interest about halfway through and had to force myself to finish it.

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