The final SmackDown of the year is in the books, and if you missed it, shame on you. There were three title matches announced ahead of time, plus the return of John Cena, making the entire two hours feel like it was one of the better-produced shows of the year.
If you missed out on the main event, go watch it. If you did watch the main event then you know that it’s probably not a bad idea to put that contest on a “watch again” list. It was an exceptional TV match.
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Even with all my praise for the show, it still had it’s botchy and outrageous moments. Baron Corbin failed to break up a pinfall that almost cost AJ Styles his title, Becky Lynch struggled to lock on an arm-based submission manoeuvre, and Alexa Bliss gave us a cringing visual of an arm that clearly looked broken in the moment.
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I don’t care if Alexa’s arm is actually okay, she should still probably get that thing X-rayed.
We’ll talk more about Bliss’ elbow later in the article but kicking things off this time around, is the possibly intentional top rope slip up from Heath Slater...
#5 Alexa’s not broken elbow
Now that we have the benefit of hindsight, it’s obvious that Alexa Bliss has a double-jointed elbow that allows her to appear like she’s hyperextended. That wasn’t common knowledge before this match, so in the moment this looked like a fairly gruesome injury.
This was simply a ruse to distract the referee, allowing whichever woman was portraying La Luchadora this week to interfere and harm Becky Lynch. Bliss retained her SmackDown Women’s champion thanks to all of these happenings, then narrowed down the masked wrestler to someone between the sizes of Sasha Banks and Nia Jax.
Alexa isn’t very good at giving clues.
#4 Slater slipped
Unlike the Randy Orton attack on Luke Harper that lead to the Wyatts dropping the Tag Team Championships to American Alpha, I’m only partially convinced that this slip up by Heath Slater was how everything was supposed to go down.
This directly played into Heath Slater getting pinned, so that’s a big clue that Heath might have meant to screw up on the top rope.
Whether it was a planned or an unplanned botch makes no difference because it was still a botch so it’s getting highlighted in this very article. This should all play nicely into the eventual breakup between Slater & Rhyno, so it’s at least a win-win for all parties involved.
#3 Trouble locking in the cross arm breaker
Not everyone can lock on a cross arm breaker on a whim like Alberto Del Rio. As good as Becky Lynch is, she just didn’t hit this move with the finesse she was hoping for. There was a moment after she performed this rolling setup that the move was not locked into place and she needed to try a little harder.
JBL even commented from the announce booth when the move was finally locked in that she “missed it at first but now she’s gotten it.”
#2 Twins since birth
This isn’t a completely fair burn against Mauro Ranallo by JBL because tag teaming in a wrestling ring and simply knowing each other are not the same thing. Regardless, it was still funny.
JBL still is capable of a good zinger from time to time and this was a pretty good one.
#1 Failing to break up the pinfall
The main event tag match was an incredible way for the blue brand to wrap up 2016, but there was almost a new Champion crowned unintentionally. Dolph Ziggler was able to nail a Superkick right on the jaw of AJ Styles, setting him up for a sure-fire subsequent pinfall.
Styles kicked out of the manuever as the Lone Wolf practiced his breast stroke into the ring.
It seriously looked as if Baron Corbin was swimming as he tried to get anywhere near the pinfall. He failed to do so and Styles had enough ring presence to know to pick up a shoulder anyway, thankfully. If AJ relied on Baron to break up the fall then Dolph Ziggler would be WWE Champion right now.
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