SmackDown Recap and Reactions (Dec. 20, 2024): Happy Holidays!

It’s the holiday season, and that means WWE is giving its talents a break to actually give them something resembling a normal life. Hey, that’s a good thing! We should encourage this, even if it means we have to record television episodes.

We have a recorded episode of Friday night SmackDown this week and these always feel like filler, even if they advance some storylines. This was no different.

They started with Solo Sikoa and his crew, microphone in hand and Ula Fala around their necks. The promo that followed didn’t have much to offer – the usual demand for recognition from the live audience, followed by accepting Roman Reigns’ challenge for a match on Raw’s debut on Netflix on January 6th.

They do it individually, without bloodline involvement. The winner will be the one and only tribal chief.

Finally, Drew McIntyre showed up to interrupt all of this. He wondered if Solo was in bed, afraid that McIntyre would come for him. After all, he is the one who cost him the title Clash in the castleand caused him much pain and suffering.

On the other hand, he is also the only one in his family who had the courage to stand up to Reigns. The rest said they would, but then immediately came running when Reigns called out to them, even though he never changed. So McIntyre is torn. He wants to work his way through his personal hit list and Sikoa can eliminate Reigns. When everyone is finished, they can do their business with each other.

That’s when Jimmy Uso showed up, crutches and all, to stealthily attack Drew Mac and chase him through the crowd. LA Knight, Andrade and Apollo Crews ran to attack the new Bloodline and that led us straight into a six-man tag team match.

The six-count in question got several commercial breaks only to find Shinsuke Nakamura stepping in to take out Knight, Andrade was thrown to the outside like he was nothing, and Crews went to take the pinfall of Sikoa. They tried to give the impression that Solo was as wild as ever, but that didn’t really come across.

That was just the way it was. Nevertheless, the idea was clear and there was momentum.

Everything else

• They played a video from Saturday after Chelsea Green became the first ever United States champion, and it was a great testament to exactly why she won that title. She said she worked for 20 years to become an overnight success, which is a great statement, and now they are working on a “Red, White and Green” slogan. I’m good with it. She is fantastic.
• They also gave us a detailed video review of Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens, where the latter took down the former with the package piledriver. Now he’s threatening to freak out, which he hasn’t actually done yet, and what happens next depends on the authority figures who allowed the situation to get to this point.
• Remember when we used to get some Christmas shenanigans in the form of a Miracle on 34th Street Fight type match? Here we see Braun Strowman dressed as Santa Claus handing out presents to the crowd before performing on The Grayson Waller Effect. His appearance on that show was pretty tame, with Grayson trying to get him to join A-Town Down Under and Strowman resisting. Carmelo Hayes showed up to insult him and set up a rematch from last week. Said match ended in a count-out when Hayes had Braun on the outside and was thrown back just in time to count Strowman out. The slowest post-game chase ever ensued. To be honest, I don’t really know what to say about this.
• I for one appreciate how much Corey Graves hates Johnny Gargano and all the mean, vile things he says about him in comments. I don’t know if Jesse Ventura inspired this man, but I would like to see more WWE commentary that makes it seem like it’s just a guy talking in a real way about how he feels about the guy who is in the ring. Meanwhile, Alex Shelley wanted to have a straight singles match with Gargano, told Chris Sabin to stay back, and Johnny Wrestling pretended to do the same. Instead, Tommaso Ciampa came out and interfered, which led to Sabin coming out and Gargano scoring a rollup for the win. The game was okay, but that was standard.
• The main event of this show was Bianca Belair and Naomi coming together to defend the Women’s Tag Team Titles against Women’s Champions Nia Jax and Candice LeRae. They acted like they didn’t want Tiffany Stratton at the match, but she still made her presence felt. Fans shouted for her to “cash it in,” but instead she gave it to Jax, who got caught with it, kicked off the apron, and left LeRae in the ring to take Naomi down. This meant that Naomi had “earned” the distinction of now being champion, which is what she said she wanted to do before holding the title previously held by the injured Jade Cargill. They weren’t given much time for any of this, and like everything else on this show, it was just there.

This was probably the first SmackDown episode all year that I was completely apathetic about. The blue brand usually brings the goods, but this was clearly a phone show.

But hey, it’s the holidays. It makes sense.

Grade: D+

It’s your turn.