– WWF Veteran On SmackDown Stars Being Put In A “Pay Your Dues” Match, Top Stars Being Treated Like Nothing During The Main Event
During a recent edition of “The Taz Show” podcast, WWF Veteran Taz discussed last week’s episode of SmackDown Live (which was headlined by a tag team lumberjack match). Below are the highlights:
Opening segment with Shane McMahon and Kevin Owens/Sami Zayn being put in a lumberjack tag team match:
“Shane McMahon walks out. He comes out. He does his promo. And he did a good job with his promo. Shane was very good in his role, in this deal here. And then he calls out Kevin Owens and Sami and stuff and all this jazz and he goes into the whole big thing.
And Sami and Kevin get all over. I liked that. And they were like you know you need us, you’re this and that. And you could tell they’re gonna go this route where he’s going to fire them. I felt it and I’m like yep they did it. But it didn’t happen because then Daniel Bryan came out. When he comes out he kind of saves the day for Kevin Owens and Sami for getting fired.
And basically you could tell where they were gonna go with this. That he was gonna put them in a lumberjack match and that’s what he did. It seemed very obvious and we’ve seen this in wrestling, especially WWE like for ages.
You know like when someone has heat with the locker room or heat with what the office or whatever you see the lumberjack match or a gauntlet match. That’s the pay-your-dues match.
Sami is great dude. His promo works have been great. See that’s the thing I always say about being a heel man. When you’re a heel, you just got to be you and he is just kicking a$$ as a heel for sure. I enjoy it.”
On top stars being treated like nothing in the main event:
“This is the thing I didn’t like. Really didn’t like. The Lumberjacks. Before they went to break they played a generic SmackDown music and here come the Lumberjacks. They come walking down the ring and who’s the first lumberjack? Nakamura. Okay, let me get this straight.
So we got a guy like Nakamura who’s a huge star where he was, in NXT. We pushed him. He has arguably the greatest entrance in the company. Next to another guy who was a lumberjack named Bobby Roode, who has maybe the greatest interest of company. And neither of these guys got their entrance.
I’m sitting here like what the frick is going on here. They’re walking out to this and they shouldn’t even be in the match. Nakamura is too big of a star, Bobby….they shouldn’t be out there like that.
I know they were in the Survivor Series main event. I know that. But they needed to have a more prominent feel. Let them have an entrance, each of them. Play Nakamura’s entrance and trail it into the break – the other Lumberjacks are coming out…you know. And then you see them. And then maybe finish to a Bobby Roode gets his entrance. He comes out.
I know it sounds weird giving a lumberjack an entrance but hey, they got screwed and the company’s mad at Owens and Sami. Everybody’s mad at them. That was the thread of the show.
Give these guys their entrance if you’re gonna put them there as Lumberjacks, like jabronis, then give them their star power moment and they didn’t do that.”
– NXT Wrestler Being Punished For Recent Incident
As we noted before, NXT wrestler Lio Rush received a lot of heat for his comment on Emma’s WWE release. He later deleted his tweet and issued an apology, but you can read what he tweeted below:
“I guess these are the things that happen when you’re not TRULY ready for Asuka.”
It looks like Lio is getting punished for this. According to PWInsider, Lio hasn’t competed in NXT as of late due to his tweet about Emma.
