5 Botches, slip ups, and outrageous moments from WWE SmackDown Live (January 10th, 2017)
WWE SmackDown Live continues to be one of the brighter spots of the wrestling week and this episode brought us a couple of above-average matches. The Tag Team Championships were on the line, while the main event continues to prove that Baron Corbin can hang with the top WWE talent. But that’s enough of the positives, let’s move on to why we’re really here.
The truest botch of the night happened during Carmella’s match and it involved one of the more eye-catching enhancement talents since James Ellsworth. Dolph Ziggler is undergoing a character transition that’s been fun to watch even though it’s not resonating with the audience the way WWE likely hoped that it would.
Also, since when is Baron Corbin a super-heavyweight of the same calibre as Yokozuna? The blue brand definitely had it’s off moments. As usual, 5 of the botchiest and most outrageous moments follow, so let’s get to it...
#5 Not a heel
After quite a long time of his career lacking the momentum that everyone knows it deserves, Dolph Ziggler has snapped. The next step of his descent into the dark side included a steel chair beatdown of both Kalisto and Apollo Crews after he took a loss to the Lucha Dragon and the crowd cheered.
This looks like one of those situations in which WWE creative is going to botch the character casting. Fans have been in the same mindset for Dolph’s character for way longer than Dolph has, so this edge that he’s showing is a welcome development.
It also doesn’t help that the two guys he wailed on tonight have very little fan support, so nobody’s offended that the Showoff would attack them.
It wasn’t unanimous support though as WWE made sure to get a couple of solid camera closeups of upset children during this segment but there were tonnes of people in attendance busting out the “Yes!” chants for angry Dolph.
Many of those happy fans can be seen in the above highlight. There were even chants of “One more time” for the final chair shots against Kalisto and Crews. If WWE is determined to get Ziggler over as a heel at this point, it’s not quite working out that way.