Now comes the second phase, where all that crap is draining, allowing me to breathe better, but it goes into my throat. Now that I put on weekly shows on my Twitch channel, I need my throat to be operational as much as possible. Sometimes I don't know how weekly broadcasters, like sports announcers or even WWE's announcing crew, do it. But then, I suppose many of them don't have allergies, or if they do, they can get strong medicine to deal with it.

I've taken to aggressively medicate the throat problem with Dayquil, and so far it's working. But both Dayquil and my allergy medicine do fuck all for the pain and fatigue. And this shit always lasts until the middle of September or early October at least. I freaking hate allergies.

It's just one more reason why I'm considering a move to the northern states. I'm not a big fan of long, cold winters, but North Dakota has plenty of jobs, low precipitation, and a hell of a lot less pollen. It just might be worth the trip once I get my driver's license.

In the meantime, I suppose I'll try to take in some oxygen as we get to SmackDown for this week. Let's roll...

Pre-Segment 1: Jack Swagger and Zeb Colter hit the ring to start the show. Am I the only one who really doesn't give a shit about this feud? Ultra-patriotism just doesn't do anything for me as a storyline, even in professional wrestling. Maybe I'm just a stick-in-the-mud.

Also, they show a montage of Swagger/Rusev's shenanigans from Monday, and they basically only play the flag parts and the violence. I second Rick's guess that it'll be a flag match, and I'll care even less.

Also also, Cesaro comes out second, and he's ditched the goddamn air raid siren. He's replaced it with a European siren, which is fine, and far less grating on the ears. It's still annoying, but it doesn't make me want to throw my speakers out of the window.

Segment 1 [Singles Match]: Jack Swagger (w/ Zeb Colter) defeats Cesaro by flash submission. Is “flash submission” a term? Meh, it is now.

Very solid match, possibly could have been main event-worthy for SmackDown. The first half of the match was a workrate technical clinic. The second half was more power, slammy, and high-risk. Excellent pacing and an all-around excellent match. The finish came basically out of nowhere, with Cesaro trying a big boot. Swagger caught the ankle, flipped him over, and applied the Patriot Lock. Tap out, done.

If anything, my only surprise was that the commentators basically ignored Swagger and Cesaro's history. They only mentioned it in the second half after the commercial, and even then it was barely a passing mention. Otherwise, the entire conversation focused on Swagger's feud with Rusev. It sort of made the outcome obvious, but it was still fun to watch, and the out-of-nowhere finish was a surprise. I'd give this one a YouTube or Hulu view if you haven't already.

Post-Segment 1: After the match, Swagger and Colter stood in the ring to do their We The People thing, but they were interrupted by Rusev's music. He popped out waving his Russian flag with Lana in tow, pimping the Russian flag. Oh, and she challenges Swagger to a flag match at the next pay-per-view. Who is surprised? Zeb accepts with a theatrical response.

Segment 2: Randy Orton hits the ring to talk. Make your own joke here, I can't breathe right now.

He talks a bunch, basically saying that he blames Roman Reigns for no longer having a title shot against John Cena, which is why he (Orton) beat the shit out of him (Reigns) on Monday. They toss it up to a replay, and in a cute moment, WWE isolated the audio that was picked up when some little kid screamed “Randy! You stink!” I'm still waiting to hear back from my sources whether the child was speaking metaphorically or literally.

Back to the ring, Orton blathers some more, culminating in a challenge to Reigns for SummerSlam. He steals Reigns's punch line, and that's that. At least he kept it short.

Segment 3: Highlight package of Brie Bella and Stephanie McMahon's feud.

Pre-Segment 4: R-Truth is in the ring. JBL says “R-Truth is the 1 in 17-and-1.” Cute, JBL. Very cute.

Segment 4 [Singles Match]: R-Truth defeats Bo Dallas by disqualification. R-Truth had about one punch of offense while Dallas played the chickenshit heel. Once Dallas started his offense, he went all punchy-kicky. Truth at one point was near the corner and stayed halfway out of the rung under the bottom rope. Dallas continued beating the shit out of him, despite the ref's five count.

After the match, Dallas continued beating the shit out of him, but let up eventually on his own. He grabbed a mic and said that Bo-Lieving is a spiritual experience, and he knows he hasn't let us down, because we all Bo-Leive in him. Heh.

Pre-Segment 5: RRRRRROOOSSSAAA!!! Holy shit, it's been WAY too long since I've been able to write that, and Rick has totally dropped the ball doing it for me when she's appeared on RAW.

Also: her new music is awesome. Also also: My Rosa is looking ridiculously hot, thank god back to a non-insane hair color and look. I have never wanted to be a solid gold onesie more than I do now. Or, I guess, retroactively back to Tuesday.

Segment 5 [Singles Match]: AJ Lee squashes My Rosa Mendes by flash submission. My Rosa starts off by screaming “I want a title shot.” AJ counters by kicking her in the face, hitting the west ropes, and slapping on the Black Widow.

My Rosa isn't too hurt, and instead throws a tantrum on the ground. All she has to do is call me, and I promise to ease her suffering.

Post-Segment 5: AJ smilingly takes her title, smiling skips around, smilingly runs up the ramp, smilingly poses for the crowd, and then gets absolutely jacked up when My Paige appears out of nowhere and shoulder checks her off the stage. AJ sells the fall like a Grand Theft Auto windshield cannon, and in her crash-and-burn into the ground, she puts an extra roll of her body so she slams her legs into the conveniently placed crane camera.

Jesus, that looked sick. But AJ is okay: no dreaded X, and not even a single fist of health, since this was entirely planned. If I'm a dick, I'll point out that she did more “rolling” than “falling” so she was quite obviously safe. But I'm not a dick; I like acting mostly like a mark, and AJ made that look to be just about the most violent bump any diva has ever taken. It helped that Paige put some extra stank on the shoulder check.

Speaking of Paige, she planted ass on the stage and screamed “AJ, I still love you!” And as the refs hit the concrete to check on her, Paige insists she's totally fine and the refs are overreacting. Then she stands up and screams at the top of her lungs “She's my best friend!” Paige watches her a bit and says that refs need to be careful since they're besties, and tells AJ to call her once she's feeling better. Then Paige gets to her feet and does AJ-style skips to the back while looking over her shoulder and smiling at AJ's corpse.

Holy shit. With a personality like that, I just simply cannot boo Paige. And with all respect to Rick and his more mature outlook, I absolutely dig goth girls, or at least the idea of them. I can watch Paige being a lunatic all day and never stop smiling... until she slams my head into the dry wall, anyway. [Ed. Note: for the record, ever since Paige started inching towards the dark side, I'm very much a fan. And not just in a big-brotherly sort of way. In my pants. The look does nothing for me, at all. But it also does not, in any substantial way, hinder my fondness for Paige now that she seems like she'd actually be fun to hang out with. The night she spent destroying JBL on commentary cemented that for me.]

Segment 6: Dean Ambrose does a to-camera monologue that puts himself over while downplaying whatever constitutes Seth Rollins's “threats.” Essentially, he says that Rollins knows how crazy Ambrose can be, and Ambrose is going to prove it by defeating Kane and Rollins tonight.

Pre-Segment 7: We see that during the commercial (but I guess after Ambrose's promo?), AJ did a full stretcher job as she was assisted from stageside... if “stageside” is a word. Is there a word for that area? The orchestra pit?

Segment 7 [1-on-2 Handicap Tag Match]: Kane & Seth Rollins defeat Dean Ambrose by disqualification. Decent match, nothing special, and nothing that would have any surprises. The story here was that Ambrose pretty much didn't care about Kane and just wanted to claw Rollins's face off, but Kane was always there to stop that. Whenever Ambrose went down, Rollins would tag in to get some cheap shots. Formula, both match-wise and character-wise, but it was good.

Ambrose had a prayer at the end but couldn't deal with it, and was tossed out of the ring. He took that opportunity to grab a chair and blast Kane, drawing the DQ. Rollins bailed before Ambrose could use the chair on him, so Ambrose just bashed Kane's spine a few more times with the chair while Rollins watched from the stage. Ambrose shot him a crazy glare while Rollins looked on scared.

Segment 8: Renee Young interviews Chris Jericho, who says that he can't beat the three-on-one odds of the whole Wyatt Family. Ergo tonight, if Y2J beats Erick Rowan tonight, then he (Rowan) is banned from the Y2J/Bray rematch at SummerSlam. Jericho then puts himself over while promising that the Wyatt Family will never eeever be the sayme agayne.

Segment 9: Goldust and Stardust talking crazy bullshit.

Pre-Segment 10: Hulu cut the Summer Rae/Layla/Diego team-up, so I didn't realize Summer and Layla were in costume. Pyro approves of the black-and-red combination.

Segment 10 [Singles Match]: Diego (w/ My Summer Rae, Layla, & El Torito) extend-squashes Fandango by pin. Fandango had the early offense, and then his music started up. Not sure how Summer and Layla arranged that with the sound guy, but it distracted Diego to look at the girls and El Torito, who started dancing. That gave Diego the chance to hit the Back Stabber and make the pin.

I would like to point out that Layla was doing chest shimmy-shakes as she ran around the ring to celebrate Diego's victory before jumping into his arms, and then did chest shakes again after getting her feet. I am a happy man.

Segment 11: Montage of John Cena's promo exchange with Paul Heyman.

Segment 12 [Singles Match]: Alberto Del Rio defeats Dolph Ziggler by submission. Meh. I wasn't impressed, but it's long been established that I don't really dig any ADR match.

The Miz was on commentary and did a good job being an elitist douchnozzle. Halfway through the match, Ziggler looked like he was getting some momentum, so Miz hopped up on the table and continued his acceptance speech from Monday. It was intended to distract Dolph, and it nearly resulted in a flash pin, but Dolph kept his mind focused.

That is, until Miz specifically “thanked” Dolph for being a loser, since Dolph finally realized that he was just not as good as Miz. That made Dolph bail from the ring and go after Miz, who bailed.

Dolph then went back to the ring, but ADR hit a step-up enziguri out of nowhere. He slapped on the Cross Arm Breaker, and Dolph tapped. Miz returned to ringside to collect his title, wear his sunglasses, and pose as he walked around the ring and taunted Dolph.

Cut Scene: AJ has been taken to the hospital because of Paige's HEINOUS~! attack.

Segment 13: Highlight package of the Brie/Stephanie main event promo on RAW. I of course use the word “highlight” loosely.

Also, Michael Cole interviewed Brie for WWE.com. WWE, once again showing a loose interpretation of the word “exclusive,” tells us that this footage is a “WWE.com exclusive” despite showing it on Hulu and presumably Syfy. Brie says nothing of substance.

Segment 14: Bray Wyatt is apparently calling the phenomenon of the cell phone lights during his entrance “the presence of his fireflies.” That's actually quite poetic.

The Wyatts form ranks in the ring as Bray cuts a promo, rhetorically asking why Jericho keeps coming back. He says that he was warned about Jericho by Sister Abigail, and that Jericho would continue to wear his mask of deception. But Bray isn't falling for Jericho's lies, and his followers aren't falling for it either. They will see their savior, Bray, destroy The Deceiver. Jericho will not save anyone... especially not himself.

Damn fine promo.

Pre-Segment 15: The right half of Jericho's jacket isn't lighting up. After his turn around, he angled his body so the dark half of his jacket was behind him. Part of me wants to think that was intentional.

Segment 15 [Singles Match]: Chris Jericho defeats Erick Rowan (w/ the Wyatt Family) by pin. Good match for what it was. It told the story, but wasn't exactly a classic, nor was it ever going to be. Rowan isn't exactly fully green anymore, but we didn't see the flashes of potential we've seen from him in the past. I'm not saying Rowan sucked; quite the opposite. But Rowan didn't have any eye-popping moments either. [Ed. Note: I basically concur. I do think that Jericho and Rowan tried to make up for what they both probably knew were their basic limitations, and just beat the holy living shit out of each other. And I noticed, and perversely, appreciated that. But my REAL takeaway from this is the simple fact that Jericho's now guaranteed to face Harper in a similar stip match. And Jericho best match since his comeback was against Harper. More please!]

Rowan with most of the roughneck offense early. Nothing flashing, nothing special, but it got the job done. When Jericho started to get a little momentum, Harper tripped him from the outside. Mike Chioda didn't see it, but he Broadly Gestured that he heard it, and he's not an idiot. He tossed Harper from ringside, though Bray remained, and we went to commercial.

Back, and Rowan is firmly in control. More roughneck offense, slammy-punchy, including ramming Jericho spine-first into the ring post outside. Jericho had a hope spot when he hit a DDT off a counter, but he couldn't maintain it. A few hope spots happened, but Rowan looked to be in control.

However at the end, Rowan picked up Jericho to do a similar spine-first slam into the turnbuckle. Jericho slipped out and hit a Codebreaker out of nowhere, then made the pin.

Final Thoughts: Decent night and pretty by-the-numbers. The opening was superb and you should seek it out. The rest was solid at best and mediocre at worst, notwithstanding the Brie/Stephanie rehash, which you couldn't pay me to care about.

It was wonderful to see Rosa again, and I hope she's on television more often than a one-shot, 45-second squash loss. But I'm not exactly holding my breath on that one. Speaking of the divas though, the feud between AJ and Paige deepened in an fantastic way, especially since they don't bust out the stretcher jobs too often. I'm glad the divas—two of the four ring-capable ones, anyway—are getting an actual wrestling storyline that isn't predicated on That Show Which Shall Not Be Named.

That's it for me. I'm going to take some pills and call it a night.

Episode Grade: C+