This has led me to write this open letter. Ahem...

Dear Online Onslaught Moms:

I know that Rick and I sometimes forget how lucky we are. Here we be, as professional wrestling “journalists,” which is the easiest job in the world. It annually makes us a combined 83.2 trillion dollars (after taxes, of course), and the McMahons have our phone numbers on speed dial. We enjoy what we do, but you don't need to keep testing our stress levels by doing terrible things to yourselves. We love you, and we want you whole. Please remain 100% healthy for the rest of eternity; I don't think that's asking too much.

Signed,
Jon “PyroFalkon” Michael
 
[Ed. Note: Seconded.]

Okay, once the ladies read that, everything will be fine forever. So let's set that out of our minds—because God knows it's literally taking every ounce of my reserves of sarcasm and facetiousness for me to, given that she's the only family I've got—and let's get to SmackDown.

Pre-Segment 1: Dean Ambrose hits the ring to open the show, and during his entrance we get a recap of his actions on Monday; OO does not recap recaps.

Wait, he's not even talking? We're going straight into a match? Well, shit; okay then.

Oh wait, Sheamus is his opponent, and he talks. And, uh, it's basically nothing, just some threats to Ambrose. Whatever.

Segment 1 [Singles Match]: Sheamus defeats Dean Ambrose by pin. Good match, but nothing special. Ambrose had all the early offense, driving Sheamus out of the ring, but when he went for a follow-up suicide dive, he ate a big forearm that stalled momentum. Ambrose snatched it back with a series of punches, kicks, and an apron-to-floor tornado DDT to take us to adds.

Back, and the heel beatdown is on as Sheamus targets the knee with strikes and holds. Ambrose managed hit his hope spot sequence after countering out of a half crab. During the sequence, Sheamus whiffed on the Brogue Kick, sending him outside the ring. Ambrose then cleanly hit his suicide dive, then followed up with a flying standing elbow off the top rope. He hit it, then sold the knee on the landing.

That's when Bray Wyatt hit the stage; the lights were out, so Sheamus powdered out. When they came back on, Ambrose stood alone in the ring (well, with the ref), and Luke Harper stood on the announcers' table. He and Wyatt alternated taunts. Ambrose decided to exit the ring and go after Harper, the closest target... and walked right into a Brogue Kick. Whoops. Sheamus tossed him in the ring, hit a second Brogue Kick, then made the pin.

Segment 2: Jojo interviews Neville in the back concerning the attack by Stardust. Neville says that Stardust may think they're superheroes and supervillains, but Neville thinks Stardust is just a coward. He insists that Stardust is a lunatic, and that the “altitude era” is definitely now.

Neville leaves, but then the monitor behind Jojo goes static. Stardust appears on it and does the low “I'm planning something nefarious” laugh of aforementioned supervillains. He doesn't say anything; just laughs. Creepy.

Segment 3 [Singles Match]: Neville extend-reverse-squashes Adam Rose by pin. Decent, nothing special, too short to be much of anything. Crowd was dead for the whole thing.

Rose with early punchy-kicky offense, and he holds momentum until he throws Neville over the west ropes. Rose teased a suicide dive but ate a forearm (much as Ambrose did in the opener). Neville went for kicky-kicky from there to take momentum, with a moonsault thrown in for good measure. He then threw Rose in the ring, hit the Red Arrow, then made the pin.

Post-Segment 3: After the match, Stardust appeared on the Titantron to the accompaniment of bicycle horns. Yes, bicycle horns. Stardust says a bunch of crazy bullshit, essentially saying that arrows may come down, but stars are eternal. He asks Neville to be his hero and “embrace the strange.” Stardust laughs his ass off; a close-up shows this along with his new bejeweled face. Seriously, Stardust now has a few gems glued to his face in a vertical line from the bridge of his nose up to between his eyes. I didn't think he'd get weirder, but I've clearly underestimated the guy.

Anyway, Stardust laughs and runs off, and Neville looks around like he's trying to figure out why he's tripping balls.

Segment 4: Montage hype of Sasha Banks. I like her, but holy shit those glasses are annoying. The only person who can pull off the look of those stupid things is the one dude from LMFAO, and that's only because he's doing it ironically.

Segment 5: King Barrett hits the stage to talk, mainly to put himself over. It works, but it's not worth repeating.

Pre-Segment 6: Kevin Owens hits the ring for a match, but he decides to talk first. Owens puts himself over while downplaying his submission loss at Battleground to John Cena. He says that he gave Cena the “fiercest fight of his [Cena's] life” and that he still thinks “Never Give Up” is a stupid catchphrase. He prefers “Live to fight another day,” which is why he tapped out to the STF. So he's got no problem with the fans chanting “Tap Owens Tap,” since he's got a family and has no problem tapping rather than possibly suffering a huge injury. Hm... out of a face, that would have gotten cheers. From Owens, it gets no (or neutral) reaction.

Owens also says that that's why he walked out of the six-man tag match on Monday: he wasn't going to risk his health, especially when one member of his team had bailed, and when the other member “couldn't decide which Lana he wanted to get to second base with.” Ha! Is Owens turning face?

Anyway, Rusev comes down to the ring. He's in the ring a nanosecond when the ref signals for the bell. Rusev scores a few early shots, sending Owens out of the ring and selling the left eye. Then, like, instant ads.

Segment 6 [Singles Match]: Rusev (w/ Summer Rae) defeats Kevin Owens by intentional countout. Decent match, nothing special. The focus on power-versus-power didn't quite work out here, especially compounded with the heel-versus-heel factor. Still, at least the crowd was semi-awake, which is more than I can say for the last match.

The match proper sees Owens going punchy-kicky on Rusev, though that doesn't last long as Rusev goes kicky-slammy. Owens retakes momentum and hits his signature Cannonball; this occurs in the corner, and as Owens tries to drag Rusev back from under the ropes, he screams “God, lose some weight!” Heh.

He fails the pin, then goes for punchy-kicky and clotheslines. Rusev takes over with his own strikes after a couple minutes, then freaks out like he was signaling for his finisher. Owens rolled out of the ring at that point... and decided to stay out, thus bringing it back around to his promo. At the top of the ramp, Owens screams to Rusev “I'm French-Canadian, not American!” Also heh. I like it when wrestlers sort of give their own mini-promos or mini-commentary during matches; it helps sell their personalities.

Segment 7: The one new male interviewer, whose name I still don't know since the commentators introduced him in a mumble, interviews Cesaro in the back concerning his match tonight with Seth Rollins. Cesaro says that pushing Cena to the limit is past; taking down Rollins is the present. Also, he loves this business, not regretting that he doesn't get to spend Christmases with his family. He wants to prove that hard work pays off, and the American Dream never dies. Uh... when did he rejoin the Real Americans?

Uh oh, here comes Kevin Owens to in fact mock him with that happy-crappy. He also dismisses “taking Cena to the limit” since he beat Cena. Hell, that means Owens accomplished more on his first night than Cesaro did in his entire career! Oh, and you don't spend Christmas with your family? That just means you abandoned them.

Holy shit. Cesaro says that Owens is an authority on “abandoning” since he abandons half his matches. Owens dismisses that and says he's going to catering to watch Cesaro lose to Rollins. Cesaro replies that he hopes Owens doesn't choke on his food like he choked against Cena on Sunday. Heh. Owens gets the last word with “Good luck, buddy.”

Segment 8 [Tag Match]: The Bella Twins (w/ Alicia Fox) defeat Beautiful And Dangerous (w/ Tamina) by pin. Decent match and I'm glad it was full length, but the match just wasn't engaging. There wasn't much psychology, no story told; it's never been the Bellas' nor Naomi's strength. Sasha Banks had a lot less ring time by comparison.

Naomi and Nikki Bella to start with basic holds and takedowns. The Bellas try to cut the ring in half but it doesn't work. A few tags later, we see Nikki and Sasha together—that is, the Divas Champion and NXT Women's Champion. Nikki goes for neck scissors and does some damage, then tags in Brie Bella to connect a dropkick off the middle rope. It hits clean, and she shoots the half, but she can't finish the job. But then she takes down Sasha and screws around posing. This gives Tamina a chance to pull Sasha out of the ring and, when Brie goes to follow, Tamina kicks her in the head when the ref's back is turned. Sasha takes momentum as we go to break.

Back, and Naomi is kicking the shit out of Brie. BAD cuts the ring in half to keep Brie contained, and the heel beatdown commences. Brie gets free after a good five minutes after dodging a corner charge, then dropkicking Naomi off the apron. Hot tag to Nikki who goes house of fire with dropkicks and a back body drop.

Nikki then went for the Rack Attack, but Sasha slid in the ring to Spear her in half. Brie reentered the ring too to make it a Pier Four Brawl... though Brie and Sasha just rolled out of the ring. Tamina wanted to get involved there, but Alicia stopped that mess from materializing.

In the ring, Naomi tried a flash pin with tights, but failed. An exchange, Nikki hit her Rack Attack clean, then made the pin.

Segment 9: RAW Rebound. OO Moms do not approve of recapping recaps.

Segment 10 [Singles Match]: Seth Rollins defeats Cesaro by pin. Damn fine match, definitely worth a YouTube watch if you enjoy actual ring psychology. Details below.

Rollins played the chickenshit heel to start, a tactic which worked and caused a sequence concluding with Rollins cleanly hitting a suicide dive through the south ropes. It was a short opening that took us to our final ads.

Back, and the heel beatdown is on, “beatdown” in this case meaning a scissored sleeper. Cesaro fought out and went on a punchy-slammy tirade that carried him for a few minutes. All Rollins can do is try flash pins and use his speed to slip Cesaro's bigger moves, but it's not long before Rollins is purely on defense as he stupidly tries to out-muscle Cesaro and fails every time. It's a good story; a little suspicious for the “architect of The Shield” to be repeatedly trying the same failing tactic, though I can extrapolate that into Rollins being so full of himself that he's only the architect of his own demise.

Then again, Rollins is able to use his speed to avoid even a superplex, which he turns into a corner-to-corner running powerbomb. Rollins wanted a Pedigree to follow up, but Cesaro turned that into the Sharpshooter. When Rollins tried to break free, Cesaro transitioned to the Crossface, then rolled to move him from the rope! Nice!

Rollins eventually managed to get out of it with indirect rope assistance: Rollins crawled to the ropes but didn't yet grab them. To try to play prevent defense, Cesaro rolled off and grabbed Rollins ankles, intending to pull him away from from the ropes. By then, Rollins grabbed the top rope, so when he was pulled, he maintained balance and landed on his feet. Then, he hit my favorite of his, the no-look enziguri. But then Cesaro grabbed him and hit the super European Uppercut and shot the half. Only a two, but my god, that sequence of moves was crazy awesome! Smooth as hell and told its own mini-story in the middle of the match! That's how you do ring psychology!

In fact, helping to call and perform that sequence of events must have broke Rollins's poor ickle brain, as he exits the ring, grabs his title, and tries to just fucking leave. Cesaro catches him and throws him in the ring. Rollins still had the belt at that point: Cesaro grabbed his legs to set up the Cesaro Swing, which caused Rollins dropped the belt. While the ref grabbed it and ran to the southeast corner to hand it to the timekeeper, Rollins quickly thumbed the eye of Cesaro before he could actually perform the Swing, thus breaking the hold. Nice.

Rollins popped up to his feet from there and tossed Cesaro shoulder-first into the ring post, then followed up with the Pedigree. He hit it clean, made the pin, and that was that. Awesome match, good ending the sake of the story, and the whole match's story was freaking solid.

Post-Segment 10: As Rollins headed up the ramp, Kevin Owens sauntered down to the ring, in which Cesaro still lay. Owens beat the shit out of him and hit the Popup Powerbomb, then stood over his body to fade out.

Final Thoughts: Fun fact: I initially misseplled “Popup Powerbomb” as “Popeup Powerbomb,” giving me a quick visual image of Pope Francis taking the phrase “Bible Thumping” a little too literally. But then I realized that “Pontiff Powerbomb” is not only far better sounding and rolls off the tongue beautifully, but it's not based on a pun and therefore a zillion percent better. Seriously: say it out loud, right now.

Pontiff Powerbomb.

Damn man, we need to get Elijah Burke or whatever his name is back to WWE and assign him that move. It's so smooth and fun to say!

What? You wanted me to talk about the show? Meh, I pretty much said everything I needed to say. The main event saved the episode and was seriously a clinic on how to call a match. I know the divas are trying, and Nikki and Brie especially are worlds better than they were when they started, but ring psychology is still the greatest weakness of the women's division. They have the looks, they have the personalities, they (mainly) have the characters, and they have the athletic ability. But my god, someone needs to help most of them call matches. Paige and Natalya have proven they can do it, and I'm sure they're not the only two, but Bella matches are glaringly devoid of in-match stories when they're paired with others.

I critique because I love. After all these recaps I've written over the years, it's no secret that the women's division is where my heart is, maybe more so than any level of the men's short of stunt casting or special stories (i.e., Undertaker stuff). And I critique because I know how freaking amazing the women's division can be, especially in light of the hashtag campaign! And I'm not just talking about the Attitude Era: the women now have proved they're solid in the ring, Bellas included, but they still need ring psychology to tell the story or the matches simply not engaging. I know they can do it, and there are tons of WWE superstars who are good at it; someone, road agents or whatever, needs to get on that, and the women's division will fucking rock again like it should.

Not that the men are flawless, you understand. Hell, the rest of the card was pretty boring or short. The opener was solid enough but I've already forgotten the entire thing despite Ambrose's and Sheamus's skills; but the Cesaro/Rollins sequence I highlighted was so fucking good I'll remember it for at least a week.

My girlfriend, reading over my shoulder, just said “Those are a lot of final thoughts.” Indeed, and it means I should wrap this up so we can go get scared literally shitless on YouTube.

Have a good weekend, folks. And don't eat any chicken salad sandwiches at work.

Final Thoughts: A- (main event), D+ (everything else)