10 Ups & 1 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Sept 4)
8. Not The Couple They Were Looking For
We'll get to The Miz and Maryse's games later on, but as usual, SmackDown opened with a solid in-ring setup segment.
Renee Young invited Daniel Bryan and Brie Bella out to start. They showed footage of their enemies' empty arena antics, so the former General Manager let rip, breaking down the duos' characters. "This is a perfect example of who Miz and Maryse are as people," he said. "They attack from behind and call [us] out when no one is around."
When Brie called for a fight, out came Zelina Vega and Andrade Almas, who wanted another crack after last week's non-finish. Vega, as usual, killed it, but 'Cien's' scripted lines didn't come off well at all. Having him yell brief Spanish phrases is fine, but making Almas speak in imperfect English when he has a mouthpiece for that very purpose? Come on, WWE.
This all fed into the opening match, and while the segment was formulaic to a tee, it accomplished what it needed to with minimal fuss.