Previously on the Best and Worst of Friday Night Smackdown: I took a rare week off to move across the country during a global pandemic, The Stand-style. All you missed was Shinsuke Nakamura being a loser, Wayne Bloom’s son being kicked in the face by Sheamus, and THE FORGOTTEN SONS. Someone was like, “what would improve Smackdown,” and someone else was like, “how about the Forgotten Sons?”

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Here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Friday Night Smackdown for April 17, 2020.

Don’t It Make My Braun Eyes Blue?

Bray Wyatt threatened his old henchman, Braun Strowman, directly. Braun was like, “NAW, GET THESE HANDS.” Alexa Bliss brings Braun on her talk show segment and is like, “What about Bray Wyatt? You used to be his henchman.” Braun is like, “NAW, GET THESE HANDS.” But then a mysterious gift is delivered in the middle of the conversation which turns out to be Braun’s black sheep mask from when he was Bray Wyatt’s henchman, and Braun’s suddenly like, “oh no, something I WORE, this is getting TOO REAL.” I hope Wyatt fished that out of Matt Hardy’s Lake of Reincarnation.

That’s the whole segment, but I liked it for two reasons; it advanced the plot, simple as it is, and it continued Team Little Big’s friendship from the Mixed Match Challenge. The only thing I like more than friendship in pro wrestling is CONSISTENT friendship that REMEMBERS THINGS. Babyfaces especially never get to have friends or remember things. I hope Bray manages to successfully turn Braun back to the Dark Side, and Blake and Murphy have to run out to make the save for Alexa.

Worst: The Snuka Lounge

I’m honestly kind of concerned about Tamina. Is she okay? She’s only 42 years old — the same age as John Cena, Brock Lesnar, AJ Styles, Sheamus, Bobby Roode, and others — but she moves like a late 50s/early 60s WWE Legend who’s come out of retirement for a special match. She’s like Jimmy Snuka at WrestleMania 25. WWE’s releasing dozens of people and she’s out here not only getting built up for a WrestleMania appearance, but for a post-WrestleMania at the Smackdown Women’s Championship? I mean … all right?

Tamina wins thanks to an assist from Lacey Evans, who has Sasha Banks’ name with a Ghosbusters-style No Symbol around it drawn on the back of her hand like she’s the Demon Bálor at a debutante ball. Fun fact, honey, Lacey’s from the south. In the south, writing someone’s name on the back of your hand and drawing a line through it is a term of endearment. The assist is very WWE Creative Team, by the way, as Tamina was attacking Evans like two weeks before WrestleMania but now they’re suddenly celebrating together. Tell, don’t show, it’s fine.

Banks corpsing in the ring while Bayley gets laid out by Lacey Evans’ big-ass John Cena shoulder block off the steps was pretty good, at least. Sasha Banks should be able to beat Tamina 100 out of 100 times.

Best, But Also LOL: Money In The Bank Goes Full Donkey Kong

In case you missed the announcement, this year’s Money in the Bank pay-per-view originally scheduled for the Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore but canceled due to “unique circumstances,” is now happening at WWE Headquarters in Stamford, CT. If you read that and were like, “isn’t that just a normal office building,” yes, you’re correct. They’re putting a ring on the roof like in the old Raw intro and attaching the Money in the Bank briefcase to a tower, so to win you have to fight from the ground floor to the top of the building. The sound you just heard is a millions of E-Feds crying out in terror, and being suddenly silenced.

I think they might have asked an actual child to help them design this match. This is straight out of every 6-year old’s action figure wrestling promotion. What’s next, a match where the winner is the first person to get to the top of the couch? Are we going to start having “the floor is lava” matches? I just hope that when they get to the top of the building, Brock Lesnar’s up there throwing barrels at them.

If Tamina going over Sasha Banks felt like a bad decision, wait until you see Dana Brooke defeating Naomi to qualify for the women’s Money in the Bank match! I’m hoping Naomi just didn’t want to have to fly to Connecticut. At least we got some Dana Brooke promo time with her thick-ass Cleveland accent, and there’s a chance Money in the Bank will end with Dana falling off the roof of Titan Towers and dying, only to return a few segments later alongside a mummy and win.

Serious note: If they have Big Show running secret pay-per-view main events and are running a pay-per-view on the roof of a tall building and don’t do a bit where he falls off and dies, what are we even doing?

In the men’s qualifying match, Daniel Bryan defeats Cesaro. There’s been a running bit in these columns where I type out “Daniel Bryan defeated Cesaro with a roll-up, and then the next week Daniel Bryan defeated Cesaro with a roll-up, and then for three more weeks Cesaro’s team lost everything BUT WHOOPS THEY WON AT WRESTLEMANIA ON A LARK and now it’s back to losing.” I’m not sure I’ve got the strength to keep that going for the entire quarantine, but don’t be surprised if three months from now I’m still typing “Daniel Bryan pinned Cesaro with a roll-up,” followed by some ridiculous modifier like, oh, I don’t know, “to set up an Elimination Chamber match at WWF New York.”

In the interest of positivity, this was the best thing on the show by a wide margin, and while I’m sad Daniel Bryan and Cesaro have to keep doing this one match in an abandoned laser warehouse, they’re as good at it as anyone could hope to be. At least we’ll get to watch Daniel Bryan try to win a cinematic ladder match where he has to battle through Dunder Mifflin.

Worst: Hardcore Hack

The mysterious hacker who is not Mustafa Ali is back, interrupting the Money in the Bank ladder match to remind us that the truth will be heard, and is also out there. My favorite part of this is that the hacker’s footage is all HD Smackdown footage from TV. Does he “hack the planet” by setting his DVR? Is he dramatically pressing a button to make Y2Mate.com download whatever clips WWE put on YouTube?

Anyway, I love that Vince McMahon finally got to write his own self-insert dream character: “guy who ruins tag team wrestling for everybody.”

Worst/Best: Mandy, You’re A Fine Girl, What A Good Wife You Would Be; By My Life, My Love And My Lady Is DZ

♫ doo doodoo doodoo, doooo doodoo doodoo ♫

On the topics of n00b teams ruined by The 1337, here’s Sonya Deville doing the best work of her career to try to get over that one goddamn promo they give every tag team when they break up. One of them is jealous! Actually THEY are the best person from the tag team! They carried the other person! But now they only care about THEMSELVES, and they’re going to make their old partner’s life a living hell, and so on. Sonya’s KILLING it here, but even Raul Julia can only do so much with the Street Fighter script.

Dolph Ziggler shows up in a Zack Ryder shirt (aww) to do that evil romantic comedy villain thing where he tries to appeal to Mandy’s empathy and belief that deep down everyone’s a good person (or whatever) after spending weeks manipulating and trying to hurt her. Not that Mandy’s ever been that kind of character before, but in WWE, love either turns you into Miss Elizabeth or an anime super villain and nothing in-between. Sonya attacks Mandy, Dolph’s mad at Sonya for ruining his swerve, Otis shows up to make the save, Sonya attacks Otis, Mandy attacks Sonya, and then Dolph attacks Otis, so Otis beats up Dolph. I don’t have a lot of faith that they know where they’re going with the story since they fired the lady who was writing it, but hey, mixed tag team match ahoy. Do it in the Boneyard, you cowards.

Best, But Extremely WCW: Big E Is Tag Team Champion Of The Singles Triple Threat Division

At WrestleMania, John Morrison defended the Smackdown Tag Team Championship by himself in a 1-on-1-on-1 ladder match because his partner, The Miz, showed up to the WrestleMania taping sick. This week we get a “rematch” of sorts featuring the three people from the teams who didn’t compete at Mania, including The Miz, and Miz not only loses the Tag Team Championship, he’s the one who gets pinned. Lesson learned: don’t get sick during a plague and make work mad at you. America dot GIF.

On the bright side, I always like seeing Big E win and do well. I was really hoping there’d be a story for the tag team division other than, “you’re the champions, now we’re the champions, oh no now you’re the champions again,” but it’s quarantine, man. Free and healthy Smackdown pretends a promo with an interruption to set up a tag team match is Shakespeare, we’re lucky the global pandemic version isn’t just two hours of Michael Cole sobbing in a janitor’s closet while side two of ‘The Razor’s Edge’ plays softly in the background.

Also On This Episode:

Whether they go back to taped shows or stay live, they should let Sheamus tape a bunch of these jobber squashes at once and give him a few months off. Somebody’s calling him up like, “hey fella, sorry to bother you, but we’re gonna need you to drive that hour and 15 minutes from Tampa to Orlando every Friday because if you don’t spend 55 seconds hitting Denzel DeJournette with forearms, it throws off our entire narrative.”

Finally, King Corbin attacks Elias backstage to keep that feud going, because God is dead, or he’s alive and hates us.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

LUNI_TUNZ

It’s always bothered me how, Michael Cole – a non-wrestling character – talks so much shit to the wrestlers.

Mr. Bliss

Me: “Oh this might be a good time for them to tell a strong LGBTQ+ friendly storyline. They won’t have to worry about juvenile crowd reactions, they’ll be able to treat it seriously and with some dignity and can plan out a beginning, middle and an end.”

Sonya: “You’re not even pretty!”

Me: “Never mind.”

Me: “Oh cool. They’re building a slow burn for a feud between Gulak and Bryan and eventually the hacker will show that Gulak has been working with Sami Zayn to help ruin Daniel’s confidence”

Next Friday

Gulak: “You’re not even pretty!”

troi

Did Sonya just imply that Otis is packing?

The Real Birdman

For consistency, the women’s corporate money ladder will only be 80% of the men’s

Strowman: “Yeah, I was a part of Bray’s Family”
Alexa: “Kinda weird your family was only two people huh?”
Nikki: “I definitely only counted two”
Strowman: “Correct. Just the two”

AddMayne

– a triple h appreciation night
– cole pointing out he’s never won MITB

i swear to god this better not be foreshadowing

Designated Piledriver

Big E and the tag titles were not on the board for who would recreate the Edge/Lita live sex celebration, but here we are.

Jae-Su

I wanna see Sonya beat Mandy with her Gadzooks wallet chain.

Baron Von Raschke

That they didn’t have Elias as a heel troubadour in King Corbin’s Court at the very start of this is a real missed opportunity.

To close us out, here’s the tribute video for Howard Finkel, which reminds us that he’s the greatest ring announcer of all time in a walk, and that any longtime employee’s In Memoriam video package is going to contain a montage of all the times WWE embarrassed them, set to Bulk and Skull high jinks music. When Jim Ross dies it’s gonna be him getting set on fire, kissing Michael Cole’s foot, kissing Mr. McMahon’s ass, and getting slathered in barbecue sauce followed by some SOARING MUSIC and some slow pans across still photos because we MISS HIM. They’ll be like, “Jim always liked to have fun,” because you can’t say, “a crazy old lonely rich man runs this company and has a cruel sense of humor about controlling the people below him, and folks need to work.”

Seriously though, the loss of The Fink is a big one. I only go to meet him once, but he was so gracious and kind. Rest in peace, Howard. Heaven needed someone to announce a title change.

That’s it for this week’s Best and Worst of Smackdown. As always, thanks for getting through this with us and checking out the column, especially during this pandemic. It’s hard to keep a lot of this in context, especially with what’s going on with the company in the real world. We appreciate you, as well as your comments in our comments section below, and your social media shares. It’s hard to stay employed and paid in new media when you write about sports, and then all the sports just stop.

Join us here next week for Dana Brooke’s run at the Women’s Tag Team Championship, Money in the Bank qualifying matches involving Lacey Evans and Baron Corbin, and TRIPLE H APPRECIATION WEEK. Get that Bulk and Skull music ready.

June 22, 2016 was a big day in the basketball world. There’s an obvious reason for this: It was the day that the Cleveland Cavaliers held a parade to celebrate the first championship won by one of the city’s teams in more than 50 years. The entire city seemed to turn out, J.R. Smith ripped his shirt off, and a whole lot of other extremely entertaining things happened as the Cavs were honored for knocking off the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.

But down in Charlotte, something else was going on that ended up leading to the most highly-anticipated basketball documentary of our lifetimes. In a new piece by Ramona Shelburne of ESPN, we learned that Mike Tollin, who will serve as the executive producer for ESPN’s upcoming docuseries The Last Dance, was afforded the opportunity to sit down with Michael Jordan and map out the project.

“The universe has such a funny sense of humor,” Tollin said of the day. “Because when I woke up, I put on ESPN while I’m getting dressed, and there’s LeBron [James] and the Cavaliers parading through the streets of Cleveland with the trophy that they’d just won.”

The gist is that a film crew followed the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls around and captured their entire season on film. The condition under which Jordan was cool with this, however, was that the footage could not be used without his consent, and as such, Jordan and former NBA Entertainment boss Adam Silver agreed that they needed permission from one another to do something with it.

As Shelburne explained, plenty of folks tried to make something of the copious amounts of footage the NBA had in its archives in lovely Secaucus, New Jersey, but no one could ever get Jordan on board. However, after meeting with Jordan’s associates, Tollin got his foot in the door. He brought with him a number of documents with him. Jordan read all of them, and one bit in particular at the very end of the presentation caught his attention.

The last page of the presentation was a look at the documentaries, movies and shows Tollin and his company, Mandalay Sports Media, had done.

“So there’s Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar], there’s Hank Aaron, there’s ‘Varsity Blues,’ there’s ‘Coach Carter’ and so forth,” Tollin said. “He’s actually looking at them all, and in the bottom right corner is ‘Iverson.’ He goes, ‘You did that?’”
…
Tollin mumbled a cautious, “Yes.”

Jordan took his glasses off, looked up and said, “I watched that thing three times. Made me cry. Love that little guy.”

It was quite the confluence of events, and fortunately, it led to The Last Dance finally becoming a reality. It also shows that LeBron James and Michael Jordan seem cosmically preordained to be tied to one another forever, which hopefully means LeBron will respond with a gigantic docuseries about the 2015-16 Cavs some day.

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The coronavirus pandemic has put the kibosh on almost all thing social, from concerts to moviegoing to beachgoing (unless you live in Florida). It even destroyed proms. But some entertainers have thought outside the box to keep their fans, and themselves, sane. And so, just as some musicians have been playing songs or even concerts online, John Krasinski announced Thursday that he’d be DJing a virtual prom, with a little help from some friends. On Friday, he did just that.

As per Entertainment Weekly, the actor-filmmaker took to his YouTube channel for his livestream, which, sure enough, featured some impressive guest cameos to entertain quarantined seniors. First there were Krasinski’s fellow Office alum Rainn Wilson and Chance the Rapper, followed by the Jonas Brothers.

“Since we never went to prom,” said Nick Jonas, “and because we want to share this experience with everyone staying safe at home, we could potentially do one of our songs if that’s alright, try to turn this party up a notch.” Then the trio, despite being in three different homes, managed to band together for a rendition of “Sucker.”

Billie Eilish then phoned in to perform “Bad Guy” with her brother Finneas O’Connell, fighting through some perhaps inevitable technical issues to managing to get through it in one piece. By the end, Krasinski addressed his virtual guests.

“You guys are missing a whole lot of things, and we couldn’t let prom be one of them,” Krasinki told them. “Chin up, this is all gonna be over soon. This weird level of joy is contagious; pick it up and do something with it.”

(Via EW)

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ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary series started in 2009 and immediately changed the sports landscape for good. A genre long-defined by HBO’s also-great sports documentaries, ESPN put its massive power behind telling sports stories that went well beyond the TV contracts the network had and the highlights aired on SportsCenter. The results in 2009 were immediate, with six consecutive Tuesdays in October and November yielding films about Wanye Gretzky’s trade from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings, the Colts abruptly leaving Baltimore and the tragic death of Len Bias.

In the years since, the network has gone on well past its initial 30 films, spawning 30 for 30 Presents, dozens of 30 for 30 shorts and a podcast of the same name. Given the wealth of great stories told by the series over the years, it can be difficult to know where to start with a decade-long exploration of incredible and sometimes-forgotten moments in sports history. With three volumes completed, a fourth in the works, and a highly-acclaimed miniseries about the Trial of OJ Simpson to its credit, there’s a lot to choose from, so we’re ranking our ten favorites.

No 30 for 30 podcasts or shorts or OJ here. Just some of the best original, full-length sports documentaries ever made, ranked.

10) Four Falls Of Buffalo

For a large region of New York State, this 30 For 30 is a painful but sweet reminder of what could have been for the Buffalo Bills in the ’90s. For the rest of the world, it shines a light on a football dynasty that never quite found glory. The K-Gun era Bills were ahead of their time in many ways, but saw defeat in four straight Super Bowls. The first was the most painful, a last-second loss to the New York Giants after Scott Norwood missed the game-winning field goal Wide Right. Featuring interviews with four Hall of Famers from that group — Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Andre Reed and Bruce Smith — and the litany of great players involved in those teams, this is a great story and team that deserves recognition for a rare, if ignominious, achievement.

9) Fernando Nation

Fernando Valenzuela’s rise to prominence with the Los Angeles Dodgers is often compared to the narrative in The Natural. The thing is, Fernando Mania actually happened and still remains one of the most underrated baseball stories ever. Getting plucked from obscurity to become a dominant pitcher is a wild ride of its own, but this film takes special care to explain why Valenzuela meant so much more to a particular set of Dodgers fans with very different memories of Chavez Ravine. Moments like this is where 30 For 30 truly shines, adding social and political context to the great sports moments we may have already forgotten.

8) Four Days In October

The least favorite 30 for 30 of Yankees fans everywhere, this is a behind-the-scenes look at the 2004 Boston Red Sox comeback in the ALCS. Featuring video taken inside the clubhouse by players, staff, and media, the documentary goes well beyond what we saw on TV as the Red Sox made history and overcame a 3-0 deficit in the postseason for the first time in playoff baseball history. This is an incredibly important piece of media for Red Sox fans, as the team went on to win the World Series for the first time in 86 years. You’ll never unhear Kevin Millar saying “Don’t let us win tonight,” hours before Dave Roberts stole second and everything changed in Fenway Park. But it’s also a remarkable piece of baseball history, and the clubhouse sights and sounds add a dynamic to the accomplishment in a big way.

7) This Was The XFL

The rebirth of the XFL in 2019 was cut short by COVID-19, but many of the lessons the new league learned from its 2001 counterpart were hard truths on display in this film. From its bombastic debut and the instant infamy of He Hate Me to its catastrophic bust after a single season, the XFL was a lesson in style over substance and what can go wrong in startup sports leagues. Hindsight has made these follies funnier, but This Was The XFL is a fascinating look at the people involved in the upstart league and why things were, in many ways, doomed from the start.

6) You Don’t Know Bo

The superlatives showered on Bo Jackson are clear in this one: he’s called the greatest athlete of the 20th century just minutes into the film. But what follows certainly backs that up, as You Don’t Know Bo chronicles the most dynamic two-sport athlete in modern history. Jackson’s time in both the NFL and MLB are explored here, as are the injuries that derailed his career in both. There are oddly intimate moments on display, such as Jackson showing off his archery skills and quietly contemplating his career. It’s a wonderful look at a player with a world of talent and equal amounts of misfortune, and yet another story that deserved to be told to future generations. The highlights of Jackson on the football and baseball fields are truly spectacular and the praise given to him is well-deserved by everyone involved. A joyous watch all around.

5) Broke

The first of two Billy Corben films on this list, Broke is a look at all the ways athletes can lose their fortunes and features some tough interviews from the players who went, well, broke. It’s an eye-opening exploration of what fame and influence can bring to someone’s finances and destroys the myth that all athletes are set for life once they make it big. Watching this film changes the way you think about sports, as big an endorsement of a sports documentary as you’ll get.

4) Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks

One of the earliest 30 for 30s, Winning Time still holds up as masterful storytelling through the eyes of all parties involved in the Pacers and Knicks rivalry of the 1990s. The interviews are highly entertaining and yield some incredible lines — John Starks saying “Did this dude really just did this?” regarding Reggie Miller’s back-to-back threes to tie Game 1 of the 1995 series is a personal favorite. It is a highly entertaining look at one of the great rivalries of that era, featuring just about every major player and persona that took part, from Miller to Ewing to Spike Lee.

3) Pony Excess

Based on a book of the same name, Pony Excess looks at the rapid rise and fall of the SMU football program in the early 1980s. Starting with the recruitment of Eric Dickerson and his stunning choice to join the Mustangs, the documentary follows how SMU’s brazen pay-for-play system, orchestrated by boosters and the coaching staff, eventually earned them the first (and last) death penalty from the NCAA, effectively ruining the SMU football program for more than two decades. It is a fascinating look at the world of college football recruiting, boosters, and why even in a shady world like recruiting where just about everyone is cheating to some degree, SMU’s indiscretions stood out.

2) The Two Escobars

A decade since its release, The Two Escobars remains one of the best sports documentaries ever made. A harrowing and heartbreaking look at how the drug underworld intertwined with Columbian soccer, the film chronicles how Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel impacted sports in the nation and how it led to tragedy involving Columbian soccer team captain Andrés Escobar. It’s an engrossing story whether you’re a soccer fan or not and brings new context to the world soccer stage. An excellent film, wire to wire.

1) The U

Billy Corben’s love letter to the University of Miami is the pinnacle of the genre and in the eyes of many is the best 30 for 30 ever made. In many ways, Miami football was the first time hip-hop culture was put on display in living rooms across America, and the film goes into great detail to explain why it all came together in Miami and made the program a powerhouse. It’s fun, full of color, and has an attitude that matched the vibe Miami football put out during its glory days. There are many great documentaries on this list, but The U was such fertile ground that there’s even a Part Two and a third 30 for 30 just about the Catholics vs. Convicts showdown with Notre Dame. All three are good, but just like in the old days you just can’t beat the original U.