The Taz Show Recap – WWE Creative Failing Nakamura, WWE Partners With Facebook, Riott Squad Needs More Aggression, More!

Taz opens today’s show by saying that he thinks WWE is mishandling Nakamura right now. Nakamura and Asuka are special in Taz’s opinion and while Asuka is being treated the right way by WWE, Nakamura is not. He knows that the laugauge barrier probably a problem for Vince McMahon, but with some creative writing that wouldn’t be an issue.

Taz points out that Nakamura had a good run when he first debuted on the main roster, but now he’s losing clean on Smackdown Live to Kevin Owens and being booked in tag matches on PPVs. He adds that there’s no shame in losing to Owens or tagging with Randy Orton for that matter, but sometime losing clean on television can hurt you, and this is one of those times in Taz’s opinion.

He liked the A.J. Styles/Singh Brothers segment last night, even though some of the lines in the Singh Brother’s promo came off lame and corny. Taz was happy that WWE at least handled their Champion well here, having Styles get the better of the Singh Brothers before standing tall to end the segment.

Taz mentions that Colin Delaney made his return to Smackdown after a decade’s absence last night, losing a tag team match to the Bludgeon Brothers. Taz says that Delaney is a nice kid and it was cool to see him back on Smackdown all these years later, even if it was just for a one-off appearance like Mike Johnson of PWInsider reported.

Delaney’s tag team partner in this match let out a scream as he was being lifted high in the air by the Bludgeon Brother and this was a prime example of over-selling in Taz’s opinion. As a performer, you have to be careful about doing this type of stuff because it can come off as hokey and corny.

Taz points out that WWE is premiering a new show on Facebook Watch soon entitled “Mixed Match Challenge”. Taz knows that Facebook’s been wanting to do something with wrestling for a while, so reaching an agreement with the biggest wrestling promotion in the world is a win for them. He thinks that this is the way the world is moving, transitioning to short-form programming instead of 3-hour broadcasts like RAW.

Taz thinks that WWE needs to be careful not the flood the market with their programming, if they haven’t done that already. If WWE continues to spoil the wrestling fans with hours upon hours of programming each week they’ll begin to take it for granted and they’ll start tuning out.

Wrestling fans are cyclical and everyone in the business knows this, so WWE just need to be careful with how they schedule their programming moving forward. Taz points out that more programming means more money for the talent, and in the end that’s what’s important to him.

He informs that there are a lot of things required of talent in WWE that they mightn’t necessarily receive additional income for. Talents have gone on record in the past saying the don’t get extra money to film shows like ‘Ride Along’ for example, so anytime they can generate more money Taz thinks that’s a good thing.

Taz thinks The Riott Squad needs to show more aggression during their attacks on the other women. He guarantees that one of the agents or officials in the backstage area is saying the exact same thing to these girls. He thinks they’ll eventually get to where they need to be, but he doesn’t believe Smackdown Live is the place to be working on these types of things. Vince McMahon doesn’t usually have a lot of patience for talents learning on his top two shows, and he shouldn’t be blamed for that in Taz’s opinion.

Taz couldn’t get into this segment and he really didn’t like the way it ended. In his opinion, The Riott Squad should have left Charlotte laying defeated in the middle of the ring, and then Natalya could have jumped into the ring and picked the bones. Instead, WWE didn’t do Natalya any favours with their booking last night because if the heels don’t have real heat, nobody cares.

Taz liked the ‘Yep’ movement, and he liked the promo segment featuring Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens and Daniel Bryan. Unfortunately, he thinks WWE is late to the punch with this Owens/Zayn firing angle, and he thinks it should have happened after they were sent home from the European tour a few weeks ago.

That sums up today’s episode of The Taz Show. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya tomorrow for another recap!