WWE Smackdown Recap – Sasha Banks Finally Breaks the Banks Curse

On WWE Smackdown this week, Sasha Banks defends her Smackdown Women’s Championship against Bayley. Plus: Carmella is back, so those videos weren’t a waste of time after all!

I’m Jude Terror, and this is The Shovel: Smackdown Edition. We don’t yet know who the next president is, but we will find out who is the Smackdown Women’s Champion. And what’s more important in the grand scheme of things? Okay, sure, the presidency. But come on, you know Trump isn’t gonna stop bitching until, well, forever, but at least until January. So let’s just sit back and enjoy some wrasslin’, or what passes for it on WWE television at least.

The Shovel – Weekly TV Recaps of WWE Raw, WWE Smackdown, Impact Wrestling, AEW Dynamite, and WWE NXT [Photo: Shutterstock] This post is part 1 of a 3 part series. Read: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Lightning and Thunder, piped-in crowd noise, and Michael Cole welcome us to the WWE Thunderdome, and Smackdown wastes no time in bringing out Sasha Banks! Sasha is in wrestling gear, so I guess Smackdown will be starting off with a match, or at least getting there eventually. A video package recaps Sasha’s feud with Bayley.

Kayla Braxton talks to Bayley backstage, asking about the video and the emotions it brought her. Bayley says beating Sasha with a chair gives her joy; Sasha making her sign the Hell in a Cell contract brought her anger, but mostly she’s sad the video didn’t explain how Sasha can never hold onto a title. Bayley will win it back tonight.

Now Bayley comes to the ring. Cole and Corey Grave shill for Survivor Series. Then they have a match. It’s a good match, as you’d expect. It’s also a long match, with two commercial breaks during it. Eventually, Bayley taps out to the Banks Statement.

Sasha Banks defeats Bayley to retain the Women’s Championship.

Obviously, I don’t know where WWE is going with this angle, but it’s hard not to feel like they missed an opportunity here. For months, Sasha and Bayley had the hottest angle in WWE and were carrying both Raw and Smackdown. With a year’s worth of build and an even longer history, Sasha and Bayley’s rivalry culminating in Sasha winning the belt at WrestleMania seemed like the obvious conclusion. But WWE, desperate for ratings, rushed the turn, but the first match on TV for free, and then had Sasha win the title in an (admittedly good) Hell in a Cell match.

And now Sasha wins again on a random Friday night when probably no one is even watching Smackdown because of the election going on. So what now for Bayley? She’s gotten her comeuppance. Sasha has proven she’s the better woman. What more is there to prove here? They very well might still have a match at WrestleMania, but how tired of the feud will we all be by then? On the other hand, it’s good to see Sasha have a title run that lasts more than two weeks.

Carmella doesn’t think so, though. She attacks Sasha at the top of the ramp with a superkick and an X-Factor, so I guess we know who Sasha’s next opponent is, and I guess WWE didn’t forget about all those video packages they played on Smackdown teasing Carmella’s return for all those weeks.

Michael Cole promotes an Otis vs. Seth Rollins Survivor Series qualifying match for later. And hey, the Ratings King of Friday Night is back, also competing for a Survivor Series spot against Rey Mysterio. Jey Uso is getting some coffee backstage when Kevin Owens stops by to talk to him. Owens mocks Uso for getting Roman’s coffee. Uso gets offended. Owens tries to apologize, but he’s bad at interpersonal relationships.

Smackdown takes a commercial break here. And I’ll be shifting coverage to the next part of this recap. We’re posting live tonight instead of in the morning, so no link below. Just check back in a half-hour to forty minutes (depending on how wordy I am), and there will be another report. And if you *are* reading this in the morning, then I’ll have added the links by then.

This post is part of a multi-part series: The Shovel: WWE Smackdown Edition for November 6th, 2020.

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A prophecy once said that in the comic book industry’s darkest days, a hero would come to lead the people through a plague of overpriced floppies, incentive variant covers, #1 issue reboots, and super-mega-crossover events.

Sadly, that prophecy was wrong. Oh, Jude Terror was right. For ten years. About everything. But nobody listened. And so, Jude Terror has moved on to a more important mission: turning Bleeding Cool into a pro wrestling dirt sheet!

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