Smark Out Moment

Welcome to another edition of Cheap Pop and Cheap Heat from Smark Out Moment! Each week, we break down the world of professional wrestling and examine two of the polar opposite ends of the spectrum: one thing that was by far the worst thing (Cheap Heat) and the best thing (Cheap Pop) to happen over the past 7 days in sports entertainment. So, what went down this week that we loved and hated about the business?



Maybe it was just because they have a 205 Live tour coming up, but I really feel that WWE put a good effort into the cruiserweight division this past week.

Firstly, someone somewhere must have given the go-ahead to allow the cruiserweights to actually act like cruiserweights, as there was a considerably noticeable incorporation of acrobatic lucha styled moves in Raw's Fatal 4-Way match.

Why are they normally forced to tone it down and make it so ground based? This fast, flippy style is what made the Cruiserweight Classic such a hit, and far more reminiscent of the WCW Cruiserweight division that I considered the best part of the show.

Now we come to the winner of the aforementioned match, Drew Gulak. What a rising star he is. It is hard to place why he has such appeal, but there is a quirky Napoleon Dynamite quality to him that just seems to be catching on with the audience. Plus, who in human history has ever been able to get a PowerPoint presentation over before? I cannot wait to see what the deputy leader of The Zo Train gets up next week.

Lastly, WWE threw in one last treat with a bizarre five second flirtatious interaction between Nia Jax and Enzo Amore that really got tongues waggling. Are we really going down a possible romantic storyline between the pair? So bad it might just work.

Again, there is a part of me that thinks the extra effort was solely to get bums on seat for the tour, but I hope not, as WWE are clearly steering the division in the right direction if they could just learn to keep this up



Two weeks ago, I expressed disdain that WWE appeared to be duplicating a story with the Absolution and Riott Squad angles. However, I did have a sliver of hope that the stories were somehow connected to a far more expansive and intriguing narrative. Sadly, this most certainly does not appear to be the case, and they really are just copy and paste stories running concurrently.

Furthermore, save the vastly different star ranking of their respective leadership, The Riott Squad still comes across looking like a knock off version of Absolution. Whatever The Riott Squad does, Absolution has already done the night before, only better. Seeing a similar set up the very next day is not exactly innovative, and really does little to make the SmackDown version stand out. Well, unless you count Sarah Logan's brutal use of a microphone…

Absolution interests me, but The Riott Squad? Not so much yet. While I cannot solely place the blame of this on the duel booking, I would be a little more invested if they were a unique faction.

I understand that WWE probably wanted to bolster the women's ranks so that they can do a female Royal Rumble, but surely there could have been some other way to have incorporated the newer women?

So there you have it, my two choices for the week. What do YOU think are the Cheap Pop and Cheap Heat this week in professional wrestling? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!