7 Ups & 2 Downs From WWE SmackDown (24 April - Results & Review)
Fatal Influence debuts and WWE books title change on strong post-WrestleMania 42 SmackDown.
WWE couldn't have booked a weaker lead-in to WrestleMania 42 than last week's edition of SmackDown. The 'go home' segment creative chose was a sickening love-in between Cody Rhodes and CM Punk, but pretty much nothing on the show worked to inspire confidence that the company was going to knock it out of the park across 2 nights in Las Vegas on PLE.
Thankfully, Sunday's portion earned huge plaudits, but Raw on Monday (despite some interesting debuts) was another mediocre slice of WWE TV. As you can probably tell from the 'Ups' and 'Downs' counts alone, Friday's SmackDown was a lot stronger. When Triple H and staff do the simple things well, the product is a lot more palatable.
A staggering 23 workers just got their release papers ahead of the show, and there's no way it's a coincidence that WWE is calling so many wrestlers up from NXT at the same time. Here, 3 fresh stars hit the women's division hard (and there's another coming soon), and the likes of Ricky Saints was also teased as coming to the blue brand.
Further, only Friday's main event fell a wee bit short of greatness. The status quo appears to have stabilised due to healthy reactions towards reigning WWE Champ Cody Rhodes as well, so it'll be interesting to see whether or not that persists. If it does, then just build a statue of this guy - his babyface sustenance is unbelievable!
Here's all the yay and nay from what turned out to be a really solid Smackers to sit down and watch.