4 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE SmackDown (12 Sept - Results & Review)
Brock Lesnar comedy flops; Cody Rhodes returns; Wrestlepalooza is STACKED.
Cody Rhodes ditched Street Fighter for SmackDown on this week's blue brand offering, and he had one mission in mind: Defeat the competition to earn a crack at M. Bison. No, it wasn't that. Cody was back on WWE screens to avenge being unceremoniously booted through the side of the announce desk by Drew McIntyre on the 8 August episode.
That angle came after WWE delivered a PLE quality main event, but Drew vs. Randy Orton wasn't the only match you should trip over yourselves to see on Friday night. Somewhat bizarrely, SmackDown felt like a lead-in preview show for the co-WWE x AAA Worlds Collide special. Regardless, the creative team still found it in them to cram an excellent Women's Title clash and some more Wrestlepalooza build into those 2 hours.
Not everything landed as hoped though. Brock Lesnar’s latest fully-fleshed appearance on the blue team since returning to action delivered some wonky attempts at comedy with R-Truth. That's a head scratcher. Triple H must know that Lesnar is best deployed as a sneering beast right now. His feud and final match with John Cena? Serious business, so there's no room for 'Cowboy' Brock silliness in late-2025.
Elsewhere, Sami Zayn kicked off his Cena-endorsed 'United States Title Open Challenge' by bringing it with a cunning mix of selling and babyface fire. Few in the industry are better at simultaneously leading a match and still finding a way to fight from underneath than Sami.
Here's all the good and bad from a fairly throwaway SmackDown on paper, but a slightly better one in execution.