4 Ups And 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Apr 16)

Downs...

4. The Tag Team Formula Is Used Again

This is going to be in the "downs" section until it stops happening. Sorry about the repetition in using this every week, but it is WWE's fault. No matter who it is that is out there cutting the show opening promo, WWE feels the need to set up a tag match for the main event. It was John Cena in the ring this week talking about his US Open Challenge to give somebody a title shot. Actually, he was talking about Rusev before that, but when he got to the point he brought out somebody to accept the challenge. The tag champs Cesaro and Tyson Kidd (with Natalya) answered. The champions said they're not there to accept Cena's open challenge. They were there to deliver some facts to John Cena as they called themselves the greatest champions in WWE today. Cena wanted to face one of them in a US Title match. Instead, the Intercontinental Champion Daniel Bryan showed up to join the championship party. At this point everybody at home knew what was coming. It set up a tag match. We get this same thing every week whether it's a heel like Kane setting it up, Triple H doing it or even a popular guy like Daniel Bryan doing it. This is not a complaint about the guys in the match. It was good and will be mentioned later. The issue is that WWE's shows are too formulaic. What happened to fresh ideas? They don't exist.