5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE SmackDown (20 June - Results & Review)

1. Not Quite The "Pipebomb"

If one was defending John Cena's decision to rip off CM Punk's infamous 2011 "pipebomb promo", then he'd say that there was a delicious sense of irony to it. Cena has vowed to "ruin wrestling" during his retirement run, and he's doing so by being a trolling corporate champion who gleefully points out the flawed psyche of an audience spoiled on decades of content. It's a community that treats new wrestlers like toys on Christmas morning.

That's the upside. The downside is that Cena's speech wasn't very good. Some may disagree, and that's fine, but this was pretty weak stuff overall. It wasn't a patch on the 'wanted man' thing John was running with last week. There are no issues with Punk going the table or Cena standing tall, but his personalised "pipebomb" wasn't anywhere near as captivating as WWE wanted to pretend it was.

Mentioning AEW's Claudio Castagnoli, TNA's Nic Nemeth and the independent scene's Matt Cardona is slightly hollow in an era of cross-promotional stuff too. Cena was trolling, of course, but the oohs and aahs from Grand Rapids came across as more of a pavlovian response than anything else. 'Oh, he mentioned somebody who doesn't work here anymore and isn't on the WWE roster'.

Nope, wasn’t feeling this.

Feel free to chime in and tell this writer he's being a grumpy so-and-so. That might be right, and he might well be giving JC the exact reaction he wanted to glean from this promo. Who knows? It was slightly disappointing in execution though. That's an honest, admittedly knee-jerk, assessment from somebody who dearly wishes the first half of Cena's retirement run had been better.