5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE SmackDown (Nov 18)

Downs...

4. The Pointless Opening Segment

Boring.

That's the right word to sum up SmackDown's opening segment. This promo train was supposed to tease the Kevin Owens reveal later on, but it did a really poor job of that. Nobody said anything of value, and some of the jokes ("brutey") fell flatter than WWE's would've liked.

Sami Zayn was the best thing here, but even he couldn't save the skit from fizzling out. Perhaps the worst thing about it was that Sheamus offered Drew McIntyre a spot alongside The Brawling Brutes at WarGames despite the fact that Drew had already been shown in a graphic for the match.

That, as well as some lukewarm build for Sami vs. Butch, meant this was easily skippable. Remember those old formulaic promo trains that used to open Raw every damn week? Yeah, this was an unwanted throwback to those days.