5 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE SmackDown (23 Jan - Results & Review)

Downs...

5. WWE Hung Drew Out To Dry Here

Attention, WWE creative: Simply scribbling down 'Drew McIntyre talks about the Fatal-4-Way at SNME for 10 minutes before leaving' and calling it a day isn't compelling. You'd think the team would've learned that lesson last summer with Cody Rhodes. Back then, Cody was tasked with going out to the ring with a microphone to say nothing of note. Sometimes, he managed to salvage it. Other times, he didn't.

Why take the risk?

Here, McIntyre appeared to talk about that Fatal-4-Way and bragged about being WWE Champ. There wasn’t much to his promo, being brutally honest, and it really did smack of those one man promos the company had Cody do. Drew didn’t do anything wrong here, that’s worth saying - the big Scot just didn’t have much material to work with, and so he had nothing to say that hadn’t already been said.

Thankfully, the live crowd in Montreal came along for the ride and injected the skit with some much-needed energy, but McIntyre's going nowhere speech took place during a sorry lull for the episode. It badly ran out of steam around midway through, and things never really picked up again. A little more thought and care needed to be taken on those format sheets.

Something else of note: Drew is getting heavy babyface reactions from audiences no matter what he does. They were invested in his 'nearly man' gimmick before winning the WWE Title, and most fans appear legit happy that he seized the belt from Rhodes. That's something to keep an eye on.