5 Ups And 2 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Feb 7)
WrestleMania comes early?
Though it's only been nine days since the Royal Rumble Pay-Per-View - which saw John Cena capture the WWE Championship from AJ Styles and Randy Orton win the titular match - this week's Smackdown was also the go-home show for the next PPV, Elimination Chamber. As announced last week, that show's main event will see Cena defend the title in the eponymous structure against Styles, The Miz, Dean Ambrose, Bray Wyatt, and Baron Corbin.
Two weeks isn't a lot of time to build up a PPV event, and to make matters worse, WWE decided to throw in a bit of WrestleMania, too. As it currently stands, Orton is slated to face Cena at WrestleMania, but without warning, it was announced on last week's Smackdown that that match would be headlining this week's show.
So with all of that and a bunch of other matches to build up for Elimination Chamber, would Smackdown be able to keep up the momentum from last week's strong episode? Let's take a look at the show and see just what worked and what fell flat.
Ups...
5. Playing Ticklebutt
The show opened with Daniel Bryan addressing his hometown crowd for the first time since his retirement ceremony a year ago. Bryan spoke about how grateful he was for the chance to come back and be a part of Smackdown, but he was soon interrupted by The Miz. Needless to say, Miz took some pretty cutting shots at Bryan, but Bryan retaliated with a joke about how Miz couldn't wrestle.
Baron Corbin interrupted, sending things into a bit of a tailspin, and when Dean Ambrose came out, things weren't much better. Finally, though, AJ Styles hit the ring and accused the men inside of playing "ticklebutt" with each other. The bickering led to Bryan declaring that they'd all be in a fatal four-way match, up next.
This segment had its ups and downs, and overall, it was pretty middle of the road. Still, I'm going thumbs up just for the sake of the "ticklebutt" line.