6 Ups & 2 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Jan 16)

4. Flipping The Format

Last week's SmackDown was a bland, formulaic snoozer that conformed to the brand's every tiresome trope, and offered few major developments throughout its two-hour runtime. Fortunately, this wasn't the case last night. If we're going to rip on the bookers whenever they get lazy (and we do, frequently), it's only fair to praise them when they finally break the format, as was the case here.

Okay, the show kicked off with an in-ring promo, but it was brief, to the point, and featured wrestlers who don't often get the chance to feature in the opener. It quickly bled into the first bout, and that brings us to the next format deviation: the wrestling-centric focus.

This show was all about the matches. WWE gave us almost a full hour of in-action, and while none were truly excellent, most hit the right notes. Whatever the case, focusing on a more competition-driven show was extremely refreshing for a company so prone to polluting their TV product with tedious segments. They'll likely revert to type next week, of course, but we'd like to hope that they'll deem last night a success, and decide to switch things up more often.