6 Ups & 3 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Sept 11)

2. Sleepwalking

Last night was Jeff Hardy's fifth singles match against Shinsuke Nakamura since 12 June, and perhaps the least notable of them all.

While the action was fundamentally sound, this was a tiresome TV bout that did little to generate Hell In A Cell excitement until after the final bell had rang. Randy Orton's post-match assault was well done, with Hardy once again snapping on 'The Viper,' battering him with a chair the standing tall after his signature moves, but the contest preceding it? Not up to scratch.

Of course it wasn't. Nakamura is one of WWE's foremost energy-conservers, and understandably chooses only to exert himself in big matches, so he was never going to blow the doors off in this relatively meaningless TV clash. Throw the fact that old, beaten-up Jeff has a risky match in which he's almost certainly going to leap off something ridiculously high into the mix, and you have a recipe for a snoozer.

Orton's interference was predictable, too. Logical booking? Absolutely, particularly with Jeff getting the better of him in their last brawl, but these things are rarely fun when you can see them coming.