8 Ups & 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (10 Sept)
4. Silence Over Violence
Sami Zayn at least earned his beating from The Undertaker after a delivering a slew of decent lines towards 'The Deadman'. This wasn't an interruption on par with AJ Styles of Stone Cold Steve Austin, but 'The Underdog From The Underdog' requests to replace 'Taker were charmingly in keeping with his delusions of grandeur. As are most of his asides when working as Shinsuke Nakamura's sidekick. Which...he subsequently couldn't do because of the prior segment.
SmackDown Live's roster is loaded with warm bodies that probably a) would have enjoyed talking themselves into a sh*tkicking from The Undertaker and b) been grateful of the promo time in the 'World's Most Famous Arena', yet that role was given to Zayn exactly one segment before he was required to play the role he's worked diligently on over the past few weeks.
A man who probably wouldn't have asked for a microphone was Shinsuke Nakamura, based on the language barrier gag with Corey Graves the company had to craft. WWE's table is bullish enough without having to try and interject in a second language, but this wasn't any kind of canvas for the so-called 'Artist' to work on ahead of Sunday's tepid scrap with The Miz.