WWE Smackdown Review - Friday 29th February 2008

After a well booked Smackdown last week I was looking forward to what the Smackdown creative team and performers had install for us this week. However this excitement didn’t last for long.

Too many big guys

Now last week I talked about Smackdown being heavy of wrestlers around the 300 pound mark or higher but this week it was evident. Now if you have too many big guys the answers is not to put them all in to two matches. First we had Kane & Batista vs. Khali & MVP and then we had Balls Mahoney vs. Big daddy V. Luckily the latter didn’t last long. There is a place on a wrestling show for big guys but they need to be used well and not all booked together.

Slow developing feuds

Now the idea of having a weekly TV show is to develop storylines ready for the next PPV. I know it’s harder at the moment as there are more episodes between No Way Out and Wrestlemania than normal PPV’s but to keep a viewers interest you can’t have a feud treading water. The feud which is suffering at the moment was Chuck Palumbo and Jamies Noble as they had a match which Chuck won but nothing happened in the match to develop the feud so it was a waste of time.

Who has Batista annoyed?

After being in the main event scene for as long as I can remember Batista has now confirmed that he is going to be representing Smackdown in the inter-promotional match at Wrestlemania. With the two title fights, Big Show / Mayweather, Money in the Bank and Falir’s retirement match this match isn’t even on the main event radar. The only good thing for Batista is that this feud could mean him going to Raw shows and Umaga the Raw representative coming to Smackdown shows which will lead to more TV time for Batista.

Larger than life storylines

For me Smackdown has always been a product more designed for young people than Raw with more larger than life characters and storylines. This is why the WWE are trying out the tag team of Jesse and Festus in Smackdown but I for one am not a big fan. Eugene had a similar storyline and he made it work as he endeared himself to the fans but for me Festus is used as a character just to poke fun at which I don’t think is right or fits with the fans base.

The Edge / Undertaker feud

I think the Smackdown creative team are doing a good job with this on the whole. As a great heel Edge will keep on putting stumbling blocks in Undertaker’s way and Undertaker being the face will keep knocking them down. This week it was time for Zack Ryder to be used as a pawn and just as it looked like Undertaker would get his hands on Edge he fled leaving his minions to take a beating. The only thing I would watch if I were the creative team was giving the Undertaker too much mic time as with Edge being such a great talker I think the feud works best if Undertaker lets his actions speak louder than words. The other thing is to not build Edge’s minions as I thought Undertaker’s match with Zack Ryder should have been a match to show Undertaker’s dominance not to build Zack Ryder which it did.

Overall I thought it was a solid show but there wasn’t enough storyline development for my liking.