WWE Smackdown Review - Friday 23rd January 2009

With it being the last Smackdown before the Rumble it was time for the Smackdown crew to hype the Royal Rumble as much as possible but did they manage to get the fans excited about it.

Good Points

Edge doing his best

Edge is doing his best without the champion on the show to build their match at the Rumble with him still maintaining that he had nothing to do with all the incidents that have happened to Jeff Hardy. He then did the only thing he could do without Jeff there and that was wrestle his brother as Matt came to stand up for his brother.

Great Tag Team match

Was great to see both sets of tag champs Miz/Morrison and Carlito/Primo go at it. These two teams are the tag team division for the whole of the WWE and I wouldn’t mind seeing them go at it on a PPV.

Bad Points

Use of Jeff Hardy

Jeff hasn’t wrestled on Smackdown for age and has barely appeared in the arena. This week they did a pre-recorded interview with Jeff which I think would have made more sense to do in the ring. I know they are trying to do something different with Jeff but if the fans can’t see him they are not going to be able to get behind him.

The Triple H storyline

This week HHH ended up wrestling Kozlov and the Big Show in a handicap match after a streak of upsetting the odds he lost. However because there was no build up on the show for the match it had no heat whatsoever and had diddly squat to do with the PPV. Your last segment before a PPV should always be about promoting a match at the PPV which this show didn’t do.

Overall

Like Raw no promotion for the actual Rumble match itself but to add to it Smackdown have a poorly developed build for their title fight. My reckoning is that we may see the return of Christian at the Rumble as the man behind all these attacks to Hardy but we will have to wait and see.

After a below standard Raw I was hoping Smackdown could provide some light at the end of a dismal week to get us hyped for Cyber Sunday. With a huge main event I was interested to see what the show was going to be like.

Good Points

Main Event Push

I thought it was great that they made the main event HHH vs. Undertaker as that is a huge match that gets people interested and it provided scope for various run ins as these two are in separate matches at Cyber Sunday. The match was one of the longest Smackdown main events in some time and although the ending was predictable it did what it needed to do for Cyber Sunday.

Use of Primo and Carlito

It’s great to see WWE really pushing this team. Carlito has had to put up with a lot over the last few years but this brother tag team was worth the wait. They scored a good win over Chavo Guerrero and Bam Neeley as well as getting some backstage segments of them goofing around. With these two at the helm Smackdown could have a good tag division again.

Bad Points

Jeff left out in the cold

I think WWE are really trying to get people to vote for Kozlov as they are really going out of their way to push Jeff to one side. Jeff is such a fan favourite I don’t think it matters but this week to open the show he was pedigreed by HHH and then didn’t get involved in the run ins at the end of the main event or have his own match on the card.

Khali Kissing segment

This is cringeworthy TV and a reason why people are scared to tell their friends that they are wrestling fans. I hope this idea gets killed really quickly as at the moment it is just more ammunition for the anti wrestling brigade.

Overall

A much more exciting show than Raw although that wasn’t hard. Had some lulls during the show and maybe had some of the wrongs guys used for matches but the right stuff got pushed and the ending was effective.