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.

WWE Raw Review - 15th December 2008

After a really good Armageddon I was looking forward to see how WWE were going to end out 2008 over the next few weeks on Raw.

Good Points

Finally doing something with Kane

It may be a convoluted way to start a storyline but after presenting an award together last week at The Slammys Kane has now fallen for Kelly Kelly. To the point that he chased her backstage and kidnapped her while Kane tried to find out who Kelly Kelly’s boyfriend was. After many segments of kidnapping he went to the ring and destroyed The Miz so we are lead to believe that Kelly told Kane that The Miz was her boyfriend.

Orton back on top

It looks like Armageddon was just a blip as Orton was back on top after delivering a good promo and then laying the beat on Batista which ended up with him punting Batista in the head and getting disqualified in the main event but it was Orton who left celebrating as he got what he wanted done.

Good storyline development for Jericho

Since losing to Cena at Armageddon Jericho saw being put in a match with Duggan as being moved to the bottom of the pile so refused to wrestle him comparing it to if someone missed the winning hit in sport they don’t get dropped for the next game. I like where his character is going.

Bad Points

Wanted to see CM Punk in singles action

After winning number one contenders spot for the IC title and dropping the tag belts I was looking forward to seeing CM Punk return to singles action but again he was thrown back with Kofi against The Miz and Morrison.

Dolph Ziggler beats on Santa Claus

If they are going to get Dolph over thy need to give him some promo time and actually build him in to a proper storyline or else he is just going to turn in to another Burchill where he is used for a few weeks in random matches and then dropped in to obscurity again.

Overall

A solid outing with some good new storylines to keep the product fresh for the end of 2008.