Category: SmackDown

WWE SmackDown (April 7) Review

WWE SmackDown (April 7) Review

by | Apr 8, 2016

This SmackDown was fresh and original, with the IC match and main event absolutely worth watching– and new NXT faces, to boot. Sami Zayn reminds us why he’s infinitely more interesting when he’s striving.

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WWE SmackDown (March 3) Dean Ambrose & The Art of Road Blocks

WWE SmackDown (March 3) Dean Ambrose & The Art of Road Blocks

by | Mar 5, 2016

Some months ago, in another WWE SmackDown review, I talked about the idea of a fictional universe inherently needing a system of checks and balances to keep the powers of its heroes drifting wildly out of control. While WWE continues to lack either checks or balances, the quality of combat on the show continues to improve.

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WWE SmackDown (February 11) Review

WWE SmackDown (February 11) Review

by | Feb 12, 2016

The Jericho/Styles sandwich on this week’s SmackDown betrays a painfully depleted roster and the lurking ghost of “wins and losses don’t matter”: but these things are a lot easier to forgive when the wrestling is actually good.

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WWE SmackDown (November 5) Review: Owens vs Ambrose

WWE SmackDown (November 5) Review: Owens vs Ambrose

by | Nov 6, 2015

The dust has settled after the frantic apple-bobbing and pumpkin superkicking of last week’s Halloween SmackDown; the nights are drawing in, and there’s nothing to look forward to ’til Christmas. The bi-yearly tour of Europe kicked off this week (and has already tragically taken our champ as a casualty), which means SmackDown is left with a reduced roster and not much in the way of star power.

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WWE SmackDown (August 20) Review

by | Aug 20, 2015

Got a bunch of SummerSlam preview matches here, so if you’re thirsty for seeing these interactions before Sunday, you’ll love this. Otherwise, wait for SummerSlam to disappoint you instead.

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WWE SmackDown Review (June 18): Kevin Owens vs. Cesaro

by | Jun 18, 2015

If I had to assign a complimentary adjective to this week’s SmackDown, it would be “watchable”. This episode is light on wrestling and heavy on rambling promos, general exposition and filler. The only can’t-miss is the Owens/Cesaro match, but you already knew that.

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WWE SmackDown (June 11) Review

by | Jun 11, 2015

Skip the opening of this show if you don’t want to end up disheartened about Dean Ambrose, but catch the last half hour for an interesting sequence that might end up being significant on Sunday, and a very fun tag match with lots to enjoy.

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WWE SmackDown (June 4) Review

by | Jun 4, 2015

A pretty weak in-ring episode, but quite enjoyable overall anyway, apart from the massive dark cloud of the Miz TV segment. It should go without saying, but don’t miss Kevin Owens.

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WWE SmackDown (May 28) Review

by | May 28, 2015

We’ve got all of the Elimination Chamber set-up matches you would expect here: in fact, it’s almost the entire Elimination Chamber card on shuffle mode. A small mercy: Kane only looms over one segment on this episode. Highlights include a gift of a Kevin Owens appearance, and a weird twist ending.

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WWE SmackDown (May 21) Results & Review

WWE SmackDown (May 21) Results & Review

by | May 21, 2015

This show was a Roman Reigns sandwich with some unexpected bright spots in between, but a sharp drop off in quality in the second half. Interactions between Shield members remain a highlight even almost a year after their dissolution.

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WWE SmackDown (May 14) Review

by | May 14, 2015

Check out the top and tail of this show if you’re a sucker for Shield drama, but the wrestling’s nothing to write home about. While we were promised a winner in the main event, it’s certainly not the viewer.

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WWE SmackDown (April 23) Review

by | Apr 25, 2015

The main event delivered and is the SmackDown match of 2015 that I’ve given four stars. If you are looking to catch the good stuff from SmackDown this week I would watch the main event and Neville in this tag match.

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WWE SmackDown (April 9) Review

by | Apr 10, 2015

This was another good episode of Smackdown. The main event would have been better sans Big Show, but it only makes sense with the upcoming Show/Reigns match at Extreme Rules. There was a nice continuation of storylines. Smackdown continues to be a show that can bridge the gap for stories we see on Raw, but not necessary to watch as long as you watch Raw weekly.

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WWE Smackdown (April 2) TV Review

by | Apr 4, 2015

This was an excellent episode of Smackdown, a show which has quietly become an entertaining weekly event. It operates how a weekly wrestling TV show should. Smackdown gives you one, maybe two, really solid matches, while the rest of the matches are kept short. Matches are utilized to continue feuds, as are the promos, but all-in-all not too much is given away that it makes you not want to see the PPV being built. The same can’t be said for Raw on a weekly basis.

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WWE Smackdown TV (March 12) Review

by | Mar 13, 2015

Smackdown continues to be centered around the Intercontinental Championship which would be great if the division was the WWE’s sad attempt to compete with Comedy Central programming. The road to WrestleMania continues to be paved with terrible booking, bad writing, anti-climactic matches, silly voice overs, burning rocking chairs, guys who shouldn’t be pushed so much, guys who should be pushed more, zombies, aliens, savages, beasts, warlocks, vigilantes, etc. None of which is remotely exciting. What is the cause for WrestleMania’s woes? This awful pattern of part time stars. You can read more about this in my Weekly WWE Soapbox coming next week!

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WWE Smackdown (March 5) Review

by | Mar 6, 2015

This was a throwaway episode of Smackdown in a lackluster WrestleMania season. I fully expect WWE to step up their game with three more episodes of Raw left. It is disheartening that Cody Rhodes vs. Goldust is apparently being wiped from the WrestleMania card again. It would have been cool to see Dustin Rhodes take on his brother in a Street Fight to ultimately convince his brother to shed the Stardust gimmick.

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WWE SmackDown (February 19) Review

by | Feb 20, 2015

SmackDown continues to follow the format of an old Saturday morning WWE show of old (Wrestling Challenge, WWF All American Wrestling, etc.) to where few of the matches go long. Most matches are squashes, but the show does a good job of getting programs/feuds over and continues storylines.

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WWE Smackdown (February 12) Review

by | Feb 13, 2015

Over half the show was taken up by the Tag Team Turmoil match and normally I wouldn’t complain about watching Daniel Bryan wrestle for 45 minutes, but the whole match was silly and contrived. Again, I must ask, why do we care if Bryan and Reigns get along? This show overall was “meh”.

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WWE Smackdown (January 29) Review

by | Feb 1, 2015

This was the worst Smackdown of the new Thursday era, but it was still a decent watch. It didn’t quite have the pizzazz that you would hope with the magnitude of this being the first live arena show since Royal Rumble.

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WWE Thursday Night Smackdown (January 15) Review

by | Jan 16, 2015

This was a really fun episode of SmackDown. Probably the best episode of SmackDown through and through since I’ve been reviewing the show for this site. Bryan has stated in interviews in the past week that he wants to become the face of SmackDown and this reviewer welcomes that for sure!

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WWE Smackdown (December 12) Review

by | Dec 14, 2014

This was a pretty awful episode of Smackdown. It had little substance and zero importance in continuing any storylines. It felt like one of those throwaway holiday episodes of Smackdown that the WWE throws together in a matter of minutes.

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WWE Smackdown (November 28) Review

by | Nov 30, 2014

This was the best episode of Smackdown in MONTHS. It was so refreshing to see new matches, a great debut (The New Day), a new feud started (The New Day/Gold and Stardust), two really good matches that left us wanting more (Ryback vs Rollins and Ziggler vs Harper) and a hot Indiana crowd.

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WWE Smackdown (November 7) Review

by | Nov 9, 2014

WWE Smackdown November 7th, 2014 Albany, New York I would like to wish a special birthday to Kazuchika Okada! As he turns 27 today (November 8th). Yours truly, (@LuchaNerd on Twitter) turns 27 on Monday. Okada and I are...

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WWE Smackdown (Halloween Special) Review

by | Nov 3, 2014

This was an absolute horrendous and awful and embarrassing show from the WWE. I understand the holiday episodes of WWE are probably some of their lowest rated, because families are busy not watch wrestling, but what happened to the days pro wrestling promotions tried to get families to gather round the TV on a given holiday to enjoy some good ol’ wrasslin’?

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WWE Smackdown (October 24) Review

by | Oct 26, 2014

This episode of Smackdown was better than most recent ones. The Ambrose/Rollins feud gains some heat, but is still hindered by the use of props as a joke and Hell in a Cell could be a better show than anyone expects it to be.

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WWE Smackdown (October 17) Review

by | Oct 19, 2014

WWE Smackdown October 17th, 2014 Birmingham, Alabama Commentators: Michael Cole, Todd Phillips, and JBL Raw Recap of this past Monday’s episode with the Ambrose/Cena/Rollins/Authority storyline. And we kick off the show with Mr....

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WWE Smackdown (October 3) Review

by | Oct 6, 2014

This was a decent episode of Smackdown, which I feel like I type every time I watch this show, but ultimate Smackdown is always the show that isn’t bad, isn’t good. It’s just “there”. Smackdown, Main Event, and Superstars are never essential for a WWE fan to watch and that is a problem.

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WWE Smackdown (9/26) Review

by | Sep 28, 2014

WWE Smackdown September 28th, 2014 Little Rock, Arkansas Commentators: Michael Cole, Tom Phillips, and JBL We kick off Smackdown with a recap of Dean Ambrose’s return to Monday Night Raw. The dynamic of babyface Ambrose and...

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WWE Smackdown September 19) Review

by | Sep 21, 2014

This was a really pretty good episode of Smackdown. It had some good matches and some good previews to Night of Champions whether it be through the wrestlers fighting in the ring themselves or the video packages they showed. It certainly got this viewer pumped for NoC.

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WWE Smackdown (September 12) Review

by | Sep 14, 2014

This was a so-so episode of Smackdown. The stunt doubles match of the Zigglers vs. The Mizes was definitely the entertaining highlight. The main event was a decent WWE styled main event tag team match that added some heat to the Jericho/Orton feud.

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WWE Smackdown (August 5) Review

by | Sep 7, 2014

This was a really pretty good episode of Smackdown. Especially compared to the last few episodes we have seen. It was heavily filled with in-ring work, but that is a good thing. The matches delivered and at least kept storylines going.

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WWE Smackdown (August 22) Review

by | Aug 24, 2014

This was another pretty stale episode of Smackdown. Nothing happened of substance. If you never caught a minute of this episode of Smackdown you could watch Monday Night Raw on Monday without even realizing Smackdown airing on Friday. WWE needs to do something to make Smackdown stand out.

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WWE Smackdown (August 15) Review

by | Aug 17, 2014

This was surprisingly a really good episode of Smackdown. I suppose that if a casual fan caught this episode of Smackdown they would be pleasantly surprised with the in-ring action and might be enticed into ordering Summerslam on the WWE Network or PPV after the recaps of the big matches.

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WWE Smackdown (August 1) Review

by | Aug 2, 2014

This was a pretty decent episode of Smackdown. It had two important segments if WWE were smart they would recap both of them on Raw. Those being Paige attacking AJ Lee and Jericho eliminating Rowan from ringside during the Bray/Jericho match. The Cesaro/Swagger match was worth watching if you want a good WWE TV match to watch.

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WWE Smackdown (July 11) Review

by | Jul 12, 2014

Hello! And welcome to the latest Smackdown review from yours truly, Taylor C. Mitchell. We start off with a recap of Cena vs. Rollins this past Monday on Raw. This was a very nice highlight package that had their face to face...

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WWE Smackdown (6/27) Review

by | Jun 29, 2014

The go home episode of Smackdown heading into Money in the Bank was a decent one. Less quick/squash matches like in recent weeks. A lot of foreshadowing/build up to both Money in the Bank ladder matches in this episode.

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WWE Smackdown (June 13) Review

by | Jun 13, 2014

Overall this was a very good episode of Smackdown. No Cena, Orton, Batista, or Daniel Bryan gave the newer stars a chance to shine. Some did (Cesaro, Sheamus, Ambrose) others, not-so-much (Fandango, Adam Rose, Alicia Fox), but it is telling of the WWE’s future.

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WWE Smackdown (May 16) Results & Review

by | May 18, 2014

This was not the best episode of Smackdown. Too many short, pointless squash matches topped off with the focal point of this show was based around Cena and Wyatt, which is a feud similar to Kane and Cena a few years ago. There is a lot of time and money invested into the feud and the payoff/delivery left a lot to be desired.

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WWE Smackdown (April 2) Review

by | May 3, 2014

This was a decent episode of Smackdown. No stand out matches, but it wasn’t filled with Raw recaps. It at least had pieces of current feuds sewn through the show. And it was nice to see a mid card title treated as something special by getting a main event slot on TV.

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