Smackdown 7/16/15 Review

The show opens with Roman Reigns, who comes out and says that Bray Wyatt isn't in his head. He does want Bray to stay away from his match tonight, when he teams with Dean Ambrose against Big Show and Sheamus. Bray interrupts on the tron, cutting a pretty cool promo about all of the gifts that Roman has. He says that Reigns is a monument for all of the good in the world but Bray will destroy it with a hammer. This was fine as Bray got to be his creepy self while Roman held his own with the short and sweet approach. Bray ends it with "anyone but you Roman, anyone but you." Bray continues to do good work on the mic but I just can't buy him winning any big matches.

Our opening contest pits the Lucha Dragons against the New Day with PTP on commentary. With Tyson Kidd and Cesaro not currently teaming due to Tyson'd injury, these are my two favorite teams in the division. It was a really fun tag team match here as they were given just over ten minutes and did fine work with it. Look, if Smackdown is going to be the show without much angle advancement, give them time to have good matches like this. It's the worst when Smackdown has a bunch of two minute contests. New Day win and cut a promo on PTP after, but when they get in the ring, New Day exits. Next, King Barrett goes up against Jack Swagger. These random Swagger appearances are just that. Random. Barrett beats him in two minutes. Truth appears in his strange getup and Barrett tells him that he won the prestigious tournament to be King but Truth makes a mockery of it and it ends on Sunday. Moving on, Raw featured a great match between Cesaro, Rusev and Kevin Owens. Here, Cesaro got a one on one match with Rusev. Like the tag match earlier, this was given a lot of time, clocking in at under fourteen minutes. It wasn't on the level of Raw but it was still good stuff. And you know what? Cesaro beat Rusev clean, becoming only the second man to do so. This could be a big deal if acknowledged and mentioned. The fact that it happened on Smackdown has me worrying that it will be swept under the rug like most things to happen on the B show. I hope it matters.

In a rematch from Raw, Stardust takes on Neville. I think these two could have a cool feud if given care and not just rematch after rematch. They get a short match where Neville gets his win back from Monday. Both wins have been via rollup so I assume we get a rubber match soon. Maybe on Sunday? Hell, I'd have liked Rusev/Cesaro to be saved for that too. After a recap of the "divas revolution" from Raw, Jojo's cute self interviews Sasha Banks, Naomi and Tamina. I marked out seeing that Sasha had the NXT Women's Title with her. I think that's such a good thing, similar to Owens bringing the NXT Title to the main roster. They are team BAD because they're the best at dominating. Well, at least Sasha is.

In a main event that would make Teddy Long proud, we have a tag team match playa. Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose teaming makes sense, but why against Sheamus and Big Show? Show is feuding with Ryback and Miz and Sheamus is in the awful program with Randy Orton. It's like the bookers didn't even care and just threw together people who happened to be at the arena. It was your standard Smackdown tag, ending via disqualification when Bray Wyatt attacked. Reigns overcame those odds and laid out him and Sheamus to stand tall. Overall, this was a solid episode of Smackdown. The opening promo worked, the tag opener was fun, Cesaro/Rusev ruled and seeing Sasha with her title was great. Everything else was either short or average and nothing was really bad. 7.5/10.