The WWE Champion opens things by talking about how he doesn't like the "you tapped out" chants and how he broke John Cena's nose, even showing footage of it. This brings out Cesaro, who basically talks about how Seth never shuts up. They end up having their scheduled match now and Kevin Owens casually strolls out. He joins commentary, making Tom Phillips, Byron Saxton and Jimmy Uso look like amateur hour. Just as Cesaro starts to gain momentum, Owens interferes and teams with Seth to beat down on the Swiss Superman. It was all fine, but it's similar to what we see on Smackdown a lot. It's like there's a set format that they can't stray far from.
Since it's Smackdown, we have to have multiple variations of tag team matches. Teddy Long would be proud as we get an eight man tag. The Ascension teams with New Day against Los Matadores and the Lucha Dragons. The Prime Time Players are out on commentary to scout. New Day cuts a fun promo beforehand, as always. The match was a fun ten or so minutes and Viktor eats a pin, leading to a post match argument between them and New Day. Keeping with the tag team theme, backstage, Kevin Owens tells Cesaro to find a partner to face him and Seth. A special vignette airs to profile Becky Lynch. She was supposed to face Nikki Bella tonight but Nikki missed the taping. Instead, Becky had a good outing with Brie on Main Event that you should go check out.
Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper cut a promo in their weird smoke filled room about Bray giving Luke's life a purpose. It's relatively fine stuff but I think less is more for Wyatt promos. They'd be more special and feel less repetitive if he didn't have to do one on nearly every show. Rusev and Summer Rae are out next. Rusev has easily been one of the most entertaining things about the WWE lately. He cuts a promo on "fish Lana", mentions "hot Summer" and "Dog Ziggler." The dude has been great. He faces home state boy Jack Swagger for the billionth time. They go about twelve minutes with Rusev winning again. He attacks after, but Swagger turns it around and stands tall. I don't get why. I mean, I know it's his hometown but he's literally going nowhere and Rusev has been great lately. Moving on, R-Truth takes on Stardust. Stardust wins in relatively short time. After, he cuts a short promo, even saying "YOU HAVE FAILED THIS CITY" and tries to put a Stardust mas on Truth, but Neville runs out. They brawl and when he goes for the Red Arrow, Stardust makes a quick exit. You know, I could get really into a Stardust/Neville feud but it needs more depth. It's basically been a series of weird villain promos from Stardust and Neville standing around looking confused. It's like they only put Neville in this spot because he does the Red Arrow and they're leading to something with the Green Arrow.
Main event time as Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins await the reveal of Cesaro's partner. It turns out to be Dean Ambrose, which would be random, but his feud with Seth is pretty much never ending. The eleven minute match is the usual fare that you would expect from Smackdown. Fun match but nothing spectacular. Cesaro and Ambrose had good chemistry and got the win. Overall, this was a decent episode of Smackdown. The main event was fine and the eight man tag was good, but nothing really stood out. You could have missed this episode and not missed anything of importance. 5.5/10.
