The Wyatt Family come out to open Smackdown, cutting a promo on the attack they put on Randy Orton on Raw. They warned anyone who tried to align themselves with Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns. I guess the Wyatts miss the original Shield and don't want any knockoff versions. That's pretty much all they say. The opening contest is a Raw rematch between Cesaro and Miz. Unlike Raw, this one is actually competently booked as Cesaro gets the win. He also does so with the Sharpshooter, making me miss his tag team with Tyson Kidd even more. I like that Cesaro won, but like his win over Rusev, it came on Smackdown, so nobody will really remember it.
Continuing the old fashioned theme of Raw rematches, we now get Paige vs. Sasha Banks. Since getting the main roster call up, Sasha Banks is, as far as I can tell, unbeaten in singles matches. She's beaten Paige twice but was unable to win here, however, she also didn't lose. After nearly ten minutes of solid work, they brawled outside and it went to a no contest once their respective teammates joined in. The match itself wasn't bad, but I'm not sure what the plan here is. Anyway, moving on, not content with just giving us Raw recaps on Thursday nights, Smackdown basically just airs the Raw main event. It's like a good 80% of the match and the aftermath. Have they really gotten that lazy? Seth Rollins is then interviewed about what Sting did to his statue. He is pissed about it and threatens to make Sting pay at Night of Champions. Sheamus shows up to tease his cash in again because they have nothing else for Sheamus to really do. In our biggest match so far, the New Day takes on Reigns, Ambrose and Reigns' cousin, JImmy Uso. The match itself was fine stuff, as Jimmy looked happy to be back in action, but then the Wyatts showed up to ruin things. They took out Jimmy and then his partners went to save him but they disappeared. I think New Day won by countout, but they might have called a no contest. We get no word on exactly what the decision was either way. It was cool to see Jimmy back and New Day always delivers, while this built the Wyatts/Reigns and Ambrose stuff. This did what it had to.
After abandoning the Cosmic Wasteland so the Ascension could get squashed on Raw, their partnership with Stardust was back on here. They took on the Lucha Dragons with Stardust at ringside. It was another fine match and once Stardust distracted the Lucha Dragons, the Ascension capitalized to pick up a rare victory. Now please let this carry over to Raw. They go to attack but Neville runs out to make the save. Backstage, Renee Young interviews Nikki Bella about her match this Monday against Charlotte. Nikki calls Charlotte delusional and says that she will not stand in the way of history.
Our main event is, you guessed it, a rematch from Raw between Seth Rollins & Ryback. This time, there's a twist though as it is a Lumberjack match. Similar to their Raw match, this was solid but unspectacular. The lumberjacks all get into a big brawl except for Kevin Owens, who just watches like he doesn't have time for their shit. He then trips Ryback, allowing Seth to get the win. Overall, a decent episode of Smackdown. No real bad or useless matches, but nothing you need to go out of your way to see. Re-airing the Raw main event was just lazy also, but this wasn't a bad two hours, just a mediocre one. 5/10.
