Smackdown 4/9/15 Review

Daniel Bryan opens the show and talk about Sheamus. This leads to an interruption from Bad News Barrett, who says that Bryan's magical week turned into a nightmare. Sheamus is out too and continues his whole "I don't like you because you're small" deal. As they go to attack Bryan, Dolph Ziggler and his Katniss Everdeen braid show up and he means business. Just when it looks like something good is about to happen, you all know who shows up to ruin things. That's right. The Big Show. He wants in on the munchkin beating, which brings out Roman Reigns. They all brawl and the faces send the heels packing. With that segment over, we get told that we'll have a special edition of MizTV tonight and the Smackdown debut of Neville. Should be pretty fun. After a commercial, we are told that our sweet tag main event was changed to become a six man tag involving Show and Reigns. Ugh. Oh well, the opening contest is a non-title match pitting Tyson Kidd and Cesaso against the New Day. The champs get jobber entrances but New Day gets to come out and discuss how the fans boo and say they suck. Big E's promo is pretty damn good. These two teams, being very talented, put on a very good opener. It isn't anything special or out of this world, but it is a solid ten or so minute match as one would expect from guys of this caliber. Kidd and Cesaro win, as they should, and the interesting New Day stuff continues.

After one of our classic Raw Rebounds during Smackdown, Curtis Axel is out. Since the road to Axtreme Rules hit a bump the night after AxelMania, Axel challenges Neville to a rematch. Neville getting a chance to showcase his stuff is always good. I do think that on Monday he needs to beat someone else. Right now it kind of looks like he can beat Axel but nobody else. Granted it was Seth Rollins he lost to, but I'm trying to see it as a casual viewer might. He wins in a match that is only a bit longer than his debut one two weeks ago. However, I will never get tired of seeing the Red Arrow. It is, literally, breathtaking. We go backstage where Cameron, Alicia Fox and Natalya all get catty about the Number One Contender's Divas Battle Royal this Monday. You know, the one that shouldn't happen because Naomi should be number one contender from a kayfabe standpoint.

Stemming from that, we get Alicia Fox vs. Natalya with Cameron as the special referee. Why? No fucking clue. Cameron's voice is so grating as she shouts "BREAKITUPBREAKITUPBREAKITUP" non-stop. This was your standard Divas affair with Natalya picking up the win, only to be taken out by Cameron. Yup, you read that right. I guess it builds for the battle royal well. Next we see an interesting but short video package on Erick Rowan that is narrated by Bray Wyatt. He says that he fixed Rowan and set him free. That or any other explanation would have worked better than them just splitting for no reason. Those two compete, which still makes me sad. The Wyatt Family really should have never split. Bray wins a decent little match. No surprise there as Bray's record in unimportant matches is fantastic. Don't put him in there in the big fights that happen at WrestleMania or something. He'll fold.

It's time for the special "movie edition" of MizTV where we get to see a Marine 4 trailer. Miz brags about the movie until Summer Rae interrupts because it's their movie, not his. Miz says it was his version of giving a Diva a chance. They trade barbs until Damien Sandow shows up. Sandow attacks, Miz scurries and Sandow kisses Summer because he's a fucking mack daddy. I think this would have been better if he didn't lose to Miz on Raw. Why did we waste that match again? Next, we show the same WrestleMania weekend video that we've seen about 600 times already. I don't understand why the WWE must show the same things over and over again. I get that you have a lot of TV time to fill but there have to be better ways to do that.

Now, it's time for the big main event. The one that apparently needed Roman Reigns and Big Show to be main event quality. Ugh. They've worked each other more than 10 times already this year and I don't believe that was counting tag matches like this. It looks like we may get them at Extreme Rules too. How terrible does that sound? Despite this, it was indeed a fun little main event. I just don't think it needed Reigns and Show at all. Smackdown is going to get about the same rating no matter what, so let the Intercontinental Title picture run the show. That's the advantage of having a guy like Bryan with the belt. He can headline. Reigns is able to win with a spear on Bad News Barrett. Sheamus just returned and we ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO PROTECT BIG SHOW AT ALL COSTS. So fuck the top challenger for the IC Title. Good main event, I just wish Show could eat the pin. Overall, this episode reminded me a lot of last week's in that it was solid but unspectacular. 6/10