Some decent action followed by a stupid finish. Vickie apparently randomly chose this time to remind everyone that the Royal Rumble match will be in nine days. Disturbingly enough, I had completely forgotten about that. That is how bad the build to this particular match was been. They pushes hard that in this match it will be “friend vs. friend” (to cover any allegations that Hunter sent her out there specifically to distract Cody & Goldust) and “brother vs. brother.” This distracted Cody, who was rolled up by Road Dogg.
Between Vickie’s promo and the comments that JBL and Miz were making on commentary, it seems like the much-rumored Cody vs. Goldust match is the route they will be going at Wrestlemania. I think that having the announcers push this here was a big mistake as it seemed to come out of nowhere and I think it would have been better if our first hint of the direction they are going to go would have been an innocuous comment by Vickie. Without JBL and Miz pushing it, it sounds like Vickie just spouting classic promo lines for the purpose of distracting them. Coming right after Miz and JBL’s comments, though, Vickie’s lines seem like an official announcement of where they are going.
This would, of course, require them to lose the tag titles, and I actually wouldn’t be unhappy with NAO taking the belts off of them if it means they will lose them at Mania to an up-and-coming babyface team who will get a nice rub from both beating the New Age Outlaws and teaming with CM Punk on the Road to Wrestlemania (the Usos would work perfectly here).
And speaking of the Punkasaurus, his lack of presence here really bothered me. Does CM Punk seem like the kind of guy who would wait an entire week before trying to get revenge on people who walked out on him in a tag match right at the moment when he needed them most? One of WWE’s biggest weaknesses, IMO, is the fact that they don’t use all of their programming to tell their stories. Main Event never gets anything, Smackdown is often just filler for storylines, with anything important happening on Raw, and Superstars hasn’t even been mentioned of Raw or Smackdown in at least a year. If Punk is at Smackdown and NAO are at Smackdown, I just can’t see Punk got going after them. If you want to save all of the storyline advancement for Raw, then you need a reason why Punk isn’t at Smackdown. If I were booking it, I would have had NAO have a match on Main Event (which you can use to hype main event so people will actually go out of their way to watch it), and during that match, have Punk charge out at them with a steel chair. Have NAO run away and then have Triple H send out a billion security guys to arrest Punk and remove him from the arena. Then announce on the website that Punk has been suspended for a few days to “give him time to cool down,” thus creating a reason why Punk isn’t seeking revenge here on Smackdown.
Cole, JBL, and Miz all did a good job getting the possible “conspiracy” with Hunter and NAO over.
CM PUNK PROMO- instead of what I said above, Punk totally ignores the two men who betrayed him and is just going to continue feuding with the Shield. We've seen Punk face the Shield in basically every possible match-up a million times over the past three months.
PAUL HEYMAN PROMO & BIG SHOW PROMO- good segment
EVA MARIE ANNOUNCES THAT DEL RIO WILL FACE REY TONIGHT- This was in a buffer before the commercial. if you have seen any clips of Total Divas and how horrible Eva Marie was as a ring announcer, she sounded just as awkward making this announcement. i have absolutely no idea what WWE sees in this woman. She can't work, she can't cut promos, she is a terrible ring announcers, and there are much hotter women out there (even many on the current roster or in developmental who don't get as much attention).
REY MYSTERIO JR. vs. ALBERTO DEL RIO- 5.75/10
Rey cuts a pre-match promo saying that Del Rio is distracted because he is worrying about Batista, so he will get his win back on Alberto tonight. They had a good match. Rey won via roll-up, but Del RIo put him in the corss armbreaker after the match.
NAOMI (w/Cameron) vs. TAMINA (w/AJ Lee)- 2/10
Naomi has a real finisher now (a ssplit-legged moonsault), and she got the win. Tamina did not kick anyone in the face
MAE YOUNG TRIBUTE PACKAGE- watch this without crying. I dare you.
BRAY WYATT PROMO- interesting. Some background into his character. His father appears to have been some sort of rich man who disinherited him. he then wandered the world until Abigail came and pulled him out of the abyss. He was awesome here, as always.
RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS CM PUNK AGAIN- Ah. He wants to call out NAO again. My guess is that half way through the show, someone realized how dumb it was to not have Punk go after NAO and this is an attempt to rectify it.
BUMPER WITH THE BELLA ANNOUNCING FANDANGO VS. BIG E- they said "dong" a lot.
BIG E. LANGSTON vs. FANDANGO (w/Sumemr Rae)- 4/10
RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS THE SHIELD- good. They each say they would eliminate each other from the rumble, if given the chance, but agree that one of them will win.
AKSANA DOES A BUFFER TO ANNOUNCE THE USOS vs. THE REAL AMERICANS- She pronounced things mostly correctly, so that's good.
THE USOS vs. THE REAL AMERICANS (w/Zeb Coulter)-6/10
The Usos a very banged up and have lots of tape on them. I have no idea why. Everything they did with Zeb in the wheelchair was awesome.
CLOSING SEGMENT- Punk starts to insult Hunter, so the Shield and the New Age Outlaws come out and surround the ring, but Kane shouts for them to stop. He says that the Authority wants Punk to Main Event Wrestlemania and that his top priority form now on will be to ensure that Punk is treated fairly and with the respect he deserves. Punk calls Kane a "sell-out suck-up," so Kane sicks the other guys on Punk. They all feint, drawing Punks attention so Kane can slip into the ring and chokeslam Punk. This whole thing just felt weird.
Overall, an enjoyable eposode of Smackdown. Miz was a good addition to the commentary team.