Overall
Overall last night’s SmackDown was pretty good. While some risks were taken for the most part WWE played it safe in order to work out the kinks in the new Thunderdome virtual fan displays, and other than a handful of small hiccups the system worked really well. Major entrances like that of “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt looked great and it made me excited to see how the major matches of SummerSlam will look in the new setup.
Other than the Thunderdome the biggest talk of SmackDown was a tie between Jeff Hardy taking the Intercontinental Championship off of AJ Styles and the match between Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose at SummerSlam becoming a No DQ loser leaves town match. Both of these developments were welcome additions to the SmackDown story and I look forward to seeing what other changes are in store in the next few weeks.
Overall, I enjoyed SmackDown but there were some downsides. So, let’s look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of SmackDown 8/21/20.
The Good
- Vince getting interrupted by The Fiend.
- The Fiend’s thunderdome entrance is very good.
- Strowman attacking the superstars that came to help him. This is a good move for the new direction of this character.
- Sheamus and Big E is a very good choice for the first official thunderdome match.
- I was actually a fan of the distracted finish in this first match. It progresses the Sheamus and Corbin story while still giving Big E a win.
- The match between Lucha House Party and Cesaro and Nakamura was pretty good. I enjoyed it.
- AJ Bayley and Sasha all being obnoxious champs backstage.
- I like the beat the clock challenge for who will go first at SummerSlam.
- Sasha and Naomi had a really good technical match even though it was super short.
- Damn! Naomi beat Bayley!
- Asuka is a gift to us all! No one is deserving of Asuka!
- Sonya cut one intense ass promo.
- AJ and Jeff Hardy had a fun as hell match.
- Jeff Hardy is the new champ!!!! I did not expect that!
- Always happy to have more Joseph Parks.
- Braun in the fun house!
- Loved all of the backstage brawl through the end of the show!
The Bad
- God, Retribution is here for some reason.
- During Big E and Sheamus’ match the screens kinda froze in the Thunderdome. I get that they were working out the kinks so it doesn’t end up in ugly this time.
- Mandy’s backstage interview fell kinda flat.
- They cut off Jeff Hardy’s promo.
The Ugly
- I actually didn’t have any ugly this week. Good first run with the Thunderdome. We got a lot of wrestling left this weekend. Have fun!
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