Mike Tedesco’s Smackdown Thoughts
May 11, 2013
By: Mike Tedesco of Wrestleview.com
I enjoyed the Highlight Reel segment that opened the show. As has been evident to anyone with a pair of ears over the past week, Ryback is just not good on the microphone. He’s too stiff and articulate. You’d think being articulate would be a good thing, but it’s not. No one on earth goes that out of the way to pronounce every “t” and “s,” especially when they have something to gripe about. They let him fly in the opening segment of RAW with an extended promo with John Cena, but last night they put him in there with Chris Jericho who could just do all the talking and keep Ryback’s lines at a minimum. It was a well-done segment in that regard. On a side note, where has Booker T been? Teddy Long has been delivering all the match news lately.
Kofi Kingston and Cody Rhodes had a decent little match for the time they were given. It was really just to get Kingston some face time with a convincing win. It would serve to help him for later in the night.
The Big E. Langston/Jack Swagger match never got off the runway. Alberto Del Rio put a ladder in the ring, and they took each other out with it. This was actually a pretty violent segment. I know chair shots to the head are banned, but what about ladder shots to the head? The ladder seems like it would be a lot worse. I thought Ziggler was going to have a concussion following Monday’s broadcast with the way Swagger cracked him in the head with the ladder. I was surprised to hear that he got the concussion at the Smackdown taping after a kick in the head. I’m thinking his brain was already a little scrambled from the RAW show. The segment itself was ok, which is kind of how I feel this feud for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship has been.
Dean Ambrose is back wrestling a singles match on Smackdown for the third week in a row, and this week he worked against Daniel Bryan. I don’t think there are enough superlatives for how I think about Ambrose. The guy is just gold in the ring. You throw him in there with Bryan, and it’s going to be great. They’ve had some great matches in the past. I was kind of hoping Bryan would say, “I’m going to kick his flippin’ head off!” It was a hard-hitting bout that no one looks bad coming out of. My thought was that there was going to be a WWE Tag Team Championship match at Extreme Rules with Team Hell No defending against some combination of The Shield, but now that Kingston ran out to help, it seems like they’re going for the six-man tag team route. Where did Kingston come from? He got beat by them on Monday, but aren’t there guys who have bigger gripes with The Shield for bigger reasons?
The next segment was damn impressive. Mark Henry apparently set a world record by pulling two tractor-trailers. Why they had him doing that, I’m not sure, but it was really impressive. I would have liked to have seen behind the tractor-trailers as I’m not entirely convinced there wasn’t any type of assistance, but no matter the case, Henry looked incredible coming out of this. If he really pulled the trucks, then he is one hell of a physical specimen. If he didn’t and there was help, he put on a damn impressive acting performance.
Big Show taking on Tensai was what it was. We know that Big Show is a powerful guy who can take anyone out, so there was nothing too impressive about the segment. Randy Orton snuck up on him and laid him out with an RKO to end the segment, furthering their feud a bit.
The main event was pretty good with Chris Jericho and Ryback going one-on-one. Ryback has benefitted from two great matches in back-to-back weeks on Smackdown. He needed to have a match like this one last night where he took the cowardly heel approach of losing the battle to win the war. He got disqualified for crotching Jericho on the ring post when Jericho proved too much to handle, but he took him down for good following the match when Jericho could muster no momentum. This was some pretty good stuff for Ryback. Jericho can work with anyone.
Bump of the Night: Zeb Colter getting the ladder dropkicked into his ribs
Match of the Night: Daniel Bryan vs. Dean Ambrose **
Final Rating: ***
E-Mail – MikeyT817@gmail.com
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Thanks for reading!
Mike Tedesco is the official recapper of WWE Smackdown for Wrestleview.com.