Live Notes And Reactions From Tuesday's SmackDown Taping
This week's SmackDown show was presented from the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, OH. Here are some of the live notes from the show.
- Many people was not aware of WWE touring overseas, which gave the live crowd a very limited number of talent to work with as seen on SmackDown. CM Punk was advertised to appear, but did not.
- The audience were a bit puzzled at the Alberto Del Rio/Damien Sandow exchange, seeing how both of them are heels. However, during the match, Sandow started to receive more cheers.
- Los Matadores and El Torito received a marginal pop. Especially when Torito did the seated senton on one of Los Locales. Many people near where I was sitting on the floor level were aware of Ricardo Rodriguez being one of them, but at the time, no one had a clue of who the second one was (later revealed to be Tyson Kidd).
- The crowd was behind Titus O'Neil. Especially seeing his story on the Susan G. Komen breast cancer video. His fraternity bark was very over with the live crowd.
- The Rhodes brothers received a significant ovation from the crowd throughout the match. They were heavily cheered when Cody rolled up Luke Harper for the win.
Dark Match
- The 20-man battle royal was incredibly fast. Unquestionably the fastest battle royal I've ever seen. It lasted all of 5-7 minutes, with the last four being Titus O'Neil and the Wyatt Family. When O'Neil was eliminated, Bray commanded Rowan and Harper to eliminate themselves.
This led to the World Heavyweight Championship match between Wyatt and Alberto Del Rio. The crowd was not into this match whatsoever. Similar to the disinterest that two heels are fighting each other as ADR and Sandow did during the show, but neither Wyatt nor ADR received hardly any reaction. Sandow coming out and teasing a cash-in after the Wyatt Family laid out ADR created a small reaction from the live crowd, but it quickly faded when they also laid out Sandow.
When Sandow got up, he walked up to the stage area and raised up his MITB briefcase to spark a reaction, in which he got an affirmative one. It appears as if WWE will be using more dark match main events to shape up Sandow's potential babyface run.
- Overall, decent show, barring the absence of most of the main event talent.
Author's Link: The state of the World Heavyweight Championship division.