SmackDown last night was supposed to feel like the blue brand’s hard final push before WrestleMania 42, the penultimate stop before next Saturday and Sunday in Las Vegas. Instead, it was a show that constantly felt like it was fighting its own momentum. There was good wrestling on the episode. Bayley and Alexa Bliss put … Read more
Houston, Texas is a wrestling city. CM Punk said so himself last night, invoking the ghost of Harley Race in the middle of the Toyota Center, and the crowd knew exactly what that meant. With two weeks remaining on the road to WrestleMania 42 in Las Vegas, the penultimate episode of Raw before the Showcase … Read more
With just two Raws remaining before WrestleMania 42 hits Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, WWE arrives at the Toyota Center in Houston tonight with real business still left on the table. Three matches are official, the final two WrestleMania slots are expected to be filled, and Seth Rollins opens the show responding to Gunther’s calculated … Read more
Two weeks before WrestleMania 42, last night’s SmackDown should have been about tightening the blue brand’s biggest stories, raising the stakes, and making the road to WrestleMania feel urgent. Instead, it often felt like a show working against itself. The headline angle gave Randy Orton’s mystery caller reveal to Pat McAfee, who low-blowed Cody Rhodes … Read more
SmackDown has reached the point on the road to WrestleMania 42 where it does not need to introduce its biggest stories anymore. It needs to sharpen them. That is what makes tonight feel important. Last week’s episode was less about delivering a wrestling-heavy spectacle and more about locking in the emotional temperature of the blue … Read more
Last night’s episode of WWE Friday Night SmackDown was the kind of show that gave WWE plenty of headline moments while also leaving behind a lot of frustration once everything settled. On paper, the blue brand had a lot going for it. Sami Zayn won the United States Championship. Cody Rhodes returned. Jacob Fatu and … Read more
Last night’s SmackDown was a show that spent most of its two hours flirting with frustration before finally finding its bite. For long stretches, this was a serviceable WrestleMania build built on shaky character logic, rushed contender decisions, and storylines that too often feel like they are moving in circles instead of building with purpose. … Read more
March is Women’s History Month, so I’m not doing the “Rhea Ripley is cool” version of this. Everybody already knows she’s cool. The real story is how Rhea became the kind of WWE star who doesn’t just win belts — she changes the temperature of the entire women’s scene. Some wrestlers feel important when the … Read more
SmackDown arrives tonight with WrestleMania 42 pressure already squeezing the blue brand Tonight’s WWE Friday Night SmackDown does not feel like a routine fallout episode. It feels like a pressure test. Elimination Chamber gave SmackDown two official WrestleMania 42 title challengers in Randy Orton and Rhea Ripley, but instead of simplifying the road to Las … Read more
Last night in Chicago, WWE ran Elimination Chamber like a company that already sees the WrestleMania 42 poster in its head and is willing to live with the complaints that come from drawing the outline in thick black marker. The wrestling delivered. The crowd responded. But the creative philosophy was loud: protect the biggest WrestleMania … Read more
