WWE makes history today with its first-ever premium live event in Italy, but Clash In Italy is not simply a landmark show built around the novelty of a new international destination. Emanating from the Inalpi Arena in Turin, today’s event has quietly developed into one of WWE’s strongest top-to-bottom cards of the year. There are … Read more
WWE Friday Night SmackDown has one job tonight: make WWE Clash in Italy feel bigger by the time the final frame fades out. Tonight’s show comes from Barcelona, Spain, airs internationally at a special 2 p.m. EST start time on Netflix, and will air on tape delay in the United States at 8 p.m. EST … Read more
WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event returned last night from Fort Wayne, Indiana with a show that felt less like a massive one-night spectacle and more like a compact, storyline-heavy bridge between weekly television and the next major stop on the calendar. That is not automatically a bad thing, but it does mean the show had … Read more
WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event returns tonight from Fort Wayne, Indiana with a card that feels less like a throwaway television special and more like a pressure-point show sitting in the middle of several moving stories. That is both the strength and the challenge of this lineup. WWE has loaded the night with championships, familiar … Read more
Last night’s WWE Friday Night SmackDown had enough story progression to matter, but it also exposed the exact problem fans have been pointing out with WWE’s current three-hour TV rhythm: too much time, too many recaps, too many talking segments, and not enough urgency to get talent in the ring. This was the go-home SmackDown … Read more
WWE Friday Night SmackDown comes into tonight’s show from Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky with a much stronger advertised lineup than it originally had. This is the final stop before tomorrow’s WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event, but it is also one of the last major SmackDown chapters on the road to Clash In Italy on … Read more
Last night’s WWE Friday Night SmackDown was the final stop before Backlash, and for better and worse, it felt like a true go-home show with two different versions of WWE fighting for control of the episode. The best parts of the night had real stakes: Jacob Fatu warning The Usos that he is willing to … Read more
WWE Friday Night SmackDown has one job tonight: close the door on the road to Backlash with enough heat, clarity and urgency to make Saturday’s Premium Live Event feel like a must-watch show. Coming out of last week’s chaotic episode, the blue brand has several stories pulling in different directions. Cody Rhodes was medically cleared, … Read more
Last night’s WWE Friday Night SmackDown was a busy, important and uneven stop on the road to Backlash — the kind of episode where WWE moved a lot of pieces forward, but also exposed some of the same creative habits that keep holding the product back. Cody Rhodes returned to the ring, Ricky Saints made … Read more
Tonight’s WWE Friday Night SmackDown comes at a very important point for the blue brand. WrestleMania 42 is in the rearview, Backlash is less than two weeks away on Saturday, May 9th, and WWE now has to prove that last week’s reset was not just a post-Mania burst of chaos. The biggest stories heading into … Read more
