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• Who are Holger Böschen and Manu Thiele? I was expecting to see Carsten Schaefer and Sebastian Hackl at the German announce table. I can only assume that Germany also get different announce teams for Raw and SmackDown and that Böschen and Thiele are on SmackDown and Schaefer and Hackl are on Raw.
• The tag match was alright, it was short and somewhat sweet, but I wasn't really surprised with the outcome. Slater & Rhyno lost all their momentum months ago and I can see them failing to win back the titles when they have their rematch and then just going their separate ways.
It seems like The Wyatts will be using The Freebird Rule which makes a small part of me think that we could see The New Day vs The Wyatt Family at WrestleMania, but only if The New Day are still champions by then. So, if The New Day break Demolition's record, I can see the match being a possibility at WrestleMania.
• What's with all these random women appearing backstage recently and interviewing people? I swear there's around five new women that have been appearing recently and they all look insanely similar.
• Nikki/Carmella was awful. Just awful. The finish to the match was rubbish along with the reveal of Natalya being the one who attacked Nikki. I thought that maybe Natalya being revealed as the attacker would have been done better than Carmella grabbing a mic after losing and just coming out with it.
It was somewhat anti-climatic.
• The ladder match was alright. The Figure-four ladder spot was pretty cool but overall, I was left feeling that the match was a little bit of a letdown, considering what their previous matches were like.
Even though I know Bryan can't compete, I can't help but think that we could see Bryan/Miz at WrestleMania. They're building up this feud and it has to lead to something and somewhere. If Bryan doesn't compete, then I think we could see an NXT call-up to represent Bryan in a match with The Miz.
The vignette that played before the match was really cool though but I felt that they could have named The British Bulldog and Owen Hart, instead of just showing them with no name.
Also, did anyone find it weird that it jumped from Chris Jericho all the way to Daniel Bryan? Before, it mentioned previous noteworthy champions and they were all within a few years of one another, but then the jump between Jericho and Bryan was over a decade.
Did they not think there were any noteworthy champions in the 2000's? I can think of a good few. Edge, Christian, Rob Van Dam and I would even say Shelton Benjamin. I think they were all good Intercontinental Champions in the 2000's. I especially enjoyed Christian's runs as champion in 2003.
• Kalisto looking for chairs under the ring, then realising that they're right next to him got a good laugh out of me. His ring attire looked strange too. He looked like the lovechild of Rey Mysterio and Tatanka.
He should stick to tights.
The match was much like Baron Corbin. Boring.
I felt the ending was stupid too as Corbin landed slap-bang in the middle of all seven chairs, whereas Kalisto landed on just one of those chairs. Corbin took the brunt of it but he didn't even sell it. He got up immediately and pinned Kalisto.
• The Women's Championship match was alright. It was somewhat similar to the ladder match in that it left me feeling a little bit let down considering their previous matches. The Dis-arm-her table spot was cool, but other than that, nothing really stood out in the match. The ending was sudden and surprising and I'm happy that Alexa won.
This feud can now continue and we can see how Alexa is as the champion instead of the chaser. This will probably last until WrestleMania at the most with Royal Rumble being the earliest end for it. I can see Becky admitting defeat but also saying that Alexa never pinned her or made her submit for the title. This will either eat away at Alexa who will then want to prove that she can beat Becky via pinfall or submission, or Alexa will try her best to avoid facing Becky in a traditional match as she's afraid she can't/doesn't know if she can defeat Becky via those methods.
• I'd say that the main event was the match of the night and that the hole in AJ's tights was pretty distracting. Was his ass bleeding? I'm sure I saw blood coming from a wound on his ass.
Ellsworth screwing Ambrose was pretty obvious and him doing it because of his record against Styles is probably the reason why. I can see Ambrose interfering in the WWE Title match and mauling Ellsworth and that would probably be the explanation for Ellsworth's disappearance from the WWE.
I really can't see the WWE having any use for Ellsworth or him doing anything meaningful after Ambrose gets his revenge on him.
• Before my "overall" bullet point, I will say how incredibly annoying the crowd reactions were. There was no need to show crowd reactions as part of pretty much every replay.
I think maybe Vince or someone in the back found out that "reaction videos" were popular on the interwebs but like pretty much everything, they're a good few years too late and that these days, nobody really gives a shit about reaction videos.
But seriously though, they've got to stop. I really don't care how three guys in an arena of around 20,000 people reacted to a move.
• Overall, the PPV was alright. I'd say it was pretty subdued compared to what SmackDown events are usually like. Nothing really stood out and the majority of the matches were pretty short and slow-paced. It felt like a lot of the time, nothing really happened.
I wouldn't say the PPV stunk though. It didn't. It just wasn't the best SmackDown PPV this year.
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