5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE SmackDown (27 June - Results & Review)
This is 'Basic Punkanomics'! CM Punk trolled John Cena on a tough night for WWE in Saudi Arabia.
What a strange night in Saudi!
WWE and Netflix looked on helplessly as technical problems caused by a local power outage derailed this week's international episode of SmackDown. A face to face segment involving King Of The Ring final opponents Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton was completely wrecked by this - the pair did re-shoot their promo standoff, but that was only included on the USA Network version via tape delay.
In total, SmackDown's live feed went dark for approx 30 minutes before announcers Michael Cole and Wade Barrett apologised for the interruption. Thus, considering yours truly never actually saw the opening segment at the time, it's been bumped from this write up. There wasn't much to see anyway. Cody and Randy simply put their individual cases ahead for winning the tournament, but ultimately remained quite friendly.
There were way more interesting things to sink one's teeth into elsewhere. Another nothing Queen Of The Ring preview had more to chew on but still didn't work, a pre-advertised tag title bout proved pretty much worthless, and a trio of matches pulled the nose up for SmackDown fans. Then, CM Punk trolled John Cena in a snappy and witty promo skit that had teething problems of its own but was still very entertaining.
Triple H has to get a lot right at Night Of Champions if he wants a hot SummerSlam season, and there are several nightmares that could also blight the PLE. On the whole, this week's SmackDown was a tad bitty. Critics will also point and laugh at the TV show featuring more title matches than a pay-per-view framed around championship matches!
Here's all the good and bad.