Wade Keller, Torch Editor (6.0)

What a letdown that show was. They hype for weeks the 500th show celebration and it's nothing more than a usual show with no clips or anything to distinguish it. There were a number of marquee matches, but that hardly makes a show feel special anymore since that happens so often. A couple of the matches were above average, but otherwise they were short and forgettable. There was a U.S. Title change that meant nothing because after it happened, it wasn't spoken of again. No celebration by MVP or post-loss interview with Shelton.

The main angle with Cena, Vickie, Show, and Edge was par for the course and fine, I suppose, but it hardly feels like a WrestleMania 25 worthy main event with this soap opera lite-comedy flavor. It wasn't a boring show and there was some good action and relevant promos and angles, but nothing really jumped out as must-see and certainly there was nothing about it that earned it a special event that it had been hyped to be since it's the 500th show.

Greg Parks, PWTorch.com Contributor (6.0)

Smackdown had some good in-ring work featured, with an above-average Kane match, a rarity these days, plus a U.S. Title switch that may hint toward something for MITB at Wrestlemania. You either loved or hated the main event angle, but I thought it was kind-of humorous. Wrestlemania-worthy angle? Not sure about that, but at least now we know for sure it's a comedy angle after weeks of being played up as a combination of comedy-drama. Pair this with the dramatic Orton-HHH angle and clearly WWE is serious when they say they're part comedy, part drama, part sports. They've clearly split the WM main events down the middle with one being on the comedy side and one on the drama side.

Not sure where Kozlov goes after another loss. It was a solid warm-up match for The Game. I'm surprised fans are so into MVP now after nothing has changed from his heel to face character. It was a nice, high-energy match. Sad to see Kendrick jobbed in that way again and it wasn't much of a "preview" for an extreme rules match, but I suppose it got the job done. Taker vs. JBL was fine but the finish and JBL being able to withstand Hell's Gate so long was confounding.

Lee Stevens, PWTorch.com Contributor (6.0)

If this show had been broadcast well before or well after the biggest pay-per-view of the year, it would have been a decent and quite enjoyable two hours of television. Since we are just two weeks away from WrestleMania, it felt a little empty. Obviously, we were reminded of several big feuds, with Triple H calling out Randy Orton and Edge getting reacquainted with The Big Show. After The Game broke into The House with The Sledgehammer, a simple interview didn't seem nearly as dramatic. As for Edge and The Big Show, I would presume that we should be choosing sides at this point, but I'm afraid they've already lost me. I didn't cheer when Vickie was speared and I didn't boo. I simply didn't care and that is no way to end a show. Well, it's certainly one way to end a show, just not a particular good one!

As for the positives, I enjoyed MVP vs. Shelton Benjamin and I hope that by taking the belt off of Benjamin, they are setting him up to win the Money in the Bank match at WM 25. I didn't enjoy seeing The Brian Kendrick get completely decimated at the hands of Jeff Hardy, but it was the right level of intensity with the brother vs. brother match on the way.

Again, it certainly wasn't a horrible show, but if this continues the "Road to WrestleMania", then this show was the stretch of highway where you don't see any houses, business or other cars and you pray for a good song on the radio before you zone out.

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