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SMACKDOWN HITS

Hardy vs. Edge: This was by far the best match of the night, probably the best match on WWE television this week. It had some very good action. It surprised me a bit how much offense Matt Hardy got in on Edge, but it was a nice surprise given how little offense he has been getting in his matches lately, even when he wins. The match had a strong ending with a series of near falls. I really thought Edge was going to get the win with the backslide with his feet on the ropes, so I was pleasantly surprised when Hardy kicked out and the match continued. With Hardy going to ECW to be the top babyface on that brand, it makes sense that WWE would want to give him such a strong showing against the World Heavyweight Champion. Of course, Edge needed to get the win to stay strong going into Night of Champions. This was a good match, that went a good length, and had the right ending.

Selling the Draft: WWE did a good job of hyping the importance of the draft throughout the show. Vickie Guerrero started the show off by introducing Jim Ross as the new announcer. They made a big deal about Triple H’s first appearance as part of the Smackdown roster. They built up that after Sunday, Vickie and Edge wouldn’t have to worry about Batista any more as he is going to Raw. They showed videos on Umaga and Jeff Hardy to hype their switch to Smackdown and announced that Hardy and Mr. Kennedy would be on next week. They made a huge deal of it being Rey Mysterio’s final night on Smackdown and Rey gave a nice address to the fans. I can even accept Batista’s appearance (despite being on Raw now) as it helped to hype the PPV on Sunday.

End of the Show: The Main Event of Umaga vs. Batista was o.k. I’d say it was on its way to being better than their terrible match at WrestleMania, but that isn’t necessarily saying much. Umaga needs to step up and go away from his repeated long uses of that boring nerve hold if he is going to ever be more than what he is right now. But, I still enjoyed the end of the show. La Familia got in a nice appearance taking out Batista. What I really liked about this was they way that Umaga continued to beat on Batista, even pushing members of La Familia out of the way to get to the Animal. That helped build him up as a top star who wasn’t just doing Edge’s bidding, but wanted to finish what he started. Triple H’s appearance at the end to make the save worked well. It made sense given his friendship with Batista and his opening confrontation with Edge. The mini-Evolution reunion to end the show was a nice touch, especially since Triple H and Batista ended up on different shows (as opposed to what many people were guessing).

SMACKDOWN MISSES

Vickie Guerrero: I much prefer the purposefully annoying “excuse me” Smackdown General Manager to the unintentionally (I think) annoying crying Smackdown General Manager. Vickie is good at some things. She has improved over her time in WWE. But, she is also bad at some things as well, and crying and acting sad is one of them. Her performance to start the show was not good. The script could also use some work. I would not have drawn attention to the ridiculousness of her own wheel chair gimmick when trying to sell a serious injury angle with Vince McMahon. That wasn’t a good idea, and her performance was poor.

Triple H - Edge: This was not a terrible confrontation, but it could have been much better. Part of the reason I am giving it a Miss, is that it set a bad tone for the first post-draft Smackdown. By that I mean that we fans have grown accustomed to Triple H’s long Raw opening promos over the years, but they generally are not very good. Having Triple H start his first Smackdown the same way sets a bad precedent. His promo was o.k. at best. He got in some amusing lines, but they were at the expense of Vince McMahon which had been presented as serious, so now I as a fan don’t understand what tone WWE is going for with his injury angle. I understand the reason why WWE went to a Triple H - Edge confrontation right away, and it makes perfect sense given Edge’s character that he would come out to interrupt Triple H. However, part of me wishes they would have saved it. Again, it wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t very good either. All in all, I will call this a Marginal Miss as it wasn’t that bad, but it sort of left a bad taste in my mouth.

Use of MVP: I am not thrilled with how Montel Vontavious Porter has been used since losing the United States Championship. He is such a talented performer and could be a major player on Smackdown (and has been in the past), but recently he has been mired in this contract dispute angle which does nothing for me. This is the second week in a row where he has at least attempted to walk away from a match with Kane. This is a standard heel tactic to get cheap heat, but MVP is above cheap heat as far as I’m concerned. It almost seems like WWE wants him to feud with the heel GM, while remaining a heel himself, so they are having him resort to cheap heel tactics just so the fans won’t start to cheer him. I can understand that, but at the same time it is making him look weak. He should be the #2 heel on the show, but right now I don’t feel that he is anywhere close to being where he should be.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and TNA Impact each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

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