Instant Reaction - WWE Smackdown 3/23
By Benjamin Tucker, PWTorch TV specialist

Overall Score - 5.0

Well, Smackdown tonight sure did happen. To tell you the truth, I don't find six squash-esque matches in a row to be very entertaining. Sure, one or two can be good for enhancing a wrestler, but this isn't 1990. There has to be some better matches (really a complaint of this entire week in wrestling - this was just one of the more egregious instances)! The main event tag match was fine, but nothing we haven't seen before, and the rest of the show was nothing more than essentially filler.

Daniel Bryan and Sheamus still have no personal issue at hand (though, I do love Bryan's interactions with A.J.), and this was really the last show to truly sell viewers on their match, with next week's Smackdown being a two-hour hype video for the PPV. Where's the mentioning of their match last year being booted off the Mania card? The feud hasn't been awful, but it's certainly been disappointing. In fact, this is something that I've noticed with hype for World Title matches at WrestleMania - as of late, the hype has become lackluster. Remember last year when Alberto Del Rio lost almost every match leading up to Mania? And, the year before, when Edge was still trying to get his "spear" chant over and he and Jericho couldn't make any segment they had really special? The last good hype for a World Title match at WrestleMania was for Edge vs. Undertaker back in 2008. Come on WWE, improve these feuds!

As for the rest of the show, I'm still bugged by some of it. For example, why is R-Truth, a semi-main-eventer, losing in three minutes on both Raw and Smackdown? Why is Randy Orton continuing to get the better of Kane? And, what was with the Bellas's cheer thing at the end of the match with A.J.?

So much of this show felt like filler. About two hours of it. I believe the undercard feuds for Mania this year have really not been fleshed out, and this was a great show to do just that. Instead, there were six relatively meaningless matches and one decent, but underwhelming, tag team main event. Yeah, this show really didn't work for me!

Any questions or comments? Follow me on Twitter at BTuckertorch, or e-mail me at btuckertorch@aol.com.

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