Two things punctuated Smackdown tonight. One was a wave of recapping from RAW 1000 Monday. That was unavoidable, I guess. Annoying, but unavoidable.
The other thing was wrestling. There were plenty of really good wrestling matches on the show tonight. Some of them were great long matches. I thought the rematch between Christian and Miz was better than the original title switch on Monday. Cody Rhodes had a good, hierarchical match against Sheamus, probably his best effort in my eyes in WWE to date. The main event was a frenetic bumpfest where I think everyone except surprisingly Alberto del Rio took a huge fall. Seriously, Kane got rocketed over the guardrails after a Bryan dropkick, and it was sublime.
Almost as important were the shorter matches. The Ryback's progression is moving along. Sure, I would rather one of the first guys he has to sell for not be Jinder Mahal, but it's good that there's an evolution to his narrative, not just random squashes and dancing. Antonio Cesaro defeating Santino Marella was annoying in the context of Champions-losing-when-they-shouldn't, but hey, they have plans for Mr. Very European. Could this be the much-rumored return of the European Championship angle? I'd hope so. Damien Sandow continued to rock the house too in a different way than his sacrifice on Monday. It's a shame Yoshi Tatsu isn't pushed as hard as a Japanese warrior as a hairy Southie from Boston, but hey totally helped continue Sandow's rise to the top.
This was where all the wrestling went from Monday, and it was all good. I could live with RAW being the "angle" show and Smackdown being "mega-Superstars with important people". Then again, I'm a fullservice WWE fan, so there's that.
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