Cody Rhodes sure brought his A-game to Smackdown this week. The 2nd generation star returned to TV for the first time in weeks, complete with a protective mask for his broken nose, and absolutely stole the show.
Smackdown opened with Rey Mysterio squeaking a victory over Kane with a sunset flip. After the match, WWE Hall of Famer Dusty Rhodes hit the ring to talk to Rey Rey. He offered his apologies for the actions of his son, and demanded that Cody meet them in the ring to apologize for himself. Surprisingly, Cody obliged and apologized to both his father and to Rey Mysterio. Turns out, however, that it was all a ruse by the Rhodes family to assault a vulnerable Rey Mysterio. With a little help from his dad, Cody attacked Mysterio from behind and beat him all over the Smackdown set. After throwing him into his entrance “mirror,” the Dashing One unmasked WWE’s perennial underdog and left him lying on the stage.
The American Dream and Cody were at their best in this promo. Impressive work by the both of them. Up until this point, I was skeptical about the rumored Rhodes vs Mysterio match at Mania, but Cody Rhodes has sold me on it. It would be great to see Dusty in his corner in the coming weeks. Reactions to the rest of this week’s show, along with an embedded video of the whole thing, after the jump.
If you missed the show and have some downtime, you can catch the whole thing right here:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAdQ9Khf6qs]
- Outside of the Rhodes Family doing what they do best, Smackdown didn’t offer a whole lot in terms of new content this week. We were shown a replay of the John Cena rap from Monday Night and a recap of the Undertaker / Triple H returns. Together, these two replayed segments chewed up more than a quarter of the show, which is inexcusable in my book.
- Rosa Mendes beat Layla by disqualification after Michelle McCool interfered. After the match, there looked to be some dissension in the ranks of LayCool, as Layla was none to happy with Michelle’s interference costing her the match. These two are clearly heading towards a breakup, but I have to question what the point of it is. Neither one is an exceptional wrestler (is either even adequate?) and I surely don’t want to see a match between the two.
- Kofi Kingston worked a job to Jack Swagger. He was selling injuries from the attack he suffered at the hands of Del Rio on Monday, but I never like to see champions needlessly job, injured or not.
- The Big Show went over Wade Barrett in a match in which the Corre was banned from ringside. The victory was a cheap one, a count out to be precise, and after the match Barrett’s Corre surfaced to take revenge on the giant. Unfortunately for Barrett’s crew, Show managed to grab a chair from ringside and chased them off, clobbering Justin Gabriel in the process.
- In the main event, Edge & Kelly Kelly defeated Drew McIntyre & Vickie Guerrero, and as a result, Vickie Guerrero was fired. The ten minutes of Vickie begging for her job after the match was a little much, but it was nice to see her written off. I’d love to think that this will be the end of Vickie’s character, but this is wrestling, and I remind you that nobody ever stays fired in wrestling. After Vickie was unceremoniously serenaded on her way out of the arena, #1 contender Alberto Del Rio stormed the ring and locked the Champion in his trademark cross arm breaker.
I had a few big problems with this week’s show. For starters, the flashbacks to Raw were overwhelming. They dominated Smackdown and made it feel more like a recap show than a new event. Also troublesome was the lack of Christian. After returning at the Elimination Chamber, Edge’s former running buddy has yet to be mentioned on WWE television. Are they going to forget this happened? Is he actually back? The Undertaker also failed to appear at the show, despite local advertisement saying he’d be there. Lastly, the Vickie Guerrero firing angle plodded on for too long, and probably wasn’t very necessary to begin with. I think a lot of people assumed she was fired when Dolph Ziggler was fired. This week’s main event was just a formality to make it official. With the exception of the Dusty / Cody / Rey segment, Smackdown didn’t contribute much to this week’s programming.
