The road to WrestleMania continued on Tuesday night as WWE Smackdown Live took place from the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut.
The show featured The Usos defeating American Alpha to win the Smackdown Tag Team Titles and the announcement of Dean Ambrose vs. Baron Corbin for the Intercontinental Title at WrestleMania.
We are 11 days away from the biggest event of the year for WWE. There were plenty of questions heading into the second-to-last Smackdown Live before Wrestlemana. Let’s see if they were answered.
1) Do we get announcement of AJ Styles and Shane McMahon for WrestleMania? WWE didn’t wait too long on this one as Styles opened the show to accept the match. Per usual Styles came off well here as he wasn’t sorry about what he did to the Smackdown Live commissioner on last week’s show. He decided that he was going to do the same thing to McMahon this week as last week.
Styles waited in the parking lot the entire show. Near the end of the show, a car came into the garage. Thinking it was McMahon, Styles hid next to ambulance and would ambush his rival once again. But, it wasn’t to be as it was former tag team champions Heath Slater and Rhyno.
Moments later, McMahon came out and wanted Styles in the ring. Styles didn’t even know McMahon was in the ring and Renee Young told him he was there. The former WWE champion appeared to be reluctant to come out but made his way to ringside. He told McMahon he was sorry he flew off the handle last week. Styles went into ring and McMahon let loose a week’s worth of frustration on “The Phenomenal One”. It led to McMahon doing an elbow on to the table to end the show.
The segment was well done. Made me excited for a match that many are still not excited about. McMahon got to exact his revenge. Really like how McMahon outsmarted Styles in getting into the arena. Someone needs to tell McMahon how to throw a punch. They are painful to watch. And if he is going to do an elbow from the top rope, go to the other turnbuckle or move the guy to the other side. It’s closer and would be safer on your body.
2) Do The Miz and Maryse finally ask John Cena why he hasn’t asked Nikki Bella to get married? By far the funniest segment on the show. Miz and Maryse did a spinoff of Cena and Bella’s reality show, “Total Bellas”. The segment took place at a house that didn’t appear to be Cena’s even they showed clips of his house.
Miz played Cena and Maryse played Bella. They went off the idea that Cena and Bella are a fake relationship and the 16-time world champion is a dictator of his home and the relationship. The funniest part of it all was having Miz consistently tease he was going to ask Maryse to marry him and she would end up vastly disappointed every time.
The fact this topic keeps coming up has to make one think at WrestleMania, Cena is going to pop the big question. Who would want to get asked such an important question in front of 65,000 people and millions watching around the world?
3) Will Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton finally have a confrontation? It didn’t appear this would happen. Orton had a decent match against Baron Corbin. He won due to the help of Dean Ambrose. Which begs the question of why would you have the challenger in the main event title match need help to win a match? But that’s for another time.
After the match, Orton did an interview with Renee Young. The lights started to flicker and Orton knew who it was. The lights went out and when they came back on, Orton was surrounded by people in sheep masks. He tried to fight them off but to no avail. They held Orton against a wall and we finally got the confrontation between the champion and challenger.
Wyatt gave Orton a red cross and thanked him for making him realize his one flaw and now it has become his biggest strength. The segment ended with the WWE champion singing “he’s got the whole world in his hands”.
This felt flat to me for some reason. The confrontation was long overdue but something didn’t click here. On next week’s show, they need to do be in the ring as it is hard to gauge what the crowd is thinking when a segment of this nature is done backstage.
4) Who else is going to be in the Women’s Title Match? This is the only question that didn’t provide an answer. Tom Phillips kept teasing more women were going to be added but no more appeared than the ones already announced.
Maybe WWE doesn’t know who they will add or all of the surprises will be announced when the match is getting ready to start. One would think having one or two more names revealed would help give the match a boost that it sorely needs right now since it’s the least over angle heading into WrestleMania.
