Unfortunately, a busy two days at work and a happy hour beginning in about an hour will force me to keep this brief. No worries though, and my complete WrestleMania preview will be posted tomorrow, letting discussion of the show begin long before the actual PPV.
Tonight is the go home Smackdown, and overall go home show, for WrestleMania. Since they have moved the Hall of Fame ceremony to Monday night, this is WWE's last chance to sell potential viewers on the PPV. The matches for tonight's show were taped Monday after Raw, which from reports said that the crowd was very burned out by this time which is very understandable. They had already sat through NXT tapings, Superstars tapings, a live Raw with a huge Rock/Cena climax, and then had to sit through additional Smackdown tapings. It was a pretty dumb idea to tape these matches after Raw, but it is what it is. Only two matches and one segment were taped, so tonight's Smackdown will be largely focused on video packages hyping WrestleMania as well as footage from the Fan Axxess that has been going on in Atlanta.
For tonight's show:
-Wade Barrett (c) vs Kofi Kingston - Intercontinental Championship Match
-Cody Rhodes vs Chris Masters
-Jerry Lawler in ring promo
The Lawler promo really needed to be cut on Raw instead of Smackdown. Lawler has not had a single chance to speak, basically since his match against Cole was made. I can't imagine what the reasoning behind that is. After Cole once again humiliated Lawler on Raw, Lawler needed to cut a promo live on Raw putting over not only how badly he was going to beat Cole at WrestleMania, but also the personal importance of this being his first and only WrestleMania match. I've really liked the build for Cole/Lawler, but they dropped the ball here. Yes, Lawler gets his promo tonight, but only half of Raw's audience will see it, and it won't have the same impact coming four days later.
Poor Kofi. He loses the Intercontinental Championship, and now is not part of the WrestleMania card, but Kozlov is. Maybe before the match on Sunday, The Corre will take out Kozlov and Kofi will take his place. It would certainly make sense seeing how Barrett and Kofi seem to be an ongoing program.
It is now official that Christian will be in Edge's corner at WrestleMania, while Brodus Clay will be in Del Rio's corner. It certainly has all the makings of a turn by Christian. And while I think Christian is better as a heel (Trish's turn on Jericho at WrestleMania to join Christian at WrestleMania XX is one of my favorite memories from being live at that show). I would only tease the heel turn at Mania, and maybe hold it off for just a bit longer, but I have a feeling they'll pull the trigger on Sunday.
The Cody Rhodes vs Rey Mysterio match really reminds me a lot of Mysterio vs Punk last year. Everything pointed to Punk winning the match. It made sense for business. It made sense for his career. But they went with Mysterio getting the win in a rushed match. I'm hoping we don't get a repeat result this year. Especially for Rhodes, as a major WrestleMania win would be huge for him at this point.
I'll most likely be MIA for the rest of the night, but will be back tomorrow to really kick off WrestleMania weekend.
pathetic
