Friday Night SmackDown Review - April 2, 2021

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Edge Explained His Actions

Although Edge cut some stellar babyface promos both this year and last year, he's way more in his element as a heel. That was evident in this promo and I loved his explanation for his actions last week. He wanted his WrestleMania moment one-on-one against Roman Reigns and is frustrated that Daniel Bryan got added. It's a simple story that makes sense. If we see the true Rated-R Superstar during this run, it's going to be great.

Otis & Chad Gable and SmackDown Tag Team Champions Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode def. The Street Profits and Dominik & Rey Mysterio

This was the latest combination of these four teams against each other. It was well-wrestled and the action was enjoyable, but everybody trading victories doesn't make any of them more interesting. It was announced that the expected Fatal 4-Way for the SmackDown Tag Team Championship will take place on next week's WrestleMania edition of SmackDown. It's a bummer for the performers, who don't get to compete in front of a crowd, but at least it's a match that doesn't have a ton of storyline significance. I don't know of a single person who said they were looking forward to it, and that's entirely because WWE neglects its tag team division.

Seth Rollins and Cesaro Went Face-to-Face

Rollins continues to outdo himself with his suits week after week. The segment itself was exactly what it needed to be with both guys cutting good promos and hyping up their WrestleMania match. Rollins has always been a talented talker, but this was more so a test for Cesaro to see how he would do. All in all, I thought he fared pretty well. As I've said before, I hope he wins at WrestleMania because he'd benefit way more than Rollins would.

Natalya def. WWE Women's Tag Team Champion Shayna Baszler

Man, what a joke this was. Putting two heels against each other was dumb enough, but the fact it lasted all of 30 seconds or so was embarrassing. I'm not saying they should have gone 15 minutes or more, but don't even book the bout in that case. The post-match stuff was a mess with all the female teams brawling with each other. It'll likely set up a number one contender's match for the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship at WrestleMania, but I can't bring myself to care.

Kevin Owens Crashed Sami Zayn's Red Carpet Trailer Premiere with Logan Paul

I set my expectations low for this segment, but in my opinion, it actually ended up being entertaining. I have no interest in seeing Logan Paul involved in this story with Zayn and Owens, but at least he wasn't terrible here and was fairly limited with what he had to say. The preview of Zayn's documentary was hilarious and I'm looking forward to the full thing being released on Peacock or somewhere else. Zayn made this segment work as well as he could and that's all I could've asked for from this.

Bianca Belair def. Carmella

At one point, I thought this match would happen at either Elimination Chamber or Fastlane because of Reginald's involvement in the Belair vs. Sasha Banks feud and because Carmella was in the SmackDown Women's Championship picture earlier this year, but the teases were quickly forgotten about and never followed up on until now. Even this was only a few minutes long, which was disappointing. That isn't to say it would have been a barn burner, but more than three minutes would have been nice. I've been digging the interactions between Banks and Belair for the last week, but I wish we were getting this stuff after Belair won the Royal Rumble and not mere weeks before WrestleMania.

Daniel Bryan def. Jey Uso in a Street Fight

I believe this was the sixth one-on-one match these two have had since October. They have quality chemistry together, but that's a lot, even with the added stipulation. Nonetheless, this was a fun main event despite the outcome never being in doubt. Following his victory, Bryan laid out both Edge and Reigns, which makes me think that Reigns will either be the last man standing on next week's show or he'll be retaining his Universal Championship at WrestleMania. No matter what happens next Sunday, I'm happy with whoever wins.

Overall Show

Last week's SmackDown was excellent in my opinion, but this show wasn't as strong. The Universal Championship picture continues to be the best part about the show, but the tag team and women's divisions are a mess at the moment. Cesaro and Rollins effectively furthered their feud and the red carpet premiere exceeded my expectations, so at least the episode had its moments. It goes without saying that SmackDown has done a far better job of building up its side of the WrestleMania card than Raw has. That show on Monday was the drizzling shits, so this edition of SmackDown would have had a tough time being much worse.