Friday Night SmackDown Review - May 18, 2012

Daniel Bryan attacks Kane with a vicious chair shot.

Effective opening segment featuring John Laurinaitis and WWE Champion CM Punk. It was a pleasant surprise in seeing Punk make an appearance on SmackDown, and he led Laurinatis to a good promo that helped hype a match with Kane later in the night. Once Punk walked off, Laurinaitis garnered major heat by badgering the audience and playing his role extremely well.

Fun match with WWE Tag Team Champions R-Truth and Kofi Kingston defeating Titus O'Neil and Darren Young. I would have liked to see O'Neil and Young continue their recent momentum with a victory here, but the tag team champs needed a win going into their title defense at Over the Limit. Hopefully, we see more from these two teams in the near future.

Intense segment with Damien Sandow refusing to face Yoshi Tatsu, only to viciously attack him moments later after Tatsu called him out on it. Sandow's gimmick has me intrigued, and it certainly seems to accumulating heat fairly quickly. Although I would have loved to see him compete, forcefully beating down Tatsu was an awesome way in foreshadowing his aggressive characteristics in the ring.

Brief match with Daniel Bryan quickly defeating Zack Ryder. Based upon past matches between the two, I would have loved to see this go longer, but keeping it short made Bryan look strong into his WWE Championship on Sunday. Ryder hasn't meant anything in ages, so having him to job out to Bryan in this fashion didn't do much damage that wasn't already done.

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Randy Orton delivers a massive superplex to Sheamus.

Great non-title match between WWE Champion CM Punk and Kane. It's been quite awhile since we've seen these two go at it, so this bout felt fresh. Given the correct opponent, Kane can produce an above average contest, and this was no exception. I enjoyed the chemistry between him and Punk, so a future feud between Punk and Kane is something I'd love to see. Smart booking with Kane winning via disqualification, as it protects the Straightedge Savior and gives the Big Red Monster some much-needed momentum. Having Kane brutalize Punk following the bout was an awesome way of making him look vulnerable as the conniving Daniel Bryan looked on from afar.

Throwaway match between Intercontinental Champion Cody Rhodes and United States Champion Santino Marella. It's disappointing to see feuds now evolve over social networking rather than over the actual shows, but at least it was given a reason after what occurred on Monday's Raw between these two. I honestly have no desire in seeing Rhodes compete against Santino, who is no where near his level while Rhodes should be taking on more credible opponents. Instead, Santino picked up the "upset" victory clean for no reason whatsoever, further burying Rhodes in the process. I surely hope this isn't leading to a unification match between the two championships merely due to the fact that both titles are needed on both brands to aid stars in the mid-card.

Solid match between World Heavyweight Champion Sheamus and Randy Orton in the main event. Since it started thirty minutes before the close the show, I was sure this bout would turn into a tag team match of some sort. However, it didn't, but still proved to be a very well-wrestled match between these two top faces. It was given over twenty minutes adding in the two commercial breaks, which is something that could have easily been saved for a pay-per-view. Nonetheless, I was shocked and glad to see this end with Sheamus defeating Orton in a clean fashion, something that is extremely rare these days. Orton's post-match RKO on the Celtic Warrior was expected, so Sheamus comes off as a moron for shaking his hand anyways. I'm confused as to why the other two key members in Sunday's Fatal-4 Way match, Chris Jericho and Alberto Del Rio, were absent from the broadcast even though they were the ones who received the most momentum in recent weeks.

Overall, a pretty good show that throughly entertained this viewer throughout the night with its respective share of enjoyable action and segments alike. However, mot much hype was done for the Over the Limit pay-per-view on Sunday, so it was unsuccessful in that sense. I'm also baffled to notice that stars such as Ryback, Antonio Cesaro, Aksana, Teddy Long, and even AJ were absent from this week's show, but CM Punk's surprise appearance certainly made up for it.

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