Friday Night SmackDown Review - September 16, 2011

Great opening from Edge and Cody Rhodes. It's always awesome to see the Rated-R Superstar, and exchanging words with the now improving Rhodes was a nice change of pace after making some good points. The DiBiase beat-down was logical, but needed and intriguing. However, it's a shame they've waited this long to hype the Intercontinental Championship match for Night of Champions.

Decent action from Daniel Bryan and Sin Cara, but nothing amazing as we've seen in the past. The stare down between the original Sin Cara (Mistico) and the recent Sin Cara (Hunico) was awkward and confusing, as the crowd didn't really know how to react or seem to care.

Nice squash from Beth Phoenix, she desperately needed it going into this Sunday. AJ is always a nice opponent to squash quickly, but being one of the better Divas on the roster, I'd like to see a longer performance from her next time around given the right Diva to work with.

Solid tag team match featuring Christian and Wade Barrett taking on Sheamus and Justin Gabriel. The main purpose of this match seemed to be getting Gabriel over with the crowd, and it certainly worked. However, Christian and Barrett have too much potential to be credible heels to be beaten so often as they are. I hope this upcoming Christian-Sheamus rivalry can help re-establish that.

What an absolute waste of time with The Great Khali and Heath Slater. I, for one, do not at all want to see Khali revert back to that campy face he played for too long. His match with the unimpressive Slater was pointless, and a future program with Jinder Mahal does absolutely nothing for me.

It baffles me as to why a very fun contest between The Miz and Kofi Kingston is scheduled for Raw but a match between R-Truth and Evan Bourne only goes two minutes on SmackDown, the so-called "wrestling show". Even though Awesome Truth provide hilarious comedy, the commentary during the brief match was distracting. It doesn't do much in order to hype the WWE Tag Team Championship match this Sunday, but thankfully most of the bulk of the work was done on Raw.

Yet another amazing segment from Mark Henry and World Heavyweight Champion Mark Henry, as Edge's "Cutting Edge" interview made for a great environment. It was refreshing to see more from the usually bland Orton, who continues to get me excited that the World's Strongest Man might quite possibly capture the title at Night of Champions. As always, Henry overpowering the jobbers of SmackDown made him look dominant going into his upcoming title bout and made this the the most anticipated match for this viewer.

Overall, a lackluster episode of SmackDown that didn't really execute much hype for the Night of Championship pay-per-view unlike Raw. Most of the matches were too short to be considered anything special and hardly served a purpose. Nonetheless, the ending segment saved this show from being known as a total snooze fest.