WWE WrestleMania SmackDown - April 9, 2021

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Daniel Bryan Addressed Universal Champion Roman Reigns and Edge

Few Superstars on the roster right now can get a crowd fired up quite like Daniel Bryan. He's one of those people who would obviously benefit from having fans in attendance to feed off of for his promos, but that hardly mattered here as he did some of his best mic work in recent memory. He discussed having to overcome the odds at WrestleMania 37 and why he's going to prove the doubters wrong yet again, making the match feel as important as possible in the process. All three men did at different times throughout the night, but Bryan was the right guy to kick off the show.

SmackDown Tag Team Champions Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode def. Chad Gable & Otis, The Street Profits, and Dominik & Rey Mysterio in a Fatal 4-Way Match

I know I complain a lot about the lack of direction in the SmackDown tag team division, but I'm honestly bummed this didn't happen at WrestleMania. I'm all for shortening the cards, but I don't think I'd be as bummed if we weren't getting that Tag Team Turmoil match for the women, which feels completely pointless. I'm sure this was a lot better than that's going to be. They worked a fun pace and any of the four teams could have realistically won. Shockingly, this marked the first title defense for Ziggler and Roode since they won the belts in January, so I was fine with them retaining to keep everyone else in chase mode.

Tamina def. WWE Women's Tag Team Champion Nia Jax by Disqualification

I don't think I've ever seen a single person ask for a Nia Jax vs. Tamina match, and if you did, damn you to hell. In all seriousness, I knew I was going to hate this from the second it started because I find both of them to be terrible and don't care about either of them. WWE has been laying it on pretty thick that Natalya and Tamina are getting the tag title shot on Sunday and that was once again evident here when they laid out all of the teams who are set to participate in the Tag Team Turmoil match. Jax vs. Tamina was exactly what you'd expect it to be. At least it was kept relatively brief if nothing else.

Edge Addressed Universal Champion Roman Reigns and Daniel Bryan

I still feel like Edge hasn't been getting the love he deserves since returning this most recent time. I can understand the criticisms of his in-ring work (even though it hasn't been bad), but his promos have been stuff of legend. Seriously, this was amazing. He's so much more comfortable in the heel role and I loved how he brought up that no one is talking about the fact that Sunday, which is when the Universal Championship Triple Threat is happening, marks a decade to the day from when he had to retire and relinquish the world title. That's stellar storytelling, despite being completely coincidental. Edge was outstanding here and left me wanting to see him become champion again.

Kevin Owens Nearly Attacked Sami Zayn

A small clip aired showing Zayn going to Logan and Jake Paul's gym before getting locked out. Zayn then went to the commentary table to talk about it before Owens chased him off. These two have done pretty much everything they could to get me excited about their upcoming encounter at WrestleMania (and have succeeded), so it was probably for the best to keep this short and sweet. It was also wise to not have Owens give Zayn his comeuppance in the form of a Stunner just yet.

Jey Uso Won the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal

Unlike the SmackDown Tag Team Championship match, I have no issue with this being bumped from the WrestleMania card. Sure, all of these guys miss out on a WrestleMania payday (I assume) and that sucks, but it would have been a waste of time per usual, especially since it hasn't been mentioned by the company until recently. It was a pretty par-for-the-course Battle Royal with the typical order of eliminations. Based on how they've been booked lately, should I have even been surprised by Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin being thrown out so early? What did surprise me was Uso winning, though I probably should have expected that given how prominently featured he's been on SmackDown since linking up with Roman Reigns. It's a well-deserved accolade for him after all the great work he's done on his own.

Universal Champion Roman Reigns Addressed Daniel Bryan and Edge

Reigns is at the top of his game right now, but you already knew that. The crazy thing is that this might have been the weakest of the three promos from him, Bryan and Edge, and yet it was still excellent. He mostly addressed Bryan and promised to crush his dreams, but he talked about Edge a little bit, too. He played up his dominance as champion and said that the world will acknowledge him when he wins. Why WWE doesn't do this type of stuff more often, I have no idea. These three promos were phenomenal and were exactly what you want to see on a go-home show for a big pay-per-view.

Overall Show

This was billed as a WrestleMania edition of SmackDown. Basically, it was a glorified pre-show because the pre-shows on Night 1 and Night 2 won't feature any matches as of now. I'd love if WWE did this every year because it instantly made this show more important. In the past, WWE has used the final SmackDown before WrestleMania to air all the video packages promoting the big matches for the event, and while we did get a few of those throughout the night, the three big promos were the focal point and each of them were tremendous. The Battle Royal was whatever, but it served its purpose in giving the less significant stars a match over WrestleMania weekend. Even the tag team Fatal 4-Way matchup was a blast. The blue brand knocked it out of the park and did its job in getting me more excited for the event than I was previously.