WWE SmackDown Smacks and Downs: Bray Wyatt fiends with no crowd

After a tumultuous week outside of wrestling because of the coronavirus pandemic, WWE soldiered along with SmackDown emanating from the Performance Center.

Was WWE SmackDown able to give us two hours of entertainment? What storyline changes were caused by the ever evolving responses to COVID-19? Here are the smacks and downs for last night’s show.

What a week.

First, I hope everyone is safe, healthy, and calm. Remember, it’s not necessarily about contracting COVID-19 (coronavirus) at this point, particularly if you’re younger, but about unknowingly transmitting it to others.

With Wednesday’s NXT having already aired from the Performance Center (PC), WWE at least knew that the facility could serve as a last resort to hold their shows. That last resort happened, and now NXT, SmackDown, and RAW will be emanating from the PC for the foreseeable future.

The PC seems like a very prudent investment now, huh?

(AEW also shifted several upcoming shows, including their highly anticipated “Blood & Guts” event.)

The big questions surrounded how pro wrestling looks without fan involvement, especially considering “WWE style” both in wrestling and promos; what this means for WrestleMania (maybe we’ll have SummerMania or SummerSlamMania); what this means for the stories being built for WrestleMania; and if Vince McMahon will finally just stop being so stubborn and suspend all operations like pretty much every other sporting league in the country.

With all the changes, concerns, and questions surrounding WWE and sports as a whole, did I forget to mention that this was the first SmackDown since Elimination Chamber on Sunday?

Daniel Bryan and Drew Gulak did what we all expected (but stop risking those bumps please, Bryan!); The Miz and John Morrison are still Tag Team Champions; and maybe most importantly, we have a new Intercontinental Champion in “The Underdog from the Underground” and “The Great Liberator,” Sami Zayn!

With all that, and the added intrigue of SmackDown airing with no physical audience at the PC, how did it deliver? In such a setting, how were the advertised returns of Jeff Hardy and Paige (to confront Bayley), as well as another appearance by John Cena,

Well, as we’ll see, “card is subject to change” (Paige had “travel issues” according to Cole).

As a reminder of my criteria, I’m not going to run through each match/segment. Rather, I will identify a couple of segments that either worked (“smack”) or didn’t for whatever reason (“down”).

My criteria includes quality of match/segment and how it starts and/or builds stories. After all, we watch partly to be caught up in the stories. If a great work-rate match happens with no context or bearing on the stories, it’s going to be a miss.

Also, just because something is a hit/miss doesn’t mean it was an overwhelming choice. The selection could be 51 percent hit, 75 percent miss, and so on.

There are other subtleties to my criteria, but those are pretty much the parameters.

There was Bayley and Sasha Banks vs. Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross; a sit-down in-ring interview between Michael Cole and Roman Reigns; a replay of the Tag Team Championship match at Elimination Chamber (with commercials!); Daniel Bryan (with Drew Gulak) vs. Cesaro (with Intercontinental Champion Sami Zayn and Shinsuke Nakamura); Jeff Hardy vs. Baron Corbin; and an in-ring interview between Cole and Cena to close the show.