WWE SmackDown Smacks/Downs: We love Daniel Bryan’s new partner

The second empty-arena WWE SmackDown was better, overall, than the first episode last week. While not everything receives a pass, this was the best of the three empty-arena shows WWE has had between SmackDown and RAW. Let’s look at the smacks and downs from last night’s show.

As we (viewers) adjust to our new normal in many different ways, it’s nice to see WWE adjust from their previous empty-arena offerings with last night’s WWE SmackDown. While there was still a reliance on playing an older match to fill a lot of time, there was an overall better pacing and coherence to the show.

(If you haven’t picked up on it yet, I’m big on coherent storytelling.)

Matches set for WrestleMania 36 gained more momentum, and some matches were either booked or appear to be in the workings for the show. That doesn’t mean everything was done well.

While some may argue WWE should be given some leniency because of having to change their plans wholesale for their biggest show, it doesn’t excuse what has been a two decade pattern of lazy storytelling. After all, as AEW showed us Wednesday, it is possible to adjust to the current situation and put on an engaging and entertaining empty-arena show.

Showing all those empty seats is kind of eerie. Maybe placing the hard camera opposite the staging area like AEW did would help mitigate the emptiness.

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.

SmackDown started with the introduction of Rob Gronkowski and an ensuing segment; Daniel Bryan and Drew Gulak vs. Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura; Paige’s appearance and subsequent interruption by Sasha Banks and Women’s Champion Bayley; a replay of John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt from WrestleMania XXX in 2014; an interview with Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross; “The Dirt Sheet” followed by Tag Team Champion The Miz and John Morrison vs. Heavy Machinery; and the contract signing for the Universal Championship match at WrestleMania between Roman Reigns and Goldberg.

Let me also say that any note or prediction about the future and how stories might play out is all contingent upon future shows actually happening. We just don’t know at this rate what our world will look like in a week, let alone a month.

On that note, let’s start with the presidential ticket we should all vote for.