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WWE SmackDown Smacks/Downs: Celebrating 25 years of forced mediocrity

By Bruce Lee Hazelwood

HOUSTON - APRIL 05: Triple H retains the WWE Championship belt after defeating Randy Orton at "WrestleMania 25" at the Reliant Stadium on April 5, 2009 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Bob Levey/WireImage)
HOUSTON - APRIL 05: Triple H retains the WWE Championship belt after defeating Randy Orton at "WrestleMania 25" at the Reliant Stadium on April 5, 2009 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Bob Levey/WireImage) /
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Right in the middle of the build for Money in the Bank, WWE SmackDown decided to “celebrate” 25 years of Triple H. How was the celebration? What about the continuing builds for MITB? Here are the “smacks” and “downs” for Apr. 24.

We’ve had 25 years of “The Cerebral Assassin,” “The King of Kings,” “The Game,” Triple H. If these last 25 years feels as long as one of his prolonged, 40-minute matches, believe me, you’re not the only one who feels this way.

WWE SmackDown held a celebration last night honoring the career and achievements of the man formerly known as Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Remember how bad his initial character was in the mid-90s?

Yes, his character and prominence did change (for the better), but only because of his associations (and not who you’re thinking of in Stephanie McMahon).

I’ll discuss that here shortly, but there were other events to cover from last night.

We had two consecutive weeks of building a fantastic story between Universal Champion Braun Strowman and his challenger at Money in the Bank, Bray Wyatt. WWE promised a deep dive into their history; how was this retrospect?

(I also wrote on why I think Strowman should retain over Wyatt.)

We also had more qualifiers for the Money in the Bank match, as well as a Women’s Tag Team Championship match.

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 include 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.

Let’s begin with the most hyped 25 year celebration I can remember.