SmackDown: 2 things that went right on the Oct. 22 episode

More than a day removed from WWE’s latest propaganda blood money show, the promotion made its way to the Intrust Arena in Wichita, Kan. for another episode of SmackDown, which the company promoted as the “season premiere” (never mind that WWE has no offseason).

In addition to being the first show featuring the revamped roster, and the company showcased the talent that moved over from Raw and NXT with scintillating in-ring action………just kidding! No, WWE just had people talk for most of the two-hour runtime.

To be fair, though, that doesn’t necessarily mean that every bit of content that made air wasn’t good. In fact, let’s take a bit of time today to discuss some positives from this past Friday’s offering from the blue brand.

These are two of the things that went right on the Oct. 22 episode of SmackDown.

Brock Lesnar wreaks havoc to (sort of) start the show.

Even though it required sitting through a show-opening promo with Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman that extended past a commercial break to get there, the fans in Wichita got their “We want Brock!” chants answered when “The Beast” came out to seek revenge for getting screwed out of the Universal Championship.

Lesnar then pulverized Reigns, The Usos, and anyone else who got in his way (except Cesaro). Once Adam Pearce came out to suspend Lesnar for his actions, the former WWE Champion responded with two F-5’s to the WWE official.

Of course, WWE put all of this together as a pretense to write the part-time superstar off of television for a while, but it made Lesnar look like a monster on his way out and was the highlight of the show.

Hit Row’s main roster debut

WWE kept it simple when it came to Hit Row’s introduction to the SmackDown audience, but as is often the case in pro wrestling, the simplest things are the most effective.

Things got off to a good start when the group — comprised of Isaiah “Swerve” Scott, Top Dolla, Ashante Thee Adonis, and B-Fab — received promo time in front of the live crowd that was separate from the rest of the SmackDown draft picks. It also helped that the collective promos, while a relatively tame introductory one for Hit Row’s standards, was a pretty good one.

There’s not much to say about the enhancement match outside of it being an effective way to have Scott and Top Dolla show off their movesets to fans who may not have seen them in NXT and that WWE should book these sorts of matches more often.

All in all, it looks like Hit Row won’t have much of a problem getting over on the main roster, assuming they don’t get booked in counterproductive ways.