WWE Smackdown house show results
September 3, 2011
Paris, France
Report by Daley, PWTorch reader (@daleybrennan)

(1) Christian won a #1 contender battle royal. The Usos made an appearance here and were only used in this match.

(2) Alicia Fox beat Natalya. This was the first instance of the French crowd not knowing who was face and who was heel. Natalya played a complete babyface by the end of the match. There were a couple of dodgy spots on Fox's part, but, overall, this was a good Divas match.

(3) Jinder Mahal (w/Great Khali) beat Ted DiBiase. Jinder cut a promo on the crowd to begin with but spoke in too-heavily accented English (and far too quickly) to properly garner any heat. This was a good match and I couldn't believe how over DiBiase was as a babyface since the last time I saw him he was with Maryse on Raw.

(4) Sin Cara beat Tyson Kidd. Once again, the crowd was seemingly unaware of Cara's heel turn from Tuesday's Smackdown, thus Cara played a babyface and ultimately won. There were some great high-flying spots from Cara. Tyson Kidd worked the crowd amazingly. He was fantastic.

(5) Sheamus beat Wade Barrett. This was a standard brawl between the two big men. At one point, I thought we were going to see a broken neck as Sheamus lost his balance while lifting Barrett up for a powerbomb and very nearly dropped Barrett on his head. They went to the finish soon afterwards. If this was a worked botch, they did an excellent job selling it.

(6) Mark Henry beat Ezekiel Jackson. Evidently, this was the slowest match on the card. Uneventful.

(7) Intercontinental champion Cody Rhodes beat Daniel Bryan to retain the IC Title. Rhodes started by cutting a promo on the crowd. Unlike Mahal, he used one of the French announce teams to translate for him. He finished with a typical (but great!) swipe at Paris by saying that the only football team he supports is Olympique Marseille. This was a great back-and-forth match with Rhodes going over. Rhodes was an absolutely fantastic heel, second probably only to Christian on this card. Post-match, Bryan got his heat back with stiff kicks and a roundhouse to the head. He left with the title.

(8) World Hvt. champion Randy Orton beat Christian to retain the World Title. I was really looking forward to this match. As expected, the crowd was really in to it - Orton got a huge pop. I couldn't quite believe it. I've never been a big fan of Orton but seeing him live really made me appreciate how good he is. He has such control over the crowd. Orton won when Christian dove off the second rope into an RKO. Orton posed with fans to end the show.

Overall thoughts: This was my first live event in over ten years. The match of the night was hard to choose - Orton-Christian, Kidd-Cara, and Bryan-Rhodes were all excellent. It was good to see the performers work in a much more relaxed environment; Orton really let go and was much more comedic than his TV persona. I was surprised to see a lot of old fashioned spots not seen on TV anymore such as the test of strength, 10 punches on the top rope, and the aforementioned comedic spots (such as Christian's head being bashed into each turnbuckle - top, middle, and bottom - a good five or six times). It was great wrestling.

As far as the crowd not knowing who to cheer or boo, this may be to do with the delay the French audience gets when the shows come on. To be honest, I don't know how it works as I'd much rather watch the English language version than the French version, even with Michael Cole on commentary.

Biggest Pops:

- Orton
- Sheamus
- Daniel Bryan

Biggest Heat:

- Christian
- Rhodes
- Kidd

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