By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

Much of this week's Smackdown felt just okay to me. I wasn't thrilled with a lot of the content of the show, however little of it was bad. Despite the so-so quality of the show as a whole, there were still some clear highs and lows worth mentioning and discussing as WWE continues to build towards WrestleMania.

SMACKDOWN HITS

Punk Sings Happy Birthday: While much of the show was just ok, it did get off to a good start with the opening segment between Rey Mysterio and his family, and the Straight Edge Society. CM Punk was at his best in his promo, challenging Mysterio to not only a match at WrestleMania, but a fight right then and there. He was great in getting heat on himself and making the audience really want to see Mysterio shut him up as he singled out each member of Mysterio's family to talk to them about what he planned to do. His singing of Happy Birthday was very creepy and well done. WWE is doing a good job of building to this match. This week's encounter was the best of the hype so far.

Miz vs. Truth: This is a marginal Hit for the quality of the match while it lasted. But, at around 6 minutes (half of which aired during a commercial break) we really didn't see that much action. Miz and R-Truth did work well together and put on a good match. WWE has done a nice job of mixing the Unified Tag Title build with what is happening on NXT. Seeing Daniel Bryan costing his mentor the match was a nice touch.

Highlight Reel: There is no doubt that of the three biggest WrestleMania matches, this one has had the weakest build so far. That isn't to say that the build has been weak, but when you compare it to Undertaker vs. Michaels and Cena vs. Batista, it just hasn't been as good. But, that isn't a fair comparison just because of how good the build for those two matches has been thus far. Edge vs. Chris Jericho has been solid to good. This week's encounter on the returning Highlight Reel definitely elevated the hype. Jericho was his usual great self on the mic. He was able to create some doubt about Edge's health which is an interesting route to take. Hopefully they will continue down that path in the next two weeks to make the fans think that perhaps Edge did come back from his injury too soon. The physicality worked very well at the end as Jericho attempted to put Edge through the Jeritron 5000 as he did on the last Highlight Reel almost two years ago to Shawn Michaels (I was in the building for that one, which was one of two good moments on an otherwise very poor show - it was the first week of McMahon's Million Dollar Mania and watching him try to dial a phone live in the arena was horrible. For those of you wondering, the other highlight of the night was a dark match before the show featuring Brian Danielson vs. Lance Cade, which Danielson won long before he had signed a deal with WWE). Back to the segment, it also ended as it should, with Jericho finally getting the better of Edge as he avoided the spear by hitting Edge with the World Title belt.

SMACKDOWN MISSES

McIntyre in MIB: Am I the only one who is not happy about Drew McIntyre being added to Money in the Bank? For one thing, eight wrestlers in the match was already too many. I was disappointed a few years ago when they went from six to eight although the quality of the matches has remained high. However, nine really seems like too many to me. I'm also not thrilled with the push McIntyre is getting right now. He just is not that good. I am afraid that with a field of unlikely winners and with Vince McMahon's (both on screen and reportedly behind the scenes) support, McIntyre is suddenly looking like the most likely winner of Money in the Bank which would not be good. McIntyre should not become a top Champion this year.

Undertaker: Undertaker wanted to send a message to Shawn Michaels so he beat up four guys after interrupting their match. I guess this was supposed to get over how dominating Undertaker can be and how he has multiple finishing moves. However, it was just a really heelish move. WWE used to do this type of thing with the cruiserweights. Just when you thought you were about to get a good cruiserweight match with Paul London facing Gregory Helms (or whatever), some big heavyweight would come down, beat them both up and get a mic to cut a promo. Now Undertaker is doing the same with the tag team division. Not that I ever want to see Cryme Tyme vs. The Hart Dynasty again, but if you want these teams to be taken seriously, why treat them like this? This really did nothing to build anticipation for Undertaker vs. Michaels. I understand what WWE was trying to do, but I didn't like they way they did it.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, NXT, and Superstars each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

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