WWE Smackdown TV taping report
April 17, 2012
London, England at the O2 Arena
Report by Matt of Aylesbury, PWTorch reader

The upper deck on the hard camera side, which is normally pretty full, was completely tarped off and the lower tiers were fairly empty. Opposite the hard camera, it was pretty much packed. There were lots of kids wearing the new Cena t-shirt and actually quite a few wearing the most recent C.M. Punk t-shirt, too. I noticed quite a few people wearing Brock Lesnar shirts, too.

Dark Match: Antonio Cesaro beat The U.K. Kid Antonio came out berating the English and got a decent amount of heel heat. I felt like the only person in the building cheering him. Kid got a pretty decent ovation, which I guess was mostly based on the fact that he's English.

After the NXT and Superstars tapings, it was finally time for Smackdown. I missed this, but people I was with told me that Lilian Garcia came out to the ring, tripped over the pyros on the stage, and properly tumbled to the ground. Throughout the night there seemed to be a few "You fell over" chants going.

Smackdown SPOILERS 4/20

The show started with yet another awesome Daniel Bryan heel promo. He covered the typical ground that he'll win the two-out-of-three falls match at Extreme Rules, and there is no chance for Sheamus to get a fluke win. Then, A.J. came out. She tried to reason with him again, but he tore into her and told her he wished he'd never gone out with he and that she'd never been born. He may not be the nicest man at the moment, but his promo work is excellent. After Bryan left, A.J. hung around looking upset before Natalya came out for a match with her.

(1) Natalya beat A.J. via DQ. The bell rang, but A.J. just stood there looking upset. Natalya tried to console her, but A.J. hit her in the face and unleashed her tiny fury on Natalya in the corner before running off looking even more upset. Not sure they ever really acknowledged any sort of ending for the match.

(2) Brodus Clay beat Hunico. This was announced as a tag match initially, but that didn't happen. During Brodus's entrance, his stopped the music and he demanded his little brother come out. Cue Hornswoggle wearing the red tracksuit. The kids loved it and that's all I can really say about it.

Also of note, after Hunico and Camacho made their entrance for the previous match, there was another Damien Sandow promo before Brodus came out, which seemed like interesting timing as they could have just waited a couple of minutes for the match to be over.

Titus O'Neil and Darren Young mocked Teddy Long backstage before John Laurinaitis came out and made Teddy wear a Buckingham Palace guard hat. He told him that, like the guards, he mustn't speak.

Randy Orton was interviewed backstage about Kane attacking his dad. He said his dad is the toughest man he knows and that he'll face Kane in a Falls Count Anywhere match at Extreme Rules.

(3) Darren Young & Titus O'Neill beat The Usos in a perfectly-timed toilet break match.

(4) Alberto Del Rio beat IC champion Big Show in a non-title match after Cody Rhodes came out and hit Show with the Beautiful Disaster kick while the ref was distracted. After the match, Cody tried to attack Show, but when Show went to fight back, Cody ran off.

Some scrawny English guy came to the ring and dedicated the next match to his mum.

(5) Ryback beat local wrestler. Ryback came out, did a couple of his signature moves, and won in less than a minute. He's freakishly big in real-life, possibly due to the "WrestleMania diet" that Wade Keller has talked of.

Backstage, Aksana introduced Teddy to her new "friend," the European Rugby player, Antonio Cesaro (Claudio Castagnoli), who had a meeting set up with John Laurinaitis. Unfortunately, Teddy couldn't say a word because he was wearing the palace guard hat. Yes, you read that right.

Time for the main event, a six-man tag match.

(6) World Hvt. champion Sheamus & IC champion Big Show & Randy Orton beat Daniel Bryan & Marj Henry & Cody Rhodes in a six-man tag match. Great Khali was originally supposed to be in this match, but Cody hit him in the leg before the match, so he couldn't take part. Fortunately, for all the kids that love him, Big Show stepped up and took his place. In the end, Randy Orton won the match for his team with an RKO on Mark Henry. Despite being horrible to A.J. earlier in the show, Daniel Bryan was over huge in this match, with people chanting "We Want Bryan" whenever he wasn't in the match.

After the taping finished, there was a street fight between Randy Orton and Kane.

Post-Dark Match #1: Randy Orton beat Kane in a Street Fight. Orton won with a DDT onto a chair.

Post-Dark Match #2: World Hvt. champion Sheamus beat Daniel Bryan to retain the World Title. Bryan talked up how fluky Sheamus was and that he'll never lose that quickly again. As soon as Bryan put the mic down, he turned around into the Brogue Kick and Sheamus got the win in about the same amount of time as he did at WrestleMania.

All in all, it was a pretty decent show, obviously designed to send the kids home happy, but it still had some pretty cool moments. I'm not sure these will air on TV, but there were a lot of video packages for WrestleMania 28, new DVDs, and, oddly, one quite long video that seemed to be all about hammering home the point that WWE is a really nice company with all its charity work, shows for the troops, and Make-a-Wish kids.

Biggest Pops:

(1) Randy Orton
(2) Daniel Bryan
(3) William Regal during NXT taping.

Biggest Heat:

(1) Daniel Bryan
(2) Cody Rhodes
(3) Alberto Del Rio
- Closely followed by Jinder Mahal during Superstars taping.

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