By Jon Mezzera, PWTorch Specialist

SMACKDOWN HITS

Opening Segment: With one major exception (see below), Smackdown did get off to a pretty good start. Seth Rollins is a good heel. He did a nice job of gloating over manipulating John Cena to bring back The Authority. His moment of silence for the three wrestlers fired at the end of Raw was good. It was good to see Roman Reigns stand up against The Authority by interrupting at that point. I will talk about Reigns' promo later (spoiler alert, it was a Miss!), but the opening segment also set up the main event and the issue of whether or not Reigns will be able to find a partner to team against Rollins and The Big Show. Now, that is a narrative that has been done a lot with The Authority in power (it was the entire theme of the build up to Survivor Series), so it wasn't great, but good enough to help the opening segment get a Hit.

Usos vs. Miz & Mizdow vs. Goldust & Stardust: This was a pretty good triple threat Tag Team Championship match. These are all talented teams with three very different personalities and they mixed well here. I continue to enjoy the antics of Damian Mizdow. I am looking forward to The Royal Rumble when Miz gets eliminated and Mizdow is all set to eliminate himself, but chooses not to which will greatly upset Miz. I am guessing that's when Mizdow's babyface turn comes. Getting back to this match, it went a good amount of time, had good wrestling action, and was fun to watch.

SMACKDOWN MISSES

"Suffering Succotash": After Roman Reigns' terrible Superman quotes on Raw, I didn't think he could get any worse on the mic (or should I say his scripts couldn't get any worse?). Then on Smackdown, in the middle of the otherwise good opening segment, Roman Reigns quoted Sylvester the Cat. Are you kidding me? The restraint I'm having to use to not type multiple swear words at the moment is overwhelming. I don't understand how anyone on the creative staff (let along Reigns himself) thinks quoting cartoon characters is a good idea. Is "what's up doc?" next? Is he going to tell Rollins to "eat my shorts"? If WWE wanted to sabotage Reigns, they couldn't do a better job than this.

Use of Cesaro and Kidd: I am ok with teaming Cesaro and Tyson Kidd. I'm far from sold on the team, but I am willing to give it time to see how they work as a team and what type of push they get. I understand that you can't have all teams at the top of the tag team roster, but everything involving Adam Rose and The New Day screams bottom of the card to me. At the very least, Cesaro should not be at the bottom of the card. He has too much talent. I understand that Kidd is coming off of injuries and long stretches off of tv, where he wasn't much of a star to begin with, so he needs to be rebuilt. But, he is dragging Cesaro down. And it is hard to see Kidd as being built back up when he is part of a feud with the lamest team ever, The New Day.

Fox vs. Naomi: WWE seems to be building a feud between Alicia Fox and Naomi. But, why should I care about it? Their match went barely over a minute. It was presented as a back and forth match that went the length of a squash (it really wasn't much longer than The Ascensions' squash from earlier in the show). WWE has shown with NXT that Divas can get over as good wrestlers in good storylines and can deliver long matches. But, that doesn't come close to translating on the bigger stage of Raw or Smackdown.

Sin Cara Beats Barrett: I didn't understand this at all. It really does go to show that putting the Intercontinental Championship on someone is a way of dooming them to a bad win-loss record. Bad News Barrett has only been back a few weeks and he is already taking losses to someone like Sin Cara? They have a chance to really build Barrett into a top level heel after what happened on Raw when he was helped by The Authority to get the IC Title from Dolph Ziggler. Then, on the very next show they have him lose to a guy who hasn't won in months (NXT doesn't count as they don't acknowledge that he is an NXT Tag Team Champion). It makes no sense to me. Sure, Barrett gets some heat back with the post-match beat down. But, if you wanted to build Cara up with this win, why take that away moments later? It is bad writing.

Ambrose's Returns: Under other circumstances, I would be fine with Dean Ambrose coming out as Roman Reigns' partner. I like the fact that WWE has kept the two of them friends after The Shield's break-up. After his feud with Bray Wyatt came to an end, Ambrose needed something new and he never really got a final resolution with Rollins. He has the type of personality who would stand up against The Authority and wouldn't care about the possible consequences. It all makes sense. The problem is that he was in an ambulance match just a few days earlier. I never even thought of Ambrose as a possible partner for Reigns, as I was expecting him to be out of action at least a week to sell the effects of the ambulance match. If you are taken to a hospital on Monday, you shouldn't be wrestling on Friday. The main event was fine, but in the larger context, I didn't like seeing Ambrose as part of it.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw and Smackdown each week. Email him at his NEW email address - jmezz_torch@yahoo.com.

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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