March 16, 2012|By Adam Testa
* Rhodes proved he can topple giants by defeating The Great Khali. Honestly, I tend to space out when Khali is wrestling, but the match seemed alright, and it's nice to see Rhodes score a clean win here. I hope his title streak doesn't end at WrestleMania.
* It's been far too long since the words "one more match" have graced Smackdown, so it was great to see Christian back on the show to host "The Peep Show" and officially announce his alliance with Team Laurinaitis in dramatic fashion, ala LeBron James' "The Decision." The Raw team is starting to look stacked, which almost makes me fear they'll come up short at WrestleMania. The last thing WWE needs is more Teddy Long, if you hear me, playa.
* Apparently Kane doesn't like Randy Orton because they shook hands last summer. That and he prefers a lifestyle of assaulting random top-tier superstars while claiming he needs to destroy and decimate them to get back to his old self and lose all sense of humanity. OK then. If you ever need to find a match between two random wrestlers paired together due to a lack of nothing better to do, remember and look back on this one.
* Mark Henry killed Yoshi Tatsu. Not really, but it wasn't much of a match. Henry has had back-and-forth booking in recent weeks, but they have to make him look strong for his match with Cena on Raw.
* A week after being reinstated, Drew McIntyre was squashed by Big Show. At least the "is he fired or not?" angle is over, but hopefully this is actually going somewhere. McIntyre is far too talented to be a jobber to the stars.
Match Rundown
Kofi Kingston d. David Otunga
AJ d. Nikki Bella
Cody Rhodes d. The Great Khali
Big Show d. Drew McIntyre
Mark Henry d. Yoshi Tatsu
Chris Jericho d. Sheamus by countout
My Take
Friday night's episode of Smackdown was pretty strong. It wasn't must-see television, but there were few baffling booking gaffes and nothing horrible from an in-ring standpoint. If Smackdown were this good or better on a weekly basis, the show would be doing just fine. The build to WrestleMania continues to improve and hold interest, and though Bryan vs. Sheamus isn't a true main event, it's one of my most anticipated matches on April 1.
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