By Chris Shore

WWE Smackdown Hits

Usos and Daniel Bryan vs. The Shield: The only match Hit on the show is also only a Hit because of the last couple minutes of the match. The rest of the match wasn't terrible, but it wasn't all that exciting either. The Usos are nowhere near as over as Bryan, but they took the heat from the Shield well and the place exploded when Bryan finally got the hot tag. The finishing sequence was good enough to save the match from the doldrums that the rest of the show suffered from.

Alberto Del Rio: Del Rio continues to be a Hit with his aggressive style. His attack on RVD did more to make me care about their feud than any silly Ricardo promo that they have had. His physical style also meshes well with RVD's physical style, and I think they have the potential to have a good match at Battleground. I hope the rumors of RVD taking off after Battleground are false because this feud could build to a needed Hell in a Cell match.

Ryback: Even though I have not been a fan of Ryback's bully character, and even though I didn't initially like the pairing with Paul Heyman, they have managed to turn this into a decent story that I can get into. Ryback's sudden mic improvement is a bit of a surprise and a Hit as well. I don't know if they found the right subject matter or what, but ever since he interviewed RD Evans last week, I've been impressed with his mic work, including on this show.

WWE Smackdown Misses

Vickie Guerrero: The opening segment with Vickie was awful. She was obviously reciting lines, and I struggle to remember the last time she looked so wooden and fake. Her editorializing while listing the 10 men who helped Bryan on Monday were the worst of the segment, but none of it worked. It left Daniel Bryan with little to say to combat her, and so he said very little. Smackdown generally opens the show with a good segment. They missed on that with this show.

Triple H: At the same time, Triple H's logic was all over the map with this show, and his interrupting of the gauntlet match was clumsy and confusing for viewers. The announcers never sold what happened, and the show went straight into commercial only to come back to him jumping Vickie and suddenly acting like a kinda/sorta babyface again. Then his match making for the rest of the ten men was fair and yet also not. The whole thing was a mess that left me scratching my head at his character once again.

Natalya: WWE gave her a chance to go out and make a character for herself and she missed completely. JBL even set her up a couple of times and her responses were minimal at best. She was full of clichés and platitudes and showed no real charisma. I don't know if they were in her ear or gave her lines, but this did her absolutely no favors.

The Wyatt Family: This is more of a general miss instead of a specific show miss. The Wyatts don't have a real direction right now, and that's a miss for what I consider to be the most interesting and compelling characters in all of wrestling right now. All we have had since they took out Kane was the new mention of Sister Abigail (and the naming of Bray's finisher as the same), but while I appreciate the new character wrinkle, it doesn't put them on the path toward anything. Couple that with the promo on the show where Bray talked about WWE lining them up for them and it feels like they are in a holding pattern right now. I want to see more out of them.

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