Old North Banter: Pre-Survior Series Smackdown Amazes

WWE’s final taping of Smackdown Live before Sunday’s Survivor Series showcased a major title change and surprise guests.

The Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C. hosts the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets. The venue also hosts many artists and comedians that come through to perform. This past Tuesday, the WWE made its final stop before Survivor Series in the Queen City for Smackdown Live.

As many could gather from my article reviewing the Ric Flair 30 for 30, I enjoy my fair share of WWE. Max Landis’ “Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling” short film is one of the reasons why, but it’s something I’d enjoyed for most of my life. I’d been to a couple of house shows at PNC Arena in Raleigh, home of NC State basketball and the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes, but watching a live televised event had always evaded me until Tuesday.

To say this event met my expectations would be an enormous understatement. To put this in perspective, Randy Orton, my favorite wrestler on the Smackdown roster, didn’t wrestle at this event, and I was perfectly fine with that. The event could have ended after the first couple of matches, and it would have been perfect, but more on that in a bit.

Pre-show dark-match: Tye Dillinger and Breezango vs. Mike Kanellis and the Colóns

Once 7:45 p.m. hit, the first match of the evening kicked off with a six-man tag team face-off. A standard faces-versus-heels performance to ignite the crowd, this was entertaining yet didn’t have anything super impressive in the way of style. Still, it was great to see Dillinger, Tyler Breeze and Fandango overpower the heels to start everything off. Dillinger’s “Perfect 10” gimmick generally hypes up the crowd fairly well, and he shows plenty of promise moving forward.