Best and worst of WWE SmackDown Live- 5th Feb 2019
It's always interesting to note what your initial thoughts are after a WWE show. Strangely enough, my first thought was how Jeff Hardy would be considered short for his era in wrestling. But he seemed to tower over Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles during SmackDown Live. It was a passing thought, but also a testament to how long he's lasted in the wrestling business.
I daresay that because the show was two hours long, I did not mind it all that much. But all said and done, this wasn't a very good episode of SmackDown Live. In my opinion, I'd say that very little of consequence actually happened during the said show.
There are so many loopholes in the programming and the booking that sometimes I wonder if WWE wants to get Elimination Chamber over with and fast forward to WrestleMania 35. This isn't to say that the show was all bad, but certainly, it could have been much better.
Here is my analysis of the episode that was!
#1 Best: The RKO
The moment this match was announced, my colleague Daniel Wood remarked on how we're going to see a very good RKO during the course of it. All of us assumed that Mustafa Ali would leap off the top rope into an RKO with Orton scoring the victory.
The RKO was so unexpected and so well done that I thought that it exceeded all my expectations. It's amazing how Orton and his fellow competitors keep the move fresh and exciting after we think that we've seen possibly every version of it.
Also, Mustafa Ali is seriously one of the most underrated performers in the entire roster right now. He's so gifted that it's scary.
One wonders if he will go on to hold gold in 2019.