WWE SmackDown Live – March 26, 2019 (Review)

What was your favourite moment from SmackDown Live?

Steven Lugo

Tag Team Gauntlet match. There’s no denying it. This series of matches was awesome, and fans are fully invested in Kofi Kingston at WrestleMania. Not only did this gauntlet build to a satisfying conclusion, with Rowan getting buried under a table for a ten count, but the atmosphere was great.

As with Kofi’s gauntlet match last week, the crowd of onlookers grew and grew in the backstage area, because Kofi’s fellow wrestlers have that much respect for him. It was good to see tag team matches determine a WrestleMania championship match. Feels like, if only for a night, the division was getting some respect.

Nate Craver

It’s going to have to be the fact that it appears Kofi finally has his title match. The gauntlet match was fine. The Usos stepping out of the way to allow the New Day to win was a nice touch. While the two teams have been consistent rivals over the years, it is clear they have a deep respect for each other. Hopefully, nothing too crazy happens next week and Kofi gets a one on one shot at ‘Mania.

Nicholas Holicki

I was ready to give my vote to the Charlotte / Asuka encounter. This bout was a really excellent TV match between two of the best wrestlers on the SmackDown roster. But the decision to arbitrarily take the belt off Asuka just 12 days before WrestleMania, robbing her of her own moment on the ‘Grandest Stage of Them All’ and adding another unnecessary element to the Raw Women’s Triple Threat, is insanity.

So instead I’ll go with the tag team gauntlet match pitting Big E and Xavier Woods against a series of SmackDown’s best pairings. While I disagreed with the confounding premise of the gauntlet, I love good tag team wrestling. And I’m an even bigger sucker for multiple tag team bouts strung together.

As a minor point, I appreciated the Usos forfeiting their place in the gauntlet. At first it seemed that they would take advantage of a beaten down Big E – which would have been baffling considering that just last week they were cheering on Kofi during his gauntlet – but thankfully they sided with continuity on this one. And seeing Bryan go full cartoon villain backstage in response, throwing chairs around his locker room, was an appreciated bonus.

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