WWE SmackDown 2/16/2024: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "WWE SmackDown," the show where you can pull out all the stops with your heel promo and they still start chanting "Rocky!" There was a lot going on Friday night on the blue brand, with not one, not two, not three, but four Elimination Chamber qualifying matches leading up to the massive appearance of the latest member of The Bloodline. We will cover all of that, though some things will necessarily go by the wayside — sorry Bron Breakker, we're glad you're here, though! — as we move through the matches and moments that the WINC staff felt most passionate about, in both the good and the bad ways.

As always, for more thorough and objective coverage of "SmackDown," you can check out our live coverage/results page. This column is exclusively about our individual opinions. Here are three things we hated and three things we loved from the 2/16/2024 episode of "WWE SmackDown."

For months, R-Truth has tried to be part of The Judgment Day. They've barely tolerated him at best, mostly just being annoyed by him. He tries his best to fit in and to be friends with them, but sometimes it backfires when he gets in their way, calls them the wrong name, or tries to tag in during a Royal Rumble match.

R-Truth has been jumped by The Judgment Day, although he thought it was a rite of passage. Last week, they once again told R-Truth that he was not a member. Regardless, he still came out for Dominik Mysterio's match against Kevin Owens. Mysterio didn't want him out there until he needed him — Mysterio couldn't beat Owens, so he asked Truth to get him a chair. R-Truth responded that since he wasn't a member of Judgment Day, he couldn't help him.

After a desperate Mysterio insisted to Truth that he was a member several times, Truth got the chair ... and then opened it and sat down. Mysterio was in disbelief; Truth warned him to turn around, but it was too late. Owens was able to get the win and advanced to the men's Elimination Chamber match. "Dirty Dom" got what he deserved, and R-Truth got such much-needed self-respect.

Written by Samantha Schipman

Look, I'll admit it: Logan Paul is a great competitor. His performance against The Miz might seem contradictory to that statement — Paul crumpled multiple times — but nobody's perfect. Paul has understood his role more than any celebrity who has stepped in between the ropes, and in another life, maybe he could have been a full-time WWE Superstar. That all being said, he does not need to bring the United States Championship — and his celebrity image — into the Elimination Chamber match.

There are several issues with this, and I'll start with the bad before transitioning into the worse. Paul is already a champion, and while the chance of WWE following through to make him a double champion is not impossible, it's extraordinarily slim. Really, Paul's talents are wasted in the Elimination Chamber match. In a card as empty as this event's is right now — there are only two non-Chamber matches and one episode of "The Grayson Waller Effect" planned — Paul would have been much-better utilized in a title defense. There are several midcarders open and ready to compete for the United States Championship, and they couldn't pick one to have Paul defend his title against? I've written at-length that Paul's championship reign leaves a lot to be desired in terms of activity, and while WWE and Paul have improved somewhat in that aspect, Paul's inclusion inside the Chamber only validates my concerns.

Speaking of my concerns, let's talk about Paul's celebrity status, and how WWE is putting too much stock in celebrity appearances. Paul's quick acquisition of the final spot in the Elimination Chamber match comes right off the heels of the whole The Rock/Cody Rhodes/Roman Reigns fiasco, which has been covered extensively. It is the belief of some — myself included — that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was inserted into what should have been a clean Rhodes-Reigns rehash in order to capitalize on his celebrity power. It makes sense: WWE is in a lot of hot water right now, and what better way is there to look good to investors and the general public than to have a name as big "The Rock" headline WrestleMania? You'd think that after the "#WeWantCody" phenomenon, though, WWE would have thought twice about replacing the spot of a crowd favorite and tried-and-true, full-time wrestler with a part-timer celebrity.

Nope! "The Maverick" took the last Elimination Chamber spot. At least Johnson was a wrestler before he became a movie star.

Just as there are many midcarders who could have easily been put in a feud with Paul, there are many top faces in the company that would have been a better fit for the Elimination Chamber. Sami Zayn comes to mind first, but other names such as Shinsuke Nakamura would have been better suited. Remember when Paul Heyman asked Jimmy Uso to win the Rumble and challenge Rollins on the January 26 episode of "SmackDown?" Why couldn't they follow that storyline heading into Elimination Chamber? So many possibilities were dashed, partially or entirely because WWE wanted to feature a famous person on their social media posts. While Paul's usurpation of a Chamber spot is not as in-your-face as The Rock trying to literally take Rhodes' title match, wrestling fans should be aware of this troubling pattern.

Paul has proved himself to be one of the best celebrity wrestlers in recent memory, but his talents and the talents of others were wasted when he took the final spot in the men's Elimination Chamber. Even if Paul has an absolutely stand-out performance in the Chamber, the fact that he was placed in the Chamber in the first place will soil any wonderful feat of athleticism he shows.

Written by Angeline Phu

The story between Bayley and Damage CTRL didn't get any actual ring time this week, which sucks because it remains one of the best, if not the best, angle in the company heading into WrestleMania season. But while they didn't get much time, you can't say the five women involved didn't make the most of the time they had.

The backstage segment between Bayley and Dakota Kai was both welcome and necessary. It's important that Bayley doesn't trust Dakota right away, and it's important that Dakota sells the idea that being on the outs with Damage CTRL has her afraid for her life (with much more justification than Tony Khan probably had). I'm working on the assumption that Dakota is trying to get Bayley to trust her completely so she can then turn on her, and if so, it's pretty smart to make yourself seem defenseless, especially with Dakota coming off injury. And hey, if not, that works too.

Meanwhile, WWE Women's Tag Team Champions Asuka and Kairi Sane standing on either side of WWE Women's Champion IYO SKY is just an objectively terrifying sight. Even those who stick to WWE programming should be pretty scared by this threesome — if you have any familiarity with joshi wrestling, you might not sleep tonight. As a result, by the time we got to Dakota begging Bayley to help her, we felt the danger very keenly, and the new Damage CTRL came across looking like a group you wouldn't want to cross on your best day.

The two segments combined got maybe half of the time allotted to The Rock's promo, but they were far more effective at advancing their storyline than The Rock was at advancing his. At this point I think it's pretty clear that Bayley and IYO won't be main-eventing the first night of WrestleMania, but they just keep proving why they deserve to.

Written by Miles Schneiderman

I get that Elimination Chamber is right around the corner next weekend and the field for the men's and women's matches aren't quite filled yet, but having four qualifier matches in one night just seems like it's a little bit too much.

"SmackDown" is only a two-hour show, and with that comes a limited amount of segments WWE can put on. Not including backstage interviews or interactions, the only other things featured on tonight's show were The Rock cutting a promo as he officially became a member of The Bloodline and the Authors of Pain having a squash match.

Naomi vs. Alba Fyre and Kevin Owens vs. Dominik Mysterio were both good matches, and Logan Paul vs. The Miz and Tiffany Stratton vs. Zelina Vega were decent. That having been said, it became repetitive to watch after a while and the qualifiers lost some of their interest value to me. It felt as though WWE were scrambling to reveal the last entrants when the qualifiers could've easily been split between tonight, Monday's "Raw", and even next Friday's "SmackDown" if need be.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

In a long-awaited and long-overdue return to WWE, Naomi came out of the gate swinging. She went up against Alba Fyre for the opportunity to book a flight to Perth, Australia in order to compete in the Elimination Chamber, coming out to an uproarious Salt Lake City crowd with a brand new theme and a gorgeous new one-piece that exposed her stomach.

Following up an iconic theme like "Amazing (Remix)" is hard, but her new entrance song was effective in making one thing clear: she did not return to WWE just to play around. She fought well against Fyre, and while there were parts of the match that were a bit slow and felt sluggish to watch, the overall contest did a great job in reintroducing the WWE Universe to the former "SmackDown" Women's Champion and WWE Women's Tag Team Champion. Naomi won — something I'm hoping to say a lot more often going forward — after locking in her signature Rings of Saturn submission on Fyre, and just like that, she was booked for the Elimination Chamber match.

Friday night, Naomi reminded the whole WWE Universe that her athleticism and ability to entertain — which was already second-to-none — is still improving. Naomi came out with a presentation that felt familiar, but was distinctly new. Her entrance, her gear, and the new parts of her moveset felt like an evolution of who she was in May 2021; she is still Naomi, but she is an evolved Naomi. She is still glowing, but she is somewhat grittier now. Her iconic black-light entrance is familiar, but the 619-adjacent bulldog move she pulled in the middle of the match is a manifestation of her metamorphosis.

While Friday's contest, in vacuum, was nothing to write home about, I'm so incredibly excited to see where Naomi will go after this. Sure, maybe she doesn't win Elimination Chamber — Becky Lynch basically has that honor already — but I am confident that she will show up and show out inside that sadistic structure. Naomi has fought in the Elimination Chamber once before, but did not score any eliminations. Hopefully, that is the next thing to change. This is a new Naomi, people, and if this performance and her new presentation are anything to go off of, she is not to be messed with.

Also, she does a better leg-drop-into-splits than Logan Paul. Argue with the wall.

Written by Angeline Phu

I'm not as compelled by this Rock-centric Bloodline story as I have been with previous Bloodline stories, but I was still expecting this much-hyped segment featuring The Rock and Roman Reigns to actually, you know, go somewhere. After all the twists and turns this whole thing has taken since Cody Rhodes won the Royal Rumble, everyone is trying to figure out what Rock is doing at Mania. Will he fight Cody on Night 1? Will he fight Roman on Night 1? Or is WWE planning a tag team match with Reigns and Rock taking on Rhodes and Seth Rollins? We didn't know, and it seemed like most people were expecting "SmackDown" to give us some sort of clue.

Well, it didn't. All we know is that Rock is officially in The Bloodline now, and while that's kind of a big deal, it's not a big enough deal that it justifies being the point of the entire segment. After Reigns did his usual "acknowledge me" thing, Rock came out to a cut a promo that was basically just "look at me, I'm a heel now." He mentioned Cody a little bit — the most interesting part of the promo was the part where he talked about how the fans ruined the prospect of a Roman/Rock Mania match because of how much they loved Cody, which is probably just straight-up how he really feels — but he didn't mention Triple H, despite Triple H tossing several thinly veiled statements his way on "WWE Raw," and he definitely didn't mention Rollins, who continues to feel like a fourth wheel in this story. We didn't get any clarity at all on what he's doing at Mania — he just cut his promo and we faded to black.

As a result, to borrow a certain catchphrase, it doesn't matter whether Rock's promo was "good" or "bad." What matters is that it didn't accomplish anything, and considering the poor planning and sloppy execution that has gone into this angle so far, it's pretty disappointing to see WWE kick the can down the road yet again.

Written by Miles Schneiderman