More Off-Camera Notes From This Week's SD! Tapings: DX, More (Contains Spoilers)
Thanks to WrestlingINC.com reader Sean Evans for sending in these off-camera notes from this week's SmackDown tapings:
The show started almost an hour late. Nobody cared about Brodus Clay and NXT didn't get a reaction except when Percy Watson called Maxine "fish lips" and made this popping noise. AJ got a pretty good reaction from the crowd, but it wasn't enough.
The Superstars match didn't matter either. I enjoyed the Usos' match, but the arena could care less.
There were tons of D-X signs and shirts. Shawn Michaels got a huge pop, the crowd gave him a "Hogan ovation." The building exploded for D-X. They did the sketch about WrestleMania possible coming to Dallas and the fans went insane. Vince McMahon came out during the skit and popped his head out of the gorilla area looking down the entrance ramp at D-X, waiting for them to get backstage so that they could start SmackDown!. HBK plugged his hunting show, and he and Triple H were both laughing and breaking character a lot. They also mentioned that this wasn't going to be on TV so they can say what they want. They did the "suck it" phrase and a baby was crotch-chopping in the front row and got on the titan tron. D-X then took pictures with him had him do the crotch chop again.
Smackdown! started and the 41-man battle royal was just such confusion. Randy Orton won and got a huge pop. Throughout the show there were no real highlights. The general reaction to the Sin Cara mask-switching was laughable. Shameus got a good crowd reaction, but Alberto Del Rio had no heat. It felt like he was down playing his character for some reason. Mark Henry also got no heat at all, which was a shame. Randy Orton was the crowd favorite, for sure.
The real action came for the main event dark match. John Cena made the crowd pop big-time and go wild. Del Rio got the biggest heat of the night during this match. He was really pouring it on with the Spanish and the crowd bashing. Del Rio messed with Tony Chimmel and made Ricardo Rodriguez announce him in Spanish because Tony had "an ugly American accent." There were really loud "Let's Go Cena" / "Cena Sucks" chants during the match.
Biggest heat
Alberto Del Rio
Vickie Guerrero
Biggest pops
Dx / WrestleMania announcement
John Cena
Sean Evans contributed to this article.