OTTAWA — A crowd of about 7,000 was in attendance at the Scotiabank Place in Ottawa for the tapings of Smackdown! Tuesday night. Less than 24 hours after Jerry “The King” Lawler suffered from a heart attack live during Monday Night Raw in Montreal, the aftershocks of it were still felt in Ottawa, but not as much as one might think.
A handful of people brought signs wishing Lawler a speedy recovery. The most popular among them was “Get well soon King.” There were a few “Jerry” chants throughout the evening, but nothing like the day before. Michael Cole still looked pretty shaken up though and didn’t seem to be enjoying himself that much, which is quite understandable.
The show had one dark match, one Saturday Morning Slam match (Rey Mysterio vs Michael McGillicutty), two Superstars matches (Natalya vs Alicia Fox; Cody Rhodes vs Zack Ryder) plus one dark main-event.
The dark match saw Roman Reigns (Joe Anoa’i) beat Heath Slater. Slater tried to get some cheap heat by singing Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” before the match, but it didn’t work out. Maybe he would’ve needed Mike Rotunda and Barry Windham to sing along!
For Smackdown on Friday, fans can look forward to seeing Sin Cara vs The Miz, Kane vs Kofi Kingston, Tensai vs Randy Orton, Beth Phoenix vs Kaitlyn, and Sheamus vs Daniel Bryan.
The dark main-event was Sheamus defeating Alberto Del Rio, accompanied by Ricardo Rodriguez. After Sheamus ducked a kick that ended knocking Rodriguez out, he put his Cloverleaf submission hold on Del Rio for the win. The match was nowhere near the quality of what a PPV match should be so let’s hope they were just trying a few things for this coming Sunday.
On a side note, they were still selling the Pat Patterson Appreciation Night t-shirts they had done for Montreal. The t-shirts were sold Monday night at the Bell Centre but since the celebration was cancelled, one could think they would’ve removed the t-shirts from the merchandise table. Actually, it now becomes a rare collection’s item as it would be surprising that this t-shirt gets sold elsewhere, including wwe.com.