WWE: The Best of Smackdown - 10th Anniversary

Introduction

Wow - has it really been ten years since Smackdown first made it to our television screens?

The phrase made famous by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson ("The Rock will lay the smack down on your candy ass") morphed not only into the title of WWE's second television show, but also into a word worthy of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, defined as:

1) the act of knocking down or bringing down an opponent
2) a contest in entertainment wrestling
3) a decisive defeat
4) a confrontation between rivals or competitors

Any way you wish to slice it, Smackdown has been an overall success for World Wrestling Entertainment, and "The Best of Smackdown: 10th Anniversary" set counts down those success from 100 to 1. There are 21 complete matches included, involving the likes of The Rock, The Undertaker, Kurt Angle, and Brock Lesnar.

Video

Video is presented in 4:3 fullscreen PAL, and is very good for a DVD of this genre. The footage is ten years old at maximum, and thus you'd expect it to look great, but there are no disappointments here.

Audio

Audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, and is also very good. All aspects of the audio come through clearly at all times.

Main feature

Matt Striker and Michael Cole take us through the 8½ hour journey into the Smackdown archives, and it is a very enjoyable one at that. Fans who have been watching WWE for some time will know that so much WWE television is thrown at you every week, that it's nigh on impossible to remember things that occurred years back. This - like the Raw 15th Anniversary DVD - provides a fun way to reminisce.

The highlights of the DVD include the return of Hulk Hogan (2003), Vince McMahon's "lethal dose of poison" (the return of the NWO, 2002), the Billy & Chuck Wedding (2002), the Tribute to Eddie Guerrero (2005), Kurt Angle vs The Undertaker (2002), Angle vs Brock Lesnar (2003), Edge vs Eddie Guerrero (2002), The Rock vs Triple-H, and of course, the 9-11 Tribute show (2001). On the other hand, there's very little which is not worth your attention, and that which may fall into that category is kept short in any case.

There are a couple of issues with the feature that don't refer to what is available on the set, but rather what is not. For one, with most of the 100 segments shown in clip or highlight form, it is difficult to put a historical value or place on them. Furthermore, despite the fact that he was probably the MVP of the whole history of Smackdown, Chris Benoit is nowhere to be seen here due to the murder-suicide in which he was the perpetrator in 2007. It's a completely understandable decision, but the viewer is robbed of so much great action that it's hard not to be very disappointed.

Conclusion

Overall, however, "The Best of Smackdown: 10th Anniversary" is an entertaining DVD set that will leave a smile on the face of those in particular who remember this period in wrestling history. There's humour and good wrestling throughout these 8 1/2hrs, making it a very worthy of recommendation.