WWE SmackDown - 3/27/2026: 3 Things We Loved And 3 We Hated - Wrestling Inc.

The Road to WrestleMania continues, and it brought "WWE SmackDown" to Pittsburgh, PA, home of the Penguins, the Pirates, and "The Pitt." The show was loaded with Jelly Roll appearances, featured a US Title switch, and even had Matt Cardona wrestling in the main event. But enough about what happened, we already covered that.Instead, it's time to talk about the very good and the very bad from Friday's show in the PPG Paints Arena. As always, there was plenty to love, like Sami Zayn's big win, and there was plenty to hate, like the wall-to-wall Jelly Roll coverage, that would even make his own mother say, "Ok, enough."But enough of my bloviating, let's get down to the very best and the very worst from the March 28, 2026, edition of "WWE SmackDown." It has taken weeks but WrestleMania 42 is finally starting to take shape. WWE has been kicking around various ideas, and teasing others, but the general managers of "Raw" and "SmackDown" have finally started saying "at WrestleMania" with their whole chests.No better example of this than Nick Aldis stepping in between Drew McIntyre and Jacob Fatu and making an unsanctioned match between the two at WrestleMania. There is a very real probability that a violent brawl between McIntyre and Fatu could steal the weekend, and while I think there's been too much p****footing around about WrestleMania, the matches themselves have some real bite to them.There's about 20-something days until the big show, and they've already given me a match that will feel like appointment television. Reigns vs. Punk is a solid idea, there's history to Orton vs. Rhodes, but McIntyre and Fatu wrestling in an unsanctioned match will provide the kind of visceral thrill I love.Written by Ross Berman I am all for celebrity involvement at WrestleMania. I'm well aware that's what the entire concept of the event was built on, but I can't for the life of me figure out what Jelly Roll is going to be doing this year. Sure, we have an idea of where the country music artist may be headed, but it seems really strange that WWE wouldn't have an official match locked in for him yet that they could market the hell out of to sell more WrestleMania tickets.Maybe that's not so strange with the way the entire build to WrestleMania has been this year, but Jelly Roll seems like a pretty easy guy to book, and it seems like an easily marketable match to get those tickets selling. I've seen "WWE Unreal," I know how much they love him, and honestly, his match against Kit Wilson tonight was surprisingly pretty solid for it being his first-ever singles match. He's been feuding with Wilson for a few weeks now, but they burned that match tonight, so I'm assuming the only possible direction is for him to team with Danhausen against The Miz and Wilson.I guess Danhausen's first WWE match being at WrestleMania would be huge and would get a major pop, but I just can't picture him fighting alongside "Jelly Jam." I really cannot picture it in my mind at this point, but I guess much stranger things have happened in a WWE ring. Jelly Roll has also been involved, slightly, with the Undisputed WWE Championship feud pitting Randy Orton against Cody Rhodes, but he's obviously not getting added to that match. He was just kind of existing during their main event brawl until he ate an RKO. That's likely just another reason for Rhodes to want to beat Orton at WrestleMania in their match, to avenge his friend Jelly Roll.So, what we basically have here is Jelly Roll hanging out on "SmackDown," possibly driving some eyes to the product on the "Road to WrestleMania," but he's not yet set for the big event. Who knows if he'll be on the show next week after taking Orton's finisher after wrestling a match of his own? It felt strange to me to not announce something for him tonight, on a night where Jelly scored a big victory, and other WrestleMania matches, like Drew McIntyre and Jacob Fatu and the US title match, were announced.Written by Daisy Ruth EDITOR'S NOTE: Another bit about Jelly Roll, so as to best convey the sheer amount of Jelly Roll on this show.Another week of "WWE SmackDown" came, and Jelly Roll was here once more, wrestling Kit Wilson and embedding himself further into the WWE Championship feud between Randy Orton and Cody Rhodes. Jelly is the latest in the long line of wrestling fans who became celebrities and appealed to the latent clout-chaser within a promoter, leveraging their fame and talent in one industry to yoink someone's spot from beneath them despite the fact that it is their chosen vocation. They're the ones with stacked medical bills because of it.Oh, and they're also normally much better at it. And with Jelly, endearing as one may find him, that is most definitely the case. His match with Wilson was as good as Wilson is in the ring and as not bad as Jelly could be. He didn't drop Wilson on his head, and he knows how to do the moves. It's just doing the stuff in between the moves that he doesn't excel at, and he's also just not believable at all.Then he won the match, which, sure, he is the more popular guy, objectively speaking. But then he returned in the main event... why? Like seriously, why is Jelly Roll embedded within the WWE Championship program? It's Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton feuding; they have plenty of well-known wrestling friends and third parties that you could bring in if you really needed to. But aside from that, they didn't need anyone else.This was supposed to be one of the best feuds, the easiest stories to tell, and it's being presented as Orton and Rhodes face one another, but first, what does Jelly Roll think? In the middle of a brawl between Orton and Rhodes, a really, really long brawl between Orton and Rhodes, Jelly Roll came down to the ring to get between them and, I guess, try to stop them from fighting because that always works, doesn't it? And then he got hit with a terrible-looking RKO and melodramatized the rest of the show with his face on the mat.Great effort on his part, don't get me wrong. But it's the very fact that there is a celebrity embroiled in a feud set to main event WrestleMania. Especially when they're nowhere near the level of a Bad Bunny, or even a Stephen Amell and maybe he would have even more of a reason to be involved with Rhodes.At the close of the show, the focus was more, "Oh, Jelly Roll got RKO'd," rather than what was going on beyond the two men who will be fighting for the industry's top title. And that becomes quite damning for the industry, the more one thinks about it.Written by Max Everett At the beginning of the month, I lamented about the terrible booking for the women in the first few days of Women's History Month. During the last show of the month, we got two women's matches, an in-ring segment, and two backstage segments.The first match was a tag match between The Bellas and Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss with the tag champs were ringside. Following the match, the Irresistible Forces got involved in a brawl with both teams. Lyra Valkyria and Bayley happened to be in the building and came down to even things up. While Bayley & Valkyria need to win their match on "Raw", it looks like we're heading towards the rumored 4-way match at WrestleMania between all the teams in this segment.The following segment was a hot mess, as my wonderful colleague will attest to. Rhea Ripley addressed being blindsided by Michin and B-Fab the week before. They came out along with Cargill and dealt with boos the entire segment. The women were talking over each other and just struggled to get through it. Ripley came out looking the best of the four. Ripley and B-Fab were scheduled to have a match, but it didn't get very far because Cargill got involved. We'll likely Michin vs. Ripley next week. While the segment was not the greatest, it's giving B-Fab and Michin something more substantial to do and potentially give them roles at WrestleMania.While Bayley and Valkyria was merely a quick interview segment, it put a spotlight on their match on Monday and the stakes if they win. In another backstage segment, Tiffany Stratton turned down help from Chelsea Green prior to her title match against Giulia. With help from Kiana James, Giulia was able to retain the U.S. title. It may have been a bit surprising, given the way Giulia has been booked during her reign. Hopefully, it's a sign that Giulia will have a WrestleMania match.While some parts were rough, there is movement in various probable WrestleMania storylines and title pictures.Written by Samantha Schipman Wow, I don't even know where to start with this entire thing.Rhea Ripley is in my top five favorite wrestlers of all time, so it takes a lot for me to hate something that she's involved in. However, her segment with Jade Cargill, Michin, and B-Fab and subsequent match with B-Fab was one hot dumpster fire of a mess. For one thing, it almost felt like the fans hijacked Ripley's verbal exchange with Cargill, Michin, and B-Fab with just how loud their boos were for the three latter women. It was pretty hard to hear what Cargill, Michin, and B-Fab were saying, and it almost seemed like they were getting overwhelmed by the heat that they were receiving. B-Fab and Cargill also felt like they stepped over one another at certain points during the entire exchange, which made things feel pretty awkward between them.I also had no idea what points Cargill, B-Fab, and Michin were even trying to make throughout this entire segment. It kind of felt like it was a bunch of one-sentence jumbled-up points that didn't really have a through line but were supposed to act as a response to Ripley's succinct point of not wanting to wait until WrestleMania 42 to do what she has to do.Aside from that, Ripley and B-Fab's match didn't really do anything to help matters. I'm all for this match being a way to give B-Fab some television time in the ring, but she barely even got that, seeing as Cargill almost immediately interfered in the match back from the break to cause it to end in a disqualification. Cargill's involvement didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me either, as one would think WWE would want to get B-Fab a win under her belt to make Cargill, B-Fab, and Michin look collectively stronger. There would've been plenty of opportunity for Cargill to beat down Ripley after the match, so there wasn't any good reason for her to cost B-Fab a win in my opinion.From top to bottom, nothing good came out of any of this, nor did anyone involved really come off looking good. "SmackDown" puts out some bad segments on a weekly basis, but I would dare venture to say that this was easily one of if not the worst things that has been on this show in months (excluding a certain slam poetry battle from last Friday).Written by Olivia Quinlan I have to admit, I had no idea where Sami Zayn's "Road to WrestleMania" was actually going to lead him, especially with how bumpy said road has been this year, and I was quite pleasantly surprised when he officially got a match against Trick Williams on "The Grandest Stage of Them All" made official tonight, all by defeating Carmelo Hayes in the US Championship open challenge. While I do feel bad for Hayes, I think he had an excellent run with banger after banger with the open challenge, and I think he'll be feuding for the gold again soon if my 'Mania 42 prediction comes true.I suppose I half expected that Williams vs. Zayn was going to be added to WrestleMania, but I didn't think it would be for a title. It made sense tonight, however, following a backstage segment with "SmackDown" General Manager Nick Aldis. Aldis flat-out told Williams he was going to have a 'Mania match this year, because he's been on a hot streak and is a bona fide star, but when Zayn asked what was in store for him, Aldis basically said he was SOL because his year hasn't been going so hot, and he didn't have a title.So, Zayn went out there and won himself a title. The finish of the match wasn't exactly the cleanest, but it worked, as Williams accidentally clocked Hayes instead of Zayn, allowing Zayn to get the victory. I didn't expect Aldis to make the match official almost immediately after the new champion got backstage, but I can't say I mind it. I thought maybe after Williams accidentally hit Hayes, they'd drag it out, making it official until next week or something.I can also see "Melo" attempting to get himself on the WrestleMania card, as well, via triple threat for the title, which I wouldn't mind, but I'm not exactly certain if I see that happening. Zayn and Williams have been feuding for months now, and it's a hot feud. I don't know if adding Hayes to the match would work out well for him in the long run. I do think, however, that Williams gets a huge WrestleMania moment his first time at the event, and defeats Zayn for the title. One of his first feuds on TV, after Zayn likely gets a rematch for Williams to get another victory, should be Hayes, as the pair have excellent chemistry from their "WWE NXT" days.I may be getting ahead of myself there, but I did really like this tonight. It was a nice little moment for Zayn, and it makes his match against Williams at 'Mania really mean something.Written by Daisy Ruth