WWE's Best Match of the Week: Sheamus vs. Randy Orton on May 18th SmackDown

If you watched Over the Limit on Sunday, you were treated to arguably the best match of the year so far: Daniel Bryan vs. CM Punk for the WWE title.

But that match was on pay-per-view, and my “Best Match of the Week” award is now restricted to TV matches only.

I’m glad that’s the case, too, because I had a rare experience when watching last week’s episode of Friday Night SmackDown.

Usually, when I glance at the clock as the show’s main event is about to start, it’s around 8:45 p.m. (CST), give or take a few minutes.

That’s not what happened last week, though.

I had read the spoilers and knew that Randy Orton would face Sheamus in a non-title match in the show’s main event, but none of the spoilers I read let me know just what type of treat I was in for.

It wasn’t even 8:30 yet (I think it was 8:26), when Orton made his way out for his match against Sheamus.

My initial reaction: “Wow. We’re about to get an awesome match.”

And that’s exactly what we got.

It’s rare for TV matches to get more than 15 minutes today, and even rarer for them to get more than 20 minutes. But Sheamus and Orton got 27 minutes, and they used every single one of those 27 minutes incredibly well.

When Sheamus and Orton feuded in the past, their chemistry wasn’t great (remember their Royal Rumble match in 2010?), and they never really had that memorable match you’d expect out of them.

However, that all changed last week when we saw a classic battle between two of the WWE’s biggest baby faces.

The WWE found itself in a tricky situation, as the creative team clearly didn’t want to see either Sheamus or Orton lose after getting hit with the other guy’s finisher.

So, to work around that, they structured a back-and-forth brawl that truly left us wondering who the heck was going to win it and then ended it with a roll-up.

It was a classic case of two top faces trying to prove that they were better than each other, and it worked to perfection as Orton and Sheamus delivered one of the best TV matches in recent memory.

We’ve seen a lot of great TV bouts recently (Punk/Ziggler, Punk/Bryan, etc.), and Sheamus vs. Orton was just the latest in that line.

Note to the WWE: More matches like this and fewer matches like Khali vs. Kane, please.

Drake Oz is the WWE Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions (to be answered in the B/R Mailbag) on Formspring.