Sure, you can do it, but if you mis-judge the distance, the poor sap gets bisected at the waist by the top rope, and he hangs there, half in, half out of the ring. Outside the ring, you can whip your opponent into the steel steps at ringside. You can then pick up the steps and bash in your opponent's head. You can even pull tag-team maneuvers with no trouble at all. Now that's cool.
Control is a breeze.
There's a button for grappling, one for striking, and one for defense. Nice and simple. Depending on your positioning and the direction you hold the D-pad, your wrestler does different things. All of the sound effects in the game are impact related, but sound authentic enough. The music seems to be the same type of generic metal that THQ used for the first Smackdown game.