Smackdown has been widely considered the more entertaining show since the brand split. Monday Night Raw is a weekly three hour show which usually contains 30-45 minutes of quality content. The remaining 2+ hours of the show usually consists of pointless matches and boring promos. Smackdown has consistently been solid. There hasn’t really been a bad show. Not all of them have been great but at the very least they have been enjoyable. Well, until last night.
This week’s episode of Smackdown was boring. Nothing noteworthy happened at all. Carmella and Nikki Bella had a good promo. The Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton feud is still intriguing. That was about it. The rest of the show was corny jokes and matches that didn’t mean anything. Smackdown is in a tough spot because they don’t have a PPV to build towards. They are pretty much waiting for Raw’s Hell in a Cell PPV to go down before they can really do anything. James Ellsworth winning a couple of matches against Styles in ridiculous fashion is cute and all, but what is the end game here? Ellsworth is a funny looking guy with no chin. He is getting his 15 minutes of fame and that is fine. Personally, I’m already tired of it.
The problem with last night’s Smackdown is that it’s sole purpose was to kill time. AJ Styles losing to Ellsworth is a funny little joke, but is it really funny two weeks in a row? After Smackdown, Daniel Bryan announced that Dean Ambrose will face AJ Styles in a non-title match next week. Is James Ellsworth going to wind up being the special referee for that match? The match doesn’t mean anything and it is not building towards something important.
Baron Corbin defeated Jack Swagger in a minute last night on Smackdown. Why? Does that really help Corbin? Swagger has been booked as a jobber for what feels like an eternity now. He switched from Raw to Smackdown and confronted Corbin. Swagger and Corbin had two decent matches and they each won one of them. I don’t understand why there wasn’t a competitive third match to close out the feud. In the end, this feud helped nobody. There wasn’t enough time allotted for the WWE Universe to begin to take Swagger seriously. JBL and David Otunga were claiming that Corbin had a dominant victory last night. Yeah, I guess he did but it didn’t mean anything.
Apollo Crews was in a “match” against Curt Hawkins, the male version of Eva Marie. Hawkins cut a goofy promo stating that Apollo Crews should change his name to Apollo Lose. This angered Crews and he punched Hawkins in the face. Hawkins then rolled out of the ring and walked backstage. There was no match. One could write it off as character development for Curt Hawkins. I was left wondering what the hell is the WWE doing with Apollo Crews? The answer is nothing.
Why is the Spirit Squad on Smackdown but the Hype Bros, The Ascension, The Usos, The Vaudevillians and American Alpha aren’t? What happened to building new stars? Smackdown has a break between their next PPV and they apparently have decided to just kill time. Instead of building new Superstars up, we see James Ellsworth and the Spirit Squad. It was just one show but I’m not not looking forward to the next month if it is going to be like this. The Ascension and the Hype Bros seemed to have an issue with each other on last week’s episode. There was no mention of that whatsoever on tonight’s show. Are The Usos and American Alpha still feuding?
The WWE has gotten into this habit of just skipping a week of progressing a feud and then revisiting the following week. I’m guessing most people have already forgotten about the backstage interaction between the Hype Bros and The Ascension. I haven’t but that is because I’m a maniac and watch way too much wrestling. If you are trying to build new stars and bring new feuds to the table, you can’t just not have them be a part of the show for a week. The feuds may not be intriguing to the WWE Universe now but isn’t the whole point of Raw and Smackdown to get the audience invested? If on next week’s episode of Smackdown, Jimmy Uso attacks Jason Jordan and The Ascension beatdown Mojo Rawley backstage, who cares? I guess they could run a quick video package of what happened a couple of weeks ago to try and remind the audience that these Superstars aren’t fond of each other.
Smackdown has done a much better job than Raw of developing storylines and creating feuds that everyone can get invested in. Those feuds didn’t just happen on one show. Ziggler and The Miz had multiple promos together and were able to convince the audience that their match at No Mercy was important. On last night’s Smackdown, they were in a six man tag team match with the Spirit Squad and Slater & Rhyno. In other words, they were in a 10 minute match that meant nothing and Kenny from the Spirit Squad got the pin over Slater.
Everyone is aware that Smackdown has no PPV to build towards. I understand having goofy segments that make the audience laugh to kill time. I just don’t get why they aren’t throwing Superstars that the WWE Universe doesn’t care about right now out there and forcing them to care. I’d rather see Apollo Crews smile for no reason and fall flat on his face a hundred times than watch the Spirit Squad on Smackdown again. Eventually, the crowd will either warm up to Crews or start booing him because they find him annoying. Either way, it is better than having him waste a way in a two minute segment with Curt Hawkins. Why not have Baron Corbin cut a 5 minute promo insulting everybody in the audience and bragging about how great he is? At the very least wrestling fans will talk about it. Instead of just killing time until Survivor Series, I wish Smackdown would just force the WWE Universe to have some kind of reaction to the performers and tag teams that currently are just running in place on the roster.