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Locke.
Hard Hitter. Soft Talker. Ginger Beard. I use this as a place to talk about everything I can’t on my Letterboxd. Mostly I talk about Professional Wrestling.

WWE SmackDown 23/08/16

So, new episode of SmackDown, one that had a lot to live up to after Raw really did a great job in effectively making it up as they went along, after Finn Balor got injured. Ironically their off the cuff storytelling was better than their original, planned, ideas for the Universal Title. Go Figure.

To kick off SmackDown we get… two new, identical, looking titles just with blue bits. Sigh. At least they look of higher build quality than that shoddy ass Universal Title.

This whole Tag Tournament thing also further exposes the “Team Blue” Tag Scene as far as I’m concerned, it seems they had to pay for a weak overall division all in the name of getting American Alpha on their brand. And sure, I like American Alpha, but I’m not sure it’s worth it in the long run. Their match against Breezango was kinda weird too, making Breeze look so much weaker than Fandango.

On the flipside however, even with Bayley now on Raw, I still feel like SmackDown has the overall much stronger Women’s Division and it’s only gotten stronger with the inclusion of Nikki Bella in my mind. That women’s six pack challenge has the potential to be epic and I feel like the Team Blue Women’s Title has the potential to go so much further than Raw’s can in its current condition.

For the rest of the show, I didn’t find it as strong as this week's episode of Raw but the main event scene of this episode was still pretty strong. Ziggler and Styles, as far as WWE are concerned, feel at their peak right now. AJ Styles seems to have finally found “it” after feeling so off in WWE for so long, possibly because he’s coming off the back of his first significant victory which wasn’t achieved through “shenanigans” and Dolph Ziggler doesn’t appear to have lost any momentum at all despite his rather pathetic loss at SummerSlam. So a feud between the two of them is perfect…

…Even if the conditions of their match made absolutely zero sense. Win or lose, AJ… you get to go to Backlash and challenge for the title. But Ziggler, if you win, you can be in it as well? In a triple threat? Seems fair..? Although I suppose Ziggler not being sent immediately back to the end of the line after his loss is kind of a reward in itself.

And sure, Ziggler lost… again, which is kinda weird really because this all sorta feels pointless now, but at least AJ Styles made him look so much stronger than Ambrose was able to. Even if it was a weirdly scrappy match from two usually very good workers.

Bottom Line? Right now, as far as I’m concerned, this new Universal Championship situation has made RAW feel like the top show but SmackDown has certainly answered, they just haven’t quite topped them.