Felt like a really rough program overall tonight.
In terms of segments, Corbin's promo to kick off the show ran way too long and was just overall bad, especially since I generally consider Corbin one of the stronger talkers.
Then Sasha and Bayley's interview was truly tough to watch. Bayley trying to play the tough guy flopped miserably in comparison to that confrontation Becky and Shayna had on Monday. Then she went on to stink it up on commentary. Meanwhile Graves is suddenly speaking up for the WWE Universe and shunning Bayley for turning her back on the fans? Since when does he care about them at all?
And what's with Gable being a snitch? "Roman! Roman! Thank God you're here! Corbin was just saying he's going to beat you up!"
He came across like a real geek in that segment. The name and ring attire doesn't exactly help matters.
Then you've got the Fury segment, which I understand why you'd bring him out here, but it was just straight filler. You got the most lukewarm "Yes!" chant I've ever seen and some of the hammiest dialogue imaginable by Braun. "They're gonna get all four of these hands!"
The B Team was great, to their credit. I actually miss those guys being a regular part of TV. They've got a Will Ferrell-John C. Reilly kind of dynamic.
And once again the NXT attacks were so empty. On Raw, they at least added some extra layers to the NXT takeover but here on Smackdown we just reverted back to hit and run attacks with no real context or impact. I might be alone on this but I feel like the attacks are just not cutting it. You have to at least have one talking segment to further the brand warfare storyline. What makes it worse is Michael Cole saying all night that the big guns are here tonight for Smackdown, yet NXT still gets over on them all throughout the night and it seems like no one from Smackdown even gives a damn. No one on that roster is cutting a promo calling out NXT or challenging them to a fight. At best you just had a few of the SD guys running out to chase Imperium off. They are not doing a good job making this thing seem like a heated rivalry between brands like they are on Raw.
The New Day and Revival had an awesome match but it's still a shame to see Kofi happy to win another tag championship when he was just the leading man on Smackdown a month ago. I'm going to try to remain optimistic for the most part but the early signs are not good that Kofi is ever going to get a serious singles run again.
I'm a really big fan of the idea to have Zayn lead a faction, especially if it's going to be filled with guys like Nakamura and Cesaro who can cut the mustard in the ring but might need a little help on the mic. I was definitely pulling for Bryan to either join them or feud with them but it seems like his next storyline will be with The Fiend. Can't complain about that and the story is there for why The Fiend would want to terrorize Bryan.
And great, looks like Corbin could be forming yet another stable of midcard heels. Also gotta love Roode and Ziggler serving as squash fodder more or less when they just ran through the entire Raw tag team division on their first night as a tag team a couple months back. Roode unfortunately will probably never be a high profile act again and I'm not the biggest fan of Ziggler, but I still think they deserve better than this. Hell, I'd even say Reigns and Corbin deserve better than feuding against each other because I find it pretty unlikely that this program will benefit either guy in the long run.
So all in all, it just felt like a bad night for promos and storyline progression. Aside from The Fiend targeting Daniel Bryan, there was nothing on this show I really felt was meaningful. Lots of decisions were made that I wasn't a fan of and there wasn't nearly enough good wrestling to make up for it. I feel like I generally try to stay on the positive side when talking wrestling but I don't understand how this show continues to get worse and worse.
