4 Ups And 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (July 26)

SmackDown had an awful lot to live up to this week.

Not only was it the first instalment since the splitting of the brands, but over on Raw, the competition had delivered a pretty stellar showing just 24 hours prior—one that more than lived up to all this “new era” billing.

And SmackDown certainly gave it their all with their own crowning of a new number one contender, as well as the return of Randy Orton to in-ring action after nine and a half months on the shelf. But with a shorter show-time and a shallower roster, it was always going to be difficult for SmackDown to meet and exceed the lofty expectations set by Raw on Monday, and that proved to be the case.

As such, there were just about as many negatives as there were positives on Tuesday's show. With that in mind, this article looks back at some of those ups and downs from SmackDown this week, where it’s even-stevens this time out with four points apiece—which brings us nicely onto our first point of the day…

It seems this article isn’t the only thing adopting an even-stevens approach, because on SmackDown we saw the ugly return of the WWE’s 50/50 booking policy.

In the second match of the evening, Becky Lynch went toe-to-toe with Natalya just a couple of days after their recent contest at Battleground. There, it was Natalya who’d scored the victory. So as they announced the rematch ahead of the commercial break, naturally you’d have assumed that it was now Becky’s turn to get her win back on SmackDown.

And, of course, that’s exactly what happened.

Giving us this rematch so soon after their last meeting was uninspired in itself, but to then feed us more of this tit-for-tat, you-win-then-I-win booking nonsense was even more frustrating still.

Having Becky win and essentially nullifying the outcome from Battleground seems directly at odds with what Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan had hoped to deliver on SmackDown. We’re supposed to be entering a new era, an era of change and opportunity—not an era of the same old 50/50 booking that makes it all the more difficult for the guys and girls to get themselves over.