Wrestling fans who find Monday Night Raw to be too long could do a lot worse than choosing Smackdown as their main WWE fix nowadays. The 2-hour show has been sparkling since moving to the USA Network, and that's something the company deserve some credit for. There's been a clear emphasis on making the show more viable. Smackdown always had some good matches on it, but it was sorely lacking when it came to storyline development. This week marked one of the first in a while that the likes of Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns weren't featured on the broadcast, but that didn't actually hurt things overall. Indeed, it gave others the chance to shine. In total, there were 4 matches on the Thursday night show. 3 of these had purpose from a storyline point of view, whilst the other seemed there only to fill a few minutes on the program. By far, the featured bout was always going to be AJ Styles facing Chris Jericho for the second time. The big question is, did that match manage to top the first one between the pair? This article looks at all the distinct positives (ups) from Smackdown, but also analyses the different negatives (downs) that permeated the show.
