12 Ups & 2 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Mar 12)
In which Vince McMahon brands Kofi Kingston a "B+ player."
Note to Monday Night Raw: this is how you build to the biggest wrestling show of the year.
SmackDown was firing on all cylinders last night, delivering all kinds of big developments on the latest stop along WWE's road to WrestleMania 35. It wasn't a perfect show, and the brand's Women's Title picture remains particularly concerning, but almost everything within its two hours existed to push something forward ahead of the 7 April event.
The night began with Shane McMahon's breakdown of why he decided to turn on The Miz at Fastlane. From there, we took a detour through the increasingly chaotic tag division, then checked in on Randy Orton and AJ Styles, who took their brewing feud to the next level with a heated back-and-forth. The Sonya Deville/Mandy Rose split angle continued thereafter. Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair butted heads, the United States Title scene erupted, Rowan proved his worth in tag action with Daniel Bryan, before the pièce de résistance: Vince McMahon and The New Face, face-to-face.
Shows like this guarantee that SmackDown will barrel towards 'Mania on a tidal wave of hype. Whether or not the show lives up to that promise is a different matter, but this was another week of excellent build...