4 Ups & 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Oct 31)
Tricks And Treats
WWE embraced a Halloween aesthetic a little too liberally on Monday Night, with an episode of Raw that not only wasn't a treat but felt far too real to be a trick. Stephanie McMahon's re-emergence kicked off a night of returns, but hers was by far the scariest.
And not only for the audience. Becoming a downtrodden authority figure like all the rest, Kurt Angle spent the evening appropriately terrified after the Commissioner informed him that he'd be out of work if Monday Night Raw lost the Survivor Series main event. It did attach some stakes to the match at least, but in doing so reduced the Olympic Gold Medalist and 'Wrestling Machine' to a frightened state just eight days removed from him smashing some of his own roster members through tables as a substitute for Roman Reigns.
Angle's place on the team was one of Raw's headline stories as they attempted to rebuild in the wake of the painfully over-branded '#UnderSiege' attack a week prior. A lone voice of reason in amongst the utterly pointless, Daniel Bryan was seemingly written out of the angle altogether following an attack from Kane during his visit to the flagship show, leaving aggro Shane free to run the rule over the rampant blue brand.
How would he, and more specifically, his pavlovian roster, respond to the red brand's first strike back?