5 Ups & 2 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown
3. The Man In The Middle
Surprise, surprise: this week's SmackDown kicked off with an in-ring segment.
It was AJ Styles, not Shane McMahon or Daniel Bryan, greeting the fans this week, but the authority figures soon joined him. The General Manager was first to walk through the revolving door, though the Commissioner followed soon after, offering an apology for triggering the WWE Champion's loss to Kevin Owens the previous week.
This inevitably saw the segment devolve into another Bryan/McMahon disagreement. They played nice for the most part, but Shane continued to prod at Daniel's cloudy relationship with Zayn and Owens, and directly questioned why the GM allowed Sami to be at ringside last week.
The endgame was Shane announcing he'd be at the ring for the night's main event between Zayn and Styles, Bryan refusing to ban Owens from the bout, and his assertion that he, too, would be out to watch the action. This effectively telegraphed the bout's convoluted conclusion, but the segment itself was solid. WWE continue to do a good job of escalating the tension between Bryan and McMahon, and while their regular match derailments are a bugbear, their verbal interactions are always on point, with Styles and effective middle man.