5 Ups & 2 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (June 13)
Nakamura grabs the briefcase on a satisfying MITB go-home show.
It'd be a stretch to call last night's WWE SmackDown anything better than "pretty good," but the show brought a significant upturn in quality from the tedium of the past few weeks. With Money In The Bank on the horizon, the blue brand presented an enjoyable go-home show that produced few thrills, but plenty of solid action, tempered by some textbook failings.
The spotlight was on the tag division for the first half-hour, kicking things off with a typical revolving door segment, before drifting into a lengthy eight-man match. Elsewhere, Randy Orton was finally able to lay hands on WWE Champion Jinder Mahal, the women were split into a pair of singles matches, and the men's MITB participants closed SmackDown with the show's strongest main event in weeks.
Sunday's pay-per-view will hopefully spell the beginning of the end of the blue brand's summer slump. The ladder matches promise excitement, and having a couple of briefcase-holders around should bring unpredictability back to a show that has let its standards slip since the Superstar Shake-Up. Either way, there was enough strong work to deem last night's episode a net positive.
Let's take a look at what hit the mark, and what missed the target completely...