6 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE SmackDown (19 June - Results & Review)
2. This Is All They’ve Got For Finn Bàlor?!
So, let's get this straight. WWE bosses moved Finn Bálor away from SmackDown so he wouldn't have to interact with familiar faces and ex-stablemates like Dominik Mysterio or JD McDonagh. In the process, they've elected to book him in segments with familiar faces and ex-stablemates Damian Priest and R-Truth. Got it. All of Priest's beef with Royce Keys has seemingly been dropped cold too.
Eek.
Teasing a Judgment Day reunion with Priest and Truth is plain lazy. This actually feels relatively similar to The Bloodline stuff that’s going on over on Raw. Again, WWE moved Finn to SmackDown so he’d be away from Judgment Day on Raw. Now, they’re already implying a soft reunion of some OG members on Fridays. It's shockingly lazy.
Thus far, Bálor has lost out in a King Of The Ring Fatal-4-Way and worked some promos with the likes of Tama Tonga and these dudes this week. It's hardly blockbuster stuff, is it? Nobody's saying that Finn has to be the focal point on Fridays, but surely WWE has something better in store for him than this. No? If not, then he might as well have stayed put on the flagship.
It'd be some laugh to pore over company booking sheets to see what's actually mapped out in advance. Sometimes, it feels like the promotion makes decisions before shrugging their shoulders and saying: 'Meh! We'll figure out the rest at a later date. It'll be fine. No-one will care anyway!'. If they don't care, then why would fans bother investing?
Bálor deserves some time to bed in, perhaps, but he's off to a lowkey start on SmackDown.