10 Ups & 0 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Jul 24)
8. Tag Tournament Begins
The New Day and Sanity continued their recent run of decent-to-good TV bouts in the first round of SmackDown's new tag team tournament last night, and though it suffered from a distractingly placed mid-match commercial, it was solid.
WWE condensed their entire tag angle into a shade under 10 minutes. It started with The Bludgeon Brothers cutting a typically dull promo, before Sanity and The New Day came out and did their thing, with The Usos on commentary. It was a textbook midcard bout. Momentum seesawed back and forth, both teams got a chance to shine, and Big E and Xavier Woods' Midnight Hour sealed the deal, scoring revenge for their Extreme Rules loss.
Afterwards, The Bar arrived for the first time in what feels like an eternity, announcing that they missed holding tag gold, and plan on winning the tournament and defeating the Bludgeons. Nothing game-changing, but it was good to see Sheamus and Cesaro back again.
The unfortunate news is that The Bar's return could be short-lived, as Cesaro was seemingly injured in the post-show dark match. Unable to support weight on either leg, 'The Swiss Cyborg' had to be carried out by Sheamus and Shinsuke Nakamura, putting his team's tournament status in jeopardy. Let's just hope for a positive prognosis.