2 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE SmackDown (May 28)

4. Diminishing Returns

Kevin Owens sold that 'Nigerian Nail' from the towering Commander Azeez very well, and his post-match pleas to Adam Pearce to ban the big git from ringside next week played out logically. However, it does feel like WWE has done the 'inspirational babyface' gig to death for KO since the turn of the year.

This is a case of diminishing returns.

Next week's match has also painted WWE into a corner. Now, they either have to put Apollo Crews over clean (which would scrap Owens as a viable challenger) or shift the belt onto Kevin for the sake of it (which would destroy Crews outright). Worse, this isn't even happening on pay-per-view in a big time showdown.

The best workers fight back against questionable creative, and that's what KO and Apollo will try to do, but they can only be expected to do that for so long. If Owens loses, where does he go from here? Into a tag-team? NXT? He's running out of things to do on SmackDown already.