4 Ups And 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (July 26)
7. The Women's Segment
Still, despite its booking, the in-ring portion of Becky vs Natalya was, in fairness, a pretty strong showing—though the same can’t be said for the segment that followed it.
At first, it was intriguing to see Alexa Bliss emerge and tease a possible feud with some decent time on the mic. But when Naomi’s music hit shortly after, you got the feeling you knew exactly where this one was headed. And by the end of it, I have no idea why Carmella was so surprised to be interrupted by Eva Marie.
As well as being predictable, though, this was hardly the most emphatic way to debut two new NXT call-ups. But perhaps most significantly, the entire segment just felt as though it had been included for the sheer sake of it.
The way it just faded out into the next part of the show gave the impression that they didn’t really know what they were trying to achieve here. There wasn’t even any back-and-forth on the mic once all six women were out there.
The lack of an explanation, other than to serve as a reminder of who’s actually in the SmackDown women’s division, really detracted from this segment and made the whole thing rather awkward.