5 Biggest Winners & Losers From WWE SmackDown Live (Aug 2)

4. Loser: Carmella

Called-up from NXT to pad-out SmackDown’s women’s division alongside Alexa Bliss, Carmella has endured a rough transition to the main roster. She debuted last week during a stagnant group confrontation that left the women standing still rather than moving forward. This week, she was scheduled to face-off against Natalya, but she was laid-out before the match could even begin and left tapping to Nattie’s Sharpshooter out on the floor.

We’re only two weeks in and Carmella has already fallen to the bottom of the pile. She got some brief interview time with Renee Young earlier in the evening, but the back-and-forth with Natalya felt stunted and awkward, and did little to excite fans about a potential feud between the two. Carmella will no doubt benefit from working with a veteran like Nattie, but they’re off to a tiresome start, and it’s only going to get harder from here.

Booking isn’t Carmella’s only problem, though. At this point, nobody has a clue who she is. For two weeks in a row she has came-out and performed her trademark microphone introduction to absolutely no reaction from the crowd. Not every SmackDown viewer watches NXT, and those who don’t are completely oblivious to The Princess of Staten Island and don’t know how to react to her.

It was a mistake not drafting Carmella to Raw, where she could have been introduced as a part of Enzo & Big Cass’ act, and given a legitimate chance to get over. On SmackDown, Carmella is alone as a small fish in a river full of sharks, and it’s not going well for her.