5 Biggest Winners & Losers From WWE SmackDown Live (Oct 18)
In which AJ Styles loses to James Ellsworth... again.
Say it quietly, but SmackDown couldn’t compete with Raw this week. Neither show was particularly outstanding, but Raw at least had Bill Goldberg’s emotional comeback to lean on, while SD provided a relatively uneventful evening that was worryingly reminiscent of the red brand’s post-Draft mediocrity.
The night’s main event saw James Ellsworth challenge AJ Styles for the WWE World Championship. It ended with a disqualification victory after Styles went overboard in his beatdown, but it wasn’t the champion who was standing tall at the end of the night. Dean Ambrose leapt up from ringside to lay Styles out with a Dirty Deeds and celebrate as the show went off the air, leaving Styles embarrassed for the second week in a row.
Elsewhere, the Randy Orton/Bray Wyatt feud rumbled on, Baron Corbin obliterated Jack Swagger, and Curt Hawkins went full Eva Marie on the SmackDown audience. Meanwhile, Carmella and Nikki Bella continued their rivalry, and Alexa Bliss avenged her No Mercy loss to Naomi in a closely fought match.
It was a clear step down from the quality fans have come to expect of SmackDown lately, but not a bad show on the whole. Unfortunately, missteps in the show’s biggest feuds (Styles vs. Ambrose, Orton vs. Wyatt) are slowly derailing the main roster’s most enjoyable brand, and WWE have some significant realigning to do.
As always, some wrestlers shot up the rankings, while others fell downwards. Here are the 5 biggest winners and losers from WWE SmackDown Live.