5 Biggest Winners & Losers From WWE SmackDown Live (Oct 18)

4. Loser: Curt Hawkins

Curt Hawkins’ WWE return is becoming increasingly tedious. While the gimmick is slowly drifting into “so bad, it’s good” territory, his continued inactivity is wearing thin. Hawkins has promised his in-ring debut for a number of weeks now, and he failed to deliver for the third show in a row. He talked Apollo Crews into attacking him, and that was that: Hawkins refused to wrestle, and Crews had “ruined” his debut.

SmackDown’s writers are repeating the Eva Marie format with Hawkins, and it’s falling entirely flat. They’ve even gone so far as to ape Eva’s voiceover-assisted ring entrance with Curt’s facts, and his continued refusal to actually wrestle just isn’t getting him over. To top it all off, it looks like WWE are inserting him into a storyline with Crews (another wrestler nobody cares about), and it’s tough to see him getting over any time soon.

Eva Marie’s schtick works because she already had a great deal of crowd heat prior to joining SmackDown. All Red Everything is the most maligned member of WWE’s roster, and her troll gimmick played to the crowd’s real-life disdain for her lack of abilities. Hawkins, meanwhile, is a completely average performer across the board, and he has next to no crowd heat. Who knows what WWE have planned for him, but he’s already struggling.