5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE SmackDown (31 July - Results & Review)

Cody Rhodes asks, "What do you wanna talk about?" and Trick Williams says, "Let's talk about it". Well, the people tuning into WWE's weekly product want to talk about the fact that improvements need to be made. Let's talk about that.

Listen, not everything on Raw or SmackDown is outwardly terrible by any means, but the company began taking audience interest for granted a while ago, and they figured that giving fans entrances without much substance was enough. In effect, you're paying for a ticket to sing along with music, but that misses the point of what attending a wrestling TV taping is supposed to do.

This week's SmackDown was the 'go home' edition before SummerSlam. It tried to add some last minute garnish to bouts like Rhodes vs. CM Punk, Sami Zayn vs. Finn Bálor, Gunther vs. Nick Aldis, Trick Williams vs. Baron Corbin, the 5-way ladder match to crown an interim Women's Champion, and even Danhausen vs. Dominik Mysterio. You won't be surprised to hear that not everything hit the way it was supposed to.

WWE went from spotlighting the women's division one minute to palming it off to the side in a disgraceful show of apathy the next. They booked an unsatisfying non-finish in the tag ranks following a month plus of build, then want peeps to care about a team they're trying to re-establish seconds later. The booking is all over the place - it's too haphazard, and that needs to change.

There's a reason why SummerSlam hasn't been selling the number of tickets WWE wanted it to. Here's all the good and bad from Friday's latest.