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

1. Women’s Qualifier Is Just Insulting

Oh dear.

Lash Legend beat Giulia in less than 2 minutes to qualify for the ladder bout at SummerSlam. The question must be asked: What are we even doing here? What’s the point in Giulia even being around if this is all you have for her? No problems with Lash winning/qualifying, but give these workers a chance to do…something. This is why their matches/segments play before silence.

You've got to worry for Giulia’s future on SmackDown. She hasn’t clicked on the main roster since day one, whether she’s babyface or heel, and now she's being jobbed out like she's being fed to Nia Jax on episodes of Raw back in 2016. These are dark times for someone who was once an equal to Stephanie Vaquer on NXT. The union with Kiana James achieved sod all, and (worse) Giulia didn't even get to shine a little like James did when losing to Chelsea Green in jig time on last week's show.

Legend will improve, but she needs reps and more than this to work with. It certainly didn’t help either woman that WWE had already laid bare who’s really important in the ladder bout earlier: Charlotte and Jade. Going in, this match always felt like 'SummerSlam also ran vs. SummerSlam also ran'. Neither Giulia nor Lash get the blame for that - it rests fully on the shoulders of folks behind the scenes who are supposed to help them.

SmackDown has dropped an hour, but there's no excuse for feeding guff like this or insulting an entire division.