5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE SmackDown (Apr 10)

Needs must.

by Jamie Kennedy

Tons and tons of qualifying matches.

That's how WWE will fill episodes of Raw and SmackDown (maybe with some NXT involvement too) over the next few weeks, and it's easy to see why - by cramming as many Money In The Bank qualifiers onto TV as they can, the company will find it fairly straightforward to build towards a 10 May pay-per-view that might match WrestleMania's weirdness.

This week's SmackDown wasn't a flawless show, but it did more to set up the future of of the brand than Monday's post-'Mania weekend Raw did. New Universal Champ Braun Strowman has his next challenger over the next few months, there were some juicy developments in the Women's Title scene for Bayley and Sasha Banks, and WWE debuted a fresh act on the 'main roster'.

Remember the wording there. It felt a bit off considering WWE's landscape in 2020.

Elsewhere on the downside, there was a glaring missed opportunity in the female tag-team scene, another champ was nowhere to be found and the company leaned on lazy booking that doesn't actually make much sense...

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Contributor

Lifelong wrestling, video game, music and sports obsessive who has been writing about his passions since childhood. Jamie started writing for WhatCulture in 2013, and has contributed thousands of articles and YouTube videos since then. He cut his teeth penning published pieces for top UK and European wrestling read Fighting Spirit Magazine (FSM), and also has extensive experience working within the wrestling biz as a manager and commentator for promotions like ICW on WWE Network and WCPW/Defiant since 2010. Further, Jamie also hosted the old Ministry Of Slam podcast, and has interviewed everyone from Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels to Bret Hart and Trish Stratus.