5 Ups And 2 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Mar 14)

Downs...

2. How To Lose Your Audience

Last night's SmackDown Live was a fine show until little over halfway through, when Dolph Ziggler and Mojo Rawley showed-up to do their best to put the audience to sleep. Their match was a follow-up from a confrontation last week, when Mojo burned Ziggler for his career's lack of WrestleMania moments, and while brief, it succeeded only in derailing SmackDown.

Mojo still isn't over with the crowd, and if Ziggler has even a small amount of cache left with his once loyal fanbase, it wasn't on display last night. The match completely sucked the life out of the arena, and furthered a rivalry that should have never been built in the first place. Mojo scored a count-out victory when Ziggler walked-out on the match after less than three minutes, and though the goal was likely to build hype for the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, WWE accomplished the opposite here.

Matches like this really expose SmackDown's paper-thin midcard. The writers are continually forced to feature wrestlers with little to no crowd investment, and while that's partly their fault for not building them up over the past few months, the blue brand are in dire need of a refresh at this level. For SmackDown, those rumoured post-WrestleMania roster trades can't come soon enough.