5 Ups And 3 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Dec 17)

3. Dolph Ziggler Has Been Moved Into Intercontinental Title Picture

Dolph Ziggler has had a somewhat rough 2015. Things haven't been helped by the erratic writing of the man, who has been involved in some poor storylines this past year. The whole saga involving Rusev, Lana and Summer Rae was bad enough, but now a prospective rivalry with Tyler Breeze looks to have been canned without a real conclusion to their issues. On the latest edition of Smackdown, it became clear that Ziggler will now move into the WWE Intercontinental Title picture for the next while. The Royal Rumble is a strange pay-per-view, because the focus is firmly on the 30-man over-the-top-rope bout. Therefore, there's not an awful lot of room on the card for titles outside of the WWE World Heavyweight belt. The Intercontinental Title may or may not be featured, but there's nothing wrong with inserting Dolph into the picture on TV in the interim regardless. In the main event of Smackdown, Ziggler defeated Kevin Owens by disqualification. The match was fine from an in-ring point of view, but it was after it had finished that things really became interesting. Dean Ambrose showed up, looking to aid Ziggler and fight off Owens. He was then clocked with a Superkick from Dolph, as Owens looked on and chuckled. The entire segment was played out extremely well, as though Ziggler accidentally nailed Dean, thinking it to be KO.