7 Problems Plaguing WWE SmackDown Right Now

This one is just bizarre. For whatever reason, after WrestleMania, Vince and co. decided to turn SmackDown into the “America is #1, Hot Dog, Apple Pie, NASCAR, Smile-Time Variety Hour.” No less than three of the current top feuds on the show concern an American vs. an evil foreigner. AJ Styles and Kevin Owens have their US title feud in which Owens, the smug French-Canadian, is claiming to be the face of America. As of July 4th, John Cena and Rusev are in a stopgap retread of their 2015 program which will culminate in a Flag match at Battleground.

Most galling, however, is the horribly uncomfortable feud between Jinder Mahal and Randy Orton, in which Jinder is exploiting a large portion of WWE fans’ racism/xenophobia for cheap heat, and reinforcing many negative stereotypes about foreign wrestlers, wrestling fans, and wrestling as a whole.

Obviously, part of the problem is fans who chant “U-S-A, U-S-A” at these insipid angles almost like it’s their Pavlovian response. However, given that there are three of these storylines going on at the moment, the blame for that falls squarely on SmackDown’s creative team. Obviously, Vince has final say, but given we see none of this nonsense on RAW, that’s a heavy implication there’s some serious patriotic Kool-aid being passed around in the SmackDown writer’s room.

Or unoriginality, either or.