7 Ups & 3 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Aug 7)
1. Unity?
At one point last night, Becky Lynch told Charlotte Flair that they're "not like Sasha Banks and Bayley." Here's the thing, though: they are.
Their interactions were peppered throughout the show. First, Charlotte claimed she didn't mean to spoil her best friend's momentum by taking a spot in the SummerSlam Women's Title match. Lynch said she was happy for her, and the tension was brushed off ahead of their tag victory over The IIconics, then brought back to the forefront in another backstage segment that closed with a staredown.
This is Bayley and Sasha Banks to a tee, and exactly the kind of interactions the duo exchanged in their storyline's early days. That's a problem. We shan't write the angle off entirely, because it's still getting started, but it feels very much like a retread of an ongoing Raw angle. Should we really accept this from a show that regularly blows the red brand out of the water every week?
To top it all off, the Women's Title programme has shifted gears from the beloved babyface hero potentially securing her overdue glory, to that same beloved babyface hero nudging at a heel turn. A bummer by anyone's standards.