7 Ups & 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Oct 23)

2. A Lazy, Lazy Night

Though last night's show was a net positive, it was one of the laziest SmackDowns WWE have put together in quite some time, with the aforementioned Shane McMahon/Evolution battle royal content and a couple of other bits and pieces rendering long sections skippable.

AJ Styles/Daniel Bryan vs. The Usos II was another good match, but did we need a repeat finish so soon after the last? Similarly, we've just seen Jeff Hardy and Randy Orton try to kill each other for the best part of a season, yet WWE couldn't come up with a more creative World Cup preview main event.

This kind of "f*ck it, it'll do" booking reeks of the glacial holding patterns this brand fell into pre-WrestleMania 34 and for much of 2017. It stinks, because SD has been consistently strong for the past six months, and a clear level or two above Raw most weeks, so we can only cross our fingers and hope this was a one-off, rather than an indication of what's to come throughout the notoriously uneventful winter schedule.