8 Ups & 2 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (June 5)

5. The Most Annoying Person In WWE

There are obvious flaws in Carmella's performances, but the SmackDown Women's Champion is ticking every box with her character work. She is the most annoying person in the company. If she winds you up, good - that's exactly what she's trying to do. Her role is to make audiences yearn for the day when she finally gets her head kicked in by a superior athlete, and segments like last night's opener compound it, as 'The Princess Of Staten Island' cut a typically obnoxious promo on Asuka.

'Mella ran a video package, criticised 'The Empress' for losing at WrestleMania, saying that now that her undefeated streak is gone, "everyone is ready for Asuka." This drew the former NXT Women's Champion out, but Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose appeared before she could get a word out. While both need to work on their cadence, their interjection made sense after last week's bout between Mandy and Asuka, and Paige's eventual interruption justified Carmella's pot-stirring by confirming the handicap match.

It was an effective table-setting segment carried mostly by Carmella's performance. She's doing a great job as the division's lead agitator, and this helped elevate a structurally mundane segment towards something greater. Still, it'd be nice if her ring work started catching up to her character sometime soon...