8 Ups & 3 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Mar 20)
3. It's Still Good, It's Still Good...It's Gone
WWE
Due to reasons which will become obvious very shortly, AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura had a rather inconsequential week on SmackDown Live!, with their interactions confined to another terse in-ring stand off and sarcastic backstage exchange.
Just minutes before some incredibly big news broke ahead of the show, the main story going into SmackDown Live! was the health and wellbeing of AJ Styles after knee injury concerns emerged coming out of the weekend house show loop. His participation was thus entirely non-physical, deliberately delaying his rescue of a beaten down 'King Of Strong Style' so not to get hurt before Nakamura managed to save himself anyway.
So what of the perpetrators Rusev and Aiden English? 'The Bulgarian Brute' painted another mini-masterpiece with 'The Artist', and loud 'Rusev Day' chants were still audible as always, but both look destined for spots in the Andre The Giant Battle Royal. Rusev deserves so, so much better, of course. But he doesn't look likely to get it when the spiritual originator of his support base has made such an unexpected return...
Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation nearly 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett
