9 Ups & 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (29 Nov)
4. Evans Above
If a thing objectively f*cking sucks but it gets over, does it actually suck?
Bayley and Sasha Banks were in the middle of cutting a pretty dull heel promo about SmackDown's Survivor Series failings, with the Women's Champion suspiciously putting focus on the 'Sassy Southern Belle' until she made her own way out to state her case. The fix was in as soon as Corey Graves coercively chuckled at her arrival and Michael Cole referred to her as "always bold" instead of "always sh*t" - they were about to turn her babyface.
Evans barely tweaked her content and delivery beyond the usual, but the fans - to her credit more than theirs - lapped it up like the "36 people" she cooked dinner for. Was it the extra Southern inflection in front of an Alabama crowd that did it? Will references to a "chicken dance at a garden party" get over in the North East? Will international audiences start a "Lacey Evans" chant when she puts over her "style" and "sophistication" or pop when she drops somebody with that 50% success rate Women's Right?
Your writer has no answers for these questions, but also can't understand how this went so well either. An Up for the segment, a Down for the state of the (WWE) Universe.