The road to SummerSlam continued on Tuesday night, with a stop in Laredo, Texas for Friday's Smackdown taping. The following spoilers include results from the show, in addition to the big angles that played out. Dean Ambrose opened the show, but before he could really say much, Seth Rollins interrupted. This resulted in some verbal sparring, ultimately leading to Ambrose revealing the stipulation for their SummerSlam match. As you'll remember from Raw, Ambrose won the right to pick the stipulation after triumphing in a beat the clock challenge. Ambrose announced that at SummerSlam, it will be a lumberjack match. That's hardly what the fans wanted to hear, it's a tired gimmick that effectively cheapens Ambrose vs Rollins. These are two of the best in ring workers on the roster, they should have been contesting a serious style contest. Presumably WWE took this direction merely to get as many of their wrestlers as possible on the SummerSlam card. Rollins closed out this opening segment by announcing that later in the show Ambrose would have to go one on one with Randy Orton. The first match of the evening was Sin Cara vs Damien Sandow. These two men aren't at all bad in the ring, but when they're both buried week after week, how are fans meant to care about them wrestling each other? They have been rendered meaningless. Cara won this uninteresting match up. The divas were up next, with Paige defeating Natalya. That result was pretty obvious. Natalya doesn't really have any role of note right now, whereas Paige is primed as the Diva's title number one contender. This contest was designed to give the English wrestler that little bit more momentum heading toward AJ Lee at SummerSlam. A promo segment with Chris Jericho addressed the Wyatt Family. Specifically he talked about Bray Wyatt and their upcoming match at SummerSlam. This was a nice bit of salesmanship for the feud, but it really is amazing how WWE have squandered this story. It just doesn't feel as exciting as it should. Here we have Jericho and Wyatt, two hugely charismatic stars, two astute in-ring workers. Yet they are struggling to capture the imagination. It's partly because WWE booked their first match early at Battleground, which ended up a bit of dud with Jericho going over clean. The Dean Ambrose vs Randy Orton main event finished in a no contest after Rollins interrupted. A melee then broke out to close the show. This wasn't really surprising, WWE are looking to protect all their main talent heading into SummerSlam, no one was ever going to take a fall in this setting. Smackdown this week wasn't about being an entertaining show in its own right, it was instead wholly about being a sales pitch for SummerSlam.
