Best and Worst of Smackdown Live - 24th January 2017
Listen, you cannot compete against a show that ends with The Undertaker, Goldberg and Brock Lesnar in a staredown for the very first time. The good thing about Smackdown Live though, is that they try hard!
This wasn’t the perfect show by any means, but there were enough moving components to ensure that we go into the Royal Rumble as excited WWE fans.
Live from the Huntington Center, in Toledo, Ohio; Smackdown Live was a show that, with its limited roster, built nicely to the Royal Rumble and the Elimination Chamber, which is only two weeks separated from the Royal Rumble.
It's time for our best and worst countdown for the blue brand!
#1 Worst: Genuine burial of AJ Styles
Okay, we admittedly hadn't noticed until AJ pointed it out on this week's show, but you seriously do not put your WWE Champion that far back in your Royal Rumble poster for sure.
Not only does this show that AJ is a placeholder champion who appears on the smaller shows, see how far back other Smackdown Live superstars have been positioned! Raw is the flagship brand and it will stay that way, at least if the poster has anything to do with it.
Even if Cena was working an angle, calling AJ Styles the biggest star not in the WWE before he joined the company- ‘some guy from Atlanta’ is simply not done. If that wasn’t enough, John Cena, the best-known wrestler in the world also buried independent wrestling with his promo.
What made it worse is that after Cena cut his promo, AJ did not get a single word in, making him look like a complete chump. This is why WWE still has to bring back stars from the past to boost their ratings, Treat your champion like a champion! Okay, rant over.