Best and worst of SmackDown Live- 3rd October, 2017
Our sympathies for the crowd at Denver, Colorado, who had to endure one of the weakest episodes of SmackDown Live in ages. The go-home show before a pay-per-view is generally lacking in quality, with the central objective being to protect the talent before the big event.
However, even by that yardstick, this wasn't a good episode. Until the last 15 minutes of the show, we were tempted to call this article, 'Worst of SmackDown Live'. Shane McMahon and Kevin Owens changed our mind, but this episode still left much to be desired.
Let's revisit the show and look back at what worked for us, and what didn't. Mind you, unfortunately, the latter far outweighs the former.
Here is our analysis of what went wrong this week, on SmackDown Live, with a few redeeming points for the episode.
#1 Worst: Just an unimportant show
In an era when so much entertainment is available on demand (even on the WWE Network), you have to give the audience a compelling reason to tune in and watch a program live, on a weekly basis.
When you make a show part of a larger narrative overall, a small piece of the jigsaw puzzle, the audience then realizes that the show is a 'can't miss' affair and is compelled to tune in. Nothing of consequence happened during the show at all. We could have skipped right to the pay-per-view and it wouldn't have really mattered.
Sadly, because of this very same reason, no match except for the Kevin Owens-Shane McMahon contest has any real heat. The matches on Sunday may be classic affairs, but will the audience care?
We were especially disappointed with The Usos reading their rights to The New Day, and the lacklustre few minutes that segment was. With the kind of promo ability that both teams have, this should have been far more exciting.