The biggest winners and losers of last night's SmackDown (August 7)
Unfortunately, there was a ton of filler on last night's SmackDown. While a few angles advanced, it often didn't feel like SummerSlam was two weeks away. The second hour was superior to the first, which definitely felt like it was mostly filler. Even a great promo by Randy Orton to start things off didn't advance anything in particular, as he basically said the same thing that he did a couple of weeks ago.
We get that Randy Orton is doing fantastically. Try and make him show it in yet another way!
SmackDown nevertheless did edge out Raw this week, but not by its usual margin, and it's very clear that the company is in a terrible creative rut in 2018. That this show was the best it could offer us two weeks before its supposed second biggest show on the calendar is yet more unambiguous evidence of its overall creative doldrums.
Nevertheless, the second hour was solid. Who managed to walk away with some wind in their sails as Brooklyn edges ever closer?
Losers: The IIconics
The IIconics were always going to be comedy jobbers. That was what they were on NXT, after all. Last night was worse to them than most, however, as the crowd chanted "boring" in response to their pre-match promo.
Clearly, the crowd understood that nothing that they said mattered and neither did the match. Maybe WWE should start listening, because these repetitive copy/paste tag team matches are among the worst offenders on its large palette of poor booking choices.
The match itself was standard filler fare. No tension between Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair was visible. It will either come later or WWE will conveniently forget the hints of dissension ever happened en route to a predictable (and disastrous) Carmella title retention at SummerSlam.