The biggest winners and losers of last night's SmackDown (October 4)
It all came down to this. WWE's premier show on FOX needed to be memorable, to say the least. With All Elite Wrestling literally stealing the show on Wednesday, Vince McMahon's juggernaut wanted to take back the conversation.
SmackDown managed to be a memorable show, but was it for the right reasons? How does the landscape look going forward on FOX? Who got the most and least out of the premier on the bigger network?
Winner: Becky Lynch
For the first time in three years, The Rock returned to a live WWE show, joining a segment with Becky Lynch. The two got the party started at Baron Corbin's expense.
One could point out the usual trope here of a full time star looking like an idiot and a geek against a returning legend, with WWE signaling just how inferior the current generation is to the past. That's true, but Becky Lynch gained much more than Baron Corbin lost.
Becky got to share a segment with one of the biggest stars the industry has ever seen and get his endorsement. If she is to lose her title on Sunday so that she can come to SmackDown, it will be a padded loss, because she'll have this endorsement behind her and be one of the focal points of the blue brand.
Loser: Bayley
As good as the opening segment was, this one was pedestrian. We've seen this before and despite the talent involved, the match didn't get above second gear.
Charlotte Flair tapping Bayley out probably means she'll get a title shot at Hell in a Cell, or shortly after that. The standard 50/50 booking fare might come into play here, but either way, it just makes the champion look bad.
WWE needs to find other ways of building feuds than having champions lose cleanly on TV.