The biggest winners and losers of last night's SmackDown (September 3)
Last night's SmackDown was a decent show despite some questionable booking decisions in the King of the Ring tournament. WWE's programming has gotten better after the slump it had during the spring and early summer. SmackDown continued the positive, if not completely excellent, trend. With the NFL season about to start and All Elite Wrestling set to premiere on TNT, WWE picked the right time to improve its content.
Most of the major storylines advanced and the King of the Ring tournament delivered some surprising results. Who got the most and least out of this show?
Winner: Bayley
Say what you will, but the heel turn is working. Explaining her actions, she told everyone that her friendship with Sasha Banks was behind all of this, even rationalizing her villainous side by saying it was about loyalty to her best friend - a lesson which the kids who have watched and loved her should learn.
She also called Charlotte Flair the "most selfish person in WWE," a label which the Queen proudly accepted, only to see her take a beating from Banks and Bayley.
One suspects that it won't be long before Flair has to reform her alliance with her old best friend, Becky Lynch, in order to take on this new threat.
There's a very NXT-like feel to this story, where the Four Horsewomen constantly shifted alliances. We can't expect that brilliance to be repeated on the main roster, but it would be a huge step up for a division that has been on the downswing this year.
It was precisely at this time last year that WWE's women's division caught fire. Can this angle bring the flames back? Or will it sputter out? That's the question that WWE will have to answer as the year begins to wind down.