WWE SmackDown Live recap: Someone doesn’t like Roman Reigns

On this week’s SmackDown Live, Shane McMahon stays away, the women’s division draws the short straw again and Roman Reigns has a mystery attacker.

This week’s edition of SmackDown Live wasn’t as dynamic or, dare we say, fun as Monday Night Raw, but it was still a serviceable and at-times entertaining show that ended in confusing fashion. Here’s the need-to-knows from SmackDown for July 30.

Shaneless

SmackDown Live opens with a pre-taped message from Shane McMahon. McMahon announces that he won’t be part of the show this week, because of Kevin Owens’ repeated attacks. His life coach reminded him that he’ll be facing Owens in two weeks at SummerSlam and thus there is no real reason for him to be around until then.

Now, ignoring the fact that this minutes-long promo in fact serves as McMahon being on the show, the fact that McMahon’s claim he’d not be around proved to be accurate made it nice to know ahead of time that we are getting a much-needed reprieve from McMahon’s sweaty redness.

Owens then comes to the ring and (sarcastically) tells us not to panic about McMahon’s absence. Oh, we’ll be just fine. Owens then cuts his own dueling promo declaring that he will indeed prevail at SummerSlam. This draws out McMahon ally Drew McIntyre, who says Owens talks too much. He also adds that McMahon failed to mention that Owens will be facing him tonight and gives Owens a bit of beating ahead of said match, which is our first of the night.

Most notably, this ended up being a good showcase for McIntyre, a welcomed development after seeing his momentum being stopped-and-started since reaching the main roster and having him serve as a lackey for McMahon rather than a physically-intimidating competitor who can fight his own battles.

It also gave us some of that classic Owens-the-underdog storytelling, with Owens refusing to fall to McIntyre’s brutality. Instead, he rallied, hit a Stunner on McIntyre on the announce table, got him back into the ring, superkicked him and then finished him off with a second Stunner.

In the service of The Fiend

After Owens-McIntyre, Kayla Braxton interviews Dolph Ziggler backstage; he takes on Finn Balor and, much like on Raw where Ziggler’s match with Seth Rollins served only to set up the return of Brock Lesnar (who then went on to brutalize Rollins), this seems booked to set up Balor being attacked by Bray Wyatt’s Fiend.

The Firefly Fun House is back (briefly) and Ramblin’ Rabbit is our initial host. He’s excited about SummerSlam because he’s a huge fan of Balor. He does warn that Balor has made a mistake by unleashing The Fiend. Rabbit sees Wyatt coming and runs off, and Wyatt is … disturbed. Yes, let’s go with disturbed.

Once Ziggler takes on Balor (Wyatt’s SummerSlam opponent) later in the night, the earlier presumption is proved true: the match only serves as a vehicle for The Fiend to warp the lights and sound as he arrives to the arena. This distraction allows Ziggler to hit a superkick (here, termed Sweet Chin Music, a la Shawn Michaels, re: recent events) and get the win.

Again, all of this Michaels-adjacent content isn’t doing anything but making us want to see Ziggler vs. Michaels, a match that isn’t likely to happen. Though it’s just being used to set up Ziggler as enhancement for other feuds and matches set for SummerSlam, invoking Michaels in these matches — especially after years of Ziggler trying to ape Michaels’ career and/or being compared to him — makes us think about things other than the ones WWE is trying to get us to focus on.

Where has the women’s division gone?

In the women’s locker room, Bayley and Ember Moon have a little confrontation about their SummerSlam match. But first: They must team together tonight. Bayley warns Moon to not try to attack her, as she did last week.

Moon and Bayley, who face each other at SummerSlam for Bayley’s SmackDown Women’s Championship, team up to take on Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross in the second match of the evening. Unsurprisingly, Moon and Bayley have an uneasy alliance.

Bliss (miraculously healed from the “ankle injury” she suffered on Monday) and Cross dominate most of the match, owing primarily to their more-established partnership. But a hot tag from Bayley to Moon swung momentum — briefly — to the faces’ side. Moon hits an eclipse on Cross, but Bliss interferes with the pin, takes a few cheap shots and gets the win via pinning Moon following Twisted Bliss.

Bayley then hit Moon with a Bayley to Belly, retribution for Moon’s Eclipse a week ago.

So, that makes it … two women’s matches in two days (and five hours) of WWE main-roster programming, with Bliss and Cross involved with both. We were also supposed to have a match between The IIconics and Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville (and if Rose and Deville win, they get a shot at The IIconics’ Women’s Tag Team Championships). But that doesn’t happen for some reason (puppy fever).

Yes, the women’s division is dealing with the absence of Sasha Banks and injuries suffered by Nia Jax, Ruby Riott and Mickie James. But what about Naomi? Sarah Logan? Liv Morgan? The fact that, despite the so-called “Women’s Revolution,” there has been no development of a mid-card in the division shows just how seriously the company is actually taking its women competitors.

The only additional women’s-division related content this week features one of the company’s biggest historic misogynists.

Something for Charlotte to do

This week, because SmackDown is in Memphis, WWE rolls out Jerry “The King” Lawler for a special episode of The King’s Court with special guest, WWE Hall of Famer Trish Stratus. This segment serves as a vehicle for Charlotte Flair to come out and complain about not having a SummerSlam match and to condescend to Stratus. Flair issues the challenge and, after serving some insults to Stratus for daring to be a mother, the two will be facing off at, yes, SummerSlam. Voila.

This again …

Aleister Black is locked back into his promo closet and is again asking to have someone pick a fight with him. Through fighting, he is seeking salvation, and his matches with Cesaro weren’t enough. He is apparently less patient this time around; maybe that means another challenger emerges more quickly than the last time? Regardless, why is WWE choosing to go back to this trope after it was so annoying the first time around?

Oh, but Sami Zayn is here. Why? “Scoping out the competition,” though he adds that the SmackDown roster isn’t good at much other than complaining. He refers back to Black’s promo and says that it seems like he’s begging for help and not a fight; Zayn says that Black is afraid of being exposed. Thus, Zayn will challenge Black at SummerSlam. Black only has to be kinda patient in order to get his next fight.

Given Zayn’s recent history, we can all figure out where that is going to go.

Daniel Bryan announces nothing

Daniel Bryan is backstage, and he’s allegedly set to make his “career-altering announcement” tonight. He emits a couple of sniffles and walks away. Not tonight.

Ali vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura defended his title against Ali at the weekend’s “Smackville” WWE Network special, with Ali filling in for a sick Balor. That match wasn’t much of anything, especially given that it was literally put together at the last second. As such, Nakamura and Ali get a second crack at it tonight.

Ali decides to be aggressive early but the veteran counters not long after. Things do remain fairly back-and-forth with things titled a bit toward Nakamura. Nakamura goes for a Kinshasa; Ali counters with a superkick. Ali goes for the finish, but Nakamura rolls out of the way. Nak then attempts another Kinshasa, but Ali counters that into a pin and he gets the upset (non-title) victory.

This should set up a match for the gold at SummerSlam, with the hope being that it gets time to breathe, unlike these last two clashes. Nakamura isn’t young anymore, but when he wants to put on a show he does, and Ali would be the perfect young Superstar with whom to do that.

Kofi Kingston vs. AJ Styles

Initially, The New Day were set to face The O.C. in a six-man tag match. That was subsequently changed on Tuesday afternoon, and now SmackDown‘s main event is WWE Champion Kofi Kingston (accompanied by Big E and Xavier Woods, the SmackDown Tag Team Champions) against United States Champion AJ Styles (with Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows, the Raw Tag Team Champions) in a non-title one-on-one exhibition.

For all of the opportunity for interference and shenanigans, Styles and Kingston get an extended amount of time to take each other on, with the tag teams mostly concerning themselves with each other and staying outside of the ring.

Kingston wins via Trouble in Paradise, which he landed while Styles was launching himself for a Phenomenal Forearm, a beautiful-looking finish to a strong match.

So, this was odd

To close the show, a rushed Kayla Braxton is backstage awaiting Roman Reigns, who will be announcing his SummerSlam opponent. This is all very hurried, as the Kingston-Styles match went a little long, which probably helped owe to why this all seemedso confusing. Because before Reigns can make his announcement, scaffolding and other pieces of backstage equipment fall on him. He’s kind of okay, though, getting up literally moments later, and is refusing medical attention. And look at how many quick-cuts they use:

Obviously, someone wants to fight Reigns and that someone knocked over the equipment. But who? One guess should be Braun Strowman, only because of his history toppling large, heavy things that a human man shouldn’t be able to topple. Reigns also has unfinished business with Samoa Joe, and Joe certainly has a propensity for violence that makes it plausible that he was behind the attack.

Or maybe it just fell down on its own? Either way, that’s how SmackDown Live ended this week.

So, that was SmackDown Live for July 30. It was neither bad nor great, but the confounding ending and the continued abandonment of the women’s division proves that there’s still work to do when it comes to improving the main roster product. What were your thoughts on SmackDown this week? Who attacked Reigns? Let us know in the comments below!