WWE SmackDown 7/21/2023: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "WWE SmackDown," providing all your blue brand review and analysis since about a month ago! If you're looking for more objective "SmackDown" results, we have you covered on that elsewhere, but here, it's all about the feels (and how we feel them). And we knew there would be plenty of feels to be felt on this episode, probably from the Roman Reigns/Jey Uso "Rules of Engagement" segment alone.

Beyond that, though, there was a ton of great wrestling on this episode, including one of the longer non-title women's matches we'd seen in WWE in quite some time. We also learned who would take on Santos Escobar in the finals of the United States Championship Invitational, got another brief glimpse of Bobby Lashley, and booed lustily for Dominik Mysterio's first "NXT" North American title defense. How did all of this go over? Here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 7/21/23 episode of "WWE SmackDown."

It's kind of amazing how WWE has chosen to respond to the rise of LA Knight, and more specifically, the conversation about Knight online, which has been dominated of late by the question of whether or not he's "ripping off" Steve Austin and The Rock. So naturally, not only did he go for a Stunner during Friday night's fatal four-way match to advance in the United States Championship #1 contender's tournament, he actually hit his own version of the People's Elbow. Glorious. We hope next week he comes out with a can of beer and threatens to shove it up someone's candy ass.

What he didn't do in that match, of course, is win, which was a bit surprising. We figured Knight was, at the very least, a shoe-in to make the finals, and probably to win the US title. Austin Theory's reign is very much out of steam, and giving Knight a midcard championship seemed like the perfect move given his current popularity. Instead, in a move that's far more predictable in hindsight, WWE put the story they're choosing to tell ahead of social media's preferences. With Santos Escobar having won the previous four-way last week, WWE gave this week's win to Rey Mysterio, Escobar's fellow member of the LWO, setting up a finals match between the two friends and allies.

We would assume the idea here is to have Escobar go over Mysterio next week in a passing-of-the-torch moment, then go on to (hopefully) dethrone Theory. Now, if WWE wanted to push Escobar, could they have theoretically had Escobar defeat Knight in the finals instead of having Knight go out earlier? Sure, but what would that have accomplished? The self-styled "YEAH Movement" would have been just as upset with a Knight loss next week as they were this week, and in the meantime, Escobar vs. Knight is just a match for the sake of a match. Escobar vs. Mysterio is a match with inherent meaning and built-in pathos, and it's probably past time we expected such priorities from the Paul Levesque creative regime.

Anyway, the match was really good, and we happen to think Escobar and the LWO are way more interesting than Knight and his simplistic catchphrases, so we're happy with the result. Viva "Lucha Underground."

Escobar ended up getting a victory in a non-title match against Theory later in the show (further setting up the idea that Escobar might be the one to take Theory's title) and it was a pretty great performance, capped by an insane super hurricanrana from Escobar. In fact, most of the wrestling matches on this week's "SmackDown" were pretty great. The exception, unfortunately, was the "NXT" North American title match between Dominik Mysterio and Butch. There was just way too much going on, with Rhea Ripley interfering leading to Ridge Holland coming out leading to Pretty Deadly coming out leading to Ripley interfering again. What's worse, the roll-up finish was very evidently botched and made Butch look pretty weak for not kicking out after the amount of time Dom took to legally cover him.

Moreover, it's absolutely maddening to us that Pretty Deadly are still out here interfering in Brawling Brutes matches. There was a legitimately funny gag with Elton Prince, who has a shoulder injury, being rolled out in a wheelchair named "Prince Wheeliam" but eventually giving up and running away — and we're glad Prince is still being used instead of taken off TV while he recovers — but are we really still doing this with these two teams? Pretty Deadly is now 4-0 against the Brutes, who were their very first main roster opponents. One of those matches was a six-man tag also involving Theory; that was back on June 2. Yet Theory has moved on and Pretty Deadly is still annoying the Brutes. Is that relationship ever going to be explained? Did we just imagine it in a fever dream? We are desperately in need of some actual progression for every non-Judgment Day participant in this segment, and that is not a new situation.

Also, Shawn Michaels is just walking around backstage and decides to sanction an "NXT" title match on "SmackDown?" After all the fuss he made when Solo Sikoa was holding that belt on the main roster? Make it make sense.

Part of the problem with "SmackDown" at this particular moment is that with SummerSlam two weeks away, we're still seemingly close to the end of a company-wide storyline cycle that's been going since at least Night of Champions. Pretty Deadly vs. The Brutes; AJ Styles vs. Karrion Kross; Bianca Belair vs. Asuka (co-starring Charlotte Flair); these are all feuds that have been running for multiple months now, with very little development from episode to episode. The whole long-term storytelling works great when there's always a compelling hook for next week, as in the case of the Bloodline. But when the Bloodline is sucking up the majority of the show's (a) time, and (b) creativity, you don't have the resources for literally everything on your show to be a 2+ month feud and remain compelling. You have to advance the undercard at a faster pace. And when you don't do that, and we're right at the end of a long, slow cycle, fans start to get impatient.

For example: We love the idea, in theory, of Bobby Lashley starting a new Hurt Business (if that's what he's doing) involving the Street Profits and Carmelo Hayes/Trick Williams. That sounds like it could be really fun, even if part of us wishes they would just bring Shelton Benjamin and Cedric Alexander back to TV (and wonders what the hell happened to Omos). But it's hard to get excited about it with the story advancing at a snail's pace, with mere snippets of backstage film hinting about who Lashley is recruiting. We're guessing they're just waiting to debut any big new acts until after SummerSlam, and that makes sense, but it doesn't make it better. Lashley hasn't wrestled on TV since May 12. It would be really nice to have him back!

Oh, and speaking of people it would have been nice to have around this week, put Belair in Lashley's faction, cowards.

We're actually wondering if Belair (and possibly also the Street Profits) was one of the people sidelined with an unknown-but-possibly-COVID-related medical issue this week, because WWE announced earlier today that the WWE Women's title match at SummerSlam would be revealed during "SmackDown" and then ended up announcing Asuka vs. Flair vs. Belair hours before "SmackDown" aired. And then the only part of the story that actually advanced was Asuka attacking Flair after her match with IYO SKY, which feels like it could easily have been a last-minute replacement for the original segment. From a narrative standpoint, the only thing that really happened narratively involved Bayley's ongoing feud with Shotzi and the still-being-hinted-at signs of a future Damage CTRL split, which is fine, but we'd be surprised at this point if Bayley vs. Shotzi happened on SummerSlam, so it seemed like a weird thing to prioritize.

Whatever happened, however, we can't argue with the end result. Flair vs. SKY was awesome, by far the best match of the night, and that's after the participants visibly struggled to stay on the same page early on. Whether it was because of plans changing or not, they got some time to shine on this episode of "SmackDown," and the match turned into everything you'd want out of a contest between two former "NXT" Women's Champions. We're somewhat dubious of the choice to put Flair over clean, but she has a big match coming up and SKY still has the briefcase going for her (in addition to having put up one hell of a fight). We would have preferred to see SKY win, but the loss wasn't enough to dull the excitement from having witnessed such an excellent in-ring contest.

In the eternal battle between Bloodline drama screen time and wrestling matches, wrestling matches scored a definitive victory this week, as there were four decently long ones taking up the bulk of the episode while the Bloodline got maybe the last 15 minutes. It was still the main event, though, and in terms of sheer quality of character performance, it continues to prove why it should be.

Admittedly, it was pretty funny (and not really in a good way) for the much-hyped "Rules of Engagement" segment to be just a basic contract signing. When you think about it, "rules of engagement" is just a slightly more specific term for "contract signing," but we had assumed there was a little more to it than that. And as it turned out, there was.

We loved so many things about this segment, from Jey tearing up the contract to Roman preventing the Samoan Spike from Sikoa, but more than anything, it reminded us of how long this story has been going, and how deep its waters run. This segment was the mirror image of another scene between these two, one that played out in front of digital screens in the heart of the pandemic, on October 30, 2020. That night, five days after Jey had willingly lost his "I Quit" world title match to save his brother from Roman, he was crying, telling Roman he hated him, asking Roman how he could possibly do what he had done. Roman replied that he had to, that that's what it takes to be champion, to be the face of WWE. This time, weeks after Jimmy's hospitalization at Roman's hands, Jey is confident and composed. Now he's the one telling Roman that he has to fight him, that he has to beat him, because that's what needs to be done. In 2020, Roman told a rebellious Jey he didn't understand, that the entirety of their family, including the elders, supported Roman as Tribal Chief. In 2023, Roman tells Jey he doesn't "get it," reminding Jey that he's just a soldier and signing the contract with an unworried laugh. But now Jey has a rebuke: This is Tribal Combat. A match approved by the elders, a fight without rules, with both the world title and the title of Tribal Chief on the line. You can see Roman's face change in response. Because Jey must have some backing now. Jey must have support within the family. For the first time in three years, the elders are not unanimously backing Roman's reign, and that's because Jey has changed. He's grown. He's different now. Roman realizes it all at once. He starts off the segment calling his cousin "kid" and "little Jey." He ends it by dumbfoundedly agreeing to the match, by clasping Jey's hand and pulling him close, and by stopping the attack from Sikoa. Jey isn't just another challenger anymore. He has the support of the tribe. He's an equal. And when Jey mercilessly superkicks Sikoa before Roman's eyes, it's a message. This is me now. I can beat you.

It's so good. We can't believe there are still two more weeks until SummerSlam. We're ready now, dammit.

In last week's column, we laid out a theory about how WWE could have Jey win this feud without giving him the championship, essentially suggesting that it be made very clear that he would and should have won, but having Jey make the choice to not become champion and walk Roman's path. And while we were doubtful they would ultimately go there, some of last week's segment made us think they might actually be headed in that direction.

Well, we certainly don't think that anymore. Not with Jey wearing a shirt that says "The Real Chief" and essentially telling Roman that he had a tribal responsibility to take the championship and the lei from him. And if Tribal Combat is no rules, it's not like Jey could get himself disqualified or counted out or any of the traditional ways of choosing to lose a match. No, this segment made it pretty clear that our version of the story is off the table in favor of a match to clearly decide who's the head of it, and that presents a problem. Namely, WWE absolutely has to give Jey Uso the world championship now, or this entire story will have been a failure.

If that seems like an extreme statement, that's because it is. Who knows, maybe they'll come up with something creative of their own to get around the issue. But after that segment, we don't see how. Either Jey beats Roman and takes the title or Roman beats Jey and keeps it, and the latter option would actually be as stupid and short-sighted as the "fumbles" that many wrestling fans believe have occurred over the past six months. And we are not quite ready to believe that WWE will actually put Jey over.

Granted, we're more ready than we've ever been before. That main event segment seemed to be all about establishing Jey as being on Roman's level, as if everything else he's done over the past few years hadn't already done that. But there is a very deep, very cynical part of us that just doesn't believe they'll pull the trigger on Jey. We defended the decision when Roman beat Sami Zayn, and we defended the decision when Roman beat Cody Rhodes. We don't think we'll be able to defend it if he beats Jey Uso. That would be a true all-timer of a mistake. And now it's one or other. Joy or heartbreak. The best possible ending or the worst possible one. No middle ground.

And yet, alongside that deep, cynical part of us that thinks Jey has no chance, there's another part — smaller, but deeper, and not cynical at all — that remembers months ago, when Sami Zayn told Jey, "I acknowledge you." And that part of us has hope.

We just don't want to feel it get crushed.