WWE SmackDown 10/9/2026: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "WWE SmackDown," in this case the go-home show for Money in the Bank this weekend, and a show that saw the crowning of new Women's Tag Team Champions! The WINC staff have thoughts about that, as well as many other things that happened on the blue brand this week as we prepare for Saturday's ladder match festivities.

As always, if you missed the show, you can catch up on everything that went down by checking out our "WWE SmackDown" 10/9/26 live blog. It's a new style of live coverage for us, but still the same objective, opinion-free information you've come to expect. If you're after opinions — specifically the opinions of the WINC crew on the matches and segments that stood out to them the most, either in a positive or a negative sense — you're in the right place. Here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 10/9/26 episode of "WWE SmackDown!"

This week's show saw a match booked between GUNTHER and Danhausen after their interactions in recent weeks, seemingly allowing for a natural blow-off to their little issue before GUNTHER continues his main feud with Finn Balor. The match was booked with Balor in the segment with Mr. Hausen and Nick Aldis, so it seemed as though he would be in pole position to make the save and continue that story.

That happened, at least. Balor did make the save after GUNTHER beat fifty shades of p*** out of the little demon-gremlin-man. But there was no match as had been teased. Rather, Danhausen got cold feet when the "Ring General" was stood in the same ring as he, and thus tried to stop the referee from ringing the bell. The referee insisted, "Sir, I must ring this bell, the fans want to see this spectacle," and Danhausen was left knowing his fate. So he tried to curse GUNTHER, getting a boot to the face.

Only, the cold feet had spread to the referee and he opted not to ring the bell. And so this was just GUNTHER beating up Danhausen and Balor making the save. Exactly the same thing that could have happened without the entire pretense of there being a match.

Now for a lot of people, surely the thought is: "It's Danhausen. He doesn't belong in the same ring as GUNTHER." And yes, that might well be the case. But personally, what made GUNTHER versus Danhausen intriguing in the first place was that fact. Seriously, what insane nonsense is Danhausen going to have to pull to even consider beating GUNTHER? There was an opportunity to explore that in a brief contest, to create something different to the average barn-burners or squash matches GUNTHER normally puts on.

The Danhausen character is very clearly a joke, a niche innovated by a wrestler who will be the first to admit he is no technician or best bout machine. So don't send him out there to fight GUNTHER, craft something that sees him frustrate his dominant opponent, catching him off-guard and very nearly sneaking the win, only to be obliterated and have that fool's hope stamped out of him.

Instead it was just a segment like any segment before, devoid of anything to set it apart from the general haze of bad guy beating up good guy until other good guy arrives and maybe gets beaten up all the same by bad guy anyway.

Written by Max Everett

I complained about and hated the promo parade last week during "WWE SmackDown," even though the parade of Money in the Bank competitors included Undisputed WWE Champion Sami Zayn and his other challengers. WWE made up for it this week with its show-opening promo between CM Punk and Kevin Owens, once again involving Zayn. however. Fans these days are always clamoring for a good pre-MITB promo with everyone up on ladders, a la the go-home episode of "WWE Raw" ahead of the event in 2016, and I am one of them.

This promo was far less cheesy than that of 2016, however, and I love the ongoing feud between Owens and Punk, and this format spiced it up a bit. They made the silly "up-on-ladders" promo work really well, and thankfully, the entire thing just involved them, along with Zayn. The other guys in Money in the Bank were involved in a brawl in the main event segment after promos last week, and splitting things up this way this week worked really well . Evans, Penta, Williams, and Breakker are much more likely to win the briefcase than Punk and Owens, despite the latter being bigger stars, and Owens basically confirmed that himself tonight.

"KO" came out to interrupt Punk, who was already sitting atop a ladder after going through his MITB opponents along with the fans. He basically put them all over, but when he got to Owens, said he was the guy he "didn't sweat at all." He talked through Owens' entrance about how he beat him in front of his mom in Toronto, which was a nice touch.

Owens then made it clear that his priority was winning the contract, but his second priority was making sure Punk didn't win. Punk then had a great line where he said Owens not winning, yet still preventing Punk from winning, was only an excuse for Owens failing to capture the case, and that he'd always been looming over Owens, looking down on him. That got Owens up on the ladder to go face-to-face with Punk, where he said he'd win and "beat that b**** Sami Zayn," which then brought out the champion, who stood on a comically shorter ladder, to help close out the segment. He told Owens and Punk they're more similar than they realize, and he doesn't believe either of them are winning the case.

I never thought Punk or Owens were winning, either, but it seems like the MITB match is going to further the feud, and tonight heated things back up between them. I'm usually not one for a show-opening promo, or anything involving Punk, for that matter, but I really enjoyed this.

Written by Daisy Ruth

While I love Tatum Paxley and want only good things for her on the main roster, I can't say I understand where the storyline with her, Alexa Bliss, and Charlotte Flair is going after tonight. Paxley and Flair were meant to challenge Fatal Influence's Lainey Reid and Fallon Henley for the Women's Tag Team Championships, but after Flair was taken out backstage by Jade Cargill and the Baddies, it was Bliss to team with Paxley, and the women defeated the champions to win the gold.

I'm thrilled Paxley's already won her first championship on "SmackDown," especially after she didn't qualify for the Money in the Bank ladder match, but I just expected it to be alongside Flair to continue that angle. Flair's been pretty mean to Paxley, refusing to hug her and everything, and I figured we were going in the direction of them becoming besties, just like how the story between Flair and Bliss played out.

What's perhaps more baffling to me is that WWE is seemingly continuing the Cargill vs. Flair thing, despite not really having anything to work toward. Neither woman has a championship, and outside of Survivor Series, there are no major premium live events left for them to face one another again, after their first singles match on an episode of "SmackDown" back in August. That match also wasn't great, and it's not like Cargill has been working a ton of matches to improve, though of course she could be working hard behind the scenes.

Maybe the goal is that Flair gets jealous of Paxley, since she and Bliss are holding titles, but that just feels a bit beneath Flair to me at this point. And if that's the case, that's also kind of stupid, since she should be targeting Cargill, since she was the one to take her out backstage. I guess I just need to let this one play out, but after hoping to see Flair and Paxley pull it off tonight, I just feel a bit disappointed and a bit more concerned about where this all goes.

Written by Daisy Ruth

It's MITB eve, so we got a trios match involving all six participants in the women's ladder match. Team "SmackDown" was represented by Lash Legend, Jacy Jayne, and Tiffany Stratton. Sol Ruca, Lola Vice, and Roxanne Perez represented Team "Raw." Team "Raw" got individual televised entrances (Team "SmackDown" didn't even get ome televised entrance).

All six women got time to shine and to get their stuff in. While it was brand versus brand, the women also had to coexist within their own brand, which added tension to the match (see the ending). For most of the match, the women were able to work together and show why they were the representatives for their respective brands. The latter half of the match devolved into everyone trying to get in the finishers. Vice and Ruca were working together until the closing moments when Ruca went for Sol Snatcher on Legend, who Vice was holding in place. Legend moved, causing Ruca to land her finisher on her own teammate. Legend connected with the Lash Extension for the win.

The women all proved why they are the right choices to be in the MITB match. It's a stacked group of women and anyone's match. Each woman has a serious case to win the briefcase and potentially be the next women's champion. Tonight, they each got the chance to make a case for why they could be the one to win it all.

Written by Samantha Schipman

Capping off what was an episode of "WWE SmackDown" that did indeed happen was what I like to call a lovely big waste of time.

The October 9 show was already paper-thin heading into it, but it was bolstered by a main event between Bron Breakker and Trick Williams, which was designed to hype up the men's Money in the Bank Ladder Match that takes place tomorrow night. Given that Roman Reigns and LA Knight's WWE World Heavyweight Championship match will open tomorrow's Premium Live Event, it looks like the men's fight for a world title shot will close Money in the Bank, so WWE wanted this to be the big go-home angle. In the end, the angle was just kind of there.

The match itself between Breakker and Williams was fine if a little unspectacular. We all know both these guys (especially Breakker) can have much better matches than this, and it didn't help that the match had to grind to a halt within the first two minute due to both guys taking each other out on the outside. Just as the match seemed to be getting into a gear that could send the crowd home on a high note with Williams mounting a comeback, here comes The Vision.

Austin Theory jumps in to attack Williams, Logan Paul shows up with a head of hair that really needs some work done to it, and it all leads to both Je'Von Evans and Penta showing up to try and make the save. You have four of the guys in tomorrow's match involved which is fine, but because CM Punk and Kevin Owens were already in their own segment earlier on, you can't really have a full-blown go-home angle here because you're already presenting a third of the participants as more important in some eyes or not related to the rest of the field in others.

Bronson Reed shows up as well because we need more Vision antics obviously, which naturally prompts Oba Femi chants as they will face off tomorrow, but Femi never shows up. The show just ends, like legit ends and fades to black without having Femi come out, which just looked odd and made the ending feel rushed and incomplete. If there's a word to describe this episode of "SmackDown," it would be that: incomplete. For a go-home show before one of the biggest PLEs of the entire year, outside of the tag title match, nothing really happened — you could skip it and not miss a beat, and that was all personified in an overblown, untidy mess of a closing segment.

Written by Sam Palmer

This week's main event, the final action before Money in the Bank this weekend, saw an interbrand collision between Trick Williams and Bron Breakker.

This was actually only the second time that the former NXT Champions had squared off in the ring, having met for a six and a half minute bout on the developmental brand three years ago. And in the time that has passed both men have come on leaps and bounds in the ring and as characters.

The result was a bout that felt like a clash between two performers on the cusp of true greatness, and that was before the starting bell. When the bell did ring they both went all out to justify the expectation on their shoulders.

Williams had the crowd well and truly behind him as usual, juxtaposing with the relentless villain energy that Breakker exudes. At times he was a beast with roars behind each strike, others he was to endure like any underdog against constant pressure. Breakker was explosive and Williams was electric, matching blow for blow in a contest that earnestly felt like it was shifting towards instant classic territory. They had answers for one another whenever the big questions came and they really could have gone much longer.

Alas, there is an attitude within the WWE bubble that such matches are not to be "wasted" on TV when there are marquee events. This ended in a disqualification through interference and then bled into the general build towards the Men's Money in the Bank match, which Breakker and Williams will be a part of.

That's a shame that this writer has no need to really discuss. Because ultimately the match between Breakker and Williams was good heading to great. In the moment, not unaware per se because it was always going to happen, but yet to watch the ending and how it played out, this was enjoyable TV.

Written by Max Everett