WWE SmackDown Live Recap, Grades & Opinion: August 20, 2019

WWE SmackDown Live Recap: August 20, 2019

A.K.A. The One Where Buddy Murphy May Or May Not Be A Liar

Results:

King of the Ring match: Andrade def. Apollo Crews
Buddy Murphy def. Daniel Bryan
The Revival def. Heavy Machinery
King of the Ring match: Elias def. Kevin Owens

Match of the Night: Buddy Murphy defeats Daniel Bryan.

Buddy Murphy has been red hot the last two weeks. He has had consecutive match of the nights on SmackDown Live. Bryan throughout the match called Murphy a liar over and over again. Towards the end, Rowan goes to interfere, allowing Murphy to dodge a yes kick and set up the Murphy’s Law for the three count. This is Murphy’s first real win on the main roster since moving from 205 Live in April.

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Three Thoughts

KO Vs Shane Continues

Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon had three segments tonight. The first started with Owens asking for Shane to reconsider the fine. The second consisted of Shane asking Owens to apologize for attacking an official. If Owens did it again he would be fired. The last was the King of the Ring tournament match.

Towards the beginning of the match, Shane came down to ringside to watch the match. As Owens got closer to winning, Shane took off his jacket and revealed he was wearing a referee uniform. Elias eventually rolled up Owens and got the quick count from Shane to advance in the King of the Ring tournament.

"It was HIM, Kevin! It was HIM all along!"

Special guest referee @ShaneMcMahon guarantees @IAmEliasWWE the victory in the #KingOfRing tournament! #SDLive @FightOwensFIght pic.twitter.com/VuxAc4oQ4a

— WWE (@WWE) August 21, 2019

This segment is likely to cause controversy. The WWE Universe has been adamant over the past number of weeks that they do not like Shane on SmackDown and would like this feud to be over between him and Owens. Tonight’s ending match not only showed that they will continue their feud, but now many brackets for the tournament have been busted. It was widely predicted that Owens would win the tournament and follow in the steps of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

Roman’s Attacker

In the final segment of the show, we see Daniel Bryan remove the hood off the supposed attacker and it turns out to be…a Rowan doppelganger? This was the whole setup throughout the show. They began by showing Bryan taking the attacker into a room backstage and throughout the night the cameras kept checking up on him. This ended up being a swerve. Kinda. It seems like this story will continue until at least Hell in a Cell in October.

Are we seeing DOUBLE?!

The man on left, and NOT @ERICKROWAN, is the one who attacked @WWERomanReigns. #SDLive @WWEDanielBryan pic.twitter.com/MzL1fBE8aP

— WWE (@WWE) August 21, 2019

Samimura

During tonight’s segment of Miz TV, we found out that Sami Zayn is now the manager of the Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura. This is certainly a very interesting choice. Nakamura is not the best at speaking english so it makes sense to pair him up with someone. It was not expected for him to be paired with Zayn. It will be interesting to see where WWE goes from here with the pair of former NXT champions.

.@ShinsukeN & @SamiZayn have aligned and they're DECIMATING @mikethemiz on #SDLive! pic.twitter.com/pSMGwHYQTn

— WWE (@WWE) August 21, 2019

Grade: B

This show was a middle of the pack SmackDown. For the majority of the show the matches we got were very good, but some things felt off. The pacing was very slow throughout the night. At points it started to feel like it was the length of Raw. It was also confusing why there were two segments in Shane’s office with Kevin Owens. This seemed like they forget a few lines the first time around even though they are pre-taped segments. The ending was really what ruined the show overall and took it down a ton. This absolutely hurts Owens in the long run.

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One More Thing:

For the past few days, the topic keeps circulating about a Queen of the Ring tournament taking place. Tonight was the first hint of it. During a Moment of Bliss, Charlotte looked at the throne and said that that was the chair she should be sitting in. This was clearly Charlotte saying she would like to have a Queen of the Ring tournament some day, and it seems like the possibility of it happening continues to grow.