WWE SmackDown Live Recap, Grades & Opinion: September 3, 2019

WWE SmackDown Live Recap: September 3, 2019

AKA The One Where It Feels Like a Go Home Show

Results:

King of the Ring match: Elias defeats Ali
Fire & Desire defeat Alexa Bliss(c) and Nikki Cross(c)
King of the Ring match: Chad Gable defeats Andrade
Aleister Black defeats Shelton Benjamin
Bo Dallas pins Drake Maverick to become new 24/7 champion
Shinsuke Nakamura(c) defeats enhancement talent
Drake Maverick pins Bo Dallas to become new 24/7 champion
R-Truth pins Drake Maverick to become new 24/7 champion

Match of the Night: Chad Gable defeats Andrade

Although we have seen the end of the reign of Buddy Murphy here, this match is a worthy successor. This match was a classic wrestling match. A ton of German suplexes from Gable and some hard hitting action from Andrade. The crowd also was insane during this match. Gable was extremely over with the crowd in Norfolk. After Gable got the three count for the win, there was a huge pop. Hopefully we see Baron Corbin vs Chad Gable in the finals of the King of the Ring tournament. A loss to Corbin would surprisingly get tons of sympathy for Gable and would help him get over more than he currently is.

Three Thoughts

Roman vs Rowan

Tonight WWE announced that Roman Reigns will face off against Erick Rowan at Clash of Champions in less than two weeks. We saw Rowan deliver his first promo in a while tonight on Smackdown as he turned on Daniel Bryan, his former tag partner. Rowan also delivered an iron claw to Bryan through the announcers table. This segment was the best in a bit in the Roman’s mystery attacker saga. Although it seems like another twist is in store for Clash of Champions, this match between Reigns and Rowan should be interesting.

.@WWERomanReigns is attacked yet again by @ERICKROWAN on #SDLive. pic.twitter.com/EKrSzvJACA

— WWE (@WWE) September 4, 2019

Kofi’s Reign Has Gone Stale

Unfortunately, Kofi Kingston has champion has started to run it’s course. Although the championship win was a great moment in modern WWE history, they don’t really know what to do from here. The last four weeks we have basically seen the same thing in repeat on Smackdown or Raw where Kofi gets an RKO from Orton along with the Revival. Hopefully Orton can win and bring something new to the belt, or WWE gives Kingston a fresh opponent following Clash of Champions.

Is Bayley A Heel?

The show opened tonight with a video package showing Bayley’s turn on Becky Lynch last night on Raw. She then cut a promo basically saying she isn’t a heel but instead backs her best friend who just happens to be a sadistic blue haired boss. After Charlotte interrupts her, followed by Banks interrupting her, Bayley and Banks beat Charlotte with a chair. This is very confusing. Charlotte is a heel along with Banks. However, Bayley is a face. It seems like WWE is trying to pull an AEW and have an MJF situation where someone can be a major heel and at the same time be with their best friend who’s a face. It very much feels like a copy of Cody and MJF but just not as good. Hopefully next week we can see some more clarification on this as we head into this month’s PPV.

Latest Wrestling News

Grade: B

This was another middle of the pack show. It seems as though WWE is just wasting time to get to October 4 when they make their Fox debut. There was some solid wrestling on this show along with the first Aleister Black match in a bit. It’ll be interesting what happens next week as they basically had a go home show this week.

One More Thing:

It’s really starting to seem as if WWE has no idea what to do currently. You can feel the pressure they had coming off of All Out this past weekend and they didn’t really have a good answer. It seemed as if Bayley’s turn was that answer, but tonight they kind of ruined it which is the problem with not having separate brands. With Heyman running Raw and Bischoff running Smackdown, characters look different on each show. There are rumors that WWE will do another draft before the Fox debut in a few weeks to create separate brands. Hopefully this is true.