WWE SmackDown Live: Examining The Best and The Worst of the Brand for 2017

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Photo Source: WWE.com

SmackDown has aired its last episode of 2017. Let’s look at the best and worst of what Team Blue had to offer this year.

Another year is just about in the books. 2017 has given us a bunch of great wrestling across the world. But over the past 12 months, WWE SmackDown Live has changed quite a bit.

Sure, AJ Styles was WWE Champion in January, and he’s closing the year out with the same title. And The Usos have been leading the charge in the tag team division for just about the whole year, whether champions or not. Beyond all that, though, the landscape is very different from this time last year.

Think about it this way: If I told you one year ago that Jinder Mahal was going to have a six month run as WWE Champion, would you have believed me? And who could have predicted Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens reforming their friendship? What about Tyler Breeze and Fandango being the most entertaining part of the show with regularity? (Okay, that last one is kind of believable.)

Point is, SmackDown Live may truly be “the land of opportunity” it’s billed as. While Raw sometimes gets stuck in the same old cycles, for much of 2017 SmackDown was seen as the superior WWE show.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, though. Some things just flat out stunk. To find out what was good and what wasn’t, here’s our list of the best and worst matches, debuts, promos, and superstars from 2017 on Team Blue.