WWE SmackDown Results, Highlights, And Grades For June 19, 2018

Two days ago, AJ Styles retained the WWE Championship and Carmella retained the WWE SmackDown Women’s Championship at Money in the Bank. Tonight, a Gauntlet Match will decide Styles’s next challenger.

WWE SmackDown has consistently been the “A” show ever since it was announced that FOX purchased the rights to air the “Blue Brand” on a five-year deal worth about $1 billion. With AJ Styles, Daniel Bryan, Samoa Joe, Shinsuke Nakamura, Charlotte Flair, Asuka, Becky Lynch, Paige, The New Day, The Usos, The Bar, The Miz, Rusev, Jeff Hardy, and Andrade “Cien” Almas on the show, it’s quite clear that SmackDown is the most loaded it has ever been.

Although Monday Night Raw turned in a strong episode this week that was complete with solid work from Braun Strowman, Sasha Banks, Bayley, Ronda Rousey, and Roman Reigns, SmackDown Live should once again have the best showing.

Not only will Becky take on Billie Kay in what should be an entertaining bout in the SmackDown Women’s Division, but we’ll also be getting an insane Gauntlet Match that will almost certainly main event the show. Rusev, Big E, Samoa Joe, Daniel Bryan, and The Miz will compete tonight, and the winner will face Styles for the WWE Championship at Extreme Rules. All of those wrestlers, with the exception of Bryan, failed to grab the Money in the Bank briefcase on Sunday with Strowman in the match.

Raw’s No. 1 contender’s match for Universal Champion Brock Lesnar will take at Extreme Rules, so SmackDown is clearly giving us a PPV-worthy match for free tonight.

Elsewhere, Sanity will make their highly anticipated debut, and they’ll take on the finest tag team that WWE has to offer in The Usos. This should be an awesome introduction to the four members of Sanity, as Nikki Cross’s NXT Women’s Championship loss at TakeOver: Chicago II on Saturday made this debut possible.

The Bludgeon Brothers retained their titles on the Money in the Bank pre-show, so the WWE SmackDown Tag Team Division is totally up for grabs. Can Sanity take those titles from the unstoppable Bludgeon Brothers at SummerSlam?

Carmella barely survived another match, but now she can say that she defeated Charlotte Flair twice and Asuka once. But Asuka probably isn’t done pursuing the SmackDown Women’s Championship, because her loss at Money in the Bank came under extremely dubious circumstances. A year after James Ellsworth tried to hand her the briefcase, he allowed Carmella to successfully retain the title against Asuka. We should see some more movement with this storyline tonight.

Andrade “Cien” Almas and Sin Cara were supposed to face off on SmackDown Live last week, but the match was removed from the show. Will WWE give the fans this match tonight, or are they saving it for later (or never)?

Tune in tonight on the USA Network at 8 p.m. ET to watch WWE SmackDown – otherwise known as the “A” show. And check back here for live results, highlights, grades, and analysis.