WWE SmackDown Smacks and Downs: Black sheep, lien, and reptilians, oh my!

Money in the Bank is just over a week away. Last night’s WWE SmackDown saw two more wrestlers qualify for their respective ladder matches and continued builds for bubbling feuds. Here are the “smacks” and “downs” for May 1.

With just two episodes before one of the more anticipated pay-per-view events of every year, Money in the Bank, how did WWE SmackDown build their end of the card on last night’s episode?

Concerning stories, it was a pretty good night. The same can’t necessarily be said about the in-ring outcomes.

There were some questionable booking decisions, as well as an announcement that had me saying, “Tell me he didn’t just say that!”

On the other hand, at least the matches were all pretty serviceable to great. We also had further character development for one wrestler in particular, and this only makes me intrigued to see what comes next.

We also had a little story time on the “Firefly Fun House.” As Bray Wyatt might say, “Yowie Wowie!”

As a reminder of my criteria, I’m not going to run through each match/segment. Rather, I will identify a couple of segments that either worked (“smack”) or didn’t for whatever reason (“down”).

My criteria include quality of match/segment and how it starts and/or builds stories. After all, we watch partly to be caught up in the stories. If a great work-rate match happens with no context or bearing on the stories, it’s going to be a miss.

Also, just because something is a hit/miss doesn’t mean it was an overwhelming choice. The selection could be 51 percent hit, 75 percent miss, and so on.

There are other subtleties to my criteria, but those are pretty much the parameters.