WWE SmackDown Smacks and Downs: ‘Daddy Deville’ is amazing

WWE SmackDown’s first show after Money in the Bank had a few points of interest prior to airing. However, it was Sonya Deville who stole the show. Let’s look at the “smacks” and “downs” for May 15.

Hey, I did say last week Otis may end up winning the Money in the Bank briefcase.

He may not have actually “climbed the corporate ladder” so to speak, but he embodied the old cliche: find a way to win.

Is it his fault AJ Styles couldn’t hold onto a briefcase? Is it his fault he just happened to be standing where the briefcase fell?

The answer, of course, is no.

His first appearance as “Mr. Money in the Bank” was advertised for Miz TV. What path does WWE have Otis set on post-Money in the Bank?

The big draw (to WWE) was the return of Charlotte Flair to SmackDown as NXT Women’s Champion. What was the purpose of her “return,” and who emerged to challenge “The Queen” for her throne?

To me, the big draw was actually the Intercontinental Championship Tournament that began last night after WWE dishonorably stripped (well, “vacated”) the title held by Sami Zayn. Who is in the tournament, and what does the bracketing mean for the semifinals and finals?

(Quickly, most expect the hacker character to be revealed as Mustafa Ali, a duo of Ali and Chad Gable, or even a still-recovering Xavier Woods; he’s not Wolverine, folks. My sleeper pick if it isn’t Ali: Ember Moon.)

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 includes 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.