WWE SmackDown Smacks and Downs: Dawn of Bayley-2-Belts!

Was WWE SmackDown able to rebound after last week’s show? What’s to make of Boss ‘N’ Hug Connection after last night? Here are the “smacks” and “downs” for Jun. 5.

Last week’s show left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I went into last night’s show hoping it would be better.

Most of the first hour was a sludge, but it started to pick up with the Lacey Evans-Sonya Deville rematch after last week’s double count out (a frequent finish the past week on WWE television).

I’m not going to cover the match here, but these two have wonderful chemistry together and put on another solid match. It is obvious the growth each wrestler has had, and I think it’s safe to wonder how much of that has been due to not having a crowd.

I also think Deville’s modified, elevated neckbreaker from the apron to her knee/ground might be my new favorite move. It was something wicked.

There were two big segments advertised for last night. I’ll start with the main event, where Boss ‘N’ Hug Connection (Bayley and Sasha Banks) challenged Bliss Cross Applesauce (Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross) for the Women’s Tag Team Championship. What does a title change mean for the bubbling implosion waiting to happen between Bayley and Banks?

Also advertised was a “special warning” for Universal Champion Braun Strowman delivered by his opponents at Backlash, The Miz and John Morrison. Well … let’s just say that it was something different, and while sometimes different is good, last night was not the case. Poor, poor Kayla Braxton …

Then there was the follow up to the Jeff Hardy segments from last week. I mean, it couldn’t be worse than last week, right? Was Hardy able to provide any updates we already didn’t know or speculate? If it isn’t who we all suspect it to be, then who’s going to be the swerve (and I don’t mean Isaiah “Swerve” Scott)?

Lastly, there was a billed face-to-face interaction between Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles, the two men competing in the finals of the Intercontinental Championship Tournament next week. Were the two competitors able to add intrigue to their match, and what came of the segment?

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.

Let’s begin with the birth of Bayley-2-Belts.