Friday Night SmackDown Review - July 31, 2020

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Intercontinental Champion AJ Styles def. Gran Metalik

Metalik hasn't received many, if any, opportunities to showcase his skills in singles competition on the main roster, so I was happy he had that opportunity here and made the most of it. He had an excellent opponent in Styles and they produced a highly entertaining opener. Granted, the outcome was never in doubt, but Metalik looked great in defeat. I'm looking forward to who will step up to Styles next.

King Corbin Interrupted Jeff Hardy; Corbin def. Drew Gulak

Hardy's promo seemed heartfelt and genuine, but I'm ready for him to move on from talking about his past, especially since it's, you know, in the past. I don't think Corbin is supposed to be his next rival either considering Corbin currently has his hands full with Matt Riddle. Corbin's outing against Gulak was well wrestled but too short to be anything of note. I was more intrigued by Shorty G attacking Riddle afterward to collect the bounty from Corbin. I'm not super high on the idea of Shorty G going heel, but if it means him getting his Chad Gable name back, I'm all for it.

Big E def. The Miz

The long overdue singles push for Big E is officially underway and I am here for it. This was his chance to shine and I thought he and Miz had a good match. Even with John Morrison at ringside, Big E still managed to emerge victorious. Unfortunately, that doesn't speak too well to the credibility of Miz and Morrison at the moment. I fear that a split might be imminent based on how much losing they've been doing lately.

Naomi def. Lacey Evans

With #NaomiDeservesBetter hashtag picking up a lot of steam on Twitter two weeks ago, I really hope the company takes notices and starts to feature Naomi in a more prominent role on the show going forward. This match didn't blow me away, but it was fine while it lasted and had the right result. Ideally, I'd like to see her re-enter the SmackDown Women's Championship picture, but I don't see that happening until the belt is off Bayley.

SmackDown Women's Champion Bayley def. Nikki Cross

With this being positioned as the main event, I honestly thought there was a chance Cross would beat Bayley for the title, or that Alexa Bliss would cost Cross the championship. Neither of those things happened, but it's cool WWE went with something a bit more unpredictable by having "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt attack Bliss to end the night because of how she was/is clearly a love interest of Braun Strowman's after what we saw in the Swamp Fight at Extreme Rules. Bayley vs. Cross was on par with their encounter from Extreme Rules, though I felt like it ended a bit abruptly.

Overall Show

In addition to everything above, Sheamus cut a promo backstage putting the rest of the SmackDown roster on notice, while Sonya Deville viciously attacked Mandy Rose backstage to resume their rivalry. I really liked SmackDown last week and I thought this show was equally enjoyable as having two titles up for grabs made it more must-see than usual. My only gripe with it was that, unlike on Raw, there wasn't much progression when it came to announcing new matches for SummerSlam. There's still plenty of time before the pay-per-view and at least you can tell what matchups are most likely to be added to the card on the SmackDown side of things.