WWE Smackville Review - July 27, 2019

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura def. Ali

WWE revealed shortly before the show that Finn Balor was not medically cleared to compete against Nakamura after suffering an injury earlier in the week. Here's hoping he's back in action soon and won't have to miss SummerSlam. Ali was a logical replacement since he teased targeting the title on a recent episode of SmackDown Live. I was looking forward to watching these two kill it, but they didn't really pick up the pace until the final few minutes. It was a good match on the whole, but I'm sure they could do much better, so here's hoping the rivalry is just getting started.

Kevin Owens def. Elias

I understand Nashville is known as Music City and thus an Elias' performance felt fitting on this show, his shtick is starting to get old for me because it has shown no signs of evolving. This was your basic house show-style segment, but at least the live crowd ate it up. The match that followed between Elias and Owens was decent and gave Owens a win over one of Shane McMahon's lackeys.

WWE Champion Kofi Kingston def. Samoa Joe and Dolph Ziggler in a Triple Threat Match

The two-on-one formula with the heels teaming up against the sole babyface caused the contest to drag early on, but once that alliance between Joe and Ziggler broke down, this turned into an entertaining three-way. Although the outcome was never in doubt, the crowd seemed to buy into some of the nearfalls and all three men worked well together. Hell, for what it's worth, I enjoyed this more than Kingston's recent title defenses on pay-per-view. Despite taking enough losses lately, Joe was pinned by Kingston here. With Joe and Ziggler finally behind him, Kingston can now fully focus on Randy Orton at SummerSlam.

Overall Show

Smackville was a lot like Starrcade last November and The Shield's Final Chapter earlier this year where it was technically a televised house show but only an hour of the event was filmed. Similar to those shows, this wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Nakamura vs. Ali was solid yet slightly underwhelming, Owens vs. Elias was exactly what you'd expect it to be, and the main event was fun yet predictable. I'm glad WWE is doing more original in-ring content on WWE Network, but this wasn't their best effort in my opinion.