Tonight, on the WWE Smackdown Live open discussion thread:
After WrestleMania made an earth-shattering impact on SmackDown Superstars such as WWE Champion AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, Daniel Bryan, SmackDown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair and more, Team Blue’s top competitors look forward to new challenges, opportunities and conflicts as the SmackDown LIVE after The Show of Shows approaches. (via WWE.com)
Our five-point preview:
1. While the Smackdown After WrestleMania isn’t usually as eventful as the Raw After WrestleMania, it should certainly be eventful on SOME level. After all, Daniel Bryan is back, Shane McMahon is probably in the ICU, and the Superstar Shake-Em-Up is next week! I have no idea if we’ll get any call-ups or debuts, but last year we got Shinsuke Nakamura. So, you know, there’s precedent for some surprises here.
2. Speaking of Nakamura, the official Smackdown preview on WWE.com talks about his “betrayal” of AJ Styles, like they weren’t in a big feud and teasing beating each other up from behind for weeks. I’m excited and hopeful that this feud will continue at least through Backlash, and I’m also excited and hopeful that heel Shinsuke will be as cool as it seems on paper.
3. Asuka was not on Raw after losing her first match ever in WWE, so look for her tonight on Smackdown. The character should (theoretically) only get more interesting from here, but let’s see if they can prove me wrong! (Note: please do not prove me wrong.)
4. There are new Smackdown Tag Team Champions, and I expect there’s about to be a whole lot of bludgeoning goin’ on. I also hope the Bludgies run through the whole tag division and the last hope end up being Breezango, who find the Blubbo Bubbos’ only weakness: goofiness.
5. And finally in “new champions” news, Jinder Mahal is your new United States champ, and he’s out here trying to cancel Rusev Day. He needs to get got, and I happen to know just the Rusev to do it.
As always, we’re including 10 of the best comments from tonight’s open discussion thread in tomorrow’s Best and Worst of Smackdown Live report. Reply to your favorites with a +1 to nominate them for consideration, and share the open thread around so we can get some fresh voices and jokes in here. Enjoy the show!
