WWE SmackDown Results: Winners, Live Grades, Reaction, Highlights After Crown Jewel

After a star-studded month of SmackDown featuring Roman Reigns, John Cena and Logan Paul, it felt like WWE scaled back on the roster for this week.

That may be to give talent time to rest after overseas travel, but this week’s episode did not follow up on nearly enough from Crown Jewel.

WWE has teased that The Champ may retire after his devastating loss to Solo Sikoa, and The Head of the Table continued his dominant reign as the top world champion in WWE. Yet no Bloodline members appeared live.

The onus was put on a limited roster to deliver a show that felt big, but this led to overlong segments into matches across the card.

Damage CTRL is more interesting than ever, but the follow-up and Asuka turn could have been handled over multiple weeks rather than rushing everything together in one night.

LWO is fracturing in a way that should benefit the talent, but it again came off rushed. Santos Escobar turning the moment suspicion was thrown at him left serious storytelling unexplored.

This is all to say that WWE did enough with the talent on hand to deliver a solid show, but it never big enough for the moment. Survivor Series felt far more imminent on Raw than on SmackDown.

While each individual segment was solid enough, the overall impact was less than the sum of those parts. At least the product is headed in a better direction for many stars on the blue brand.