Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "WWE SmackDown," the show that saw a new match made for WWE SummerSlam, another new match made for Saturday Night's Main Event in Madison Square Garden, and perhaps most importantly, the return of Baron Corbin! As you might expect, the WINC staff has thoughts about all that stuff here in the column this week, and more!If you missed the show, as always, you can catch up via our "WWE SmackDown" 7/10/26 results page, which contains all the objective facts you could possibly want about everything that happened during this episode. We're not covering all of it here in this column, because that's not what this column is for if you're still reading, it means you're interested in the WINC crew's subjective opinions about the things that stood out to us the most, be they positive or negative.In other words, here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 7/10/26 episode of "WWE SmackDown!"
I know I'm asking for a lot by wishing any WWE shows would kick off with a match rather than a promo segment, and while I'm certainly glad "SmackDown" is back to just two hours, the first 20 minutes of the show were absolutely brutal. Every show continues to start the same way, but for whatever reason tonight, the opening segment just dragged on and on, though I can't say nothing was accomplished, at least.Before new Undisputed WWE Champion CM Punk could come out to speak, General Manager Nick Aldis was in the ring to announce he had been re-instated from his suspension, following his previous confrontation with GUNTHER. He was already on the show on Monday, and was the one who called up Punk to replace Cody Rhodes in the title match against Sami Zayn, so it hardly felt like he had been absent. If I hadn't already expected that Punk was going to open the night, I would have assumed GUNTHER would come out to get in his face.But, nope, even that would have been more interesting than "Is It Great to Be Alive in *insert city here*" Punk, who is only more insufferable when he has a championship. It was a lot of boring babyface nonsense involving Rhodes, who came out eventually, and by the end of it, we found out (what we already knew) that Rhodes will be challenging Punk for the title at SummerSlam. And that was it. Almost 20 minutes of just setting that up, plus Aldis being like, "Hey, I'm back!" to kick things off.While, again, I am extremely glad that the blue brand is back to a reasonable runtime, taking 20 minutes to get this out of the way is a little ridiculous. That's an entire television match, and then some, that could have been contested, but WWE wanted to get this set up and announced to push tickets to SummerSlam. I don't know how effective that's going to be, however, because this crowd was dead when it was made official. They were louder when Punk's music played to end the segment and commentary was moving on to the next thing.I also expected Zayn to run out at any point of this lengthy segment to rant and rave about what happened on "Raw." Turns out, Zayn wasn't even on the show tonight, which seems pretty darn ridiculous for how fired up he was in the video they showed of him backstage following Monday's match. He apparently "called" Aldis a bit later on in the night, but it makes me feel like he's not serious about losing the gold, which just isn't a good look for him.Written by DaisyRuth
Candice LeRae's delivery wasn't the best, but I at least appreciated the ideas behind her backstage segment with CM Punk on "SmackDown." On an episode in which SamiZayn didn't appear after unceremoniously losing his WWE Championship just nine days after winning the title, it was nice to hear somebody on the show stick up for him, giving a voice to those who felt hope during his extremely short title reign. Even if it's just Johnny and Candice (and really just Candice), at least SOMEBODY in WWE canon appreciated Zayn's brief run as champion. For the SamiZayn ride-or-dies out there, at least somebody was upset with Punk for ruining the party in less than two weeks.And to be fair, Punk's response to Candice was a bit of fresh air in and of itself, as he essentially told her that she and Johnny should get back in the ring and stop doing this ridiculous bit. He's 100% right about that, and it was nice to hear someone express it. So there were two different truth-tellings going on here, and they were both refreshing to hear. And I really hope Candice and Johnny do get back in the ring soon, because I'm very tired of their considerable talent being wasted in these backstage segments even the ones I enjoy.
Normally, Finn Balor scoring the win in a match would be perfectly fine by me as someone who has an immense amount of respect for him as a performer. In the case of his match against Tama Tonga from this edition of "SmackDown," I actually would've preferred to see him take the loss here because I think it would've been more beneficial to Tama than it was for Balor.If you cast your minds back to last Friday, then you may recall that Tama and Talla Tonga orchestrated a backstage attack on Balor to take him out. Tama explicitly told Balor that he was coming for everyone from his past starting with the leader of the Balor Club, so in my mind, the perfect catalyst for him to start on his journey to do just that was with a heel win against Balor. Tama has kind of been floating around on the roster with Talla since their split from Solo Sikoa, and the pair desperately need something to do whether it's a mission for Tama to take out everyone from his past or the two of them going after Sikoa. I just think it was a missed opportunity here for Tama not to win this match, especially considering Talla was already on the outside, had interfered during multiple points in this match, and could've very easily helped Tama cheat in order to get a victory.Written by Olivia Quinlan
It was really not that long comparatively speaking but Baron Corbin finally returned to WWE on Friday, and there really is no other company he belongs to. He is that classic big man villain archetype that WWE got rich from, especially when booked against the, arguably better, smaller and faster wrestlers that can extract an instant classic from the normally ambling brawlers.Corbin is a step above that description, moving a little more fluid and explosive with one of the most iconic modern day wrestling finishers. And in his return, he has been immediately placed in a United States Championship picture crying out for some depth, interrupting an otherwise unimportant non-title match between champion Trick Williams and Carmelo Hayes. It's the one and only singles title he has held with WWE, the one and only title he ever held on the main roster.Corbin working with either or both of Williams and Hayes is an interesting proposition in itself one that would have a prizefight feel between two large strikers and the other that would be the match described previously. A three-way between them would bring that all together for something else entirely.Written by Max Everett
Jimmy Uso and Jacob Fatu were conducting Bloodline business on "WWE SmackDown" this week, thus drawing Royce Keys out for a conversation about family a la Toretto. That then led to a match being booked between Jimmy and Keys, with Fatu saying that this was their business and not his.The match was about what could have been expected just by saying the billing aloud, and personally that wasn't in a good light. Nothing that could be called interesting in their interactions belongs in the confines of a wrestling match.And the only thing that remotely threatened the whole boring aspect the segment had going for it was that Solo Sikoa appeared, appearing behind Jimmy for a cinematic turn-around spot into some punches and the Samoan Spike.Sikoa was going to cost Jimmy, giving Keys a needed singles win as he tries to get truly started on the main roster. But then music played, and thus he needed to stop, while commentary tried to play it off as the music distracting him. That music obviously belonged to Fatu, and that brawl with Sikoa cost Keys as Jimmy returned to beat him. Why didn't he just hit the spike and then run to fight Fatu? He was mid-motion.More importantly, why is Jimmy Uso beating Royce Keys in a singles match? It's yet another terrible result marred by interference because it was booked as the footnote in something drip-fed over the course of a year or more, WWE requires a lot of patience and/or a neurodegenerative condition to be best enjoyed.Keys should be protected as a monster much in the vein of Oba Femi on Monday nights. He doesn't even really belong in a singles match with Jimmy Uso, let alone it going on long enough for him to lose it in such a manner. It's just a shame, and why it is so rare to have faith in anyone being brought into the company.Written byMax Everett
With every week that passes, I remain hopeful that WWE is actually going to run GUNTHER vs. Nick Aldis at SummerSlam. While Aldis didn't fight back whatsoever tonight, and how could he when he spent quite a bit of time locked in a sleeper hold before Cody Rhodes made any effort to help, I still thought everything felt like a tease toward a match.The pair had a tense backstage segment, though it remained pretty cordial, all things considered with GUNTHER'S threats. GUNTHER said Aldis had until the end of the night to "make things right" with the Undisputed WWE Championship match, and by that he meant adding him to the match pitting Rhodes against champion CM Punk. So, of course we all knew that much was a tease to something bigger.Aldis and GUNTHER's confrontation took the main event spot of the night, which I'd imagine has to mean something. WWE also gave a good amount of time to GUNTHER's beat down of Aldis, with Rhodes' music not hitting until the last possible second before the broadcast cut off. By that time, Aldis had been in GUNTHER's sleeper hold numerous times and was completely knocked out, despite the best efforts of officials and producers. When I read the spoiler that Rhodes made the save, I figured it would be sooner, but no, WWE really wanted you to see this go down between GUNTHER and Aldis.Maybe I have my tin foil hat on and just need WWE to be considering doing something, anything interesting at SummerSlam that I couldn't have predicted back at the beginning of the year, but I still feel like we're on the road to "The Career Killer" ending Aldis' in-ring career. We have three weeks to go until the big event, so hopefully WWE doesn't keep Aldis off TV next week, selling the effects. It would be kind of cool to see him show up, proving he's tough, and maybe he gets physical with GUNTHER again the next week or something when he's healed a bit.I didn't love too much on tonight's episode of "SmackDown," but the continued storyline of GUNTHER and Aldis was pretty solid. It seems like "The Ring General's" SummerSlam plans have been up in the air for awhile, so I really hope, for his sake, this is what WWE is actually working toward.Written by DaisyRuth
