Grading SmackDown's divisions before and after the Superstar Shake Up

Mid-card Division

Balor will anchor the IC Title scene until he is needed to challenge a main-event heel

Added - Apollo Crews, Aleister Black, Finn Balor, Buddy Murphy, Chad Gable, Lars Sullivan, Jinder Mahal

Lost - Samoa Joe, Cesaro

Other Notes - Andrade moved to Raw but back to SmackDown

Grade Before - B-

Grade After - A

While SmackDown lost its bruiser US Champion, they added the scrappy Intercontinental Champion in Finn Balor. Balor should hopefully have a stabilizing force on the mid-card division before eventually dropping the title to one of the young up-and-comers like Black, Sullivan, Murphy or Andrade.

Once he does drop the title, whomever takes the title from Kofi Kingston will need fresh face challengers, and Balor would be the perfect man for that. While its mid-card division was already pretty good with Joe, Rusev, Shinsuke Nakamura, Rey Mysterio, Andrade and Ali, it improved mightily with the additions of Murphy and Black as well as scrappy faces Apollo Crews and Chad Gable.

Some of these superstars might get randomly paired together in order to help bolster the tag team division, but the IC Title scene should provide a lot of masterful matches if WWE books matches like Balor vs. Black, Balor vs. Murpy, Ali vs. Black and many more possible combinations. Is this where Black starts his ascent up the card? What road will they take with Sullivan?

And just like bolstering the tag team division might pair up some of these superstars, some like Black, Sullivan and Balor will eventually move up into WWE Championship contention. Their characters will likely be built up well before that, so they might be mid-card staples for most of the rest of 2019.