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The Holidays are over, and in WWE, that means that the road to WrestleMania has begun, although it won't be official until the Royal Rumble. The company didn't waste any time in leaving its December sleepy mode, thankfully. Last night's SmackDown was the best in a long time.
Since the draft, the blue brand has struggled to find its footing, but last night signaled a new direction as the most important months on the WWE calendar begin. Namely, it was a night of big returns.
Who got the most and least out of the show? Let's take a look.
Winner: Dana Brooke
It's surprising to type those very words, but here we are. She wasn't the focus of the match (her partner, Lacey Evans has a big match coming up after all, unfortunately), but she got a big win over Sasha Banks at the end of it and did more in this match than she has perhaps since 2016.
Is it likely that this will be sustained? Probably not, but maybe she's turning enough eyeballs to find a place in the tag team division, which at any rate would be a big step up from where she's been in the past few years, which is either losing in seconds or not on TV at all.
Winner: Sheamus
It wasn't a match, but Sheamus made his return to the ring last night, flattening Shorty G after his victory against Dash Wilder.
Sheamus is a well known and loved veteran and a feud between him and Shorty G should at least make for some great wrestling on television. It will give the latter a renewed singles focus (has the team with Mustafa Ali petered out?). Meanwhile, it's a good feud for Sheamus to re-establish himself after being absent for nearly a year.
Winner: The SmackDown tag team division
The Miz suddenly turned heel last night by attacking Kofi Kingston from behind. Maybe it was slapdash, but then we saw John Morrison backstage, hanging out in The Miz's locker room. It was the second big return on the night.
The Miz and John Morrison vs. The New Day is going to rule. It's a fresh feud and everyone over the age of 10 or so remembers the entertainment value that these two provided when they reigned as tag team champions. Mix that with the craziness of the New Day and you can take a guess where this will go.
Loser: Drew Gulak
It's too bad that the former cruiserweight champions seem to lose reflexively. Drew Gulak is a vastly superior talent to Otis, that's for sure, and he could be a great staple of the intercontinental title picture if he's allowed to be. Putting him beneath Otis who is involved in what should be a train wreck of an angle with Mandy Rose is questionable, at best.
The whole thing has Vince McMahon humor written all over it. I'm not looking forward to seeing where this angle goes.
Winners: The Usos
The Usos were the final big return on the evening, coming to the defense of Roman Reigns against Baron Corbin and Dolph Ziggler. In the short term, their presence adds a lot to the lackluster feud between Reigns and Corbin. Instead of a singles match, we're probably heading to some kind of tag team encounter at the Royal Rumble. That's an improvement right off the bat. I'm not in the mood to see any more dog poop or dog food segments on my TV.
In the long term, The Usos are now back in the tag team division, which greatly aids its composition. Though SmackDown lost out in the draft in October, the blue brand always seems to feature the best tag teams. Their added presence will easily make the SmackDown division superior to Raw's, which mostly consists of the Viking Raiders beating up anonymous jobbers every week.
