Braun Strowman is only recently returned from injury, but I’m already wondering where on Earth WWE is going with him after the last few weeks. I thought we were getting away from him facing Carmelo Hayes, with Strowman defeating Austin Theory on “SmackDown” tonight, and Hayes in an excellent (until the end) main event match against Sami Zayn, but, it appears as though WWE is going back to that well. When I really thought about it, I suppose it makes sense somewhere along the line, because with Bronson Reed now out with injury post-WarGames, there aren’t too many big men to feed to Strowman.
Apparently, WWE thinks Solo Sikoa is a good fit for that, however, despite Sikoa finally getting a singles match against Roman Reigns in a Tribal Combat match on the debut of “WWE Raw” on Netflix here very soon. What I really hated about all of this, however, is the fact Strowman interrupted an excellent main event, and from there, it all went to hell. Hayes was bailing on Zayn and seemed to be heading to the back, but Strowman’s music hit, and he grabbed him, brawling to the back before the new Bloodline came out for Zayn. Hayes and Strowman didn’t stay in the back for long, though, and Strowman just came out, dumped Hayes on the stage, and then made his way to the ring to take on the new Bloodline. Strangely, commentary mentioned that he had history with the Bloodline, which we don’t think is exactly true. Strowman has history with Reigns, who beat him for the championship, THEN the Bloodline storyline started to unfold, so that didn’t make much sense, and confused those of us here working “SmackDown.”
This all ended pretty abruptly and very lame, as well. Strowman was beaten down by the Bloodline before Zayn got back into the thick of it. He was taken out by a Samoan Spike, then Kevin Owens’ music hit, and all the men in the ring, outside of General Manager Nick Aldis, just kind of rolled out for “SmackDown” to move on to the real main event segment – Owens and Cody Rhodes facing off. Just watching them all roll out under the bottom rope, and assumably slink to the back, was kind of silly. It might still be too early to tell, but I’m not sure WWE is going to be booking “The Monster Among Men” too strongly this time around. Hey, at least he isn’t teaming up with a child and holding the tag team titles yet, I guess.
Written by Daisy Ruth