What Happened Before And After SmackDown Live?

Double bonus. You can never guess what you might get for a dark match. It might be something fresh that you’ve never seen before, or it might be what I somehow got stuck with: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Dolph Ziggler four times in a row (plus a house show). Sometimes though you get a good one to start and a big one to end the night, which can make the shows that much better. That seems to be the case this week.

You can check out our full SmackDown Live results right here.

According to Wrestlinginc.com, the pre-show dark match this week saw Carmella successfully defend the SmackDown Women’s Title against Becky Lynch with Carmella getting the pin via a rollup. Also according to Wrestlinginc.com, the post-205 Live dark match was AJ Styles successfully defending the WWE Championship against Shinsuke Nakamura. This match was a short one with the Bar running in for the disqualification. Anderson and Gallows made the save and posed with Styles to end the show.

Styles and Nakamura did some important stuff on the regular show too and it’s worth seeing.

Nakamura reveals stipulation for the title match at Money in the Bank: SmackDown LIVE, May 22, 2018

Opinion: There’s nothing wrong with giving the fans something fun to see before and after the major shows end. At least they got to see some of the biggest names in action, even if the match was rather short. Styles vs. Nakamura can be a heck of a match and it’s a treat to let the fans in the arena see it live. Two titles matches are quite the package of dark matches and if it means that Lynch is going to be in the title hunt soon, I’m certainly in a better mood.

Which of these matches interests you more? Will Lynch get back in the title hunt soon? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his Amazon author page with 26 wrestling books. His latest book is the WWE Grab Bag.

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