Two Matches Announced for "Smackdown Live"

Two for the road (to Backlash). We’re less than a week away from “Backlash 2017” and that means it’s time to really push home the card. There’s not much left to really set up but you can always build up a World Title challenger a little bit more. That seems to be the case as WWE has announced two matches for this week’s “Smackdown Live”.

This week on “Monday Night Raw”, WWE announced that Randy Orton will face Baron Corbin and AJ Styles will face #1 contender Jinder Mahal. These matches are designed to help build up Sunday’s pay per view where Mahal will face Orton for the Smackdown World Title, Styles will challenge Kevin Owens for the United States Title and Corbin will face Sami Zayn.

Opinion: The latter of those matches was announced as being for the first time ever. Are we really to the point where Styles vs. Mahal is billed as a major match? Mahal wasn’t even with the company a year ago and has only been a few steps above a jobber for about a month. Corbin vs. Orton was fun the first time so hopefully it’s just as good here.