Friday Night Smackdown preview: Three questions heading into August 5 episode

WWE Friday Night Smackdown comes live from Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, SC, tonight as the company dives into the fallout from SummerSlam last Saturday.

Whether it’s an extremely important episode or a completely throwaway show that will be forgotten about in two weeks, there’s always questions that surround each edition of Friday Night Smackdown. I’ll ask a few pertaining to tonight’s episode.

Will Smackdown match the same energy of this week’s Raw?

This week’s edition of Monday Night Raw was one of the more universally praised episodes of the show in quite some time as it had a completely different feel with Triple H now in charge of creative. His fingerprints were all over the show, from dedicating half of the episode to the women’s roster to Ciampa winning two matches to become the No. 1 contender for the United States Championship. There’s a new aura surrounding weekly WWE programming and the question heading into tonight will be how it applies to Smackdown.

Will lesser profile women like Shotzi and Aliyah get more prominent roles? Will a rising star like Intercontinental Champion Gunther be featured even more? Will we get more fresh matchups we haven’t seen before? We’ll find out starting tonight.

What’s next for Liv Morgan?

Smackdown Women’s Champion Liv Morgan successfully defended her title against Ronda Rousey on Saturday but in a bit of controversial fashion. While in a submission, the champ managed to get the challenger’s shoulders pinned to the mat for the three-count but tapped out while the pin was happening. The referee missed this and awarded the bout to Morgan, prompting Rousey to go into a rage and attack both the referee and Morgan after the bout.

As a result, Rousey has been suspended indefinitely, so we’ll assume that she’ll be off television for the next few weeks. The question now becomes who will step up and challenge Morgan for the belt in the meantime. Could it be someone like Shotzi? Or could we be in for a surprise, like a returning Charlotte?

Are the Viking Raiders next in line for a tag team title match?

The Viking Raiders have been on a rampage since returning to Smackdown and turning heel several weeks back. They have systematically destroyed the New Day and would, in theory, be next in line for a shot at the Usos for the unified tag team titles.

It would make sense, considering that the Usos have dispatched of everyone during their reign. We’ll find out if tag team gold is in the future for the Raiders.