Figure Four Weekly 7/24/2017: Battleground brings Smackdown to lowest point since brand split

Only days after the one-year anniversary of WWE’s most recent attempt at a brand split, SmackDown hit its lowest point since last summer with Battleground.

It wouldn’t be much of an issue if this were an outlier. Bad pay-per-views are bound to happen and there will always be excuses for them. Stipulations marred things at Battleground, dragging down both John Cena vs. Rusev and the main event. And Kevin Owens vs. AJ Styles, the match that seemed destined to be the best of the night, had a finish that couldn’t possibly have gone as planned.

But Battleground, along with the cancellation of Talking Smack as a weekly series, encapsulated what has been a bad run for SmackDown. The show has consistently decreased in quality over the last several months.

SmackDown has clearly been getting worse since at least WrestleMania, with the superstar shakeup upsetting a mix at the top of the card. But things have been slowly going downhill for most of the year even before that. After flourishing with AJ Styles as champion, the show hasn’t been the same since he lost the title.

Current subscribers click here to continue reading.