One would be inclined to say that this week’s “WWE SmackDown” was another example of phoning it in for the go-home to a big show, but this has been a recurring theme specifically with the blue brand over the past however many months: there was legitimately no reason to tune into the show, and the main event was yet another predictable, boring, and actually quite choppy match.

Rhea Ripley reunited the Terror Twins alongside Damian Priest for a mixed tag team match with Zelina Vega and Aleister Black, as one could have surmised was the plan when Vega was first factored into the Priest-Black feud – a feud that started in September, over three months ago, may one add. And to be honest, while the actual storyline, if that is what it can be called, has been the most diluted of weak sauces, the match itself never stuck out as something that could have been bad.

Leave it to WWE to try, however, and the match itself was both boring and messy in the worst versions of those flavors. Obviously, it’s hampered by the fact that it’s a tag team match that, by design, forces both members out of the ring with a tag, thus eliminating any sense of explosiveness or spontaneity that makes tag team wrestling compelling to begin with. But then, even then, neither set of competitors really clicked with the other, or had the chance to, owing to the format.

To be clear, a mixed tag team wrestling match presented as two simultaneous singles matches running parallel to one another is always going to be limited. But even then, it wasn’t a case of limitations getting in the way of a really stomping match. It was just a hastily thrown together paper-chain of spots, the seams were there for all to see, and literally no one in their right mind thought Black and Vega were walking away with the win here.

Moreover, they were effectively squashed. They didn’t get much offense in that hadn’t seemed to have hurt Ripley any more than it had hurt Vega. Black pulled Ripley off a pin just to stare at her before getting headbutted. It was Looney Tunes levels of sticking it to the bad guy. Neither Priest nor Ripley needed this feud. Black and Vega really didn’t need a feud designed for them to lose so convincingly. Nothing actually happened on this three-month treadmill to nowhere, and there’s not even a guarantee that this is the end of the feud. It should be. But that in itself is never a guarantee. After all, it shouldn’t have taken this long to get here in the first place.

Written by Max Everett