SmackDown Live Winners & Losers: New Day, New Champs

Following SummerSlam, SmackDown Live had an opportunity to outshine Raw, which was also very good. Could they? As Daniel Bryan would say, Yes! Yes!

It becomes increasingly clear that two hours of tightly-packed WWE programming has the potential to deliver a lot more entertainment than three hours of Raw and on Tuesday, SmackDown Live did just that. There was very little wasted energy on the blue brand and the show offered great promo work from Samoa Joe and Becky Lynch while including match setups for Hell in a Cell and a title change.

Here are the winners and losers for SmackDown Live: August 21, 2018.

Winner: Becky Lynch

Lynch was tremendous on Tuesday. Her promo was the best she's ever been on a mic and it begs the question, 'why hasn't WWE put her in this spot to show her chops more often?' Every word was believable, she didn't even stop to the let the crowd cheer for her (even though they were clearly on her side) and her brawl with Charlotte was exactly what the feud needed to give it some teeth.

Lynch was arguably the best part of the entire night and all she had to do was start telling what she believed to be was the truth. If this is what fans can expect from a heel turn by Lynch, WWE might have just struck gold.

Winner: SmackDown Tag Title Change

The match itself was decent, included tables and ladders and some high-end moves but the title change is the extremely interesting part of what happened here. This must be all about the fact Erick Rowan got injured at SummerSlam and New Day winning the belts perhaps sets up a program with The Bar.

This contest was interesting in that it made The Bludgeons still look strong in defeat, the New Day took a butt whooping only to still come out on top and the tag division is now wide open again. Some will argue The Bar or another team might have been better served to get the win here but that can come with time. There was nothing wrong with this decision.

Winner: Hardy's Revenge

The segment between Jeff Hardy and Randy Orton would have been tremendous if it had happened at SummerSlam but at least fans got to see Hardy revisit his daredevil ways at some point as he took it to Orton, got himself disqualified, dragged the action into the arena and Swanton Bombed his adversary from the staging outside the ring.

This feud instantly got more interesting than anything it had provided up to that point and it will be curious to see how Orton tries to exact his own measure of revenge.

Hardy's comeback here was long overdue and removing Shinsuke Nakamura from the equation is a good long-term strategy.

Winner: Samoa Joe Attack

There wasn't much time left in the two hours to do a full interview and long-winded promo with Samoa Joe and AJ Styles but what WWE did do was effective and entertaining. Styles couldn't even finish threatening Joe before being attacked from behind and put to sleep.

Joe was intense, he was quick to deliver punishment but the anger was believable in its delivery. When he spoke to Wendy at home, he touched a nerve for many fans. This feud really is just getting started and while SummerSlam was good, it was only the start of what's on the agenda for these two in-ring greats.

NEXT: SUMMERSLAM 2018 - BIGGEST SURPRISES WE DIDN'T SEE COMING