Randy Orton Pins WWE Champion Clean on SmackDown

Well, that was an interesting way to finish the show.

Randy Orton and WWE Champion Jinder Mahal were paired up in the main event of this week’s WWE SmackDown. It felt like the 300th time these two have wrestled in the last couple of months. But even more surprising than another match between them being featured in the main event slow was how it ended.

SmackDown’s World Champion, Mahal, was pinned clean by Orton in the middle of the ring. Mahal had Orton in a sleeper hold, but Orton countered with an RKO out of nowhere for the pin. The announcers played the finish up as Orton “getting his revenge” on Mahal, but it’s still not typical for your champion to lose clean less than two weeks before the second biggest show of the year.

There’s also this fact.

As Orton celebrated his victory on the ramp, he was blindsided by a kick from Rusev as the show went off the air. Rusev will be Orton’s opponent at SummerSlam.

Prior to the main event, a sit down interview with Shinsuke Nakamura aired. Nakamura was interviewed by Renee Young and played up how performing in WWE has always been his ultimate goal, as was earning a victory over John Cena.

While the match between Orton and Mahal was relatively good, it just felt so tired because we have seen it so many times before. The finish tells us that WWE really felt it was important for the babyface Orton to finally get some revenge on Mahal before the pair were split off for good. At least the booking for SummerSlam indicates that the company was wise enough to skip having their rematch (and Orton’s revenge) be at what is traditionally the company’s most important PPV of the year outside of WrestleMania.

But if Orton’s final revenge was slated for a random television match with not much hype, one is left wondering if it was really at all necessary in the first place.