WWE SmackDown 7/10/2026: 3 Things We Hated & 3 Things We Loved
Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "WWE SmackDown," the show that saw a new match made for WWE SummerSlam, another new match made for Saturday Night's Main Event in Madison Square Garden, and perhaps most importantly, the return of Baron Corbin! As you might expect, the WINC staff has thoughts about all that stuff here in the column this week, and more!
If you missed the show, as always, you can catch up via our "WWE SmackDown" 7/10/26 results page, which contains all the objective facts you could possibly want about everything that happened during this episode. We're not covering all of it here in this column, because that's not what this column is for — if you're still reading, it means you're interested in the WINC crew's subjective opinions about the things that stood out to us the most, be they positive or negative. In other words, here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 7/10/26 episode of "WWE SmackDown!"
I know I'm asking for a lot by wishing any WWE shows would kick off with a match rather than a promo segment, and while I'm certainly glad "SmackDown" is back to just two hours, the first 20 minutes of the show were absolutely brutal. Every show continues to start the same way, but for whatever reason tonight, the opening segment just dragged on and on, though I can't say nothing was accomplished, at least.
Before new Undisputed WWE Champion CM Punk could come out to speak, General Manager Nick Aldis was in the ring to announce he had been re-instated from his suspension, following his previous confrontation with GUNTHER. He was already on the show on Monday, and was the one who called up Punk to replace Cody Rhodes in the title match against Sami Zayn, so it hardly felt like he had been absent. If I hadn't already expected that Punk was going to open the night, I would have assumed GUNTHER would come out to
