The biggest winners and losers on last night's SmackDown (March 6)

Last night was the go-home show to Fastlane, the final major event before WrestleMania 34. We saw a bit more effort from the blue brand than was typical lately, including a decently-done promo to kick things off and a showing of what the Fastlane main event used to be.

Still, most of us will be more excited when Fastlane ends and the build to WrestleMania can become the primary focus of the entire company. The lack of authority figures helped things too.

In a baffling move, John Cena wasn't in attendance, making us wonder why exactly he's on the Fastlane card at all. It shows WWE's continued laziness with SmackDown, which, despite its slightly higher quality, still consisted of numerous questionable booking decisions.

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Winner: Ruby Riott

In her best promo to date, Ruby Riott confronted her Fastlane opponent. We finally got a reason for the Riott Squad's existence - to destroy the myth of Charlotte Flair. Too bad that up to now, there's been no coherent story behind that statement!

Charlotte was under threat from the Riott Squad, but nothing came of it when Bobby Roode's entrance interrupted everything.

Ruby Riott still doesn't feel like a genuine threat to Charlotte and has no hope of winning on Sunday, but she did show potential for what she can bring to the table in the future.

Loser: Randy Orton

Randy Orton's losing streak to Jinder Mahal continues, despite the Maharaja's non-presence in the US title match on Sunday.

More interesting though, was that Bobby Roode distracted Randy Orton. Is this the beginning of a heel turn? If so, that would be the best thing to come out of this segment, which was a retelling of one of last year's worst feuds.

Loser: Carmella

Miss Money in the Bank lost to Becky Lynch, who has done nothing for months, despite dominating most of the match. Even though Becky is the better performer, it's still a puzzling decision.

It's not unique, as WWE often does this with its Money in the Bank winners, but it's a trite and try-hard approach to deliver a stupid swerve. All it winds up doing is cooling the Money in the Bank holder off before a potential title win.

Carmella doesn't feel anywhere near ready for a championship and last night did nothing to disprove that. Hopefully, she fails her cash-in.

It also set up ANOTHER women's tag team match, solely to fill space on the card for Fastlane. Sigh.

Loser: AJ Styles

AJ Styles felt like just another warm body last night, as I was expecting he would. The match with Dolph Ziggler was poorly-produced on WWE's part, and Styles didn't feel like an important presence in the subsequent fatal 5-way main event.

The WrestleMania build will heat him back up, but it has its work cut out for it when it didn't need to be.

Winner: Sami Zayn

Sami Zayn won the fatal 5 way by pinning Kevin Owens after a Helluva Kick. It looks very much like the start of a WrestleMania feud between them (at least for now).

The end of this angle will be a great boon to SmackDown, so hopefully it'll happen in New Orleans, tired as the build to the match will be.

Loser: Rusev

Rusev challenged Shinsuke Nakamura to a match at Fastlane. It's obviously only to fill the card and a way to warm up the Royal Rumble winner before WrestleMania. Unfortunately, it will come at the expense of the most popular performer on SmackDown.

And it didn't need to happen in the first place because there was no reason to keep Shinsuke Nakamura off TV for so long. It's all typical SmackDown.

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