Raw vs SmackDown (18th, 19th December): Which show was better this week?

The Main Events

Randy Orton, Shinsuke Nakamura and AJ Styles team up

RAW

I know that the women's six-man match was technically the main event of the show, but that was just a vehicle to make the Royal Rumble announcement, so I'm going to disregard that, as it would clearly be the best main event.

RAW featured the six-man tag-team match between Jason Jordan, Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins vs Samoa Joe, Sheamus and Cesaro. The match was really good and hit all of the storytelling beats it needed to, Jason Jordan came across as inexperienced, impulsive and impetuous, Joe was calculative and dangerous and, of course, Rollins hit that dive that inadvertently injured Ambrose's arm.

The extension of the backstage beatdown with Joe snapping Ambrose's arm in the travel case was a nice addition as well, and really sold Ambrose's injury and future absence from the show.

SmackDown LIVE

There was no real story here other than Randy Orton, Shinsuke Nakamura and AJ Styles getting a modicum of revenge against their heel opponents with Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens and Jinder Mahal picking up losses.

Who was better?

The SmackDown LIVE main event was a bit bland, didn't further a storyline and didn't really do anything special or memorable even though it gave us tag-team pairings we'd never seen before. Whereas, the RAW main event helped to further develop several storylines, as well as give us a genuine shock