WWE SmackDown Live: 5 things we learned from this week's episode (January 29, 2019)

#3 SmackDown’s championship scene is slipping

A couple of Raw’s championships have become a joke over the past year, as the tag team titles were won by Nicholas and Braun Strowman, and then tossed around between makeshift teams, and Brock Lesnar won the Universal Championship once again.

Similarly, it seems as though SmackDown is heading down a similar path, as we first saw the SmackDown tag titles won by Shane McMahon and The Miz at Royal Rumble.

What followed this week was absolutely outrageous, as Shinsuke Nakamura lost his United States Championship after only two nights to R-Truth. Truth then also went on to beat the next biggest competitor for the title, Rusev, in a match that followed.

Truth is past his prime, and there was no reason for WWE to put the title on him. Instead, if they wanted to surprise the crowd, they could have allowed someone like Rey Mysterio, Mustafa Ali, or even The Miz to win the championship, opening up the US Championship scene.

Whatever SmackDown is trying to do with their championships at the moment is not humorous at all, and could result in a dip in value.