28th August Edition Of The Friday Night Smackdown & Wrestling News

After a recap of Roman Reigns returning at SummerSlam (BREAKING NEWS, THE BIG DOG IS BACK), Adam Pearce is backstage in Vince McMahon’s office, and Vince tells him he needs signatures from the three people competing for the Universal Title at Payback, before handing him an outfit to wear so he can enter the Firefly Funhouse? Huh? Also I’m going to address this problem once and only once, the crowd noises this week were obnoxious. It was a constant drone of noise, instead of ups and downs like actual cheers do. It just covered some of the people talking and didn’t add anything. It was like those vuvuzelas in World Cup. Sort it out. Anyway.

The first match of the night was Jeff Hardy vs Shinsuke Nakamura, the former of which who had issued an open challenge for the Intercontinental Championship, which AJ Styles was not happy about. He came out to lambast Hardy for winning with the knee brace, which actually played into this match too as Hardy used the brace again to turn the tide of the match, before hitting a Twist of Fate and Swanton for the win. Is Hardy using the brace intentionally? Or just a happy accident? That’s actually quite a good story to tell, I’m curious to see if they build on this.

But the segment’s not over there because Sami Zayn is back! He comes out with the Intercontinental Championship, calling Hardy a fraud and a fake champion. I was so excited to see Zayn back...it’s just a shame it was a bit of a pants return for him. Because later, he was backstage with Kayla Braxton who made him out to look like a massive dick for not being around for months, WE’RE IN A PANDEMIC GUYS, and in another backstage promo later, his old teammates of Cesaro and Nakamura weren’t too happy to see him either, saying he’d been gone for 4 months without so much as a phone call, again, making him look like a massive dick for taking time off during a pandemic! But don’t worry guys, no consequences for taking time off, remember.

There was a Firefly Funhouse next, where Adam Pearce came in, dressed as a postman, and then Wyatt signed the contract. And then Pearce left. How would Vince know to give him the postman outfit? Why did he have to wear it? I’m so confused.

Matt Riddle came out to the ring to call out King Corbin next, who instead made a match between Riddle and Shorty G, which Riddle won in about 2 minutes. I’ve been doing this review for longer than the match was. Riddle beats up Corbin a little bit after, and after another backstage promo, Corbin says he wants Riddle at Payback.

Sasha Banks & Bayley came out next, and Bayley had a brilliant promo here, lamenting Sasha losing her title at SummerSlam, and says it’s all her fault...for letting Sasha challenge for the title in the first place, she knows her record, that she can’t defend a title. Then the segment came crashing down when Shayna Baszler and Nia Jax came on the titantron and said they were going to win the tag titles at Payback. I’m sure they said other things, but it was all so generic it blended into each other.

In yet another backstage promo, Drew Gulak is looking for Braun Strowman, and then finds him immediately, smashing a chair over his back, before handing the chair to Adam Pearce, and walking off. Okay? Strowman then says he’s going to squash Gulak, and guess what, he did. That’s Wyatt and Strowman that have signed the contract, just Roman to go. I’m sure that’ll be uneventful.

Tensions build between all the teams it seems, because Bayley & Banks can’t be the only ones. Cesaro wasn’t happy Nakamura went out for an Intercontinental Championship match without so much as a heads up, and Kalisto and Lince Dorado continued their argument, with Kalisto telling Dorado to watch how it’s done against Cesaro. The match itself was awesome, some really great lucha things going on in this one, but it was super short, only going a few minutes, before Nakamura tried to get involved unsuccessfully as Lucha House Party accosted him, but the distraction allowed Cesaro to get the rollup win.

We’re going backstage YET AGAIN to see Nikki Cross holding the mug Alexa first got her, before she’s joined by Alexa who has her hair in pigtails. Uh oh. And she’s got a singular dreadlock. Uh oh. Cross says her new hairdo isn’t a good idea, it reminds her of The Fiend and Alexa’s expression suddenly goes very blank, before she snaps back into reality, and then fires up at Cross, saying she thought friends supported each other, so much for friendship, and she smashes the mug Nikki was holding and walks off. TENSION BETWEEN TEAMMATES? MUST BE SMACKDOWN.

The main event of the show was a six-man tag of Big E & Heavy Machinery vs Sheamus, Miz & Morrison. Wait, what happened to that advertised segment of Big E on Miz TV? I mean I’m not complaining, this show had enough bloody promos as it is. The match was fine, with Big E picking up the win over Miz, which was nice.

But the night wasn’t over, because we cut BACKSTAGE...AGAIN...and Roman Reigns is there with the contract, saying he’ll be there on Sunday, he’ll win the Universal Championship, that’s not a prediction, that’s a spoiler. The camera container over, and Paul Heyman is sitting close to him, who just says “Believe. That.” Hoo baby. This is brilliant for many, many reasons, but Roman having a mouthpiece is awesome, because Roman is best when he’s brooding and can deliver a seething one-liner, that’s his best promo style. Having a guy like Heyman working with Reigns is going to do wonders for him. Some of Reigns’ best work came against Brock Lesnar, when he was working closely with Heyman, I think they can make some magic. I’m genuinely pumped for Payback, mainly because, try not to kill me comments, I want to see Roman win the Universal Championship, and that would have been completely unheard of before this show. What a turnaround.

Let us know what you thought of the smackdown show in the comments, but for us, overall this show was...not great. Roman with Paul Heyman is a masterstroke, and it was great to see Sami Zayn but good god, there so many promos. To put it in perspective, there were 5 matches on this show. 2 of them were squash matches, 1 of them went less than 5 minutes, so there were 2 actual match on the card. In contrast, there were 15 promo segments, 12 of which were backstage, 2 were in the ring, 1 was the Firefly Funhouse, and on top of that there was the promo from Riddle to goad out Corbin, and there was a picture-in-picture promo from Cesaro during the Hardy/Nakamura match. If maths isn’t your strong suit, let me explain it a different way: THAT’S A LOT OF PROMOS. Some of the promos were really good, but it just didn’t give the viewer any time to digest what they’d just seen, it was promo, promo, promo. So, somehow, on a show that saw Sami Zayn return and Roman Reigns align himself with a returning Paul Heyman.

Wrestling News

In classic WWE fashion, they’ve only left themselves one week between PPVs, which means that Payback tomorrow is bound to be just chock full of rematches from SummerSlam with absolutely no character development whatsoever...right? What’s that? ROMAN REIGNS IS A PAUL HEYMAN GUY?! ...WHAT? Last night’s episode of SmackDown saw Adam Pearce’s journey to get the three competitors in the Triple Threat match for the Universal Championship to sign the contract, which ended with Roman Reigns. Reigns then said he’s going to win on Sunday, that’s not a prediction, that’s a spoiler. And Paul Heyman was sitting next to him. Holy hot damn. I’ll dive more into the angle itself, but what does this mean for SmackDown and WWE? A report states that the plan right now is to push Roman as the top heel on SmackDown. Guys, it’s a Roman Reigns heel turn! That thing you’ve always wanted. Now be happy about it. The report also states that Braun Strowman will also continue to be a heel moving forwards. And interestingly enough, the top babyface on SmackDown is going to be The Fiend. This was already seen on last night’s episode as during a video recap of Roman’s return at SummerSlam, cheers were overlaid to The Fiend winning the championship. Who do you want to see Roman feud with for the Universal Championship? Because, he’s definitely winning tomorrow night. Let us know in the comments. But Paul Heyman wasn’t the only shock return on SmackDown, and no I’m not talking about Sami Zayn. I’m talking about Kenny Omega! ...Who was part of the ThunderDome audience.

Tweeter user tweeted an image of the SmackDown ThunderDome, where current AEW Tag Team Champion Kenny Omega was seen quite happily watching along. Very clever, it’s clearly just a picture of Omega, he wasn’t really watching SmackDown “I was just trying to have a good time, I honestly didn’t think anyone would notice.” Oh. So he was watching. Nice. The ratings are in for this week’s episode of AEW’s Thursday Night Dynamite, no thanks to Kenny, the traitor. Despite being outside its usual Wednesday timeslot, AEW Dynamite upped its viewership to 813,000 viewers, an increase from last week’s 755,000. Conversely though, Dynamite dropped its ratings in the 18-49 demo from 0.31 last week to a 0.29 this week. Next week is the go-home show for All Out and they are returning to their usual Wednesday night timeslot and they are unopposed as NXT is running Super Tuesday, so you’d expect next week’s show to be even higher. But it’s not all about AEW as Payback is tomorrow night, and noticeable by their absence on last night’s SmackDown was Retribution, wait sorry...RETRIBUTION. But we might not be waiting too long to see them again, as one of the people suspected to be part of the group, Dominik Dijakovic, who has blacked out his Twitter for months now, tweeted a series of numbers before quickly deleting it. The numbers, when put through a cipher, spell out the word ‘Sunday’. Turns out Dijak just wants some ice cream. Because...sunday. Retribution will probably be at Payback.