11th September Edition Of The Friday Night Smackdown & Wrestling News

The show kicked off with Roman Reigns & Paul Heyman formally introducing Jey Uso as the number one contender to the Universal Championship, revealing that it was Roman’s idea to put Jey into the Fatal 4-Way last week. Roman says Jey earned his shot, but at Clash of Champions it’s going to be like it was when they were kids. He’s gonna whoop his ass, but then afterwards, it’s all love, man. God I cannot wait for him to murder him at the show. Unfortunately though, King Corbin and Sheamus came out saying that Roman’s actions reeked of nepotism, which, they did in fairness, so one holla holla later and we got ourselves a tag match in the main event playas.

AJ Styles vs Jeff Hardy was the first match of the night for the Intercontinental Championship, to which Sami Zayn was not happy. He was backstage in the production truck complaining about the title graphic and how it could exist when he was the Intercontinental Champion, and came out before the match saying this match couldn’t be for the title, when he was the champion, before eventually being escorted out by Adam Pearce and his security team. They actually did something! The match itself was fun and fast-paced, but ended prematurely when Sami came back out and caused the DQ, attacking Styles and delivering a Helluva Kick to Hardy. On his way out of the arena, Hardy collapsed on the ramp, from seemingly nothing, which WWE then said later was from dehydration? Erm...ok? Is this another Montez Ford poisoning angle?

Lucha House Party vs Cesaro & Nakamura, and prior to the match the champions were joined by Raw Tag Champions The Street Profits ahead of their champions vs champions match on Raw. Cesaro & Nakamura left, telling them not to break anything, and of course, they instead hosted a party with nameless extras, and also Drew Gulak for some reason, which distracted Cesaro in the match and allowed Kalisto to roll him up. I am...not really into the Street Profits. They just seem obnoxious rather than fun, like they were in NXT. I can’t pinpoint what’s different, but they just aren’t as engaging as they once were.

Bayley came out next to explain her actions from last week, which was done in a very solid promo that didn’t overstay its welcome. She essentially said she attacked Banks before Banks attacked her, because she knew that’s what she wanted to do. She played her the whole time and never cared about their friendship. This was a fine explanation, nothing wrong with it at all.

Following that was a Fatal 4-Way to determine Bayley’s new number one contender between Nikki Cross, Alexa Bliss, Lacey Evans, and Tamina. Alexa Bliss, still in her pigtails, shockingly turned on Nikki Cross and hit a Sister Abigial on the outside! Woah that’s crazy! Here’s an ad break immediately after, and when we come back, here’s what happened during the break where Bliss left the match seemingly under some sort of trance. That’s really important stuff to put into a match, you can’t just have it all in an ad break! Why does nobody care about this? She just hit Bray Wyatt’s move on her tag partner and left the match, why are we still talking about Tamina?! Aside from that blunder, the ending of the match was really good, with Nikki overcoming both Tamina and Evans to roll up Tamina for the win.

We got another vignette from a glammed up lady, following on from her walk in high heels last week - I’m pretty sure that’s Carmella, right?

But something that isn’t very glammed up is Otis’ bloody lunchbox story with his bloody MITB contract which bloody continued this week with bloody Otis and bloody Morrison. Ugh. In the match between Otis & Morrison, Miz stole the lunchbox which contained the MITB contract in it, allowing Morrison to get crushed by Otis. But it was all a ruse, because that lunchbox was just a decoy. Instead the MITB contract was inside the lunchbox that was inside the briefcase. PLEASE BUY OUR LUNCHBOX.

The Firefly Funhouse came next, with Bray Wyatt introducing the newest member of the Funhouse, Pasquale the Perseverent Parrot! Except Pasquale was dead in his box because Bray didn’t cut holes in it. He failed his Animal Handling check. Instead Puppet Vince made his return to the Funhouse, saying Bray had lost control of the Funhouse, so he was taking over, and instead he’ll be introducing the newest member: Wobbly Walrus, a Paul Heyman parody puppet. Vince said that’s such good s-word and Bray Wyatt said oh no the camera, as a to be continued popped up on the screen. I don’t know how to feel about Wobbly Walrus and this whole angle in all honesty, but I’m curious to see where it goes.

Finally on the show was the main event tag match with Sheamus & King Corbin vs Jey Uso & Roman Reigns. Except it wasn’t. Jey Uso made his entrance, but Roman was nowhere to be seen, and the match begun with just Jey in the ring. After fighting off a 2-on-1 assault for a little while, Jey eventually succumbed to the numbers, and as Sheamus was lining up for a Brogue Kick, Roman’s music finally hit, allowing Jey to get the upper hand on both Sheamus and Corbin, but as he was going for a splash on Sheamus, Roman had sauntered down to the apron, and tagged himself in as Jey leapt off the ropes. Jey looked deflated, but Roman entered, hit a Spear on Sheamus, pinned him, and left. On the ramp, Jey raised Roman’s hand in victory, which Roman looked legitimately pissed about, with a brilliant bit of character work as he snatched the title away from Jey.

Now look - I love this Roman character. I’m so incredibly invested in it, and I think him vs Jey is my most anticipated match at Clash of Champions. But I have a problem. And this may feel like a nitpick, but hear me out. THIS SEGMENT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE. My only issue with the triple threat at Payback is that the bell shouldn’t have rung to start the match before Roman came out, and he should have signed the contract beforehand. The same issue applied here, because the TAG TEAM match started with only one member on one side. That doesn’t make any sense, for the rules that you, WWE, have told and shown us! It’s so easy to make this a perfect segment and make sense, and not to step on Adam Blampied’s toes too much, but I’m gonna re-book this segment real quick. Sheamus and Corbin beatdown on Uso BEFORE THE BELL, they absolutely destroy him. After being beaten down for a good few minutes, Jey just manages to counter an End of Days and hit a Superkick and send Corbin out of the ring, but Sheamus hits him with a White Noise and lines up for a Brogue Kick. That’s when Roman comes out, distracting Sheamus allowing Jey to get the upper hand, but the bell rings once Roman makes it to the apron, starting the match. He then tags himself in on Jey and hits the Spear on Sheamus for the win. THAT SOLVES ALL YOUR PROBLEMS. STOP MAKING IT NOT MAKE SENSE. Like I said, this sounds like a nitpick, it doesn’t really change much in the grand scheme of things, right? But this actually undermines Roman’s entire character, because he and Heyman aren’t being smart and exploiting loopholes in the rules to show up and win, the rules are changing for him, which makes a huge difference. I had made my peace with the finish at Payback, because we now had this awesome heel Reigns character, but I worry that if the rules continue to bend to Roman’s will, he’s going to lose steam fast, which is the last thing I want because this character is AWESOME.

So that was SmackDown show, let us know what you thought of the show in the comments below. Overall, this was a pretty good show. Not as good as last week, but it built some effective stories, and grievances with the storytelling I have aside for one moment, I am more into heel Reigns than I have been for any wrestling character in years. But seriously this Otis story needs to die sooner rather than later.

Wrestling News

Remember that time back in 2018 when WWE did their own all-women’s PPV and had women headline WrestleMania for the first time ever in 2019? What’s become clear since then however is that it wasn’t really the women’s division getting their own PPV and headlining WrestleMania, it was Ronda Rousey getting those things, because other than the recent Bayley and Sasha storyline on SmackDown, which also moved to Raw for a little bit, WWE’s writing for its women’s division has been...let’s call it lackluster. However, it appears this could be about to change, as daughter of WWE legend Roddy Piper, Teal Piper, has revealed in an Instagram post that she has been training with Ronda Rousey. While Piper didn’t say Ronda was training for a return, it’s the first time we’ve had any suggestion that Ronda is preparing for an in-ring return of some kind. There’s still some time left on Ronda’s WWE contract, and WWE will be desperate to get her back in, in the hope of giving their falling ratings a boost particularly on raw.

While WWE...sort of...allowed Matt Hardy to carry his Broken Universe trick to WWE from Impact, a character we are yet to see is that of Willow, a character utilized by Jeff in Impact too. In the event that you haven't seen Willow previously, it's fundamentally a change conscience character for Jeff, and he utilizes loads of highly contrasting paint, and wears a creepy cover. Definitely, I think I've truly sold the character there. Addressing fans through the WWE on BT Sports Twitter page, Hardy uncovered he couldn't want anything more than to make a big appearance Willow in WWE and fight with the Fiend. "Willow is my go-to wrestling persona. To carry Willow into the WWE Universe and see what occurs. I simply have an odd inclination that something insane cool could occur among Willow and 'The Fiend.'"

It was reported earlier this week that unfortunately, a number of WWE talent and backstage staff were being released, including Gerald Brisco, Mike Rotunda, and Sarah Stock. Wrestling news has updated its initial report to say that they’ve been told around 60 people, mainly staff in the travel and events sector within WWE, were let go in the past week. While not on the same level of the April releases, which saw a reported 40% of WWE’s entire staff released, it’s still a huge chunk of WWE’s payroll out the door.

WWE may have made a bit of an error with Otis’ Money in the Bank contract, which he won back in May. On last night’s show, Otis showed the contract to the camera, and some people have noticed a mistake. The contract clearly states that it is only redeemable between June 14, 2015 and June 15, 2016. So, either WWE is just being lazy and they’ve been using the same piece of paper for 5 years, or this is part of a storyline in which Otis tries to cash in, and someone then realises his contract isn’t valid. It’s probably WWE being lazy though isn’t it?